by Zoe Chant
She could still hear the way her squad boss had hurled orders at her like rocks. On and on, a barrage of conflicting demands, until she was disorientated and panicking, not knowing where to go or what to do first.
“Bullshit,” Rory said again, even more fiercely. “You responded today without hesitation, didn’t you? I bet you didn’t even think twice about it. You just did it. So congratulations. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve passed with flying colors.”
Once again, she had the sensation of falling through a hole in the conversation. “Passed what?”
“Your job interview,” Wystan said, smiling. “Want to be a hotshot?”
She’d never understood why breathtakingly cruel remarks were meant to be funny. But she’d learned the hard way—only teasing, don’t be so uptight, can’t you take a joke?—how to respond in these situations. She forced out a laugh.
No one else did.
“Wait.” She stared around at them all. “You can’t be serious.”
Rory slid off the log, kneeling down in front of her so that their faces were level. He looked more like he was proposing marriage than making a job offer. She fixed her gaze on the top button of his shirt, avoiding the fiery trap of his eyes.
“I have never been more serious in my life.” His deep, resonant voice shook her bones. She could feel every word in her chest as if he spoke directly into her heart. “Any crew would be lucky to have you. Come down from the tower, Edith. Don’t let your life be defined by stupid words from stupid men, who needed you to be small so that they could feel big. Be bold, be daring, be you. The person you were always meant to be. This squad needs you. I need you. Join us.”
Chapter 7
Rory’s whole chest ached with the effort of getting the words out—not because he didn’t mean them, but because he did. Edith’s whole life history was clear in every line of her posture; shoulders hunched, hands pressed so tightly between her knees that her legs trembled.
He wanted to enfold her in his wings, wrapping her in warmth and reassurance. He wanted to rip apart whoever had convinced her that her dreams were futile. That she wasn’t good enough, would never be good enough.
All he could do was draw as hard as he could on his griffin’s alpha power. Not to dominate—never that, not to her—but simply to convince. He filled every syllable with his trust and certainty and unwavering support. He had to make her believe him, believe in him, as he believed in her—
“No,” Edith said. There was nothing but bleak resignation in her own voice.
Rory’s lungs felt like they’d turned inside-out. For a moment, all he could do was gape at his mate in utter consternation.
*Did she just ignore your alpha voice?* Blaise said in his head.
He tried again, harder. “Edith. We need you. Join us.”
Fenrir flattened against the ground. The rest of the squad all rocked back in their seats as though he’d fired a pistol past their faces.
Edith just looked mildly annoyed.
“I heard you the first time,” she said, tone sharpening. “And the answer is still no.”
The entire squad stared at her.
She flinched, curling around herself more tightly. “Why are you all looking at me like that?”
“Because we kind of assumed you’d say yes,” Blaise said, wide-eyed. “People generally have a hard time saying no to Rory.”
“Well, I don’t.” Edith’s mouth set in a determined line, even though her body language was still meek and defensive. “I know that he doesn’t really mean what he’s saying.”
“Trust me.” Callum rubbed one ear with a rather pained expression. “He does.”
“I do,” Rory said, this time being careful not to use his power. “Why don’t you believe me?”
Her gaze flicked briefly up from his collar, skating across his face and away again. She still wasn’t looking him in the eye.
“Because it’s unbelievable.” Edith pulled her hands out from between her knees to tuck them under her armpits, hugging herself. “Hotshots are the best of the best, the elites of wildland firefighters. People try for years to be good enough to get on a crew. Now you want me to believe that you want me in your squad? A random fire watcher you’ve only just met? I don’t know if this is a sick joke, or some kind of misplaced sense of charity, but I’m not falling for it.”
She paused, looking down. A crease appeared between her eyebrows. “What’s the matter with him?”
Fenrir had crept forward on his belly until his head rested on her boot. He whined, his tail tucked between his legs in a posture of extreme respect. For an enormous hellhound, he looked remarkably like a puppy trying very hard to prove he was a Good Boy.
“I think you’ve impressed him,” Rory said.
*Very. No one else has ever been deaf to Birdcat’s bark.* Fenrir rolled over in full submission, paws waving in the air. *Pack needs her. Run with us, Stone Bitch.*
Fenrir still hadn’t grasped the concept of personal names. Or mastered some of the finer subtleties of human language. Rory knew he didn’t mean any insult.
His griffin, however, didn’t.
*Fenrir,* Blaise said silently, while Rory was fully occupied with stopping himself from shifting on the spot. *I strongly advise that you pick a different nickname.*
*Why?* Fenrir asked, sounding puzzled. He was still upside-down, showing Edith his throat. His copper eyes fixed on her face in clear adoration. *Is what she is. Tough. Strong. Break your teeth if you bite her. Stone Bitch.*
“Edith,” Rory snarled, his head too scrambled with his griffin’s outrage for telepathy. “Edith.”
Edith’s expression shifted from wariness to baffled annoyance. “I’m sitting right here. You don’t need to yell.”
Callum stared at the stars. Blaise buried her face in her hands. Joe was biting down on his knuckles, his huge shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.
*May I make a suggestion?* Wystan cast an aggrieved glance around the circle. *Shall we try not acting like raving lunatics?*
Rory finally wrestled his inner beast back under control. He briefly contemplated trying to explain that he’d been talking to the dog, and discarded the idea. She already thought he was suffering from some kind of brain injury.
“I’m sorry, Edith.” Damn it, he wished she would meet his eyes. “I didn’t mean to shout. I swear this isn’t a joke. We really do want you to join us.”
She shook her head, still looking unconvinced. “Why?”
*To keep Birdcat in line,* Fenrir said earnestly. *Bite his haunches when he tries to run too far ahead of the pack.*
Blaise managed to turn a laugh into a cough. “Well, for a start, Fenrir likes you. He’s generally an excellent judge of character.”
“Your Red Card says you’re more than qualified.” Rory handed it back to her. “And we’re one person short.”
Fenrir flattened his ears. *Am here. Am pack.*
*But technically not on the payroll,* Rory sent to him in exasperation. *If you aren’t going to shift, you can’t complain that humans don’t see you as a person.*
“Usually Thunder Mountain Hotshots consists of three squads, with a minimum of six firefighters on each,” Wystan was explaining to Edith. “Our Superintendent wasn’t pleased with us for being undermanned compared to the other squads—it makes it harder for him to balance tasks across the entire crew when the numbers don’t match up. Truly, you’d be doing us a favor by filling the vacancy.”
Edith’s eyebrows drew down further. “But aren’t hotshot crews always flooded with applications? I would have thought that you guys would be able to take your pick.”
Wystan winced, glancing at Rory. *Oh boy. How do we explain this one?*
Tell her the truth, his griffin urged.
Rory opened his mouth—and hesitated. If he told Edith about shifters, she’d only demand to know why they wanted her on the team, since she obviously wasn’t one. Then he’d have to explain about fated mates… and that would s
ound perilously like he only wanted her on the team in order to be close to her.
And he didn’t only want her to join because she was his mate. He wanted her because she was, undeniably, a superb firefighter. He’d known that at a gut level, just from looking at her fireline, even before he’d seen the training record printed on her Red Card. It would be criminal to waste such obvious talent in a remote lookout tower.
But she’d locked herself away, because she’d been convinced she wasn’t worthy to join a crew. If he told her they were mates, she wouldn’t believe she’d won her place on her own merits. Not only would she turn him down, but the little self-confidence she had left would be shattered.
Edith’s expression was shuttering down, clearly taking his pause as a bad sign. He had to say something. He wished the alpha voice worked on her. It was a little disconcerting to realize just how much he usually relied on his power.
“We did have a lot of applications,” he said slowly, picking his words as carefully as threading through a bramble thicket. “But I rejected them all. Our Superintendent gave me full power over hiring decisions for the squad. I’d rather have no one than the wrong person. And I didn’t find anyone who came even close to being right for me—for the squad. Until you.”
Edith shook her head. “You must have had people better than me. More qualified. More normal.”
“I don’t want someone normal.” He made a scornful sound. “None of the rest of us are normal. I need someone exceptional.”
Edith’s face had smoothed out again. Even though she still wasn’t looking at him, he could somehow tell that he had her whole attention.
“This isn’t just a squad, Edith. This is a family.” He gestured around the circle. “A bit weird, a bit argumentative, like any family… but at the end of the day any one of us would run into fire for each other. I can’t take on anyone who wouldn’t do the same. Today, you didn’t hesitate to put your own life in danger. And for what? A rabbit.”
“Hare,” she said, barely audible.
He grinned at her. “And you don’t hesitate to correct me, either. That’s the kind of person I want on my squad, Edith. Someone who stands up to me when I’m wrong and has my back when I’m right. Someone whose quirks match ours, who likes Joe’s cooking and talks to Fenrir like he’s a person. Someone who I can trust, whole-heartedly. That’s why I want you. That’s why I need you.”
He held out one hand, palm out. “So. Will you join us?”
Slowly, hesitantly, she put her hand in his. It was only the barest contact, light as a feather. It felt like being kissed by lightning.
“Yes,” she said.
Chapter 8
The prey was on the move.
The hawk’s body was a more difficult host than the hare. It couldn’t simply puppet the bird directly; not without falling out of the sky, at least. Instead, it had to keep a light touch on the beast’s mind, allowing the animal’s own instincts to coordinate wings and tail in the subtle movements required for flight.
It did not like being in the air. The sky was an unnatural domain for it, too far removed from the cold, comforting darkness under the earth. The bright blue emptiness and searing eye of the sun unnerved it.
At least the hawk’s mind was a more comfortable fit than the hare’s, being closer to its own predatory nature. It only needed to nudge the bird’s instincts—good hunting, prey there, find food—to get it to follow the shifter pack’s boxy yellow vehicle.
To Thunder Mountain.
It knew this place. Or rather, knew of it. None of its kind had laid eyes on the mountain for hundreds of years. There were forces that even they feared.
Almost, it abandoned the hunt. But it was not a dumb beast, driven only by fear and instinct. It had waited long to re-emerge into the mortal world.
It would not be driven out. If it was to be free to feast and hunt, it needed a strategy. A way to defeat those who sought to destroy it. And this prey—this fascinating, flawed, unique prey—might be the key.
For such a chance, it would risk even Thunder Mountain. It flew on cautiously, alert for any danger.
The jagged peak stood alone in the sunlight. No shadows swept through the clouds shrouding the sacred mountain.
Where were the guardians?
The world had changed greatly since it had last stalked the earth. Human dwellings infested the once-pristine wilderness in astounding numbers now. It could scent their souls, fat and placid and mouth-watering. If the guardians had truly gone…
No. It could not risk feasting yet. The lesser shifters were still here. In the before time, they had always worked for the greater powers, watching over the human herd. This could yet be a trap.
It circled high over the shifter den. Hunger gnawed at it, but it had to move slowly, cautiously. It had to observe these new guardians. Learn their habits, their weaknesses.
Learn how to destroy them.
Chapter 9
Edith huddled under her noise-cancelling headphones. They muffled the worst of the bone-saw shriek of the hotshot crew vehicle’s engine, turning it from agonizing to merely uncomfortable.
More importantly, they gave her an excuse to avoid conversation.
Even a truck this big was a tight squeeze for the whole squad, given the size of the men. She’d ended up wedged into the back row, gear piled around her feet and Fenrir’s hot, doggy weight pressed against her side. Joe, Wystan, and Callum shared the middle seats, with varying degrees of muttered grumbling and stoic resignation. She could only catch glimpses of Rory past their broad shoulders.
The squad boss rode shotgun in relative comfort, one arm draped along the open window. He kept turning his head, glancing back as though he could sense her looking at him. Every time, he flashed her a warm, private smile that made her skin tingle. Every time, Edith jerked her eyes away, pretending to be deeply engrossed in her music.
It wasn’t just the juddering, jolting ride that twisted her stomach into knots. Edith clenched her hands between her knees, sick with guilt.
I have to tell him.
She knew she should have done so already. It should have been the first words out of her mouth when Rory had made his incredible, breathtaking offer: I can’t. You don’t understand, I’m not like other people. You don’t want me.
But his words had been like a spell, transforming her into someone else. For one shining moment, she’d believed herself to be the person that he saw—someone he could want. Someone who deserved to have a place on his team.
So she’d said yes. And then sat in mute horror, as everyone beamed and congratulated her and the realization of what she’d done came crashing down on her.
She’d spent her last night in the lookout tower staring up at the familiar ceiling, her head spinning through a million different scripts, trying to find a way to come clean. But her nerve had failed her. Just thinking of how Rory would look at her made her tongue dry up in her mouth.
He would hate her. He would leave. And she’d never see him again.
She’d been a coward. She’d called up her supervisor on Rory’s satellite phone to hand in her resignation… and been almost grateful for the blast of anger in her ear. Here was an excuse she could use.
“He says I have to work out my notice period,” she’d told Rory, with Wayne still ranting down the phone.
The hotshot’s mouth had crooked in a way that wasn’t quite a smile. He’d taken the phone out of her hand, walking off with it. She hadn’t been able to hear what he said, but his shoulders had been loose and relaxed. As far as she’d been able to tell, it had been a perfectly pleasant conversation.
When Rory had handed the phone back to her, a gleam in his eye, Wayne sounded very different.
“Yes,” he’d said, in a high, peculiar tone that she’d never heard him use before. “Of course. Would two months severance pay be sufficient?”
After that, she’d felt like she was floating free of her body, merely observing as everything happened around her. Su
rely she couldn’t really be packing up her limited possessions. Surely she couldn’t really be heading down the tower stairs for the last time. Surely she couldn’t really be climbing into the crew truck, as though she belonged there.
She kept waiting to wake up. To be found out. But the dream kept stretching on.
And the weight of the lie grew heavier with every passing moment.
She jumped as a hand waved politely in front of her face. Wystan had twisted round in front of her, as much as the limited space allowed. He gestured at her headphones. Reluctantly, she pulled them down around her neck.
“Apologies for disturbing you,” the paramedic said, smiling. “But we’re nearly there. You’ll need to hang on.”
True to his words, the truck lurched as Blaise turned up a narrow dirt track. She had to grab onto the back of Joe and Wystan’s seats as the vehicle clawed its way up a steep gradient. Pines rolled past the windows. She noticed that the undergrowth had been cut back, removing dangerous dry fuel. The occasional stump showed where dead trees had been felled.
“Does the crew maintain this forest?” she asked Wystan.
He nodded. “All this land belongs to the Thunder Mountain Hotshots. Our base is halfway up, but we spend a lot of time down here at the foot of the mountain. Hiking, training, and practicing clearing fuel.”
She squinted up the twisting road, but couldn’t see anything other than forest yet. “Why all the way down here?”
Joe heaved a put-upon sigh. “Because Rory likes making us suffer.”
“It’s good for you,” Rory said from the front. “If I had my way, you’d be hiking to the top of the mountain for practice.”
“Sadist.” Joe put his hand over his heart, lifting his eyes to the ceiling. “Thank you, eagles.”
“Eagles?” Edith asked.
“Bald eagle nesting area at the summit,” Blaise said from the driver’s seat. “We don’t go up there, to avoid disturbing the birds.”