Wolf on the Job
A Covenant College Short
Amanda M. Lee
WinchesterShaw Publications
Copyright © 2019 by Amanda M. Lee
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
1. One
2. Two
3. Three
4. Four
5. Five
6. Six
7. Seven
8. Eight
9. Nine
10. Ten
Mailing List
About the Author
Books by Amanda M. Lee
One
Five years ago
“Look what I can do.”
I sipped my coffee and slid my eyes to Sami, my eight-year-old daughter, as she finished a rather impressive tumbling act in the middle of our living room, ending with a loud thud as her feet hit the ground. The smile she sent me was serene as she waited for me to applaud, a tendency she gets from her mother, who also likes to show off.
“Nice job, Sami,” I commented as I offered her an indulgent grin. She looks like me, wild black hair flying. She has my eyes and coloring. There’s nothing of her mother in her ... until she opens her mouth. “I thought your mother told you to stop cartwheeling in the house, though.”
Sami’s eyes darkened. “Do you see Mom around?”
I barely managed to keep from laughing. It would only encourage her, and as much as I enjoy watching Sami and my wife Zoe go head to head, I know better than to undermine Zoe’s authority. She’s a good mother ... even though she often questions her ability. Before we even brought Sami into our lives, we agreed that we would always work together for her benefit. That meant being parents instead of friends. “I don’t,” I acknowledged, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t know the rules. Don’t do it again.”
Sami jutted out her lower lip, an expression she also inherited from her mother. She recognized I was more likely to kowtow to her demands if she pouted first. I may be a wolf shifter with a powerful mage for a wife, but I, Aric Winters, am also a big softie when it comes to the two females in my life. Zoe came first and wore me down, and Sami follows in her mother’s footsteps.
“Don’t do it again,” I repeated, determined to be firm. “You have a huge yard to tumble in.”
“It’s not as much fun.”
“Yeah, well ... .” I trailed off when I heard noises emanating from the other side of the living room. My hearing is keen — something that drives my wife crazy because she can never sneak around without me knowing — and I recognized the telltale sounds of her imminent arrival. “We’ll let your mother decide,” I suggested.
The look Sami shot me was straight out of Zoe’s repertoire. The kid looked like me and acted like my wife. Most men would say they prefer a demure child with impeccable manners, but that’s not how I roll. Don’t get me wrong, I want Sami to grow into a respectable adult, but I like her attitude. That attitude is what drew me to Zoe from the start ... and I’ve never regretted one moment of our lives together. I want Sami to be strong like Zoe, and the attitude is part of the package.
That doesn’t mean my kid isn’t too much to take at times.
“She’s wearing those boots I hate,” Sami announced, making a face. She’s only eight but considers herself a fashionista in the making. “You know I hate those boots. They’re embarrassing. If she’s dropping me off at school in those boots I’ll be really upset.”
Brow furrowed, I narrowed my eyes. “How do you know she’s wearing the boots?” I’d yet to interact with Zoe this morning — other than her usual grunt of acknowledgment as she trudged toward the master bathroom (she’s not much of a morning person) — and I was fairly certain Sami hadn’t seen her either.
“They squeak on the floors,” Sami replied darkly. “They sound like dying mice.”
Huh. That was interesting. Super hearing was a shifter thing. Sami was a hybrid — half shifter, half mage — and she’d shown more mage characteristics to date. I didn’t care if she took after her mother in that department, because that would make her powerful. My father was another story. He took great pride in being a shifter and remained upset that Sami wasn’t a full wolf.
“You can tell the difference between your mother’s shoes?” I was impressed. I could often tell the difference in Zoe’s shoes, too. I’d stopped paying attention at a certain point, because she lived in Converse as often as possible. I knew exactly what boots Sami was referring to, though, and I was amused at the thought of Zoe wearing her Old Gringo sugar skull boots, because I liked the way she looked in them. Sami, on the other hand, was often mortified by her mother’s fashion choices.
“She’s wearing them.” Sami’s expression darkened. “She wants to embarrass me.”
“Oh, we live to embarrass you,” I supplied. “That’s not just a thing your mother does. I enjoy embarrassing you, too. In fact, I’m looking forward to your teenage years because your mother and I are going to compete to see who can embarrass you most.”
“Ugh.” Sami made a disgusted sound before snapping her head in the direction of an opening door. Her hearing was clearly more developed than I realized. Perhaps it was an ongoing thing. When she was younger she wouldn’t have picked up on the sounds of the house as she did now.
It was an interesting development, one I didn’t have time to dwell on because my wife was about to join the party.
Sure enough, Zoe strolled in from the bedroom. Her eyes were much more alert than they had been forty minutes earlier and her blond head shimmered under the sun that filtered through the huge windows at the back of the house. She smiled at me before shifting her gaze to Sami.
“Have you been tumbling in the house?”
Sami scowled. “No ... and how can you possibly know that?”
“Because I have special powers,” Zoe replied, extending a finger. “We talked about this. You have to do those flip things you do outside. You’ll break something in here.”
“I thought you hated the decorations in here,” Sami challenged, refusing to back down. She was like her mother in that regard, too. She never met an argument she didn’t want to win. “Grandma picked them out, and you said they remind you of a funeral home.”
I arched an eyebrow as Zoe’s gaze slowly tracked to me. Her relationship with my mother was fine on most fronts, but they still waged the occasional battle when it came to decorating. In truth, my mother attempted to wrest complete control from Zoe soon after construction of the house was completed. They were still battling over it eleven years later. “A funeral home, huh?”
Zoe merely shrugged. “We have, like, eight urns up there.” She gestured toward the recessed shelf I had built into the wall. “Where else do you see urns but in a funeral parlor?”
I followed her finger and snorted. “I think those are vases.”
“They have lids. You can put stuff in them ... and what’s meant to be put in them are people’s ashes.”
“How do people become ashes?” Sami asked, clearly taking Zoe by surprise with the question. “Do they fall in the fire?”
Zoe opened her mouth to answer but no sound immediately escaped, which caused me to snicker. Sami was at the age when she asked any number of questions and, unlike when she was younger, it wasn’t easy to point her toward a different avenue of discussion as a distraction.
“Yeah, Zoe, do they fall in fires?” I taunted.
She glared at me. “Don’t you start.” She strolled past Sami and into the kit
chen. I was going to make breakfast this morning but Sami ultimately wanted cereal so that never came to fruition. Instead of complaining, Zoe headed straight for the Fruity Pebbles. She was a slave to sugar ... something she’d passed on to Sami. “So, are you guys excited about your day?”
The conversational shift threw me for a loop. “Who are you talking to?” I glanced around the open space, confused. “Who has a day together? Are you talking about you and me? I had no idea you wanted to spend quality time with me.” I lowered my voice to a suggestive flirt. “Are we dropping the kid off at school and having a Manic Monday or something?” She hadn’t mentioned wanting to spend quality time together — something we occasionally did when Sami was safely ensconced at school — but I was all for it.
Instead of responding with a fountain of flirt of her own, Zoe simply rolled her eyes. “No. That’s what we’re doing Sunday when your parents take Sami for the day.”
“I heard a rumor that you can take off days for ... loving ... more than once a week,” I pointed out.
Sami made gagging noises from across the way. “I know what you’re talking about. You try to use weird words, but I know exactly what you’re talking about,” she accused. “You’re talking about sex.”
I tilted my head to the side, considering. “How do you know about sex?”
“Mom watches dirty stuff on television,” Sami replied without hesitation. She was always open to sacrificing her mother on the altar of disparagement. “You think you’re fooling me but you’re not.”
I flicked my eyes to Zoe. “What dirty stuff are you watching without me? I thought we agreed that all dirty stuff should be watched together.”
“She caught me watching General Hospital,” Zoe replied, unruffled. “It wasn’t dirty.”
“Well, as long as you’re not watching dirty stuff without me.” I winked at her and turned back to Sami. “You’re too young to know about sex. Go back to playing with dolls.”
“I don’t like dolls.” Sami turned haughty. “I want to go back to the ashes.” Her eyes moved to the shelf with the vases Zoe insisted were urns. “Are dead people in those? I don’t want to live in a house with dead people on the shelf.”
I folded my arms over my chest and stared at Zoe as she poured milk into her cereal and steadfastly refused to make eye contact. “Way to go.”
Instead of responding to me, Zoe focused on Sami. “There’re no dead people up there,” she promised. “Those are empty. However, at a funeral home, those types of vases would be for sale.” She sounded as if she were conducting an infomercial. “Sometimes, when people die, they don’t want to be put in the ground. They prefer being cremated and turned into ashes. When that happens, sometimes the ashes are put into an urn.”
Sami was downright flummoxed now. “What happens the other times?”
Zoe shoveled cereal in her mouth and waited for me to answer the question, which was the last thing I wanted to do. Still, we’d promised Sami — and ourselves, for that matter — we would always answer truthfully when possible.
“Sometimes people want their ashes to be spread at certain places,” I explained, choosing my words carefully. “Like a favorite spot by the river or at sea.”
“Why?”
“Because ... they have a special attachment to the ocean or boats. Some people go to the mountains. It’s all a personal choice.”
Sami was thoughtful. “So ... it’s a place that means something to the dead person?”
I bobbed my head. “Exactly.”
“Does that mean you and Mom want your ashes spread in the hot tub? I mean ... that is where you spend all your time. You make me go to bed early and then run out there and splash around. It’s completely unfair.”
“We’re adults,” I reminded her. “We don’t need bedtimes.”
“I don’t need a bedtime either.”
I turned back to Zoe. “It’s time for you to take over this conversation.”
Zoe was blasé. “Your father and I don’t want to be cremated,” she said. “We plan to die at the exact same time, so you can just throw us into the same casket. If your father lingers a few days more than me — you know, because his broken heart hasn’t caught up to him — just throw him in anyway. We want to be together forever.”
I flicked her ear and shot her a dirty look. “Don’t tell her things like that. She’s very literal.”
“She gets that from you,” Zoe fired back. “But you’re right. We don’t have time for deep conversations this morning. I have to get going.”
Confused, I glanced at the digital readout on the microwave. “It’s still early. Sami doesn’t have to be at school for an hour.”
“Sami isn’t going to school today.”
I flipped through my mental calendar. “Why? Is it another dead president’s birthday or something?” Seriously, I don’t remember having so many days off from school when I was Sami’s age. It often seems the students are out more than they’re in.
Zoe shook her head. “No. It’s some teachers in-session thing. I don’t know exactly. She’s not in school, though, and she’s spending the day with you. We talked about it yesterday.”
Wait just a second ... . “Um, I think I would remember that.”
“We were in the hot tub.”
Suspicion rolled through me like a tsunami. “Excuse me? You mean when we were ... you know?” I spared a glance for Sami and noticed she was watching the exchange with overt curiosity. There was no wonder she picked up on things we didn’t want her to know about. She has big ears ... like me. “That doesn’t count,” I added. “You can’t tell me things when we’re spending private time together. I can’t listen and play at the same time. You know I’m bad at multi-tasking.”
Amusement flitted through Zoe’s blue eyes, reminding me of the first time we’d met. Even then, back in my early twenties when we had nothing but ambition and open timelines in front of us, I realized she was all I would ever want. That doesn’t mean she’s not a pain in the butt.
“I can’t take her with me today.” Zoe was firm. “I have a meeting with my publisher.” She writes romance novels under a pen name, and while she isn’t always dedicated to her profession she is determined to make sure she brings money into the family coffers. She refuses to live off the money I make — which is substantial — and instead insists on keeping a career she isn’t overly fond of.
“Move the meeting,” I suggested, my mind busy. “She can’t come with me, Zoe. I have work at the lumberyard.”
“You always have work at the lumberyard. She can play in your office.”
“I don’t play.” Sami turned disdainful. “I’m big now. I don’t play.”
“You were just tumbling in the living room,” Zoe reminded her. “I told you not to do that. If you’re big, you should be punished for that.”
“Fine. I’m little.” Sami rolled her eyes. “I’ll stay little forever. Does that make you happy?”
“It makes me happy,” I admitted. “That way I don’t have to worry about boys.”
“I already have a boyfriend.”
I stilled, surprised. “What?”
“Skyler Green,” Sami replied. “We sit next to each other at lunch and everything.”
This was news to me. “You’re too young for a boyfriend.”
“He’s not a real boyfriend,” Zoe countered. “They basically pull each other’s hair. Get over it.” She refused to deviate from the conversation. “I can’t move my meeting. They’re flying out here. It’s not as if they’re local. She has to go with you.”
Frustration washed through me as I shifted my eyes to my daughter. I wasn’t the sort of father who pushed off his duties on others. I didn’t want to be that sort of father. Heck, I love spending time with my kid. But today was a bad day.
With that in mind, I lowered my voice and leaned closer to Zoe. “My father is bringing several members of the wolf council to the office today.” I couldn’t remember if I’d previously shared the info
rmation with her. Zoe was iffy on the council and didn’t want the members invading our lives. She wasn’t alone in that desire, which was why I insisted the delegates come to my office rather than invade our home.
There was one other consideration. “If Sami is with me, they’ll see her.” I didn’t go into a lot of detail, but I recognized when Zoe comprehended exactly what I was trying not to say.
“I don’t see where we have much choice,” she said after a beat. “I can’t take her to the meeting with my publisher.” She was firm. “She might let something slip about ... you know.”
I blinked several times before responding. “Sex?” I finally asked.
Zoe’s expression was withering. “Not sex, you dope.” She flicked me between the eyebrows, causing me to catch her hand. “The wolf stuff. The mage stuff.”
I caught on. “Oh.” I didn’t release her hand, instead keeping hold and pressing a kiss to her fingertips as I considered the conundrum. Sami was fairly good at keeping her mouth shut about certain things, but she’d been asking more questions about magic lately. If she slipped in front of Zoe’s publisher, that wouldn’t go over well. If she slipped in front of the wolf council, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Still, I wasn’t comfortable.
“What if they question her, Zoe?” I was serious. “I don’t want them digging their claws in and trying to learn things about her abilities. We don’t even know what she can do yet.”
And that right there was the biggest worry Zoe and I had. Sami was our only child by design. We’d pledged ourselves to keeping her safe. We had no idea when she would manifest. Heck, there was a chance she never would.
Still, there were signs littering her childhood that she might turn out to be powerful in a way neither of us was prepared to handle. Our main goal was to keep her safe, and that meant hiding her away from certain actions. The wolf council was one of them.
Wolf On the Job Page 1