Hot Wolf in the Country: A Cozy Monster Romance by Honey Phillips

Author:Honey Phillips [Phillips, Honey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2026-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

The Pack Hall was alive with energy, primal, wild, almost visible. Wolves moved with a predatory grace, their laughter deeper, their movements more fluid, their gazes sharper. Harper stood near the edge of the huge room, clutching a cup of punch she had no intention of drinking, feeling like a biologist who’d accidentally wandered into a shark feeding frenzy.

Everyone had changed. Earlier today, they’d just seemed like a strange, rural community with a shared secret. Now, they were undeniably other. Her analytical brain catalogued the changes: the way their eyes caught the light with a reflective sheen, the low thrum of their voices when they spoke to each other, the territorial spacing between them that shifted and resettled as people moved through the room.

They were beautiful and terrifying.

“Hey.”

She jumped, sloshing punch over her fingers. Jared grinned at her, looking even more handsome than he had in the office, though the predatory gleam in his eyes was more pronounced tonight. His dark hair was slightly longer, brushing the collar of a soft-looking Henley, and he held two bottles of beer.

“Want a real drink?”

“No, thanks. I’m good.” She gestured with her cup. “Punch is my… limit.”

“It’s just fruit juice.” He leaned against the wall beside her, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from him. “You’re hiding.”

“I’m observing.”

“Observing what?” His gaze swept over the room, then returned to her, his smile suggesting he found her more interesting than the entire pack combined. “The strange customs of the local wolf pack?”

“Something like that.”

“You should join in. The full moon celebration is the best night of the month.” He held out one of the beer bottles. “Come on. Live a little.”

She hesitated. Getting drunk with a werewolf who’d already made it clear he was interested seemed like a terrible idea. But standing here like a wallflower wasn’t helping either.

“Okay,” she said, taking the beer. “But only one.”

“That’s what they all say.” He laughed, a warm, easy sound that made some of the tension in her shoulders ease. He was charming. Dangerously so. If she’d met him under different circumstances, before Adrian, she might have been tempted. But the memories of Adrian’s possessive growl, of the heat in his eyes, of the desperate way he’d kissed her against the wall… they were burned into her.

“It’s nice to see you relax,” Jared said. “You’ve been buried in your office all week. We were starting to think you were a robot Adrian built to fix our internet.”

“I do enjoy my work.”

“Nothing wrong with that. But a pack needs to interact.” He tipped his beer towards hers. “Even the human consultants.”

They drank in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the pack. The music was louder than usual, a thumping rhythm that seemed to vibrate through the floorboards. Several couples were dancing, intimate in a way that made her skin prickle. The air itself felt thick, charged with something primitive and urgent.

“It’s the moon,” Jared said, as if reading her mind. “It pulls at the wolf.

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