one
EMMY
“I’m not goingto see a werewolf,” I told Zoe through my car’s speaker, slowing to a crawl as I peered down the dirt road. It looked like I was in the middle of absolutely nowhere, but Iwasheaded toward the map pin Stella had sent me.
My phone was in the pocket of my pink lounge pants, but I’d already checked to make sure I was going to the right place five times.
I was.
It was just in the middle of nowhere.
“You might not see them, but they’re going to see you,” my best friend said. She was at home, grading some of her students’ work. Unlike me, she had more than a full load of classes. Her department head seemed to be testing her with the sheer amount of work he gave her.
She was up for it, but it meant she was much busier than I was.
I didn’t mind. I was a sucker for free time, and didn’t particularly like teaching college students.
The overly-decoratedcongratulationscake on my passenger seat proved that point. It kind of looked like a wedding cake.
Which fit, because Zoe and I were pretty sure that on top of Jade’s new job, she’d gotten herself paired up with one of Moon Ridge’s many werewolves.
We weren’t positive they existed, of course.
We hadn’t actually seen anyone change forms.
But there didn’t seem to be any other explanation for what had been going on with our friends for the past few months. The werewolf rumors around campus were pretty detailed about how women got abducted by wolfy guys and fell in love with them, too.
“I guess there’s always achanceI’ll get lucky and one of them will shift in front of me while I’m out here,” I said, reaching a fork in the dirt road. I looked both ways. “Do you remember if Stella said it was the third house after turning right, or left?”
“I wasn’t there for that conversation, Em.”
“Oh yeah.” Crap. “I definitely remember her mentioning a fork, though.”
“Did you find it?”
“Yes.”
“There can’t be that many houses out there, right?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have werewolf connections.” I pushed my tangled blonde curls out of my face. It had been raining all day, so my hair was frizzier than usual. No amount of product helped tame it when it got like that. Then again, I didn’t really try that hard.
There were better things to do. Like making not-wedding cakes.
“Just pick one. If you go to the wrong house somehow, I’m sure whoever answers the door will know where to send you,” Zoe said.
“True. And I might get lucky. They might be a werewolf.”
“Yeah, this could be your chance,” Zoe teased.
I debated for another few seconds and finally turned right. “If a sexy werewolf guy answers the door, I should probably pretend to faint or something to get his attention.”
Zoe snorted. “You’ll have his attention, Em. You’ll be on his porch, with a cake.”
“Good point. Maybe I should offer the cake in exchange for him making me his werewolfy bride or whatever.”
“I think the word you’re looking for ismate.”
“Assuming werewolf books are accurate.”
