Werewolf Wedding(6)
Remembering why he’d walked across the room in the first place, Jake mashed the button on ancient, wood-grain intercom that was bought used when his dad built this place in the 70s. Still worked though, so why replace it?
“George?” he asked into it when no one immediately responded to his button pressing.
The sound of a pair of heels hitting the floor came first, followed by the creak of an old office chair swiveling. Her last act before responding to him was to put down the paperback she was reading with a decided pop. “What’s up?”
George was... not your garden variety assistant. She’d been with Jake for most of his life as the regional pack alpha. He was in charge of an area that spread across most of Texas – although the south part was a different region – Oklahoma, and most of the South East. Miami, like south Texas, was a different jurisdiction. Good thing too, because Jake had a hell of a time learning Spanish.
She was only a couple of years older than he was, and if it weren’t for her husband and her four kids, he wouldn’t have minded one bit making a little mating action with her. That had never been on the table though, probably for the best. Jake had a way of flubbing relationships once they got anywhere near serious.
“If we’re going to work here, we have to be more formal. The riffraff is going to start thinking we’re a couple.”
She laughed her nasal laugh that was just like home to Jake. “I think they care more about being called riffraff than who the boss is f*cking.”
“George!” he hissed. “You can’t say that! What if someone hears?”
“Say what?” she asked, genuinely confused. “That thing about not wanting to be called riffraff? Who would like that? It’s very insulting.”
“No, George,” Jake said. “The other thing.”
“What other thing?”
Unbeknownst to him, she had turned the outgoing volume on the intercom to high.
“That we’re,” Jake pursed his lips. “Fucking,” he whispered.
Immediately, the entire front office staff – which was light that day, thankfully – erupted into laughter and a couple of wolf whistles. Well, not actual wolf whistles. In the entire building there were two souls who knew about the whole werewolf business, and one of them was busy harassing the other.
“Okay very good,” he said, as the laughter died down. “You got me. Can you come up here? I need to ask you some things about pa—”
Jake gritted his teeth. Of all the things about acclimating to life among regular people who had absolutely no knowledge past stories and weird teen romances that his people existed, was the first rule of werewolfing, which was that you never talk about werewolfing.
Not with a human, and not with a witch or a vamp. The last thing in the world the pack needed was to be hunted to near extinction again, like had happened when the United States was a gleam in Ben Franklin’s eye. And anyway, everything’s easier when you don’t have to constantly watch your back.
“Yeah,” she said, heading him off. “Be right up. Gotta clean the riffraff off of my fine textiles before I present myself to his majesty.”
“I’m sorry!” Jake said, playfully, before switching off the intercom.
He’d been worried about taking the company because, first of all, he didn’t know the first damn thing about international banking, or investment banking, and to be perfectly honest, all of that stuff made his teeth hurt a little. He’d always been the political black sheep of the family, and the idea of being some self-important billionaire with a thousand employees or whatever he had just didn’t appeal.
Then again, getting a statue made of himself to replace the one his father had made of himself? That... held a certain delight that appealed to Jake on a very deep, primal level.
And then there’s the girl making it, he thought, as he stared out the window of the tallest building for miles. From his lair that was right out in the open, right out in the midst of polite, ignorant society, he could see the entire city.
Franklin City was a weird place.
Not in a bad way, it just didn’t fit. It was a university town in the middle of nowhere, so everyone looking for a cheap degree ended up going through this place at one point or another. Not many stayed, though, since outside of the community college and the four year, there wasn’t much of anything. A few tech startups, sure, and a fairly flourishing arts district, but that was just about all there was in Franklin City.
Never in my whole life have I met someone – anyone – like her. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts to focus on pack politics bullshit, but he just couldn’t. The way she smelled, the way her skin tasted, her lotion, or whatever it was; her hair with that funny kink, the way she smiled and laughed...
“What’s up, boss?” George unceremoniously threw open the giant oak door and let it swing free until it hit the extent of the hinges and thumped against the wall. “Is it about Dane?”
“No,” he said, obviously trying to not talk about what was actually bothering him. “I ordered a statue and I need to go model for it.”
“Er,” George chuckled. “You commissioned a statue of yourself?”
“Yeah,” he said. “From a woman in town – Delilah Coltrane – her other stuff looks good.”
“Oh yeah!” George got excited. “A couple weekends ago I went to an exhibition of hers. If you’re going to get a statue of yourself, you probably picked the right girl to do it. How big?”