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  Reign of Terrier

  Soul Mutts | Book Two

  Lori R. Taylor

  Copyright © 2020 by Sterling & Stone

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  What to read next…

  A Note from the Author

  About the author

  Chapter One

  A man stared at Princess through the bars of her kennel.

  He looked all right. Nice enough, if a little stern around the lips. Someone who would expect only perfect obedience and order from every living thing around him, but not without a bit of gentleness for those he liked.

  Princess wanted to be one of those he liked, but the growl rose through her throat, pressed out between her teeth, before she could remind herself that was what kept anyone from seeing past her shell.

  The woman called Leslie came into view through the kennel door and looked Princess over as the growl continued to rumble through her throat.

  “Well, this one’s nasty,” the man said, a dismissive smirk in his voice.

  “Princess has had it hard,” Leslie answered. “Took six months to get her healthy enough to move her out from the back. But I wouldn’t want her around kids, so…”

  Leslie waved the man forward another kennel. Through the wall to Princess’ left, she heard her neighbor, a thick-skulled Lab-something, whining and digging at the bars of his door.

  Eager to make the humans notice him, as always. Labby had always been an attention-whore.

  The humans leaving her sight, though not her hearing, eased some of the panic that flared in her chest when the man poked his head around to look at her. Princess straightened from her crouch. The door to Labby’s kennel rattled as his tail and paws bounced alternatingly against it.

  Could acting out happiness actually cause happiness to be felt? She thought she’d heard that was something humans liked to say. Princess flicked her tail, side-to-side and in circles the way Labby always did, and immediately felt stupid for even trying it.

  Just because her tail could make such motions didn’t mean that it should. It’s not the sort of thing her tail was meant to do.

  She’d wagged my tail before, of course. She had moments in her life where it felt like the natural thing to do — all of those moments had occurred since coming here, but that shouldn’t negate their existence, right? The man called Dr. Dale and the woman Leslie were gentle humans that made her tail feel like wagging.

  But wagging her tail in an attempt to make her happy? That’s not how it worked.

  Maybe it was Labby’s secret, or maybe he was just dumb enough to be happy always, but neither option was for her.

  Princess went back to her bed, the place the humans’ presence disturbed her from, and curled up into the smallest ball she could make of her body. This bed was soft, and when she lay in the center of it, the edges billowed up around her so she couldn’t see anything but warm, ribbed fabric unless she lifted her head. The cocoon of her bed calmed her more, and she snuggled down just a little further.

  She might never grow accustomed to the strange sounds and smells of the kennel, the incessant whining and carrying-on from Labby on her left, and the piercing barks of the pit bull across the hall, but she hoped someday to grow accustomed to the softness of her bed.

  Until that day, she took every moment with it as something that might never be repeated and tried to appreciate its presence beneath her body, the little nest it made around her, keeping her safe and warm and away from the attention of anyone who might want to hurt her.

  The humans must’ve moved on, perhaps to The Front where dogs sometimes went and only rarely came back from, because the trail of whining and barking that always signaled a human’s presence in the kennels had quieted.

  At least they took Labby with them, and the wall of her kennel, for the first time ever, wasn’t being attacked by the nails and tongue of her stupid neighbor.

  Princess closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

  The next time she awoke, it was to the gleam of artificial light. The kennels were always lit with those bright human contraptions, but during the day, the windows above each kennel also brought in enough natural light that the artificial ones didn’t hurt to look at.

  (They flickered. A lot. Princess couldn’t tell if the humans couldn’t tell, or if they just weren’t bothered by it.)

  The door between the kennels and The Front opened, and a terrible metallic rattle startled her out of her sleepy half-doze. Princess burrowed a little further into her bed at the sound.

  Though she knew what it meant, that the noise was only the predecessor of dinner, she couldn’t stop the wave of panic that rose from the very center of her.

  It was only the dinner cart, but it still caused her heart to race and her muscles to tremble until even the cocoon of her bed shook in response. A whine leaked from her mouth.

  Please no. Please don’t.

  Humans were at the door to her kennel again. Leslie and the white-coated man called Dr. Dale. Friends, but she couldn’t stop trembling enough to get to her feet and go to them for the gentle hands they would have for her.

  Dr. Dale flipped open the latch to the door, and both humans crouched down at the entrance, making themselves smaller and less frightening.

  “It’s all right, Princess,” Leslie said softly. “You take your time.”

  Both of them looked away from her, back to each other.

  “I’m worried about her, Les,” Dr. Dale said. “I know how you feel about … but if it’s a quality of life issue, wouldn’t it be better to?”

  Princess didn’t like how she wasn’t sure what they were talking about. Humans could be cryptic sometimes, but this sounded more serious than usual. More like the way Dr. Dale sounded when he first saw her, when she wasn’t sure she’d ever feel better.

  Leslie took a breath, something that sounded like it might’ve been a gasp if she wasn’t controlling herself. “Don’t be ridiculous. We haven’t worked so hard to heal her just to give up now.”

  Dr. Dale frowned, but it wasn’t an angry expression like frowns were supposed to be.

  Leslie leaned toward him. They were always leaning toward each other, trying to be as close as the other would allow, though neither of them seemed to notice the behavior in either themselves or each other.

  Humans could be so oblivious.

  “I had faith in you, Doc. Have a little faith in me.”

  The frown ease
d from Dr. Dale’s face. “Of course.”

  Her shaking had quieted, comforted by their soft voices and not-big postures. The sound of the metal dinner cart muffled into the background behind their noises, and Princess was able to stand. Slowly, placing one paw deliberately in front of the other, she approached them. She knew they were aware of her — Leslie equally slowly extended one hand toward her even as she approached — but they kept their eyes and voices directed at each other.

  Princess sniffed Leslie’s hand. She smelled of all the other dogs she’d handled that day, the mud she must’ve been brushing out of their coats, the bread and turkey she must’ve eaten recently, and the warmth of human skin.

  She took another step forward and tilted her ear toward Leslie’s fingers, and she began to scratch gently at the base. Her whole body relaxed, and Princess leaned a little harder into her hand, her tail swinging loose and without any conscious effort along her hocks.

  “See?” Leslie turned to look at her now, a smile softening her human features. “She just needs a little bit of patience, and then she’s as lovely as any dog I’ve ever known.”

  Dr. Dale reach out, too, and when Princess didn’t pull away, settled a hand against her shoulder. His skin was warmer and rougher than Leslie’s, his hand large enough to cover her from spine to elbow, but his touch was just as gentle. She leaned against him, too, when he began to move his fingers down the coarse hairs along her back.

  “I know,” he answered Leslie. “I was just saying—”

  “I know, Dale. Keep just saying; it keeps me thinking.”

  “Alrighty, then, Princess.” Dr. Dale’s motions took on more purpose, though his motions stayed smooth and slow, his fingers gentle. He lifted her up, picking her front legs off the ground and peering at her belly where a soreness had finally begun to ease, then set her back down before she could start to feel afraid of not having all four paws on the floor. His eyes flashed over her, that same sort of once-over he’d given her dozens of times while she was not in the kennel room, but this time, it ended with a curl of his lips into a small smile and a satisfied tone to his next words.

  “She’s looking better. Finally.”

  “Good. That’s good to hear.” Leslie matched his smile, then glanced at Princess and cooed, “You were quite the little challenge, weren’t you, pup?”

  Her tail wagged again of its own accord. She was even tempted to flick her tongue out toward their fingers.

  “Now all we need to do is find you a home.”

  Chapter Two

  Tessa didn’t want to wake up.

  Or, more accurately, get out of bed. Her eyelids felt heavy, the lashes like they were coated in glue, making them stick together every time she blinked.

  But her phone was buzzing with an alarm already snoozed three times, and she had work to do — a lot, actually, as she’d been quietly putting off a long day of filling in spreadsheets by busying myself with less hideously boring tasks and claiming to her boss she was cleaning off the to-do list so her mind would be clear for said hideously boring spreadsheet work.

  But three days of stretching out minor tasks to avoid the big, dull one had finally cleared off the entirety of this month’s to-do’s but the spreadsheet, and there was no putting it off anymore.

  She dismissed the alarm and sat up, sagging immediately to her elbows, her face pressed into her hands, then she scrubbed her fingers through her hair, trying to stimulate some blood flow and wake up her brain.

  At least she didn’t need to get out of her fleecy pajamas and fuzzy socks to get work done.

  Five minutes and a K-Cup of coffee later, Tessa sat at her desk and pulled up the Roanoke Business and Loan folder with her name on it and stared down the six pages of numbers that needed sorted into a more sensibly organized spreadsheet.

  “Well,” she muttered down at her coffee. “No time like the present.”

  Livy used to say that whenever she caught Tessa dithering over some choice or other. It was what she’d said to her when she’d finally nagged her enough to get her to enroll in Harper Jones.

  Tessa bit her lip and willed away the water making the numbers across her screen dance and blur.

  Would there ever be a time when thinking about Livy wouldn’t reduce her to tears?

  She wasn’t sure. At the moment, it was hard to imagine it.

  Spreadsheets. She had to focus — her boss had already told her in yesterday’s email that he wasn’t pleased with how long this project had already taken.

  It was a long, dull day. She generally didn’t mind dull — dull meant no surprises, nothing unusual or unexpected to disturb her routine. Dull meant safe.

  But it also stirred something inside her, something that she’d long been able to ignore, but that since Livy’s — well, since Livy — had been yawning through her like it meant to swallow her whole.

  Dull meant safe, routine, alone.

  Dull meant lonely.

  It was the sort of evening, after she’d finished up the spreadsheet and emailed it off to her boss, that she might send some innocuous text to Livy. Hey, she’d write, and Livy would call back two minutes later.

  “What’re you up to tonight?” Tessa could imagine her saying. There’d be noise in the background of her side of the conversation because Livy was never one to linger in silence.

  “Nothing. Staying in,” Tessa would answer.

  “Nope.” Livy would pop the P. “Brush your hair, kid. We’re going to Coyote Joe’s.”

  Or, “I’ve got us tickets to that silly handbell choir thing you mentioned. Put on your best Christmas sweater.”

  Or, “They’re doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the park. You’re bringing the wine.”

  Or if it was a bad night, “Pizza or Chinese?”

  Tonight was a bad night; Tessa knew that the moment she stood up from her desk. The knot she tried to keep down in the deepest pit of her stomach had spent the day clawing its way to the surface and unraveling as it sometimes did to empty her out. She stretched as she made her way from office to living room, hoping that she could shift it all by popping a few stiff joints.

  A stupid hope. That wasn’t how the emptiness worked.

  Chinese, then.

  She had the nearest Chinese delivery place on speed-dial, a fact she tried not to dwell on if at all possible, because that wasn’t true before, and she only had to say her name to the woman who answered to place her order and request the delivery.

  All of these facts that weren’t so before. Facts Tessa didn’t question the meaning of because their meaning was too depressing to contemplate.

  Livy would’ve had her head.

  She turned on the TV and scrolled aimlessly through the channels without any idea of what she wanted to watch. Something funny, maybe? Something stupid and ridiculous to take her mind off of things?

  But she was in no mood to laugh.

  Drama? Maybe a soap that was too bizarre to take seriously?

  Not at this time of the day.

  True crime — something where they caught the bad guy and served justice to all those who were hurt by him?

  Except that wasn’t always true. Not every bad guy got caught, and not every hurt received due justice.

  The delivery driver knocked on her door.

  Tessa got up from her sprawl across the couch, the TV playing a roar of canned laughter at some stupid face being made by some stupid sitcom actor, and answered the knock.

  “Hey, Maggie.” She tried to smile at the girl on the other side of the door.

  “Evening, Tessa.” Maggie handed her the bag of lo mien and egg rolls.

  They weren’t exactly friends, but Maggie ran in the same circles as Livy’s younger sister, so Tessa had seen her around some. Enough, at least, to know her by name and face.

  “How are you?” She squinted at Tessa, probably hoping to see her a little clearer in the dark since she hadn’t bothered with lights and the sky was already getting black.

  Tessa s
hrugged. “Hanging in there, I guess. How’s June?”

  “About the same. You haven’t…?”

  She shook her head. “She won’t talk to me.”

  Maggie wrinkled her nose. “That’s shitty. Well, you have my number, yeah?”

  “I do. Thanks.”

  Tessa took the bag and waved with her free hand. “Thanks. G’night.”

  Maggie smiled, nodded once, and turned back to her car, idling at the curb in front of the door.

  She took her bag back to the couch and tried to pretend that she was interested in either the lo mien or the nonsense happening on the TV screen.

  Neither worked. The lo mien and egg rolls were good — not great, but tolerable, given that this was the only Chinese delivery nearby — and the sitcom was probably funny — at least, the laugh track behind it thought so — but she wasn’t paying much attention to either.

  She could spiral for hours. Days. She’d done it before.

  But before, there’d been a hand holding hers, a voice soft in her ear, fingers stroking her hair, lips gentle across her brow.

  She needed something to focus on before she spiraled out of control.

  Her anatomy and physiology textbook was sitting on the coffee table; she grabbed that and let it fall open to wherever it would. Muscles. Great. There was never not a need to review muscles.

  Tessa read the words on the page without seeing them, without being able to string them together into any sort of coherent sentences. Just the words. Letters making sounds that symbolized something meaningful.