“The onlyneedsyou have are the same as everyone else,” I said, still seething but keeping it within my own skin. Probably unhealthy for me, but whatever. The only way I’d learned to survive the dog-pile was to pretend that I wasn’t all that bothered by it. My brothers had long since taught me that much. “Oxygen, food, water, and community. So here, let me help you with one of them since you sound so damn thirsty.”
With that, I picked up my water glass and threw it right in his face.
It wasn’t full, which would have been far more satisfying, but it was enough that it made an audible sound as it made contact. Andooh,the way he sputtered as he slammed back in his chair really was the cherry on top of the cake.
“What the—Are you some crazy bitch?”
“A bitch, huh? So,nowyou want to acknowledge that I’m still a she-wolf? Sorry to disappoint you, Jason, but the only boneyou’re getting tonight is whatever rawhide you have lying on the floor of your alpha den next to your knot-sock. Get bent.”
I flipped him the bird, then marched right out.
Admittedly, it did grow kind of awkward considering how long it took for my short little legs to actually make it to the door. My footsteps seemed to echo in my head, but at least he didn’t try to get up and stop me. Because as pissed as I was, I didn’t actually want to cause any more of a scene than I already had.
We magical folks were supposed to keep a relatively low profile while in human territory, and unfortunately,human territoryhad gone from small patches of communities to giant cities, to pretty much the whole world. Thankfully, we had witches, sorcerers, and other magic users who kept up a global network of spells to help us stay under the radar when human technology was growing more and more difficult to hide from. Like, for example,literal radar.That invention had thrown dragons for a real loop, and for about twenty years, there was a massive uptick in UFO and deep-sea entity readings. A fraught time that I was very grateful I’d only had to learn about and not live through.
Granted, that seemed slightly less painful and frustrating than modern dating, even as a kind of magicless magical creature. Sure, thanks to some very inventive enchantresses and witches throughout the digitization era, we had apps that ran on scrying magic through a phone’s camera, where all sorts of magical folks could find their mates in a world where we so often had to live incognito outside of our family or packs. It was incredibly convenient, but unfortunately, with convenience came pitfalls.
AKA fuckboys.
There was an argument to be made that they’d existed as long as men had, but there was no denying that the advent of swiping had caused a boom in their population. And with no naturalpredators, all we could do was hope that a lack of viable mates would cause them to eventually die out. Survival of the most tolerable, or whatever term that human had coined.
I was a tad breathless by the time I reached my car. Not because of any lack of cardio health, considering my day job, but because I was just soangry.
Except it wasn’t just anger there. No, there was humiliation too, sharp and spiky down the back of my throat. And that humiliation latched onto the shame and worthlessness that I was trying so hard to ignore.
Because the truth was, Iwasa bit ashamed.
I would love nothing more than to have an inner wolf, to have to struggle with the balance between my primal, beastly nature and my human one. I would love to be able to shift with my family, to run with them, to finally be a full part of the community that I was only barely on the outskirts of.
But that wasn’t going to happen. After thirty-two years, I’d learned there were no spells, no magical happily-ever-afters that would make me transform into a wolf. I’d largely made my peace with it, even though it made my heart ache. But at the same time… I’d thought I’d finally landed a guy who would look past that and see the me behind the disability, so finding out I was wrong was reopening wounds that I had long since worked through.
Somehow, I made it all the way back home without any tears blurring my vision. I always got a bit weepy every time I was frustrated, something my brothers liked to exploit back when they were teenagers. But once I wasinside, the anger I’d used as a shield crumbled away, leaving me disappointed and very much…
Alone.
That wasn’t a feeling I wanted to sit in, especially since I’d thought I was going to be doing something a lot more fun andathletic, so I beelined straight to my desktop and booted up one of my favorite games, a sort of sandbox experience that was known for both mining and crafting, but I mostly used it to create elaborate gardens and overwrought zoos for digital creatures that didn’t exist.
It didn’t take long to get onto the server I’d been part of for about five years, and sure enough, I saw a familiar username at the top of the online members list.TweetyGurl96.AKA my best friend.
The fact that my best friend was someone I met in a game about putting different blocks down and that we’d never met in person wasn’t lost on me, but it was really amazing how well people could get to know each other after talking online for years. For example, I knew she was a harpy. Neither of us had come right out of the gate with the news that we were magical. We’d both dropped hints here and there without thinking, tiny details that only someone of the magical world would catch. After a year of us chatting, I’d messaged her and asked outright.
It was a risk, for sure, especially if I was wrong. Thankfully, I wasn’t, and we’d gotten closer than ever. Another year later, she finally told me the reason she spent so much time online was because she was a harpy with no wings, and because of that, she had no flock, no one of her own kind she was close to, which was why she lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment on the other side of the city.
Talk about twinsies, except mine was a two-bedroom, in the hopes that the extra space would allow me to grow into it.
What are you doing here?her message popped up in the chat.
Although I liked many people on the server, I wasn’t about to blast my personal business to everyone. Not to mention, I was pretty sure we were the only non-humans on it, so I didn’t need to be blabbing about the foibles of trying to date other wolves.
Call?I typed.
TweetyGurl96:Righteo!
Less than a single beat later, the familiardoo-doo-dootfrom our least favorite but most used app for communication went off. I answered so fast that it took several seconds for it to actually connect.
“Please tell me he was beset by a sudden stomach bug, and you’re not here because he turned out to be a bigoted jerkwad,” she said right out of the gate, her voice full of chagrin—the negative kind, of course.
“Wolves don’t get stomach bugs,” I answered with a sigh. Talking to her instantly took the edge off the pain still trying to nettle its way through my every limb. Sometimes it really sucked to feel things as intensely as I did in a world that seemed to demand that everyone be as chill and unbothered as possible.
