Real Men Hunt: Real Men Shift

by Kyle, Celia

  A sound filtered through his desire, an odd sound, one that shouldn’t have been. A rope sliding through a carabiner. Warren froze, listening hard to make sure he hadn’t imagined it. Persia’s panting nearly drowned it out when it happened again, but he heard it. Clear as a bell. A human was messing around at the base of their tree!

  Before his poor dearest even knew what was happening, he was out of the sleeping bag and peering over the edge of their treehouse. Then a scent even more powerful than Persia’s arousal hit him like a baseball bat.

  Human.

  Male.

  Gunpowder.

  Persia eased up next to his tense body, her fingers slipping between his. His wolf surged against Warren’s self-control, demanding to be released so he could protect their mate, but Warren only allowed it to come out just enough to boost his vision. No sense overreacting until he was sure there was actually a threat.

  Sure enough, a man with a gun slung over his shoulder inched his way up the tree using their own damn climbing ropes.

  Fuck!

  Chapter Fourteen

  Persia’s heart pounded like a tribal drum in her chest, her stomach twisting into knots of anxiety as she peered over the edge of the platform. How could things have changed so quickly? From sleeping as peacefully as she ever had to waking up in the most delightful manner to staring into the abyss, trying to see the threat that had put Warren on high alert. Tension pulsed off him so powerfully it felt like a blazing fire and kept growing, yet she couldn’t make out what he seemed to sense.

  “What is it?” she whispered, eyes wide as she willed them to adjust to the darkness.

  Warren released her hand as she blinked hard again and again, straining to focus on something… anything. A small movement caught her attention, and that did it. Suddenly the shape of someone pulling themselves up the tree resolved, and her blood ran cold. It came as such a surprise that she stumbled backward a step and clapped her hands over her mouth so she wouldn’t scream.

  “Shit!” she hissed, spinning around to see if Warren might have smuggled a cauldron of molten lava in with his supplies so they could pour it over their assailant. But instead she was met with a sight more horrifying, more incomprehensible than she’d ever seen in her life.

  “W-warren?” Her throat clamped up, not allowing her to make so much as a squeak after that.

  He was no longer the gentle country boy with the soft kisses and the lilting twang as sweet as honey fresh from the hive. The Caribbean blue eyes that melted her to the core intensified to a wholly inhuman shade of cobalt, flashing with rage, even as the structure of his face changed. At first subtly, but then quickly and dramatically. The rest of his body soon followed suit.

  No matter how fast or how much she blinked, this bizarre nightmare or vision or whatever it was didn’t fade away. It remained, and only became freakier. But it couldn’t be real. Not any of it. She had to be dreaming or sleepwalking.

  Time slowed as Warren’s body bulged and twisted, stretching the seams of his jeans and flannel shirt. He fell onto all fours, his mouth and nose seeming to elongate into a snout—she knew it was impossible, but it was the only way to describe it—and golden fur sprouted over every inch of exposed skin. It must have only taken seconds, but hours seemed to pass as Persia watched, utterly paralyzed as his shirt and pants tore away from his body in shreds, like the Hulk. Except, instead of turning into Lou Ferrigno covered in green makeup, she was left facing something so incomprehensible, her knees gave out and she dropped to her ass, staring at the beast in total, overriding shock.

  “Nonononono,” she babbled as her brain short-circuited.

  Scrambling backward and pressing herself against the rough bark of the tree trunk, she gaped at the huge wolf standing in the middle of the platform, its lips pulled back in a vicious snarl. At least it wasn’t snarling at her. The animal’s murderous gaze focused on the edge of the platform, where the person climbing the tree would soon appear.

  Persia’s breaths came in short, quick gasps, her brain frantically trying to make sense of what it had just seen—was still seeing—but it couldn’t. Instead, it tried to convince her Warren hadn’t just turned into a wolf. That the wolf had never been a man to begin with. A man was a man, a wolf was a wolf. Of course, that had to be true, yet… she’d watched Warren change, contort, transform. And she couldn’t ignore the fact he was nowhere to be seen. She even craned her neck back to see if he’d climbed the tree, but he’d vanished into thin air.

  Maybe he was never here to begin with, her inner pragmatist whispered. Maybe she’d simply dreamed cuddling up with him, kissing him, touching him. Maybe that’s what happened.

  Then where did the wolf come from? another part of her argued. She hated that part. A bear might have climbed a tree, but wolves weren’t known for their tree-climbing skills.

  I’ve lost my mind, she decided. It was the only explanation, unless aliens had transported her to an alternate reality or parallel universe or different dimension or whatever the Sci-fi nuts called it. Damn, she was even babbling inside her own head!

  The line between reality and hallucination blurred into the background of her mind. Everything was real and nothing was real, all at the same time. With a start, Persia realized Wolf Woods had gone silent. No rustling of foraging nocturnal animals. No birds flitting around as they prepared for the day. Not even the breeze that had cooled her heated skin moments earlier whispered among the leaves. No sound whatsoever from the forest itself, as if it silenced itself to better hear the maelstrom that was about to be unleashed.

  Only a few sounds passed the thundering of her heart. The beast—whether imaginary or terrifyingly real—prowled at the edge of the platform, moving silently, even as drool splattered on the freshly cut plywood. Her breaths continued in hot, ragged bursts, and she wondered for a moment if her throat was closing up. Maybe dying like that would be for the best before the wolf could turn its gaze on her. The rough hiss of rope brushing rope reminded her of the threat about to present itself.

  Unable to stop herself, she turned her nearly catatonic gaze toward the edge of the platform in time to see a pair of big, strong hands grip the railing Warren had installed just hours earlier. She didn’t need to see the man’s face to know he was one of her father’s hired guns. He’d come for her. Or maybe the massive wolf standing in front of her, shielding her from the hunter. Knowing the tenacity of the men Dick McNish hired, whatever was about to go down, it would not go down easily.

  The wolf took a half-step backward, closer to Persia, but somehow, she knew it wasn’t because it was afraid. It just wanted to stay out of the hunter’s sightline for as long as possible. It was smart. Smarter than an average wolf because the tactic worked. The hunter grunted softly as he hoisted the top half of his body past the edge of the platform and faced them.

  The man probably barely had time for his brain to process what it was seeing before the wolf lunged forward, snapping his powerful jaws and latching onto something so hard the crunch made her cringe. The silence of the forest was shattered by a bellow of surprise and pain. Then the crack of branches and sickening thud of a body hitting the forest floor nearly brought up her beer and potato chips.

  Persia held her breath, not daring to move or make a sound. Even though she knew the man had almost certainly been sent to drag her down from the platform, if not kill her outright, she didn’t want anyone to die. Silence dragged out for so long she was either going to take a big gasp or pass out, but before either happened, some very colorful curses reached her ears.

  Daring to edge closer to the wolf, she peeked down to see the hunter hobbling away from the rabid wolf in the tree and toward the entrance of the woods, holding one hand to his shoulder and dragging a near useless leg behind him.

  Once the man was out of sight, the normal night sounds of the woods peppered the air, and Persia dared to face the wolf. Of the many ways she’d envisioned herself dying—skydiving over the Mojave, hiking through the Amazon, h
ell…driving down I-75 during rush hour—becoming wolf-chow had never been one of them.

  But when the animal’s bright blue eyes found hers, the fire that had blazed in them moments before winked out and they looked almost familiar. Only when he sat back on his haunches did it hit her. She knew this wolf. Very well.

  “Y-you?” she muttered, her heart stuttering in her chest.

  The wolf tilted his head to the side and slapped his fluffy tail on the plywood a couple of times, as if asking her a question. Anger surged inside her, drawn from her confusion and fear, as well as relief at knowing her mysterious visitor.

  “What the ever-living-fuck is going on here!” she shouted, drowning out the night sounds of the woods again. “I’m having a psychotic break. That has to be it. None of this is actually happening. Nope. No way. Nuh-uh. I’m nuts.”

  People who have psychotic breaks don’t usually know they’re having them, though, that asshole voice in her head reminded her. Which could only mean one thing.

  It was all real.

  Tears streamed unbidden down her cheeks and she knew her head was shaking back and forth frantically, although she hadn’t specifically told it to. The wolf, her special friend who’d been nothing but kind to her, took a step closer and whined, almost as if it was worried about her. That’s all it took to send her into hysterics.

  “Get away!” she screamed at him, pushing her back against the trunk like maybe she could somehow bury herself inside to stay safe.

  The wolf froze, and then something even crazier happened, confirming she was, in fact, losing her marbles. His furry body lengthened and contorted, his muscled shoulders shrinking and broadening at the same time. Thick fur retracted as if being sucked back inside by an invisible vacuum, leaving only smooth, tanned skin behind. The still-frothing muzzle shortened back into a human face while his eyes dulled to a mesmerizing, handsome, terrifyingly familiar blue.

  The wolf disappeared, replaced by a stark-naked Warren.

  “It’s okay, Persia,” he spoke softly, holding his palms up at her, as if that would somehow make everything better. “Stay calm. You’re safe.”

  It’s okay? Stay calm? Bullshit! Nothing was okay, so she wasn’t about to stay calm. Every cell in her body screamed at her to run! Get away from this insanity as fast as she could, however she could. Scrambling away from him toward the other side of the platform, she stood and glanced around wildly for her best chance of escape. She had to get out of the tree. Now!

  Crouching low and leaping with every ounce of strength she possessed, Persia managed to wrap her hands around the next closest branch, adrenaline masking the deep gouges the rough bark left on her fingers. Pain-schmain. She wasn’t above free-climbing this bitch of a tree, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to wait around to be gobbled up by some human-wolf mutant, no matter how sweet and cute and sexy as hell he was when he was being sweet and cute. Nuh-uh, no way.

  Holding her breath, Persia pulled with all her might, swinging one leg up toward the branch but missing by a mile. She dangled from her branch, a good thirty feet over the forest floor, struggling to stay out of Warren’s reach, when her vision began to blur. Her limbs felt as heavy as logs and she could barely keep her eyes open. Dizziness overcame her, and the last thing she knew was the terrifying sensation of falling.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “All right,” Zeke groaned, running his hands over his face in Trina’s clinic a few hours later. “Can we go over again how we got from ‘a hunter at the base of the tree’ to ‘our attorney lying in a clinic’?”

  Warren paced Trina’s small clinic with a snow lion flag that read Free Tibet! wrapped around his waist in lieu of clothing. His sister bent over an unconscious Persia, opening her eyelids and shining a light in them, checking for a concussion. Another concussion, he reminded himself.

  What a shit show!

  “He knew we were up there,” Warren grumbled, out of patience with his alpha’s multitude of questions. He was right to be asking them, but that didn’t mean Warren had the patience to answer them. “If I hadn’t woken up, the bastard would have gotten the drop on us.”

  No one else needed to know the hunter had interrupted a hot-and-heavy make-out session, which only brought back memories of how Persia’s body had reacted to his touch, his kiss. Her soft sighs, his overpowering need for her.

  Val snapped her fingers in front of Warren’s face. “Snap out of it, loverboy. Now explain why you shifted in front of her. And let me remind you of the seriousness of that particular offense.”

  Ironic, coming from Val, considering her mate’s sister had shifted in front of her when they were college roommates.

  “I had no choice,” Warren snapped, watching Trina’s every movement. “It was one of McNish’s hunters. I’d bet my life on it. He knew exactly where we were, he was sneaking up on us, and he had a gun. Honestly, I think that’s what woke up my wolf. I never would have smelled the gunpowder on my own, but he was close to the surface.”

  Zeke raised a curious eyebrow, but Warren ignored him in favor of keeping his focus on his mate.

  “I wasn’t about to risk my mate’s safety, Zeke, and I know you would have done the same. Lucky for the hunter, he didn’t make it as close as my wolf wanted.” He shrugged his disinterest over the hunter’s fate. “My fangs probably didn’t even puncture the skin, but I might have cracked his clavicle. I think the fall really hurt him. Not so badly he couldn’t hobble away pretty fast, though. Bottom line, he’ll live.”

  “Okay,” Zeke frowned at his beta. “Did he see you shift?”

  “Not a chance. As far as he knows, some crazy wolf somehow managed to climb a tree. Unless McNish filled his goons in on the truth, I doubt anyone will take him seriously. Just another fictitious Wolf Woods sighting that will feed local lore.”

  “What about Persia?” Zeke’s hard gaze bore into him.

  “She saw the whole thing. After the hunter fell, she flipped her shit and tried to climb the tree to get away from me. I can’t really blame her. It’s not how I envisioned telling her. It must have overwhelmed her because she passed out mid-climb. I managed to catch her before she could fall.”

  After lowering her limp body to the platform, Warren had harnessed her in and then used the belaying lines he’d used for the supplies to lower them both to the ground, grabbing her Tibet flag on the way, just in case he ran into anyone. He’d then carried her all the way across Wolf Woods and pack lands to Trina’s cabin-slash-clinic. Heading to his truck would have been too risky.

  “How is she?” he dared ask his sister.

  Trina smiled and gave his shoulder a squeeze before pulling the stethoscope’s ear tips out of her ears. “I’m pretty sure she just fainted, big brother. She should be fine. That was quick thinking on your part. I think you saved her life more than once tonight. Or last night. What time is it again?”

  “Five,” Max growled hoarsely as he walked into the clinic from the cabin and handed his mate a mug of steaming Earl Grey tea. She pecked his cheek, and then he took one look at a nearly naked Warren before disappearing back into the cabin.

  Maybe he should have been relieved at the diagnosis, but his sister’s equivocation troubled him. “You’re sure? Why hasn’t she woken up yet?” he didn’t even try to hide the worry from his voice.

  “Warren, she’s been through a lot in the last twenty-four hours,” Trina chided. “That bump she got the other night might be why. If she hasn’t sustained any new injuries, I’m almost certain she’ll wake up soon.”

  “Almost?” he snapped, directing his guilt and worry at the wrong person.

  Val moved to step between the siblings, but Trina brushed her aside and gave her brother a hard look. “Listen, Warren, I’m not a human doctor. You know that better than anyone. But I know an injury when I see one, and she has none. So cut the crap, or your ass will be sitting in my waiting room.”

  She pointed at the clinic’s only door, which led directly outside. No way was he going
to leave his mate, so he bit his tongue and glowered as his sister did a few more tests. Max wandered back in, glanced down at the flag around his waist, and handed Warren a set of sweats.

  “She might not appreciate seeing your junk rubbing up against the symbol of Tibetan liberation when she wakes up.” He gave a wry smirk and a wink.

  Warren gave him a grateful nod and, as he finished dressing, Persia began to stir. Every head in the room jerked in her direction, and Warren rushed to her side, taking her cool hand in both of his. Zeke and Val flanked him while Trina remained on her other side.

  Her eyes fluttered open and then squinted against the bright light of the clinic. When her eyes adjusted a little, her gaze skimmed over those clustered around her, landing on Warren. Her hand tightened around his for a moment, driving home the knowledge she was his and he was hers. A whisper of a smile played at her lips, the same kind of sleepy look she’d given him when she awoke on the platform.

  Then her eyes widened, and her pupils dilated. Sweet affection gave way to terror. All color drained from her face and her chest expanded in preparation for a blood-curdling scream. The moment her piercing shriek ruptured the air, all hell broke loose.

  Persia flailed around, trying to scramble away from the source of her panic—Warren. Val’s instincts presumably kicked in as she tried to keep Persia on the gurney, as Trina and Warren used soothing tones to try to calm her down. Zeke shouted for Max to get his ass over and help while Max backed away from the chaos, which Warren appreciated. He wasn’t crazy about Val touching his mate. If another male—mated or not—touched her, he might go nuts.

  “Persia, honey, you need to calm down or you’ll pass out again,” Trina remained firm, her voice just this side of shouting.