Werewolf Bitten, Twice Shy Read online

  Werewolf Bitten

  By

  Riley Rivers

  © Riley Rivers 2020

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cover art: Heather Meloche

  A note of appreciation for Grem. Thank you, friend.

  A struggling college student…

  A man determined to care for him…

  And a run-in with a wolf that brings several things into focus.

  Broke, exhausted, and homeless, Cameron Drake's only hope is to make it to tomorrow. At twenty-two, he’s a full-time college sophomore working third shift at a warehouse and only scraping by because he doesn’t pay rent. Living in his car isn't the easiest, but he makes it work.

  Cameron lives and breathes photography, and all he wants to do is graduate and wield a camera for a living. When Ezra Green, a world-renowned photographer, offers Cameron a paid internship, Cameron can’t believe his luck. Ezra is kind, and a fantastic mentor, and it’s altogether too easy for Cameron to develop a crush on the handsome older man. Even though Ezra seems to care for him in turn, Cameron shoves his feelings down in favor of working harder. For once in his life, he gets to have something good. He doesn’t want to mess it up.

  Naturally, his good luck is interrupted by a freak wolf attack.

  Injured and without anywhere else to go, Cameron would rather die than burden Ezra. Will Ezra be able to convince Cameron that he isn’t a burden at all?

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  About the Author

  Excerpt: The Werewolf’s Nymph Neighbor

  Other Reads by Riley

  Chapter One

  Cameron stumbled into his nine am class, eyes bleary, clutching his thermos of coffee and desperately hoping the caffeine would help clear his head. He usually tried not to work his third-shift job at the warehouse on Sunday or Tuesday nights because Mondays and Wednesdays were his early morning days, but he hadn’t been able to pass up the shift.

  He almost regretted it now, as he made his way towards a seat. Focus Photography 2045 was only offered from nine to noon, and it was a highly intensive class that basically everyone in his program fought to get into. It was an elective class, but it was a good one… and small. And only offered once a semester. If you didn’t get into the fall class and wanted a shot, you had to wait until winter. He’d been incredibly lucky to score a seat and had arranged practically his whole schedule around it. He wanted to make the most out of the class. Which meant being fucking conscious.

  But with winter getting closer and closer and his old tires getting more and more bald, he’d really needed to earn a little extra cash to get them all replaced. The last thing he needed was to spin out and end up in a ditch and then need to pay for that. It wasn’t snowing yet, but there was a bite in the air even though it was just the beginning of November, and forecasts were dreary. It was supposed to be a bad winter.

  There were a lot of reasons Cameron wasn’t looking forward to a bad winter, but he’d worry about staying warm once temperatures really started to drop. As it was, he didn’t have the capacity to think about it. A plus side to it would be that he’d be able to keep more food with him, since his car would be turning into a moving refrigerator. The downside, well… he wasn’t interested in freezing too.

  His last winter had been blessedly mild. Temperatures hadn’t dipped down much below 20 degrees, which honestly might have saved his life. So thinking of a truly frigid winter full of snow and ice and freezing temperatures…

  Whatever. Tires first. Maybe by the time it started to get well and truly bad out, he’d be in a better position.

  Yeah, right.

  He took another sip of coffee, grateful for the fact that the warehouse had a never-ending pot available for employees. Smart, considering it was a twenty-four hour operation. Cameron hadn’t been big into caffeine before, but needs must. And it was nice to have a hot drink to look forward to. He didn’t exactly get those during his downtime. So he’d gotten the idea to start bringing in a thermos. He just filled it before he got off shift, dumped in a bunch of sugar, and went out into the world.

  Now he took another sip and pulled his notebook out of his bag. He was probably the only college student in existence who didn’t own a computer, but that’s what the campus library was for. When he wasn’t on campus he was just as capable of writing papers longhand, and then typing them up and doing the final edits when he was back in the library. He’d also gotten really good at typing on his phone. For actual editing, he used the labs. He made it work. Every so often he thought about saving up to buy a cheap, refurbished laptop, if only to be able to type stuff up outside of the library, but then there’d be some new surprise expense and that thought would die.

  It wasn’t a big deal. He practically lived on campus anyway when he wasn’t at his job. Cameron had been trained into not needing a lot of sleep since he’d started living in group homes when he was eleven.

  You learned a lot, fast, in those circumstances.

  He took his phone out of his pocket while he waited for class to start, trying to wake up a little more by reopening the news articles he’d spent the last week reading. They were having a guest speaker today, one that his teacher was super excited about. Once she’d spilled the beans about who was going to be speaking, Cameron could admit to being just as excited.

  Ezra Green, their guest speaker, was a fucking world-renowned photographer. He specialized primarily in food, and was responsible for like, pretty much every major food commercial that appeared in a magazine or on a billboard. And while he wasn’t exactly a celebrity to the world at large, in photography circles he was a big-deal name. Cameron had freaking studied his lighting and positioning techniques in other classes. The fact that he was going to be getting a chance to hear this guy speak in person was amazing.

  He was a little surprised that Green had deigned to come give a guest lecture at some random local college in Detroit—not even UofM or State, the big name Michigan colleges—but Cameron certainly wasn’t complaining. Then again, googling had revealed that Green had grown up in Michigan, so maybe it was giving back to the community or something. Apparently he lived in and had a personal studio in Franklin, and when he wasn’t literally traveling the globe for projects, the projects came to him.

  Cameron rested his head in one hand and scrolled through pictures on his phone. Green had done a photo essay on his home studio several years ago and the place was just gorgeous. Essentially made of windows so it was filled with natural lighting, dozens of backdrops, an array of lighting equipment, shelves of carefully stored lenses…

  He jolted upright once his teacher, Lisa Nash, walked into the room, clapping her hands to get the class’s attention. There was a general shuffle as the room qu
ieted down, pulling out laptops and tablets as she started to speak.

  “Alright guys, listen up. You all know we’ve got a special guest today, and I won’t prolong the wait. Just remember that Mr. Green is here on his own time. Give him your attention and respect, and be mindful of everyone in the room while he talks and during his Q&A. You get an hour and a half of his time. Don’t waste it. You’ll get a break once he’s done, and the rest of the class will be more hands-on work. You sign out after the second half of class. No ducking out once Mr. Green leaves. Got that?”

  She waited for the various nods and chorus of “yes”s from the twenty-five person class before crossing the room to the door on the other side, which opened up to the back area of the floor that housed the labs, the equipment storage, and the faculty offices. “Mr. Green? We’re ready.”

  Ezra Green walked into the room, and Cameron had to swallow. He already knew what Green looked like from the judicious googling he’d done and had thought him handsome then, but it was something else to see him in person, so close up. It was kind of stupid how the guy was such an amazing photographer but that the pictures of him hadn’t done him any justice. Pictures hadn’t captured how devastating his smile was, or the proper color of his dark brown skin, or what his proportions actually were, all tall and broad-shouldered, with a body that looked like it belonged to Captain America as opposed to a guy that spent most of his time behind a camera. Cameron’s eye kept zeroing on details, like the way Green’s soft-looking black sweater hugged his frame, or the little smatterings of salt in the pepper of his curly, close-cropped hair.

  He shook his head hard. He was too tired and it was making him stupid. Staring? Really? Yes, he’s hot. Focus. Come on.

  Green directed his smile at the room at large. Cameron grabbed for his notebook. “Thank you for having me. It’s nice to see all of you here.” His voice was pleasantly smooth and deep. “I’m not sure how much your teacher has said about me, so forgive me if this is a repeat of information you already know, but my name is Ezra Green, and I’m a photographer based out of Michigan.” The smile turned into more of a grin, playful and encouraging. “Just like all of you.”

  Cameron let Green’s speech wash over him as he explained a little about his background and schooling. This was stuff he already knew, yeah, but it wasn’t a hardship to listen to Green talk. It was kind of relaxing, in a way, to not have to think too hard and just watch and listen to the man speak.

  Then Green switched to the topic of his work and photography in general, and pulled out a clicker. “So let’s look a little into the more technical aspects of focus and overall composition, shall we?” Two pictures were suddenly displayed on the smartboard, side-by-side.

  Cameron squinted at them. At first, it looked as though they were both the same picture; a bird’s eye view of a fully decked out Thanksgiving table. Eight place settings, with people’s hands and arms in the shot holding silverware or helping themselves to food. The positioning of almost everything was the same, the lighting was the same… but the picture on the left was clearly better than the one on the right, somehow.

  “The picture on the left is the one that ran,” Green said, verifying what Cameron had been thinking. “The picture on the right was the runner-up that was ultimately rejected. Both pictures are of the same set, but in the end, the left was the superior choice. Can anyone tell me why?”

  It was like a game of spot the difference. Everyone in the room looked from one picture to the other, quiet murmurings springing up as people talked among themselves.

  A few people tentatively raised their hands, and Green pointed to Nancy.

  “Is the lighting warmer on the left?”

  Green shook his head. “Not quite. The lighting in both pictures are exactly the same.”

  Both of the other people who had raised their hands lowered them again.

  Cameron tapped his fingers restlessly on his notebook as he stared at the picture on the left. Something was different, and it obviously wasn’t the lighting. That was pretty clear. There was just… there was something about the hand model with the purple sleeves…

  It clicked, and Cameron eagerly raised his hand. Green pointed to him. “Yes?”

  “The model in purple has her wrist bent in the left picture,” Cameron said in a rush. “In the right, her wrist is straight.”

  Green’s smile widened. “Yes, exactly. As… your name, please?”

  “Cameron, sir.”

  “Cameron,” Green said warmly. “Great.” To the class at large, he said, “As Cameron pointed out, this one model’s positioning is slightly different from one picture to the other, and it changed the entire composition of the piece. It’s not something a lot of people spot, since most people take in the picture as a whole, instead of being able to pick apart individual elements.”

  Even though Cameron knew Green wasn’t talking to him specifically, he still felt himself preen a little at what amounted to some pretty specific praise. It’s not something a lot of people spot.

  That was kind of cool.

  Green went on to display several more pictures, each with minute differences in the placement of the focal points. Some he pointed out himself, but others he asked the class to try to discover themselves, using each photo as another way to illustrate his overall lecture about the importance of focus in each component of a larger whole, and how it could utterly change the subject of a piece.

  Now that Cameron had an idea of what to look for, it was a lot easier to spot the details in the rest of the photographs. A lettuce leaf was placed just a touch more off-center. A model’s hoodie was slightly less zipped up, showing more of the shirt underneath. There were fewer beads of condensation on a mug of beer.

  He valiantly held off on raising his hand immediately once he figured the latest picture out, trying to give his other classmates a chance, but anytime someone else tried to pick out the differences, they got it wrong. It was frustrating to keep hearing incorrect answers, especially as it became more and more obvious of what they were supposed to look for. Eventually, when Green went, “Anyone else?” tone only open and encouraging, Cameron lifted his hand.

  “Ah, Cameron,” Green said. He didn’t sound annoyed that Cameron kept raising his hand, at least. He actually sounded kind of pleased. “Going for five in a row, huh?”

  Cameron bit his lip, not sure what to do with—with what sounded like teasing. “Yeah, uh…” he faltered, but pushed through when Green raised an expectant eyebrow. “The cluster of grapes next to the knife. It’s an entirely different bunch of grapes.”

  “Excellent.” Green aimed that smile at him at him again. “How can you tell?”

  Cameron waved a feeble hand at the smartboard, which was displaying a wine and cheese board, complete with exactly sixteen grapes placed in strategic areas around the board. There were four grapes grouped together next to the cheese knife, very artfully positioned in a way that they looked not-too symmetrical and not-too haphazard. In both photographs the grapes were in the exact same spot, but… “The right grapes… they’re slightly different sizes, and the left grapes are more uniform. Like… the one on the bottom kind of… bulges out more? Over the bottom one on the left.”

  “Very good,” Green praised before turning back to the screen and pointing out further details.

  It was fascinating stuff, and interest helped Cameron stay in the moment, but he still found himself fighting yawns and hating himself for it. The very last thing he wanted to do was have Green glance over at him and find him yawning.

  And Green was glancing at him a fair bit, considering how often Cameron was answering questions. When he put up his final example and Cameron found the difference—in a photo of a man drinking a coke, his fingers curled around the can, his index finger was just a smidgen higher—Cameron looked up and found himself locking eyes with Green, who gave him an amused look, tilting his head slightly to the side.

  Cameron took a breath, flushing at what seemed to be cle
ar, personal attention, and nodded. Yeah, he was pretty sure he knew the answer.

  Green’s eyes sparkled before he went on to ask the class as a whole if anyone wanted to make an attempt at this last picture, and Cameron practically had to sit on his hands to not burst out with the answer. It wasn’t just that finding the differences was fun; he liked that he was impressing Green. Or amusing him, at the very least.

  He just liked hearing that he’d done a good job, in figuring something out. Green was an expert, and though he was obviously a… a really nice guy, he didn’t seem like the type to hand out empty praise. Cameron was earning each smile. And that was nice.

  Eventually Bradon, a classmate that Cameron had worked with on a couple projects so far, got it right—and got the honor of Mr. Green telling him he’d figured it out. If Cameron was disappointed, he tried not to let it show. Besides, it was good that someone else had gotten a turn. His performance today regardless, Cameron wasn’t a huge fan of standing out. He asked questions like crazy, yeah, because he wanted to learn and damned if he wasn’t going to get every penny’s worth of tuition out of his classes, but volunteering answers like he’d just done for the past hour was not his typical style. He resolved to stay quiet for the rest of the lecture.

  Of course, the Q&A session was a different story.

  Cameron had a list of questions, carefully chosen and worded over the past week as he tried to think of things that would make the most of having Green available to personally answer them. He’d put them in order of “must ask” to “okay if he wasn’t able to get around to it” and barely had to glance at his notebook at this point, because he kind of knew them by heart.

  But when Green opened the floor to questions, every single hand in the room went up, and Cameron’s heart sank. They only had half an hour, and with twenty-four other people wanting attention, the chance of Cameron getting called on to even ask one question, much less more than one, was pretty slim.