Page 21 of Bewitching the Wolf

Otis huffs. “This thing between you and Tippy. It’s getting out of hand. You need to sort it.”

“Yeah, well, chance would be a fine thing. She’s refusing to talk to me,” I mutter, crossing my ankle over my thigh and tugging on the boot buckles.

“Granted, you’ll have to grovel. She’s mighty pissed with you.”

“What did she say?”

“What didn’t she say.” Otis rolls his eyes. “Never heard so much vitriol out of one small vixen.”

“Shit,” I groan. “I don’t wanna know.” My head is aching, my cheek still stinging. The little claw mark on my hand throbs. My whole body bears the marks of Tippy’s outrage.

Otis shrugs. “I won’t tell you then.”

There’s a moment’s silence while I struggle internally. “Okay, I do want to know.” I mutter. “Lay it on me.”

“She’s furious you didn’t tell her you’d been turned.”

“Yeah, I’m aware of that. But I couldn’t, you know that. Otherwise word could have spread to the human realms. I didn’t even tell my own sister, for the gods’ sake.”

“True,” Clem agrees.

Unrelenting, Otis continues. “She said that even though you were a rude, surly, puny human before…”

“She said puny?” My leg starts to jiggle. I take a drag on my vape to calm down.

“I dunno. Maybe she said skinny. But since you’ve shifted, she reckons you’ve got tickets on yourself. That you make crass and inappropriate remarks. And that’s why vixen shifters despise wolves, because they’re so… erm, macho and uncouth.”

My wolf growls. I slap it back down. “Well, there you have it. It’s my wolf’s fault.”

Clem scoffs. “Typical male, blame it on your dick.”

“I said wolf, not dick.”

“Same thing.”

That silences me. If my wolf is taking charge of my dick, I’m in deep shit.

Otis sighs, his tone softening. “You’re clearly having problems since you shifted. You’re out of sorts, Jax.”

Traggar’s words at our last session ring in my ears. “I guess, yeah, things have been weird since then,” I admit glumly. “My wolf is hard to control. It used to be very much in the background, but now it’s like… It’s like…”

It’s like we’re vying for the same girl, I want to say. And disagreeing on how to woo her. But I can’t say that; it’s too hard to explain.

Shit, this is not what I need right now.

I’m on the brink of the most dangerous job of my life, and I’m falling apart. Soon I’ll be heading up to Sparkle City, wearing a portal cape that has serious glitches in its functionality, placing bugging devices all over the workplaces of Marsha Winters and the mayor of Sparkle, Ronald DeVine.

There’s no margin for error.

It’s our only hope of finding out what sinister plans the humans have in store for the Labyrinth.

“Maybe I’m not up to this.” I groan, burying my head in my hands at the sudden realization of my own inadequacy.

Otis relents. “Yes, you are. Remember how you rescued me and Clem? No hesitation. You just went for those human guards.”

“Yeah, but since then I’ve been all over the fucking place.”

“You’re working on that with Traggar, aren’t you?” Otis counters.