I slumped back into the pillows, frightened. “What do you mean? What crazy shit?” He didn’t answer right away and I really started to freak out, hard. “Cass, what happened to me?” My voice cracked as fear won.
Cass looked to Molly, clearly uncomfortable, and I pinned him with a glare that made my head hurt.
“What are you looking at her for? Tell me what the hell’s going on here!” I shouted, then winced at the pain it caused my body.
Cass, who never fidgeted, squirmed on his golden ass, his little pot belly jiggling as he did. What could be so terrible that would make him afraid to tell me, after all we’d been through together?
Oh my God. Was I werewolf?
I turned my attention to Molly. “What happened to me? Tell me, please. I’ll go crazy if you don’t tell me right now.”
“You nearly got your throat torn out by a werewolf.” Well, that was obvious. “Then the alpha wolf charged in to protect you.” She gestured, pouncing with her hands, totally animated, her face alight. “They tore at each other.” She bared her teeth and bent her fingers into claws, swiping left and right. “The black one was bleeding, and the alpha might’ve been about to rip his throat out for what he did to you, but that’s when I remembered the shotgun you left me, and hauled ass to get it. I shot a round into the air and they both stopped.”
I rolled my eyes internally. Was I going to be cursed with two motor-mouths for friends? “Breathe, Molly, breathe. I mean after that, what happened to me after? What’s the big deal here?”
She nodded, eyes feverish with excitement, and I realized right then that she was a supernatural junkie. She was Croft’s blood mistress not because she needed the money, or maybe she did, but that wasn’t the main reason. She was with him because vampires were one of the few supernatural races that had any need for humans. Molly was a supe groupie, which would explain how she’d find a werewolf attack exciting, and not terrifying like a normal human being.
They were scared to tell me something, and that definitely didn’t bode well. I could smell the fear coming off Cass in waves, one of my lame witch gifts.
I wiggled in the bed and noticed something. Fast as a flash, I lifted the covers. Yep, I was buck naked.
“It couldn’t be helped,” Molly explained, watching my every move. “Your clothes kind of... fell apart when you, uh”—she played with the hem of her shirt—“shifted.” After she dropped the bombshell, the tasteful eggshell walls of the bedroom suddenly held all her attention.
My eyes bulged, and I sat up straighter, wondering if I’d heard her correctly. I wasreallyhoping I hadn’t. “What do you mean,shifted?”
Oh my God. I was a werewolf.
My pink friend sighed a long-suffering sigh, and brought a dramatic hand to his forehead, as if this were somehow about him, and all he’d been through while I was...shifting.
“Cass,” I warned, “you have exactly ten seconds to tell me what the hell is going on, before I traipse right out of this room to find my own answers. And I don’t give a rat’s ass who sees me naked.”
“Don’t worry. I think we’ll all survive the show,” Brock stated as he waltzed in the room with an entourage behind him.
My nostrils flared, but dammit, they pulled in the earthy scent of him, so I stopped breathing for a few seconds to compose myself. Molly scurried out of Brock’s way as he shot an annoyed look at Cass, sprawled out on the comforter.
The alpha stopped right next to the bed and peered down at me, his face a mask that concealed all emotion. I tightened the sheet around my naked body.
“What your friends were trying to tell you in the most roundabout way possible, is that you are in fact not a dud witch, and there’s no chance on this green earth you’re human.” Brock spoke without his usual restraint, and I sensed mild fascination in his voice.
“Spit it out already, wolf,” I growled. “Am I one of you?”
I didn’t have time for his games. I was freaking out right now. What would scare Cass so much that he was afraid to tell me?
“You’re a fox,” Brock answered bluntly.
“What? You mean I’m foxy, right? I get it. Wink, wink.” My sanity left the building with his comment. This had to be a joke. Cass was probably twisted enough to go along with a joke like this.
A tall, distinguished-looking woman, with more class than I’d ever have, stepped forward from behind the alpha. She looked down her perfect straight nose and assessed me. “Brock brought you to me last night. I’m the pack doctor, Sabine,” she offered.
Oh, so she’s on a first-name basis with Brock the Cock, is she? I shot the biggest cock in the room a glare, and the hint of a smirk tipped his mouth upward. Fucker. I scowled and his smirk grew bigger.
I glared at the lady as she spoke again, hoping for some real answers this time. “You were bitten on the neck by one of the pack’s new wolves. It was his first time shifting, and that’s when they’re always most ferocious. He nearly gnawed your head off.”
The hand Cass wasn’t holding flew to my neck for the second time, where I juggled the glass in my attempt to verify that my head was, indeed, still attached.
“But then you started shifting on my table,” she continued, as if what she was saying was completely normal. I guess for a doctor to werewolves, it would be. But not for me. I was starting to feel the itching need to check out of crazy town.
“You must be mistaken,” I replied, though the grim expressions, all except for Molly’s, suggested otherwise. My purple-haired friend just looked fascinated. Still, they couldn’t be right. There was no way I shifted.
