Condemned

4 | Jael

"She's home!" Ivy claps, squeals, and bounds out of bed.

I groan at all the bouncing and shaking and the daylight her newfound enthusiasm forces into my eyes.

Unlike Ivy, I require sleep in solid blocks at consistent intervals. Ivy can sleep wherever, whenever. If it's twelve minutes or twelve hours, she wakes up "refreshed."

What time is it anyway?

With a pained squint, I fumble for my phone and bring up the display. 12:46PM.

The phone gets lobbed back to the bedside table. My hope is to roll over. If Sam is in the house, I don't have to get out of bed. She's safe. And she isn't the type to bother anyone if the door is closed.

I know, I know. I shouldn't be this tired, but I didn't get to crash until mid-morning. Now, it's like the middle of the night for me. This whole traipsing-after-Sam thing, who was gone this morning before I even came home, will be the death of me. This may sound like an exaggeration, but, well, it isn't.

I can't screw this up. And I'm a stammering, stumbling idiot when I'm sleep-deprived. A recipe for disaster? Abso-fucking-lutely. On so many levels. My competency for this task, or lack thereof, is only a fraction of what could go wrong.

I'd like to bury my head under my pillow, but all this crap is firing through my synapses. Plus, Ivy is prancing around my room, tidying up a few stray curls and touching up her near-perfect makeup.

No rest for the wicked, I guess.

Over her black negligee—not that revealing for me, but very revealing for anyone else—she puts on a sheer black cover-up. It barely covers a damn thing, and still, she heads for the bedroom door.

The turn of the knob has me lumbering after her, grabbing for the first pair of pants I can get my hands on—some shredded black jeans that fall low at the waist.

"Hi, you must be Sam," Ivy says cordially. It passes as genuine, though not by much. There can be a glacial edge to her voice that I'm sure humans can hear, too.

"Oh!" Her surprise is accompanied by the strong scent of her fear. It wafts into my room. "Hello," Sam squeaks like a mouse in a wide-open field.

It's not as bad as it was last night, but it's still pungent, like her body knows what her mind does not. Ivy's no linebacker, but she could inflict more harm with fewer consequences.

And that puts me in the doorway, shirtless, my hair probably a mess. I'm no model for appropriate behavior, but anything is better than letting these two "get to know each other" without me there as a buffer. Yes, even buck naked or in wolf form.

Ivy can mingle within the human world, and no one is ever the wiser, but she's never lived with one before, so she doesn't truly get it.

I suppose that makes me the expert here. I had a human mother. Too human, which doesn't make her the best example. I was always a "lone wolf," regardless. I didn't understand why or realize I was an actual shifter until my early teens.

Yeah, it's been a while and I was never good at it in the first place, but I do know that Ivy shouldn't be welcoming her new tenant in lingerie.

"I'm Ivy." She leans against the kitchen counter, her hand unabashedly on her hip. Her cleavage is spilling over a bit. It usually is. "Jael's girlfriend."

This is usually when a possessive female would toss a glance in my direction, and maybe a caustic little grin, but Ivy doesn't acknowledge me whatsoever. She's too busy trying to bore a hole into Sam's turned shoulder with her stare.