I'm starting NaNoWriMo off strong with help from Tate and Adrian, two werewolves in their late twenties who are spending some quality time together marooned in the middle of the forest with a bunch of teenage werewolves who are adjusting to their werewolf puberty.
Unfortunately, so is Adrian. A quirk of his genetics prevented him from maturing into his wolf when he was nineteen, as almost all Weres do. He'd accepted his fate as the lone human in his pack, but his twenty-seventh birthday changed that. And now he's going through werewolf puberty, with all the embarrassments and frustrations that entails.
His mortification only escalates when he arrives at Camp H.O.W.L., which is basically a high-end boot camp where baby Weres learn control, and finds that his assigned counselor is hotter than the sun.
Tate has been helping teens master their urges for years, but Adrian is a new and unexpected challenge. Today's WIP Wednesday showcases just exactly how exasperating his job shepherding the Werewolf elite's brats into wolfdom can be. *g*
Camp H.O.W.L.
“For the last time, Ryan, we aren't keeping you prisoner here. You are an adult, and if you choose to leave we can't stop you.”
They really couldn't. The kids Tate worked with at Camp HOWL weren't prisoners—they were Weres who were adjusting to their wolves. Technically, since the change came on the first full moon after a Were's nineteenth birthday, they weren't really kids, either. Everyone at the camp was a legal adult, but it was often difficult to tell from the way they acted. Camp HOWL catered to the elite in Were society. A month at the camp cost more than a year's tuition at most colleges. He'd heard rumors that some parents signed their kids up as soon as they were born and started making paying the exorbitant fee in monthly installments nearly two decades before their precious little wolfling would ever set foot on the manicured grounds.
It wasn't the raw juice bar or the Pilates machines that kept the kids from leaving camp, though.
Every single one of them knew they'd be roasted by their Alpha if they walked away from the camp before the counselors released them. Guarding their secret from exposure was every wolf's highest priority, even these stuck-up, pampered pseudo-adults. And if any of them thought they knew best and tried to leave, well, that was between the Weres and their packs. In his seven years at the camp, Tate had never seen a Were leave before they graduated. There had been a few close calls, but all it had taken was a few words with the recalcitrant Were's Alpha to turn things around.
He had Ryan's on speed dial, since it was his job to know how to spot trouble and Ryan had walked through the camp's gates with trouble written all over him. Tate hoped it wouldn't get that far, but it was a nice ace up his sleeve.
Ryan had his phone in his hand, his fingers clutched around the nearly indestructible case most kids arrived with. They weren't fashionable, but the wolf-proof titanium was a necessity while the young wolves learned how to deal with their heightened strength and volatile mood swings.
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“I called an Uber,” he sneered, his gaze locked on Tate's in a blatant challenge.
Tate held his hands up, placating the teen. “That's your call, man,” he said, trying his damndest to project an air of calm detachment. Ryan's senses weren't honed enough yet to pick up on Tate's racing heart or the faint tang of salt in the air from the cold sweat that had broken out down his back.
He'd called an Uber. Jesus Christ. Some day these kids were actually going to kill him. An emotional, angry baby Were in an Uber?
Luckily they were miles and miles from an Uber driver, and that was assuming Wade Watkins could get his scuffed-up Ford F150 to start in the wet autumn chill. A kid like Ryan would probably take one look at the dented, rusted out truck and turn tail and run.
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