Page 1 of Baiting the Werewolf

Chapter One

Wesley

“Your voice is breaking. Are you in your car?” Logan’s deep voice fills the car.

I swallow, my hands tightening on the steering wheel. “Nope. Just at home, wistfully looking out the window, listening to Sam Smith songs.” I swerve the car into a narrow road. It makes a very dramatic sound. Then someone honks loudly. “He just gets it, you know?” I shout to cover up the noise. I’m an alright driver at the best of times. Following someone through busy weekday traffic is a bit too aspirational for me.

“Uh… okay,” Logan says like he doesn’t believe me but is willing to let it pass. “But was the guy really worth pulling out Sam? He was at best Olivia Rodrigo.”

My jaw hangs open. “He was the love of my life, Logan.” The car in front of me makes another right. I slow down to give myself some time to think.

I’m breaking a ton of laws here. Not the ones that’ll land my ass in jail, but definitely a few that are the foundation of every liberal society. Ones that keep it from collapsing entirely and ensure the world doesn’t descend into pure chaos.

Can I ever come back from this?

“You knew him for three months,” Logan’s exasperated but fond voice adds to my guilt.

The distance between the turn and my car disappears with every second. “When you know, you know,” I say, ignoring the feeling of unease growing inside.

“Hey, are you alright?" Logan asks. His tone is one of those serious ones he only brings out when he’s really concerned. Ugh, the guy knows me too well!

And that’s exactly why I have to do this. So I take the turn at the intersection into the narrow path the other car just disappeared into. Then, suddenly, I’m on a dark path lined with dense trees blocking the setting sun. I slow down when the asphalt gets rough, the tires bumping over patches of uneven ground.

I clear my throat and steel myself. “Of course, I’m not alright. I just got my heart stomped on,” I say, only half joking.

Look, it’s never fun to be broken up with. But when I texted Logan three crying emojis, and he didn’t show up at my door within fifteen minutes with provisions, I had other, more urgent things to worry about. My best friend was hiding something from me. And it’s time I got to the bottom of it.

“He didn’t even like Sabrina,” Logan says, sounding a bit distracted.

“He is deathly allergic to cats.”

“He made fun of your ice cream choices.”

“Uh…” Okay, he got me there. The guy was a douchebag. And he was not allergic to cats. I only learned that nice little fact when I found his secret Instagram account filled with pictures of him with his girlfriend, and you guessed it… their cat! But I’m not telling Logan that. He already has plenty of fodder for mocking my choices in men.

“See? You’ll be fine. But I’ll be over tonight, okay? I need to go right now—”

“Are you out?” I ask before he hangs up. One last chance. That’s all he gets to come clean as I follow his car deeper into the forest.

“Nah, you know me. Just sitting in front of my boring laptop in my boring office. Listen, I have to go, Margaret is making me try her new muffin recipe.”

I let out a breath, my shoulders slumping. I don’t know what disappoints me more. The fact that he’s lying again or that he’d defile muffins for his sick attempt. “Right.”

“I’ll see you tonight, okay?” he asks, his voice a little uncertain.

I blow out a breath. “Okay.”

“Love you,” he says before hanging up.

My breath hitches like it does every time he casually throws those words at me. If I grab the steering wheel any tighter, I’ll have permanent spike marks on my hands from the wheel cover Logan jokingly made me put on and I never removed. But as always, I don’t let the words burrow in. My heart skips a beat anyway.

We are just friends. Have been for decades. Probably since the day we were born, only a day apart.

And then everything changed three years ago. One day we were catching up on the latest episode of This Is Us, casually lying on my couch, my feet on his lap. A week later, he canceled our six-year-standing plan with one lazy-ass text.

Things are crazy at work. Have to stay back.

I swallowed my frustration and tried to be supportive. Logan had finally found work he was enjoying after not holding onto a job for longer than a week. I wanted to be happy for him.