Addie (Pack of Misfits #1) - Raven Kennedy Page 0,12

I go play PacMan with another one of our friends, Aspen. She’s a cool chick, and she stays on pack land and runs the homeschool program for the younger shifter kids. Since we shift sporadically as children, we can’t go to human school until we get our shifting under control and learn to hide our animals.

Aspen lives in one of the other singles’ warehouses, and is probably the most adorable person I’ve ever seen. Not that I would tell her that to her face. I once saw Stinger call her cute, and Mr. Enforcer walked away with a limp. Aspen is about five foot even, has brown hair, dimples in her cheeks, and her two front teeth are big, but somehow it makes her smile even more perfect. Like I said, adorable, and her sweet voice doesn’t help things. But I’ve faced her in the training ring when Hugo runs defensive fighting drills, and she is a force to be reckoned with.

“How do those little ghosts never get you?” I ask with exasperation.

“PacMan is my jam,” she replies as she moves the joystick with more finesse than I thought possible. She handles the joystick so well in fact, that I notice a few of the guys shooting her appreciative glances. Men.

We take turns at the game, but after the second round, there’s no coming back for me. Her score is ridiculously high, whereas mine is...not. “You bitch,” I tell her.

Aspen laughs and just tosses more quarters into the machine, never taking her eyes off it. “Sorry, Addie. Better luck next time.”

She’s even adorable when she wins. Instead of rubbing it in my face like I’ve been known to do, she preens gracefully. I hate losing. I need to rectify the feeling immediately, so I go to the one machine that never lets me down. I shoot Zoey a thumbs up when I see her score is a point higher than Matt’s at the air hockey table, and continue making my way through the arcade.

When I spot my favorite game, my lips curl upward. “Come to mama.”

Within minutes, I’m annihilating anyone who tries to beat my score. I’m in the zone and passing out some mad trash talk when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I look over to see an attractive guy smirking down at me. “You’re pretty good at that,” he says, tipping his head at the padded mallet in my hand.

“Yeah. I’m pretty good at whacking the mole,” I say. Then I cringe because, yeah. That sounded dirtier than I intended.

The guy laughs. “I’m Mario Perez,” he offers, holding out his hand.

I shake his hand, feeling his warm, firm grip. I know immediately that he’s a human, but unlike a lot of shifters, I’m not against having fun outside of my species. “I’m Addie.”

His dark brown eyes slide over me, but not in a creepy way. “Don’t you work at the bank?” he asks. He doesn’t seem familiar, but I would see hundreds of customers every week, so he might’ve slipped through the cracks of my memory.

“Yeah. Not anymore, though,” I answer, dropping the mallet and trying to contain the fist pump I want to throw in the air at my new high score. I have to play this cool.

“Why not?” he asks.

I look longingly at my high score, the beeping like music to my ears, and force myself to focus on him. Would it be weird to pull out my phone and take a picture to save this momentous occasion? He’d probably think it was weird. Still, my fingers are itching to grab my phone and do it anyway. “Oh. It’s a long story,” I mumble distractedly.

He looks between me and the scoreboard I’m staring at. “Yeah?” he prompts.

I feel the seconds tick down like my own personal countdown. Every second makes me twitch until I can’t stand it anymore. To hell with it. I dig into my pocket, yank out my phone, and open my camera. Selfie-style, I snap a pic with my beaming face as I throw up a finger to point at the obnoxiously large red numbers showing my high score. Mario just looks at me awkwardly as I snap the picture.

No regrets.

A second after I get the pic, the scoreboard goes blank and the exciting beeps cut off. Thank goodness I got it in time. That was a close one. I can’t wait to show Zoey and Aspen later. Why is it that when a cute guy finally talks to me, it’s