Chapter 103

Zane POV

I didn’t particularly want to do it, but I read through the comments Travis had sent me a link to.

Blorp69: Grace, do you know what destiny is?

GinnyWolf: OK, seriously, @Blorp69, you’re disgusting and we’re all tired of it. Stop it now.

KinSixy: You re all pretty gross. What kind of fandom is this, anyway?

JaneSillwell: Has everyone seen her blue dress? [photo]

Blorp69: Fuck you and your mother in a pile of shit @GinnyWolf

2BFree: Don’t let Blorp represent the fandom.

GinnyWolf: That’s enough out of you, @Blorp69.

OGDIG: I bet Blorp lives with his mother.

Blorp69: Fuck you in the ass @OGDIG.

GinnyWolf: OK, I did a little digging, and Blorp69 lives at 458 Gordon St. Who else is going to go with me to kick his ass?

GinnyWolf: Nothing to say, @Blorg69?Maybe you’d like to go fuck yourself?

“Well, you look ready to murder someone,” Travis said as he came in with Sarah at his side.

“Pretty much,” I said, unsurprised Travis had shown up in person. He had a great knack for knowing when I was about to get serious.

They came in and took their seats in front of my desk. I could tell they’d been conferring.

“I have a suggestion,” Sarah said. Her no-nonsense tone really made me want to jump her bones. I reminded myself to focus on the issue at hand. This was about Grace’s stalker.

“I realize the werewolf way would be to kill him,” she said. “But, well, the house is owned by Mr. and Mrs. Howser.”

“So?”

“So, he’s probably some stupid kid, and he’s probably human.” Sarah shrugged. “He a dumb-ass teenager who thought he’d stir up some trouble online. I don’t think a death sentence is the answer.”

“He’s been making inappropriate comments about my daughter.”

“And he’s a kid.” Sarah frowned at me. “Werewolf puberty kicks in around nine years or so. For humans, it’s more like twelve, and I hate to admit it, but human males in their mid-teens are absolute morons.”

I frowned at her, hardly believing what she was saying. “Are you suggesting I just let this go?”

“Of course not,” she said. “But if werewolves and humans are to live together in harmony, as both of us want, it can’t all just be humans making compromises. This was probably some brain-dead little teenager looking for attention. Killing him isn’t going to make anything better.”

“I’d feel better,” I said, and I meant it. Just the thought that someone out there was talking about how Grace was “so pretty” and needed someone else to take care of her brought out the most primal of my instincts.

Sarah frowned at me. “It’s a human teenager, and I think human justice should prevail, or why should humans accept things when werewolf justice prevails? This is an idiot kid posting something stupid online. Killing him, from a human perspective, is a gross violation of justice.”

I thought about that and admitted to myself that humans were still something of a mystery to me.

“So, a fifteen-year-old human male shouldn’t be punished because he’s hormonal?”

“Of course he should be punished,” she said. “But not put to death.”

“What would a human court mete out as punishment?”

“Some community service, some probation,” she said. “A punishment that would get him to think about how stupid what he did was. Something that still allows him to grow up and be better.”

“If he were a werewolf—”

“He’s not,” she said. “He’s a dumb, lame-ass human teenager who wanted attention. He’s not a wolf who could transform and kill people with his anti-social behavior.”

“And what’s the human solution?”

“A human court will make him go to therapy and monitor his real-life and online activity. He’ll be evaluated for the danger he poses to society.”

“That’s all?” I demanded.

Sarah seemed a loss for words for a moment, and then she nodded. “Humans consider teenagers dumb because they are dumb, and, as I said, they’re not the threat to the pack that teenage wolves are. I realize that werewolves have to pounce on any sign of a wolf’s anti-social behavior, but with humans, well, they’re given more than one chance to prove themselves.”

“He was talking about Grace sexually,” I growled. It was horrific.

She nodded. “And he got all the attention he was looking for and more.” She put up a hand. “And hey, if I’m wrong and he’s actually an adult doing this crap, you should eat his liver while I applaud. But if I’m right, can we pursue this through human channels?”

Not liking it all, I agreed. However, in the end, she was right.

“Blorp69” was indeed a pimply-faced human fourteen-year-old who broke down crying when Travis knocked on his parents’ door. With my blessing, Travis turned him over to the authorities, and his parents just about pissed themselves trying to apologize.

I found myself wishing the rogue who had attacked Grace had been so accommodating. And when Travis described the scene, I found myself actually feeling sorry for the kid.

That evening, I walked the grounds. Sarah was reading to the children, and I had already kissed them goodnight. It was one of those calm, dry nights when the moon, though not full, was bright in the sky as though it were showing the stars how professionals did it.

I had reached one of Mavis’s vegetable gardens when my skin began to itch. In a moment, I had left my clothes in a pile and transformed into my fur.

Yes, that was better. Things were always so much simpler when I was a wolf. I was glad not to have killed Grace’s online stalker; he was just some stupid kid who didn’t know any better, and the system would now get him the counseling he needed.

I raised me head and sniffed the air. I scented my daughters, Sarah, Mavis, and a few of the workers Mavis oversaw. Then I growled low in my throat. There was a honey badger on the property.

Honey badgers are not native to my territory, or even my territory’s continent, and anyway, I recognized this particular honey badger’s smell. With a growl, I followed the scent through the garden and then down the bowling lawn and then through the pathways toward the villa and the garage before I found the damn thing sleeping in a burrow it had dug almost seven feet long.

I pulled the nasty creature out of its den with my teeth—it stank to high heaven—endured the tantrum it threw, and then chased it back over my property line toward its owner’s land. I’d have to have a talk with them in the morning.

Standing there on my paws, I thought about what it meant to be a wolf in love with a human woman. What would I need to give up to be with her, and what would she need to give up to be with me?

Was there even a chance we could make it work?