Nola wiped her hands on her coveralls and watched the black SUV pull away from the curb.
Dora: You going to tell me what that was about?
Nola: What what was about?
Dora: The Alpha. Big scary guy. Stared at you like you owed him money.
Nola: He stared at me like I was a wrench he dropped.
Nola: Hired help, that's me. Terrifying.
Dora laughed, and the sound of it loosened something tight in Nola's chest.
Dora: Come to the diner. Dermot's got pie.
Nola: I've got a fountain to babysit. Make sure it doesn't die again out of spite.
She did not think about him. Not once. Not while she coiled the hose, not while she packed her tools.
Men like that had a whole world built around them. They didn't get to live in hers too.
Her hands started to burn on the drive home. Just her hands at first, like she'd grabbed a hot pipe.
She checked her palms at a red light. Pink. No blister, no oil burn, no reason.
At the shop she ran cold water over both hands until they went numb.
It helped for about nine seconds.
Then the heat crawled up her arms, under the skin, like somebody had turned a stove on inside her.
And then she felt it. A stir, deep in her chest. Something waking up that had been asleep for years.
Her wolf. Her fucking wolf. The one she'd decided was dead and buried and done with her.
Nola: No. No, no, no. Not now. Not here.
She pressed her back to the cold cabinet and tried to breathe slow, the way she used to.
Dora: Nola? You in there? You left the square without your coffee.
Dora had a key and no manners. Two of the reasons Nola loved her.
Dora: Jesus, you're red. You look like a lobster.
Nola: Sun. Too long under the fountain.
Dora: It's October.
Nola: The sun doesn't know that.
Dora made her sit, put a glass of water in her hand, and felt her forehead again.
Dora: You're hot as a griddle. I'm taking you to the clinic.
Nola: No clinic. I'll sleep it off. Probably food poisoning.
Dora left after making her promise to call. Nola locked the door and slid down it to the floor.
The lie had come out so easy. She'd had years of practice.
The heat moved lower, into her belly and up her spine, and her wolf pushed at her ribs like a dog at a gate.
North. It wanted north. It wanted trees and cold air and the smell of pine.
Nola: You don't get to want things. We agreed on that.
She said it out loud, to the empty shop, and her voice shook worse than her hands.
Three miles away, in the back of the black SUV, Merrick had not let go of the armrest since the square.
His wolf had been pacing since that woman lifted her arm. Still pacing. Claws out.
Foster: You want to tell me what happened back there?
Merrick: Nothing happened.
Foster: You stopped walking, Alpha. In the middle of the street.
Merrick: There's a rogue in town. Wolf scent, unregistered, in the square this morning.
Foster: A rogue.
Merrick: Find them. Before the council sniffs it out and makes it a circus.
Foster kept his eyes on the road and thought about the woman in the coveralls. The grease on her hands. The way she made herself small.
Foster: I'll find the rogue.
Merrick didn't answer.
His wolf was already dragging him back north, to a shop at the end of a block, where a woman with a wrench had wrecked his whole morning.