That time of the month

Werewolves aren't the only ones who have an uncomfortable time once a month.

Amanda stood at the microwave waiting for the bean bag filled with rice to heat. Shane would usually have been here by now, but he had a new girlfriend, and might not have been able to convince her that going to hang out at the home of a woman she hadn’t met to cuddle wasn’t weird.
Because it really was weird.
On the plus side, all the dogs had moved to sleeping outside in their run for the spring, all the dogs that was except George. He was the latest addition and wasn’t quite ready to be with the pack. Shane had built the run on Amanda's land to house the huge dogs he fed and cared for.
Amanda wasn’t sure exactly how her life had become so tangled up with Shane’s after she hired him to work at her coffee shop. She just knew that he needed the company of the dogs to run with and have puppy piles with, and the boundaries she gave him, and someone to answer for him to Davidson, because Davidson was in charge of all the werewolves in the area, except, of course, for Shane.
As far as she could tell, Davidson wasn’t actually a bad person to have in authority. Shane just didn’t want to join up. So, he stayed independent, and Davidson let him, which went a long way to convincing Amanda that Davidson wasn’t a bad person. Except Shane didn’t really want to be independent. Thus Amanda, who had a big yard and would tell him what to do without being able to force the issue, had somehow become in charge of him and his dogs.
Amanda sighed as she took the heated bag out of the microwave and put it with the others on the tray along with the popcorn bowl and tea, then walked over to her giant U shaped couch. Time for a movie and chill. She didn’t really need Shane to warm her back. The heating bags would work just fine to ease the cramps. And without him here she could watch what she wanted.
Amanda settled onto the couch she had all to herself and waited for George to arrange himself on the floor. He knew he wasn’t allowed on the furniture without Shane here. She picked up the remote to turn on Dog Soldiers.

Mangled bodies had been found, and the troop of soldiers had run into a character who looked like she’d be filling the role of exposition girl, when Amanda’s doorbell rang. She considered for a moment before switching to Netflix and setting it to Shane’s profile. Thumbnails for gentle nature documentaries and cooking shows filled the screen.
She didn’t have to avoid stepping on George who had been sleeping, since he had popped up and run over to do circles in front of the door even before the doorbell sounded.
“Down George” George stopped his frantic movement and lay to the left of the door so Amanda could open it, but George would be the first to see, and be seen by their visitors. Amanda looked through the peephole, seeing Shane and an unknown woman with curly black hair and red rimmed glasses holding boxes of pizza. She opened the door wide to let them in, along with the mass of dogs that had been just below sight.
“Hey Amanda, this is Julie. Julie, this is my friend Amanda I told you about. We brought pizza!”

Shane put the pizza on the kitchen counter and told Julie “Gotta do something, be back in a bit” then left with the pack of dogs for an hour. Amanda talked to Julie and discovered that she knew Shane would come over to act as a platonic back warmer for Amanda when she got her period, but hadn’t yet been told why Shane would need to come here out of town around the time of the full moon next week. There was a bit of awkward chatting, then they grabbed a few pieces of pizza after Amanda convinced Julie that they didn’t have to wait for Shane, and the women settled on the couch to watch the rest of Dog Soldiers, which fortunately Julie had seen and didn’t mind starting in the middle.
They had switched over to watching The Floor is Lava by the time Shane came back with a pack of tired out dogs. Shane cleaned them off and brought in their food and bowls, moving the coffee table over to set up the dogs’ once a month, in the house feast. The three people settled themselves onto the couch, Shane sitting back to back with Amanda with Julie spooned in his lap, and soon the canines finished their food and piled onto the normally forbidden couch, with George laying with his head on Amanda’s lap.
Deciding on a new cooking show that looked like it would be set in the universe of Willy Wonka, everyone settled in.

Amanda woke to her phone’s text notification. She looked around to find everyone else asleep.
“Is the lone wolf with you?” It was Davidson.
“Yes. He went with the dogs for a run, and came back” she texted back, then paused the TV to check “three episodes ago, and has been asleep under a puppy pile for most of the time since.”
Davidson replied with a string of texts
“How long were the episodes?”
“You sure he didn’t leave and come back.”
“Does he smell of bleach?”
Then followed up with
“Getting used to Bob and Jim? You usually say The Rottweilers”
Amanda paused, Davidson didn’t usually need details. He would check in with her because Shane was a lone wolf in his territory who acted as if Amanda was his Alpha in spite of her being human, but Shane was good about following the rules and Davidson mostly left him alone.
Amanda checked the episode length for Crazy Delicious and texted back
“46 min each”
“no bleach”
“don’t think Shane moved much, though anything is possible since I dozed off.”
She sent a selfie of Shane sandwiched between her and Julie, with two huge black and tan dogs sprawled asleep over his legs, and another beside Julie.
“Still call them The Rottweilers, though Bob and Jim have been joined by Sue”
She sent a picture of another two huge wiry haired grey beasts blocking any exit from the couch utilizing the floor.
“Couple weeks ago he brought over The Wolfhounds.”
“And on Sunday it was George” This time it was a picture of the massive great dane with his head on her lap, sprawled on his back over half of the couch.
There was a pause while Amanda imagined Davidson, the local werewolf leader with his sandy blond hair and signature goatee and black leather trench coat, staring at the phone just absorbing the fact that there were now six dogs, each almost as big as a grown man living at and guarding her home.
“I’ll assume Shane wasn’t the one who took down one of the Markle Dairy’s cow then. It was intact on the CCTV less than an hour ago.”
“Have you told him to stop buying dogs for your place?”
Amanda replied “Yes, right after Sue. Then I made sure he unsubscribed from the big dog rescue newsletter he was getting after The Wolfhounds showed up. If you could tell Ivan to stop sending him large breed rehoming ads that would be great, since that’s how George and a couple of the others happened.”
“If I call off Ivan, can I join the puppy pile”
“Nope. Go deal with your cow. Good luck”
“After?”
“No. One werewolf is enough magic in my life. Besides you come with Ivan. Good night.”

Eric Davidson stood in the rain beside a bleach drenched mutilated cow, looking at pictures of a big cozy living room bathed in firelight filled with dozing canines and two sleepy or sleeping human females. He zoomed in on Amanda with the fire gilding her straight brown hair and the look of annoyed tolerance that crossed her face whenever she saw him.
His second approached, “Well, was it the simpleton?”
“Unlikely. Amanda was asleep for some of the time, but he joined her and another woman and the dogs a couple hours ago. She says he doesn't smell of bleach, and it would have been strong enough even a human would notice.” Davidson put his phone back into his coat pocket and turned to the man beside him “...Ivan, how long have you been sending Shane ads for dogs?”
Ivan paused, Davidson’s tone wasn’t dangerous, but warned him to be cautious “Don’t know, a few weeks maybe, just occasionally when I was looking for the puppy I promised Sarah, and saw one that made me think of the look on Amanda’s face if he kept bringing monster dogs to her place.”
“Ah, well, he now has six such monsters, two bred specifically to hunt wolves, installed at her home with you, my second’s, tacit permission. He’s taking them for runs. If they aren’t a pack yet, they soon will be.” Davidson held out his phone to show Ivan the pictures “Together those could probably take out a werewolf if they were motivated, possibly two or three once Shane gets them used to hunting together.”
Davidson turned back to the cow. “So, not Shane. And stop sending him dog ads. And stop calling him simpleton. He’s cunning enough to have taken advantage of your poor judgment.” Davidson crouched down to examine the carcass. “This looks like it was torn apart by tooth and fang, and we’ve cleared our own pack and our local lone wolf. Could be a stray, but bringing the bleach in without hands would be a problem. I think this may not be our problem, at least not directly.”
Ivan looked at Davidson “Are we going to start policing everything that goes bump in the night now?”
“No, but Markle didn’t need to give us a chance to make things right if it had been our problem, one good turn deserves at least a bit of effort on our part. Change and see how far you can follow the bleach scent.”
While Ivan stripped in the rain and changed into a wolf, Davidson called Daisy Markle to let her know that it was unlikely a werewolf that had killed her cow, their reasoning, and that he would be following the sent as far as they could, but that if the predator had hands to carry a bleach bottle, they would have hands to drive a getaway car as well.
He hung up as Ivan shook off the pain of becoming a wolf, and began sniffing along the ground, sneezing occasionally at the bleach.

Three hours later Davidson and Ivan returned to Markle Dairy with a rather battered troll, who was made to sign a contract to pay $5000 in restitution and be bound not to hunt within a mile of any farms in Davidson’s territory.
With public relations taken care of, Davidson dropped Ivan off at his house before heading to his own apartment.
Sitting at his computer Davidson uploaded the photos Amanda had texted him. Cropping Shane out of her selfie, he added it to the computer’s wallpaper. Then he microwaved some dinner before settling on the couch in front of a video of a fireplace playing on his TV.