I slipped out of my robe and decided the best thing to do was cover his head so he wouldn’t see me when I pulled it out.
Kneeling before him in my bra and panties, I draped my silky robe across his back, sliding it over his face until it obscured his view. I wrapped my fingers around the handle, ready to pull it out with lightning speed. At least I had medical insurance, even though the deductible was outrageous.
“Here we go,” I whispered. Then I did a mental countdown. One… two… three!
In a clean motion, I yanked the handle and pulled the screwdriver free.
He yelped and growled all at once. The wolf flipped onto his feet and the robe fell away, revealing one pissed-off animal. I scrambled backward, holding the bloody screwdriver in self-defense.
He limped forward, tracking blood with each step as his brown eyes locked on mine like a target.
This was it. I was going to be one of those sad-o’clock news stories about a lonely woman found mauled to death in her bra and panties. Then they’d go to commercial and talk about squeezably soft toilet paper.
“I’m so sorry,” I said in a shaky voice, lying on my back as he reached my legs and then my hips. “You had a bad thing happen, and I’m… Please don’t hurt me.”
In that moment, I was either going to be ripped to shreds by an incensed wolf, or I was going to kill an animal to save my life—something I’d never done.
My fingers gripped the handle tightly and I tensed, preparing for the inevitable attack.
Tension mounted.
I couldn’t breathe and kept thinking about my sister.
The wolf lurched forward and fell beside me, resting his chin on my left arm. After two short wags of his tail, his tongue stretched out and licked the bottom of my jaw. I sighed dramatically and stared at the ceiling in relief.
“Just another exciting night in the life of April Frost,” I said, laughing with tears hovering at the corners of my eyes.
That was the night a fierce and beautiful creature walked into my life and changed it forever.
The next morning, I sleepily crawled out of bed and brushed my teeth. I made a mental note to pick up toothpaste on my next trip to the store since I had all but sat on the tube to get a smidge on my brush. My wild encounter the previous evening had slipped my mind and I went about my morning routine. When I suddenly remembered, I burst into the hall and found the wolf asleep in my kitchen.
Just as I’d left him. Lying on top of my grandma’s blue blanket, a bandage wrapped around his wound, which I’d carefully cleaned before going to bed. He wasn’t showing any signs of sickness and seemed to be almost smiling in his sleep.
I set a pan on the stove and heated up a few slices of sausage. If he planned to become a regular tenant, then I needed to pick up dog food from the grocery store.
He still had his eyes closed when I sat down to eat. What a gorgeous animal. His large, heavy paws were crossed in front of him, giving off a regal aura. I’d never seen such an unusual pattern as the dark mask that covered his face. He must have been a mixed breed, because wolves didn’t live in Austin. I’d heard of coyote sightings, but they were smaller and more skittish of people.
“Are you hungry? I’ll share what I have with you.”
His brown eye popped open as if he’d been listening all along. The nose-twitching led me to believe he was famished, despite his indifferent demeanor. But when I held out my sausage, he made no attempt to lunge and gobble it up.
Peculiar.
Lexi sent a message on my phone asking me to hurry my ass up—in those exact words. Which meant I’d overslept.
“Shoot,” I grumbled, scratching my wolf behind his ear. My life was just getting too weird.
***
“April, can I see you for a second?” Lexi tugged the hem of my orange work shirt and dragged me away from a customer. I knocked over a counter display of Pop Rocks, but we both ignored it.
“What’s up?” I leaned against the vending machine and her eyes pretty much scraped me from head to toe. I tried to pretend I had no idea what she was about to say.
But I did.
“You cannot walk around the store looking like you just crawled out of a Vietnam War movie. Don’t you have a change of shoes? It looks like you’ve been to boot camp and then ran through a jungle.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll rinse them in the sink again,” I said, staring at my white sneakers.
Which were now my brown sneakers.
“Look, I have a pair of sandals in my car you can borrow. Austin’s funny like that. He helped me pick out a new car and lately he’s been obsessed with stocking it for every kind of emergency imaginable. Blankets, clothes, bandages, flares, and even food,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “So if an asteroid wipes out the planet, I’m good to go because I have a bag of jerky and peroxide.”
“I think I saw your boyfriend’s brother yesterday,” I said, changing the subject.
“Who, Denver?”
“No. The guy with the motorcycle.”