Chapter One

In Which It’s the Most Monday of Monday Nights

“ I t’s about to rain!” Zane hollers as he walks into the nearly empty bar. The sound of his cowboy boots on the hardwood of the steps echoes through the club as if he’s an important man on a mission and not a toothpick with too much hair. He just turned eighteen a few months ago, and now that Mama lets him come to work with us, he walks in like he fucking owns the place.

“Thanks for the weather report, Gremlin!” I holler back without looking up. The old timers behind me, Atticus and Norm, chuckle. I know it pisses Zane off to no end, but he’s still every bit the little kid Mama used to call Gremlin back when he was climbing the counters to steal cookies. He turns bright red.

“Zander, what the hell?”

I meet his eyes as he walks toward me and lean over the bar so only he can hear me. “This is a business. It’s not the house,” I speak quietly. I’m not a complete asshole, just mostly one. “No one comes to a strip club to see a kid wandering around acting like he just came home from school. They’re here to see tits and ass. That’s how our pack makes money. That’s how you have those shoes on your feet and the two million pounds of food you inhale daily. If you’re going to work here, you need to blend in like your cousins do. You need to keep your mouth shut and your ears open.”

He looks down at the bar. If he was in a partial or full shift, his ears would be back, and his tail would be down. I’m not Alpha. That will be our older brother Zach’s problem when the time comes, but I’m a lot older than Zane, and adhering to the pack hierarchy is in our blood. Even when it’s not, it’s drilled into our heads from day one.

“What am I on tonight?” he asks quietly.

I think about it for a moment. Even if Mama lets him come to work, she’s not big on him seeing the girls dance. I don’t know what Zach does with Zane when he’s the night manager, but I do what I can to keep him out of the main bar. He may be eighteen, but he’s not the kind of eighteen Zach and I were growing up.

“Why don’t you stick to the door tonight? You’ll need to partially shift.”

Eddie, our bouncer, is a good guy and will keep Zane out of trouble if nothing else. That perks him up as he heads back to Randy’s office to clock in.

“He’s a young one for eighteen,” Norm says, shaking his head as Zane walks away.

I shrug. “He’s the baby. It’s hard not to be.”

“Not everyone needs to be siring a clutch of children the minute they hit puberty,” Atticus quips back.

Norm snorts. “I don’t have that many kids.”

“You’re barely ten years older than me and already a great-grandpa,” Atticus points out.

Norm chuckles. “I can’t help it if I happen to come from a long line of very fertile men.”

Norm and Atticus continue their back-and-forth banter until six. Now that Atticus has a girlfriend, he’s gone as soon as she’s off work, but Norm likes to close the place down. Like clockwork, Atticus is up and paying his tab right at six. To my surprise, Norm stands with him .

“Where you headed, old man?” I ask as he pays his tab.

“Taking the wife out to dinner. It’s our anniversary.”

I’ve worked at my uncle’s strip club since I was old enough to darken its door. Very little shocks me. But the idea of this old drunk having a wife…that’s a little out there.

“You have a wife?”

He nods. “We’ve been married twenty-seven years today.”

“And she doesn’t get upset with you being here all the time?”

He chuckles. “The secret to a long-lasting relationship is space. She’d have me out of the house more if she could.”

“Can’t argue with success,” I say, handing him the receipt. That’d never fly in a wolf pack. You aren’t together if you aren’t literally together…almost to the point that you’re practically on top of each other, but maybe Gobelins are different.

“Well, have a good time,” I tell him as he signs the receipt .

He looks around and chuckles. “You, too.”

“Yeah, thanks, old man.” He shakes his head and wanders out the door as I lean back against the bar and try to figure out how I’m going to kill time for the rest of the night.