One
September 18th
Six nights until the full moon
Steam carries the smell of charred hamburger meat through the diner and I try not to wrinkle my nose as it assaults my senses. Tears threaten to prick the back of my eyelids but I blink them away as I scoop one of the plates waiting on the counter and balance it in my palm.
“Whoa! Be careful, Jane! That’s a hot plate,” the man at the grill, Carlos, calls out to me.
I smile as I turn away, barely feeling the burn on my skin and round the corner of the diner counter. Table three lifts their heads as I step near and as they smile at their incoming lunch, I set their plates down on the table.
“Enjoy!”
The older men, all fairly covered in dirt and grime they’d collected through their construction shift, nod and thank me before digging in. I could hear their stomach’s growling the moment they stepped out of their work truck in the parking lot fifteen minutes ago and since they were regulars, I put in their usual order before they ever reached the door.
Carlos calls it a good work ethic.
Mindy, the other waitress working with me, calls it intuition.
I just like to consider myself thankful.
This is the life I chose. The life I wanted for myself. It's a thousand times better than the one I left behind so why wouldn’t I try to make it the best? It may just be a part-time job at a diner, but I love it.
As I hurry back behind the counter to grab the coffee pot—Mr. and Mrs. Parker gets antsy if their cups get below half-empty—Mindy sighs and stretches her neck to one side. She can’t hear the tiny snaps and cracks of her joints but I can and I wince as she reaches up to knead the tight muscle at the back of her shoulder.
“Rough night?” I ask, turning to pour a fresh cup of coffee into the Parker’s mugs where they sit at the counter near the register. Mrs. Parker thanks me and I flash a quick smile before facing Mindy once again.
She rolls her eyes and glances back to make sure the elderly couple won’t hear. Stepping closer to me, Mindy drops her voice, but not much. Thankfully, the Parkers both had hearing aids and usually didn’t have them turned up all the way. “Went home with Andy from next door—”
“The pawn shop guy?” I blink at her. The guy had to be fifty years old. “With the eye patch?”
She shushes me and her dark eyes dart to the window where Carlos is busy with a fresh batch of fries coming out of the fryer. Once she’s sure he’s not listening to our gossip, she ducks her head closer to me. “He may be pushing fifty, but the guy has stamina, Jane. Like a fuckin’ jackhammer or something.”
“Oh, my.” I cover my laugh with my fingers and she smacks my arm.
“You laugh now, but one day you might find yourself in your forties, divorced with no kids on the weekend, and eye patch Andy doesn’t look so bad.” She points at me and I turn away with a shake of my head and a quiet laugh.
Okay, so I may have chosen a life in a tiny town of less than ten-thousand people right off the interstate, but I don’t think I’ll go down the same path that Mindy went down.
The middle-aged woman is fresh from her third divorce and, from what she’s told me, has probably slept with every single—and some not exactly single—man in Brookfield. It’d be nearly impossible for me to find a decent guy to date that hasn’t slept with or at the very least sexted with Mindy.
Not that I’m looking.
I’m only twenty-three and I’m not even sure if I want to be married. There’s too much baggage weighing me down, too much history chained to my legs that I’m forced to drag everywhere I go. It’s not fair to ask someone else, someone who has no idea about my past to help me carry it.
So for now, I’m fine with flirting with the decent-looking locals and letting the middle-aged men think they have a chance if it means a bigger tip left after their meal. Every little bit of money I make, the tips, and extra income from odd jobs here and there, goes right into my savings.
Brookfield has been good to me for the past few years, but it isn’t my permanent home.
I doubt I’ll ever have one of those.
Though I’m not sure if my pack even knows I’m still alive, I can’t run the risk of them finding me. Three years is all I can risk in a place and after the next several months, I’ll pick everything up and find somewhere else.
I did it before.
I can do it again.
And again and again, if I need to.
Ding! Ding!
The sound of Carlos smacking the bell snaps me from my thoughts and I push away from the coffee station to retrieve the order waiting at the window. One burger, medium well, and a Philly cheesesteak—Table six.
Balancing the warm plates on my left hand and forearm, I snag some extra napkins and the water pitcher before making my way across the diner. The lunch rush is in full swing and though I want to grill Mindy for more details about Eye Patch Andy, I know we’ll have plenty of time during the afternoon slow down.
She and I work well with one another—which is why our boss, Rob, always begs us to work doubles. And while I want the extra money, need it even, I’m already tired by the time the dinner rush starts. Mindy and I share gossip in between trips from the counter to the tables and I find out that Eye Patch Andy might have been a jackhammer in bed, but he was still very generous.
Her one-night stand stories always keep me entertained and though Andy isn’t my type in the slightest, I still let myself live vicariously through her. Just because I have my reasons not to hook up with every hottie that walks through the diner doors, doesn’t mean I don’t want to.
Sometimes it’s unbearable how badly I want one of these men to just take me into the alley behind the diner and fuck me against the wall.
Especially when the moon is full and my heat is unrelenting.
Though the longer I suppress myself, my true nature, the easier it is to resist and after denying my wolf successfully for the past two years, I think I can handle many more. There’s a reason I picked Brookfield to settle in and it’s not just because of its proximity to the closest interstate. Though it’s fairly rural and has a limited population, what really attracted me was the fact that there hasn’t been a single wolf sighting in fifty years.
No strange cryptids or urban legends of larger-than-normal wolves.
No reports of mutilated animals.
Nothing but roadkill on the side of the interstate and stray dogs.
“Ugh,” Mindy sighs, leaning back against the ice machine as a party of five makes their way out the door of the diner. “Is it nine yet?”
I glance at the grease-splatter clock on the wall above us and scoff. “Not for another hour and forty-two minutes.”
“Tell me your feet are aching as bad as mine.”
They’re not, but I humor her anyway. “I could definitely use an extra break tonight.”
“I could use an extra oxy. My neck is still sore from fucking Andy last night and if he thinks I’m going to be up for round two tonight then…”
Her words fade in one ear and right out the other as something in the distance pricks at my senses. At first, it’s only a small sound like the flutter of a pulse but there’s only four people in the diner—Carlos, Mindy, one customer at the counter, and me—and yet...I can hear six separate beats.
The last two are faint and far away, but as they grow closer, sweat beads along the small of my back.
Ice crackles through my veins and panic bubbles. Mindy’s saying something but to Carlos this time and I’m thankful for the few seconds her attention is off of me.
I scan the front windows of the diner, staring into the nearly empty gravel lot surrounding the building. Across the street are the pawn shop and an out-of-business payday advance place. Neither is occupied by a single soul.
It could be a fluke.
Maybe my hearing isn’t as attuned to my surroundings as it once was.
The fluttering beats were nothing but a passing car engine or an animal that had wandered onto the parking lot. But even as I try to convince myself, I don’t believe my lies.
“I’m going out back for a smoke.” Mindy’s voice sounds loud in my ears and I turn to face her. Before I can open my mouth, the two extra pulses grow louder and with the sound loud in my ears, a scent hits me.
Not just one scent.
Two.
