Penny

She felt her heart pang a little bit. She was far too tall to be carried around like that by most men. And besides, she would never let herself be so undignified in public…but just one time, she might like Bobby to sweep her off her feet without notice. To put all of their baggage aside and just grab her up in his arms and take her to bed.

Maybe it would ruin their friendship. But it probably wouldn’t.

As Penny instinctively scanned the crowd, she noticed something was wrong. Wrong in the air, in the scents that were present. Her wolf senses took over and she set aside her melancholy feelings for the moment. GiGi and Vann were missing, but their scents were still on board. Word around the boat was those two were holed up below deck, making up for lost time with each other as Vann had recently returned from a television shoot overseas.

But then, also missing were Chastity and Gavin, the other remaining members of the bridal party. Chastity was Rosemary’s cousin from Baton Rouge who had gotten so drunk at the bachelorette party, she was dancing on Bobby’s bar. Gavin had paired up with her at the end of that night and that’s as much as Penny knew or cared to know about it. But Chastity and Gavin were not just missing from the human tunnel and shirking their bridal party responsibilities.

Their scent is not even on this boat, she thought.

Penny sniffed the air again. Something else canine was in the air though. Actually, full canine, not shapeshifter canine.

Has someone brought their service dog to this wedding?

But no, that wasn’t it. It was a disturbed, determined energy.

After Rosemary and Ash had disembarked the riverboat and hopped into the classic car to speed off to the hotel, Penny turned to Bobby. “Take a whiff. Gavin’s not here on the boat. He left.”

Bobby looked around and sniffed. “You’re right. Think he sneaked away with that chick from Baton Rouge?”

Penny shook her head. “I don’t know, but I think we’d better find out.”

Again Bobby took Penny’s hand and sparks seared into her.

His stare warmed her soul. Bobby’s eyes came to life again, now that he didn’t have to talk about himself.

And then, looking down at the dock, they watched as a stray Labrador retriever was running toward them. Its eyes were locked on to the two of them and then it stopped short of the gangway and started barking right at Bobby and Penny. And it looked filthy and its fur was matted. It was clearly a stray dog off the street.

“What the hell?” Bobby muttered.

Penny turned to her friend. “I think he wants us to follow him.”

* * *

Her paws were light on the earth, her eyes trained on the stray Lab, as they all ran full tilt, like they’d never run before.

Penny’s coppery fur stood on end, knowing she was headed straight into trouble. The air in New Orleans on that June day was virtually pea soup, but the matter at hand had the wolf friends speeding along as if the wind was at their back. As if they were together on a hunt in the woods, carefree and fierce.

The wolves were anything but carefree at the moment—she was certain she and Bobby were not going to like what they would find at the end of this scent trail—but part of her was happy to be running beside her dearest friend again.

The wild, boisterous hunts in the woods, lakes and swamps had taken a backseat these last few months. A lot of wedding drama had taken over their lives. The normally life-giving hunts had become a quick inconvenience every full moon, only to be squeezed in between dress fittings and endless wedding-related parties. There was another inconvenience: with all the pairings-off lately between wolf shifters and feline shifters—that would be Rosemary’s people—the monthly hunts were including more and more participants. Outsiders were working their way into the pack. Penny was trying to keep an open mind, but it was hard.

She loved Rosemary, so she had to keep an open mind. Last January she had become a client at Penny’s design studio, and the two of them hit it off immediately. They liked each other so much they even worked through their differences in their packs. Rosemary was a shape-shifting panther, and Penny was a shapeshifting wolf. But Penny figured if her pack mate, Ash, could overcome the fact that his true love was a shifter of an entirely different species, so could Penny.

She had even grown to accept Rosemary’s cousin GiGi, grudgingly, after she’d morphed into a panther and accidentally injured Penny’s wolf pack member Vann.

Penny had told herself to just deal. Because why bother living in New Orleans if you could not be free to love who you loved, or could not throw a party at every turn for no reason?

But the wedding was over now. There would be no more chatter about flowers or dresses or place settings. Penny was simply running beside her best friend Bobby and not talking.

It was primal and perfect.

She had discarded her gigantic silver bridesmaid’s dress in a lonely, crumbling cemetery on the edge of downtown. She and Bobby had hidden there to quickly shift from their human to wolf forms. Funnily enough, Penny noticed before they sprinted away that her dress was entangled with Bobby’s custom-tailored morning suit on the ground among the tombs. The two garments looked like they were getting the kind of action Penny and Bobby should have been enjoying.

But for now, she put the thought of bedding down with Bobby out of her head. Chas and Gavin were missing and likely in trouble.

When this was over and all her friends were safe, Penny decided, she was not going to waste any more time wondering when Bobby was going to come around.

She was done watching everyone else fall in love. She was going to fix this thing between them, once and for all.