Chapter One

BILLIE

There’s a kid asleep on one of the benches in the booths near the bar. He’s been here since New Year’s Day, three days ago. Just another day in the Gaelic Wolf, Meridian’s townie, human-owned, 80 year old Irish American Werewolf pub, patronized solely by wolf shifter college students and faculty from Crescent University. Where 100% of the front-of-house employees—minus the bartenders—are young townie human girls looking for rich wolf shifter college boy tips, and the door never really closes.

I’m a human, and a townie. But I want to be a student. I’m waiting on the results of an audition for a modern dance scholarship.

In the meantime, momma’s treatment has to be paid somehow, and townie bars are the best places to get paid under the table.

Werewolves and humans have been coexisting for centuries. It’s only recently, in the past fifty years, that treaties have been signed and werewolves have integrated further into society. A shortage of female werewolves, coupled with a growing need among their young to coexist more closely with their peers, has led to werewolf packs settling closer to human towns, and even sometimes within their limits, founding the werewolf colleges, like the one here in Meridian, Crescent University. Crescent U. also takes human students, but they're a minority. Hopefully, they'll take me.

There are occasional skirmishes between werewolf packs, but the werewolves seem to view humans as incredibly fragile, occasionally cute, and mostly harmless. There are human females who will mate with male werewolves, due to the she-wolf shortage, and some human females follow packs like groupies, acting as servants. They seem to be viewed as pets. The werewolves call them, and the weakest of the female wolves, Omegas–their leaders are called Alphas, which is also the word for the strongest, most dominant type of werewolf.

It’s fascinating to me. I’ve always wondered what they get out of it, besides protection. There’s no reciprocal exchange of werewolves to humans, they’re much too powerful. The closest are the rogue lone wolves who live away from packs inside human society. They tend to keep to themselves, checking in with a home pack to ensure everyone they haven’t gone crazy and killed a bunch of humans. Lone wolves mostly just want to be left alone.

It's intimidating to live in a werewolf town after growing up among humans, I have to admit. Serving them can get a little dicey. I've only had this job for two weeks. At least the Gaelic Wolf is a cool place to work.

It's a time capsule of an 80 year old bar, a relic from a time only werewolves lived here, complete with taxidermied deer heads and tin ceilings on both floors, the only modern concessions electric lighting, a booth for the disabled, and some of the labels on the bottles behind the bar. The Wolf collects misfits, Goths in particular, as both patrons and workers.

It’s a Wednesday shift, just before 8 pm, and both floors are crowded with mostly werewolf college students newly returned from winter break. I work the second floor, which means I have to go up and down an 80-year old staircase to retrieve each order from the bar and the kitchen for a full ten hours minus lunch. It’s not my favorite shift. I’m grateful dance has given my thighs strong muscles and my body endurance.

The bar is full of goths as usual, of varying degrees of flamboyance. Most of the kids are dressed casually with Gothic touches—black lipstick here, a spiked dog collar there, black clothing everywhere. Many of the girls are wearing corset tops, real ones with stays. All of it is expensive-looking and elegant. Black nail polish is nearly universal. I’ve never seen a town with such a high goth subculture population.

I can’t afford the high end fashion the wolf shifters love and seem to wear exclusively. My uniform tonight is a pair of black velvet shorts, fishnet thigh-highs with garter belts that cut off below the shorts, showing leg, black combat boots from the Army/Navy Surplus, and a tight black tee with a plunging v neck from Goodwill. Marissa, our afternoon manager, said we were encouraged to dress sexy. The tip of my neckline reaches to just between my breasts, and to emphasize it I’m wearing a velvet choker necklace with a dangling cross. Both of my wrists are covered in several black leather bracelets mixed with chunky chains. My makeup is subtly dark, with smudged brown eyeshadow and dark, almost black, red lips. My neckline is so deep I have to pin my name tag on my shoulder. About an hour into my shift, I pile my long black hair on top of my head and stick a pencil in it. Running up and down the stairs is hot work.

I’m carrying up a round of pints for a table when I notice them. They’re sitting in an alcove in the farthest corner, my section, shrouded in shadows with light flickering from the battery operated candles in the sconces on the wall. Seven boys, seven werewolves judging by the aura of charisma flowing from their table, in varying degrees of conversation ranging from intense to bored. The bored looking one is scanning the room as if looking for his next date. He, like the others, is a brunette, his hair shaved on the back and sides and longer on top. The one sitting next to him has long black hair, a pierced nose, and a flirtatious grin on his face. He nudges the giant on his other side and tips his chin…in my direction.

I drop off my pints and slowly walk over to their table, gathering my nerves. As I walk, I look over the other boys. One, in intense conversation with the giant, has a mass of long curly black hair and what looks like a beauty mark in the shape of a star near his left eye. The next one has floppy chin-length brown hair and is gesturing dramatically, his arm over the chair of the one on his other side. I overhear parts of the conversation, which seems intense.

“Don’t try to tell us you can hold your boys back on pulling raids, especially when Dom beats one of them in the fighting ring.”

I reach the table and pull out my notebook. “Welcome to the Gaelic Wolf, what can I get you?” I pull my pencil out of my hair and shake it out like a sexy librarian. Almost the entire table looks at me.

Hey, I need the tips.