by Chant, Zoe
Wyatt could make out an indistinct flick of its head, before it flapped its wings and sped off into the sky, disappearing into the gray light of dawn. Wyatt heard a breathless voice asking Did you get that?! before the video stopped.
All up, it was less than thirty seconds of footage, and nothing too convincing. It was too dark and wobbly to really be any proof of aliens – especially, Wyatt thought grimly, since it wasn’t an alien in the video at all.
That was a shifter.
A shifter that had clearly been interrupted in the middle of making some of the crop circles that’d been showing up in everyone’s fields for the last few weeks.
To anyone else, it might not have seemed all that interesting, but Wyatt knew what he was looking at.
Which means that shifters, not aliens, are what’s been causing all this trouble.
But why? What could any shifter possibly hope to gain by playing such a stupid trick?!
Wyatt glanced at Tora, who was frowning. As she lifted her eyes to meet his gaze, though, he realized she’d had the same thought. She’d only been introduced to the idea of shifters a short time ago, but already she was thinking along the same lines as him.
“So, what’d you think?” Mikaela broke into his thoughts, clearly eager for his opinion.
“Well, I mean…” Wyatt made a show of looking confused. “Was that it?”
He didn’t like to be disingenuous, but he couldn’t risk these kids really figuring out they had something here. It wasn’t up to him to blow the secret of the existence of shifters – it’d be putting too many people just like him at risk. So right now, as little as he liked it, he had to play dumb, and pretend he’d seen nothing too impressive or interesting.
Mikaela and her friends looked a little crestfallen.
“You didn’t think it was proof of the aliens?” she asked.
“Huh. Not really,” Wyatt said, relieved that he wasn’t technically lying. The video really wasn’t proof of aliens, after all! “I just saw a bird flapping around. Large birds aren’t so uncommon around here. He was probably picking up some prey he’d dived on before flying off. No big deal.”
“You didn’t think it looked… bigger on the ground?” Kasey asked.
Next to Wyatt, Tora cocked her head. “Wait, are we still talking about aliens, or large birds?” she asked. “I thought aliens were like… little green men? I just saw a bird.”
“I guess,” Mikaela said, obviously discouraged. “But I still think it was weird!”
“It was making the crop circles,” Kasey said, obviously a little less easily talked out of things than Mikaela. “It was burning them into the crops, like what we saw!”
“I thought aliens made them with like, a laser beam or something,” Tora said. “From their flying saucers?”
“Well, I still think there’s something in it!” Kasey said, snatching his phone back from Wyatt’s hands. “I’m still going to put it up on our channel!”
“Okay, well, you do that,” Wyatt said, holding up his hands placatingly. “Maybe someone’ll have some more interesting info for you.”
Kasey clearly hadn’t been expecting that answer, and he screwed up his face angrily. “Yeah, I will,” he said finally. “C’mon. Let’s go.”
He turned, his friends following him, until Wyatt stopped him with a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t go that way – our friend George the bull is still roaming around out there. Best come up this way with me, so you don’t run into him again.”
A tiny glimmer of fear flashed in Kasey’s eyes, despite his defiant expression – and in the end, he turned, deciding to follow Wyatt’s advice, and led Mikaela and their friends up the hill toward Wyatt’s cabin.
Wyatt followed them, lost in thought.
A shifter? But why? Is it just a prank?
He knew, however, that the only answers he was likely to get were ones he sought out on his own – hopefully before anyone else managed to get footage of this bird shifter that was causing all the trouble.
He glanced at Tora.
But why is this all happening now?!
All he wanted to do was sit down with Tora and get to know her better! The last thing he wanted to do was investigate all this crap!
Wyatt sighed. Unfortunately, he didn’t really have a choice. This shifter was behaving irresponsibly, and it was putting them all at risk. He’d have to deal with it.
And hopefully, Tora will be sticking around for a while yet.
Chapter 7
“So… what I saw in that footage, that was a shifter, right?” Tora asked, as soon as Kasey, Mikaela and their friends had safely been seen off the property, hopefully now with a better understanding of why they couldn’t just go traipsing around in the fields as they pleased.
“Yes,” Wyatt said, nodding, a deep frown on his face. “I really don’t understand it. Why would shifters be pretending to be aliens? What’s the point? And besides, they’re putting us all at risk – I know there’s plenty of shifters who’d rather live a little more openly, but right now, there’s too many of us who’d be in danger if we did that.”
Tora didn’t question that – she could see that there were very good reasons why shifters might not want to announce their presence to the world at large!
“So what should we do about it? Right now, it seems like we’re the only ones who know the truth about the situation.”
“You’re right,” Wyatt said, nodding. “As a shifter, I think it’s my responsibility to do something, anyway. Even if it’s just finding out why they’re doing this and asking them to stop.”
“Well, if Kasey and his friends can catch these clowns in the act, then we probably can too. Do you think that’d be the best way of doing things?” Tora said.
Wyatt nodded. “Since we can’t find them any other way, I think it’s really our only option. But it’s really hard to know where they’ll strike next.”
Tora frowned, thinking it over. Wyatt was right: these fields were pretty vast. How would they know where to look for them?
“I don’t suppose there’s any pattern to where these, uh, not-aliens have been striking,” she mused.
Wyatt’s frown deepened as he thought it over. “I’m not really sure. First it was the Besters’ property, over in the north-east of town. Then the Eastens’ ranch, but that’s way down south, and then the Harrises’, which is north again. It seems really random, in terms of direction.”
Something was poking at the back of Tora’s mind, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was yet. “Bester, Easten, Harris,” she said, thinking aloud. “And whose property was next?”
“The Jacksons’ wheat fields,” Wyatt replied. “And then the Lopez’s.”
“And… yesterday we saw that circle in…” Tora said, her brain finally linking up the pattern she’d sensed.
“Lori Marsden’s barley crop,” Wyatt said, staring at her. “It’s alphabetical. It’s like they’re just following the names of the property owners in order.”
“Some aliens,” Tora snorted. “That seems really lazy.”
“I guess this morning Kasey and Mikaela must’ve disturbed them as they were making their circles in the O’Briens’ fields,” Wyatt said, laughing a little. “I wonder if they’ll come back to finish the job, or decide to just leave it and move on.”
“I suppose it’s a fifty-fifty chance,” Tora said. “Who’d be next, if they don’t return to the scene of the crime?”
“The Radisons,” Wyatt said. “After that, there’s no one else. So they’ll either start again from the top, or go find greener pastures, so to speak.”
“So – who should we stake out, the O’Briens or the Radisons?” Tora glanced up at Wyatt, a spark of excitement kindling in her stomach. Despite everything, she couldn’t help feeling like this might be a kind of fun adventure – the kind she hadn’t had since she was a kid, when she and her friends would invent mysteries to try and solve, or pretend they were girl detectives looking for
clues that obviously didn’t exist anywhere but inside their own imaginations.
This is all real, though, she reminded herself. It’s not a game, and who knows why these shifters are doing this. It’d be better to remember this might not just be some harmless fun.
But somehow, with Wyatt by her side, it was impossible to feel scared. She’d seen his bull form – how mighty and powerful it was. But he was just as impressive in human form: strong and broad and muscular. She couldn’t imagine the person, shifter or not, who wouldn’t think twice about tangling with him. As long as Wyatt was there with her, Tora knew she’d be safe.
“You want to come with me?” Wyatt asked, clearly cautious. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Tora shot back. “One, I’m not letting you go out there all alone. And two, it’s exciting! Do you think I’m going to miss out on confronting these guys and finding out what’s really been going on?”
“All right, all right,” Wyatt laughed. “I’m probably not going to be able to talk you out of this, am I?”
“Not a chance,” Tora said. “Better to just accept it and get it over with.”
Wyatt just laughed even more at that – a deep, rumbling sound that sent a warm shiver straight down Tora’s spine. Her mind drifted back to exactly what they’d been about to do before they’d been interrupted by the alien hunters’ screams – and what they’d been about to do before Wyatt’s friends had come to drag him away to help them with his neighbor’s cows.
Tora licked her lips, swallowing.
Is it too late to go back to that? Has the moment been lost now?
But one thing she’d learned as an athlete was that you made your own moments. You didn’t wait for them to come to you.
“Wyatt,” she said, turning toward him. His eyes were warm and deep as he met her gaze – and was it just her, or did she detect just the slightest amount of hunger in them too? “This might seem a little forward, but right now, there’s just one thing I want to do before anything else happens.”
“What’s that?” Wyatt began to ask – but his words were cut off before he could quite finish, as Tora leaned up and kissed him.
Oh. Oh my goodness.
Wyatt’s lips were warm and soft against hers, and the kiss sent a thrill rippling all through her body, heat gathering in her belly.
This is what kissing was made to feel like, Tora thought hazily, as she felt Wyatt’s strong arms come up around her back, pulling her close against his chest.
She would have very happily stood here on the path all day, simply kissing him and running her fingers over the strong, firm muscles of his back – but eventually Wyatt pulled away.
Tora felt breathless, need surging through her. She could see the same need in Wyatt’s warm olive eyes as he looked down at her, one large hand still cupping her cheek.
“Tora,” he whispered, his voice hoarse with desire. “Tora, before we go any further, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Tora blinked. After the bull shifter thing, what else could there possibly be…?
“We shifters – being able to change forms isn’t the only thing that’s different about us,” Wyatt continued after a moment, still looking down into her eyes, his thumb skimming gently over her cheekbone. “We also have something – someone – called a fated mate. Someone who’s made just for us. And we’re made just for them.”
Tora’s head spun. She looked up at Wyatt, wondering what he could possibly be saying – and then, it clicked.
I’m his mate.
She wasn’t sure why the knowledge hit her with such certainty. Maybe it was something in his eyes. Or maybe it was the way she’d felt so instantly comfortable with him. Maybe it was the attraction she’d felt for him from the very first moment she’d laid eyes on him.
Tora opened her mouth, but couldn’t find the words to express what she wanted to say.
“Tora, I need to know that you’re okay with that,” Wyatt said. “A mated bond is forever. I can’t hold you to that if you’re not completely – mmpf!”
Again, Tora cut off his words with a kiss. It was the fastest way she could think of to tell him that Yes, yes, yes, of course I am. How could I ever say no?
“I think,” Tora said, once she could bring herself to pull back and finally managed to organize her brain enough to speak, “that we should take this somewhere private.”
And Wyatt, looking too dazed to speak, could only nod in agreement as Tora took his hand and led him up the track toward the cabin.
* * *
Tora yawned, her warm breath streaming out in front of her into the cold, pre-dawn air. She was tired, but it was in the best way – the way that told her she’d been using her body, and was now satisfyingly worn out.
Yeah, I guess you could say we wore each other out a bit, Tora thought, with a wicked grin. It probably hadn’t been the wisest way for them to have spent the morning – and then, after lunch, the afternoon – considering they’d have such a long night of staking out the Radisons’ field to contend with, but Tora couldn’t bring herself to regret it.
And besides which, her heart was still singing with the knowledge that Wyatt was her mate.
He’d explained it in a little more detail to her as they’d lain in bed together, telling her that no one really knew how it worked, but that the bond was unbreakable. And he’d told her that if she wanted it, everything he had was hers – she could stay here with him in the sanctuary. Or, if she preferred, he’d pack up his life here and go with her wherever she wanted.
No way, Tora had told him at that. And leave your animals? After everything you’ve done for them? I don’t think so.
She’d been looking for something to give her life meaning again after finding out she wasn’t going to live her dream of professional sports. And maybe, just maybe, she’d found it. What could be more rewarding than helping animals in need of a home? They needed a new start in life – just like she did. The thought of being that new start filled Tora with a sense of hopeful anticipation. Running a farm, even a small one like this, was hard work, but Tora had never shied away from hard work.
And with someone like Wyatt by my side…
She shook her head gently to clear it. All of that was still in their future. Right now, she had to focus on trying to figure out where these so-called aliens were going to strike. But that was why she was currently up a tree in the middle of a field with a pair of binoculars, scanning the landscape for any sign of anything that looked even remotely like some kind of giant bird messing around in the growing crops.
She wouldn’t have had a hope of spotting a thing if, as Wyatt had pointed out, whatever kind of shifter it was wasn’t using some kind of fire to make the crop circles. They were probably making them in human form, Wyatt said, and then using their bird form to escape if anyone came too close. That was why no one had seen anyone entering or exiting the properties where the circles had been showing up.
Wyatt, meanwhile, was meandering around as an innocent-looking bull. If the ‘alien’ showed up, it hopefully wouldn’t be suspicious, given just how many cattle populated this area. A bull wasn’t exactly anything out of the ordinary.
Tora swallowed down another yawn, rubbing her hands across her eyes blearily – and then, suddenly, caught her breath.
Did I really just see –?
For a moment, Tora was worried that her single moment of inattention might have cost her a clear view of the tiny spark of light she thought she’d seen in the field – but no, a moment later there was another small flare of light, pale yellow in color, snaking its way through the crops.
Gotcha!
Tora yanked up the powerful flashlight that was strapped to her belt, giving Wyatt the agreed-upon signal – three flashes straight up, into the sky. It was likely, though, that he’d already seen the flare of the fire being used to make the crop circles and was heading that way himself, since it was in the part of the field Tora knew he’d been patrolling.
Biting her lip, adrenaline rushing through her, Tora slipped down from the tree. She didn’t want to get too close too quickly and give the shifter the chance to change into their bird form and fly away. But then, she supposed, if they were really determined to escape, there’d be nothing either she or Wyatt could do about it.
She made her way quickly across the field. Once she started to get close to where she’d seen the fire, she dropped down, moving slowly. Scraps of conversation – two people talking? – drifted to her on the wind.
Tora paused. If there were two of them, she really should wait for Wyatt. But luckily, he made his appearance a moment later, either having seen her signal or having spotted the fire himself.
He was in human form, and already dressed. He jerked his head toward where the people were talking, before reaching out and unhooking the flashlight from her belt. Then he nodded, and together, the two of them crept stealthily forward.
“I’m telling you, you got this part wrong!” As they got closer, the voices became more distinct, and one of them didn’t sound very happy. “This line is supposed to go that way, not over there! What were you thinking?!”
“Does it really matter?” came the second voice. “C’mon – like anyone’s really paying that much attention! And anyway, even if they are, it’ll throw them off, make them wonder a bit. Why is this one different? What does it mean?! And all that.”
“It matters because it’s my design you’re messing up!” The first voice was becoming angrier by the minute. “Show some respect for my creative process, please!”
Tora glanced at Wyatt. He’d clearly had the same thought as she had – if the two ‘aliens’ were arguing, they clearly weren’t paying close attention to what was going on around them. Which gave them the perfect chance.
Wyatt nodded to her, holding up a hand with three fingers raised. Tora understood immediately, and counted down with him as he slowly folded down each finger in turn.
Three… two… one!
Together, they surged out of the high crops and into the partially cleared crop circle.