Page 51 of Wolf Unseen

“Mom, I’m fine,” I snapped, annoyed that she’d sent me into a panic for no good reason. “What do you want?”

“Oh, Riley, you sound stressed.” I heard masculine laughter in the background, along with music.

“Mom, where are you?”

“That’s why I called, darling. I’m in Silver City.” She giggled. “Hamish got me a job in a club. I start in an hour.”

“What sort of club, Mom? Silver City is dangerous.”

Silver City was full of shifters, although a few oblivious humans lived and worked there, along with a small population of witches and mages.

“It’s not dangerous, Riley. Hamish and his friends have been so kind to me. He found me a lovely apartment, and he’s got me this job. Why can’t you be happy for me?”

“Because I worry about you, Mom!”

I’d spent my whole life worrying about my mother. She was like a child with no sense of danger, leaping from one crisis to another.

“You don’t need to worry about me anymore, Riley. Hamish is taking good care of me.”

Somehow, I doubted this guy was helping my mother out of the kindness of his heart, but I stopped short of saying so.

“So what’s the job?” I asked, trying to sound upbeat.

“Oh, this and that,” she replied vaguely. “Serving drinks at private parties, that sort of thing.”

I leaned against a tree and closed my eyes in despair. There was no point telling Mom her new friend might be a shifter, and worse, a member of the shifter mafia.

“What’s the name of the club?”

A man’s voice shouted something I didn’t quite catch. “Sorry, darling, I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow. Love you!” The call ended abruptly, leaving me wondering what my mother had got herself caught up in.

But what could I do? Nothing. She was thousands of miles away. It was time I took a step back and let her stand on her own two feet.

The sound of a branch cracking behind me made me jump, and I inwardly cursed my inner wolf for not alerting me to another’s presence.

“Well, well, it’s the dickless hybrid who got me into trouble with the heirs,” the wolf shifter snarled. Derek? Dickhead? While his name escaped me, I remembered how he believed it was his goddess-given right to talk shit about me when I first arrived.

“Ooh, look, it’s the dude who pissed himself.” I’ll admit it wasn’t sensible to lash out at the wolf, but the conversation with my mother had put me in a bad mood. “Fuck off, asshat.”

“You fucking little—” the prick roared before shifting into a sandy-colored wolf with a nasty case of mange. My wolf sat up and growled. It seemed she wasn’t a fan.

I tensed as the sandy wolf snarled and drooled, blocking my path back toward the main campus buildings. If I ran, my only path of escape was further into the forest, and I was no match for an adult male wolf with anger issues.

We’re going to have to shift, I told my wolf. I can’t fight this asshole otherwise.

The mangy wolf snapped at me, tearing a strip from my jacket. I had seconds, at most, before he went for my throat.

My animal pushed forward, forcing the shift. The brief pain of cracking bones and stretching tendons nearly had me vomiting all over my feet, but the minute I landed on four paws, it vanished. The other wolf jumped back in surprise; he’d not expected me to shift because hybrids rarely did.

Then he sniffed the air and howled with excitement. Fuck, his wolf recognized mine as a female. I tore off through the trees, my wolf making the most of her freedom after months spent slumbering inside me.

She was small for a wolf, but what she lacked in size, she made up for in agility, and it took very little effort to evade the much larger beast chasing me. I heard him crashing through the undergrowth behind us, yipping and howling.

We ran hard and fast, weaving through the trees, taking the least trodden paths in the hope our pursuer gave up. Trees and bushes flashed by, but it wasn’t long before my wolf grew fatigued. As the path grew steeper, she slowed, panting hard.

We can’t let him catch us!

If he did, we were dead.