Rating: 4 stars
Shay has returned a changed wolf to the pack he left for the big city. Shay is now painfully thin, and way too quiet for his best friend, Darius, who remembers his friend the way he used to be. Darius thinks a pair of leather pants will do wonders for Shay’s confidence but Shay may just be the only werewolf in history to hate the smell of leather! Shay believes leather smells like dead cows and refuses to wear any dead cow pants. But Dar has more than missed his friend and figures helping him rediscover his self confidence might just lead to something both have wanted all their lives. Now if he can just get him to put on those pants!
How can you not love a short story about a werewolf who eschews wearing animals products? Julia Talbot gives us an adorable story about two best friends reuniting and the unspoken love that has been there all along. My only quibble with this story is that Talbot delivers such wonderful characterizations and then puts them in a plot that just begs for more backstory. What happened to Shay after he left the pack? Why is he so thin? What was going on with Shay to make him leave the pack to begin with? The story left me with so many questions because I became invested in these characters from the start and loved what little I knew of them. At any rate, terrific short story full of two intriguing questions and one author’s twist on the werewolf genre. Great job.
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 