Wildfire Shifters: Collection 1

by Zoe Chant

  Buck shook his head. “This isn’t about fighting fire. Damn it, boy. It never was about fighting fire.”

  Rory furrowed his brow. “Chief?”

  Buck let out a heavy sigh. “The fire yesterday, the one at the lookout tower. You said on the phone you needed to talk to me about it in person.”

  “Uh,” Rory said, thrown by the abrupt change of topic. “Yeah. There were things that I couldn’t put in the official report.”

  Buck gave him a level look. “Like the fact that it was started by an invisible lightning-throwing monster?”

  Rory stared at him.

  “Thought so.” Buck pushed his chair back. “Guess it’s time we had a little chat about the real reason you’re here.”

  He unlocked a desk drawer, extracting a thick manila folder. He flipped it open, paging through. Rory caught brief glimpses of printed-out news stories—MYSTERY FIRE CLAIMS THREE LIVES and INFERNO STILL RAGES—before Buck pulled out a map from amongst the clippings.

  Buck unfolded the large sheet, spreading it across the desk. Upside-down, it took Rory a moment to recognize it as a detailed topology map of Montana, showing terrain and elevation. Colored blobs had been hand-drawn across the soft, well-worn paper.

  Buck put a square, blunt finger on a blue splotch. “Ridge Fire, five years ago. Lightning strike. Jumped four attempts to contain it thanks to repeated thunderstorms.” His finger moved across a few inches, to a green blob. “Hook End Fire, following year. Blamed on dumb kids horsing around a campfire, but they swore on the witness stand that lightning came out of nowhere and hit their tents. No one believed them, of course. Blue Mile Fire, lightning. June Bug Fire, a damn nightmare of a blaze, same cause.”

  “I remember it,” Rory said, staring down at the map. “That was my first year. We came in late on that one.”

  “And I wish we hadn’t already been deployed in California when the call went out, because I would give my left nut to have had you on the scene at the start. Might have saved a hell of a lot of acres.” Buck leaned back, looking grim. “And lives.”

  Rory counted blobs. “These are all lightning fires?”

  “Yep.” Buck waved a hand across the map. “Either Montana has personally pissed off Thor… or something paranormal likes to keep its territory nice and toasty. Now, here’s the interesting bit. Red, yellow, and purple are the fires from the past three years. What do you notice?”

  “There are fewer of them. They’re smaller.” Something else hit him as he studied the scrawled lines. “And most of them are well away from our base. You think that’s because I was here?”

  “Exactly. Our firebug is scared of shifters. I’ve been tracking this creature for a decade, Rory. I was going motherloving bananas trying to work out why it had suddenly started tiptoeing around when it usually rampages across the state every summer. Once I found out what you were, it all clicked into place. And I realized that I finally had a way to put a stop to all this.”

  Rory had been standing to attention for his dressing-down. Now he sank into a chair opposite Buck. The chief didn’t object, simply watching him without expression.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Rory asked.

  “Because you’re pathologically protective with a hero complex,” Buck said calmly. “If I’d told you why I actually needed a shifter-only squad, you would never have recruited your friends for me.”

  Rory clenched his hands on the edge of the desk. “You realize I’m going to tell them the truth.”

  “Go ahead. Even if you use your power to force them to go home, they’re only going to turn around and come straight back the moment it wears off.” Buck shrugged. “After all, are you going to turn tail and run now that you know the real problem?”

  Rory let out his breath, slowly. “No.”

  “Exactly. You’re a firefighter. So are they. Nobody comes into this line of work unless they’re willing to lay down their life for the greater good.” Buck sighed, suddenly looking every one of his forty-five years. “Look, I’m not going to apologize for manipulating you. I’ll do what I have to do to get the job done. But I also won’t risk lives unnecessarily. A-squad is my secret weapon. Whenever I get even a sniff of this monster, I’m going to send you out, right into the heat. I need you to kill this thing. That’s why I can’t put an ordinary human on your squad.”

  Our mate is not ordinary, Rory’s griffin said. And we need her at our side.

  Rory leaned his elbows on the table, putting his head in his hands. I know we do. But it’s not safe. We have to send her away, for her own protection.

  NO. His griffin’s denial was instantaneous, and so fierce that his skin prickled, threatening to erupt into fur and feathers. We have invited her into our nest, our pride. To throw her out now would break her heart. We cannot hurt her!

  Rory remembered the hitch of old pain in Edith’s soft voice when she’d spoken of how her old crew had rejected her. It was clear how much she wanted to be a wildland firefighter. Ever since she’d agreed to join A-squad, she’d been walking around with a dazed, thunderstruck expression, like someone waiting to wake up from a dream. How could he snatch that away from her?

  But if she stayed…she would be in danger.

  If there is danger, that is all the more reason to keep her close, his griffin insisted. She will not want to leave us, any more than we would ever leave her in peril. We are mates. Our fates are bound together.

  Cold ran down his spine. His griffin had a point. Out of all the places it could have gone, the lightning-creature had struck at Edith’s tower. It had broken its own patterns, attacking even though he himself had been nearby. That couldn’t be coincidence.

  And there had been the hare. And the hawk that Callum had spotted. The one that had followed them all the way from Edith’s tower to Thunder Mountain…

  “From the way you’re staring into space,” Buck said dryly, “I take it you’re having one of those weird wrestling matches with yourself again.”

  Rory pulled himself away from his inner conversation, returning to the outside world. “Chief, these lightning-started fires…has anyone spotted animals acting oddly around them?”

  Buck’s habitual frown deepened. He shuffled through his folder. “Any critters that hang around a wildfire tend to end up crispy. But I did notice this one, a few years back.”

  BITTEN OR BURNED? screamed the headline. Rory skimmed the article, his sense of unease growing. While it was previously thought that the couple had tragically perished in the wildfire, investigators now say that they were actually killed by an unknown wild animal. They believe that a panicked wolf or coyote must have been fleeing from the blaze, and sought refuge in the house…

  Rory pushed the paper away again, feeling sick. “Chief, Edith has to stay.”

  “Which one of us was sitting on the Superintendent side of this desk, again?” Buck looked around his own office, affecting surprise. “Oh look. It’s me.”

  Rory had only ever pulled the alpha voice on Buck once, and that had been to save the Superintendent’s life. Buck had thanked him, sincerely, and then equally sincerely promised to muzzle him if he ever did it again. He was absolutely certain the chief had not been joking.

  Which left him with no option but to tell the truth.

  “Chief.” Rory squared his shoulders. “There’s something I need to explain about shifters.”

  Chapter 11

  “Edith?” Blaise poked her head around the door, frowning as she took in the pristine state of the small bedroom. “If there’s something you don’t like about this bunk, we can swap.”

  “No, no.” Edith tried to force a smile onto her face. “The room’s fine.”

  In truth, the mattress was too hard and the pine-tar smell was too strong and the view out the tiny window was all wrong…but none of those was the real problem. She hugged her backpack tighter, running the familiar straps through her fingers.

  Blaise sat down next to her on the narrow bed. “Then why ar
en’t you unpacking your stuff?”

  She looked down, avoiding the other woman’s kind gaze. “I really need to talk to Rory. Do you think he’ll be back soon?”

  “Hard to say. I think he had a lot he needed to discuss with Buck.” Blaise nudged her with an elbow. “But I promise, they aren’t talking about kicking you out into the night.”

  “They should be.” Edith stood up abruptly. “I have to go talk to them. I should never have come here in the first place.”

  Fenrir, who was occupying most of the floor space in the tiny room, made a deep, rumbling growl. He flopped across her feet. The effect was similar to putting a parking boot on a car.

  “See, even Fenrir doesn’t want you to go,” Blaise said, as Edith struggled vainly to extricate her toes from under the dog. She patted the blanket. “Now tell me why you’re having second thoughts. It’s not that jerk Seth, is it?”

  “Not directly.” Edith sat down again, since it was clear it would take a backhoe to shift Fenrir. “But he wasn’t wrong. I don’t really belong here.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to him. It’s pitiful, really. Just because we’re A-squad while his own is called C, he has to take every opportunity to get into a dick-waving contest with Rory. As though a stupid letter means we’re better than him.” Blaise grinned. “Though we are, of course. And what’s this nonsense about not belonging with us? I thought Rory made it perfectly clear how much he—how much we all want you to be here. You seemed to believe him last night.”

  Edith bit her lip. “Have you ever been carried away in the heat of a moment, and done something that you would never have done if you’d been thinking clearly, and then realized too late that you’ve destroyed your life?”

  “Ouch.” Blaise blew out her breath. “That’s a bit close to home. Yes.”

  Edith traced patterns across the top of her backpack. “Rory’s been so kind to me. All of you have. But there’s something I haven’t told you. And when I do, you’re all going to hate me.”

  “There is literally nothing you could say to Rory that would make him hate you.” Blaise shook her head ruefully. “If you told him that you ate roasted kittens for breakfast every morning, he would be scouring the internet for recipes within five minutes.”

  “But what if, if I was keeping a secret. Not, not anything bad or illegal,” she added hastily. “Just something that made me different. Something that I really should have told him straight away, but…didn’t.”

  Blaise leaned back on her hands, staring at the ceiling. She didn’t speak for a long, long moment.

  “If you found out Rory was keeping a secret like that,” she said at last. “Would you hate him?”

  “No!” The word jumped out of her mouth without conscious thought.

  “There you go then.” Blaise shrugged. “And as for the rest of us…we all like you, Edith. There’s only one thing you could do to change that.”

  Edith swallowed nervously. “Let the squad down?”

  “No.” Blaise looked at her levelly. “Hurt Rory.”

  “I would never--“ Edith cut herself off as she heard her own voice echo from the walls. She made herself speak more normally. “I mean, I would never want to hurt him. Not deliberately. ”

  “Good.” Blaise’s mouth curled. “Because you do not want to be my enemy.”

  Fenrir huffed as if agreeing.

  Edith jumped as someone rapped on the front door. Neither Blaise nor Fenrir so much as twitched.

  “Speak of the devil.” Blaise raised her voice. “It’s not locked!”

  Rory himself came in. He’d swapped his turn out gear for dark jeans and a soft tee that could barely stretch over his biceps. Her bedroom seemed even smaller with his broad, burly form filling her doorway.

  “Hey,” he said, smiling at her. “You settling in okay?”

  He must have come straight from the shower. His blond hair had darkened to bronze, little beads of water glittering like gems amidst the tousled spikes. She was so mesmerized by the slightly damp, gleaming hollow of his throat, she didn’t realize he’d even spoken until Blaise slid off the bed.

  “I’m gonna go…uh, take a walk,” Blaise announced, her gaze flicking from Edith to Rory and back again. “You coming, Fenrir?”

  Rory stood aside to let the pair squeeze past. Edith noticed that Blaise caught his eye for a moment, some private message flickering in the air between the two old friends. A pang of envy shot through her at that easy, silent communication.

  Rory looked after Blaise as she exited the cabin, his forehead creasing a little. When he turned back to her though, his warm smile was back again.

  “We need to get you some gear,” he said, holding out a hand. “Buck wants the crew practicing with full kit tomorrow. Let’s go see what we can find for you in the storeroom.”

  She didn’t need help getting off the bed, but it would be rude to just leave his proffered hand hanging in mid-air. She tried not to show the shiver that raced through her as his fingers folded over hers.

  She hadn’t anticipated his strength. A flex of his arm, and she shot up like a rocket, stumbling into him. She caught herself just in time to avoid bumping her nose against his chest, but she did get an excellent close-up view of that delicious dip between his collarbones. She wondered if he would taste as good as he smelled…

  What was she thinking? She stepped back so hastily that she tripped. Only the fact that Rory still had hold of her hand stopped her from toppling straight back onto the bed again.

  “I’m not really this clumsy!” she blurted out, blushing furiously. “It’s just, just—“

  “It’s a small room,” Rory finished for her, looking a little red himself.

  She’d actually been about to say, just that you make me go weak at the knees. On retrospect, she was very glad that he’d interrupted.

  “Sorry, that was my fault.” Rory let go of her hand at last. “I didn’t mean to yank you around like that. Come on. Let’s go get you kitted up.”

  “Uh, yeah.” Edith swallowed hard, trying to get a grip on her surging libido. “Good idea.”

  She couldn’t have a serious discussion with Rory while she was tongue-tied with helpless lust, after all. Surely it would be easier to maintain a cool, professional attitude once they were away from her bedroom.

  There was nothing sexy about putting clothes on, after all.

  Chapter 12

  An hour later, and she was seriously wishing they were back in the bedroom.

  Rory’s bowed head was level with her groin. Her fingers itched to feel the texture of his tousled hair. She stared straight ahead at the wall, and tried very hard not to breathe in his scent.

  “It’s no good. This pair is too short too.” Giving up fiddling with the cuffs of the turn out pants she was trying on, he sat back on his heels. He ran his hand through his hair, making her own hand clench in longing. “You have really long legs.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s a pain. I can never find pants that fit.” She knew she was talking too much, but she couldn’t help it. His proximity unhinged her tongue as well as her mind. “All the kids at school used to call me a stork.”

  He frowned, his eyes darkening. “Teenagers are cruel.”

  It had actually been back in preschool, when people had only seen her outward differences. Her nicknames later on had been much crueler.

  “Well, I am a stork.” If she didn’t move soon, she was going to explode. In a moment of inspiration, she flapped her elbows, making a joke of it. “Awk, awk.”

  “A sexy stork,” he said—and flushed. He cleared his throat, turning away to rummage through the shelves lining the walls.

  He thought she was sexy?

  “Maybe one of the smaller men’s sizes would be a better fit.” He tossed her another pair of pants. “Try these ones.”

  As she got changed, she noticed that Rory was carefully keeping his eyes fixed on a shelf of safety helmets. Her stomach sank a little. If he really thought she was sexy, shou
ldn’t he be trying to steal a peek?

  “These are better, I think.” She pinched a roll of extra fabric, wrinkling her nose. “But I’ll need a belt.”

  “Try these.” He moved in close, fastening a pair of suspenders to the waistband. She sucked in her breath as his fingertips skimmed over her shoulder blades, adjusting the straps. “There. Move around a bit, let me see if they hold up properly.”

  She obligingly squatted down, bending and twisting. The pants were definitely roomy around the waist, but they didn’t threaten to expose her ass.

  “Feels good to me.” She straightened, bouncing on her toes. “What do you think?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Rory?” She turned—and was caught in the full force of his stare.

  Heat rushed over her. For all that she was wearing multiple layers of protecting clothing, she felt utterly naked.

  But not exposed. She felt…worshipped.

  Just for a second. He blinked, wrenching his gaze away.

  “That looks good.” His voice had gone rough and growly. “Take them off now. I mean, uh…” He shook his head sharply, turning on his heel. “Put them with the rest of your stuff. Just got one more thing to find.”

  She did so, adding them to her growing pile of gear. Protective jacket, pants, backpack, fire shelter, tools…he’d already found her everything on the standard equipment list. She couldn’t imagine what else he thought she’d need.

  He cleared his throat again, still noisily clattering around at the back of the storeroom. “So. Stork, huh? Any other nicknames?”

  There were, of course. Her warm glow faded, quenched by cold reality. She couldn’t flirt with him, even if she was almost sure now that he might not entirely object.

  For all her nervous prattling, she still hadn’t told him the truth about herself. Every time she tried, she found herself babbling about something else instead. Like stupid childhood nicknames.

  “What was your childhood nickname?” she asked.

  And there she went, racing away down the slightest diversion. Maybe if she just kept talking long enough, she wouldn’t have to tell him. Surely he had to have worked it out by now?