“I missed you, too.” I craned my neck to press my lips to his and let my head drop to the pillow.
10
A Furry, Friendly Wake-Up Call
Even if I did know about the existence of werewolves, it was still shocking as hell to wake up spooning with one.
I was still mostly asleep when I registered the feeling of a wide, warm tongue rasping down the length of my cheek.
“Morning. That’s different.” I chuckled, pressing my face into the pillow. I squinted into the semidarkness of early dawn, running my fingers through Caleb’s hair. It seemed coarser and thicker . . . and there was a lot more of it. In fact, it seemed to cover his entire body.
“What the—?” I opened my eyes and found myself staring into the brown eyes of a huge gray wolf.
I scrambled out of bed, falling to the floor, scuttling back over the carpet into the wall. “Caleb!”
Our sonar-sensitive neighbor pounded on the bedroom wall, and I heard his muffled voice call, “Too damn early for that! Decent people are trying to sleep!”
Whining, the wolf shook his way up onto his haunches and stretched. He looked over the edge of the bed at me, head tilted to the side, as if he was trying to figure out why I was acting all weird. OK, OK, this wasn’t a big deal. I’d seen werewolves before. Unless they phased out of anger or fear, they were usually pretty calm. And Caleb wouldn’t hurt me. It was just a shock to see him in his natural state. The Caleb wolf shook his head, and that golden light spread over the gray fur, slowly fading away to skin.
“Don’t be scared,” he said, scrambling toward me.
I flopped back against the wall, holding my hand up like a crossing guard. I looked up at my werewolf paramour, all panicked and wide-eyed. I looked down at the stray gray hairs on the sheets. And I burst out laughing. It was just so ridiculous, him crouching naked on the bedroom floor while asking me not to freak out over his wolf body. I laughed and laughed until I fell over. Until I realized I was touching nasty motel carpet and sat back up. I wiped at my eyes.
“Werewolf.”
Caleb’s mouth flapped open like a guppy’s as he stammered, “Uh-uh, no, you must be having a bad dream. Uh, yeah, that’s it, there was no wolf here.”
I smirked at him. “Are you trying to Jedi-mind-trick me right now? ’Cause you kind of suck at it.”
He cleared his throat and followed with a weak “Maybe you hit your head?” His tone was uncertain and quiet, as if he didn’t want our neighbors to overhear. He pulled my arms gently and led me to the bed. “You’re not running away and screaming. Why are you not running away and screaming?”
I winced, biting my lip. Right, how to explain this . . . “I kind of knew already.”
“How?” he exclaimed. I shushed him. “How did you know?” He sat heavily on the bed, stared at me for a long moment, and then groaned. “The night I was shot. Did I say something?”
I shook my head, but my continued silence seemed to make him chatty. “I just, uh, put some things together. You’re not the first werewolf I’ve met.”
“It’s not a big deal, really. I don’t hurt anybody. I don’t freak out under the light of the full moon. It’s just a genetic condition, you know, like color blindness or being born with an extra toe. Just, you know, furrier.”
I stared at him, suddenly blank-faced. That was the saddest description of werewolf-dom I’d ever heard.
“So how do you know about us?”
I sighed. “Promise you won’t get mad.”
“I can’t actually promise that,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “But I won’t phase or yell or anything.”
I leveled a doubtful look at him.
He nodded and walked to a corner, the farthest point in the room away from me. “OK, hit me.”
“I’ve been working with werewolves for years. I was the pack doctor for your family in the valley for the past four years. I worked under the name Anna Moder.” The words ran out of my mouth so quickly I was surprised he managed to pick up on what I’d said. But I could tell it had registered by the shocked expression on his face.
“The cute little pack doctor Maggie was always going on about?”
I nodded.
He sighed and then burst out laughing. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through trying to cover for my little issue? Do you know how hard it is for one of us to go this long without phasing regularly?”