Just Like Animals: A Werelock Evolution Series Standalone Novel

by Hettie Ivers

  “But you cheated on me.”

  “And you cheated on me for how many months, Gregg? With how many women?”

  “Say, that’s quite a lot of messages you’re racking up there,” Mike broke in with a nod at the phone in Gregg’s hand that was continually going off. “Maybe you should check them,” he suggested with a smile. “Make sure there’s nothing important happening. Oh, that reminds me, Bethy. I think I heard your phone buzzing a few times back in the bedroom as well.”

  Mike pulled my phone from thin air—literally—and handed it to me. Gregg did a double take when he witnessed it. I felt a sense of impending dread in my gut, knowing it was time to face the music.

  Too afraid to check my emails, I glanced over my many text messages first. After scrolling through countless texts from Kylie from last night pleading for updates and demanding dick pics, I got to more serious ones from her from this morning where she was asking if I was okay, telling me that what had happened with Gregg was for the best and that she’d be over with wine and chocolate when my on-call shift was over. There were confused texts from Jessie and multiple frantic texts from my mom and my dad, saying that they would be by the hospital later to check on me. Stranger still, there were a handful of texts from my associates at the hospital telling me to take the day off, assuring me that my shift would be covered. I even had a text from Granny Jean. It was a single eye-roll emoji with the hashtag #basic.

  Not quite the horrified reactions I was anticipating from people who had been forwarded raunchy sex vids of me.

  “What … the hell?” Gregg’s voice was a breathless whisper, as if the air had been knocked out of him.

  I glanced up to find him shifting anxiously on his feet, his wide eyes focused on his phone screen.

  “No, no, no. This can’t be happening. This isn’t real,” he said a bit louder, before yelling, “What the fuck? This isn’t real.” He began turning in aimless circles. “That’s not the email I sent. That’s not the video I attached. This can’t be happening to me.”

  His face had paled; even the blotchy parts were shades lighter. His hands were shaking as he clicked and scrolled frantically on his phone—that was still going off. “Who did this? I never sent this! Where the hell did that video come from?”

  He’d sent the wrong video?

  I went to my inbox and saw that I had hundreds of unread messages—all of them replies to an original message with the subject line: I regret to inform you the McIntyre - Garrett wedding has been cancelled. I scrolled down until I found the original message sent by Gregg and opened it to find a video attachment with a freeze-frame image of Gregg putting bills in a stripper’s thong.

  Never would I have imagined I’d be overjoyed to see such an image of my ex-fiancé. But my heart felt lighter than it had since Gregg’s arrival as I double-clicked on the video and a montage of Gregg cheating on me played out across my phone screen.

  There were multiple video clips of Gregg getting lap dances, several of him making out in bars with different women, one of him having sex with someone else at his office, and another of him having sex inside his car in his office building’s parking garage. Some of the images were grainy and hard to see, but they were clearly of Gregg and women who weren’t me. The montage appeared to have been assembled from various surveillance videos.

  In my elation, I emitted a watery giggle as I turned and beamed at Raul next to me, babbling, “It’s not us. My life’s not ruined. He didn’t send out the elevator sex tape. Or the one of us in the foyer.”

  “He tried,” was Raul’s stony reply, his eyes on my unraveling ex.

  “I have to destroy those tapes,” I processed aloud as the sobering reality that they were still out there hit me.

  “Already done,” Mike said with certainty.

  Gregg’s head jerked up from his phone at Mike’s assertion. “You,” he accused, his wild eyes those of a trapped, desperate animal as they glared first at Mike, and then at Raul. “You guys did this. You ruined my life. Posing as a bunch of fucking babysitters!”

  Mike and Stephen burst out laughing, and it occurred to me I hadn’t seen Stephen crack a smile before now, much less laugh.

  “This one’s sharp, Bethy,” Mike said, dropping both the British accent and the towel on his head at last. “Wherever did you find him?”

  “Who are you?” Gregg demanded, his eyes darting back and forth between the three of them. “Who hired you to do this to me? Bethany, these guys set you up. This is a corporate sabotage scheme. And you fell for it.”

  My jaw dropped open. This was somehow my fault that he’d sent the wrong sex tapes to our entire guest list?

  “Ah, Greggie with too many g’s,” Mike said with a sigh, “you’re gonna wish we were only part of a corporate sabotage scheme.”

  “Now can I change my outfit?” Stephen asked on a whine.

  I didn’t hear Raul or Mike answer him, but Stephen snarled ferociously and transformed into a giant brown wolf.

  Instinctively, I screamed and scrambled behind Raul’s back.

  Gregg tripped over his own feet and fell backward, landing on his ass. He quickly sprang back up again and darted for the door when the brown wolf snapped his mammoth jaws at him.

  Before Gregg could reach the door, Mike was somehow standing in front of it, his yellow wolf eyes flashing menacingly. “Wolf got your tongue?” he taunted.

  I didn’t understand what Mike meant by that, but then Gregg’s hands flew to his throat and he spun around, his jaw opening and shutting, his mouth moving to form words, yet failing to make a sound.

  “No one objects to me disabling his vocal chords, right?” Mike looked to Raul for approval, commenting with disdain, “I can’t stand the sound of a coward squealing. And I believe we’ve all heard enough bullshit out of this one that we can skip his final words. It’s bad enough reading them from his mind.”

  The brown wolf growled at Gregg, causing him to jump and scream soundlessly. My ex-fiancé looked like he might cry as his head whipped back and forth between the giant wolf snarling at him from the living room floor and Mike—with his scary glowing wolf eyes—blocking the only exit.

  Gregg’s panic-stricken eyes cut to me, where I stood peeking out from behind Raul’s back—and entering my own state of shock—as I watched the disturbing scene play out. Gregg mouthed, “Help.”

  “I’m afraid she can’t help you,” Mike told him. “And there’s no need to mouth or pantomime; we can hear your thoughts loud and clear. We know exactly what a sorry sack you are.”

  They could hear thoughts?

  They could disable a person’s vocal chords.

  The brown wolf transformed back into Stephen—dressed in the slacks and T-shirt he’d been wearing earlier when he’d come in with Kitsune.

  “The truth is, we’re not exactly mannies,” Stephen revealed the obvious. “And now that you know about us, we can’t let you live.”

  Slowly, my bloodless fingers released their grip on the back of Raul’s T-shirt I’d unconsciously been clutching as it dawned on me the extent of danger Gregg and I were actually in.

  Also, I realized Raul was growling—a lot.

  He hadn’t touched or so much as glanced at me since I’d ducked behind his back to get away from Stephen in wolf form. As I cautiously inched around from behind his broad shoulders to get a better view of him in profile, I saw that his eyes were as feral as Mike’s and Stephen’s, and his face was a mask of murderous rage—aimed squarely at Gregg.

  “Sure, we do some babysitting here and there,” Mike expounded, waving his hand about. “But we’re more like an elite werewolf special-ops unit. Maybe think of us as a lethal, supernatural version of the Baby-Sitters Club. But instead of organizing daycare camps for kids, we spend our time warring with enemy packs and paving the way for a next-level breed of super-werewolves.”

  This was so much worse than Raul being part of the Brazilian mafia. He was in the werewolf mafia.

  I still had my
phone in my hand. Did 9-1-1 accept texts? What could the police possibly do against three huge werewolves with the ability to poof places and immobilize speech?

  “But enough chitchat, eh?” Mike smirked at Gregg, who looked about ready to piss himself. “I think my boss wants a word with you.”

  Mike’s attention transferred to Raul. “Think you can finish this without shifting and making a mess of his entrails all over my step-cousin’s living room? If we don’t wrap it up and get out of here in the next twenty-six minutes, we’re going to have more minds on our hands to erase.”

  What?

  “I won’t need that long.”

  Faster than I could blink, Raul was in front of Gregg, his hand wrapped around his throat, choking him.

  My own breath left me, and for a moment I froze—too petrified of what I was seeing to move a muscle.

  “Let him talk,” Raul said to Mike. “I’ve decided I do want to hear his final words after all.”

  Upon Raul’s directive, Gregg began making terrible gurgling and choking sounds in the back of his throat, wheezing pitiably over what little air supply Raul’s hand around his neck would allow.

  “Stop it.”

  The words left me, but they were so faint and breathless in my paralyzed state that I barely heard them myself.

  Gregg’s tongue wagged aimlessly in his open mouth, his hands yanking desperately at Raul’s wrist.

  Holy shit. This was real. This was serious.

  “What did you say?” Raul mocked him, tilting his ear toward Gregg’s increasingly purple-red face. “Was there a final, burning question you had for me? Wait—did you just ask why? Are you serious? Nah, that wasn’t it. Who? Really? That’s what you’re going to go with—still asking who I am?”

  “Wow. I do believe that’s what he’s trying to say,” Mike confirmed with a laugh.

  Raul and Stephen started laughing as well as the three of them shared a look, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how any of this was funny.

  “What a dumb final question,” Stephen assessed. “How disappointing after so much set-up.”

  Mike gave a nod of agreement. “Even why would’ve been better.”

  Raul shook his head in amusement at my suffocating ex-fiancé in his unforgiving grasp. “Well, Gregg, some might say that I’m a nobody babysitter who has just hit pay dirt. A loser club rat who got lucky with your girl last night.” Raul’s laughing countenance abruptly fell away, and he leaned in to whisper, “But they’re wrong. Know why? Because she was never your girl. She was always mine,” he seethed. “You’re the one who got lucky. And now that luck has run out.”

  What—what did he mean by that?

  “Take a good look at my girl, Gregg, because it’s the last time you’ll ever see her.”

  Oh, God, he was going to kill him.

  I had to do something.

  Gregg’s eyes bugged out as Raul raised him off the ground by his throat, growling, “Who am I? I’m the guy who worked his ass off his whole life, the one who earned every damn thing he has—the scrapper kid who had to claw his way up from the bottom of the food chain while watching assholes like you get handed everything you wanted in life.”

  13

  Raul

  “Raul, stop! You’re going to kill him. Stop!”

  I heard her words, felt Bethany’s fists pounding frantically against my back and shoulders. But it wasn’t enough to dim the red haze enveloping me.

  Ten years. For ten years I’d left her alone—the woman I wanted most—in order to protect her. I had thought that I was doing right by Bethany in doing so. And this asshole—the man she had chosen to be with and commit to for life—had taken her for granted. He had betrayed her trust. He’d attempted to shame her to all of her family and friends.

  He’d made her cry.

  He deserved to die. Painfully.

  “He can’t breathe, Raul. Stop it! You’re going to crush his windpipe.”

  Arrogant prick had thought to claim the woman who was mine. And he’d hurt her—my Bethy.

  “Stop him,” she appealed to Mike and Stephen. “Raul, don’t do this! Please let go of him. Please, I’m begging you.”

  The scent of Bethany’s fear hit me. Along with that of her tears. She had moved to my side and was practically hanging from my bicep now, using all of her body weight in her attempt to get me to stop choking her worthless ex-fiancé—who had just lost consciousness.

  Reluctantly, I forced myself to let him go. He dropped to the floor with a thud, collapsing in an unconscious heap.

  Bethany released my bicep and dove to the floor after him.

  I wasn’t having it. I swung her back up again and into my arms despite her struggling.

  “Let me go—I have to help him.”

  They were the wrong words for her to say to me. I was never letting her go again. And I was not letting her near that asshole to help him.

  “He’s fine.” It was the truth. More or less. Gregg with too many g’s would live. Not that he deserved to.

  “He’s unconscious!” She was still flailing and struggling in my arms. And crying. Her voice was shrill, hysterical. “He needs medical attention. Raul, you have to let me help him. Please.”

  “I said he’s fine,” I snapped callously at the woman whose happiness and well-being I had sworn to myself ten years ago I would always place before my own.

  Because as much as Bethany’s tearful pleading gutted me, her loyalty and concern for a man who didn’t deserve it from her awoke a dormant monster of bitterness within me that was as dark and ugly as it was childish and irrational.

  Even my own fated mate chose another over me. A man who had cheated on her and lied to her.

  She couldn’t begin to understand what I had sacrificed for her safety over the past ten years—the ongoing pain my wolf had endured by staying away.

  I could barely see straight as I carted her from the living room, barking orders in Portuguese over my shoulder so that Bethany wouldn’t understand them as I told Mike to make sure the bastard lived, but to leave his mind to me.

  I wasn’t done with Gregg yet.

  Be gentle! Be gentle, my wolf howled at me. The rage that had me in its grip thinned as I realized I’d carried Bethany into her bedroom and I was on top of her, pinning her to the mattress. And she was freaking out. Thrashing beneath me, she was babbling a mile a minute through her tears, alternating between berating and pleading with me.

  My mate. Was. Terrified.

  And it was all my fault. I’d fucked things up royally. Again.

  “I won’t tell anyone anything, I swear. You don’t have to kill me. We can pretend this never happened. You and your men can walk away. I never saw any of you—I promise. Swear on my life. Please? Damnit, Raul, how can you do this?” she sobbed. “What’s happened to you? How can you kill me like I mean nothing to you?”

  I blinked. My brain struggled to process her words as my emotions fought to reset. Bethy thought I would kill her?

  “Kill you?” My voice was soft. It felt even worse to say those words out loud. Like a knife in my throat. “How could—how can you even think that I—?”

  I was acting like an asshole, that’s how.

  “I’d never harm you.” I felt hollow inside as I said it. But I said it again and again, along with anything else I could think of to reassure her. “I promise you’re safe with me.” I kissed her tear-streaked face. “Always and forever safe.”

  I rolled us over so that she was on top. My fingers combed through her hair; my hands ran up and down her back and arms. But I felt helpless to soothe her as she continued to cry and blather more promises about not saying anything to anyone.

  “S—swear I won’t tell anyone you’re a—a werewolf … subspecies,” she said with a sniffle.

  I wanted to flay myself.

  She didn’t understand. She wasn’t getting it. And it was my fault. For waiting too long. For pushing things too fast.

  For fucking it al
l up like I always did.

  “Bethy, I’m sorry I scared you back there. I lost my temper. But you don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m not going to hurt you. Not ever.”

  “What about Gregg?” she wailed.

  “I won’t hurt him, either. Anymore,” I appended. Not physically, at least.

  She let out a little gasp. “Because he’s already dead?”

  “No. No, he’s not dead. I told you he wasn’t dead.” Didn’t she believe me? Eh, fuck, why would she?

  “You said he was fine. You never said he wasn’t dead.”

  She was too smart to be mated to me. The fates had made a mistake. “Okay, you’re right. But when I said he was fine, I meant that he was alive—that he would live.” I was sick of discussing that S.O.B. “Listen, let’s talk about this later. Right now we need to get you back to Argentina. I have a doctor there who—”

  “Back?” Her brow pinched as she looked down at me, her glassy eyes red, her blonde hair in disarray. “I’ve never been.” She paused, her frown intensifying the longer she stared at me. She seemed to be trying to gauge whether or not I was serious. I knew from her heart rate the moment she realized that I was. Dead serious. “I—I can’t travel out of town, much less abroad, Raul. I’m on call this weekend. Besides, I’d have to get updated inoculations—”

  “Sweetheart, I bit you a little harder than I meant to last night.” Sometimes honesty was the best approach.

  “You mean this bite?” Her fingers flew to the initial bite I’d made and had subsequently repeated on the side of her throat.

  “Yes, that one.” As well as the ones on her thigh, shoulder, and breast. Often partial honesty was a better approach. “I have the best doctor in the world in my employ at my home in Bariloche. I want Rafe to take a look at your neck for me, okay?”

  “There’s no need. It’s totally fine.” She’d begun shaking her head continuously. “I’ll just inject some antibiotic if it’s not better in a few days.” Her wobbly smile was strained.

  The scent of her fear permeated the air, and my stomach roiled as I realized Mike was right: I was going to have to take her to Bariloche by force. She was too confused. Too frightened of me to go willingly now.