Page 22 of Bewitching the Wolf

“He says I have to give this up.” I wave the vape in the air. “That it’s messing with my wolf.”

“I have noticed you’re vaping more since you shifted,” Clem says, then adds, “If you apologize to Tippy, maybe she’ll help you quit. After all, she helped you give up the cigarettes.

At the mention of Tippy, I arc up all over again.

“No fucking way,” I growl, throwing the vape down on the table. “I’ll do it myself.”

“You can’t.”

“Yes, I fucking can.”

“Why won’t you accept you need help?”

“Why won’t you stop being a nag?”

“Stubborn asshole.”

“Bossy cow.”

“Woah.” Otis holds up a big green hand to halt our bickering. “Look, we’re all tired. Let’s just get some shut-eye. You can bed down here, Jax.”

I look at the couch wistfully. It’s almost a proper bed.

These days, I place my hat wherever it finds a home. I’m nomadic, have been since the chip was bitten out of my neck and the humans could no longer trace my whereabouts. Otis invented a holographic Jax, which is what the authorities get to see on their cameras. They believe I’m doing my job as a supervisor, sleeping in my apartment up in the Periphery at night. The reality is, I keep my night gear in my bike bag. I set up my rolled-up mattress in corners of alleys here in the Labyrinth, and shower at my demountable office next to the portal elevators each morning.

Some nights I’ll sleep as close as I dare to Tippy’s little cottage. There’s a bend in the tunnel with a small natural cave from where I can just see the lights of her home. I make up my mattress there, knowing she’s at the end of that street, cozy in her own little bed, and imagine that we’re there together. That soothes me somehow, and sends me to sleep.

She doesn’t know, of course, and I would never tell her.

It would just be another thing she’d have against me. I’ve never spied on her. I just lie at the end of her street, in that little indent in the rock wall. I’m always gone before morning, my sleeping bag rolled up on the back of my bike.

And now with the wolf inside me, making deeply inappropriate remarks to the girl I lo— the girl I like. Well, I just don’t trust that it wouldn’t encourage me to prowl closer…

I huff a sigh “Yeah, okay. I’ll take the couch, thanks.”

“And if Mom offers you a full cooked breakfast in the morning, you’ll accept, you hear me?” Otis puts on a mock stern face. “You need all the sustenance you can get.”

I smirk. Otis’s mom, Sally has recently come back to live in the sheriff’s house after years in a care home, deeply depressed after her husband, Sheriff Bradley Cane, disappeared. But a miracle happened recently, and she’s back to her old self, living in their family home again and cooking up a storm for any visitors.

My mouth waters at the thought. Sally is the best cook in the Labyrinth.

“Okay, okay, I’ll accept.”

“Well, I’m off to bed. Are you coming, babe?” Otis winks at Clem, who jumps up, a smile replacing her frown.

She comes over and gives me a hug.

“I agree with Tippy. You are a skinny bastard. But I love you anyway.”

“Love you too, bitch.” I grin and hug her close.

That’s the thing with Clem and I. Our fights are no match for our love for one another.

When I let her go, she practically skips out of the room after Otis.

As I hear Clem’s giggles and the deeper timbre of Otis’s laughter through the wall, I can’t help a stir of envy, my stinging cheek from Tippy’s slap reminding me just how far I am from having a love like theirs.

CHAPTER 7