Page 1 of Howl About That

ONE

POPPY

The Plaza's grand ballroom stretched before Poppy like a gilded battlefield, the crystal chandeliers casting fractured light across marble floors that had witnessed a century of New York's most exclusive gatherings. She paused at the entrance and smoothed the midnight blue silk of her dress with unsteady fingers. But her lioness prowled restlessly beneath her skin, demanding action.

Take what's ours. Stop begging for scraps.

"Breathe," Neve murmured beside her, elegant in red that somehow managed to look both understated and lethal. "You look like you're about to challenge someone to single combat."

"Maybe I am." Poppy's voice carried the edge of someone who'd spent eleven years fighting for everything she owned. "Ninety days, Neve. That's all I have left before the bank calls the remaining loans."

"I know." Neve's tone held the patience of someone who'd watched her best friend carry impossible weights for over a decade. "Which is why we're here to win, not to panic."

The auction catalog felt heavy in Poppy's hands—forty-seven lots of prime real estate, but only one mattered. Lot thirty-eight: five hundred acres of Hudson Valley woodland that borderedher family's ancestral pride lands. The same parcel she had been forced to sell during the financial crisis that followed her father's murder, the piece of their territory that some developer could use to strangle everything the Mintz pride had protected for centuries.

One million dollars. Every liquid asset she had left, scraped together from accounts she'd been hoarding like a dragon guarding treasure. It had to be enough.

"Remember," Neve said as they moved deeper into the ballroom, "most of these people are here for the Manhattan properties. Rural land doesn't usually attract the serious money."

Poppy nodded, though her chest felt tight with the weight of everything riding on that assumption. Around them, shifter society's elite mingled with champagne flutes and casual conversations about eight-figure acquisitions. She recognized faces from business magazines and society pages—wolves, bears, a few big cats like herself, all radiating the particular confidence that came with generational wealth.

The kind of confidence she'd been faking for eleven years.

They found their assigned table near the front, close enough to signal serious intent without appearing desperate. Poppy settled into her chair, hyperaware of every sound and every movement. Her lioness wanted to pace the perimeter, to identify threats and escape routes, to do something other than sit quietly while their future balanced on the edge of a blade.

"You're broadcasting anxiety," Neve observed, adjusting her napkin with deliberate calm. "Your shoulders are practically at your ears."

"My shoulders are fine." But Poppy forced herself to relax, to project the image of someone attending a social event rather than fighting for survival. "I just need this to go smoothly. No surprises and no complications."

"When has anything in your life ever gone smoothly?" Neve replied a bit too sharply.

Before Poppy could respond, the auctioneer approached the podium—a distinguished man in his sixties whose voice carried the authority of someone who'd orchestrated billion-dollar sales. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Whitmore & Associates' quarterly real estate auction."

The room settled into expectant silence. Poppy's hands clenched in her lap as the first lot appeared on the massive screen behind the podium—a penthouse overlooking Central Park. The auctioneer started the bidding, and within five minutes, it sold for thirty-two million dollars.

Poppy tried to remain calm and focused as the minutes passed by and more lots were being sold, but her mind kept calculating how long until her lot appeared on the screen. She estimated that lot thirty-eight wouldn't appear for at least another hour. An hour of watching other people casually spend more money than her pride's annual budget, an hour of pretending she belonged among Manhattan's financial elite when she was actually betting everything on a single desperate gamble.

"Stop counting," Neve said quietly. "You'll give yourself a panic attack."

"I'm not counting."

"You're doing that thing where you tap your fingers in mathematical sequences," Neve said, her voice tinged with amusement.

Poppy stilled her hands, annoyed at being so transparent. Around them, the auction continued its relentless pace—commercial properties in Midtown, luxury developments in Brooklyn, a historic mansion in the Hamptons that went for forty-five million. Each sale felt like watching other people play with house money while she sat holding her last chips.

"Lot twenty-three," the auctioneer announced. "A mixed-use development opportunity in Lower Manhattan."

We're getting closer.

Poppy's pulse accelerated despite her best efforts. Fifteen more lots. Fifteen more chances for something to go wrong, for some complication she hadn't anticipated.

"You know," Neve said conversationally, "there's something almost liberating about having everything on the line. No room for half-measures."

"Liberating isn't the word I'd use."

"What word would you use?"

Terrifying. Overwhelming. Like standing on the edge of a cliff and realizing the ground behind you had already crumbled away.