Rescue Me (Sawtooth Shifters, #2)

by Kristen Strassel

  If he was, I could never be in the same pack as him. Alpha or not.

  **

  Word spread quickly we were back. All our neighbors were here. Mom loved a house full of laughter and it had been too long without it. It was a strange combination of celebration and memorial, our return made that much more real by the fact Archer didn’t make it back with us.

  No one said a word about any of the Lowe brothers. Major and Xavier were probably still walking back to Sawtooth. Their village was close enough to ours that their trouble often spilled over.

  “I need to get back to the shelter,” I said, standing up. Even with my friends and family surrounding me, I couldn’t stop thinking of Trina. “I have Trina’s truck.”

  “Who’s Trina?” Mom’s face lit up at the mention of a woman. With no chance of a wolf mate, there weren’t many women worth mentioning in her presence. But it didn’t mean she didn’t want us to settle down. Four sons over twenty-five and not a grandkid in sight. It was making her antsy.

  “The woman who runs the shelter.” My whole body was on point thinking of her, of last night. It had been everything I’d been fantasizing about the whole time I was held captive in my wolf form. If all went well I wouldn’t be back here tonight. Trina was a hard woman to read. So open one minute and guarded the next. I wasn’t fooling myself by making assumptions. “She broke up the dog fighting ring.”

  “Is that all?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “For now.” Baron punched my arm. I whacked him back. I didn’t respond to the oohs and ahhs.

  “Shadow Channing, are you leaving without saying goodbye to your mother?” Mom chased after me. “After I thought I’d never see you again?”

  “No.” I stopped and wrapped my arms around her. As little as she was, she could still rock me back and forth. “I’m not going anywhere this time.”

  “Who’s this Trina woman? Don’t try to tell me nobody. You can’t lie to me, Shadow.”

  I laughed, pulling Mom in closer. That damn grin was back, the same one that spread over my face any time Trina popped into my mind. I must’ve looked like an idiot half the day, smiling at nothing. “I think she could be someone special. But she’s human.”

  “Don’t let the pack speak louder than your heart. There isn’t anyone here for you to mate with, and when you boys were gone,” she squeezed her eyes closed and shook away a fresh onslaught of tears, “I thought that was it for our family. Our future was gone. You all deserve better than to be forgotten.”

  “They’ll kill her,” I said. Major, and anyone else who thought they had a legit claim to the pack, would see a human mate as a weakness. Not only that she was as strong as a wolf, but that she would be my weakness. Anyone who hurt her, hurt me. “I can’t put her at risk like that.”

  But I already had, last night when I went to her bed. Major had been in the next room, and he’d make sure to use this to advantage.

  “They’ll see it’s the only way. You have to take the lead on this. She’ll help you build your kingdom.” My mom patted my chest, just over my heart. “Baron and Dallas will take your lead. We need the humans too much for the wolves to hurt them.”

  I wanted her to be right, but I wasn’t so sure.

  Chapter Three

  Trina

  “You guys can head out.” Kiera and Lyssie stared at me, waiting for me to finish the end of day paperwork. Today the shelter had felt so empty without the wolves. The good news was we could take five more guests. But the bad news was Shadow was no longer mine.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about last night, his body on top of mine, his lips everywhere, the way he filled me. For a little while, I was able to forget everything that had brought me to this place. But this morning, it was all still there. As much as I wanted to move on, I was scared shitless. So many things unknown.

  And Shadow. God, he was gorgeous. And kind. And an amazing lover. I hadn’t known him as a man even twenty-four hours yet and my emotions were already so frigging intense.

  “Do you need a ride home?” Kiera asked. “You can’t stay here tonight, Trina. I hate it when you do this. Everything’s all set. You need to have a life, too.”

  I hated it when she started barfing up therapist speak. It was all we really had in common, that and the animals. Kiera and Lyssie had hit it off, they were roommates and were always together. I was happy for them, but it made me feel even more alone. But I had my grief, the most awkward third wheel possible. “Shadow’s coming back with my truck.”

  “Will you text me when he gets here?” she asked, and I nodded like she didn’t just call me a liar. I mean, I could drive the rescue truck, but it cost a fortune in gas I couldn’t spare, and it was too hard to control. One accident was enough for a lifetime. I couldn’t hurt anyone else.

  The shelter at night was so peaceful. I loved listening to the animals wind down for the day. If they could find peace here then I could, too. I’d stay late and finish my work uninterrupted. No calls, no questions. And I didn’t have to think about anything outside of the shelter.

  “Hey.” Shadow stood in the lobby. I didn’t hear the door open. I jumped, my heart slamming against my chest with surprise. “Sorry. I knocked.”

  “I zone out after hours.” I never realized how much. Shadow was still in the same sweats I’d given him last night. He had nothing. I needed to stop being so wrapped in my own head. This guy had it much worse than I did, and he wasn’t throwing a pity party. “How was your mom?”

  His face lit up. “Amazing.” He swallowed hard. “Telling her about Archer sucked.”

  I couldn’t look at him anymore. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

  Shadow knelt beside me, crooking his finger under my chin. “Look at me,” he said softly. His voice vibrated against my skin and parts of me that I hadn’t paid attention to until he’d walked into my life. “What happened to Archer wasn’t your fault. The Lowes were gunning for him because that was the only way they were going to get to me.”

  He squeezed his eyes closed, bowing his head, his pain still harrowing. I took a deep breath, not convinced, but I nodded, pressing my lips together and managed a wobbly smile.

  Shadow’s hand dropped to my leg and he laced his fingers between mine. “Want to take a ride out to my old house with me? I figured today was a good a day to get all the shit I don’t want to deal with out of the way.”

  “I’d love to.” I wanted to see a piece of Shadow’s old life, if anything was left. The more I knew him, the easier it would be for me to let him in. I’d shut everyone out for so long, I needed practice. “Will you be able to see anything in the dark?”

  “Dark isn’t a problem for me. Wolves can see in the dark like the sun is out. They’ve probably cleaned up the site, but I have to know what happened. And I don’t want to go alone.” He shuddered, and all I wanted to do was kiss him and make it all go away.

  He kept admitting his vulnerabilities to me, but he’d stood up to Major without blinking.

  “I like to think I can see in the dark, too.” Awkward. I was trying to be profound, but it wound up sounding totally weird. This is why I spent most of my time with animals. I cringed, waiting for Shadow’s reaction. He squeezed my hand, understanding what I meant.

  It didn’t take us long to drive through the town. Most of the residents lived on the outskirts and in the forest. “A lot of shifters live in town now,” Shadow said. “It’s easier.”

  “Like who?” I didn’t have many friends in Granger Falls, but gossip like this was too good to pass up.

  “Let’s see.” Shadow grinned. “Jacques who runs The Redheaded Stepchild. Have you ever been to the Full Moon Fever parties?”

  “Nope.” I was embarrassed to admit I’d never even been to The Redheaded Stepchild. Kiera invited me out sometimes, but I preferred to drink alone.

  Shadow shot me a sideways glance and smirked. “Oh, I’m definitely bringing you next month.”

  “Okay.” I could pretend I was excited about
that. The idea of all those people and shifters was already freaking me out. “Who else?”

  “A couple of the police officers, Fred who owns the antique shop.” No surprise there. I’d be more shocked to find out that guy was human. “The mayor.”

  “What?” I shrieked. “No. Way.”

  “Yeah. Think about it. It makes sense. There are more shifters in Sawtooth than residents of Granger Falls. Or at least at one time there was. So to make sure everyone plays nice, Southworth ran for office. The humans didn’t have a better option.”

  “Would you ever do that?” I knew Shadow cared deeply about the packs. Unlike Major, he didn’t have a chip on his shoulder about humans. And Southworth wasn’t a favorite in town, either. Everything was making sense now. “He’s up for reelection. Is he part of your pack?”

  He didn’t answer right away. “I would,” he said quietly. “And no, Southworth isn’t in our pack. Packs mostly form between families, and our villages in the forest. We recognize and respect the leaders of each pack. There was some talk of combining our pack with the Lowes to take care of Ryker, but I don’t think Major and I can work together. All of the packs need to go in a different direction. But before I think about any of that, I have to rebuild what I had first.”

  “I think you’d make a great leader.” He didn’t answer me, because we’d pulled up at the place that used to be his home. The dirt driveway was still there, and a few hulls of burned out cars remained.

  Shadow didn’t get out of the car right away, just gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. I wanted to touch him, but I knew sometimes that made things worse. This was the kind of feeling I was all too familiar with. The realization that everything could change in an instant, no matter how much you wanted everything to stay the same.

  “It’s all gone,” he said to himself. “Like we were never even here.”

  “I’m sorry.” I put my hand over his. Shadow’s body was tense like he’d forgotten he had company, but my touch softened him. “Did you live here with your brothers?”

  “Yeah.” Shadow managed a grin. “All four of us. Some wild stuff happened here.”

  “Tell me a story.” I wanted to get to know Shadow the human, the one that existed before his house burned down and he spent six months in chains.

  The smile widened. “One night, after a Full Moon Fever party at The Redhead, everyone came back here for the after party. There was a motorcycle in my bedroom the next morning. And half the packs were passed out on my lawn, naked. Think of the Hangover, Idaho style.”

  “You want to bring me to one of these parties?” I raised an eyebrow. I hadn’t taken Shadow as a party guy. Maybe it was a way that problems got solved between the packs. But that party sounded like my own personal hell.

  “We’ll break you in.” I had no problem seeing the smoldering look in his eyes, even in the dark. “Don’t worry.”

  I didn’t doubt he would.

  Shadow took my hand as we walked around the property. Every so often, he’d murmur something about the house, a log cabin he and his brothers had built themselves. “This is where the deck was. I loved sitting out here on nights like this.”

  “Do you own the land?” I asked as he turned to me. He took my other hand in his too. After last night, it shouldn’t have seemed so intimate, but his touch was getting even more intense.

  “Yeah.” He drifted back to another memory. “It’s all mine.”

  “You could always rebuild.”

  “I know. But it’ll never be the same.” Shadow sighed, walking back to the truck. He didn’t have to add without Archer. I followed him, already wanting to touch him again.

  “Tell me about it,” I said more to myself than him. His pain was tangible with the corpse of his former life sprawled out in front of us.

  “What happened to you, Trina?” I almost walked right into him when he turned around. My heart slammed against my ribcage, a different sort of impact. “I brought you here because I knew you’d understand what I was going through. But I don’t know why. Who do you cry for?”

  “What?” Oxygen stopped flowing to my brain. This why I never talked about Ryan. His memory threatened to drag me to the other side.

  I didn’t want to be like this. I wanted to be the smart, funny, light-hearted girl that lived in Portland and loved Ryan. Not the melancholy mess that grieved for him in Idaho. But Ryan took that piece of me with him, and I hadn’t figured out how to get it back. Some days, I could convince myself I was doing better, but Shadow shattered that little misconception.

  “You cry in your sleep,” he continued. “Every night I’ve spent with you, you’ve cried. Even last night. You call out for someone, but I can’t understand who you’re calling for. I thought maybe as a human I could figure it out, but I haven’t yet.” He put his arms around me, and I should’ve shrugged away. But I couldn’t move. “Who did this to you?”

  “I can’t talk about it.” I ducked out from under his arm, breaking into a quick trot until I got back into the safety of my truck.

  Shadow took his time starting the truck. We weren’t in any hurry. Just having him nearby calmed me down. Those ice blue eyes framed by long lashes, the dark skin, that impossibly silky hair. The way his chest rose and fell under his sweatshirt. I swear I could hear his heart beat. Or maybe it was my own blood drumming a tattoo in my ears. “I want things to be better for all of us.”

  “Me too,” I said softly.

  “Whatever it is,” he said as he turned the key in the ignition, “I promise I wouldn’t do it to you.”

  That was a promise he was sure to break.

  Chapter Five

  Shadow

  It was the perfect morning to go talk to Major. He’d pissed me off, and I was ready for a fight.

  I was grumpy as hell today. Trina’s couch had seen better days, its springs poked into my ribs as I tried to sleep. I wanted to be in the bed with her, kissing away what hurt. Melting the guard she put up against all humans and letting her be free. I’d ripped a wound open with my question, and going to bed with her last night would’ve been taking advantage of a shitty situation.

  I tossed and turned, but resisted going to her until she cried. It was just a matter of when. She didn’t shun me when I crawled between the sheets, kissing her wet cheeks.

  “It’s gonna get better,” I whispered to her, rocking her back and forth until she calmed down enough to sleep peacefully. I just wished I believed it. She was twisted inside this pain like a maze, and there was no finding the way out.

  Eventually she fell asleep, letting me hold her while she dreamed. Finally I drifted off, too.

  “Sometimes I think I’m dreaming that you’re human,” she said when she woke up, her voice gravelly from her own shitty night’s sleep. “But I wake up and you’re still here.”

  “Is that a good thing?” I asked her.

  “It’s the best thing.” Her T-shirt and hair were rumpled, and she leaned down shyly to kiss my forehead. I gasped, my erection painful under the tangle of sheets. I looked to the clock, wondering how much time we had before the girls would be waiting for us outside the shelter. “I don’t usually do this, you know. Let guys I don’t know into my bed. All right, I never do this.”

  My aching cock was going to have to wait for the shower. I pushed myself up on my elbow. Trina bit her lip, and I’d give anything to get inside that head and know what she was thinking. “Since we’re doing this backwards, how about I take you out tonight? We can get dinner and talk. Get to know each other.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Like a date?”

  “Exactly like a date.” My heart was pounding just as hard as my dick. I’d been with a lot of women, but I wouldn’t consider any of them dates. No chance of having a mate had equaled no future. My mother’s voice echoed in my head, the only thing that could deflate this erection. The heartache that had been so plain on her face, thinking all of her sons had left her alone. “Where should we go?”

  Tri
na’s face fell, looking around the room. “I don’t have any nice clothes. An animal has marked every single top I have, and—“

  “Trina,” I cut her off. “You’ve already got me. I don’t care what you wear. I’d prefer you didn’t wear anything at all. What do you want for dinner?”

  She exhaled, more in disbelief than relaxation, but she laughed. “I’d love to go to Sun Valley Saloon. I hear the steak is amazing, but I’ve never been.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged. “I never had anyone to go with.”

  I sat up quickly, pulling her into me and returning her forehead kiss. “That’s a not a problem anymore.” I crawled off the bed. If I didn’t get into the shower I was going to explode. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

  **

  Before I went to back to Sawtooth, I stopped at the Tack and Feed and bought all of the dog, cat, and bird food they had.

  “Holy shit.” Trina couldn’t pick her jaw up from her chest when I walked in with the first massive bag of food over my shoulder. When I came back in with the next load, I caught Kiera poking at the bag like it was a rabid animal that could bite at any second, maybe to make sure she wasn’t imagining things.

  “You’re a fucking hero. It sounds cheesy, but it’s true.” Trina’s eyes were glossy with unshed tears. “I wondered how I was going to make it through the rest of the week. You know your crates were taken the minute you guys walked out the door, and with the way I’ve been treated in town since the fights, there haven’t been any donations. I’ve been beside myself.” She finally took a breath. “Thank you.”

  My smile faded as the little cluster of cabins that Major and the rest of his community lived in came into view. It was shitty of me to have wanted something to have happened to his house, too. Then I could point the finger about my ruined life squarely at Ryker. But with everything as it always was here, it left too many questions.

  I went straight to Major without stopping to get my brothers. I needed to do this alone, without anyone interfering. My brothers would follow my lead. They always had. What happened next would determine if all the wolves would follow.