How to Take Care of a Stray Were

Chapter one

Mia Collins was not the type to complain about her life, and she was sure she had it much better than many others, but as she stepped out of the bus into the pouring early autumn rain, she couldn't help but give an exasperated glance at the heavens. She was fairly sure she had never experienced a longer and more mentally exhausting day. All she could think about was dragging herself though the flooding streets and getting home, stripping every piece of the restricting dress suit from her body and taking an excessively long bath while gulping down wine and listening to something with lyrics along the line "life sucks, you are all a bunch of assholes".

She had also always thought she wouldn't be the type to became very bitter after a break-up, but today had her considering whether her position as a communications specialist was worth losing for assault charges. It sure would feel nice to wrap her fingers around her ex-boyfriend's neck and never have to work in the same building with him again, but alas, that was not how sensible adults dealt with their emotions.

Mia felt a pang of loneliness at the thought of going home to her empty apartment to brood alone, but she didn't feel ready call her best friends and pour out her latest humiliation in the hands of Kyle, her sadistic and full-of-himself ex-boyfriend. Maybe she should get a puppy.

Wine. She needed wine. With a groan, Mia realized that she didn't have any at home as her small stock had been demolished a couple of weeks earlier during a particularly fun evening of "wine tasting" (read: getting drunk off their asses while watching movies and demolishing whole blocks of cheese) with her closest friends. Defeated, she turned back towards the bus stop and the small store located at the end of the street, a couple of blocks from it.

It had been raining for nearly two weeks now, and this Friday was especially vicious: it had been pouring for hours straight, and the streets were more or less flooded, more water gushing down the gutters. Mia was glad she had been sensible enough that morning to pack her office heels in a tote bag and wear her cute rubber boots to her commute to work. She gripped her umbrella and tilted it against the wind and the rain falling almost horizontally straight to her face.

As she got closer to the store, she heard angry voices from behind her umbrella, and had to lift its corner to carefully check what was happening. This was not a particularly sketchy neighborhood, but weekend nights in particular sometimes seemed to incite young, restless men looking for trouble.

These men were not particularly young, though. A group of rough-looking men were standing in the alleyway next to the store, moving in an agitated way and watching as one of them seemed to be roughening up someone against the brick wall of the building next door. The light cast by the street lamps didn't quite extend to the alleyway, and the men were clearly trying to keep their voices muffled, but Mia got a feeling that something was off about them. The men moved in a weird, restless and almost twitchy way, circling around the towering man whose thick arms had lifted someone by the front of their jacket against the brick wall. Mia's ears caught a weird, animal-like low tremble in the air. Growling, Mia realized with a startle. The men were growling.

Mia, like everyone else, of course knew about werewolves and the fact that they lived among people. Their existence had been common knowledge ever since Mia was still a student in her early twenties, and an astonishingly real-looking video clip of a man turning into wolf circulated around the internet, eventually leading to a series of events which caused the werewolves to officially let people know about their existence. However, Mia had never actually met a werewolf, and she didn't know much about them. Most of the werewolves still liked to keep to themselves, not letting other people know much about their way of life.

The man who was doing the roughening up knocked his victim against the wall. He pushed his face closer and seemed to say something in a low, almost growl-like voice. Then he dropped his hold, letting the victim – who Mia could now see was a younger man – sag against the brick wall, and turned, straightening his jacket. His eyes met Mia's for a brief moment, but Mia lowered the edge of her umbrella again and walked decidedly towards the store door, trying to look like she had seen nothing and ignoring the malicious laughter of the men who had been watching the assault. She felt bad for the young man, but at least she hadn't seen any serious violence taking place. And while she knew little about werewolves, she was positive it was not a good idea to intervene with the actions of the growling, wolf-like men, illegal or not.