Tayme (Were Zoo Book 8)

by R. E. Butler

  “Save us some burgers,” Tayme called across the sidewalk to Seneca who was cooking in the burger stall.

  “You got it,” he said.

  The line for ice cream stretched back a few yards, and Rory smiled at the people who were waiting. The next set of customers stepped up, and a little girl wearing a sparkly unicorn headband and hugging a tattered teddy bear under one arm smiled up at Rory, showcasing missing front teeth.

  The older female nudged the little girl. “Go ahead, sweetie.”

  “Ice cream, pease.”

  “Please,” her mother corrected with a soft smile.

  “Pl-ease.”

  “Sure,” Rory said with a chuckle. “Do you want a bear cone?”

  She nodded eagerly, the headband falling forward to cover her eyes. As she shoved it back into place, she said, “Brown Bear loves ice cream.”

  “His name is Brown Bear?” Rory asked as she began to assemble the cone, settling a perfect scoop of vanilla onto a sugar cone and fixing the face with cookies and candy to make it look like a bear.

  The little girl nodded. “Green Bunny had to stay in the car.”

  “Adorable,” Rory said.

  She walked around the stall and handed the cone to the little girl. “Did you go on the safari tour?”

  Her eyes big like saucers, the girl took a lick of the ice cream and smiled. “I like the bears.”

  “Me, too.” She glanced at Tayme who was giving her his sexiest secret smile.

  After accepting payment from the older female, Rory returned behind the stall and served the next people in line. An hour later, she and Tayme were eating the cheeseburgers and fries at a picnic table under a huge tree, the gentle summer breeze bringing some much-needed relief from the sweltering late-August temperatures.

  The evening passed quickly, and soon enough they were hanging up the closed sign and cleaning the stall.

  “I’m thinking about strawberry ice cream for tomorrow,” Tayme said, counting the cones in the storage bin and making a note on his phone.

  “That sounds perfect.”

  He gave her a warm smile. She’d noticed he liked when she approved of his cooking and that he’d taken to running his ideas for ice cream flavors by her.

  “You know what might be cool?” she asked as she put the utensils into a bin to take to the kitchen to wash.

  “What’s that, love?”

  “If we could figure out a way to make a cone out of shortcake dough.”

  He hummed and straightened. “I never thought about that. You’re thinking about making a strawberry shortcake in ice cream form.”

  She nodded. “A shortcake cone, strawberry ice cream, and whipped cream. Sounds good to me.”

  “Me too,” he said, rubbing his chin in thought. “We can go to the commercial kitchen and experiment.”

  Once the ice cream stall was cleaned and closed for the night, he lifted the bin of utensils and they walked to the commercial kitchen. She used the code to unlock the door and helped him load up one of the dishwashers. While she filled the detergent dispenser, he used a tablet that was always plugged in on one of the counters for the cooking staff to use and looked up recipes for shortcake dough.

  They spent the next two hours making small batches of dough with differing ingredients until they got one that toasted just right on the waffle iron. It was sweet, crispy, and didn’t fall apart when a bite was taken out of it.

  Tayme took a bite of one that had cooled and hummed. “I like it.”

  “Me, too,” she said, breaking off a piece and popping it into her mouth. “You know what would be fun? To try to make rolled ice cream.”

  “I’ve always wanted to do that. It’s too late to debut something like that topside. In about two months the ice cream stall will close for the season, to reopen the first day of spring. But we could try it out in the marketplace.”

  Rory had tried rolled ice cream with Jess at a festival and had been captivated by the process, including when the young woman behind the glass partition had used chocolate syrup to write her name in the chilled sweet cream.

  As they cleaned up their mess, her thoughts turned from cooking to sexier things, and Tayme suddenly pressed her against the counter with his hands planted on either side of her. She heard the metal creak as his hands flexed, and she grinned.

  “Can I help you?” she asked with a smile, looping her arms over his shoulders.

  He lowered his head to her throat and kissed her pulse. “You smell amazing,” he growled. “I can always tell when you’re thinking about sex.”

  “I can’t help it that you turn me on all the time.” She slid one hand up into his hair and gripped the strands. “Sexy, tempting male.”

  He lightly scraped his fangs along her throat and goosebumps erupted over her skin. “I want to take you right here, sweetness. Love you hard and fast. Make you mine again and again.” His voice had dropped low, his breath whispering over her skin and making her shiver with anticipation.

  Was there any female on the planet luckier than her?

  “I want you so badly,” she said, tilting her head to give him more access to her skin.

  He growled, the sound rolling up his throat and vibrating against her skin.

  A door opened behind them, and in a heartbeat, he had her pressed against a wall and was standing protectively in front of her.

  She peeked around him and saw Marcus and Jupiter striding into the kitchen.

  Tayme straightened from his defensive stance and looked between his alpha and the head of security. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s a group of people here,” Marcus said, stopping at the counter and looking at the two of them. “They say they’re here for Rory.”

  Tayme brought her against his side and held her close. She had visitors? No one knew where she was. “Who says they’re here for me?”

  Jupiter cleared his throat. “A group of red foxes.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Tayme frowned at the two males. “Say that again?”

  “A handful of people showed up at the front gate just as some of our security personnel were escorting the last humans outside,” Jupiter said. “They asked to see Rory. Our security officers are trained to not confirm that any particular person works at the park, especially a soulmate. They were insistent, however, and when one of our officers scented they were shifters, he escorted them to the security office, and called me. I called Marcus.”

  Tayme looked at his sweetheart. “I thought you said you’d never seen another red fox since you lost your family?”

  “I haven’t. I don’t understand.” She shook her head like she was trying to clear her hearing. “Red foxes? You’re sure?”

  Marcus nodded.

  “I should...go see them?” she asked, looking at Tayme. She looked like she was two seconds from bolting, her eyes going luminous and the elongated pupil of her fox making an appearance.

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Tayme said, tucking her more firmly against his side.

  “That’s not entirely true,” Jupiter said.

  Marcus put a hand up and the big lion shut his mouth with a click. “He’s both right and wrong. The truth is we can send them on their way. Foxes aren’t that big on the shifter scale and we can put some fear into them. But if you don’t talk to them, then you’ll never know how they came to find out you were here.”

  Rory squeaked and then cleared her throat. When she spoke the second time, her voice was thin and high. “I think it was the owls.” She looked up at Tayme. “Because of what happened with Jess and her arranged mate.”

  The males nodded. Tayme thought over what they’d learned on the way back to the zoo from their disastrous visit with Rory’s adoptive parents. She’d called Jess to tell her what happened, when her best friend explained that she’d just been attacked by the male owl who was her arranged mate. She’d been saved by natural owls, who had attacked the male and driven him out the window, where he
’d fallen to his death. Jess believed that she and her mate had been tracked somehow as they left the nest.

  “Why would my... I’m not going to call them my parents, because they don’t deserve that title anymore.” Rory rubbed her temple and sighed. “What’s the point of them sending red foxes to the zoo to look for me? I don’t understand.”

  “We don’t either,” Marcus said, “which is why we believe it’s best that you speak to them. We’ll have bears, lions, and wolves standing guard, and we won’t allow them to go anywhere without an escort.”

  “You want her to hear them out?” Tayme asked, his bear riled at how upset she was.

  “It’s the right choice,” Marcus said with a shrug. “It may be difficult, but I think she deserves to know if it was in fact the owls who sent them, and what their purpose is here. The foxes are being cagey about why they’re here, but I don’t believe they intend Rory any harm.”

  Rory straightened her shoulders and wiped under her eyes with trembling fingers. “He’s not wrong. It’ll drive my fox batty wondering why they came.”

  “Okay sweetheart,” Tayme said. Then he looked at Marcus and Jupiter. “Tell us what you want us to do.”

  “I convened the alphas before I came to find you,” Marcus said. “The consensus is that Rory needs to see what they want. Then we can make a show of force if necessary to make them leave and never return.”

  “The concern is that they’ll blow our cover,” Jupiter said.

  “Cover?” Rory asked.

  “That the safari park is really a zoo for shifters,” Marcus said.

  Rory glanced at Tayme and he could sense her emotions through their soulmate connection. Fear and sorrow mixed up with curiosity and anger. His bear wanted to take her home and lock the door and say to hell with anyone else. That wasn’t going to help the situation, though.

  “We’ll see them,” Tayme said, answering for her. “But we don’t want to be cooped up in the security office.”

  “Let me make sure the park is empty,” Jupiter said. He put his cell to his ear and walked a few steps away, talking quietly. When he returned, he said, “The wolves just completed a second sweep of the park and it’s empty of humans. We’ll meet the foxes outside of the security office.”

  “Are you ready?” Tayme asked, cupping her face.

  “Y-yes.”

  “I’m right here, okay? I’m not leaving you alone with anyone.”

  “Okay. That’s good.”

  He chuckled and kissed the top of her head. “Sweetheart, I’m always going to protect you.”

  She hugged him fiercely, and he reveled in the tight embrace.

  They followed Marcus and Jupiter out of the commercial kitchen and toward the security office. The sun had set, but the automatic lights around the park were on, so they could see the group of people who were standing with the lions and wolves. There was a single female among the males, and all of them were dressed casually in jeans and shirts. He noticed that most of them had auburn hair like Rory, some darker and some lighter. He’d never thought about human hair color being a trait of a shifter, but it was clear that red foxes tended to have red hair.

  As they approached the group, she gripped his hand tightly, her steps slowing and her head tilting as she looked at them. They stopped a few feet away, with Marcus and Jupiter on either side of them.

  No one spoke for several moments.

  And then a tall male in the center of the group cleared his throat. “You look just like your mother, Rory.”

  Rory sucked in a sharp breath. “You knew my mother?”

  “She’s my cousin by mating,” he said, looking at the female next to him. “My name is Bertram, and this is my mate – your cousin – Ginny.”

  Tayme looked at Rory. “Do you know them?”

  She shook her head with a frown. “I don’t know. My fox is saying they’re familiar, but I’m not sure.”

  Ginny pulled a worn pack from her shoulder made of quilted material. From the interior, she removed a small photo album and held it out to Rory. “Your mother and I are first cousins. My mom and her dad are siblings. Our skulk lives in Missouri. Your family’s skulk was from here in New Jersey. Or they were, until they were forced out.”

  Tayme looked at the photo album as Rory turned the pages that each held a four-by-six glossy photo. Rory didn’t make a sound, until she stopped on one page, with Ginny, Bertram, and another couple. Rory looked just like the female.

  “Is that your mom?” Tayme asked softly.

  “Yeah,” she answered, tracing the female’s face with her finger. “Why don’t I know you?” She looked at the foxes.

  “Can we sit down?” Ginny asked, shifting from foot to foot. “My feet are aching.”

  “Of course,” Tayme said. He gestured to nearby picnic tables and walked with Rory to one of them. Ginny and Bertram sat across from them, and the rest of the foxes sat at the next table, with the park shifters standing loosely around the whole group.

  Bertram introduced the rest of the skulk, but Rory said she didn’t recognize any of them. Marcus and Jupiter offered them drinks, and when everyone declined, they stepped away with the others, giving the group some privacy while keeping an eye on things.

  Rory put the photo album on the table and pointed to the image of the four adults. “You said my skulk was forced out. Of where? And when did that happen?”

  Bertram rested his forearms on the table and linked his fingers. “Red foxes are fierce, make no mistake of that. But when a skulk has a large youth population, the alpha will most often make the choice to walk away from confrontation rather than risk the injury or death of any parents in a battle over territory. I remember the phone call from your father, Rory, in the middle of the night. Your mother was pregnant with you, and another skulk came upon your people while they were sleeping and tried to engage in battle. There were numerous young in your skulk, and the alpha called for retreat. They were living in trailers in Northern New Jersey close to the Pennsylvania border. The attack happened suddenly, and they couldn’t get out with the trailers, just their vehicles. But everyone was safe. The other skulk claimed the territory and the trailers, and your people were homeless. We wired them money to purchase trailers, and they began to travel to find a new territory.”

  “They never settled down,” Ginny said. “They wanted to stay in New Jersey, but they couldn’t find a place to set up a home base where they’d be away from humans. So the alpha declared they were nomadic until they found a place to settle, and they just traveled all over the state.” She sniffled and leaned against Bertram, who put an arm around her.

  “We talked to them every few weeks. They were taking odd jobs for money and following the weather, going toward the coast during the warm months and south in the cold ones. When we didn’t hear from them for two months, we were worried, but had no way to get in touch. Then Fenway and his mother Erica showed up in our territory. Fenway?”

  One of the males rose from the next picnic table and joined them.

  “You and I were littermates,” he said to Rory. “Our mothers were best friends and you and I were born just weeks apart.”

  Rory tilted her head and stared at the male. “You look kind of familiar.”

  “I was hoping you might recognize me. Even though we were four when we were attacked, that night is burned into my subconscious.”

  Rory shivered. “Mine, too.”

  “Trauma will do that to a child,” Bertram said.

  “Wait,” Rory said, rising to her feet and stepping away from the picnic table. She walked to the male and picked up his wrist, lifting his arm and inspecting it. She dropped it with a gasp and turned to look at Tayme. “I do remember him. He has a birthmark on his forearm.”

  Tayme joined her as Fenway twisted his arm around to show him the birthmark she’d described.

  “Rory was taken by the owls,” Tayme said, putting his arm around her waist. “You weren’t?”

  He shook his head. “Let’
s sit back down. It’s a bit of a long story.”

  They joined Bertram and Ginny at the table, and Fenway wove the tale of the night their skulk was attacked. “We were hunting in the woods. The whole group hunted together, even the young. But my mom was pregnant and having trouble with nausea, so she stayed in a trailer and I stayed with her. We were sleeping and woke up to the sound of fighting. Mom and I went to investigate and saw the owls killing our people. I saw your parents get killed, Rory. We searched for you, but the owls drove us out. Everyone was dead – from the youngest to the oldest, even our alpha pair. Mom drove us away to safety, and then we returned at dawn to look for survivors but didn’t find anyone. The owls burned all the bodies. We honestly believed we were the only ones left alive, and we drove for Bertram’s skulk and they took us in. I didn’t know you were alive, Rory, or I would have kept searching for you. My mom died a few years ago. She never really got over losing your mom and you. You were family to us.”

  Rory turned into Tayme and cried, and he wrapped his arms around her. “How did you guys find Rory?” he asked.

  Bertram twisted on the bench and faced them. “A male called us a few days ago with information on a red fox female who was being held against her will in a shifter zoo.”

  Rory lifted her head abruptly. “So it was the owls who told you where I was.”

  “Yes,” Bertram said. “We didn’t believe them at first, of course. No one from our skulk was missing, and Fenway insisted that everyone in his skulk had died. But then the male described finding a young female after the battle, and Fenway was certain it was you.”

  Tayme was thankful he was holding onto Rory, because her legs went out and she leaned heavily against him. He took her to the table and helped her sit, murmuring to Marcus that she needed some water. His alpha returned a moment later with a chilled bottle, and Tayme cracked the lid and gave it to her. Her hands were trembling so badly that he had to help her hold it. After a few swallows, color returned to her cheeks and she blinked tear-filled eyes at Tayme before turning her attention to Fenway.