“Can your human see anything through you?” I checked, assuming the wolf could answer given his many human-like actions.

He shook his head in a no.

Phew.

It was just me and the wolf.

“Cool.” I tugged my shirt over my head, exposing the sheer bra I had on beneath. It was made of this weird netting that for some reason, was about eighteen thousand times more comfortable than any padding I’d ever worn.

The wolf licked the gap between my boobs, and I snorted, pushing his face away again. “You’re weird.”

He grinned at me once again, and I couldn’t help but grin back.

“Your human’s lucky you’re a pain in the ass,” I warned the wolf, still grinning as I grabbed Archie’s shirt and tugged it over my head. As I expected, it fell down my thighs, the hem hitting below my shorts. It would look like I wasn’t wearing pants at all, so I went ahead and unbuttoned my shorts before stripping them off and tossing them onto the pile of Archie’s dirty clothes.

I tugged my combat boots off as I headed into the kitchen, and tossed them onto a pile of shoes Archie already had near the garage door. Curiosity had me peeking into the garage, and my lips curved upward when I saw the old, beat-up truck sitting inside.

There was just something about a shitty vehicle that spoke to my soul.

Maybe it made Archie seem a little more approachable? Probably not, but I guess we’d see when the wolf decided to bite me and turn me into one of them.

It felt odd to be wearing nothing but my underwear and a shirt in another person’s house, but the place smelled like Archie and the mess definitely prevented me from feeling self-conscious about it. I sat down on a barstool in front of the island, inhaling the delicious smell of steak.

Wasting no time, I dug into the food. Free food… glorious free food.

My scholarship had paid for the school’s basic meal plan, but honestly, the food there was shitty. I hadn’t eaten anything more than was required to continue living during my four years there, and I’d skipped at least one meal a day most of the time.

So having a massive plate of delicious food, for the first time in years, was damned incredible. That was the reason I’d driven all the way out to Moon Ridge for Ebony’s barbecue, anyway, and it was proving itself to be worth it in just the food alone.

Archie licked my legs almost constantly while I ate, but I didn’t mind. The wolf was a sweetie, and if I was his instant-wife, he probably liked the way I smelled. I sure liked the way Archie smelled, so it wasn’t hard to believe that I’d smell just as good to him.

Hopefully.

I cringed at the thought, though.

How weird would it be if a guy wanted to sniff me?

I mean, I’d like it. Hell, I’d love it. But I wouldn’t know how to react, you know? Like, should I cringe away? Or kiss him?

The one time I’d kissed a guy had been in high school, before my parents got all crazy, and it had been so awkward I hated even thinking about it.

But the thought still made me sort of excited.

To have a guy want me… that would be different. In a good way.

But I mean, I couldn’t get too caught up in that idea. There was still a good chance that he might not want me at all. He hadn’t looked at me like I smelled good to him; hell, he’d hardly looked at me at all. So he might not want to be anything more than friends, and that was fine. Just having a built-in best friend sounded like a damned miracle to me.

Whatever happened, Archie and I seemed to be pretty much trapped together. So that was good; I liked the thought of that. He was just as stuck with me as I was stuck with him, so we would have no choice but to figure shit out. Even if we were just house-mates, I could get used to that. I would have my own room, I assumed, and that would be plenty of space for me.

I devoured the entire plate of food, tossing the thick disposable plate in the trash and then setting the fork and knife off to the side of the overflowing sink.

Turning toward the house, I surveyed the room. There was shit… everywhere.

Yep.

Everywhere.

“Alright.” I blew a puff of hair out of my eyes. Since I bleached my hair to get it to the platinum blonde I loved, there was always a bit of breakage. I didn’t mind that, though, because I loved all the choppy strands that framed my face. “Where to start…” I trailed off, nibbling on my lip.

“If I start with the kitchen, I’ll have to look at the awful living room through the entire time,” I said, processing out loud. I talked to myself a lot; always had, probably always would. It kept me sane. “So, living room it is.”

I’d worry about the upstairs after I had the downstairs dealt with.

Stepping back into the living room, I started sorting the clothes. It was easy to tell the cleans from the dirties, thanks to Archie’s yummy smell, so I made quick work of the clothing mountain. There was actually only one load’s worth of dirty clothes in the mass of fabric, which reassured me slightly as far as my new roommate’s cleanliness went.

I started the one load, reluctantly leaving out a few t-shirts and a sweatshirt that smelled like Archie. Doing that made me feel kind of creepy, but he’d turned into a wolf that was hunting me, so I was pretty sure the two things balanced out.

Mostly.

The clean clothes, I folded up and left in piles on the couch. As I folded, I revealed the fabric beneath. It was a nice dark gray that I really liked, and the throw pillows were all in other shades of gray. Ultimately, it was a lot more manly than I preferred, but I didn’t mind the colors. With a couple of black-striped or polka-dotted pillows, it would’ve actually been cute.

When Archie was a human again and we figured out whether or not we were going to live together, I would change shit up. Until then, I’d deal with the manliness.

After I folded all the clothes, I decided to leave the toiletries and boxed furniture until I cleaned the rest of the townhouse. Furniture-building and organization would just have to wait a bit.

“To the kitchen,” I announced to the wolf, who had followed me absolutely everywhere I went. His fur brushed my legs with every damn step I took, and it was actually pretty nice. Maybe I’d been lonelier than I realized.

Fine, I had realized I was lonely. There just hadn’t been anything to do about it, so I’d tried to ignore it.

But… it was nice not to be lonely anymore.

Really nice.