The Vet, The Dogs and The Big Bad Gay Wolf
Chase was knee-deep in old dog poop.
Not metaphorically, but literally.
The culprit?
A fifteen-year-old golden Labrador named Mimi, blessed with both a bowel disorder and enough abandonment issues to guilt-trip a saint.
The Lab gave Chase an innocent look, as if he was the problem here—the inconvenience, the one who pooped.
He rolled his emerald green eyes at the sassy old dog.
“C’mon Mimi,” he grumbled, scooping the last of the mess and tissues into a plastic bag.
“You have a perfectly fine, designated area where you can do your business, but you choose this spot here on the floor—near your bed,” he continued to scold.
“That’s very unsanitary.”
Then he gestured towards Duke, the notoriously gluttonous pug, currently snoring with his favorite yellow duckie and blue blankie.
“What if that monster was awake and thought it was a naptime treat, huh?” he added, glaring before sighing dramatically like Cinderella with a grudge.
“You’re treating me like your personal slave now,” he muttered.
“Jeez.”
He peeled off his disposable gloves, added them to the bag, and tied it shut with a practiced flick of his wrist.
A bead of sweat rolled down his smooth, handsome face.
He was finally done with the clean-up.
His long dark hair, tied back messily, had a few strands spilling loose from the band, slightly tickling his face.
The smell still lingered—mild now—but Chase barely noticed.
“Already used to it,” he mumbled.
He’d been a tired (not retired) veterinarian for over a decade and he’d seen and smelled far worse.
Horse manure.
Cow dung.
Even a cat’s litter box.
‘It was a nightmare,’ he thought to himself.
‘The worst.’
It had a kind of stench that haunts you even in your dreams.
He grimaced, remembering how that odor always made his stomach turn.
‘I’ll just take a hot bath before going to bed,’ Chase decided, thoughts already drifting.
‘With wine.’
His gaze dropped to the slobbering Mimi.
“You’re not even sorry, are you?” he asked.
Still kneeling, he playfully glared at the adorable Lab, then shot the plastic bag in the nearby trash behind her.
Swish.
It went in like a basketball.
‘Yeah!’
Rimless.
Arms still in the air, he made a fist.
He’d take the win.
Mimi thumped her tail once in response and sneezed.
Typical.
No remorse.
Just vibes.
‘Adorable,’ his heart clenched, then lowered his arms.
‘How can someone heartless abandon her at the foot of the mountain before winter starts?’
He reached out and gently petted Mimi’s soft fur.
‘Because she’s gotten old?’
Chase, still in a kneeling position, joints already aching, sighed—feeling old himself at thirty-four, nearing thirty-five.
He surveyed the comfortable chaos of his shelter-slash-vet clinic-slash-home.
It was 3:45 pm on a Tuesday.
But between the clouds and the cold, it might as well have been midnight.
It was unusually cold and dark.
“Colder than yesterday,” Chase murmured to himself, while he eyed the Lab’s golden and white furry bottom as she turned away from him.
Mimi gently lay down beside Sasha, the black poodle.
His hand itched to take a picture, but he remembered that he forgot his phone on his bed.
‘It’s picture perfect,’ he bit his lip in regret.
Instead, he adjusted his oversized white, red, and green hoodie—a festive monstrosity—with Rudolph the reindeer and Santa Claus riding off to the snow, a massive ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’ sprawled across the front.
It hung off his muscled frame like a deflated tent, over his thick egg-yellow pajamas.
His fashion sense wasn’t great to begin with.
Frankly, it was questionable.
But the house he lived in didn’t judge.
No.
It didn’t.
A tall, up-and-down house with a cabin-in-the-woods aura—the kind you’d find in horror or slasher films.
The kind where a grotesque creature or killer with a mask on might jump out from the shadows and scare the living daylights out of the main characters… and even the poor bastards watching from the couch.
It wasn’t pretty—but it was solid.
A duplex-style log home tucked away near the base of a mountain, just a stone’s throw from the nearby village-slashed-small city in Montana.
Oakhaven Village.
Where people either knew you for life—or ignored you on sight.
In his case, the latter.
He preferred it though.
Chase was a self-assumed introvert—he was tired of human relationships.
He came from the bustling city of Manhattan, where he spent all thirty-three years of his life.
Now, aside from the occasional delivery guy who thinks Chase was a somewhat six-foot-nine-tall, bulky serial killer, he barely sees another human soul.
When his last living relative—his grumpy uncle—died, he had been contacted by an attorney about this house.
An unexpected inheritance.
He gladly took it.
That was three years ago.
But he’d only been living here for almost a year now.
‘This place was always snowy.’
He spent two summers briefly on renovation—visiting—more like flying—between vet shifts to supervise the mess—which was extensive work and a pain in the ass, to be honest.
Because it was hard to do renovations in snowy settings.
‘But it’s worth it.’
And on the third summer, he moved in for good.
The upper level of the house was his living space.
Basic.
Boxy.
Walls lined with secondhand furniture and dog gates he stopped trying to keep closed six dogs ago.
The dogs found him, not the other way around.
Only Mimi was the one he personally rescued—when he’d gone at the base of the mountain to gather firewood for the coming winter.
The downstairs had been split into halves.
He knocked on a connecting door so he wouldn’t need to put on snow boots just to walk around the damn house once winter came.
One side a modest vet clinic with decent equipment and a cranky fridge full of vaccines.
No paying customers yet.
Not even a patient.
He was surviving on the last of his New York vet clinic savings.
‘It wasn’t much. Since apartments there and daily necessities were all ridiculously expensive.’
Even breathing there felt costly.
Still, Chase had always been decent at budgeting—so much so that people started calling him a cheapskate on his face.
Not the type to spend money unless it was absolutely necessary.
He didn’t mind.
Being broke was much worse.
And honestly?
That helped.
A whole lot.
A decade in a prestigious vet clinic—that catered to elite clients—most of them were Hollywood stars, socialites and fashion icons—had given him enough cushion to take this leap.
The other side was a dog shelter he ran solo.
Funded by online donations, a surprising number of guilt-ridden rich people, and some of his loyal clients from the past.
He never touched those for his living expenses.
Every cent went to the dogs—food, medicine, heating, blankets, chew toys and the occasional tutu—for social media reels—all to gather more funds.
Outside, snow whispered against the windows.
Thin gusts curling like ghost fingers across the glass.
Another storm was moving in.
He could feel it.
Chase looked at the wood-burning stove in the corner and wondered if he should light it, but then decided against it.
“I think this heat was already comfortable.”
His gaze drifted to the dogs that he kept on accidentally collecting.
From six strays to now—twenty-four of them.
With their cages opened, some were already asleep with their blankets and heated dog beds.
‘How cute.’
From dumped, abandoned and mistreated—to now loved, cleaned and well-fed.
It warmed his heart but it also pained him to think, ‘What if I’m not here?’
Some of the cuties were awake, like Mimi, staring at him now full of curiosity, as if she didn’t do anything wrong.
‘They looked warm enough,’ he thought.
Thanks to the radiant floor heating.
Chase sighed, bracing his forearm against the wooden wall as he stood.
His knees cracked.
“Ugh…” he groaned, stretching his back a bit, then massaging his shoulders and back.
The old pine floors creaked with him, warm beneath the thick mismatched wool socks he wore.
“I should take that hot bath now,” he muttered.
Just as he was about to take a step on the wooden stairs—
A sudden gust of wind blows outside—
And something slammed hard against the wall.
The entire house jolted.
Lights flickered.
“What the hell—”
The words barely left his mouth when—
A low, drawn-out howl followed.
Close.
Too close.
“Shit, what was that?”
