Fae Wolf

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

“Friendly, my ass.”

The stranger’s deep rumble carried through the double library shelves before curling around me like a sun-warmed puppy. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t quite hold the obvious rejoinder in check.

“Your a*s is friendly?” I shot back. “How do you know? Has it been butt dialing again?”

My jokes, I’m well aware, aren’t exactly funny. But I wasn’t prepared for such a violent response.

The peace of the library was broken by a clatter of falling books from the opposite side of the shelves. A huge hand thrust through the second tier of hardbacks to rake those in his direction also. Then a single tome clenched in strong fingers slammed down flat on the shelf, a face pressing through the gap to rest on the plastic-lined cover.

The stranger was my age or a little older. Appealingly stubble-jawed. Boasting an intriguing tattoo that curved out of his t-shirt and up one side of his neck.

But his eyes were what caught my attention. Startlingly blue, glinting with interest...and shadowed by something wild and furry and entirely familiar.

He was a wolf, like me.

My breath caught. Aiti and I had chosen this town thinking it was on the contested periphery of two werewolf territories, a location unlikely to be visited by either potential owner. We always skirted territory interiors where werewolves were likely to wander.

Apparently our research had proven wrong.

Backing up—one step, two steps—my butt hit the shelf behind me. Right. Library. Shelving. Exits were to the sides, not behind.

“Um, my mistake,” I muttered, trying to heft the massive bag of discards I’d set on the floor while browsing the stacks. I had to stock up when I could since visiting libraries was a rare indulgence. Still, I really should have left after achieving that goal.

But Aiti liked to take her time scavenging goods to bring back with us to Faery, so I had time to kill. And the plastic-sleeved hardbacks on the shelves, the ones I couldn’t actually check out since I had no address here on earth, tempted me with their diversity.

Now, my overloaded pack caught on the sleek wooden paddle—glamoured with a sheen of Faery magic to look like a walking stick—clasped in my other hand. The pack thumped to the floor, the paddle’s handle caught between my legs, and I would have fallen onto the shelf in front of me—the one I’d been trying to scramble away from—if an arm hadn’t shot out of that gap to hold me up.

The stranger’s fingers were warm on my skin but entirely impersonal. They set me on my feet then retreated. The face, when it returned to the gap, no longer had interest sparking in its pupils.

There was now no wolf behind his eyes.

“Hey,” the shifter soothed, “I’m not going to hurt you. I didn’t realize you were a kid.”

I wasn’t a kid. Still, the stranger’s words settled me. They meant my cloak was working, helping me blend into whichever setting I wandered through. Given the backpack and library, I wasn’t surprised my cloak had glamoured me into the form of a rather tall child.

A child with no wolf inside her. I wasn’t about to be slapped with a werewolf territorial battle while boasting no home base of my own.

Grinning from sheer relief, I couldn’t resist a rebuttal. “I’m older than I look.” The sentence amused me because it was both what every kid imaginable proclaimed...and the honest truth in my case.

Meanwhile, my heels settled back onto the floor. This werewolf was safely on the other side of a double-shelf barrier and he thought I was an underage human. Perhaps I could do what I’d never done previously—quench my curiosity about my own kind.

I had to give the other shifter a reason to stick around and chat, however. So I scanned the title of the book beneath his chin. “Pixies,” I noted, “are friendly. Mischievous maybe. Definitely likely to keep you up all night with their revelry.”

He tried to c**k his head...and ended up knocking one ear against a book, which promptly collided with another book and created a second mini-cascade of library materials. I considered a joke about bulls and china shops, but the guy’s wince prompted me to let the moment pass.

He, on the other hand, didn’t ignore his blunder. “This kind of thing is normal for me,” the stranger observed after the clatter ceased. He nodded at a librarian who’d poked her head in to check on us. “I’ll pick it up,” he promised. “No worries.”

Proving his good intentions, he stooped, disappearing for a moment then reappearing with books in his arms. His voice lowered to more library-friendly levels as he repaired the damage he’d created save for the gap that let us converse.

“But,” he continued while swapping two titles that were, presumably, in the wrong order, “windstorms don’t usually come out of nowhere and knock my bike off the road. I don’t usually walk into holes that weren’t there the day before. Mosquitoes never used to like me but now when I go outside I get eaten up.”

He frowned and I got the distinct impression he hadn’t meant to spill his guts to a random not-really-kid in the public library. To distract him, I provided information he wouldn’t find in the book beneath his chin.

“Could be spriggans,” I suggested. “Or a curse. But, most of the time, things like that are just our brains trying to make sense of a string of unrelated bad luck....”

I trailed off as the paddle in my hand started moving across the floor without any help from my muscles. It was trying to stroke water...which meant Aiti’s canoe was leaving port.

And all thought of learning about my heritage faded as a pure shot of adrenaline coursed through me. I hadn’t taken a single step, but I was already out of breath when I made the barest of excuses. “Gotta go.”

This time, I managed to get the bag’s strap over my shoulder and myself turned toward the exit without falling over. I was home free, except....

“Wait.” The stranger’s voice had gone gruff. Lupine. It tried to snag my feet...

...But the cloak’s fae power rebuffed whatever werewolf magic he was spinning. Freed, I sprinted toward the exit, craving the stranger’s presence even as I left it.

I didn’t peer back over my shoulder though. Werewolves were intriguing. This particular werewolf was particularly intriguing.

But my Aiti was my life.

***