Her Big Easy Wedding The Complete Series

by Abby Knox

  If Bobby were in his human form, he would have asked what the hell she was talking about.

  As Penny was perusing the contents of the open pages, Bobby heard another noise. It sounded like people talking. He froze. Then, if he was not mistaken, some muffled cries and growls. Whimpers.

  It was coming from the main room.

  It sounded like Gavin.

  Bobby felt the fur on his neck stand up. He looked up at Penny, who locked eyes with him. She had heard it, too. Something was very deeply wrong here. The beast inside told him to remain perfectly quiet. Move in to get a better look but to not make a goddamn sound. With his eyes, he told her to stay still. Penny moved over to put her hand on the neck of the stray Lab and nodded. All they needed was for an overexcited dog to ruin the element of surprise.

  Bobby peeked around the corner, and his beast nearly began to growl. He was using every fiber of restraint he had in his being. First, he saw Gavin, sitting in a chair, kicking and snarling at some invisible force holding him still. More alarmingly, there was Manny, standing next to Chastity, who was helplessly rooted to another chair. Bobby could see no visible ropes holding them in place, so there was obviously some dark magic going on here. Manny was holding a small pistol in his hand, angling it down Chastity’s hairline and toward the back of her skull.

  Manny was speechifying in true Disney villain fashion. He was talking about the purity of the wolf race.

  What the hell is going on here?

  “Gavin, man, your mind has been poisoned by the DuChamps clan,” he heard Manny saying. “Just because they own your friend Boudreaux doesn’t mean we all have to fall in line. I’m surprised your clan are so agreeable to mixing the blood of the wolves with humans, let alone another species of shifter.”

  So. Manny’s got some weird blood purity fixation.

  While watching their scene play out, Bobby had been holding himself back tenuously. The emotions and the alcohol, and now terror at this voodoo-practicing lunatic, were all working against his self-control. He needed just the right moment to strike.

  And then, he made the mistake of locking eyes with Chas.

  The terror had been gripping her as Manny traced lines around her face with the barrel of his handgun, like some kind of psychopath. Truth be told, Bobby hadn’t much cared for that chick’s behavior the other night, sloppy drunk and dancing on his bar. And he didn’t much like the idea of her hooking up casually with one of his best buddies. But they would deal with that later. For now, Bobby’s first priority was disabling Manny.

  Bobby was ready to lay waste to this asshole.

  Manny’s back was to him, and so was Gavin’s. But Chastity’s whole demeanor changed when she saw the wolf emerge from the back of the shop. Manny saw the change in her face and turned.

  That’s when Bobby lost the element of surprise. Manny’s eyes narrowed as the wolf bounded at him, and then he did the unthinkable. Pointed his .32 semi-automatic and fired.

  Chas screamed. Gavin howled as he watched the wolf get hit.

  But it wasn’t Bobby the wolf who got shot.

  It was Penny.

  Chapter 7

  Penny

  She knew Bobby had signaled her to stay in the back and not to wolf out again.

  But to hell with that plan. All her wolf senses were firing in full flight-or-fight mode. Penny never backed down from a fight before and she wasn’t about to start now.

  When she inched around the corner behind Bobby, she saw in a split second that Chas was smiling up at Bobby. Who could blame her? Penny imagined that Chas was relieved, no doubt, that the cavalry had arrived.

  Penny wolfed out without a second thought and dove with all her might at Manny.

  The shot rang out. Bobby and Penny both hit Manny at full force and knocked him to the floor. The gun went skittering. Bobby loomed over top of Manny, whose eyes now were wide and filled with terror. Penny fell to the floor, howling in pain.

  She tried to catch Bobby’s eye to let him know she was OK. But it didn’t matter if she had not been hit at all. She saw the primal rage in her wolf friend. His massive canine jaw was locked on to Manny’s neck like a rabid dog.

  Manny screamed and struggled. Doubtless, he was trying to shift into his full wolf as well, to make it a fair fight. But Bobby had him and he was not going to let go. Manny was helpless. A bleeding Penny ran at Bobby and tried to nudge him off of Manny. It was enough, they could restrain him until they called the police. But even at her strongest effort, she bounced right off of Bobby’s massive body. She was already weak from all the shifting back and forth; she had no power over him as a wolf.

  Penny shifted back into human form and felt the side of her face, felt the blood dripping. The pain was blinding and the blood was surging from her ear.

  “I’m OK, Bobby! Let go!” she cried, but it was too late.

  Bobby instinctively jerked Manny’s neck in his grip, as a wolf does with its prey, and in that moment everyone in the room heard the snap. Manny exhaled his last.

  Chapter 8

  Bobby

  Bobby, now in human form, stood over Manny’s lifeless body. Manny’s blood was all over his face and down his chest.

  This was bad.

  Things were supposed to go way differently today. He should be in Penny’s bed right now, or heading out of town to let her live her life. Instead, he had let the wolf take over—outside of the safety of a full-moon hunt under the cover of night and trees—and now someone was dead.

  Again.

  “Baby?”

  Bobby looked up and turned. Penny was standing behind him in the long tee-shirt down to her thighs, looking sexy as hell, even with a minor flesh wound, but there was just one problem. She was staring at him in horror.

  “Bobby, are you OK?”

  And then, Bobby did what he did best. He panicked and ran away.

  And knowing he was leaving behind an injured Penny, he hated himself all the more. Because the wound had occurred while she was in wolf form, it would heal quickly, but still he felt like an asshole.

  He could never go back now.

  He would have to leave New Orleans for good and let Penny move on without him.

  It was for the best.

  Chapter 9

  Penny

  They had never talked in depth about their past, and now the past had come to bite them all in the ass. Except now, it was worse than the last time.

  Gavin and Chas were freed of the voodoo spell as soon as Manny had died. Chas sat with Penny in the back office and applied first aid to her ear while Gavin went to fetch her something to wear from his apartment up the street. Chas explained to her what was going on, why they hadn’t been able to move. Manny had trapped them with a voodoo binding spell and was planning to murder Chastity over the fact that she was a feline shifter intruding on the wolf clan.

  “What did he care? He’s not even a part of our particular pack,” Penny said when Gavin returned with a pair of his board shorts and a belt.

  “I should’ve kept a closer eye on him. All this wedding bullshit—I mean, wedding activities—got me so distracted, I hired the first wolf shifter to walk in the door. Some of them are pretty hardcore, I guess. I feel like such an idiot.”

  “Don’t,” Penny said, patting Gavin’s hand. “We’ve all been off our game lately.”

  Gavin smiled weakly. “A lot of pairing off. A lot of parties. A little too much fun.”

  Penny closed her eyes to avoid the bloody mess on the floor. “Damn it, Bobby.”

  Gavin put his arm around his friend. “Penny, Bobby was defending us. Manny had been ready to kill one or both or all four of us in the name of shifter purity. There was exactly one way this day was going to end for him. Killing someone or someone killing him.”

  She shook her head and rubbed her palm on her brow. “The first time Bobby ever shifted in order to defend his friends from a human, it went badly, and he never dealt well with it. You remember, Gavin? I’m just worried that thi
s time will mess him up for good.”

  Gavin nodded and sighed as he put pressure on Penny’s ear. “We should get you to the hospital. If we let it magically heal, which it will, we will have less of a case to make for self-defense when we talk to the police.”

  She might have been embarrassed to pull on a pair of pants in their presence, but neither Chas nor Gavin were paying any attention to Penny.

  Gavin stood and hugged Chas so tightly her feet rose off the ground. Gavin’s eyes scrunched closed. Then he moved his head and kissed her tenderly on the lips. The pair of them opened their eyes and Penny saw it. The look on their faces was like there was nobody else in the room. It was true love. They had it. It had happened just within the last few days, but it was real.

  Fifteen-plus years side by side with Bobby and they still had not figured it out.

  Maybe it was just not meant to be.

  Chapter 10

  Penny

  Thirteen-year-old Penny and her best friend Bobby walked to school like any other day. It was a crisp September morning. About as crisp as any morning gets on the Delta. She wore her plaid pleated school uniform skirt and gray cardigan.

  She had just told Bobby she had gotten her period that morning for the first time. That’s how close friends they were.

  So when she told him that, something clicked. He changed. He walked closer to her. She thought she could sense him smelling her cardigan. Weird.

  Jimmy and Charlene, parents of their friend Ash, had been coaching Penny and Bobby and a gaggle of other friends on how to react when they first began to sense their inner beasts. None of them had yet wolfed out, but the Boudreaux family had taken them all under their wing after determining they had the “gift.”

  And they needed all the guidance they could get at the age of 13.

  The boys at school had been teasing Penny since she was 11, when her breasts developed early.

  Lately, they’d even been so bold as to start snapping girls’ bra straps. She hated that with a raging fire. Seriously, sometimes she thought she might snap and kill one of them. But Charlene had taught her that that was her human and wolf hormones getting mixed up and confused. So she breathed through it and got help from teachers whenever possible.

  But these days, with the teasing ramped up, Penny felt like a broken record every time she asked for help from a teacher.

  And so, Bobby had started taking matters into his own hands.

  That morning, Penny decided to have a difficult talk with him.

  “Listen, Bobby? Could you maybe stop punching everyone out when they snap my bra?”

  “I can’t help it,” he said with a glower.

  “You’re gonna get suspended.”

  “She’s right,” said Ash as they made their way up the street to the middle school. “My mom can help you control your anger.”

  Just then Gavin and Vann met up with them; they walked to school together in a cozy, familiar pack.

  “What’s she right about?” asked Gavin, sort of teasing.

  “Bobby’s going to get suspended if he can’t control his knuckle sandwiches,” said Ash.

  Vann licked his lips. “Yum. You said sandwiches.”

  “I’m with Bobby,” Gavin said. “You need extra muscle, just say the word, bro.”

  Penny hugged her cardigan tightly around herself. “You’re all idiots.”

  This pack of wolves all came from different backgrounds. Some had parents who were shifters. Some had parents who were not shifters at all. Others had parents who were absentee. They had all found each other for the same reason, though some of the parents were in denial about their canine proclivities. Whatever their differences, they were connected forever.

  Later that day, Penny did not get her bra strap snapped by a boy. Instead, during lunch break, something much, much worse happened.

  Todd Connors, star middle school quarterback, crashed into Penny. Her lunch tray went skidding, his pizza toppled to the floor. In the commotion, Todd reached out and blatantly grab Penny’s breasts as she bent over to pick up spilled food. It was stupidly obvious, and everyone saw it.

  All it took was a shriek from Penny and it was like a light switched on inside Bobby. He was no longer in control. The wolf was now calling the shots.

  The screams—from Penny, from Todd, and from the other random girls in the room—bounced off the walls like an echo chamber and seemed to heighten Bobby’s protective instinct all the more profoundly.

  When the wolf’s massive teeth sank into the quarterback’s shoulder, that was the end of Todd’s football-throwing career.

  Watching Bobby shift for the first time into his wolf shape had triggered something in Ash, Gavin and Vann all at once. Earlier that morning, they may have bragged about being able to control their wolf selves, but now the truth was laid bare. None of them knew what they were doing with the power they had.

  The three male wolves all surrounded the scene. Ash, Gavin and Vann bared their fangs and stood there snarling, daring any of the other jocks to come close to try to rescue Todd.

  At some point, Bobby stopped clenching his jaws on Todd’s shoulder. He glanced up and saw Penny, watching him. She had not shifted. Human Penny was staring at him, her mouth open, her eyes wide in shock and terror.

  In response to Penny’s reaction, Bobby let Todd go.

  Bobby

  He knew he should have stayed to make sure Todd was all right. But he left. He took off and ran out of the school and disappeared for days. Nobody could find him, including the police.

  While Bobby was gone, the Boudreaux family swooped in and cleaned up the mess. Penny, Gavin, Vann, Bobby and Ash were all pulled out of school. Jeff’s parents were paid off in a settlement out of court and agreed not to sue the school. The rest of the children who had witnessed the event were told that a hallucinogen had been slipped into everyone’s food that day and that the person responsible had been dealt with. Anybody whose families didn’t buy the hallucination story was paid off handsomely.

  Penny eventually found Bobby hiding in the trees behind her house one night.

  She had come outside when she had first felt the urge to shift. It had been a full moon. She had just been about to corner her first rabbit when Bobby, in wolf form, pounced first.

  Bobby saw the look again from Penny. Horror, betrayal. Bobby nosed the little rabbit carcass over to Penny and felt so ashamed he shifted back to his human form right then and there.

  But that had been the wrong move, apparently. After watching Bobby shift again and watching expectantly for her to eat the rabbit, Penny instead pulled a Bobby. She took off running and he didn’t see her again until the next morning.

  They all gathered at Jimmy and Charlene’s estate to begin their homeschool education for the next few years. It took weeks before Penny and Bobby could look each other in the eye again.

  Over time, things got better. They learned to hunt as a group and eventually came to enjoy the shift.

  At the age of 16, Charlene hosted a cotillion at the Boudreauxs’ country estate, specifically for shifter kids. Penny’s father even showed up to present her to society. She was a real, authentic debutante.

  At the dance that followed the presentation of all the 16-year-old girls, Bobby danced with Penny. He had wanted to kiss her so badly. He thought maybe she wanted him to kiss her, but every time he thought he might dive in, all he could see in his mind was the terrified 13-year-old Penny staring at him, the monster.

  At the age of 17, the wolf pack enrolled in public high school. Charlene and all the other parents agreed it was time to teach the children to mix with other kids to prepare them for the real world. Although they stuck together like glue, Penny did not go to prom with Bobby as her date. He wanted to ask, but he hadn’t. He still desperately hated himself and loved her. So, as he saw it, she deserved better. The violence that he had done in front of her—the mess he had made of everything—would keep them apart. He knew she would only ever see a monster when she l
ooked in his eyes.

  Chapter 11

  Penny

  Bobby was heading down the stairs from his walk-up apartment, halfway buttoning up a fresh, clean shirt, when Penny found him. There was a large leather bag over his shoulder.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “Penny. I…”

  “Save it,” she said. “Where are you going? Running away? Why?”

  “You know why.”

  The staircase was dark, but a light from the window on the landing slashed a streetlight beam across Bobby’s face. He looked tired and drawn.

  “I have some money saved up. I’m leaving town. I was hoping to leave before you could try to talk me into staying. How’s your ear?”

  “It’s fine. Nothing like the time we took down that gator. That animal nearly got my whole paw.”

  Bobby chuckled. “I remember.”

  “You didn’t run away that time,” she said.

  “I can’t stop fucking up. I can’t be around you anymore. I’m just gonna drag you down. Every time I look at you, I want you in my bed, but then I remember that kid from middle school and it all comes flooding back and I have to take a step back. I want you. I’m bonded to you, and I’m bound by Wolf Code to protect you. But at the same time, I can’t be around you. It’s fucking torture.”

  “So, your solution is to run away?” There was a tear falling down Penny’s cheek.

  “Fuck me. I’m such an asshole. But what am I supposed to do? Make us both suffer?”

  “No!” she choked. “You just have to let me in and let me help you through it. We can fix you. Together.”