Hungry Like a Wolf (Claws Clause 1)

She blamed it on the accident. It left her so many different shades of messed up that it was easy to fault the crash and her recovery for how much she had changed over the last three years.

Swallowing roughly, Evangeline knew she had to say something. “Mom—”

“Of course I told him you weren’t. He could hardly believe it, pretty girl like you still unattached. You should have seen the look on his face. You know, I think he’s still harboring that little crush on you.”

“Mom,” she tried again, with a touch more urgency this time. “I really don’t—”

Naomi continued as if she didn’t hear her. “You would enjoy yourself, Eva. Fiona is always raving about what a good boy Adam is.”

Adam was a grown man. Maybe he’d matured as he hit his late twenties, grew out of his womanizing ways. Evangeline doubted it. In her opinion, Adam hadn’t been a “good boy” since the time he tried to talk her into losing her virginity in the darkroom during senior year photography. Ten years ago, she got him to

back off by splashing him with stop bath. Had he changed all that much since then?

Her mother seemed to think so.

“—and, you know, he’s made something of himself. He’s constantly moving up in that job of his. Fiona tells me he’s due for another promotion soon.”

That caught Evangeline’s attention. “Wait a sec, Mom. Doesn’t he… didn’t you tell me not too long ago that he works at one of the Cages?”

Cage. Technically that wasn’t the politically correct term for the magic-free prisons created for dangerous paranormals—that would be “voluntary incarceration facility”—but “Cage” was what most everyone called them since a majority of the inmates were animal shifters who were kept locked away because they weren’t tame enough to be allowed on the loose. It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t fair. Still, even Evangeline had to admit it fit.

She didn’t mind the Paras. She had no reason to. When she was a little girl, her best friend had been an untrained witch with the loveliest lilac eyes. Some of Evangeline’s fondest memories involved all of the trouble two girls could get into when magic was involved.

It was a shame that their friendship didn’t last. Once they graduated to middle school, Morgan was sent to a Para academy to learn to control her powers and Evangeline—at her parents’ insistence—attended a local human-only private school.

If she was being honest? Though she got along with humans and Paras alike, there was one race of paranormals that… that just made her nervous.

Shifters.

And it wasn’t because each of the shifters walked around with some kind of animal inside of them that could spring out without a moment’s notice.

It was the whole ‘mates’ thing.

Everyone—human or not—knew all about how certain Para races believed in fated mates. It was the whole basis behind the Bond Laws that got passed right after the world learned that the paranormal races had always existed alongside the humans.

But shifters? They were the worst. Supposedly a shifter could tell their mate from one single sniff.

What kind of shit was that?

Seriously. What about the chosen mate? They could have a job, a life, even another family that maybe wasn’t touched by magic, but was just as important. Didn’t matter, according to the shifters. Fate chooses—which meant that, a lot of the times, the partners didn’t get to.

That bothered Evangeline, even more now. She shuddered. There had been so many things that were out of her control lately. Fated mates? Lifelong bonds? Nope. Just the idea that she might have no say in who she would spend the rest of her life with made her want to hole up in her apartment and never leave.

After everything she had gone through these last three years, Evangeline was done with letting anyone else make decisions for her.

Even her well-meaning mother.

Naomi was still talking. Evangeline realized that she was trying to explain how respectable it was to be a police officer doing his year’s time as a Para prison guard. Great. So her mother hadn’t given up on convincing her that she should give Adam a shot.

With a softly murmured, “Mom,” she finally managed to interrupt her mother’s pleasant voice.

“He— oh, Eva? Did you say something?”

“Didn't we decide that it was time for me to try living on my own?”

“Well, yes—”

“And shouldn’t that mean that it’s up to me to decide if I’m ready to date again or not?”