“No, I’m not saying it’s the only option, but it is the best one.”

“And what gives you the right to say that?” the irate woman demanded. She had a finger jabbed in his face. The urge to bite it might have overcome a lesser man, but Ryan was a professional. Besides, he’d seen worse clients in his day. This one had yet to threaten him with bodily harm.

He wished she would. It was his unprofessional opinion that she deserved to have some sense knocked into her.

“Maybe it would be the fact that I’m your pack leader?” he replied with exaggerated patience. “Or my job as a lawyer?”

And not just a lawyer, but the tenth highest paid lawyer in the entire state of Virginia and the fifth most-demanded. He wasn’t the type of asshole to lord these accomplishments over other people, but he did think they deserved some sort of recognition since this was his area of expertise.

“Well, Ryan, that doesn’t give you the right to tell us what to do!”

Ryan rubbed his face with his hands and looked up again at the woman before him. Jeanine Robinson-McIntosh, an unhappy she-wolf married to a tired man. They’d been having problems for as long as anyone could remember. As their six children started leaving the nest, problems escalated into disputes and arguments that occasionally became physical. Now, there was a difference here he had to be very careful about. It wasn’t domestic violence. It wasn’t River beating on his wife, or Jeanine twisting River’s balls whenever he disagreed with her. Wolf shapeshifters were very physical creatures, and they would rather act than have words. A tussle here and there was to be expected, especially between two people who had tempers. Based on that, he couldn’t say anything.

But verbal abuse was a whole different story, and the two of them fired off insults like missiles no matter where they were, whether it was in the privacy of their home or in the middle of a church sermon. Tensions were high, escalating by the day, and their children never visited. The last kid staying with them, a smart girl just about to graduate high school, confided to Ryan once that all the arguing made her brothers and sisters leave even faster. Why, she was going straight to a college on the other side of the state.

And they were both miserable. A person only had to pass by one of them on the street to see how truly miserable they were. Their dark emotions were affecting the rest of the pack, leaching shadows into a contented atmosphere. He’d been trying for ages to get them to sort out their differences, which led him now to this conclusion that the best thing for them to do would be to simply split up and go their separate ways.

“Ryan?” came Jeanine’s impatient voice.

He looked up at her again, at this pretty face which was now lined with the heavy-creased wrinkles of a woman 20 years her senior. “Jeanine,” he said, “I am a domestic lawyer. I specialize in divorce cases. All the signs are here. You know it. I know it. So why on earth do you keep inviting me out here only to send me packing when you don’t like something I say?”

She was quiet for a moment, looking down at her hands. Her fingers worried over one another, her hands churning as if she was washing them with soap. From the red chafing on her skin, he suspected this tic was a common one for her and she did it all the time. He half-expected to see her raise a bloody red froth after a few seconds.

While she thought it over, he looked idly around the living room. The house was quite a fine place, kept in a rigorous state of cozy cleanliness. Jeanine probably used the cleaning to give herself the satisfaction that her relationship no longer could. She used to be a private school teacher at a very well-to-do district, one which thanked God at every turn rather than giving credit where it was due. Religion was fine and all that, but God didn’t make it rain, God didn’t get a patient through surgery, and God didn’t make a school successful. Clouds did, dedicated surgeons did, and hard-working teachers and taxpayer dollars did.

In any case, she was on temporary leave right now. Loud arguments in the school hallways and lashing out at students led the other members of the faculty to believe she was detrimental to learning—and their picture-perfect image.

But they weren’t hurting without their second source of income. Ryan knew River Robinson quite well, having admired him from afar in the way children did with the “big kids” in their community. That admiration didn’t always fade with the years, especially when a person continued to deserve it. River was a damn smart man, a financial advisor; always good with money, he’d been into saving up since he was a boy. He made big bucks, and he made damn sure none of it went to waste. They probably could have both retired today and been no worse off for the rest of their lives.

Their home reflected this wealth, though like all wealthy people, they had gone to great lengths to make their home seem inviting. The disconnect was a bit odd, almost like a dream. They might have seemed like a normal family, what with the hallway of portraits of their children, but then Ryan would see the chandelier in the dining room or the TV in the living room that covered half of one wall, and the illusion would shatter.

“I guess I just get lonely sometimes,” Jeanine finally said. She looked up from her hands and peered out at him from behind a sheet of blonde hair, a strangely girlish gesture. “Don’t you ever get lonely?”

Uh-oh.

It wasn’t unusual for couples in a strained relationship to want to see their advisor separately, rather than airing all their complaints out in front of their partner. He hadn’t thought much of it when Jeanine would call him over to the house during River’s work hours. Clearly, she’d just been working up to something.

Now, to gracefully retract himself from the situation...

“I don’t suppose I do,” he replied. He leaned away from her slightly. “Have you considered seeing a counselor? Or joining some sort of club? It can be good to have something else to focus on in difficult times.”

She shook her head, and his heart sank a little. “Oh, I don’t need any of that. I just need a man again. A real man who will speak his mind and not play all these guessing games.”

“Is River aware of your desire to see other people? He might...oh.”

Ryan looked down as Jeanine stroked his chest, her reddened fingers wandering over the material of his t-shirt. He was grateful for the long sleeves, which hid the prickles of goosebumps forming on his skin so she couldn’t mistake his reaction for one of arousal.

“I think we both know it’s best if River doesn’t know about this,” she murmured. “I know you want me.”

He most certainly didn’t. He was no stranger to the touch of a woman, but this was wrong. It wasn’t her age—he’d taken women much older and found them very fine, as mature women knew exactly what they wanted and needed—but the situation and her status as a mated wolf. This was incredibly wrong, and rather than arousing him, he could feel his dick shrinking, trying to retract inside his body where it could get away from this conundrum.

“Jeanine...”

“Don’t speak. You’ll ruin it.” Her hands dropped to the front of his jeans but encountered only empty air.

Ryan stood in the middle of the living room, heart pounding in his chest. That had been close. Very close. Unpredictable movements were hard to dodge, and he’d only just been able to twist out of the way. “I think I need to be going,” he said. His throat was tight, strangling his words. “It would be best if our next meetings are with River.”

Jeanine stood as well, and he backed away from her, circling around to get closer to the front door. She followed his movements almost hungrily, a wolfish gleam in her eyes. He could see her wolf form emerging from deep inside her, saw a flicker of golden fur rippling in the air around her body, and he could smell her desire for him heavy in the air. The scent made him feel sick.

“He doesn’t need to know about this,” she said. It was both a demand and a request.

“Nothing happened to make him aware of,” Ryan replied. He felt like prey, and he didn’t like that. An alpha male in the prime of his life should be doing the hunting, not be the one hunted. “I think I’ll take my leave now.”

“Wait!” Jeanine cried out after him but the sound was muffled by the door he shut between them. In three steps, he was inside his truck. Another few seconds after that and he was out of the driveway and down by the nearest stop sign at the corner. He looked back after slowing down to make sure he wasn’t being followed, and upon seeing an empty street, he finally relaxed.

Idling at the stop sign since there was no one else around, Ryan rubbed his face again and glanced at himself in the mirror. He didn’t have any hairs out of place even though he felt damn shaken up on the inside. All he could do was hope that Jeanine wasn’t going to spread some fabricated version of her side of the story, or he’d have some major damage control to do.

Still, he didn’t think he regretted becoming a pack leader. He’d done a lot of good in his time as the head of his wolves. Some days were just more difficult than others.

Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was just after 1 p.m. A perfect time.

Driving again, keeping his attention on the quiet streets of the neighborhood, he found his phone and fished it out of his pocket. It was a $15 flip phone from Walmart, the kind which had been all the rage only a short time ago. Everyone had these flat touchscreen smartphones now, but those were expensive, faulty, easy to break, and just impractical for a shapeshifter. Something about shifting really fucked with the delicate inner workings of a smartphone, wearing them down over a period of months, or even days. These cheap pieces of crap he could buy at the department store had sturdier mechanisms and less of them, which meant less could go wrong.

Besides, it amused his clients. It never failed to get a reaction out of them when they saw what kind of phone he had. A wealthy man like him who could have anything he wanted, and he was using a flip phone? It made them laugh, and an amused person was a relaxed person, easier to deal with.

Truth was, he could have afforded to buy a new iPhone every few months but he was stuck in his ways. He liked being able to find buttons by touch and memory alone, and a person couldn’t do that on a touchscreen.

He dialed the first number in his speed dial list, keeping both eyes on the road to watch out for any cops who would take offense to him driving distracted. Being wealthy didn’t exclude him from getting a ticket.

The phone rang twice in his ear before being picked up. “Hey, fuckface,” the person on the other end of the line said. His voice was rough but edged with affection.

And just like that, Ryan felt better. “Hey, dickhead. My day has been hell.”

“Mine, too. Drinks tonight?”

“You know it.”

“Alright. Same time, same place?”

“I’ll be there. See ya, Dilly.”

“See you, Ryan.”

They both hung up at the same time. Their conversations never lasted very long when he called at this hour. Dylan, his best friend, had gone to trade school to become a mechanic, pursuing his passion for fixing things. From fences to computers to clocks, Dylan could put it together. If he couldn’t, give him a few days and he’d figure it out. The man was a genius, brilliant with his hands.

Very brilliant.

Ryan reined in his thoughts, sighing a little. Drinks at their favorite bar tonight seemed like such a long way away, and he would have to fill that empty time between somehow. They’d been doing this since they were old enough to drink; hitting up the same bar to shoot shit whenever trouble came their way. The frequency of those nights at the bar lessened as they grew older, though. They weren’t college kids anymore. They were adults who couldn’t catch up on notes if they missed a class because of a hangover. Clients didn’t like it when you canceled on them, and working with machines while nursing a pounding headache was a recipe for disaster.

Still, this felt like a night where he needed a drink, and he only ever drank with Dylan.

Setting his sights on home, thinking a long swim might calm his nerves, Ryan adjusted course and merged with traffic on the main streets through his hometown of Portsmouth. He hated traffic. Not because of the waiting, but because the stop-and-go motion kept him alert and thinking. If he took the back roads, he could let his mind wander, zone out a bit, but he wasn’t in the mood for that.

He wasn’t in the mood for much but drinking.

Suddenly, he wished that he could have talked longer to Dylan, but the other shapeshifter relished his lunch breaks. He spent them sitting out at the park near his garage—which he owned—always with some sort of manual in hand. He never skipped those breaks, never shortened them, using them as his chance to unwind and recharge. When they were growing up together, Ryan often overheard his parents saying that Dylan was the reason he didn’t get into nearly as much trouble as he could have. It was true, for sure. They were the most unlikely of friends, an alpha and an omega, the jock and the nerd.

Their folks were also childhood friends and neighbors, which meant he and Dylan spent much of their time together. It wasn’t unusual that they should play together, or that they should enjoy each other’s company, but the weird thing was that they hadn’t ever grown apart from one another. As Dylan developed into an omega and began to develop his interests in how things worked, leading to marathon builds with Lego blocks and hours spent in front of a chessboard, Ryan didn’t abandon him. Likewise, Dylan came to as many of Ryan’s football games and wrestling matches as he could. They had always been close. Closer sometimes than others, but never apart.

There had been that one moment about six years ago when things could have fallen apart, that one night when they were both a bit too drunk, a bit too desperate, but the bonds of boyhood weren’t broken so easily. They’d moved on.

Ryan gave up on chasing away the thoughts and let them overcome him until he finally arrived back in his neighborhood. From there, it was only a few turns until he was on Water Street, and his house was within sight at the very end of the road. He could have bought something even bigger and better, but he’d been attracted to this place more for the location than the size. The house backed up right against the Elizabeth River, which meant his backyard extended down into the water. Like everyone else in the neighborhood, he owned a boat and was a frequent visitor to the docks, but he preferred to swim his troubles away.

To swim and to work. Fall was approaching on the wind, with temperatures dropping a fair bit in the night, but the days overall were still fair and his plants were enormous with good health. He’d planted every one, nurtured them from seeds or saplings. Each bush that formed his hedges, he’d picked out on his own. He’d seeded his own grass to fill in the bare patches that troubled the yard when he first bought the house. He’d planted all the trees, one after another until he was satisfied. They were his babies, and he treated them as such, never missing a watering or a dose of fertilizer. Rather than let anyone mow his lawn, rather than hire a gardener, he did all his own trimming and pruning. It was important to him to do these things, just as it was important for him to maintain the interior of his big house in the same manner.

If he didn’t do these things, he would probably have gone crazy from stress. It was therapeutic for him to do the housework, to focus on these harmless little tasks after a day of settling petty wolf problems, after weeks of listening to divorcees scream at each other over slights that never happened.

Ryan pulled up into his driveway alongside his boat, a pristine lady christened Bloody Mary by the man he bought her from. He didn’t particularly care for that drink, but it was bad luck to change the name of any ship. As a wolf shifter, he didn’t really mess around with anything water-related.

As he walked inside to change into his swim trunks, he smiled a little while remembering the indignation in Dylan’s tone when Ryan told him that. They had been a few years younger then, and the drinking was easier.

“I didn’t think you were such a fucking superstitious idiot,” Dylan said. He had nursed his glass like a weary mother, uncertain of how much more shit she can take despite loving her children.

Ryan had laughed, a bit too loudly. Much too loudly, he recalled, if the stares cast in their direction by the other bar patrons were anything to go by. “Are you saying you’d take the risk of having your soul be lost forever at sea?”

“It’s a fucking river, man. I’m sure even your dumbass soul could find its way out eventually.”

And they had laughed and drank.

No, he wasn’t superstitious, and he wasn’t an idiot, but he believed in hedging his bets and not taking unnecessary risks. Like all kids, they’d believed in the usual myths—mirror ghosts and boogeymen, tooth fairies, Santa Claus—but there was one which he had heard that he could never forget.

He heard it from his grandmother, who warned them all that they shouldn’t go swimming until an hour after eating because they would get cramps and drown. Being practical wolf children, they had asked why that would be so much worse than dying any other way.

Ryan’s grandmother had leaned forward, her wrinkled-apple face very serious as she studied the group of curious pups before her. “Because,” she had whispered, “all wolves go to heaven, but if you die in the water, your senses will be confused. Your soul will be forever lost in the water.”

Of course, the old woman was immediately scolded by the other adults for telling such tales, but Ryan never forgot. He treated the water with respect, much like a driver grows overly cautious after getting into an accident. If there were waves even a little stronger than average, he didn’t go swimming.

But today was a fine day for it. The sky glistened like a jewel overhead, clear and pale without any cloudy impurities. Where the water and the sky met along the horizon line, it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. Motorboats skimmed the placid surface of the river, leaving foamy streaks in their wake.

Ryan headed down from his back porch, enjoying the soft tickle of grass beneath his feet. A rabbit skittered away from him as he passed, bounding off along the shoreline.

I wonder if that’s one of the babies who lived in my bushes last year?

Cool wetness touched his toes as he stepped into the river, but the water grew warmer around him as he waded out. The warmth of summer was trapped here beneath the water, caressing along his muscular frame. Closing his eyes, Ryan ducked underneath the surface and let it surround him. He swam without worries, losing himself in the play of the water and the motion of his own body. All thoughts ceased to exist in the purity of the river, doubts carried away from his skin so that when he finally emerged back up onto the grass, he was like some new entity which had just been birthed into the world. Dripping and content, he knew nothing of the harshness of the world.

His muscles ached in that gentle sort of way they always did after a swim, and he wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed and sleep for an hour. Unfortunately, he was too aware of the dangers of swimming in water so close to a big city like this and headed into the shower first.

When he was so clean that he would have squeaked had anyone touched him, Ryan turned off the water. As the last rivulets drained from the shower head into the bottom of the tub, he shook like a dog and sent water spraying from his blonde hair. Droplets scattered from the hairs on his arms and chest, dappling the slick wall.

Grabbing one of several towels on the nearby rack, he dried off roughly and then swept his fingers through his hair to restore some sort of order to it. If he didn’t, he’d wake up with an afro.

Eyes heavy, he fell into bed and slept for a solid hour in a cocoon of clean white sheets. He awoke without needing an alarm, his wolf instincts rousing him when it was time. Stretching, a high-pitched whine emerging from the back of his throat as soft pleasure went down to his toes and back up, he then rolled out of bed and went to put on a pot of coffee.

After that, there was nothing to do but housework until it was time to go meet Dylan at their favorite bar.

Dinner was hearty, as shifters ate a lot and often. Stomach full, he settled in for some light reading while a football game played in the background. He didn’t care about the sport as a rule but it reminded him of his “glory days,” as Dylan called them. It wasn’t like he’d been the captain or anything. He was a defensive lineman, putting his broad shoulders and alpha aggressiveness to good use.

As the game on TV started to wane, with a clear winner and a discouraged losing team that only performed worse and worse, he focused more attention on what he was reading. All the talk afterward bored him, as the coaches babbled and tried to pretend that luck just wasn’t on their side when it was really their skill that was lacking.

Eventually, Ryan grabbed his remote and just turned the damned TV off. Quiet filtered in and he relaxed into it, burying himself a little more deeply into his book. While Dylan could happily learn all day, absorbing knowledge from instruction manuals for fun, Ryan needed some time to shut off his brain and his poison of choice was detective novels. They were simplistic stories that featured logical men doing logical things, reaching logical conclusions. Things always rounded out so neatly, and he rather enjoyed that. It felt like finishing a job or putting in the last piece of a puzzle.

Instead, as he finished his second novel of the week, he just set it down in his lap and let out a sigh of contentment. He savored the conclusion like he would savor a fine wine, rolling it around in his thoughts to mull over the notes of sweet and bitter.

And then his clock chimed softly as an hour was struck and he looked over to see that it was nine.

Best to start getting ready, he thought, quickly locating his shoes.

Swinging his truck keys on one finger, he stepped out the front door and into the night.