---

Chapter Nine 
     
ROWAN
I am horrified. That’s all there is to this. This… this thing inside me is making me question everything. It makes me want to rush up to Quinn and lick him.
How disgusting. I feel broken inside. It’s like there are two of me or two desires or something that I can’t control and they’re clashing against each other.
Right now, he’s staring at me, amber eyes watching me closely before he lifts a paw and bops me on the top of my head.
“Why?” I ask.
He seems pleased with himself as he jumps up and heads over to the entrance. “I haven’t heard him in a while. Do you think you’re good to go? We’re going to run and head straight to the nearest road.”
“Okay.”
He slips through and I follow behind him before checking on Talon. He seems very confused and has been sticking to Quinn’s side, but he follows after us as Quinn starts to run. It’s weird, even though the last time I shifted was at the age of seven, I find using these muscles easy. It’s like second nature, which is so wrong. All of this is wrong.
“You okay?” Quinn asks as he looks back at me.
“Fine.”
“I can feel a spike of anxiety from you. Did you hear something?”
It’s not fear of the beast coming for us, it’s fear of myself. “No.”
“I wish I could show you how you’re not unnatural. That you’re wonderful the way you are. You might be a whole lot hairier, but that doesn’t make you a worse person.”
It makes me a horrible person. “You don’t understand.”
Quinn jumps over a fallen tree before looking back at me. “I might not have been raised the way you have, but I was treated like shit by the whole world. The only one by my side was my brother, but I have a pack now who loves and cares for me. Just know that if you want to stop living a lie, my pack would welcome you.”
“I can’t,” I say. It was long ago that I gave up the idea of even trying to live life as a shifter.
“I understand.”
We reach the road without much issue and when we do, Quinn stops and shifts before pulling a pack off his back and taking a phone out. “You can shift back if you want. I have a pair of shorts you can put on. I’ll have someone pick us up here.”
As he talks to someone I think is Ari, I tell myself to shift back. When I realize that I still have no idea how to shift back, I’m left just standing there on four paws.
“You constipated or shifting?” Quinn asks with a grin.
“I don’t know how.” What a mess.
He stops, startled, and kneels down before grabbing my face in his hands. “Why can I hear you?”
“You just explained it to me! This whole link mind thing going on. Can you read my thoughts?”
“Yes, you’re thinking about how sexy and naked I am. But no… the link only works when we’ve both shifted, but oddly, I can hear you when we’re not. Oh, and I can’t hear your thoughts, only what you’re saying, but what the hell is going on? Why can I hear you when I’m a human?”
“I don’t care, and I don’t want to know. Just tell me how to shift back.”
“Just think of your human side.”
I try to think of being a human, of having fingers and legs and how much superior it is, but I feel rooted right where I am. I feel like this skin is my own skin. Quinn peers into my eyes. “Do you have contacts in?”
“Yes, and they’re quite irritating.”
“You were hiding your eye color!”
“It’s a pain hiding it.”
“I can imagine. Let’s go.” Quinn turns around and just starts walking off as a human and I realize quite quickly what my view is from behind him.
“Will you please cover yourself up? In this form I’m face to face with your bare ass.”
“It’s a nice thing to be face to face with, or at least I’ve been told,” he says as he throws a devilish grin back at me. And I literally start purring. Fucking purring. I quickly snap that down in pure horror, but it’s too late, Quinn heard it. He doesn’t have to say anything for me to realize that—it’s the god-awful smile on his face.
“What was that?” he asks, looking absolutely delighted.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Ohhhh, but you purred. Do you like my ass by chance?”
“It’s the flattest ass I’ve seen,” I say as stubbornly as I can. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m ill. That’s all there is to it. My system is out of whack and in response I’m purring. Out of confusion.
He shakes his ass as he walks, and I nearly die.
“I’m going to bite you in the ass so hard.”
“Ooh, sounds a bit kinky, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested,” he says.
“I just want this day to end,” I realize.
“Are you sure? I’m enjoying it. I’m going to call Scott and tell him I found you. That you’re currently a kinky leopard that’s debating ass nipping.”
“I will eat you if you tell them anything close to that. Your little ocelot friend will show up and there will be nothing left but bone and probably your penis because eating genitals sounds horrifying.”
“But eating my heart doesn’t?”
“No.”
“You’re a sassy snow leopard.”
“No, I’m having a midlife crisis and you’re enjoying it.”
He slows down and gives me a smile before sinking his fingers into the fur on my head. “I’m sorry. I was just hoping to distract you.”
I find my leopard side leaning into his touch for some reason, but I guess it’s not all that bad. “I’m sorry I’m acting like an asshole. Thank you for coming to find me and helping me. Not many would have risked everything for someone they barely know.”
Quinn gives my ear a gentle tug. “Hey, I’ve built my pack out of people with nowhere to go who feel like they have nothing left.”
That’s how I feel almost every day, but I don’t say that. I want to keep that side of me hidden. If I tell him that, I’d be telling him that my life as a human isn’t making me as happy as it should be.
When the car pulls up, the window rolls down and Ari whistles. “Look at that naked man, and who do we have here?” he asks as he pops out and rushes over to me before grabbing my face in his hands. “Oh my god. He’s adorable. Can I keep him?”
I growl at him, not at all pleased with him touching me. How dare he think he can just touch me? Only Quinn can touch me—hold on… why is it okay for Quinn to touch me?
“I take that as a no,” Ari says as he pulls his hands back.
“Don’t be so grumpy,” Quinn says to me as he opens up Ari’s trunk and takes out some pants, which he pulls on. Then he explains to Ari, “He’s just frustrated because he can’t shift back.”
Is that why I growled at him? It’s like I don’t even understand my own body or get what’s happening.
“I’m sorry for growling at you,” I say to Ari.
Ari doesn’t even look at me.
“I don’t think he can hear you,” Quinn says. “When you’re in that form, you usually can’t speak to other shifters who are in their human forms. I’m not sure why I can hear you.”
“Hold on a minute…” Ari gets really close and sniffs me. “Oh my god. Rowan? This is Rowan? No! But… I thought he was human.”
“I did too,” Quinn says as he opens the door to the back seat and waves me in. I climb in and Quinn grabs a seat belt before strapping it over my chest, which is not at all helpful. “Trust me, you’ll want it.” He puts Talon up front before giving the dog a pat and cooing over him for a moment, which makes him quite pleased.
Ari whirls around with his hand on the car door. “I’m not a bad driver!”
“I never said you’re bad,” Quinn says as he gets into the back seat with me instead of the front, which I find peculiar.
Ari gets into the driver’s seat and the moment his foot hits that gas pedal we’re both thrown back into the seat. “So, where are we taking him?”
“Back to the village. Once he shifts back, I’ll take him to Scott. I’ve alerted Scott that we found him and pretended like the reception broke us up when he started asking questions. I’ll send a message to Graham, so he can talk to the others about what I ran into and then when morning comes, we’re calling a pack meeting about the creature in the woods.”
“You ran into it again?” Ari asks as he whips us around a corner. It’s quite clear why Quinn put the seat belt on me as I brace myself to keep from falling onto the floor.
“We did.” Quinn turns to me. “Okay, I’m going to run you through some exercises we give the kids to see if we can get you back into human form. So let’s start off with some relaxation steps to try to clear your mind and see if that’s what’s prohibiting you.”
The whole car ride he tries talking me through different steps, but by the time we reach the village, it’s clear my snow leopard side is out to play for the long term.
      
“He can just go with me. It’s late and there’s no sense in bothering Donna with him when he can’t open doors or anything himself,” Quinn says as Ari drives us over to a quaint home toward the edge of town.
“True. Someone’s going to have to give him a bath,” Ari says before cackling. “If you don’t want to, I can send Logan over. Nothing fazes that man. He’s such a go with the flow kind of guy it’s a bit creepy. Like if we lived in a haunted house, I’m positive he’d just make friends with all of the ghosts and they’d all be so confused they’d just go along with it.”
I growl at him because I don’t need anyone to bathe me since I will shift back shortly. My mind flashes to some ridiculous scenario of rolling around in the tub with Quinn which is horrifying.
When I follow Quinn into his home, the first thing I notice is how nice it smells in here. I can’t really place what about the house smells nice, but I’m instantly soothed. It’s a simple home with a large open concept that shows that it’s clearly lived in with pictures on the wall and decorations here and there. There’s a picture on a mantel of Ari hanging on him that I growl at for some reason.
“Stop your yowling. What are you annoyed about now?”
“Nothing,” I say, trying to pull away before I make a fool of myself by batting the picture off the mantel like I really would love to do.
I look back at it and lift my paw.
“Don’t you dare,” he says.
“I was stretching my paw.”
“Sure looked like you were going to beat my picture off into oblivion.”
I growl at it as I start after him then reach back and smack it down before hurrying after him.
“I heard that!”
“You heard nothing.”
“You’re filthy. I’ll give Talon a bath first and you keep trying to shift back,” Quinn says before heading off.
Smell… what is that lovely smell? I find myself rubbing against the doorframe before stopping in horror. Was I just marking his door with my scent? What the hell is wrong with me?
Quickly, I walk over to the middle of the kitchen and just sit where I can ponder why I’m letting my animal side consume me. What if I can never shift back again? What if I’m stuck like this for the rest of my life? Forced to be some… some pet because I can’t use my hands?
I lift up my paw and stare at it in horror before racing into the room Quinn had disappeared into. “Have you heard of shifters never being able to shift back again?”
“No! Stop stressing, you’ll be fine,” he says as he dries Talon off before sending him on his way. “Get in.”
“Get in what?”
“The tub.”
I stare at the tub as I realize that once in it… it’s not like I can wash myself. “I can’t.”
“You can too!”
I hold up my paw. “I cannot. My foot is broken. I can’t move.”
He grabs me around my midsection and tries dragging me in which leads to me flailing. “You’re heavier than you look! You look like you’re all fluff!”
“I can get in, but then I can also wash myself.”
“Get in, pussycat. Come along. Meow meow. I might even have a little tuna treat for you.”
I growl at him before jumping into the tub and sitting down until he sprays me with the water. I hiss at the water without thinking, which just seems to delight Quinn. “This is horrible. I am miserable. I will likely die a miserable freak.”
“At least you’ll be a clean miserable freak!” he says as he grabs some soap and begins sudsing me up.
“This one time in college, I got so drunk I went home with this woman who I thought was a man. And when she took her clothes off, I was too embarrassed to tell her I was gay. But I couldn’t get it up and had this walk of shame unlike any other back to my car. And this moment is ten times worse than that.”
Quinn starts laughing as he rinses me. “Wait until you have to use the toilet in this form.”
I look at him in horror. “No! Change me back, please. Now. Instantly.”
“God, your hair is thick. I might have used too much soap and you’ll forever be a soap ball.”
“This day just gets worse and worse.”
Once Quinn’s finished, he towel dries me off before letting me jump out. “I don’t have a spare bed so I’ll make a spot for you on the couch, but I’ll get something started for supper first. Make yourself at home while you wait.”
I follow him out and watch as he heads off before something grabs my attention. Far too driven, I head off to the right, smelling my way toward it before coming across an open door. What is that smell? What a wonderful smell.
Without thought, I jump up on what must be his bed and realize the scent is thickest in this room.
“I know I said make yourself at home, but this is a bit excessive. What are you doing?” Quinn asks.
I jerk back into my own mind as I realize that I’m rolling around on his bed. Full on, flopping around, rolling this way and that. “Nothing,” I say as I spring off his bed.
“Were you… rolling around in my bed?”
I can’t even meet his eyes, I’m so horrified. What has taken over my body? What’s happened to me? “No!”
He holds up the top blanket with a very clear damp spot on it from my wet fur. “Then why’s it all wet? Were you drying yourself on my bed?”
“I don’t know! I’m confused! Why’s your bed smell like that? What’d you coat it with?”
Quinn scrutinizes me like he’s just as confused as I am. “Um… nothing? Is it a human tradition to coat your bed in something?”
“I’m going insane,” I say as I realize with horror what it is. It’s him. The smell of him is driving me insane. Why am I so drawn to him in this form? Why does my leopard want him? Why was I so enamored by his scent that I wanted it on me? Oh, dear god, someone end me now.
I decide falling onto my side and contemplating my entire life is the only thing left to do.
“Are you melting into the floor?” Quinn asks as he kneels next to me.
“Kill me now.”
“You would make a really pretty rug,” he says with a grin. “Everyone that would come over to my house would be like, ‘My, what a pretty rug you have!’ And I’d never have to tell them my rug was once human.”
“I’ve lost my mind.”
He gives my ear a tug. “No, you just don’t know how to control your animal side yet.”
“I’ve lost my mind. It’s turned to mush. Evaporated. Poof. Gone.” I was… rubbing my own scent on his bed. I am humiliated. I might as well never face the world again.
He pokes my nose. “How about you eat something and then we go to sleep and if you’re still like this by morning, we can figure out why you’ve lost your mind. Deal?”
“No. I shall just be a rug right here. Never moving. Walk on me. I am your rug.”
“I’ve never seen such a dramatic wildcat before,” Quinn says as he grabs my front paws and starts dragging me after him. I let him drag me all the way into the kitchen where the smell of something cooking makes my stomach rumble. “Is the rug hungry?” he asks as he sets a plate with a pork chop cut in chunks down before me. “Does the rug think it could eat?”
“The rug thinks he’ll be a rug after he eats,” I say as I roll up onto my stomach so I can devour everything on the plate. I’m finished before Quinn even gets his plate.
“Do you want more?”
“No. Even overeating won’t make me happy.”
He starts laughing as he sits down at the table. “You are such a strange man. Dramatic as you can be. Life isn’t over, I promise. It just got a little bit more interesting. You’ll change back when your leopard side is satisfied. Maybe it’s afraid that once you shift back to human, you’ll never run as a leopard again.”
“That’s the plan,” I say.
“Isn’t it freeing, though? Don’t you feel like you’re whole now?”
I do. And I hate it. It’s wrong. So wrong.
Without another word, I turn from him and go over to the couch, which I lie on. Talon stares at me before sniffing me all over and deciding that he’ll curl up with me.
OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER TEN 
     
QUINN
From my bed, I can hear Rowan pacing the house. When I’d left him on the couch, he’d just watched me with his vibrant greenish eyes (having rubbed out his contacts at some point). But now that I’m out of his sight, he seems anxious. I’m sure he’d never let me know he’s anxious, but I wait a while because I’m not sure what to do with him. I want to comfort him and tell him it’s all right, but he just wants to hate himself and hate what makes him unique and perfect.
Rowan hates the thing that makes me who I am enough that he’s kept himself drugged for most of his life to avoid that side of him, and I struggle to comprehend that.
Around one in the morning, I get out of bed and find him in the hallway leading to my room. He skirts back into the living room like I wouldn’t notice, so I follow after him and over to the couch he’s lying on.
“Do you want to come into my room?” I ask as I look down at him.
“Not in the slightest.”
“You’re so stubborn it’s not even cute,” I say as I tug his ear. “Stop fretting and go to sleep.”
“What if I never change back?” Rowan sounds very concerned about that.
“I think the first step is accepting this,” I say as I ruffle his fur, “as a part of yourself.”
“But it’s not.”
“And that’s why you’re not shifting back. If you need me, you know where to find me.”
I walk back to my room and climb into bed. He doesn’t pace anymore, but he also never comes to my room.
      
When I open my eyes, there’s a pair of pale green ones peering right into mine. I jerk back, startled.
“Holy fuck,” I yelp. “What are you doing?” What a way to shock the system into waking up.
“I honestly don’t know, but my leopard seems satisfied only when I’m staring at you. Did you know you drool as you sleep?”
I wipe at my face while staring at Rowan in disbelief. “How long have you been in here?”
“I honestly don’t know. A while. I think I even fell asleep standing up staring at you. You also flip-flop around nonstop. Flip this way, flop that way. Flip-flop, flip-flo—”
I shove his face away. “Yes, alright, creeper. Thanks for umm… letting me know all the weird things I do.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Are you in a better mood today?” I ask as I stretch. Now that my heart’s not racing from my rude awakening, I can gather my thoughts better.
“I got like half an hour of sleep and I still have at least three-inch-thick fur coating my body.”
“I bet you didn’t get cold, at least.”
“Nope. Cold? What is the meaning of that word? I feel like I’ll never know the meaning ever again.”
I get out of bed and the moment Rowan sees me naked, he’s out of my room in a flash, probably before he can start purring, which might be the most amusing thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
Once I’m dressed, I head to the kitchen to prepare breakfast where I find Rowan licking water from the faucet, like he can’t ask me to get him water. When I open the freezer to grab some waffles, Rowan rushes toward it and all but crawls into it. “This is lovely.”
“Are you hot?”
“Not anymore.”
“Fine. You sit in the freezer. Do you want some waffles?”
“I will eat anything.”
“Well, this is all I feel like cooking. When we’re finished, we need to talk to the others about you. I’m positive Ari will have already spread your arrival around to everyone. He’s a good guy but he’s still nosy as hell. He’ll slink around and chatter with everyone he can, but he’s adorable so everyone lets him get away with it.”
This makes Rowan growl for some reason as he extracts himself from the freezer.
“Why are you growling now?” I ask in disbelief.
“I’m not,” he says, even though he clearly was.
When we’re finished eating, we head out to the town hall where the others are supposed to meet me. Waiting for me are Graham, Logan, Ari, and a woman by the name of Kaiya.
Kaiya is a childhood friend and who my brother Graham is hopelessly in love with. She is completely oblivious. “Kaiya, I didn’t know you were coming back so soon,” I say, since she’d been visiting her adoptive parents, both human.
“Graham told me about all the chaos going on and I didn’t feel right being away so long,” she says as she steps toward me and lifts her arms to hug me. Rowan slips right between us and hisses at her, like he’s seriously going to keep her from touching me.
“Mine,” he growls even though I know only I can hear it.
In my mind, I know I should find this action completely ridiculous but instead I find myself insanely pleased. Is his ludicrous nature rubbing off on me? Am I losing my mind as well?
“Umm… nice to meet you too,” Kaiya says as she looks down at Rowan.
“His shifter side has been stomped down for so long he’s going a wee bit crazy,” I say as I grab him in a throat lock and drag him back for his sanity and mine. I don’t want to start acting crazy like him.
“So this is the guy that everyone in the pack found super suspicious yet Quinn just let in with a huge smile and didn’t question a single thing he said or did,” Graham explains like he has to tell her everything.
“Wait, what?” I ask. “Are you guys still questioning my judgment?”
“Well, for a man who lives life by questioning everyone else, yes, we all find it a bit strange,” Graham says.
I decide that glaring at them to get all of them to back down is required and they quickly do so. Even if we’re all friends, they know to respect their alpha. “There are more pressing matters than whether or not I let Rowan get away with something. The first issue we have is the escaped convicts. Rowan and I have now been attacked by one of them twice. We need to keep our pack safe because we don’t know how far that thing will go to hurt us, especially when I don’t know what it is.”
“What do you mean?” Kaiya asks. “They’re shifters, right?”
“He said it’s unnatural,” Graham says.
“It’s not like any animal I’ve ever seen. It’s different,” I say, wishing I had something to show them. “It almost looks like a cross. Like two species mashed together.”
Kaiya looks suspicious, which is quite reasonable. “But if a shifter interbreeds, the children will always take the traits of the female. If the female is wolf, they’ll be wolf even if the father is a… cat or something.”
“Exactly. Can someone look into whether a cross from interbreeding has ever existed?” I ask.
“I will,” Logan says.
“And the second issue?” Kaiya asks.
“Law enforcement is breathing down our necks. They already think we’re hiding the convicts here. They’ve done house searches and ID checks, but that doesn’t mean they’re done with us.”
“Isn’t he with law enforcement?” Kaiya asks as she points at Rowan.
I want to immediately defend him, but I’m not sure why. “No, he’s not. He was pulled in because he has a tracking dog and works as a specialized consultant tracker, but he’s not with them.”
“Can’t he at least talk them down?” Kaiya asks.
“Not in this form, and we can’t get him to shift back,” I say as I stare at Rowan who is eyeing everyone while his shoulder presses into me just a little.
“I’m sure he will in time,” Ari says. “But I like him better like this.”
“I’m going to call a pack meeting because staying together in the village is more important now than ever when there are two enemies at our doorstep,” I say. “Graham, tell everyone we have a pack meeting at noon.”
He nods and rushes off to do as I ask.
As I step outside, my phone rings and I see it’s Scott. I debate not answering, but if he has something going on, it would be best for me to know about it immediately.
“Hello?”
“Where’s Sinclair?”
“Here. I told you I found him and I was closer to my village so he went with me,” I say.
“I’d like to speak with him.”
I glance down at the snow leopard who is swishing his tail as he stares at Ari and Kaiya like he’d enjoy eating them. I’m not sure what his issue with them is, but he wants to make sure they’re aware he’s angry at them. “Okay. I’m not around him at the moment, but when he gets up this morning, I’ll have him give you a call.”
“Find him and have him call me, immediately,” Scott grumbles.
“Of course.”
I hang up with him and set a hand on Rowan’s head. He leans into it and I realize that I’m going to get in trouble with this. Graham and Ari are right again. Why would I just accept him without hesitation? I’m generally pretty skeptical of everyone, but the moment I saw him, it felt like seeing an old friend again.
“I think we might be fucked, Rowan,” I say.
“Do you want me to eat them for looking at you?” he asks, like that could have even remotely been what I was talking about.
“Do you hear anything wrong with what you just said?”
“Suck the marrow from their bones.”
“You are disgusting,” I decide.
He doesn’t seem to mind as he trots after me. “I’d like to check on Maze.”
“Okay, we can do that,” I say as I veer to the left to head toward Helen’s stable. As Rowan stares at his horse through the stall door and his horse stares at him in wonder, my phone rings. When I see it’s from Logan, I’m not as reluctant to answer.
“Hello?”
“Boss?” he asks, which I’ve always found a strange thing to call me, but I let him do what he wants.
“What’s that?”
“Trenton didn’t show up for work. When I called his home, he didn’t answer.”
My mind flashes back to Trenton stepping out of the woods before I’d gone to search for Rowan at his motel. Did Trenton go back into the woods? He wouldn’t refuse to listen to me, right? Although, he’s always wanting to question my authority. “Fuck. I’m going to check out his house.”
“Okay. I already sent Ari to check, but I haven’t heard from him yet.”
“Thanks, Logan. I’ll get it figured out.”
“Do you like Logan?” Rowan asks.
I stare at Rowan in disbelief. “Are you jealous of him too?”
“I kind of want to fight everyone for some reason. See? Another reason why this side of me is shitty and I want out of it and never in it again.”
“You’re just not used to it,” I say as I scratch behind his ear, hoping to reassure him. He leans into me before realizing he’s leaning into me and straightening up quickly.
When I reach Trenton’s house, Ari is knocking on the door.
“He’s not answering.”
“The door is locked?” I ask as I grab the handle.
“Yep.”
I hammer on the door, but I hear no movement inside. His sister, Addie, should be around, but she still hasn’t replied to the call or text I sent her way. “I think the asshole went out into the forest.”
Ari looks at me in surprise. “When he knows what’s going on? Why would he go against you?”
“Because he doesn’t think I’m worthy of being alpha,” I say as I go over to a window and pull the screen down before pushing on the window. It slides up and I climb through the open window just in case he got hurt and is lying somewhere in his house. “Trenton!”
Silence.
I hear a noise behind me a moment before Rowan lands beside me. “I don’t need help.”
He doesn’t say anything as he sticks to my side while we search the room. When we’ve cleared the whole house, we head out.
That’s when Addie replies to the text that she was at Sophia’s all night and hasn’t heard from him. I have Graham call an emergency meeting and everyone heads to the town hall where we all pack into it.
Rowan never leaves my side, even as I go to the front to face the others. And while I know I should send him down to stand by the others so people don’t start talking, I find that I don’t care.
“Has anyone seen Trenton today?” I ask.
A few people look around, but no one says anything.
“The pack is aware they are to stay inside the village limits because there are two criminals out in the forest. Just yesterday, I caught Trenton coming in from the forest. He claimed he wasn’t and was just walking the sideline, but I now have reason to believe he was lying to me. I need full respect and honesty as the alpha of this pack. I know I am more lenient with you guys than most packs are, but all of you have to realize that no matter how much you want to step outside this pack, no matter how much you want to go against me, this is your life. They don’t want you out there. They see us as freaks. We don’t get the job opportunities others get. Even getting an education is harder for people like us. Advocates are doing what they can to change things and make this world a better place, but for now, this is where we belong, and I need you guys to respect me.
“So tell me, then. Does anyone know where Trenton went?”
The room is silent for almost a full minute before Addie raises her hand. She lowers her head in respect for me as she says, “I… don’t know for sure but he said something weird the other day that I thought was a joke… he said that if he stopped the guy who attacked you that he’d probably be better respected. I thought it was a joke.”
“Just let him go,” Ari says. “If he wants to get killed, let him get killed.”
Everyone turns silent as they stare at me. Even Rowan is looking at me, waiting for my command. “I will not risk anyone’s life helping me find Trenton. I will go alone and see if I can get him back. While I’m gone, Graham is in charge—”
“I will not let you go out without me,” Graham says.
I turn to him. I don’t want to leave my pack without someone in charge that can protect them. “No, stay here.”
Graham steps toward me. “As second, I will not allow my alpha to run into danger alone, let alone my brother. I will go with you.”
I take a deep breath before I nod, respecting his decision. “Ari—”
“I’m going too,” he decides.
“I’ll help you too,” Kaiya says.
I turn to Logan. “Logan, you’ll be in charge until I return.” Even though Logan is a human, he’s done a lot for this pack and they respect him.
“Yes, boss,” he says with a nod.
“Before I dismiss you, I ask that everyone pair up. I want no one wandering alone until these people are back in police custody,” I say.
Once they’re gone, I turn to those still remaining. “Rowan, you can stay back with Logan.”
“I’m not leaving you alone.”
“It’s up to you, but I really think it’d be unsafe for you to go.”
“I’m not leaving you,” he repeats.
“Okay. Everyone ready, then? We’ll be in and out quickly.”
Logan pulls Ari against him, the larger man dwarfing the small ocelot shifter. “Please be careful.”
Ari grins at him. “Careful is my middle name.”
“So is exaggerator,” Logan says.
“So is stubborn and annoying,” Graham tosses in.
“Evil,” I add.
“And a dash of cute,” Kaiya says which makes Ari’s eyes narrow.
He folds his arms over his chest and taps his foot. “Logan, they’re picking on me. Fight them.”
Logan assesses us. “You… you want me to fight a wolf, another wolf, and a cougar? Oh, and myself because I started it?”
“Correct!” Ari says before stroking his muscular arm. “You’ll definitely win, babe.”
Logan snorts and kisses the top of Ari’s head. “Please be careful.”
“I will.”
We head out together and walk to the edge of the woods where everyone undresses. When I glance over at Rowan, I notice he’s watching me. He quickly looks away and hisses at someone or himself, who knows.
Once everyone has shifted, I take the lead, nose to the ground as I draw in Trenton’s scent. Kaiya, in her cougar form, leaps onto a large rock as she looks around.
“I honestly think he deserves for us to just forget about him,” Ari says.
Oh, how I wish I could. “I agree, but that’s not what I should do as alpha.”
“We could just pretend we didn’t notice he was missing,” Graham suggests.
Kaiya jumps up onto a fallen tree. “Or we could go play in the river for a while and be like ‘oh no, we never found him, we tried soooo hard.’”
I shake my head, amused. “We’re horrible people.”
“He’s the idiot,” Rowan says. “What is he? Shifted, I mean.”
“An ugly brown bear,” Ari says as he runs to keep up with our jogging.
“Hideous,” Kaiya adds.
“Kaiya dated him in high school,” I explain to Rowan.
“For a week. One week when I lost my mind for a moment and got confused,” Kaiya says. “In my defense, he’s handsome and kind of nice when he’s not being stubborn.”
Graham lets out a grumble probably only I can hear with him beside me. He’s asked me more than once how Trenton was able to get Kaiya’s attention but he can’t. It was a very good question that I’m not sure we’ll ever know the answer to. Kaiya is extremely smart in some ways and extremely odd when it comes to men. But despite how hard we are on Trenton, he’s not a bad guy when he uses his brain.
We run for a while and I find myself watching Rowan as he races next to me. I don’t know what it is about him that draws me to him. But as we run, we’re practically side by side. Snow leopards are smaller than other large cats like the lion or the tiger, but he’s still bigger than me. His tail is more than twice as long as mine, but I notice it gives him quite a bit of dexterity as he maneuvers up and down hills.
Something weird hits my nose and I draw still quickly, causing Graham to slam into me, throwing me forward. “You smell that?”
“I do,” Kaiya says.
“Blood,” Rowan says.
Immediately, I wonder if what we’ll find of Trenton is nothing more than a body, but as we follow the scent, I realize there’s too much blood. The first thing I see is the body of a woman lying on the forest floor. She doesn’t seem to be wearing a police uniform, but she’s definitely not in hiking clothes either.
It’s clear she’s dead, so I make a wide berth around her.
“Oh my god,” Rowan says, so I turn to where he’s jumped up onto the branch of a tree. I follow him as he leaps down and steps into a massacre. There are at least six bodies, but it’s hard to tell when there are appendages strewn about. They’re all wearing the same uniform, but there’s no discerning names on them, just numbers on the shoulder.
“Is this the search crew?” I ask Rowan. “Is this what they’d wear?”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “They’re not wearing what I’d think a typical search crew would be wearing.”
“They were packing some heat too,” Graham says as he looks down at an assault rifle.
“Did they not have time to kill it?” I ask.
“This isn’t a normal gun,” Rowan says as he looks down at a different gun a woman is holding.
“Those are tranquilizer guns. I’ve seen them used against shifters far too often…” I say.
“But why tranquilize it when it clearly was massacring them?” Rowan asks. “They sent me out alone knowing how dangerous this thing was, telling me it was no threat.”
“I don’t think they cared,” I admit. “Rowan, you have to have some information on them. I want to figure out who they are and what they are because this… this isn’t natural for any shifter.”
“All I was told was that there were two escaped convicts, crimes were undisclosed, but I was shown pictures of them and given descriptions. There was one woman and one man. The woman was around thirty, with brown hair and blue eyes. Then the second one was a man with dark brown hair and brown eyes. I can’t remember specifics like height and weight, but if I saw them, I could place them.”
“We have to assume they’re murderers, right?” Ari asks anxiously.
“We still haven’t come in contact with the other one yet. With all the blood, it’s hard to pick out a smell, but we have to assume the one who did this is the one who attacked us. I need to call this in, and then I’m not sure if we should keep going to find Trenton or not.” I turn to look at Graham who seems just as anxious about the idea of putting more of my pack in danger.
“How long have they been dead? Can you tell?” Rowan asks as he turns to me.
“Probably half a day,” Graham says.
“Trenton passed through here so it must have been after this happened, right? But then why would he keep going if he saw this?”
“Maybe he stumbled onto the scene?” I suggest.
Ari perks up and cocks his head. “I hear something,” he says before trotting off to the other side of the massacre.