" 'Course I did."
"I hate strawberries," I said, trying to hide my amusement.
Gabe flashed me a smile and glanced at my now-bare left hand. Satisfied that I wasn’t going to ruin the secretive world of werewolves to the general public, he swished his tail out of my office and left me to work.
...Alone.
As much as the work paid, as much as I found satisfaction in it, I had to admit that my office was more of a cage than anything else. But Gabe had promised to look into the matter and I had no doubt that he would do his best to hunt him down.
When we'd started making dog food, it'd been easy. Hell, we hadn't even needed to have dogs in the kitchen to test it. One of us transformed, shoved a few bites in our mouths, and told the rest if it was a decent meal or not. More often than not, we'd spent only a few days on each formula.
We were a smash hit. Dogs ate our food like it was prime rib. There had been reviews that dogs had torn into cabinets and refrigerators to get to our kibble and our canned mush. I wasn't the biggest fan of the kibble; it left you feeling a little dry no matter how much water you drank afterward. But some pet owners just couldn't keep up with the demands of wet food, and those nutrients were important regardless of how the pet set got them.
I spent the next few hours screwing around on the computer. I checked a variety of social media sites, hoping that someone would post my son. Maybe they'd given him a bath, shoved some food in his mouth, and snuggled him up in a pile of cozy blankets. I was supposed to be browsing over the monthly fiscal reports, but my boy was out in the wilderness and who knew if he was safe or not?
He stood a better chance than most kids who got lost outdoors. His fur was plenty warm for the colder evenings so I wasn't particularly worried about freezing or frostbite. Better, he knew his way around the property we owned out in the unincorporated portion of Clareton County. But he was still vulnerable. Predators didn't usually toy with a werewolf, even a pup, but owls and hawks took a chance now and then.
The idea of Tommy in pain or injured set me on edge again. I took another stiff hit from the coffee and killed the donuts in a single go. The sticky strawberry mess looked enough like blood to soothe the animal inside of me.
What I really needed was a steak and, after the shareholders meeting that afternoon, I'd have one. Even if I had to rip it off a big, buck deer with my own teeth.
Just before lunch, I forced myself to look through the reports. The numbers swam together on the screen but I made myself work through them. Profits were up. Expenses were down. Everyone would be pleased and the meet shouldn't take terribly long, then. Hopefully, no one would want to push a point of trying to lower expenses even further. We'd made good deals with the farmers who supplied our various protein sources and kept them afloat in a world where meat came from the grocery store.
Too often, humans had forgotten that their meat had to moo and wander a field at some point. We visited every farm we signed. We looked for those who were on the verge of losing their property due to taxes or disaster; floods were hell on a beef farm and we'd had plenty of them over the past few years.
More so, we tried to support the farms we felt were doing the right thing. Slaughter day was never a happy sight, but we preferred the animals who had only one bad day. When you run on four paws, you come to have a sense of companionship with the rest of the fur and fang club. Ethics mattered.
We'd turned those ethics into a multi-billion dollar company in only six years. No matter if people thought that their beef came pre-packaged from day one or not, they cared that we looked into the backgrounds of the farmers. They cared that their pets were getting only the finest meals we could produce.
They cared that our pet accessories were made from products that we would use ourselves. Hell, the labels on the first bags had been pictures of us as wolves. I'd been slapped on the beef and amaranth bag. My eyes were still part of the logo.
Of course, no one knew that other than the pack. ...And perhaps the other rare werewolf who kept pets. There is something about stark, golden eyes that, when authentic, catches another werewolf and holds them. We know our own kind even when it's a static picture on a bag of dog food.
I'd seen it happen once when I'd been touring a new facility. We'd hired without checking too deeply into those who would be working there. One worker, a young woman, had stopped when she saw the bag. Her hackles had gone up, her eyes had widened. Female alphas were rare, but not entirely unheard of. And she'd seen the challenge in the photo of my gaze.
Lillian Webster, said a ghostly voice. That's my name. Is there a problem?
There had been so many problems after that introduction. I ran the tips of my fingers over the keyboard one last time, then locked the program and stood up. I stretched and tried not to think of the alpha bitch that danced across my thoughts. Lunch was ready, and that meant meeting with the rest of the pack.
Our hallway was cut off from the rest of the building. Sixteen floors, all of
