The bag handles of stolen merchandise was in one hand the collar of the thief was in the other, as I dragged them both back to security. After kneeing the little shit between the legs a few times, he was a lot less interested in kicking up a fuss and having all his teeth knocked out helped too. 
I dumped the dazed wolfman at the feet of the security guard that came hurrying up to me once I stepped into their office. His eyebrows flew to his receding hairline.
“Oh wow, is that a werewolf? I’ve never seen one up close.”
No, he’s never seen one in half wolf form. It’s likely he’s seen plenty of Weres, he just didn’t know it. 
Before the Europeans came, the North American continent was populated with hundreds of different tribes of indigenous people and native magical peoples. 
The pilgrims got quite the surprise when they showed up expecting timid, dumb natives and instead found organized warrior tribes of hungry werewolves. 
Of course, not all the people were werewolves, only about a third of the indigenous people could take a second form with their unique animal based magic. And not all the forms were wolves, there were were-cayotes, ravens, bears, eagles, even were-orcas in the Pacific Northwest. If it was an important spirit animal, it was probably the were-form of that tribe. 
My favorite holiday, The Great Feasting day was started  when the pilgrims to encourage their native neighbors to stop eating them, held a great feast for the local tribe. A peace treaty was signed and the tribe agreed to stop eating the European settlers as long as they held a great feast for the natives tribes every year. 
Four hundred years later, after wide scale Were hunts in the 1800’s, forced removal from their native land and earth magic centers, and breaking up of the tribes, now the original peoples of North America mostly live in forest and wildlife reserves, or get by running less that savory businesses in the city.
Considering how things turned out for them, maybe they shouldn’t have stopped eating the pilgrims.
Though their numbers are far fewer than they once were, the indigenous people of the North American continent still made up nearly ten percent of the population, even after European invasion and Were hunting of the past. Long ago, most of the natives learned to blend in with the newcomers communities for survival, leaving behind their tribal traditions, and for their Were population that meant remaining in human form for most of their lives. Though few were full blooded Weres anymore, that didn’t mean they weren’t around.
I nudged the wolfman, to make sure he wasn’t thinking of causing anymore trouble. He whimpered and twitched, but that’s about it.
Good.
“You need to call this one into the police, he became aggressive and attacked someone.”
The security guard bobbed his head, his eyes wide, looking nervous.
“Right, right. You’re not going to leave him here, are you?”
The guard flashed worried eyes at me.
He really meant, “You’re not going to leave me here alone with him, are you?”
I shot him a “Suck it up!” look and held up the bundle of shopping bags.
“I wouldn’t worry about him, he’s pretty well out. And you should get these back to whoever owns them.”
The guard was nodding a little too fast again, reaching for the bags.
“Right, right.”
And then he froze in mid motion of grabbing the bag handles. His eyes fixed on my arm. 
I followed his line of sight and – 
Oh shit!
I totally forgot that my entire sleave was soaked in blood from when my hand was bitten off. The cuff of the shirt was missing too, leaving only a tattered edge that stuck to my wrist in bloody patches.
The guard’s voice sounded even more panicked.
“A-Are you okay?! We should call an ambulance!”
I frantically waved my hands around.
“Oh no, this is nothing! We just fell into some ketchup, that’s all. I’m totally okay.”
I gave a stiff smile and a awkward laugh and hoped like hell he believed me. The last thing I needed was to have to explain why my shirt arm was covered in blood yet I didn’t have a scratch on me.
I guess he wasn’t that great of an investigator, because the guard laughed a long with me and scratched his head.
“Oh yeah, that’s the food court for you, it can get pretty messy.”
I laughed and smiled and shoved the shopping bags into the guards hands and then backed my way out of the security office as quickly as possible before someone smarter came along.
I made a beeline for the nearest restroom and check out the disaster in the mirrors over the bank of sinks. 
Yikes. It was worse than I thought.
There was red splattered across my face, and soaking one sleave from the missing cuff almost all the way up to the shoulder. The other sleeve had a huge gaping hole in the elbow and a good dotting of blood along the forearm. 
I eyed the hole. 
How did that even happen? He didn’t try to bite me in the elbow.
I sighed and grabbed a hand full of fabric. Looks like my faux silk button up was a sacrifice to the law and order of this city. Damn it, I liked this shirt.
In one swift yank, the sleeve came off at the shoulder seam. The stitching popping with ease. The other sleeve joined it. A quick wiping of my face and pulling some loose threads, and it just looked like I was wearing a sleeveless shirt under my ugly Groovy Smoothie smock. 
Huh, I noticed that unlike my gorgeous shirt, the blood seemed to wipe off my hideous smock just fine.
Typical.
I looked down to the toes of my boots. Luckily they had come out untouched. Of course. My little knock-off Kimmy Chu’s were blessed. They were just too cute to get a blemish.