I should have said all of that, but I didn’t, and so here we are—with Cauley’s solution to our problems being a live-in submissive werewolf, because submissive werewolves are apparently amazing with children.
Now if you’re thinking ‘Stop right there—who the heck lets a complete stranger, an adult MAN no less, into their home to watch over their defenseless little girl?’
The notion is completely crazy, and not in a million years would I be okay with it.
But I really mean it when I say that werewolves are different. Suspend your disbelief if you’ve not met one yet. They’re so different that you’d be sold on them too, honest. Plus, I work with a Pack alpha. I feel safe with shapeshifters primarily because Cauley is a great ambassador, the most trustworthy guy you’ll ever meet. He acts like the fun-loving prankster, but you should see him around women and kids. When he tells me he’s got a werewolf I can trust, I believe him. To add to that, I’ve seen a lot of interactions working the ‘family’ hours at the pub, where kids and parents and werewolves are all thrown together. Werewolves really do seem to have an affinity with children.
“He’ll need somewhere cool and dark to sleep, preferably, and you just tell him to do what you want him to do and he’ll follow your orders to the letter. Believe me,” Cauley had boasted when he told me who he was bringing to my house. “And you will never have to worry about him mistreating your little Maggie. No feckin’ way—that’s a promise.”
It sounded so good that I’d agreed.
But in the face of this man who’s acting like an abused animal, my doubts and concerns are reaching floodwater proportions.
Also reaching floodwater proportions is Maggie’s excitement. Like a dam bursting, she squeal-shouts an excited, “I get to meet my first werewolf!”
And even though she’s in the living room, it’s still an ear-piercing sound to those of us in the kitchen.
It’s too much for our new shapeshifter. Her boisterous holler breaks Deek.
Right before my eyes, he transforms into a wolf.
CHAPTER 2
SUSAN
“WHOA!” I shout before I slam my hand over my mouth. I wince and shoot Cauley an apologetic glance.
Cauley’s smile is grim. “Easy.” Although his smile is directed at me, I’m not sure if he’s reassuring me or the massive creature beside him, who looks like he’s hugging the tiled floor.
With care, Cauley strips the long-sleeve shirt and black pants and boxers off of the miserable-looking wolf and sets them beside the cringing animal.
Erm, man?
For a man who’s not remarkably large in his man form, Deek’s paws are huge. Actually, all of him is huge. The same shade of tree bark brown as his hair was, that’s the color he is all over. His coat is thick and plush, and he’s very majestic for an animal that looks like he’s about to pee himself in fright. For all his fearful posture though, he’s otherwise endlessly impressive—he’s almost the size of a miniature pony. As a man, I’d guess he weighs somewhere around a muscular two hundred pounds. As a wolf, he has to be nearly the same. He’s just enormous.
“I didn’t expect you guys to be so big,” I whisper.
“Some of us are bigger,” Cauley says with an easier grin in my direction, and he even adds a roguish wink.
The effect is lost on me today though. “Wow,” I puff, shocked. My gaze leaves Cauley’s flirtatious eyes after only the briefest contact—and then they become glued to the wolf.
I can’t help but stare at him.
Deek risks a glance up, catches me looking at him—and he whimpers and bows his head even lower, so that his jaw is touching the floor, and he crawls to press himself into Cauley’s leg. It’s clear the animal—
Or the werewolf-man, rather.
—desperately wants to be anywhere but here.
“Are you sure—” I start.
“Sue,” Cauley cuts in, and just a hint of an Irish accent touching my name has my insides purring even as my brain is locked on the mythological creature prostrated on the floor, “I can’t be arsed to take him back to the dens—he’s yours.” He flashes me a smile that’s supposed to be calming. “Let’s do introductions and then let him settle in.” Cauley scruffs the wolf’s dark ruff and murmurs his next words more to him than anyone else, I think. “Real quick, he’s going to suck it up and quit being a geebag.”
The wolf shivers and his jaws part in the saddest, silent whine.
“Mommm,” Maggie cajoles.
I growl—because she knows better. She was supposed to wait, no matter how excited she is. At my warning sound, she goes obediently silent. But my growl also makes the wolf thump itself over Cauley’s feet.
Cauley sighs a heartfelt, “Holy mother of Jaysus,” and he draws something from his pocket, bends down, and slips a nylon loop around Deek’s neck. To me, he jerks his chin in the direction of the other room. “Call your brood. And don’t look embarrassed about the little piper. I was raised with litters and litters of werewolves. One thing I know is that no children have rearing on them when exciting things are involved.” He grins at me, and I hear a click.
He just snapped a collar on his lycanthrope-affected friend.
Usually, I’m stunned by the sheer beauty of Cauley’s smiles. Right now though, with a collared werewolf in my kitchen, I’m too stunned to be stunned more. I clear my throat. “Charlotte, Maggie—come in here. Slowly,” I warn.
Maggie flies to my side, beside herself to see a werewolf in person for the first time ever. Charlotte moseys in, arms crossed, with the practiced apathy only a teenager can affect.
When she gets a look at Deek though, she’s the perfect image of Maggie: her eyes are as round as saucers.
“Hallo,” Cauley greets them, and my daughters are young but not immune to Cauley’s charm—evident when both immediately smile back at him, wearing silly, affected grins. “I’m your mom’s friend Finn, and this here,” he drags the wolf up by his collar until the creature is sitting, “is Deek.”
“He’s so cute!” Maggie coos. “Can I please pet him?”
“He looks scared,” Charlotte notes, a worried frown wrinkling her brow. She shoots Maggie a superior look. “He’s not a dog, Maggs.”
This takes some of the spike out of Maggie’s punch. She frowns, but considers Deek for only a heartbeat before declaring, “He looks like one.” She beams a wheedling sort of smile up at Cauley. “May I please pet him, Mr. Finn?”
“Sure you can!” Cauley says magnanimously of his friend.
Perhaps in disagreement or in some sort of bracing preparation, the wolf bolts forward hard, slamming flat over Cauley’s feet again—which causes the collar to snap like it offered no more resistance than a single thread.
“Oh, feckin’ handy that was,” Cauley mutters, gripping the broken collar in his fist. Shaking his head, he gives us all a patient look. “Like I told you, Deek here is a submissive, which as far as the lot of you are concerned, means he couldn’t punch his way out of a paper bag. He’d never hurt you,” he promises my girls and I. Then his gaze drops to Deek. He bends down enough to scritch affectionately at the wolf’s ear. “This, what you see here, is just his natural nervousness in a new place and new situation.” He extracts his boots out from under his friend’s head gently. “As much as it looks like this one couldn’t kick snow off a rope, he’s a good lad. He’ll watch over you all like you’re Pack.” Cauley hunkers down to say this last bit, and he gently tugs the wolf’s ear like he’s telling Deek to watch over us like we’re ‘Pack.’