Free Bitten 2 by A.J. Colby

edge of the counter to savor the rich flavor of the dark coffee. While Alyssa’s choice of companions left a lot to be desired, her taste in coffee turned out to be excellent.
    Yawning wide, I ran a hand back through my hair, frowning when my fingers hit a tangle. It wasn’t until I caught Alyssa’s gaze lingering on the scar across my belly that I became aware of the way the camisole rode up to expose a wide swath of my stomach and the lingering evidence of the attack that had left me a werewolf. She’d seen it before, but I understood how it could give someone pause. It was an ugly, lurid thing that had never faded to the faint white of the few scars I’d had before contracting lycanthropy. It was a permanent reminder of how Samson had irrevocably changed my life.
    Looking away as though she was embarrassed at having been caught staring, she turned her attention to setting a couple of cinnamon rolls on a cookie sheet to warm in the oven. Reaching around her I swept a finger through a dollop of cold icing left in the container.
    “I made a couple calls and set up a meeting for you with the pack master. The details are on the table,” she said, gesturing to a notepad on the kitchen table.
    Sucking the icing off my finger, I shuffled over to the table and slid into an empty seat. Pulling the notebook towards me, I glanced over her delicate script, and then up at the clock mounted on the wall.
    “Is that clock fast?” I asked. I appreciated her help, but with it already creeping towards nine o’clock, and the meeting set for noon, that didn’t leave me enough time to drive home to change and come back again.
    As if reading my panicked thoughts she said, “You’re welcome to clean up here and raid my closet.”
     
    * * *
     
    Scrubbed clean and smelling faintly of Alyssa’s honey scented soap, I stood in front of her closet wrapped in two big fluffy towels. I hadn’t had a lot of girlfriends growing up and had never experienced the common practice of swapping clothes with friends. I felt awkward looking over the racks of her clothes, as if I was peeking at something far more intimate than shirts and pants.
    What the hell does someone wear to meet a pack master, anyway?
    I’d never gotten as far as meeting the pack master in my previous dealings with weres; I’d been so preoccupied with trying to figure out what my life had become that I wouldn’t have cared that much if I had. But now things were different, and against all logic I found myself fretting over what to wear. I was tempted to call out to Alyssa and ask for help, but I also didn’t want to admit how unskilled I was at matching a pair of slacks with a shirt. I’d never considered myself to be a slob, but as I stood at the foot of Alyssa’s bed staring at the array of silky shirts, fitted jackets, and short skirts, I realized that maybe my go-to wardrobe of jeans and a t-shirt left a little to be desired.
    How the hell did I land Holbrook when I dress like a hobo?
    Sighing at my own lack of fashion sense, I was reaching for a simple navy blue sweater when a swath of translucent black caught my eye, and my fingers instead gravitated towards the sheer shirt. It wasn’t at all my usual style, and I was sure that the one-shouldered shirt wasn’t practical in the middle of February, but I so desperately wanted to try it on. Plucking the shirt off the hanger before I could change my mind, I unwound the towel wrapped around my body and let it fall to the floor.
    I’d just started to pull the shirt on over my head when the door creaked open, complete with cheap horror movie sound effects. Freezing, with my arms waving in the air like an epileptic orangutan, I struggled to see through the fabric bunched up in my face. Wrestling the shirt the rest of the way over my head, I rounded on the open door to find Marvin looming in the doorway. The sight of his wrinkled, bald head cocked to one side as his coal black eyes took in my half-naked state made me