Page 1 of Wolf Unseen

1

Riley

Being half human and half wolf was the worst of both worlds. Humans hated my otherness, and shifters mostly wanted me dead. It was why I worked so hard to make sure I could protect myself.

Sweat trickled into my left eye, temporarily clouding my vision. The break in concentration was enough to give Danny the opening he needed. His fist slammed into my cheek, knocking me off my feet. I hit the mat with a sharp oomph, much to Danny’s delight.

“Ha! I got you good, Riley!” The human teen bounced up and down on the balls of his feet before offering me his hand, which I took. Suppressing a smirk, I yanked him forward, using his body weight against him and unbalancing the big bastard.

Danny’s eyes widened in surprise, not expecting my countermove.

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” I crowed, springing to my feet and dancing away so he couldn’t hook my legs out from under me.

“Damn. That was mean.” Danny pouted for a few seconds before grinning.

“Not mean,” our coach, Cal, corrected. “You were too busy showing off to pay attention to her body language. Anyone with half a brain could tell she wasn’t out for the count.”

“But…”

“Enough. Hit the showers. It’s late and some of us have a home to go to.” Cal strode away, grumbling under his breath, and a second later the lights over the mats went out.

Cal was one of the good guys: tough but fair. He’d seen a neglected kid with more energy than she knew what to do with and given her a way to channel it into something productive. If not for the gym, I’d have probably ended up in human juvie.

Or dead.

Either way, my mother wouldn’t have noticed.

“Need a lift, sweetheart?” Cal’s gravelly voice jolted me from my thoughts. Water dripped down my back, soaking through my thin jacket; there hadn’t been time to dry my hair after a quick shower. Not with Cal eager to lock up and go home.

Unlike me, who was always looking for excuses to avoid going back to the trailer park I laughingly called home.

I shook my head. “Nah. Felix will be here in a sec.”

“If he doesn’t show, call me and I’ll swing back.” He scowled. “This neighborhood has gone to the wolves lately, and I don’t want you hanging around too long.”

The shifter mafia had moved in, and a year later, crime rates reached record highs.

Not that Maximus Lightfoot, head of the Shifter Council, gave a fuck. He was likely on the mafia’s payroll.

I watched as Cal climbed into his beat-up truck and headed off into the night. The minute his taillights vanished in the gloom, I moved back into the shelter of the gym’s doorway and pulled my phone from my pocket.

The message from Felix on the lock screen gave me a bad feeling.

Felix: gonna be 20 mins late. Soz.

I cursed under my breath. Knowing my friend, he’d been too busy gaming to notice how late it was. Or chatting up some cute shifter online.

Either way, I was stuck here for a while longer unless I felt like coughing for a cab, which I didn’t, seeing as how I had no money.

After sending Felix a thumbs-up emoji, I reopened my chat thread with Lorna. There were no new messages. Nothing since August.

I was so busy scrutinizing Lorna’s messages for clues I might have missed that I failed to spot the two hulking males, both dressed in MC leathers. The moon tattoos on their necks told me they were wolf mafia goons from the local pack.

Brilliant.

My inner wolf opened one eye, yawned, and then went back to sleep, apparently unconcerned about our imminent death.

Praying Felix hurried the fuck up before these two clowns jumped me, I tucked my phone away and affected a relaxed demeanor. Experience had taught me showing fear to an apex predator was a good way to end up hurt.