Iwatched her through the pane, stalking her own house like a wraith. It was nearly 2 AM by the shivering wall clock in the kitchen, but Carrie Stillwater looked like she hadn’t known sleep in weeks. She wore a silk robe the color of old Scotch, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, hair wild and unbrushed. On anyone else, the robe would have been a come-on, a detail for a sales pitch, or a late-night ad. On her, it read as armor.
She didn’t see me. She never saw me, not when I was on four legs. But I saw her, and I could taste the panic on her skin. The bourbon princess, up and down every hallway, checking the window locks twice, peering through the gaps in the blackout curtains, every third lap detouring to the wall safe where she kept a backup thumb drive of “the family recipe.”
I could have told her the real risk wasn’t in the pixels, but in the people. But that wasn’t what she needed right now.
I ran the perimeter again, a quick trot through the shrubs. My paws left clean tracks in the mulch, nothing the grounds crewwould notice in the morning. The night was heavy with threat—the aftertaste of diesel, the ancient stink of buck urine, and a sharp metallic tang that wasn’t natural to these woods. Maybe someone else would have called it paranoia, but paranoia keeps you breathing.
Back at the north end of the house, I slunk under the bay window and shifted. Every change is an ugly, shuddering mess, but I’d done it enough to get it down to about four seconds of ugly. I squatted behind the hydrangeas, muscles still humming with the aftershock, then crept around to the kitchen terrace and rapped twice on the French door.
No light on. No sound but the hiss of the old fridge and the tick of the clock. A shadow flickered across the wall as she neared. Then the door cracked, and her face peeked through—a knife-edge of suspicion before she let herself admit it was just me.
She unlocked the bolt and opened it. “If you wanted in, you could use the front. Like a person.”
She was shivering, but I couldn’t tell if it was the cold or something deeper. Her voice had the fine vibration of a string pulled too tight. “Got you out of bed?”
“I was comfortable.” She turned away, not waiting for me to follow. Her bare feet made no sound on the old tile.
We went to the study. It was what her father called “the heart of the house,” and it looked the part. Walls lined floor-to-ceiling with bottles and books, all of them overstuffed and out of order. A few leather-bound volumes of bourbon history sat stacked beside her dad’s military trophies; opposite those, a glass cabinet of rare bottles, each worth more than a year’s wages for any of the workers who’d actually made them. Above the mantle, a black-and-white photo of her as a toddler, standing in the dust of a rickhouse, hands sticky with mash and grinning like she owned the world.
She went to the liquor shelf, grabbed a cut-glass bottle. “You want a pour?”
“Always.”
She filled two glasses, then set the bottle down so hard the stopper rolled off the desk and clattered to the floor. She didn’t even flinch. Just handed me a glass and curled up in the big leather chair that had belonged to her dad.
I sat across from her, my chair creaking under my weight, and tried to keep my body language in the “tame” zone. Hands flat, eyes down, mouth soft. All the tricks they teach you in state lockup for not getting stabbed.
She drank half her bourbon in one go, then set the glass on her knee and stared at the fireless hearth. “Someone accessed my internal server. They downloaded a PDF of the family’s double-barrel yeast notes. It was supposed to be impossible.”
I shrugged. “You made enemies.”
She cut her eyes at me, and for a split second I saw the animal in her—the exact same spark I saw in the woods, in the pack, right before a kill. “You think I’m stupid?”
“I think you’re not scared enough.” I let the words hang. She might take them as an insult or as flattery. Maybe both.
She swirled her drink, watching the amber legs crawl down the side of the glass. “Why are you still here, Shivs?”
I considered the answer. I could have said “because you paid for it,” or “because the club doesn’t leave a job half done.” But the real answer stuck in my throat, hot as a shot of the barrel-strength she’d poured. “Because I want to be.”
She barked a laugh. “That’s a first. You know, last night I dreamed I was being eaten alive. Not by wolves—by men in suits. My father was there, but he didn’t help. He just kept pouring drinks and watching.”
I nodded. “I’ve had that dream.”
She grinned, sharp-edged. “Did you win?”
“No. But I kept fighting.”
For a second, her face softened. She looked up at me, and I saw her really see me—not the wolf, not the muscle, but the man.
“Do I scare you?”
“You do, but not in a way that’ll make me run.”
She considered me over the rim of her glass, all the bourbon science and sorghum diplomacy falling away until it was just her and me, animal to animal.
“Does it ever stop? The paranoia? The hunger?” Her eyes flicked to the bottle, then back to me.
“No.” I took a long swallow, then leaned forward, elbows on knees. “But you learn to use it.”