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KEANE

Finding a job right after you’d been fired sucked. I wasn’t even fired for being crappy at my job, either. Not even close. I was fired the day of my big promotion, the one I’d earned. I’d been appointed the manager of my division. It was middle management. I wasn’t going to be making the big bucks, but it was the step up that would let me not have instant noodles for dinner twice a week and eat the same generic cereal every morning for breakfast.

It was the promotion that was going to allow me to not worry if I took a shower a few minutes too long and used more hot water than I had budgeted for. It was the promotion that said I finally got rid of my bad luck—bad luck that began as a child when I lost my sense of smell thanks to being in a garage hit by lightning.

Silly me, when the storm came in, I thought it was best to get out of the tree cover and inside a building, picking the abandoned building. How wrong I’d been. I didn’t know until my first shift, when my cat came out into the world for the first time, that I barely had the sense of smell of a human, and while in my fur, my cat had none. If only that were the worst event.

That bad luck followed me like my shadow. It even got me expelled from college for walking in as someone was messing with grades. Stupid bad luck.

After my promotion announcement, I went home straight and pulled out the frozen pizza I had planned for dinner. Sure, it was a day to celebrate, but I had no one to do that with. My family had never been close, and I sucked at making human friends. It was me against the world.

But there was something about the pizza that looked so pathetic and bland that had me tossing it back in the freezer. Why did I need someone to celebrate with? I earned the promotion… I was worth going to a celebratory dinner at that little Italian restaurant I had been eyeing since I moved in.

If only I had stuck with the pizza instead.

I walked right inside the restaurant and sat myself as the sign instructed. If I’d taken two seconds to look around, I’d have chosen better. Before I could order a soda, I realized that it was my boss at the table next to me. Shouldn’t have been a problem, right? Except when that boss was there with their personal assistant—the one they weren’t married to, even though they were, in fact, married. I caught them not only breaking company policy, but cheating.

I swore to them that I wouldn’t tell anyone, that their secret was safe with me. And what did my boss do? He fired me on the spot and blacklisted me from pretty much every insurance company in town—or maybe all of them. There were only two I hadn’t applied to yet, and neither was taking applications.

Which was what led me, on a night when I should’ve been safe in bed at home, to be wandering from club to club and bar to bar, hoping that someone would give me a chance to at least sling some drinks. I might not have been the hottest guy in the world, but my ass looked good in a pair of jeans and I crossed my fingers that would give me an edge. And while my cat wasn’t like the fiercest shifter there was, I could take on a human if need be, and I thought that was enough to get a job.

Except apparently you needed experience to get strangers drunk, even in the seediest of bars. And that’s where I ended up pivoting to when Pulsepoint all but laughed at me after I waited a half hour for their manager. I sat nursing a glass of water, watching everyone, thinking that I might be able to pick up enough about the place to get a job. Wrong. They didn’t get past my first name. Snobby asshats.

One by one, they turned me down. And with each rejection, I went deeper into the bad parts of town—figuring there they would have less interest in experience and pedigree and whatever else the first bars had been looking for and more about wanting a body to do the work.

The last bar gave me hope when I walked inside. It was dark, dingy, and had sticky floors. There were omegas offering services for the evening on the not-so-sly. There were quite a few underage customers that no one seemed to care about. It was not a rule-following kind of place. I had to be good enough for them.

Or not.

“Hey, is the owner around?” I asked.

The bartender turned to me, looked me up and down, and snarled, “Not for you.”

“Who do you think I am?” Maybe he had me confused with someone else, like a criminal. This place felt like one that would cater to that crowd. Not that I was going to judge. A job was a job.

“Don’t care. You don’t belong here.” He went back to pouring a draft.

“I’m just looking for a job. Even... even work in the kitchen.” Yes, I was resorting to near begging, but rent didn’t pay itself.

“Get lost.”

And so I did. But I didn’t get lost alone, despite not inviting anyone along for the ride.

Instead, I realized nearly too late there was not one but two alphas following me. Great. Fucking great. At first, I considered running. And then I realized that wasn’t going to be much help in the saving department. In this form, I was slow—or at least too slow to outrun pretty much everyone.

Instead, I stopped and turned to face them head-on.

“You got a problem?” I sounded a thousand times more confident than I was.

I tried to find any indication they were shifters and was so grateful I found none. Their eyes were 100% human, and based on the way they were bloodshot, they were drunk. That made my odds better.

“You walked by us. Didn’t even let us buy you a drink,” the taller alpha slurred his words.

“I was looking for a job, not a date. Sorry.” And had I noticed them, I’d have been more careful when I left, that was for sure.

“Might as well go back. Saw there was an omega checking you out.” I was such a liar.

“No. We want you.” The older of the two stepped forward and went to put his hand on me. I stood there acting like I was scared, which I was, but not as scared as I hoped to portray. The second he got close enough, I jammed my palm into his nose.

Blood started gushing out, and before his friend could react, I kicked him in the balls, grateful they’d had so much to drink, because in a fair fight, I would’ve lost against them. I still might.

And then I caved and did what my cat had wanted me to do from the beginning, I ran.

And I ran and I ran and I ran.

I turned the corner, not stopping to look and see if they were behind me, unsure what the steps were that I heard. Could’ve been someone from any of the local businesses, or it could’ve been them. I needed to get out of here. I cut down an alley, discovering far too late that it was a dead end.

There was no way out without going back the way I came. I reached into my pocket to grab my phone, hoping to figure out exactly where I was and where to go from here, when I heard a crash, which startled me enough that my keys fell out of my pocket and bounced under the dumpster.

Fucking great.

I climbed in behind it to fetch them just as I heard people rushing in. There were more than the two guys I’d left, and at first I thought that was a good thing. But then I figured out they weren’t running together, some were running away from the others. Maybe they wouldn’t look back here. Maybe I’d be okay. My bad luck had hit again.

These weren’t men. Hot human men, anyway. They were shifters, predatory shifters. No one would ever accuse the energy flowing off of them to be that of a bunny or squirrel. A better sense of smell would be really handy. At least then I’d know who I was up against.

My heart started to pound as the scene unfolded before me. My gut said it was the mafia. I didn’t even know how I knew. It could’ve just been rivals beating each other up. But something told me—the cold, heartless commands were not unusual. This was their norm. That left organized crime of some sort.

I’d have been better off chancing things with those drunk-ass alphas.

I heard a wolf growl and did what any small, adorable shifter would do. I freaked out, my cat taking over, pushing my human side down, and crawling out of my clothes and under the dumpster. I crossed everything that I’d be able to hide long enough for them to leave. Goddess knew I wasn’t strong enough to fight them, and running? Yeah, that wouldn’t get me far. They could easily track my furry ass, and without my car, it would be an easy hunt.

These weren’t humans. They weren’t going to see my clothes and toss them in the dumpster and not think twice. They were going to know that I was here. They were going to see my cat and instantly recognize me for who I was. There was nothing I could do but wait and hope.

Everything was a blur. It was too much coming at me, all at once. So much was happening. My cat was pushing me down and the sound of my heart racing flooded my ears.

My cat gave me no freedom, fearing I’d put us in danger. As if I could make this whole situation worse than it was... There were dead shifters and live murderers on the other side of the dumpster now. I didn’t know who the good guys were, or the bad guys for that matter. There was a good chance they were all bad guys.

And then they left. Not all of them. The dead ones were still there. Or at least their blood was. I wasn’t even sure if they’d removed the bodies yet, my ability to focus completely stolen.

But the man—the man in control—his slow footsteps came closer and closer. And he squatted down, looked under the dumpster, his body naked and blood-covered. He looked like a horror movie poster.

“Come here.” It wasn’t a request.

And then what did I do? I crawled out from under the dumpster and jumped into his arms, fucking purring.

Apparently, I went from having bad luck to having a death wish.

Except... why wasn’t I scared?