by Ashlee Sinn
She’s not nervous, my cougar said. Smell her.
I opened my mouth slightly to scent the air without anyone noticing. He was right. While there was a trivial aroma of fear in the mix, mostly she was…excited. Her eyes met mine once again and this time it was me who turned away. There was just something about this woman, this state trooper who had vowed to protect us.
And I wasn’t convinced I could keep my animal under control around her.
He kept staring at me. Those yellowish, wild eyes that stood out against his dark skin and bore through my soul to connect to parts of me I didn’t know existed anymore.
He was the cougar. The only one who had revealed himself and perhaps the only one in the state. I’d done some research. Calvin Baptiste, Brandt Callaghan, and Major Patel—the three big wigs of the Alaska shifters. They were the ones who called all of the shots around here, and I’d specifically asked to meet them right away. My partner, Alan, wanted nothing to do with them and he certainly didn’t want to be standing here at the grizzly clan’s home after Danika abandoned us.
“So,” Brandt started, “where are you both staying.”
Alan clenched his jaw beside me and I sighed on the inside. He really needed to grow a pair. Soon. “Right now I have a room at the Pioneer, but I’m looking for a rental.” My eyes met Calvin’s again before I focused on Brandt. He smiled at me and I appreciated the ease behind it.
“And you?” he asked Alan.
My new partner cleared his throat and finally spoke. “Best Western, sir.”
The three giant shifters standing in front of us studied Alan. He wasn’t as big as them, but he wasn’t a small guy either. Although with the way he hunched his shoulders and dropped his chin, it would be obvious to anyone that he wasn’t a confident human being.
“Well, if either of you need any help finding a permanent place, please let me know. My family’s been in this town a long time and we know a lot of people.”
“Thank you, Mr. Callaghan,” I said.
He smiled. “Please, call me Brandt. And this is Major, Calvin, and Zane.”
The giant, red-headed muscular man standing behind Brandt gave us a wave, but once again, my eyes were drawn to Calvin. The black tee shirt barely contained his thick biceps, and his jeans clung to all parts of him in a way that should have made me blush. But I was a professional and I was a strong woman who didn’t need a man in her life. Ever. So I needed to stop ogling him right now.
“Why don’t you both come inside and meet everyone,” Major said. He was watching me watch Calvin and this time I did feel a small rush of blood dart to my cheeks. Damn him.
“Uh, no. We can’t,” Alan mumbled.
I cleared my throat and gave my weakling partner a glare. “That would be nice. Thank you.”
Major gestured for us to follow and I couldn’t help noticed how Calvin lingered behind—as though he didn’t want us at his back. Interesting. Once we made it up the stairs, I saw more people watching us through the window. I suppose some instinct of mine screamed at me to run, but I knew we would be safe here. I’d had a vision, and as my grandmother used to tell me, I trusted in them.
Alan may have had his hang-ups with the adult shifters, but the second he saw the two babies being held by two different women, he turned into a heaping mess of goo. “Oh my gosh, look at them!” He reached his hand forward and let the baby girl wrap her finger around his thumb. When he looked up at me with a goofy grin, I really didn’t know what to think. This wasn’t the tentative, scared Alan I knew. And I never would have guessed, in a million years, that he was one of those baby people.
The two women laughed while Alan acted like a doting uncle and bounced the babies around in his arms one at a time. I politely side-stepped the show and worked my way around the landing at the front door to get some air. It wasn’t that I disliked kids, they just brought back a lot of bad memories of times in my life that I wanted to forget.
“Trooper Lowe, this is my brother, Brennan, and his mate Scarlett, the alpha of the Tik’a pack,” Brandt said.
I held out my had toward the formidable couple. “Call me Sutton.”
“Sutton?” Scarlett smiled and tilted her head to the side. “What a unique name.”
“It’s a strong name,” a pregnant lady with curly, red hair said. She was tiny and I was forced to look down at her. “Hi, I’m Kenzie.”
With a smile I grabbed her hand. She held on tight and didn’t let go for far too long.
“Interesting,” she said with a grin. “You’re special, aren’t you, Sutton?”
My mouth gaped open and I had nothing to say. No one knew my secret and besides, I didn’t even know if it was really a thing anyway. How did Kenzie suspect?
“Ignore her,” another tall, gorgeous man said when he stepped up to her side and wrapped his arm behind her lower back. “I keep telling her not to give readings unless someone’s paid for it.”
“Readings?” I asked.
Scarlett smiled and answered before Kenzie could. “She’s our resident witch.”
“Witch?”
Everyone laughed at my shocked response. And then Kenzie jumped forward and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. Although before she pulled away, she whispered into my ear. “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”
Stunned and still fascinated by the last few seconds, I had nothing to say. But then I felt shiver run up my spine. I turned only to see Calvin standing by the front door staring at me again. He reminded me of a Haitian linebacker that posed as a supermodel. Gorgeous skin surrounded by toned muscles and a sharp jawline. God, he was a magnificent creature. As my brain jumped to adult thoughts, Calvin met my gaze and held it this time.
“Oh, just ignore him,” Kenzie said. “He’s always brooding and cranky.”
“And acting like he hates us all,” Bo added.
“Huh,” I mumbled before turning back to everyone. “It was really nice to meet ya’all, but if you don’t mind, we should get going.”
After shaking hands again, I was left by myself and I motioned to Alan that it was time to go. He reluctantly handed back one of the babies to Brandt and slipped away with much more confidence than he’d had when we’d arrived. As we made our way back to the front door, I couldn’t help but watch the massive cougar shifter blocking the light from one of the tall windows flanking the door.
“God, he’s scary,” Alan mumbled.
I noticed the small grins on several shifter faces and nudged him in the side. “Idiot, they can hear you.”
He ground his jaw together and focused on getting outside. Calvin held open the door and gave me a look no woman could resist—hungry eyes, dimpled cheeks, day-old scruff—holy hell he represented everything about sex.
His nose twitched as I held out my hand. “I’m Sutton and this is Alan.”
Calvin hesitated a moment, staring at my fingers like they would sprout fire from them at any moment. Then he bit his lip and squeezed my hand. It hurt a little. “Calvin.”
We stood still, hands touching each other as a thousand naughty thoughts passed through my brain. Then, it happened. In a flash I saw white walls, dark hallways, and fire. And just like that, it was gone. I flinched and pulled my hand away from Calvin’s. “Nice to meet you,” I said, as I shuffled us both outside.
Calvin didn’t say anything but before we’d reached the bottom of the stairs, someone called out behind us. “Wait!” he shouted.
I turned, while Alan kept walking toward his car. Coward.
A tan man with darker hair cut close to his scalp rushed after us. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Seth.”
“Seth…” I tried to remember the name. “Seth from the Tik’a pack?”
He smiled, something that seemed rare of his face. “Yes. Look,” he spared a glance back up at the house, “tomorrow night, we’re all throwing a surprise birthday party for Scarlett. You two should come.” His gaze danced over my shoulder toward Alan who’d just slammed his car door shut. “Okay
, maybe just you should come.”
I tried to look grateful. “That’s very kind, but—”
“You’re new here, right?” Seth cut me off.
“Yes.”
“Then it’s a perfect way to get you introduced to our small town.”
I shrugged. “I’m just not big on social things—”
“You’ll be fine. Not many of us like the public attention, but you get used to quickly.” He grinned again and I couldn’t help but return it.
“Okay. Will you settle for a hard maybe?”
He laughed and patted me on the side of my arm. “That’ll do. We’ll be at Shantytown. The bar on the spit.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he replied before turning on his heel and bounding up the stairs.
I followed his with my eyes and sure enough, as they reached the top of the landing, there was Calvin rubbing his hands together and watching me in that way that sent tingles over my skin. I gave him a small wave and then quickly walked to my cruiser. Alan buzzed me on the radio attached to my shoulder.
“You going back to the office?”
I looked over at his car parked ten feet away and pressed the button. “You do know I’m standing right here, right?”
Alan glanced in my direction and then tilted his head to speak into the radio again. “Yes, but that man by the door scares the shit out of me.”
“His name’s Calvin.”
I could see Alan sigh inside the front seat. “Well, Cavin scares the shit out of me and I feel safer in here.”
I had to laugh as I climbed into my own car. “I’ll meet you there.”
No sooner had the static cleared the airways than Alan whipped his car out of the driveway faster than was respectable. I wanted to yell at him, to tell him that he needed to get over his fears and do his job, but I stopped myself. Some people just weren’t cut out for the pressures associated with protecting others.
I spared a quick glance back up to the front door to see if I was still being watched. But Calvin and Seth had disappeared inside and I didn’t notice anyone standing in the front window. So I started the car and then flipped open the computer that sat between the two front seats. I’d only just begun my background research into the shifters of Alaska a few weeks ago. Once I’d decided to accept this job, I dove into their backgrounds, which included surfing the Shifters Among Us website that the ISC had put together in preparation for the big reveal.
So, I’d learned a lot about Major and Derrick and Julia and even Zane. Now Seth and Calvin and a few coyotes had a page. Scrolling down to Calvin’s name, I clicked to learn more. Age was listed as unknown and birth place the same. Only a headshot of him looking out over the top of a mountain represented this mysterious man. There were a lot of blank spaces where his information was meant to go, but there was one section that quickly caught my attention: Calvin was a veteran.
Just like me.
I wondered if that was part of the initial attraction. I mean, he was a gorgeous specimen of a man, but I didn’t usually get distracted by things like that. No, maybe it was the darkness in his eyes that I’d recognized. Every veteran came home carrying something with them. It didn’t matter if they’d been in combat or on a humanitarian mission—war stuck to them like a lonely ghost.
I should know. I’d been there.
I glanced back up at the house again, almost hoping I could see Calvin watching me. But he wasn’t there, and with a sigh, I closed my computer and started to drive away. Perhaps I could talk to him at the party tomorrow night. Would he be there? Probably not. He didn’t seem to like being around people too much.
Surprised by how disappointed I was at the thought of not seeing him again, I swallowed down that irrational pain and focused on the road ahead of me. Today, I met the men and women I was sworn to protect. Tomorrow, I would start to hunt down those that wanted to harm them.
“What is that?” I pointed to a square thing sitting on top of the bathroom counter.
“Um…do you mean the sink?” my realtor, Carol asked.
“That’s a sink? Why is it up so high?”
“That’s the new style.”
“Well, I hate it.”
This was the fifth house she’d shown me today and the fifth house that both me and my animal disliked very, very much.
“Calvin, you’re not helping me here,” she groaned. “First you said you wanted something in town, not a fixer-upper, and something that was move in ready. I’ve showed you five of those.”
“Well, I don’t like any of them.”
“Obviously,” she snapped. For someone in her late sixties, frail, and single, she certainly didn’t have any qualms taking on a shifter. And that was why I’d picked her.
“Do you have anything else to show me today?” I grumbled, tired of doing this. I’d agreed with Major that I needed to have a place closer to town now that I was more involved in the politics of our lives. My homestead in the middle of nowhere, wouldn’t cut it anymore. Oh, I was keeping that place, my animal would rip me apart from the inside if I didn’t. But I did need something during the times when I actually had to work.
Carol flipped through her tablet and sighed. “I have one more but it’s totally different.”
“Good.”
She glared at me. “And I don’t think it’s going to fit your style.”
“Do I have a style, Carol?”
She huffed and stomped past me. “Come on, you can follow me.”
I smiled, kind of liking the way I annoyed her. Again, she was tough, she could take it. As I backed my truck out of the driveway and followed Carol out of the little housing development, a fleeting thought caught in my chest. What kind of house would Sutton like? Why that question popped into my mind, I couldn’t answer. I’d been alive for almost a century and not once had I ever thought about what kind of house a woman might want. I’d never been mated—never cared to be. My animal had been content with the casual relationships I’d kept. It was easier that way. There were very few female cougars left and not a single one of them lived in Alaska. But I’d always enjoyed the simplicity of having casual relations with a human instead of getting complicated with all of the shifter issues.
So why did the state trooper with the blue eyes and a ton of confidence suddenly have my thoughts turning to mush?
I shook my head and focused on the road in front of me. I couldn’t spare any more time thinking about her. There was simply too much going on in our world right now.
My truck bounced along behind Carol’s yellow SUV as we finally started to drive toward a property that felt more like me. Just a few miles outside of town, the tree-lined road offered a sense of privacy and we’d only passed a handful of houses. This wasn’t the suburbia she’d been showing me and I felt a small smile cross my lips. Perhaps Carol had been listening after all.
We turned right off the main road and onto a gravel driveway that had seen better days. Perfect. More trees filled my view as I weaved between the trunks and felt a sense of peace the deeper we got into the woods. A full five minutes later, the house finally came into view. One level, log exterior, red shutters. A cabin in the woods.
I was still admiring the plot of land when Carol walked up next to my truck. She knocked on the window and pulled her jacket a little tighter around her shoulders.
“This has potential,” I said after stepping outside.
Carol looked up at me with raised brows. “You didn’t even see the inside yet.”
“I don’t think I need to.” Sucking in a deep breath, I scented the air. Fresh pine, gasoline from the vehicles, and maybe a twinge of grizzly. But I was in grizzly territory and I’d gotten used to sharing our spaces.
“Just wait,” Carol groaned, gesturing for me to follow her.
As we got closer to the door, I started to understand her hesitancy. The small porch was in need of repair. The planks looked like they would barely hold our weight, and those were the ones that were still there. Upon c
loser look, I saw the cracked windows, the chipped paint on the red shutters, and noticed the rancid smell.
“It’s a fixer-upper,” Carol said as she tried to get the key out of the lock box.
“How long has it been sitting here?”
“Since the owner…left almost a year ago.”
I immediately sensed her lie. “Left?”
“Um…died.”
Her panic made me laugh. Probably not a typical reaction, but I loved pushing her buttons. “So, let me get this straight. You’re showing me a haunted house?”
Carol slapped me on the arm, obviously forgetting what I was. “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” she tsked.
“Are you sure about that?”
Carol’s wide eyes had me laughing again. “Fine,” she grumbled. “He may have died in here but it was from natural causes. No reason to come back and haunt the new owner.”
I sniffed the air again. “Are you sure he’s not still in there?”
Carol pulled in a long breath and shook her head. “I don’t smell anything except dampness.” Finally getting the deadbolt to click, she sighed. “Come on, let’s take a look. I just ask that you keep an open mind.”
I smiled down at her. “Mind open.” But just as she was about to push the door open, I put my hand on her arm to stop her. “Are you expecting someone?”
She looked up at me and shook her head. “No, not unless…no. No one else should be showing this place…” Her voice trailed off as we both watched the government vehicle make its way through the trees. A state trooper’s car.
“Are you sure there isn’t a body in there?” I joked, but Carol didn’t find it funny.
“I’m…I’m pretty sure.”
That made me smile a little, but when the car came to a stop and Sutton Lowe stepped outside, I felt that grin grow. It was completely out of my control and I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not.
“Ma’am. Mr. Baptiste.” Sutton gave us each a curt nod although I thought maybe her eyes lingered on me a little longer. “Are you two all right?”
Carol and I exchanged a glance and I let her answer. “Yes, we’re fine. I’m just showing Calvin this house. May I ask why you’re here?”