Moon Bound

“Hey Mutt, I said I want a black coffee. No sugar or cream. Comprende?” Beefy fingers snapped in front of my face. The cat clock with fluorescent eyes laughed down at me as it swung its black tail lazily. Tick. Tick. Tick. With each pass of the clock’s tail I imagined my fist connecting with the sweat drenched shifter’s nose. The seconds felt like hours in this godforsaken place, and customers like these made surviving each day damn near unbearable. “Look boys, she’s not just a human, she’s stupid too. Coffee,” he drug the end of the word out slowly, “Go get it you dumb bitch.” It took everything in me to not to lunge at him when he gave me a toothy grin. The phantom pressure of a growl bubbled up my throat in response. The growl wouldn’t come out though. It never did. Everyone in Crescent Valley knew that. Even the pups could manage a little wolf-like yip. But not me, never me. The assholes in town thought it was funny to see how far they could push the limits of my “ailment”. Not being able to turn into a giant slobbering dog wasn’t exactly my idea of a problem. But if I tried telling the rest of the pack that I might wind up as kibble. I forced a thin smile and reluctantly pulled out my notepad and pen with the bright pink pom pom on the end, making sure to put on a show of writing out the order, “Of course Garret, I’ll be right out with that.” I turned on my sneakered heel with a squeak and started to walk away when his gravelly voice spoke up behind me. "Don't f**k it up Mutt. Show us you're good for something." That made his merry band of idiots guffaw. Anger rose to the surface, making my teeth itch, but that was as far as the shift was going to get. I looked over my shoulder and gave him another pained happy-to-be-here smile. "Wouldn't dream of it, Garret." I stormed past the diner's counter and threw the door to the kitchen open. It slammed shut on another round of the shifters' laughter. I smacked my hand against the door and yelped at the pain that shot up my arm. If I was like them I would have split the old door in two like a karate master. Wax on. Wax off. Breathe in. Breathe out. But I wasn't like them. I was like me. Like a human. My forehead hit the door with a weak thump. I closed my eyes and let out a long sigh. My exhaustion crashed over me in an overwhelming wave. If it wasn't for me, my parents would still be schmoozing it up with the Alpha's closest friends. They would be living comfortably in a pretty house on the hill. My mom would be the perfect trophy wife and my dad would be one of the guys. They would be part of the pack. Instead, they were stuck with a human for a daughter and had to live on the edge of town in a cramped run down two bedroom house where everything was falling apart. And I had to work every shift I could get at this shithole diner to help make ends meet. Every member of the pack had their place. Ours was at the bottom of the barrel. If you couldn't contribute, if you weren't strong, you didn't belong. I sure as hell didn't belong with those meatheads out there. They only came in to make fun of me and remind me that to them I was nothing more than scum. Pack life was f****d up. I supposed it could be great if you were in with the cool kids. But from an outside perspective, they were a bunch of narcissistic, overly hormonal, aggressive, animals. Static rippled through my arms. I was certain that if I could shift, fur would have exploded down the edges of my skin. Usually wolves had to work to keep it together so they didn’t unexpectedly shift and tear someone to ribbons. Luckily for me, I could lose my cool without turning into a feral beast. My first shift should have happened when I turned sixteen. My mom always said I was a late bloomer. I couldn’t run as fast as the others, I couldn’t smell things a mile away, and my vision sucked. I had to get glasses when I was nine. Mom cried in the car for an hour after that optometrist appointment. My dad reassured me that it was okay to not experience the wolfie side of myself until closer to the first shift. It wasn’t completely unheard of. Some kids just took a little time to come into their own. Connecting with your wolf was a big deal, it wasn’t something that should be rushed. Dad went into the garage and destroyed all of the shelves and the car he had been working on the night of my sixteenth birthday. We spent five hours in an empty field that night waiting for me to shed my skin under the luminous half moon. I’m pretty sure I broke their hearts that day. All we knew was that something wasn’t right with me. As far as we could tell, I was the first wolf with this issue. My parents were mortified. They were high ranking members of the Alpha’s inner circle, my dad was his Beta. They were perfect wolves; fierce, loyal, and followed the rules to the T. So how could their precious daughter be broken? The next morning the rest of the pack discovered that their Beta's daughter was a weak little human, and chaos ensued. Alpha Nickolas didn’t take too kindly to me making a fool of him and his groupies. When I still hadn’t shifted a week after that fateful birthday he kicked us out of our ritzy house and took my mom’s beloved suburban. He refused to let my dad back into pack meetings. The whole thing was a shitshow. And all I could do was stand by and watch as my parents’ lives crumbled before me. I sighed again. It felt like I sighed a lot these days. Maybe that was just a part of becoming an adult? You hit your twenties and it’s nothing but sighing and grinding your life away at a dead end job. Knowing I couldn’t put off the order any longer, I straightened and settled into the routine of pulling a faded ceramic mug out of a nearby cupboard and pouring the stale coffee into it. I briefly considered spitting into it but decided I wanted to live to see another day. Garett would be able to tell. Wolves had an uncanny way of knowing when you messed with their s**t. The teensy bit of satisfaction I would get from him drinking my saliva coffee sprinkled with a dash of hate wouldn’t be enough to make losing my job worth it. "Hey kiddo. You okay?" Finn strode through the back door, smoke wafting in after him. He only smoked at work. Something about trying to convince his wife he was quitting. Which made about as much sense as a gorilla living in the ocean. The whole inhuman sense of smell thing kind of made that impossible to hide. But whatever made him and his wife feel better. I shrugged and scribbled on my notepad. He nodded after I held it up for him to read. "I hate them." We used the notepad to communicate a lot. We couldn’t risk the customers overhearing us bad mouthing them. Our boss would have a field day yelling at us if someone complained about us to him. I couldn’t afford to lose my job, or Finn. He was one of the good ones, one of the very few people I had in my corner. A forty year old low ranking wolf and a twenty-two year old human didn't have much in common in the real world. But in Crescent Valley, we were as thick as thieves. Outsiders had to stick together. Wolves couldn’t resist making packs, even if that pack only had two people in it. And one of those people happened to be human. But a pack was a pack I supposed. One of Finn's tanned hands wrapped around the mug and yanked it away from me. He was gone from the kitchen before I could stop him, whistling away with the drink in hand. "Howdy boys. Did someone order coffee?" "Where's the girl?" My stomach flipped uncomfortably. There was a dark edge to the words and it made me feel… icky. The mug thunked on the table and I heard Finn click his tongue disapprovingly. "What the hell kid? Her name is Lyra and where she is, is none of your business. Now drink your coffee and leave or I will speak to your mother about the way you talk to women. You and I both know she raised you to be better than that." My hand raised to cover my mouth. It took everything in me not to laugh. Garret grumbled but didn't say anything. Finn wasn't a hulking beast like Garret but he could still hit him where it hurt- his mommy apparently. A second later Finn stepped back into the kitchen, ruffling my hair with a wink as he passed by. I slapped him away but couldn't hold back my grateful smile. I stretched my aching arms over my head with a groan. The clock showed that I was close to freedom. I had a hot date with my bed and I didn't want to keep it waiting. I continued to hide in the kitchen, not wanting to deal with Garret and his goons any more tonight. Their chatter eventually died down after a few minutes followed by the entrance bell ringing. Thank God. Relief filled me and I hustled out to their table to collect the money, if they had even bothered to pay. Surprisingly they had. Next to it was a napkin covered in messy letters. I picked it up to read it and was left with a rolling stomach. "Watch your back, Mutt."