The Wolf's Joy Read online

  “That’s what I asked,” Sketchy said.

  “Why?”

  “Personal reasons.”

  “Oh. Okay. That makes the question okay, then.” Turning her hands over, Alex looked to Clarissa for assistance. Certainly, she could make sense of the guy if anyone could. He and the other moon-howler worked for her. They followed her around and made sure she didn’t get kidnapped or something. Rationale was always so obscure where creatures were concerned.

  Still tranquil, Clarissa stirred her coffee.

  “Anything you can tell me?” Alex asked.

  “Nothing useful.”

  Sheesh.

  The sheriff thrust his credit card at Alex.

  Grateful for the distraction, she took it to the register with a Wolf at the heels of her orthopedic sneakers.

  “Act like normal people,” she told him as she swiped the card. “I know you know how.”

  “Of course I do when I have to. Still need to know your answer, though.”

  “If I tell you, will you go away?”

  The receipt on the slow-churning machine had cranked all the way out before he said, “Sure.”

  To Alex, that sounded like a yes with caveats, but she’d deal. She wanted him to go away. She wasn’t going to let anything slow her down from leaving work on time.

  “Twenty-three,” she said flatly.

  He counted off something on his fingers, and then hightailed it out of the diner.

  Alex looked to Clarissa again.

  Still frustratingly serene, but her lips had curved up behind her coffee mug and her shoulders were shaking ever so slightly.

  Alex sighed.

  “Here’s the soup for the specials,” Chet called from the pass-through.

  Alex slid them onto a tray and dropped them off after dropping off Sheriff’s card, the receipt, and a pen.

  The Wolf returned.

  “Oh, good,” Alex mumbled.

  “What time do you get off?”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  “Twenty-three’s okay,” he said.

  “Okay for what?”

  “You’re at the end of the shift, right?”

  “How about you start answering some of my questions?”

  “You’re not allergic to fur or nothin’ like that, are you?”

  “I—” This is why Belle told me to avoid them. Alex took a breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. They were insufferable. She’d learned the hard way that she didn’t have to put up with insufferable. “Go away,” she told him. “I’m working.”

  “Good that you work. Working’s a sign of character.”

  “No, it’s a sign that I have rent due on the first.”

  “You have a bedroom to yourself? Or some other place with a door that locks? I know y’all humans like privacy and stuff. Wolves don’t need all that. If the temperature’s warm enough outside, you can do it in the woods.”

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” Alex grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him toward the door, and gave him a scoot. “Keep the ridiculousness outside for another half hour, and I’ll give you five whole minutes of undivided attention before telling you to go to hell.”

  “Oh, okay.” He lifted the bill of his faded Cheerwine trucker hat and shoved his enviably thick hair back. “Cool.” He moseyed outside, tugging his cargo pants up his narrow hips as he went.

  “That man is not right,” Alex said to Clarissa as soon as he was out of earshot.

  “He’s a Wolf.” Smiling in her peaceful, queenly way, Clarissa turned the page of the menu. “For them, that’s normal. You’ll get used to it.”

  “I can’t think of a single good reason why I should have to.”

  Clarissa nodded and made the quietest “Mm-hmm,” sound.

  Alex didn’t think that was a good sign.

  Chapter Two

  Ben Swain watched his cousin Scott flip the pages in his little notebook and paced in front of the bench between the diner and the boot store. As long as he kept moving, the less pull his inner wolf had on him. He’d be more comfortable in his wolf form—less squirrelly, less confused of his surroundings—but if he took that shape, getting back into his human one was going to hurt like a son of a bitch . . . if he could get out of it at all.

  “I think this one’ll work.” Scott tapped the end of his little golf pencil against the pad and nodded conclusively. “She’s got some snap to her. Plus, she already knows what you are. Not gonna get all wigged out if you start howling and shit.”

  Ben cracked his knuckles. Grunted.

  Howling sounded nice. Being on four legs sounded like a good time. He wouldn’t have to worry about things like putting the toilet seat down and using utensils when he ate. Those things hadn’t seemed so difficult before the hormones that kept his wilder impulses in check had bottomed out. He’d known that would happen eventually. The wildness eventually crept up on every unmated Wolf, and he wasn’t exempt. For some stupid reason, he’d made the mistake of thinking he had a little more time to find a mate. His cousin Sweetie had started going downhill fast and early, and was full-on feral before her mate yanked her back. Sweetie’s brother Calvin—their pack alpha—had been wilding out on random folks in the Asheville Starbucks for daring to sit at “his” corner table. Calvin hadn’t really wanted a mate, but taking one had been vital for his two-legged well-being. Fortunately, he loved that lady. Things had worked out.

  Like his cousins, Ben wasn’t looking for love. He didn’t have time for it. His life was perfect the way it was. He was finally making good money, but more important, he’d finally scratched out a place for himself. Working for Clarissa meant folks respected him, and respect was hard to come by for a Wolf. He wasn’t just one Wolf in the pack anymore. He was someone important—someone with value.

  He wasn’t ready to give that up for anything. Not yet.

  He didn’t need a mate as long as he got physical contact, and his urges were becoming more and more frequent as months wore on. He was trying to stretch out the time between interactions, and the part of him that was wolf was agitated increasingly by the day.

  Ben was coming down to two choices, really. Take a mate or let the beast inside him steer the ship.

  Soon.

  Not yet.

  A night or two with a lady while he was in Maria could scare his hormones back in the other direction and give him a little more time to figure things out.

  “Damn shame about that last one,” Scott said, scratching furiously on the pad. “She didn’t want any permanent attachments, and she had that big wooded lot you coulda run around on when you go wolfy.”

  Ben grunted. She’d moved overseas. Too bad.

  For the most part, he’d given up on formulating sensible responses. Dysphasia was a common symptom of Wolf decline. Assuming he took a mate in time, his brain-to-mouth pipeline would start functioning as intended again, and instantly, if his cousins were any proof.

  “She was kind of a prissy-pants, though,” Scott said. “Got all mad about me keeping my shoes on atop her fancy rug.”

  Twenty-three, the waitress, stepped outside the diner stuffing a wad of currency into the pocket of her khaki skirt. She eyed them warily.

  Ben and Scott stood at attention. Ben’s manners were still as good as they were only due to reflexes.

  Looking from one Wolf to the other, she cocked up an eyebrow.

  Ben had probably crossed her path countless times before, but he hadn’t paid more attention to her than was necessary to order food. He’d been on the lookout for trysts who were Wolves, and if not a Wolf, some other kind of shifter or at least a witch, but the well had run dry on those. He hadn’t considered a human until Scott told him he didn’t have a damn choice.

  “Okay. I see it now,” she said.

  Her voice was husky in a walked-through-smoke kind of way. Didn’t match her face. Her face was peaches and cream with a few specks of nutmeg on her nose and cheeks. Light brown hair pulled back into a long, bouncy p
onytail. Pale pink gloss on her heart-shaped lips. Sounded like sin but looked like an angel.

  There was a word for that kind of mismatch.

  Probably’ll think of it later when I forget some other damn word.

  “See what?” Scott asked her as Ben continued his silent assessment of the waitress.

  Average height. Maybe a little taller. A bit thin for his tastes, but healthy.

  “His eyes are deeper set,” she said. “Yours are a little farther apart and you’ve got a widow’s peak.”

  Scott’s hand went immediately to his forehead.

  Ben snorted. Folks back at home didn’t generally have to stare so hard. They could tell them apart without even looking by noting their energy or their scents. The human was at a disadvantage.

  He didn’t mind her staring at him, though. They could call it foreplay and save themselves some time.

  He folded his arms over his chest and flexed his biceps for her, one after the other.

  Like that?

  She made a sour face.

  Guess not.

  “You said five minutes?” Scott said to her.

  “Yep. Five minutes.” She lifted her wrist to the front of her face and tapped the glass of her watch. “Go.”

  “Oh, shit. It’s like that?”

  “Isn’t that what I said?”

  Ben gave him a hard nudge to the ribs. Come on, dude. Counting on you.

  “Damn. Wait. Hold on. Gotta make sure we’re not wasting anyone’s time, here.” Ben flipped through the pages of his little notebook, muttering to himself, and finally said, “Ah. Here it is. Uh. What’s your name?”

  Her expression went from disgust to confusion in a second flat. “My name’s on my name tag.” She pointed to the white plastic pin over her left breast.

  Small-breasted, but Ben figured that was okay. Some folks were built for speed, some for endurance. He could go either way.

  “Oh.” Scott jotted down a note. “What’s Alex short for?”

  “Why?”

  “You said five minutes.”

  She sighed. “Alexis.”

  Alexis.

  That was a name like the ones the ladies on his mama’s soap operas had. Matched the voice but not the face.

  “All right, then. Alexis, you know Ben.” Scott pointed to him. “Ben, that’s Alexis.”

  “Heard you,” Ben murmured after clearing his throat. Grunting was easier than talking lately. His throat wanted to constrict to its animal configuration. Keeping his human form required constant diligence. The shit was exhausting.

  Alex narrowed her eyes at him.

  “What?” he asked. He didn’t like being looked at like he was about to jack her car or something.

  “Your voice is deeper than his.”

  “We’re not the same people,” Scott said, turning the notebook page.

  “I’ve never seen you separate.”

  “Don’t worry. We don’t come as a package deal.”

  “What?”

  “Are you currently married or in a committed relationship?” Scott asked, ignoring her distressed query. Probably for the best. Wolves didn’t really like sharing, but there were always stories . . .

  Good one, though. Ben gave him another nudge. There’d been a couple of times they’d forgotten to ask that all-important question. Ben had gotten away okay every time, but all the same, he liked to avoid having to scramble out of second-story windows to flee rampaging husbands.

  “No,” she said tartly, cheeks pinkening.

  “You’re okay with guys, right?”

  She blinked at him. It was a pretty venomous blink, in Ben’s opinion.

  “Well, are you?” Scott pressed.

  “Where is this conversation going?” she asked.

  “You said five minutes.”

  “Yes, but that was before I walked into the twilight zone.”

  “I’m gonna write that down.” Scott’s tongue jutted out of the side of his mouth as he wrote. “Sense. Of. Humor.”

  “Really, what is this about?”

  “Ben needs a fix.”

  “Pardon me?” Her voice got real high at the end and eyes wide.

  “I think you’ll do.” Scott put the notebook in his pocket and tucked the pencil behind his ear. “Got two minutes left. Why don’t y’all go for a little walk and make some plans.” He looped Ben’s arm around hers and gave them a push toward the corner. “Go on. Y’all can get around the block in two minutes.”

  “This isn’t how real life works!” She stumbled over a prominent gap in the sidewalk.

  Ben righted her and cleared his throat.

  At least she hadn’t yanked her arm away from him like he was burning her. She was gripping her keys in one hand, her coat in the other, and was staring straight ahead with her brow furrowed in the telltale “WTF” kind of way.

  He cleared his throat and tried to think of something to say—anything, really. He used to be quicker on the draw. Flirting was as natural to him as breathing air, but when he was thinking like an animal, flirting wasn’t a priority. Fucking, on the other hand—yeah, he could go for that.

  But then she did pull away from him right after they rounded the corner. She was wicked fast for a sweet-looking thing, and he thought he was going to have to chase her to keep her from running into traffic or something, but she stopped in front of a giant planter outside a law office and snuck a peek into the glass door.

  “I think they’re closed today,” she muttered. She looked left, then right, then across the street. From her back pocket, she pulled a little zip-top bag. “The town owns these planters,” she said. “Technically, there’s no statutes on the books about doing this, but I don’t need any new folks thinking I’m weird.”

  She snapped off a seedpod from some kind of waxy white flower and put it in the bag.

  He cleared his throat again. “What are you doing?”

  “Walk!” She grabbed him by the arm and moved him past the office, glancing warily at the passing traffic as they hustled. “I don’t have any in this color,” she said when they’d put half a block of distance between them and the planter.

  “You . . . grow them?”

  “Long story.”

  “Tell it.”

  She didn’t seem to have heard him. Her focus was on every landscaped median and planter they passed, her fingers still digging into his forearm as she pulled him along, mumbling to herself. “I don’t have much for fall and winter. Gotta round out the supply better. Might need to do some foraging this weekend.”

  “Foraging where?”

  She stopped, then, and looked up at him, blinking as though he’d materialized at that precise moment from out of another dimension. “What?”

  “You said foraging.” He was quickly getting the distinct impression that Alexis with the soap opera voice was a Grade A kook. He’d never been with a kook before. At least, not on purpose.

  She was about to bound away again, toward a red-leafed plant in the distance, and he pulled her back instinctually.

  “Quit running,” he forced through his gravelly throat. “Makes the wolf in me cranky.”

  It surprised the hell out of him how quickly his anxiety level cranked up whenever Alex sprinted away. The animal half of his consciousness generally hadn’t had much to say about his mating prospects, except that Ben needed a mate period. His inner wolf was curious about the kook.

  “I’m not sure what idea you have about me, but whatever you’re thinking, scratch it from your mind.” She was on her knees at the base of a tree, pawing through the dead brown blades of foliage on the ground around the trunk. Some kind of perennial or annual that had already shot its wad for the season. “Aha!” She held up a desiccated pod, grinning triumphantly.

  Kook.

  “What is that?” he asked warily.

  “A rare color of coneflower that I’m hoping to proliferate.” She dropped the specimen into another of those little bags. “I won’t have enough of them to sell for a
few years yet. I’m eyeing the long game.”

  “What’s the game?”

  “Long story.”

  He grunted.

  Frustrating woman.

  She looked at her watch. “Oops. You’re out of time. Nice talking to ya. I’ve got to go fetch a fruitcake.”

  Just like that, she took off again, and just like that, he hooked her arm and walked with her toward fruitcake.

  He didn’t blame her. The fruitcake was damn good, and he didn’t only think that because he’d stilled the booze that was preserving it. Clarissa was a master at that baking stuff.

  “I think you owe me some time,” he said. “Distractions don’t count.”

  She growled.

  Cute.

  He’d never had a human one who growled before.

  “I’ve got stuff to do tonight,” she said.

  “Not stopping you. Two minutes don’t make that big a difference.”

  “It does when you’ve got a tight window to do your foraging in without having the cops called on you. I’m sick of cops.”

  “Hell, me too. Better ways to get seeds, sugar.”

  “But not the ones I need.” She looped her hand around his wrist and tugged him across the street. “Long story.”

  Surprisingly, he was actually following the conversation well enough that he wished she’d tell it.

  Chapter Three

  “So, how was your walk?” the werewolf who was not Ben asked. Scott, Alex thought he was called. She was pretty sure that was right. She’d cataloged the differences in their facial structures, and the fact that Ben’s hair had more blond and that Scott had a soul patch, so she should have been able to tell them apart.

  Scott licked the end of his pencil and poised the tip over his notepad.

  “What’s with the pad?” Alex peeked into the restaurant window. The elves were still there, smiling and laughing, probably on their third round of coffee. They were so comfortable with each other and had an enviable camaraderie.

  Once upon a time, Alex had fun with friends. Then Belle moved back to her mother’s ranch and married a psychic cop, and Lily had followed to help run the place. They were cousins, just like Ben and Scott, except they didn’t look alike.

  Alex missed doing stuff. Missed hearing the voices of people she knew.