He froze in the still open doorway, his eyes wide. Clearly, he’d scented her as well, and was shocked. He looked like he might bolt. Their gazes locked, and Kitty’s heartbeat sped up. A stare was a challenge, but this wasn’t right, because the guy almost looked terrified. Like he didn’t know what to do.
“You want to close that, honey? You’re letting the warm air out.” Jane smiled over the counter at the guy, and that broke the tension.
Kitty looked away—another bit of wolf body language, a move that said she wasn’t a threat, and she didn’t want to fight. She forced herself to settle back—and could sense him relax a notch as well, lowering his gaze, turning away. She desperately wanted to talk to him. What was he doing here? She didn’t know of any werewolves within a hundred miles.
It was why she was here.
The man—young, disheveled, wearing ill-fitting clothing and a haunted expression—slouched inside his flannel shirt and moved to the counter.
He spoke softly to Jane, but Kitty held her breath and made out what he said. “Uh, yeah. I’m a little hard up, and I was wondering if there was anything I could do to earn a cup of coffee and a pancake or something.”
Jane smiled kindly. “Sorry, there’s nothing. This is our slowest night of the year.” The man looked around, at faded tinsel garlands strung around the walls, at the movie playing on the TV, and blinked at Jane in confusion. “It’s Christmas,” she said.
He glanced at the TV again with a look of terrible sadness.
This scene pushed all Kitty’s curiosity buttons. The urge could not be denied.
It was all she could do not to rush straight at him, but if he’d been startled and tense with her just looking at him, she could imagine what that would do. He was on edge—more wolf than human almost, even though the full moon was over a week away.
She walked toward him, her gaze down and her posture loose. He backed up a step at her approach. She tried to put on a pleasant, nonthreatening face.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt, but you look like you could use a cup of coffee. Can I buy you one?” She laced her hands behind her back. He started to shake his head, and she said, “No strings, nothing funny. Consider it a Christmas present from another one of the tribe who doesn’t have anywhere else to go.” She glanced at Jane, who smiled and reached under the counter for a cup and saucer.
“Hi. I’m Kitty.” She offered her hand. Didn’t really expect the guy to shake it, and he didn’t. It wasn’t a wolfish gesture. She’d never seen a lycanthrope look so out of place in human clothing.
He took a moment to register the name, then pursed his lips in a stifled laugh. He actually smiled. There was a handsome guy under the hard times. “I’m sorry, but that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a while.”
She wrinkled her nose. “It gets a little old, believe me.”
“How did a were—” He cut himself off when Jane returned with the pot of coffee.
“Why don’t we go talk about it?” Kitty said, nodding back toward her booth.
A moment later, they were sitting across from each other, each of them with fresh cups of coffee. Jane also brought over a plate of pancakes. David gazed up at her sheepishly, blushing. Embarrassed, Kitty decided. He didn’t like the charity. But he drowned the pancakes with syrup and dug into them.
Around bites, he finished his thought. “How did a werewolf end up with a name like Kitty?”
“The better question is how did someone named Kitty end up as a werewolf. That’s a long story.”
“It’s almost as bad as a werewolf named Harry.”
Perish the thought. “Oh my God, your name isn’t—”
“No,” he said, ducking his gaze. “It’s David.”
“Well, David. It’s nice to meet you. Though I have to say, I wasn’t expecting to see another one of us walk through the door. Are you from around here?”
“No. I’ve been on the road awhile.”
“That’s what I thought.”
He hadn’t yet taken a sip of his coffee, but he wrapped a hand around the cup, clinging to it like he could draw out its warmth. He hunched over, gazing out at the world with uncertainty. He probably didn’t realize how odd he seemed, coming out of the cold without a coat. Werewolves didn’t feel the cold as much.
Staring at the tabletop, he said, “I’ve never met another one. Not ever. But I could tell, as soon as I walked in here I could smell you and I knew. I almost walked right back out again.”
“What, let a little old thing like me scare you off?” She’d meant it as a joke, but he flinched. She willed him to relax. His hand around the mug squeezed a little tighter. He set his fork down and pressed his fist to the table.
His voice was taut. “You seem so calm. How do you do it?” His eyes flickered up, and the look in them was stark. Desperate.
She froze, nerveless for a moment. Is that how she looked? Calm? She was exiled from her pack, driven from Denver by the alpha werewolves, and so was spending Christmas at a Waffle House in a desolate corner of the state and not with her family. She felt like she was on the verge of losing it. Without an anchor. She’d lost her anchor—but David had never had one.
“What about the one who turned you?”
“I was camping by myself, something … something attacked me. It looked like … I remember thinking, this is impossible, there aren’t any wolves here. I knew something was wrong when I woke up, and I didn’t have any wounds, no scars, and I didn’t—”
He stopped, swallowed visibly, clamped his eyes shut. His breathing and heart rate quickened, and his scent spiked with fur and wild, wolf trembling just under his skin.
He didn’t know how to control it at all, she realized. He hadn’t had anyone to teach him. He’d been running as a wolf recently. Probably woke up with no idea where he was—no idea that it was Christmas, even.
Suddenly, her own situation didn’t seem so bad.
“Breathe slowly,” she whispered. “Think about pulling it in. Keep it together.”
He rested his elbows on the table and ran his fingers through his hair. His hands were shaking. “I turn all the time. Not just on full moons. I can’t stop it. Then I run, and I don’t remember what happens. I know I hunt, kill whatever’s out there—but I don’t remember. I try to stay away from people, far away. But I just don’t remember. I don’t want to be like this, I don’t—” His fingers tightened in his hair, his jaw clenched, teeth gritting. His wolf was right on the edge. Always right on the edge.
“Shh.” She wanted to touch him, steady him, but didn’t dare. Anything might set him off. And wouldn’t that be a Christmas to remember? Werewolf rampage in a Waffle House in southern Colorado.… He might have done okay by Jimmy Stewart, but she’d like to see Clarence the angel fix that mess.
He looked at her. Square on this time. “How do you do it? What’s your story?”
“I had a pack,” she said. “They found me right after it happened to me. Like you, in the woods, attacked. But they took care of me. Told me what had happened, taught me how to deal with it.”
“Does that happen?”
“Yeah, it does. There are probably more of us out there than you think. We keep quiet, stay hidden. At least, most of us do.” And that was more story than she should probably go into at the moment.
“Where are they? Your pack.”
Her smile turned wry. “I left. Or got kicked out. Depends on who you ask.”
He looked crestfallen. The concept of a pack—the idea that he might not be alone—seemed to have heartened him. But that opportunity had once again become remote. “I didn’t know. How was I supposed to know something like that was possible? I’ve been so alone.”
What were the odds that his wandering brought him here, to her, perhaps the one werewolf in all the world who’d listen to his problems and want to help?
She said, “It doesn’t have to be like that. You can control it. You can lead a normal life. Mostly normal, at least.”
“How?” he said, teeth clenched, voice grating. Like she’d told him he could fly to the moon, or dig a hole and find a million dollars.
“You have to really want to.”
Donning a smile that was more grimace, he glanced through the fogged window, to a graying, snowy parking lot. He spoke with sarcasm. “You make it sound so easy.”
“I didn’t say that. It’s not easy. I spend a lot of time arguing with my inner Wolf.”
