He and I watch as Wynn opens her door, takes three steps to her bed, and falls onto it face-first with a happy, tired groan.
Lug Nut shakes his head. “Sloths.”
I kid you not, she’s already snoring.
Turning his attention to me, he runs a finger over my back, petting my sleek fur. Okay, fine. What I have isn’t really as fancy as sleek fur, but I’m appearance-positive, and I just washed my brown hair this morning.
Lug Nut continues to stroke me, and damn, his pets feel really good. Like, really good.
My rat sighs a little and practically melts in his hand. She even wants to turn over and show him her belly so he’ll pet there too, and that’s when I realize that my rat has a big ol’ crush on Lug Nut. I can’t really blame her. I think I might have a crush on him too.
“Alright, you little thief. I can see by how hard you’re still chomping down on my boxers that you’re not letting it go without a fight. I’m a male who knows when to pick his battles,” he says with a grin, revealing his straight white teeth. “I’ll take you back to your cage so you can enjoy your stolen prizes, but you gotta stop stealing from me, okay?”
I bounce my head up and down to assure him that yes, I will absolutely, definitely, for sure stop stealing his stuff.
“Good Mousey.”
Snort. I have him so fooled.
5
Luca
She thinks she has me fooled.
I’m lying in bed not sleeping, staring up at the dark ceiling while I listen. I woke up about ten minutes ago to the very distinct sound of a rat scrabbling across my floor.
This has been our routine for the past week since I first caught her in here stealing some of my stuff. Cheeky little thing.
I didn’t know what surprised me more—the fact that I found her in my room in the first place or that she managed to climb all the way up my dresser to steal my boxers out of the top drawer.
Really, it’s impressive.
Pinpointing her in the dark, I can tell by the noise she makes that she’s over by the dresser, probably trying to decide if she’s going to try to climb up and steal another pair of my boxers or not. She’s taken three just this week. If this keeps up, I’m going to have to place a bulk order just to keep up. Otherwise, my ass will be going commando.
Normally, my animal would be pissed at another shifter stealing our stuff. We are very territorial creatures. But with her, my animal has been nothing but curious and amused. Which surprised me at first, because my animal is a picky fuck. He doesn’t really like anyone, animal or human. He’s not the friendliest, but he’s liked her ever since Mousey snuck up on me while I was asleep on the couch in Warehouse Three that one night—I’d crashed there after watching the game with some of the others and ingesting too many beers.
When I woke up to the little rat sneaking up on me, I stayed stock still, pretending to be asleep so I didn’t spook her. At first, I thought she was just curiously sniffing me. But then the little trickster made to steal one of the lug nuts that I wear on a chain around my neck.
The fact that she had the guts to steal it right off my neck...well, I was impressed, and so was my animal. He’s latched onto her with charmed captivation ever since. For whatever reason, he likes the little pack rat, and he perks up inside of me every time she’s near.
If I let him, he’d burst out right now so that he could meet her. He wants to nudge her and watch her. He wants to bring her more shiny things and watch her play. But I suppress his needling at me to shift, because the last thing I want to do is freak her out. And my animal? Yeah...he might freak Mousey out a bit. He’s not exactly rat-sized.
But I hope that, soon, she can shift into her human form so I can meet her properly and that she’ll trust me enough to let our animals meet. I don’t know how long it will take her to get there, but I have confidence in her. She’s already come a long way.
At first, she was just this cowering little ball of brown hair and long whiskers, and she wouldn’t even come out of the cave in her nest. But slowly, she’s made strides. I know this because I check in with Addie and Alpha Hugo whenever I get the chance.
It was a feat in itself for her to be brave enough to leave her cage. But the fact that she was so fearful to begin with just reminds me that something made her that way. I want to know why.
There’s a reason she won’t shift. There’s a reason she looked close to death and reeked of fear. There’s a reason it took weeks for her to leave her cage and she’s too frightened to be around any of the other shifters. And that just pisses me and my animal right off.
I’m curious as hell about her story, and I’m curious about her human side too. I want to see her. I have this primal urge to be around her, and all I do lately is wonder what she looks like.
Is her hair straight or curly? Does she have dark skin or light? Is her voice raspy or sweet? What color eyes does she have, and what does she look like when she smiles? I can’t help but envision her every time my mind wanders. I want to know everything about her.
I especially want to know why some human brought her to a pet shop, totally fucking filthy, underweight, dehydrated, and in the most fucked up cage Addie said she’d ever seen.
Just thinking about that makes me grit my teeth. I want to know who the fuck kept her like that. And I’m not the only one. Alpha Hugo and the enforcers have talked about it in multiple meetings. My friend Toby fills me in a little, but until Mousey can shift back and give us some real answers, we only have so many leads.
Addie sent Hugo the surveillance footage of the human who brought her in, and then Matt, our resident hacker and otter shifter, managed to break into some of the traffic cams and get the human’s license plate.
Once we had that, it was easy for Matt to track down his address. Problem is, the man has two dozen of them. He’s a landlord in town and rents out everything from apartment complexes and duplexes to single-family homes.
The enforcers are taking care to visit every single residence, but considering the human also has multiple cars and parks them all over the damn place, it hasn’t been easy.
Hugo has his best sniffers going to each place, trying to pick up Mousey’s scent, but they haven’t found where she came from yet. They haven’t been able to pick up her scent around the exteriors at all, which tells us that she hasn’t been outside walking around at any of the places. Not very surprising, considering the state she was in. She was more than likely kept inside against her will.
So finding out any more information about her has been slow going. Or maybe it just feels like that because I’m impatient.
I don’t like the fact that someone treated an animal like that, shifter or not. And the idea that the person might get away with it? That’s enough to make my blood boil in anger.
I force myself to take a calming breath, because I’m very aware of Mousey and her sensitivity to anger. I don’t want her to smell it and freak out. After all, she thinks I’m sleeping.
I heard about her reaction to the scent of anger when she was first brought to Hugo. He was pissed to see her like that, but his anger made her tremble. It didn’t stop her from running out and biting him on the finger, though.
I grin at that.