Tangled

15 Ava: Settling In (I)

Waking up with a dog is both better and worse than waking to an alarm.

Selene starts with a cute little nose bumping against my hand. Then a head burrowing beneath it. Then her entire body on mine, as her dog breath–which smelled particularly fishy–assaults my nose.

She finishes it off with a low, mournful howl, and I

open my eyes with a groan. “I’m up. I’m up. Come on, Selene. You couldn’t let me sleep for fifteen more

minutes?”

Her huff sounds a lot like you slept for six hours, you’ll

be fine to me, but I rub her ears and roll out of bed anyway, only to screech a few seconds later when something sharp tries to murder my foot.

“Shit! Ow, ow, ow. Fuck. Oh, my God. I’m dying. Holy shit.” I fall back onto the bed and check the bottom of

my foot. Only a little bleeding where something sharp broke the skin, and a nice big scratch. I grab my glasses and peered at the floor, shocked to see a purple crystal there.

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15 Ava Settling in (1)

Selene must have gotten into something overnight, because that was not there last night.

I shoot her a dark look. “This is the thanks I get for giving you a home?”

My sweet little husky just tilts her head, staring at me like I’m stupid, and I sigh, tossing the crystal onto my night stand. For a second, I feel a tingle on my

fingertips, but when I grab it again and hold it in my palm, there’s nothing.

Weird.

that ever–present aching pain in my chest seems subdued, almost as if

Dad always said it was human nonsense. Huh. Maybe

not.

one tip of the long crystal, as if it is meant to hang off a chain. I spin the crystal around, lifting it to the light to admire its colors. “Pretty. Think I should get a chain for this?” I ask, as if a husky would care if I carry something around my

neck.

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Settling

my door again by the time I dash outside, finishing the messy bun I’d corralled my hair into.

Grind’s building, and a sign on the door has my

the door.

hereby banned from the premises for the next 48 hours. This is to facilitate bonding with your new dog and to rest from your workaholic

in these past few days that I can’t stop attributing human emotions

a side effect of being raised with wolf shifters. They do have their human emotions

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Ava: Settling in

disconnect from that.

up a hand to stop my torrent of mild outrage. “Don’t

as all my arguments dissipate in the face of his loony smile

glance down to see Selene with her ears back and her eyes twice as large as normal. Or

I sigh.

But I’m going to hate every second of my

rest.”

paid time off, for–um,

open my mouth, then close it again. Yup,

face. “Oh.

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Ava. Settling

I know. Like you gave birth or something. But Mrs. Martha says fur babies are still babies,

slam, of course. It has a built–in soft close, because banging doors doesn’t fit a bookstore cafe’s ambience. It’s just the overall sentiment of the moment.

could go hiking, but I don’t know the area. With my luck, I’d get lost in the middle

occurs to me in that moment that I have