My panther’s voice reminded me of a hammer bashing a nail, with my head being the nail.
But I’d succeeded in getting Dale away from Mike, though that was more Mike’s doing when he began paying attention to someone other than my brother.
Dale was currently passed out in the guest room, and I suspected he’d sleep until late. He’d been upset about Mike and the other guy, but I’d been tempted to hug that skank and thank him for ignoring my brother. I hoped his human husband was aware of what he’d been up to and was currently changing the locks.
So the night had been worth it.
I rolled out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom before downing two glasses of water. The next step was caffeine. It might not help with my headache, but it would get my eyes open. But as I waited for the coffee to brew, I caught sight of my phone, face down on the counter where I must have left it last night.
Damn! That got my eyes open as I recalled me playing truth or dare and how that asshat Mike egged me on. That was the part of the evening that I wished I could have cancelled, rewound, and taped over so there was no evidence of it.
Shit. The dare. I’d sent my panther’s image to Lenny.
Grabbing the phone, I checked if he’d read it. Oh gods, he had. But as I stared at the reply and my message, it hadn’t been sent to my ex, and he wasn’t the one who responded. The number wasn’t in my contacts. Shoot, I’d sent it to some random person. Though I’d deleted Lenny’s number when we broke up, I’d memorized it, and I could see I was one digit off when I drunkenly texted last night.
So Lenny was still blissfully unaware of last night. That was a plus. On the minus, and every negative side, was the caption I’d added to the photo.
I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. And I’d added a winking emoji which was now mocking me.
Oh gods, that was what we used to do when one of us was in a meeting. The other would send messages and pics and the one sitting around a conference table had to pretend the text was about merchandise or whatever. In reality it was a dick pic or a puckered hole.
The relief at not being in touch with my douchebag ex was doused when it hit me that a complete stranger read the messageand saw the pic. But the day got worse when there was not one, but three responses in the thread. And the mystery person was peeved.
Who is this?
What you’re doing is illegal.
I’m going to report you.
I stared at the screen and reread the messages as I rubbed my brow, and the pounding in my head got louder.
What? No. This couldn’t be happening. While it wasn’t a certainty the person was human, my guess was they were. A shifter would have joked about my beast, and if that didn’t get a response, they’d have made a veiled remark about something shifting.
But this person had leaped from the taunting message to me keeping a wild animal in captivity.
My panther perked up.Who’s keeping my wild cousins in a cage?
No one. Well, yes, there were some people, but I wasn’t aware of who they were.
“What in the heck did I do?”
Maybe a jolt of caffeine would help me make sense of the mess I’d created. I’d blame Mike if I could, but the number he’d given me was correct. I remembered seeing it as I looked at his phone, and it was one I could repeat in my sleep.
I downed a mug full of black coffee, and it scorched my throat. But any damage the hot liquid had caused was immediately rectified thanks to my shifter healing abilities.
ven after I was hyped on three cups of coffee, the reality didn’t change. A complete stranger thought I was keeping an endangered animal as a pet, which was illegal. And the same person was threatening to report me to the authorities.
This was bad. If the mystery receiver of my text called the Game Commission, there’d be an investigation. And not only might I have human authorities at my door clutching an arrest warrant and demanding I give up my panther, but also the shifter council would haul my ass before them.
Because if the humans couldn’t find a panther, they might start digging deeper and look into my background. They might pull security footage near the woods where I shifted. Reporters might pick up on the story, so my neighbors and associates would avoid me and whisper behind my back.
And then there was Mike. He had an axe to grind and could lead investigators down a murky path. Not that he’d reveal I was a shifter, because that would endanger himself, but he could get me into a lot of trouble, and I’d lose my job.
Shifters had stayed hidden for centuries by being careful. Sending drunk texts and photographic evidence to random humans didn’t fall into that category.
Oh, that’s not good.
My fingers flew over the phone keyboard.Sorry, that message wasn’t meant for you.
