Mated to the Wilde Bear

Chapter 16: Laurel

Laurel let herself into her apartment as silently as she could. The sliding glass door was already unlocked, and she sighed in relief, glad she wouldn’t have to bother with the noisy deadbolt on the front door. She only vaguely remembered leaving the house earlier. Her fox had been in a frenzy from too many weeks of not shifting, and she’d almost blacked out when she’d finally shifted.

She couldn’t even remember if she’d undressed first or where she’d stashed her clothes to retrieve them now. She hoped it wasn’t an outfit she liked.

She didn’t bother with light as she crept across the tiny dining area she shared with her roommate. Kelly was a light sleeper, and the last thing she needed now was a bunch of questions about why she was creeping inside after one am. Kelly was friendly enough, but she was also Laurel’s landlord, and she was a “no bullshit” kind of girl. Laurel had met her when she’d come to town for the interview with DOT last year. Kelly had been working in HR, doing background checks for new hires. These days, she’d graduated to working for a local bounty hunter’s office downtown that had an owner known for being anti-shifter. Even though Kelly had never said anything one way or the other about the subject, she was not someone Laurel wanted to cross.

Besides, Kelly was bound to have questions, including why Laurel was currently dressed only in a size XL men’s tee. Not a conversation Laurel was dying to have. After everything that had happened tonight, she just wanted a shower and bed. She’d sort out Xavier and everything he’d said tomorrow.

“Ow!” Her foot came down hard on something sharp, and she yelled out before she could stop it.

A second later, the hall light came on, and Kelly appeared, disheveled from sleep and wielding a wooden bat. “What the…?” Kelly didn’t relax at the sight of a familiar face like Laurel expected. Instead, she switched her shocked gaze from Laurel’s face to the apartment around them.

For a split second, Laurel stared in shock too, too distraught to understand. The apartment was trashed. Utterly and completely. Books and shelves all littered the living room floor. A floor lamp lay on

its side barring the front door, and the bulb shattered into tiny pieces across the entryway.

Beside her, the kitchen chairs had all been upended and lay upside down and sideways on the tile floor, which was covered in something white. Flour? Sugar? She ran a toe through it to check, but red liquid stained it and she examined her foot closer.

Blood.

She yanked a shard of something sharp from her foot and held it up. The lamp that used to sit by the back door. The end table it sat on was now on its side. Above it, the window had shattered, leaving tiny shards of glass in a pile on the windowsill.

“Oh my god,” Kelly shrieked. “Were we robbed?”

Laurel opened her mouth, ready to speculate that very idea along with her friend, but then dread washed over as she realized what had really happened. Her fox. In her panic over shifting against her will, it had done all but tear the walls down.

She hadn’t done damage like this since she was a kid. Seventeen, to be exact. Her parent’s house. It was the last time she’d seen her parents. But even then, it hadn’t been this bad. Everything that could possibly be broken was. And it was all her fault. What was she going to say to Kelly?

“I think we—”

“Ssh!” Kelly crouched, knees bent, as she turned left, then right. “We need to call the police. We can’t touch anything, we—” She broke off, and her eyes narrowed as she zeroed in on something across the kitchen floor. Content property of NôvelDra/ma.Org.

She crept toward it, tiptoeing over the flour, and Laurel held her breath.

“What the hell?” Kelly demanded as she bent over something. “What is this?”

Laurel could see it from here. She already knew.