Book 1: Chapter 14

Finn was still giggling in the corner as he stretched. I stripped down naked before shifting into my wolf form. It was becoming more and more painful to shift. It was harder for my body to shift back and forth and even causing me to bleed sometimes when I shifted back. The two boys looked at me concerned but once fully shifted, I felt better.

It was also the only time I was larger than the guys. My wolf was ridiculously large. Between my past, the monster I had become, and the power I inherited after, my wolf was ridiculously huge and strong. The two metal limbs shifting easily with me and still glowing their bright blue, I looked absolutely crazy. It was just at a significantly larger scale.

Once the boys shifted, we each took a bag in our mouths and they chased after me. I headed East into the forest, skirting the edge of Silas’ territory. Once I reached the far edge before it made the sharp turn North, I stopped and shifted back to my human form. Coughing, I braced myself against a tree and threw up some blood. Finn was next to me in seconds, rubbing my back.

“Sol, if it’s that bad, don’t shift. It’s fine. We can…”

I barked out a laugh. “Yeah. An Alpha who can’t shift. There goes my credibility out the window. I’ve already lost my wolf, Noah. Let’s not add insult to injury.”

“But…”

“Leave it.” I snapped at him. “Grab the clothes in the bags and let’s get started.”

We started to dress and Noah pulled out the two recurve bows and a longbow I packed. Finn took out the arrows and inspected my handiwork.

“What is…”

The wind picked up for a moment and a whistle, obnoxiously high pitched, resounded for a moment.

Finn burst out laughing. “Dog whistles?! You attached dog whistles to the arrows?”

Beaming, I nodded. “We are going to imbed these into the trees on their territory. As high as we can get them and then the whistles will hangs and when the wind bows…”

Noah grinned. “Goddess above, Sol. I don’t know what he did to deserve this side of you but damn. How many arrows do we have?”

“So each of us will have about one hundred per quadrant of the South border.”

Finn snorted. “A hundred! That’s like four hundred for each of us! Sol!”

“Oh, I know. I want these as high in the trunks as we can get them and as wide spread as we can. I’m going to climb up and use the longbow to get further out, since I’m the better shot with distance.”

I slung a bag of arrows over my shoulder and grabbed the long bow. Turning to the boys, I smirked. “To make it entertaining, for every arrow you miss, we have to take a shot when we get back.”

The two of their mouths fell open. “The hell? That’s cruel!” Finn groaned.

“What drink?”

I smiled wide. “Monte Alban Mezcal.”

The two of them gagged.

“What? You thought it was going to be something good? We have a case of bottles we never use in storage. It’s a punishment.”

“That’s cruel, Sol! That’s the worm tequila too!!” Finn grimaced but looked away from Noah who paled.

Noah straightened his back. “I’m not missing a single shot anyways. So it’s fine.”

“Remember. The whistles will displace the weight of the arrow. So you’ll need to adjust for it.”

The two of them growled as I headed up the tree. It was easy for my to climb and I found a fairly high branch that would support my weight. I was able to see a good ways out and my magic eye helped more like a scope. Once placed, I got comfortable and pulled out an arrow and knocked it.

All three of us missed our first shots. I could hear them grown down below and I laughed. Knocking another one, this time, it impaled into the wood near the top of the tree. Even from this distance you could hear the high pitch tone. Smiling, I started to go through the arrows I brought up.

Once I finished with the ones in my bag, I climbed down the tree and landed lightly on the ground. It was so loud that I had to put on my headphones to drown the sound out to think.

“I missed two.” I smiled at the boys.

Finn chuckled. “Four for me.”

The two of us looked at Noah, who looked ashen. I but down on my lip.

“Noah, it’s okay…it’s just the first bunch.”

“Eleven. I missed eleven okay!”

Turned, I squeezed my eyes shut and bit down harder on my lip, trying not to laugh. Finn, however, was having no such luck as him holding in his laughter only brought on a serious case of the hiccups which brought tears to his eyes.

“Let’s go to the next quadrant. I’ll show you two.” Noah grabbed a bag off the floor and stomped through the forest as Finn and I followed.

We headed to the middle of the section and proceeded to let loose another three hundred arrows between the three of us. It was around noon when we finished up the last section and all three of us had our headphones on. Finn even put in extra earplugs under his headphones.

Since we were closer to the bar, we just walked back. By the time we reached the bar, we couldn’t hear the whistles anymore and I sighed, taking my headphones off.

“Goddess, my ears. It was like a symphony of pain.”

Finn giggled. “They are going to be hearing that for weeks! Even if they manage to get all of them.”

“Alright, what’s your count boys? I was two, three, one, two. So a total of eight out of four hundred or so.” I smiled, damn proud especially since I was doing it with my longbow in a fucking tree.

“Fuck. Four, five, two, and one. The second section had way more wind than everywhere else. Twelve for me.” Finn huffed, throwing the bags on the stairs as we started to get ready to open.

It was a couple of minutes and finally Finn and I leaned over to looked at Noah who was behind the bar, clanging around.

“Noah?”

“What?” He snapped at us.

Finn’s eyes were sparkling. “What’s your count, sweetheart?”

“Don’t fucking call me sweetheart!” Noah growled out. “It doesn’t matter!”

I took a deep breath. “Don’t make me ask, Noah.”

He slammed down a bottle. “Forty-two! Okay! I missed forty-two! Happy now?”

I snorted and couldn’t keep my laughter in. Tears streamed down my cheeks and from the sound of Finn, he wasn’t much better. Noah was very specific about the times he would get drunk. He didn’t like doing it often and definitely didn’t like getting blackout drunk. The reason for it was because his usual demeanor, though lighthearted, was far more serious than either Finn or I. That disintegrated when he got drunk and it was something Finn and I enjoyed immensely over the years.

“It will be okay, Noah. Really, it just burns going down. It’s only 40%” I tried to soften the blow.

Finn was no help, snorting and holding his stomach.

“Can’t we…I dunno, stretch it out over a few weeks?” Noah looked like he was going to cry.

I bit my lip. “No, Noah. It’s gotta be all today. We can do like…ten every hour or so…”

“What! No! All at once!”

“Finn! It’s already like…three bottles!”

Noah paled more and his head fell to the bar counter. “Why was I so terrible today? Usually I am better than Finn!”

“Maybe because you were still thinking it was a normal arrow. But with the whistle it was being displaced.” I offered, rubbing his back as I came around the bar. “Cheer up. If you were human, we’d have to take you to the hospital for alcohol poisoning.”

He groaned and shook his head. “Not helping. At all.”

“You haven’t gotten drunk in a while, Noah. It’s just time. That’s all. Enjoy it.”

“With the absolute worst alcohol we have in this place?”

I chuckled. “You probably won’t feel anything after the first fifteen or so. After that it’s all just smooth sailing.”

Noah looked up at me, pouting. “You owe me.”

“Me? You owe me 42 arrows that didn’t make it to their destination. Since we can’t get them back on pack territory, this was payment. I owe you nothing.” I huffed and shook my head. “Just for that, I take back my offer. You drink it all at once after we are done prepping for the night.”

Finn coughed and turned to continue wiping down the tables and making sure everything was set correctly. The rest of the prep for the Friday night was quiet. We opened about three after we had some lunch and had a couple of the early Friday regulars.

It started to get busy around seven and that’s when Finn ducked into the storage room and brought out five bottles of the tequila. A few Silas’ pack had shown up, as well as Charles who I was chatting with at the end of the bar. Standing up on a stool we kept behind the bar, Finn whistled to the room, grabbing everyone’s attention. I smiled, leaning against the back of the bar, so Charles could see Finn.

“Ladies, Gents, fangs, fairies and furries, today, our little trio of bar owners had a bit of a bet. It wasn’t that someone lost but the severity of the punishment.”

I smiled as he continued. “The bet will remain a secret, however, the punishment was having to take shots of this.” He held up the bottle of tequila. “This is Monte Alban Mezcal or better known as the worm tequila. We have to take shots based on our…performance.”

The whole bar roared in laughter and cheers. We usually were pretty candid with our patrons and happy to have fun with them. A few of the wolves whistled and the humans slammed their drinks down on the table. Finn bowed and I moved, taking out and lining up shot glasses on the bar.

“In first place, taking the least amount of punishment shots is our dear Solaris. With a total of eight shots!”

Charles coughed on his beer and I chuckled. Pouring eight shot glasses full of the bottle we had behind us, I rolled my shoulders. At the end, I had sliced a lime and rolled in it salt. Taking a deep breath, I pounded back all eight shots in a row before biting into the salt covered lime. A shiver ran through my whole body and I squeezed my eyes shut, tilting my head for a moment, waiting for the ridiculous burn to go away. Finally, I took the lime out and coughed. Turning, I poured myself a small bit of whiskey and swished it around in my mouth before swallowing it.

The whole bar erupted in cheers and whistles. Smiled, I bowed and started to set out a few more glasses. Filling them up for Finn.

“In second place was me, at twelve.”

The bar cheered again but went hush as Finn stepped down off the stool and stood in front of his line of shots. He kept a glass of lemon juice and he downed half of it before he started pounding back the shots. He got to six, halfway before he coughed. The people close enough to see him take the rest of the sip of lemon juice laughed but he continued through the last six, slamming the last shot glass down into the sink, shattering it. The bar erupted again in cheers and full blown hysterics.

I leaned back over by Charles, smiling.

“Not going to set up Noah’s?”

My smirk widened to a Cheshire Cat grin. “I don’t have enough shot glasses.”

Charles eyes widened but before he could ask, Finn cleared his throat.

“I hope everyone doesn’t mind me not getting back up on the chair. I just don’t want to crash and break everything back here.” He laughed. “Now, in last place, we have our dear sweet Noah.”

Finn tapped the bar as he continued. “As you can see, we haven’t set our shot glasses for Noah. The reason being, he actually had a few too many and we don’t want to break for a wash cycle tonight. So Sol, if you wouldn’t mind…”

I placed two full bottles and the bottle I had taken my shots from. It was roughly about what Noah needed to drink.

“Our poor dear here lost with a full 42 shots.”

The whole crowd was shocked but there was a buzz of excitement. Even for a werewolf, that was a lot.

“Now for you normies out there, all three of us have a very high tolerance and alcohol doesn’t affect us as it would just normal people. But 42 shots of this stuff would fuck anyone up. So we do ask, that you keep all camera to yourself and allow our dear co-owner here to enjoy his drunken self this evening. Outside of what we will already lord over him for the rest of our lives.”

This brought more laughter out but Noah was completely pale. I rubbed his back.

“Anything you need with it? Or want to chase it with?”

His Adam’s Apple bobbed deep. “Give me the top shelf bourbon. A glass of it. And a whole lemon sliced.”

“Want me to dip the slices in salt?” I asked while quickly grabbing and pouring his requested drink.

“No. Just the lemon. Maybe in quarters?”

I nodded and grabbed a lemon, cutting it in half and then again, setting the pieces next to his bottles and the drink at the end. Stepping back, Charles reached out and took hold of my metal arm. His eyes wide as he watched. Everyone else watched with bated breath as Noah stepped up to the bar.

He took off the cap of the first bottle and then the second. For a few moments, he stared at the bottles. Finn was biting his lip, trying not to laugh. I grabbed Charles’ wrist that was holding my arm. Honestly, at some point we probably had drank that much but I had never actually seen Nosh drink this much at once. He liked teeter on the drunk and just keep it going.

Noah’s hand whipped out and grabbed the bottle. He threw it back and we all watched in utter silence as he downed the first bottle. He slammed it down on the bar and grabbed one of the quarters of lemons. But the entire bar erupted in cheers and started chanting for him. Once he finished a quarter of lemon he took the second bottle and we watched it drain as he leaned all the way back, the bottle straight up. He slammed that one down and took another quarter.

The whole room was chanting except for me, Finn and Charles. Honestly, I was beginning up feel a little fear deep into my veins for Noah. But after he finished a second quarter of lemon, he grabbed the partial bottle and downed it. Finishing up with the last quarter of lemon. All of us cheered, whistling, stomping, clapping and howling in laughter. He downed his chosen drink before he let out a loud roar, stumbling back and Finn caught him before he slammed his back into the taps.