Ash

He liked to think of himself as a modern fellow, but Ash had exactly zero interest in the wedding other than doing what he was told to do: show up and bring Lionel DuChamps.

He needed plan, even if it meant he had to do it by force. Hell, he wasn’t even sure of the date. He was just trying to make it through Lent without thinking about his girl’s lady parts. Parts with a scent he could track for miles.

In the meantime, since he wasn’t getting the kind of action in the bedroom he really wanted, he did some digging into shapeshifting panthers in the southern Louisiana region.

He was stunned to find, when he went to his favorite voodoo shop in the French Quarter, that this history was widely known. The shop owner, Lucy, actually seemed shocked that all of this new information about shapeshifting panthers was coming as news to Ash.

“Oh yeah,” said Lucy, who knew the wolf’s secret. “The panthers go back over a century, when an unscrupulous voodoo witch was hired by a competitor to make Beauregard DuChamps suffer a mysterious and magical death.

“But she wasn’t a very good voodoo practitioner, because she got her spell all wrong. Instead of causing him to die by being suddenly attacked on his nightly walk by a wildcat, he only got bit. And because the animal was under a spell, the black magic was passed on into the blood of the DuChamps family. Beauregard DuChamps himself was not a halfling or a shapeshifter, but his children ended up carrying the magical gene. They were doomed to a life of feline proclivities. They were prone to disappearing for hours every so often, whenever the urge to shape-shift came over them. To this day, every new moon, they run off to the woods to hunt.”

Ash was gobsmacked. “How did I not know about any of this?”

She smiled and handed him a sack of crystals. “Because you never asked. Forget vampires and zombies. This city is shifter central.”

Lucy, herself a Voudon high priestess, told him to crush and burn the crystals with some sage just before the ceremony. She warned him that this would not make Lionel do his bidding, but make him more open to suggestion. Ash was looking forward to creating this awful smell at the wedding venue. Rosemary would not hate that at all. Nope.

When he texted Rosemary to tell her what he had learned about her family’s history, she had replied that under no circumstances was he allowed to see her shape-shift.

But fuck that. The wedding planning had kept them apart for weeks. The new moon was coming up, and he wanted to put his eyes on his soon-to-be wife.

On the night of the new moon, Ash waited in an Uber outside her flat. He watched her exit the building, along with her cousin GiGi who had been helping to plan the wedding. Rosemary looking nothing like her usual self. He realized he had never seen her in yoga pants and a T-shirt before. And running shoes. He had to do a double take. She got into the back of a black town car and he paid the Uber driver extra to follow it. They drove all the way to the other side of Lake Pontchartrain, finally stopping at a secluded parking area inside Fontainebleau State Park. When Rosemary got out of the car, she paused and looked around, then nodded to the driver to wait. He waited for her to disappear into the woods.

Ash had no problem catching up with her, as her scent was doubly strong that night. He stayed hidden in the trees as she stopped under a large mossy oak to take off her clothes. He watched her place her clothes and shoes neatly under the tree. Her naked body in the moonlight was almost too much. Ash was rock hard, and his beast demanded he go to her. But he held back. The next moment, he watched his woman transform into the big cat. It was startling, but not as disturbing as he’d imagined. She didn’t look as if it pained her. Her eyes spread apart and changed shape, her face turned into a golden snout. Her ears moved to the top of her furry head, and her little body was soon covered with golden fur and grew a long, curled tail. She was the most elegant creature he’d ever seen. He watched as she climbed up the tree and mounted a branch that overlooked the woods. She let out a wild roar at the moon, like she was suddenly a free female. Even the wolf in him could not help but worship this beautiful creature. Majestic and sleek, the wolves were not. He could barely admit it to himself, but the truth was before him. The panthers were a clan above the rest. Who was he, a filthy, woolly beats, to think he could be with such a creature?

* * *

When Rosemary was finished hunting at the end of the night, she took a bath in the lake to clean off the scent of blood, then shifted effortlessly into her human form and returned to her clothes. She picked up her undies first, and that’s when she knew. Ash had been here. He had touched her clothes. Son of a bitch.