Huh? No matter how hard I focused, the last thing I remembered was lying on the cool, damp grass eating apples in the moonlight after my Omega had walked away from me. Again.
“What ‘appened?” If Shelly was mad at me, I obviously hadn’t been in an accident, so there had to be another answer.
“You mean other than you vandalized a fence, trespassed, and got piss drunk on rotten apples?” Shelly asked sarcastically. “The part where you got arrested for drunkenly attacking a vehicle?”
I started to shake my head and quickly reconsidered, head fog be damned. “I beat up a truck?”
“You attacked a smart car,” Shelly corrected. “And you definitely lost.”
I knew those were all words but they didn’t make sense. “Huh?”
Shelly sighed heavily and then spoke slower. “Shep Hartzford chased you out of his orchard when you refused to leave,” he started. “Incidentally, you’ll need to hit the clinic once you’re released to have the rock salt removed from your ass.”
Hmm. That explained my right butt cheek stinging.
“Then, you apparently wandered into town and walked in front of a smart car.”
“No way I was hurt being hit by one of those things,” I disputed. “They’re tiny!”
“Confirmed,” Shelly agreed. “I never said you were hit by it. I said you walked in front of it. The driver stopped and waited for you to cross but you got a burr up your butt and grabbed it under the front bumper and tried to flip it.”
I winced. “Tried?”
“Tried,” Shelly snickered. “You lost your balance, fell over backwards, and the car landed on top of you.” He sighed again. “They checked for broken ribs or internal injuries, but you’re fine except for bruising. And the rock salt.”
“Oh, fuck. Then what?”
Shelly shrugged. “The driver called nine one one and you earned a trip to the detox cage.” I barely had time to groan before he went on, “Clark is talking to the judge to try and get the charges dropped.”
I was sure things could be more humiliating but damn if I knew how.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Mitchel
Even given the small size of our sleepy town, I was surprised when Dane’s was the only case on the magistrate’s docket that morning.
I slipped in through the massive oak doors and took a seat in the front row of the gallery just before he was led in wearing the hideous lemon-yellow jail issue scrubs that identified him as a shifter instead of a human. Normally, they were reserved for prisoners who were actually appearing at formal hearing and not requesting release from the drunk tank, but with Dane having abandoned his clothes gods knew where before his bender the night before -and me not realizing he would need clothes when my cell phone had alerted me to his arrest in the middle of the damn night – the only other choice would have been him appearing in his birthday suit.
Where normally Dane would have been represented by a staff attorney to allow the initial reading of charges to get the defendant’s plea on the record and advance to the question of bail, Clark Boreal sat down at the table Dane was seated at. And while Clark wasn’t -at least, as far as I knew- an attorney, he was a well-known shifter advocate as well as both the manager and the founder of our town, so I was optimistic that Dane was in luck.
Dane sat silently in his chair, head lowered in shame as the court clerk read off the list of offenses that Dane was accused of from the night before. When the magistrate granted his defense the opportunity to speak, Clark stepped up to the podium and cleared his throat.
“Your Honor, on behalf of Mr. Eades, I respectfully request that the charges be dismissed upon his agreement to restitution being paid to those community members who suffered property damage at his paws,” Clark cleared his throat and even the judge seemed to be fighting a smile, “er, hands last night. Mr. Eades has no criminal history and is a respected member of the community with no history of controlled substance abuse. He shifted to release some stress and simply didn’t realize the apples his bear was eating were fermented. It was an error in judgement – one that won’t be repeated- not a crime.”
The judge turned to Dane. “Mr. Eades, your representative suggests that your lack of planning was based on stress which raises the concern that the events could occur again, if the stressor reoccurs. Are you willing to share the reason for your stress with the court?”
Dane sighed. “Do I have to?”
“No, you don’t,” the judge responded, “but I can’t consider stress to be a contributing factor without knowing what it was and whether or not it’s been resolved.”
Clark bent down and whispered in Dane’s ear, Dane sighed again and muttered, “Relationship problems, your Honor. I, uh, my significant other and I broke up.”
“We did?” I gasped loudly, completely unaware of my words echoing through the nearly empty room.
Dane spun around, his gaze haunted as he met my eyes. “Didn’twe?”
I dropped my face to my hands and focused on breathing. The judge opened his mouth to speak but I didn’t hear him through the blood rushing in my ears. Then Clark was standing in the aisle beside me.
