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“Yes, that’s becoming painfully clear to me.”

She slowed as the gravel road finally merged onto a paved, two-lane highway. Once we were moving beneath the yellow glow of the streetlights, the tension inside the car faded enough for the conversation to feel less like an execution and more like a weirdly detailed lecture.

“A latent shifter carries the genetic bloodline and some of the physical traits, but we never develop an actual animal form,” she explained, her gaze fixed on the road ahead. “No skeletal transformations. No wolf. Sometimes the other abilities are a lot weaker, too.”

“Such as?” I asked, genuinely curious now.

“Our healing factor, our senses, our physical strength, and our metabolism,” she said. “It varies from person to person. Personally, I can smell a lot more than the average human, but significantly less than the rest of my family. I heal a little faster than a normal person, though definitely not fast enough to make terrible decisions recreationally.”

My mind raced back through the details of the reunion and the movie night. “So you knew what I smelled like the moment I walked in?”

“I knew you didn’t smell right,” she corrected.

That was not particularly reassuring. “What exactly did I smell like?”

“Clean,” she said simply.

“Well, I do shower daily,” I replied, feeling slightly defensive. “I pride myself on basic hygiene.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she chuckled. “You smelled completely scrubbed down to absolutely nothing at the reunion. Same tonight, except for a heavy layer of something that reminds me of wet pine needles.”

I closed my eyes, the embarrassment hitting me so fast I wanted to shrink into the floorboards. “The Etsy witch.”

Patty turned her head toward me, her eyes wide. “The what?”

“I bought female wolf-shifter essence from a witch on Etsy,” I whispered into my hands.

The Mustang swerved slightly on the pavement.

“Patty!” I shrieked, grabbing the handle above the door.

She quickly pulled the car onto the paved shoulder of the empty road and bent over the steering wheel as hysterical laughter shook her entire frame.

I covered my face, my cheeks burning with a heat that could have melted glass. “This is so deeply humiliating. Please stop.”

“You bought what?” she gasped, her face red.

“Please don’t make me repeat the words.”

“Sloane, please,” she begged, looking at me with tears of laughter in her eyes. “Say it again. I need to hear it.”

“Female wolf-shifter essence,” I muttered, my voice muffled by my palms.

“From Etsy?”

“Yes.”

“What were the reviews like?” she asked, practically breathless.

“They were mixed,” I said, my lips curling into a reluctant smile despite my shame. “One woman said it helped her reconnect with her ancestral feminine power and align her chakras.”

“Of course she did,” Patty howled, wiping her face.

“And another reviewer said it made her smell like a poorly maintained petting zoo.”

Patty slapped the steering wheel, her laughter echoing through the interior of the car. I watched her, the heavy terror in my chest finally dissipating into something lighter.

“Go easy on me,” I said softly. “I had extremely limited resources.”