Werewolf Single Dad 3, page 13
“Bees wear dresses like Elsa,” DiDi said as she flapped the skirts of her pale blue dress like a lady in waiting. “Me and bees both wearing pwetty dwesses like Elsa.”
I could almost feel the sparks in my brain jumping out as all my crossed wires stretched themselves to figure out the meaning behind Dionne’s gibberish about bees.
Bees… pretty dresses… Elsa… School…
Dionne’s morning obsession revealed itself to me like the prize board on Catchphrase.
“Ohhh!” I slowly reared my head and opened my mouth wide in realization. “You’re talking about Whitbee, aren’t you? At the school in her pretty dresses like Elsa from Frozen.”
“Yes!” DiDi shouted with an excited laugh. “Bees wearing dwesses like Elsa, and DiDi wearing dwesses like Bees and Elsa, too!”
“I didn’t know we’d shortened it to ‘Bees,’” I chuckled. “And why ‘Bees?’ There’s only one of her. But yes. Bee does belong in the school, and Bee does wear pretty dresses. Are you excited to see Bee today?”
“Yeah!” Dionne threw her arms in the air, and I used the momentum of the exciting moment to scoop her up again and take her back downstairs, since it was almost time to leave for school.
Trent was needed at the restaurant again, so I was taking the kids for the third morning that week, which was fine with me.
I’d take any excuse I got to gawk at the mega-babe formally known as Whitbee.
Trent helped me load the kids into the car, and we all said goodbye and wished him a good day, before making our way toward WereCare.
Since I realized I was being followed by those black cars, I always made sure to be extra vigilant of the behavior of other drivers while I was driving anywhere. But for the moment, my battered minivan seemed to be enjoying a period of peace, and I briefly wondered if that meant it might soon be in the cards to get myself a new ride altogether.
However, I knew this was likely to just be the calm before another storm. I’d turned the tables on one of the pursuing black vehicles, and Leo’s boys now belonged to me. However, there were still two other assailants tailing me: the hunters and the werewolves working under the orders of the mysterious ‘P.L.’
As I thought about some of the ways I could further keep my family safe while maintaining their routine, I realized a shiny new van to drive would have made me feel like I was a lot less easy to spot… and maybe it wouldn’t hurt to start taking an alternative route to the daycare, or take the kids at a different time than usual.
Plus, I’d been religiously taking my scent suppressors. That would take the werewolf contingent who were after me off my tail for a little while.
Thanks to Luna’s intel, however, I knew the hunters were only taking a break from chasing me, and they’d be back on my scent as soon as they’d settled into their new digs.
The scent suppressors seemed to work well at hiding my Alpha werewolf musk, but I didn’t know how good they’d be at dampening the pheromones I sent out when I was agitated or frightened, so I tried to take myself back to a calm state of mind before we arrived at daycare.
By the time I turned down the lane that would take us to the school, I was singing along loudly to Kylie on the radio and throwing in the odd “fart” and “poop” here and there to make the kids laugh, and a few well-placed nods to toilet humor did just the trick in making me forget all my worries as we pulled up in the parking lot.
I arrived fashionably late as always to avoid too much contact with other parents, as well as to ensure the gorgeous teacher and I got in a few moments of private nuanced conversation after I’d dropped Charlie off at the building next door. Meanwhile, Dionne and Archie were escorted into Whitbee’s classroom by one of the delightful daycare assistants.
“You really must get that window fixed.” Whitney nodded her head toward my van after her blushing cheeks calmed down following a flirtatious remark I’d made.
“It’s on the top of my to-do list, I swear,” I said. “As soon as Trent’s on drop-off and pick-up duty, I’m going to get myself down to the garage.”
“It doesn’t take long to repair a window though, does it?” Whitney cocked her head to the side. “Maybe an hour at the most?”
“Yeah, but knowing my luck, the guy who specializes in fixing the windows of beat-up old minivans will be out collecting a bucket full of spark plugs when I go over there, or he’ll be waylaid at the store looking for tartan paint or something,” I said with a smirk. “Then there’ll be something else holding someone else up, and Trent will be elbows-deep in ground beef at work and won’t be able to check his phone, so he won’t know I’ve been held up at the garage, and before you know it, the kids are marooned and social services are being called. Then they’ll all be sent to an orphanage to live like Oliver Twist, and my three wouldn’t cope with that. How would Dionne ever go on without her mid-afternoon cheese fix if she’s locked away in a children’s home? And Trent would lose sleep wondering if Archie’s getting enough exercise throughout the day, and I’d lose sleep thinking about those poor jailors having to deal with Charlie’s awful farts.”
“I think you’ve been reading too much Dickens, Mike,” the schoolteacher said with a snorting laugh.
I jokingly grabbed the low-hanging fruit by making a dick-in joke, and Whitney burst into laughter as she swiped for my arm.
I laughed like a naughty schoolboy as I evaded the teacher’s backhand, and I jumped down the steps of the classroom’s front porch. Then I said goodbye to the blushing blonde, and I blew her a secret kiss for good measure.
I smiled all the way back to the van, and after Whitney had shut the classroom doors, I took a couple of moments to breathe in the sweet woodland air while I decided what I’d do with myself for the next few hours.
As I flicked through the ever-lengthening to-do list in my brain, I suddenly remembered I wanted to pick up a new phone to do all my Alpha admin from, so I jumped in the van and set a course for the heart of the city, because I vaguely knew the area now and was pretty sure I’d seen a phone shop along the way.
I toyed with the idea of getting a second hand phone, but I was a little bit paranoid that even after master resetting, I’d find it was still connected to someone’s email or something, so I decided I’d pay the extra money to get something that was truly going to be a blank slate.
As I drove, I wondered if I should text Ava and see if she wanted to meet up for lunch. I wasn’t sure what days she worked at the tattoo parlor, but I knew she wouldn’t turn down a lunch outing.
When I got to the part of the city I recognized, I parked at pretty much the first streetside space I saw, and I walked into pretty much the first phone store I saw.
I could tell by the way his eyes dragged over my body like nails on a chalkboard that the guy who sold me the phone thought I was a drug dealer or something. I might not have helped my own case, since I was speaking in very short sentences and coldly deflecting all attempts at conversation or marketing ploys, and maybe it looked shady to text on a current, perfectly working phone while refusing to say who this new phone was for, but that was none of his business.
The store attendant might not have known it, but I was in a very delicate situation. I had a band of werewolf hunters trying to track me down, so I wasn’t about to tell some random human anything about my personal life. What if someone in the store was part of this band of bloodlusting brothers?
He was either being polite or he was prying, but this guy sure did want to know a lot that didn’t concern him.
“Who is the phone for?”
“What are you doing with your day after this?”
“Where are you from? That accent doesn’t sound local.”
Get out of my business, buddy.
For all I knew, this guy was one of the hunters who was after me, and he was making casual conversation in an attempt to add to my file.
Shit, maybe he’d be slipping a tracker into my new phone, too.
Nah, that would have surely been a step too far. If I’d found that out, I’d be well within my rights to send a very strongly worded email to this store’s customer services, and then this human asswipe would be fired for gross misconduct.
Then how would he support his wife and three daughters he’d insisted on telling me every detail about?
Yeah, yeah. Keep throwing me your red herrings, buster.
I was probably being overly paranoid and a little bit of a jerk, but I was tired of every item or service I ever bought being bound up with reams of obligation to share my innermost thoughts or personal details.
Couldn’t a guy just pay for a Blu-ray of Killer Klowns from Outer Space without having to give his email address to get a receipt anymore?
Like everyone else, I’d long been bound by the obligation to come across as overly pleasant to chatty retail employees, and I’d found a sort of freeing catharsis from not entertaining this guy’s overly-comfortable pleasantries.
The guy soon got the idea, and he asked me only the most necessary questions when it came to completing our transaction. I tapped my card, and then he handed me the phone in a box and told me to have a pleasant day.
I almost met him with a “don’t tell me what to do”, but my hard exterior was beginning to crack at this point, and that overly-Scroogey response was more comical than it was realistic.
Why was I thinking of Scrooge in the middle of summer?
Whitney was right, maybe I was reading too much Dickens.
I didn’t actually want to be a jerk to this guy, and I’d guessed he very likely wasn’t a hunter out to get me, so I made sure to flash him an extra-wide smile and return his wishes for a pleasant day before I left the store.
When I was safely sealed inside my van with my new phone in my hands, I saw I still had some time left on the meter, but no place really to go. So, in the interest of getting my money’s worth, I locked the van up and began unboxing the device that would come to be Amadeus’ means of communication with his thirteen shifter packs.
It was just an old model Google phone and a pay-as-you-go contract that was going cheap. It was nothing fancy, which was perfect, because I didn’t need anything fancy. All I needed to be able to do was download PackMate and WhatsApp so I could wirelessly spread my decrees throughout the land without it being linked back to me, and I was good to go.
As with all new phones, there was a little bit of confirmation stuff to set up, but this gave me the perfect excuse to make up a cool new email address for myself.
AmadeusAmadeus@AWOO.com.
Damn, that looked badass.
And it made me sing the song in my head, which was also a bonus.
This was the email address I envisioned giving out to shifter news reporters who were desperate to contact me to cover the story of how I digitized werekind, or maybe it was where ransom notes would be addressed to in an attempt to blackmail the leader of the new werewolf age into unmasking himself. I’d gotten phishing ransom notes even as a nobody, so I was fully anticipating an onslaught of ominous messages demanding thousands of dollars in return for the perpetrators keeping my identity a secret.
But I was going to be so careful about keeping Amadeus’ true identity a mystery that there was no way anyone was going to get any leverage over me. In fact, preempting these sorts of scam emails arriving in my inbox would only make it funnier when one such e-mail did land.
I’d once got an email where the opening line was “Hello, Pervert,” and Katherine and I laughed ourselves half-way to death over it. I caught myself grinning at the memory as I set my new phone up, and I imagined all the crazy scenarios I was sure to find myself in once Amadeus gained a little bit of notoriety.
As I envisioned the pages and pages of crazy emails I’d be sure to receive, the idea of hiring an assistant to go through all my emails and the inevitable influx of PackMate messages for me sparked in my mind.
I’d pay this person for their services, but it would have to be someone I really trusted. Someone I knew wouldn’t spill my secret. A Beta had to obey an Alpha’s command by law, so I could have put a job application out, but I wanted someone I already knew and trusted for the job.
At the moment, my circle of friends was pretty tight, and even though I realized I shamefully had no idea what any of my friends did for a living, I knew they all already had full-time jobs, so I doubted anyone would want to give up their lucrative career to come and be the Alfred to my Batman.
Actually… I did know what one of my friends did for a living, and they were already in exactly the right career.
Ava worked part-time as a tattoo shop receptionist. What did she do with the rest of her time? As far as I was aware, she wasn’t studying or anything. Maybe she’d like to pick up a few hours a week doing Amadeus’ admin.
That Rainier Wolfcastle quote from The Simpsons movie flew into my head, and I couldn’t help but do my own poor-quality rendition of it.
“I was elected to lead, not to read.”
Shit. There was another wolf-related name right there, and another Simpson’s reference. Was it too late to go back and change my pseudonym to “Wolfcastle?”
Hm. Actually. I didn’t like that as much as Amadeus. And everyone who knew me knew I was a massive Simpsons nerd. Once the ball really got rolling on this Amadeus thing, it would only take one slip-up from me not being able to resist constantly quoting The Simpsons for someone to eventually put two and two together, and for the whole plan to go up in smoke.
Amadeus was a reference that even I didn’t understand at first, and that’s what made it so perfect.
My new phone chirped and buzzed into life, and I got to work happily downloading all the relevant apps I’d need to set this shit afloat.
Or is the term “ship?”
Either way, things were really getting moving now, and I couldn’t help but feel kind of excited at the beginnings of my new secret alias’ rise to prominence.
Suddenly, I heard a rumbling.
I’d totally forgotten to expect a phone call from Grace this morning, so there was a moment of discombobulation in my brain when I heard the phone on my passenger seat vibrating while I was staring at the static phone currently held in my hands.
I quickly got with the program, and I swapped the phones over and went to answer the call from my caseworker.
But just before I did, I noticed she was calling me from her private number rather than the usual government number.
I knew Grace had taken yesterday off work, and I wondered if she was off today too, but she was still making it a priority to get in touch with me regarding the questions I’d posed to her yesterday.
Either way, I’d already changed my name from Michael Brewyer to Amadeus, and I wasn’t going to be changing it back, so I was hoping Grace wasn’t calling with any bad news on that front.
Only one way to find out.
“Hi, Grace,” I answered pleasantly.
“Hi, Mike,” the caseworker replied in a matching tone. “How are you doing?”
“Fine, thanks,” I said before asking Grace in a slightly loaded tone of voice if everything was okay.
“Ah, yes.” I could tell Grace immediately understood what I was asking. “I’m not in the office right now. Hence why I’m calling you from my personal number. It wouldn’t look right if someone were to go through our logged phone calls and see I’m talking to you about the Alpha badge on your PackMate profile completely unprompted.”
“Ah, I see,” I said. “Gotta deflect attention from the fact you gave me your private number in the first place, don’t you?”
“Indeed I do,” Grace laughed. “Shot myself in the foot with that one, didn’t I? But it’s fine. Seeing as your query is quite a small topic, I’m happy to clear it up with you in this conversation. But any other topics you may wish to discuss, please call me on my government number. Just for records’ sake.”
“No problem, Miss Sato, you got it,” I said. “Thanks for getting back to me, anyway. So, what did you find out about the rules regarding governing my packs virtually?”
“Just through a cursory glance last night and this morning, I can’t see any issue with you using the closed community groups on PackMate as your main means of contacting your packs,” Grace said. “The only thing I can think of against this idea is that you have to consider not everyone who acts as part of a pack will be signed up to PackMate, so you need to make yourself accessible to those persons, too.”
“Ah, that’s all taken care of.” I grinned and leaned back in my seat. “I’ve gone to the liberty of picking up a new phone, which I will reserve solely for communication purposes relating to my packs. Most packs have group chats on WhatsApp these days, so I’m happy to be added to any group chats using this new number. Then the people who don’t have PackMate or aren’t active there can reach me via text exchange, cos everyone’s got a phone number these days, right? Or maybe I’ll even let them book in a time to call me, if group chats aren’t their scene. I’ll even set up a PO box if I have to. That all seems accessible enough, doesn’t it?”
“It does seem to cover all bases.” Grace hummed thoughtfully. “Okay. Try those ways. I’d recommend you call AWOO and report this is how you’re choosing to govern your packs going forward, just so it’s all on written file. But please act as though it is the first time you’re sharing this information when you call in.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Thank you,” the caseworker replied. “I also read through AWOO’s policies as far as our affiliation with PackMate is concerned, and it seems as though the only way to have the Alpha badge on your page is to be a government-verified Alpha. So, you wouldn’t be able to create a new page and request a verified Alpha badge, because AWOO would need to run identity checks against your portal and the profile you’ve already tied it together with. Otherwise, there’s all sorts of risk of fraud and what have you. But nothing as far as I read said you couldn’t go by an alternative name on your profile.”
“I thought that might have been the case about the new name thing, but it’s good I’m allowed to use an alternative name,” I said. “If anyone governmental were to ask, I’d just tell them the truth and say I’m a private person. Actually, I know it’s off the record, but I am a private person, Grace. Will AWOO keep my true identity confidential, even though they can see my name on the portal I’ve linked to my PackMate portal?
