Running With The Pack: Big Easy Shifters: Book Four by Knox, Abby (best book club books TXT) 📗

“What did he care? He’s not even a part of our pack,” Pen said, still trembling in shock when Gavin returned with a pair of his board shorts and a belt for her.

“I should’ve kept a closer eye on him. All this wedding bullshit—I mean, wedding activities—got me so distracted, I hired the first wolf shifter to walk in the door. Some of them are pretty hardcore, I guess. I feel like such an idiot.”

“Don’t,” Pen said, squeezing Gavin’s hand. “We’ve all been off our game lately.”

She noted the way Chas eyed that platonic hand squeeze. That possessive little shifter might just fit in, after all.

Gavin smiled weakly. “A lot of pairing off. A lot of parties. A little too much fun.”

Pen closed her eyes to avoid looking at the bloody mess on the floor. Not that blood was new to her, but the cause of it made her heart sink. “Damn it, Bobby.” No amount of friendly counsel would be able to convince him that what he’d done to Manny was justified. Bobby would beat himself up for this for the rest of his life.

Gavin put his arm around his friend. “Pen, Bobby was defending us. Manny had been ready to kill one or both or all four of us in the name of shifter purity. There was exactly one way this day was going to end for him. Killing someone or someone killing him.”

She shook her head and rubbed her palm on her brow. “The first time Bobby ever shifted to defend his friends from a human, it went badly, and he never dealt well with it. You remember, Gavin? I’m worried that this time will mess him up for good.”

Gavin nodded and sighed as he put pressure on Pen’s ear. “We should get you to the hospital. If we let it magically heal, which it will, we will have less of a case to make for self-defense when we talk to the police.”

She might have been embarrassed to dress in public, but neither Chas nor Gavin paid any attention to Pen.

Gavin stood and hugged Chas so tightly her feet rose off the floor. Gavin’s eyes scrunched closed. Then he moved his head and kissed her tenderly on the lips. The pair of them opened their eyes, and Pen saw it. The look on their faces was like there was nobody else in the room. It was true love. They had it. It had happened just within the last few days, but it was real.

Fifteen-plus years side by side with Bobby, and they still had not figured it out.

Maybe it was just not meant to be.

Chapter Ten

Pen

Thirteen-year-old Penelope and her best friend Bobby walked to school like any other day. It was a crisp September morning. About as crisp as any morning gets on the soggy Delta. She wore her plaid pleated school uniform skirt and gray cardigan.

She had just told Bobby her first period had arrived that morning for the first time. That’s how close friends they were.

When she told him that, something clicked. He changed. He walked closer to her. She thought she could sense him smelling her cardigan. Weird.

Jimmy and Charlene, parents of their friend Ash, had been coaching Pen and Bobby and a gaggle of other friends on how to react when they first began to sense their inner beasts. None of them had yet wolfed out, but the Boudreaux family had taken them all under their wing after determining they had the “gift.”

And they needed all the guidance they could get at the age of thirteen.

The boys at school had been teasing Pen since she was eleven when her breasts developed early.

Lately, they’d even been so bold as to start snapping girls’ bra straps. She hated that with a raging fire. Seriously, sometimes she thought she might snap and kill one of them. But Charlene had taught her that that was her mind confusing her human and wolf hormones. So she breathed through it and sought help from teachers whenever possible.

But these days, with the teasing ramped up, Pen felt like a broken record every time she asked for help from a teacher.

And so, Bobby had started taking matters into his own hands.

That morning, Pen decided to have a difficult talk with him.

“Listen, Bobby? Could you maybe stop punching everyone out when they snap my bra?”

“I can’t help it,” he said with a glower.

“You’re gonna get suspended.”

“She’s right,” said Ash as they made their way up the street to the middle school. “My mom can help you control your anger.”

Just then, Gavin and Vann met up with them; they walked to school together in a cozy, familiar pack.

“What’s she right about?” asked Gavin, sort of teasing.

“Bobby’s going to get suspended if he can’t control his knuckle sandwiches,” said Ash.

Vann licked his lips. “Yum. You said sandwiches.”

“I’m with Bobby,” Gavin said. “You need extra muscle; just say the word, bro.”

Pen hugged her cardigan tightly around herself. “You’re all idiots.”

This pack of wolves all came from different backgrounds. Some had parents who were shifters. Some had parents who were not shifters at all. Others had absentee parents. They had all found each other for the same reason, though some parents were in denial about their canine proclivities. Whatever their differences, they were connected forever.

Later that day, it was not Pen’s bra strap that a boy touched. It was much worse.

Todd Connors, star middle school quarterback, crashed into Pen in the cafeteria. Her lunch tray went skidding, his pizza toppled to the floor. In the commotion, Todd reached out and blatantly grab Pen’s breasts as she bent over to pick up spilled food. It was stupidly obvious, and everyone saw it.

All it took was a shriek from Pen, and it was like a light switched on inside Bobby. He was no longer in control. The wolf was now calling the shots.

The screams—from Pen, from Todd, and from the other random girls in the room—bounced off the walls like an echo