The cabin is empty when we venture out of our room. I look around the space for signs of everyone else being here, but it’s just him and me. There are no shoes, backpacks, or voices. I look outside the front window to a gray sky, but no one is out there among the wildflowers. The window along the other wall reveals that the pickup truck is gone as well.
I look over my shoulder. “Where is everyone?”
Evan tilts his head, his hand on the door to the storage closet. “At their jobs, of course. Emily’s also got school today.” There’s a rustle of paper bags after he slips inside.
“Oh.” It never occurred to me before that they would also have jobs. But why not? They still had to maintain a human lifestyle in addition to their wolf one. Bills wouldn’t be paid without an income.
I wait for him to come out of the closet before asking him my next question. “What kind of work do they do?”
“Well, shifters can do anything really,” he says. “We’re not that different from normal people.”
“Okay.”
“Of course, we do have a tendency to live in pack houses on or near our territory, so that tends to reflect our work as well. We don’t like to be far away from our territory. Gotta protect it, you know, from rival packs or rogues.”
I swallow at the thought of danger other than bears lurking in these woods. “You guys have enemies?”
His face scrunches up. “Not really, but not every pack is friendly to their neighbors.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Oh. I guess that makes sense.”
He continues like there’s nothing to worry about. “Usually it’s just practical jokes, which tend to escalate one after the other. Very rarely do things get violent. We’re all living double lives here, so who has time for feuding? As long as we respect the boundaries, everything’s cool. Muffin?”
I turn my gaze down to the container of muffins in his hands that he pulled from the closet. The others must have brought the food with them because I know for sure that I didn’t see any muffins back there before. “As long as their not banana, sure.”
We make our way over to the round wooden table in the eat-in kitchen and sit down to eat the blueberry muffins together.
Evan had put on a loose fitted navy blue shirt and dark denim jeans prior to leaving our bedroom—which put me more at ease. I don’t know why I feel so awkward around him when he’s barely dressed. It shouldn’t bother me, right?
But every time I looked at him with just a pair of boxers on, I felt a blush warm my cheeks and I had to quickly turn my gaze away and onto something else.
“So,” Evan says as he swallows a mouthful of muffin, “Most shifters like to do work that is in or near their territory—law enforcement in small rural towns, park rangers, conservationists—stuff like that. Rick and Keith are park rangers, and Ali is an assistant coordinator at the Forest Sanctuary in the village.”
“Oh, so she’s like a conservationist?”
He shakes his head. “After finding and adopting Emily, she got a degree in social services and started interning at the Forest Sanctuary for Battered Women and Children in the Villages of Mount Hood.”
“Oh,” I pause, thinking about the kind of work she must do, as well as how well she treated me yesterday without even batting an eye. “I can see her doing that. It suits her.”
He nods, but is silent.
“And what about you?”
He looks up from the muffin in his hands like a deer caught in the headlights. “Me?” He sighs with a hint of exasperation. “Well, Rick and Keith want me to join them at the ranger’s station in Zigzag, but I don’t know.” He fidgets with the paper wrapper of his half-eaten muffin.
“Well, besides looking after me,” I say, like it’s a bad thing, “What kind of work have you been doing these days? Or are you in college?”
The corners of his lips creep up. “I’m a tour guide.”
I try not to laugh. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, I’m serious. I do guided hikes up Mount Hood, and I teach snowboarding and cross-country skiing in the winter.”
Maybe it’s because he looks so self-conscious, but I find myself grinning from ear to ear. “I think I can see you enjoying that kind of work.”
He brightens at the comment. “I love it. Sure, it’s not the best paying, or steady kind of work, but I like that sort of thing. It’s more fun than what Rick and Keith do everyday.”
“Then I guess that’s what you should do,” I say. I point my finger at him, “You know, my mama always said to do what you love because if you don’t, you’re doing yourself a disservice. It’s your life, and you gotta make the most of it.”
Looking into my eyes, he simpers. “I think I like your mother already.”
Now it’s my turn to look away and smile bashfully.
“And what do you want to do? You just finished school, right?”
I nod as my eyes drift over the grain of the wooden tabletop. “I work at the zoo. Well, that is, if Ruby doesn’t have me fired for not coming in for my shifts the last few days.”
He frowns as I sigh, feeling the heat drain from my cheeks. So much has happened; I don’t know how I am going to be able to explain it all to my family, my friends, and my employer. What can I tell them? I certainly can’t tell them about Evan being a shifter, or that a wolf befriended me in the forest. Both sound insane, not to mention that both should be kept as secrets. No one can know that Evan is a shifter. Other than hiding those secrets, my family and friends will be relieved to have me back, but my job might not be there waiting for me. This is the perfect opportunity for Ruby to have me fired. She’s such a witch…
Evan returns to eating his muffin by picking pieces off and popping them into his mouth. “Working at the zoo, huh? That must be interesting. I bet the animals are all scared of you.”
I tilt my head as my eyebrows pull together. “What do you mean?”
“You know, animals can sense that we’re different from other humans.”
Taking another bite of the muffin, I chew on the dense spongy texture as my thoughts wander to King the shepherd, and the wolves at the zoo. I always thought King was just guarding his house and his owner whenever I passed by, and maybe he was, but could it be because I’m not normal like everyone else? If I am a shifter too, could he sense that? It would certainly give him more of a reason for being so snarling towards me.
“How so?” I ask, as my thoughts shift to the wolves at the zoo and how they would avoid me, yet the alpha would growl at me. Was he territorial, or just trying to protect his pack from me?
“We smell different, of course. We’re like a combination of human and musky wolf. Humans smell differently from each other too, and it’s largely based on our diet. If I ate a lot of fish, I’d have more of a fishy smell. If I ate lots of garlic, I’d smell of garlic, you know?” He laughs lightly with a slight shake of his head. “It’s kind of funny, actually. Animals are the only ones that know our secrets, while everyone else is totally oblivious.”
I wrinkle my nose. “So, I must smell like asparagus since I ate so much of it these last few days, huh?”
He chuckles. “Yeah, a little bit. But you still smell amazing to me.”
I swallow, not sure what to make of that compliment. Aside from the bath Alicia gave me yesterday, I’m pretty sure I was starting to smell like sweat and mud before that.
“Come on,” he says, pulling me out of my odor concerns “Let’s go for a walk. Your ankle is better, right?”
I blink back at him, absentmindedly. Honestly, I didn’t even notice. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
He gets up and comes around the table to my side. As I stand up, he takes my hand in his. My heart skips a beat despite my brain telling it to chill. I look up into his eyes as he smiles warmly at me.
“I want to show you something.”
YOU ARE READING
Zara's Wolf (Book 1 of the Zara's Wolf Trilogy) BWWM
Werewolf[Complete] "He follows me around like a predator seeking a moment of weakness before he takes down his prey. But his eyes are soft and tell me a different story." Eighteen-year-old Zara is a born and raised African-American city girl. She's always...
