Bobby

He should be nailing Penny right now, he thought, as they ran toward danger.

But he had blown it. At the reception, he’d had his chance to ask Penny to dance to her favorite song, and he hadn’t. When the band had struck up “No Woman, No Cry,” Bobby had looked up from his glass of straight-up aged Kentucky bourbon and thought he saw Penny glance briefly in his direction.

He should have taken that as a signal right there.

Instead, he had sat and brooded. And then got sidelined completely by old man DuChamps.

Wasting time. It was what he was good at. Bobby was the ring leader, chief party thrower, the least serious of all of them, but it was all a diversion. He had been in love with Penny LeFleur since middle school, and now literally everyone else in the pack was paired off with somebody, except them.

As he and Penny ran, led by the stray yellow Lab up Bourbon Street, he knew exactly what was holding him back. But he had no time for the therapy he needed to get past their childhood trauma. He was too busy spending his life making sure everyone’s drinks were full and the music was turned up.

It seemed neither Penny nor Bobby had remembered to care about all the gasps and screams and stares from humans watching the two wolves barreling through the streets of New Orleans. As far as Bobby was concerned, it was kind of a relief to have a mission to focus on other than kicking himself over romance.

Just when he thought maybe that filthy stray Lab had lost the scent, it turned down an alleyway and stopped.

Bobby looked up and realized they were in the alley behind Gavin’s shop, Howlin’ G’s tattoo parlor.

He recalled Gavin mentioning he was leaving his employee, Manny, in charge of the shop for a few days while the wedding activities were ramping up.

From the alley, Bobby heard muffled whines. His fur stood on end, this time in a very bad way.

He went to the door, but it was shut. Without opposable thumbs, there was no way he could open the door. But if he shifted back into human form, he would risk being too sapped of energy to shift back, and if there was real danger in there, then he would need to be at full strength. As a wolf, he was more powerful than three ’roid-raging body-builders.

He looked at Penny, and she understood. She checked the entry points to the alley; there was nobody around but the two of them and the Lab. She shifted back into human form and opened the back door, slowly and silently. Stark naked, of course.

Yep. There was the object of his lust, his best friend, the love of his life, the person he thought about when he woke up and last thing before he slept, standing right there, naked. Bobby being Bobby, he had to kick himself to stay focused. He would not be Bobby if he didn’t sneak a peek. He could still see the indentations in her skin from her corset contraption that she’d worn under that ridiculous dress all day. The sight of those tender red lines made Bobby want to shift, scoop Penny up and softly, slowly run his tongue over her aches, tracing kisses down her rib cage, across her sweet belly and reminding her she never had the need for a corset.

“No female of mine is allowed to wear a medieval torture device to hide her perfect body ever again,” he would say, just before diving into her folds with his tongue while stroking her long, soft thighs. He couldn’t help it. The sight of her naked made his pulse pound and his skin crackle with life. How could it not?

Bobby grudgingly led Penny and the stray Lab into the back room of the tattoo parlor.

There was an open box of promotional tee-shirts in the small storage room, so Penny helped herself. Bobby was not thrilled to see her cover herself up.

Soon enough, he’d get her naked again. And hopefully their sordid history wouldn’t crop up to ruin the moment.

Looking around the nooks and crannies of the storage room, Bobby and Penny found something extremely strange. There was an altar to some unfamiliar idol, with flowers and candles. There was a jar of moonshine. There was a weird, dusty old book laid open next to the altar. Its pages had strange diagrams and pictures that Bobby did not recognize. Not that he was much of a book person. Penny whispered, “Nobody leaves a grimoire lying open unless they’re in the process of spell-casting.”

If Bobby were in his human form, he would have asked what the hell she was talking about.

As Penny was perusing the contents of the open pages, Bobby heard another noise. It sounded like people talking. He froze. Then, if he was not mistaken, some muffled cries and growls. Whimpers.

It was coming from the main room.

It sounded like Gavin.

Bobby felt the fur on his neck stand up. He looked up at Penny, who locked eyes with him. She had heard it, too. Something was very deeply wrong here. The beast inside told him to remain perfectly quiet. Move in to get a better look but to not make a goddamn sound. With his eyes, he told her to stay still. Penny moved over to put her hand on the neck of the stray Lab and nodded. All they needed was for an overexcited dog to ruin the element of surprise.

Bobby peeked around the corner, and his beast nearly began to growl. He was using every fiber of restraint he had in his being. First, he saw Gavin, sitting in a chair, kicking and snarling at some invisible force holding him still. More alarmingly, there was Manny, standing next to Chastity, who was helplessly rooted to another chair. Bobby could see no visible ropes holding them in place, so there was obviously some dark magic going on here. Manny was holding a pistol in his hand, angling it down Chastity’s hairline and toward the back of her skull.

Manny was speechifying in true Disney villain fashion. He was talking about the purity of the wolf race.

What the hell is going on here?

“Gavin, man, your mind has been poisoned by the DuChamps clan,” he heard Manny saying. “Just because they own your friend Boudreaux doesn’t mean we all have to fall in line. I’m surprised your clan are so agreeable to mixing the blood of the wolves with humans, let alone another species of shifter.”

So. Manny’s got some weird blood purity fixation.

While watching their scene play out, Bobby had been holding himself back tenuously. The emotions and the alcohol, and now terror at this voodoo-practicing lunatic, were all working against his self-control. He needed just the right moment to strike.

And then, he made the mistake of locking eyes with Chas.

The terror had been gripping her as Manny traced lines around her face with the barrel of his handgun, like a psychopath. Truth be told, Bobby hadn’t much cared for that chick’s behavior the other night, sloppy drunk and dancing on his bar. And he didn’t much like the idea of her hooking up casually with one of his best buddies. But they would deal with that later. For now, Bobby’s first priority was disabling Manny.

Bobby was ready to lay waste to this asshole.

Manny’s back was to him, and so was Gavin’s. But Chastity’s whole demeanor changed when she saw the wolf emerge from the back of the shop. She smiled. Manny saw the change in her face and turned.

That’s when Bobby lost the element of surprise. Manny’s eyes narrowed as the wolf bounded at him, and then he did the unthinkable. Pointed his .32 semi-automatic and fired.

Chas screamed. Gavin howled as he watched the wolf get hit.

But it wasn’t Bobby the wolf who got shot.

It was Penny.