Alpha’s Baby: Shifter’s Mate

Chapter 1-1

Chapter OneIt was time. I was going to make a name for myself. I was going to try, anyway. Either that, or get mauled to death by a wolf shifter, if mauled was even the right word. It probably wasn’t, but I had no idea what wolf shifters did. I didn’t even know if they were actually real. I’d certainly never run into any in downtown Detroit. I certainly didn’t work with any at the Detroit News Press. Most of my fellow reporters that were male were getting on in age; paunchy and balding. There wasn’t much “wolf-like” about them.

My editor, a man named Don, was probably the least “wolf-like” of all males who worked at the Press, as we called it. Don was sixty-five, he’d worked as an editor at the Press for thirty years, and he was tired. In the past year, he’d become devoted to his wife, daughter, son-in-law, and his baby granddaughter, Chloe, which I found admirable. Most men who worked at the Press seemed to only consider their families an afterthought.

Don had actually started taking half-days once a week in order to take Chloe out to the park, and to something called “grandparent-grandbaby fun-ercise” class, whatever that was. I only knew that on Wednesdays, when Don returned to a full day of work, he seemed to do so with a little spring in his step.

Currently, he wasn’t stepping, with a little spring or otherwise, because he was sitting at his desk, facing me. “Let me tell you, Sable. You’re hungry aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“You want to get in the game, right?”

I nodded again.

“Then, boy, I’m not kidding…have I got the scoop for you. It’s just a possible scoop, though. You’re going to have to work for it.”

I nodded for a third time, eager to work for it. “I’ll do anything.”

I’d actually already said this, because Don had done his “wind-up” to telling me what the possible scoop was twice now, pretty much asking me the exact same series of questions and saying the exact same things. Don was great at “wind-ups.” Or, maybe he was really bad. About a year-and-a-half earlier, when doing the “wind-up” to telling everyone in the newsroom that he was going to be a grandfather, he’d done it so many times that eventually, someone had just guessed that his daughter Hilary was going to make him a grandfather, thoroughly deflating him. He had wanted to give the “scoop.” He hadn’t meant to “bore” everyone by “taking his time” in delivering his “once-in-a-lifetime scoop,” he’d said sullenly, retreating into his office.

That afternoon, feeling bad for him, I’d purchased a pink-and-blue frosted full sheet cake with Congratulations written in thick white buttercream. Then, after lugging the cake back to the office, I’d arranged it on a table in the newsroom with paper plates and forks before going down to the first and second floors of the building to round up all employees that hadn’t been present for Don’s “preempted” announcement that morning.

Knowing Don, and knowing that he would probably like as large of a crowd as possible for a “do-over,” I even rounded up the Press’ three file clerks and single mailroom clerk, who all worked in the basement of the building.

Then, once everyone was assembled on the third floor, including many third-floor employees who had already heard the news, I quickly briefed everyone, saying that everyone should act enthused and surprised to hear what Don had to say, even if they’d already heard his news, even secondhand. Somewhat to my own surprise, most of the people assembled hadn’t heard. Don’s “scoop” really would be news to them.

When I brought him out of his office, saying that word had traveled that he had some news to share, but many people wanted to hear it directly from him, he looked genuinely surprised and unmistakably pleased. Standing in front of the crowd I’d assembled, he wisely did only two “wind-ups” before bursting out with the news that he was going to become a grandfather. Everyone clapped and cheered, and I lifted the cardboard top of the cake box to reveal the congratulatory message underneath, making Don grin, looking “pleased as punch,” as he liked to describe people sometimes.

All this had probably been the least I could do for the man who’d been more of a father to me than my own father, who’d committed suicide by jumping in front of a train when I was almost two. I had no memories of him. Just an empty, achy sort of spot inside my heart where my memories of him should have been.

In the present, after Don’s second “wind-up” of a “possible scoop,” I repeated what I’d just said, telling him for a second time, just for good measure, that I’d do anything for a scoop. I was so ready to make my mark as a reporter. I was beyond ready.

“Just please tell me what the ‘scoop’ is, Don.”

Not a chance. At least not yet. Don still had another “wind-up” in him. Clearly loving every second of letting it percolate, he grabbed a device called an “e-cigar” from a desk drawer, leaned back in his high-backed, faux brown leather swivel chair, and kicked his wingtip-clad feet up on his desk before taking a long drag on the e-cigar, a sight which never failed to amuse me a bit.

It wasn’t just that Don was the perfect picture of a stereotypical “cigar-chomping” newspaper editor, complete with high-backed chair and wingtips; it was that there was also something just plain humorous about the e-cigar itself. About the same size as a regular cigar, the tube that comprised the body of it was wrapped in brown paper similar to cigar paper, except this kind of “paper” might have been better described as “sticker.”

At the far end, where a smoldering “cherry” of cigar ash would normally be, a flat, clear light glowed red when a user inhaled through the device. This light rapidly flashed red when the e-cigar needed to be plugged into a power source to recharge via a special adapter, which screwed onto one end.

When Don had first debuted his e-cigar at a staff meeting several years earlier, assuring everyone that it was smoke, nicotine, and chemical-free and filled only with distilled water, which produced a smoke-like vapor cloud upon taking a puff of the e-cigar, there had been a few titters of amusement.

One of Don’s fellow senior editors had good naturedly asked him what was the point of “smoking” a device only filled with distilled water. Don had dismissed this statement without much good nature in return at all, giving his head a quick shake and telling his fellow editor that he “just didn’t get it.”

At the time, I’d been a brand-new “reporter’s assistant” at the Press, fresh out of college, and I’d been eager to impress. Recalling a philosophy class I’d taken, and wanting to appear smart, I’d smiled at Don, then had gestured to his e-cigar and had asked him if it had been Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida who had said that in the postmodern world, everything was, or would be, just a simulation of the “real thing.”

Pornography was just a simulation of s*x, and when people imitated porn stars in their bedroom, they would simply be performing a “simulation of a simulation.” Social interaction would be simulated over the internet. Historical battles would be simulated with reenactments. Even pastimes and pleasures, like smoking cigars, would be simulated.

Instantly, I’d realized that my question had probably sounded insufferably pretentious. I mentally kicked myself, hard. No one at the long, polished mahogany meeting table spoke. Right then and there, for one agonizingly long moment, I had visions of myself getting fired. I had visions of myself being permanently un-hirable anywhere else, with my Detroit News Press employee file marked “i***t- asks stupid, insufferably pretentious questions” in bright red pen.

However, after that long moment, Don had just shrugged, picking up his e-cigar. After a long drag on it, he’d exhaled the water vapor slowly, looking at me, before speaking. “I like you. You ask weird questions. You’re smart enough to ask them, but still young enough to be embarrassed that you did. And by the way…it was Jean Baudrillard who said all that stuff about ‘postmodern simulation.’ My daughter, Hilary, got some kind of a degree in French philosophy a few years ago, and I’ve heard all about it.”

With that, Don had briskly tapped his e-cigar on the table, calling the meeting to order. Later that day, rumors had begun circulating around the Press that I was “Don’s pet.” Those rumors had quickly ceased to be whispered once everyone soon saw how hard I worked, often putting in twelve or thirteen-hour days, and sometimes even fourteen-hour days. Once, when a crime wave was sweeping Detroit, I’d just slept at my desk two nights in a row, showering at a gym next door and wearing wrinkled clothes that I’d stashed in a desk drawer my first day on the job.

Now, several years later, back in the present, Don took another puff on his e-cigar before issuing his third “wind-up” about the “possible scoop” he was going to offer me. “Tell me, Sable. Do you believe that there are truly weird things in this world? And I mean, things weirder than you can probably even imagine.”

Musing about just how much Don loved the word weird and all its variations, I stifled a smile before responding. “You mean…do I believe in things ‘weirder’ than e-cigars?”

Studying his brown sticker-wrapped “cigar,” I just hadn’t been able to resist. I could talk to Don this way, and for some reason, I was the only one at the Press who could.

Instead of answering my question, he responded with another. “Do you know that thirty-some years ago, when I was just rising through the ranks as a junior editor, people could just smoke wherever they wanted? You’re too young to remember, but I kid you not. Thirty or forty years ago, people would smoke cigars in the office wherever they pleased.”

Wearing a faraway sort of look on his gently-lined face, Don paused to “ash” his ash-less e-cigar in a real cut-glass ashtray in the middle of his cluttered mahogany desk. “Yup. People just smoked cigars wherever the hell they felt like it. Cigarettes, too. You could smoke at your desk, in meetings…you could even smoke right in the lunchroom if you liked. Just light right up while waiting for your soup to cool.

“Or, you could, right up until the day that one of our secretaries, a woman by the name of Mrs. Ethel Richmondex, if I remember correctly, complained that her sandwich bread tasted like smoke. Yup. She complained about the quality of the toilet paper in the bathrooms, too. Complained that the office was ‘too bright’ when the shades were up, complained that it was ‘too dim’ when the shades were down. ‘Brittle Ethel Richmondex,’ we used to call her. She complained about everything.”

Knowing that Don was getting dangerously close to launching into some kind of an extended story about “the old days,” I decided to try to preempt it. So, after doing a gentle sort of throat clear, I tried to redirect him with a statement that would hopefully get a response. “Now, back to what I’m in your office for…that first text you sent me this morning.”

The text had been fairly brief and to-the-point, simply reading Scoop for you, Sable. Career-changing. Wolf-shifters. Men who can morph into wolves. They’re real. You can infiltrate to prove. Get in my office when back from car-crash assignment.

This text had been followed by another just a few seconds later. DELETE THAT TEXT.

When Don resumed puffing on his e-cigar, not seeming like he was going to respond to what I’d just said, I cleared my throat again. “Well, that first text. As unbelievable as it all sounds, I trust you enough to believe you when you say that ‘wolf shifters’ are real; but a tiny little part of me is just wondering if maybe you meant ‘men who can morph into wolves’ as some sort of a metaphor, or--”

“Did you delete that text?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Yes. I did. That very minute.”

It had actually probably been about two minutes later, after I’d interviewed just one more witness of the car crash, but Don probably didn’t need to know that.

Don glanced at his closed office door before returning his gaze to my face. “Good. Because everything I wrote in that text was the honest-to-God truth, no metaphor about it. Wolf shifters are real. And if you want the scoop of a lifetime, you’re about to meet some.”

I really did trust Don, so his text saying that wolf shifters were real had left me kind of upset and rattled until I’d finally made it into his office that afternoon. Not to mention that although I hadn’t answered the question he’d just asked me, I did believe that there were “weird” things in the world, with wolf shifters possibly being one of those things. However, at the same time, part of me had wondered if Don had used the term “wolf shifters” as some sort of a metaphor, maybe for s****l predators or something. All I knew currently was that Don had better start doing some explaining, or else I was afraid I might metaphorically burst.