The first part—the animal part—no longer made the wolf in me put his hackles up and growl, which was a relief.

If wolves could roll their eyes, mine would do so. Lou isn’t Eva. Lou wouldn’t hurt you. Lou would never muzzle the wolf.

Lou wasn’t my stepmother. My wolf had picked that up much faster than me. Now that we’d both come to terms with that part of Lou’s scent, though, we were left to focus on the rest of it. And my wolf? Well, he liked the rest of it a lot. Lou smelled good. Really good. And because of my bang-up idea of trying to reassociate Lou’s scent with something comforting and safe, Lou now smelled like home.

Which would still be okay if I wasn’t attracted to her and if I didn’t think dating a roommate would be too complicated right now.

But I was. And I did.

And it wasn’t helping me untangle this schedule. The nightmares keeping me from sleep weren’t helping, either. Maybe I’d stop by Wicked Brews on my way home to see if they had any magical concoctions that would help.

It was well into the evening by the time I left Wicked Brews, purchase in hand, and made my way back to the house. I had to be at the kitchen Jen and Lara rented for prep work early so I could put in a few hours for them before my shift at the tattoo shop. The food truck didn’t do breakfast, thankfully, but I still had to be there at six to help prep for lunch. Then straight from there to the tattoo shop by eleven, which was when they opened.

I desperately needed a good night’s sleep. Food prep involved using a lot of sharp things like knives and I wanted to keep all of my fingers where they belonged. My phone vibrated in my pocket and I checked the screen. Zoey’s name flashed and my thumb hovered over it, trying to decide if I should accept or decline. I hadn’t talked to her except for the odd text or two to tell her I was okay.

My chest ached and I rubbed a hand over my sternum. I missed Zoey. There was a big hole in me she used to fill and I felt like any day now I was going to fall into it and not come out. But I was still a mess, and I was also driving—she would give me shit for talking and driving, and I hated speakerphone.

I declined the call, even though I disliked doing it. I’d call her back when I got home.

It didn’t escape my notice that I didn’t miss Sid nearly as much. I really hadn’t loved her the way I thought I had. That probably meant a good amount of my hurt was wounded pride more than anything. Which didn’t exactly make me feel any better.

I got home, set my sleep draughts on the counter, and opened the fridge, thinking to grab a quick bite before calling Zoey back. With how unstable I’d been, it wasn’t a good idea to add hungry on top of that. Hungry people got hangry. Hungry werewolves—well, no one wanted to deal with a hungry werewolf.