by WB McKay
"They could try."
She snorted. "I could have taken you."
This was a fight we often had, and it told me we were going to be okay, mad at me as she may have been. Tess had first met me on a case. Before the exposure, when the bastards who ran the fae council removed the glamour that used to cover a wolf's shift, humans were unable to remember anything if they witnessed a wolf shift. Even if they knew wolves existed, they wouldn't remember seeing it happen. They'd know that the person in human form was a wolf, they'd watch the shift and promptly forget it ever happened. This had protected the wolves in many ways. It was difficult to prove to humans that werewolves existed if humans couldn't witness the act of a human form changing to that of a wolf. You had to truly place your faith in the werewolf telling it to you in order to believe it was true. Faith like that was rarer than a lightning strike.
Tess believed, but Tess was a hunter. She knew monsters were real. Werewolves were just one more kind. She'd shown up on my case, both of us tracking a wolf. A real nasty bastard, the violent crime scenes were drawing a lot of attention. I should have expected a hunter to show. I was chasing the killer down when Tess found me—and wouldn't you know it—she took me for the target. I got away, shifted back to Julia's body, and went to explain it to her. Now, most hunters would have killed me on the spot. There are many fae that shouldn't be on Earth, and when spotted, should be killed on sight. I know that. All hunters know that. And some hunters think wolves are one of those kinds. Talking to Tess was a risk for me. Tess stopping to hear me out, instead of attempting to kill me straight off, was a risk for her.
Lots of stuff happened after that, but the short of it was that we didn't kill each other, took out the target, and odd as it was, became friends.
"I like to let you believe that," I told her. It was more true than she understood. I knew, without a doubt, that had we come to blows, I'd have been the one to walk away. I thought it better she didn't know that though. The belief that came with confidence would get her farther than any fighting skills she could learn. Letting her believe nothing could hurt her was the best thing I could do for my friend.
"I could come to California anyway," she said.
"But you wouldn't do that, because you have your own jobs to do," I said. "And how are those jobs?"
"You doing anything other than working and torturing yourself out there?" she asked, ignoring my question. Classic Tess punishment. I wasn't having her come to California to help, so she wasn't going to let me help by discussing her case with me. At least not the first time I asked. "I know you're going to think this is a wild idea, but is there any chance you've done something fun?"
"Well, I shot Nathaniel."
"That's something," she said. "Did it make you feel any better?"
"Nope."
"You think you'll be seeing him again?"
I told Tess everything, even when I knew she wouldn't like what I was about to say. She did the same with me. Our lives were full of perilous moments and the people who crossed our paths were put in the way of danger. Since we worked together often, having the full context of any situation we might wind up tangled in at some point in the future was a smart plan for minimizing the potential danger. Also, we were close friends. It was a comfort, being known like that. So it really meant something, something like a knife in the chest, how little she knew about Nathaniel. If she were well acquainted with the situation, well, she'd have more to say, I was sure of it.
Do I think I'll see Nathaniel again? No. Probably. I better not.
"No telling with that man."
CHAPTER FOUR
Nathaniel was sitting on my porch when I got home. I'd come in the back, like I always did, gone into the front room, and saw his shadow through the window.
Kids have ideas about what being a grown person means. When I say kids, I mean all young ones—ten-year-olds and thirty-five-year-olds alike—they all believe they know what it means. They think the folks around them, the ones looking older to their eyes, have it all figured out. The grown folks, they know what the right thing to do is. Grown folks know how to handle all those scary little things the young ones shy away from. They know what to say. And they would never, under any circumstances, run from an uncomfortable situation.
But that's what I did. I turned around before he bothered to look at me, went out my back door, and ran. I didn't stick to the road; I went through the woods and over the creek, the direct opposite direction of him. Once I launched over the water, I turned to the left, running through my neighbor's yards. No one had time to notice, I was too fast. Not long into my run, I realized I was headed in the direction they'd come from the night they came for us. We were human. We were alone. We never saw it coming. I veered left again, past my neighbors, through the woods and the toward the mountain until I was back on the Colton's property, which meant there was no one around and I was free to keep on running as long as my legs could move me. If I took that as my destination, I'd wind up over that mountain before stopping. That'd be a foolish plan, which must have been why I seriously considered it. Like a welcome home ceremony between me and the mountain, I'd run over her peaks, wash in her streams. Kinda romantic, I thought, and then heard Tess snort in my head.
And then, blissfully, my mind cleared out. My feet sunk into soft ground, tread out of the trees to smack down on hard earth, and splashed through creeks. I didn't take a straight path, preferring to wind around fallen trees and shallow ravines. My curls bounced on my shoulders, letting air reach my neck to keep me cool. I don't get a lot of time with a clear head. An empty mind is an invitation for memories. I'd've liked to contribute it all to the running, but it was more than likely the panic that cleared my thoughts. I didn't like the sound of that. Nathaniel shouldn't have had the ability to make me panic. Nathaniel shouldn't have had the ability to do anything to me at all.
I'd only just got there. How could I be such a mess already?
So much for a clear head.
As my anger picked up, so did my pace. With all those emotions and thoughts swirling around in there, plus the noise of my feet meeting the land, well, it's no wonder it took me so long to notice I was being chased.
The wolf chasing me wasn't one I recognized. It could have been one of the Lassen Pack members, but why would they have a wolf unknown to me chasing me down if it was friendly? Whoever they were, I doubted someone giving chase meant it in a friendly way. With my luck, it was one of the very bastards I'd come to the area to track down.
The only weapon I had on me was a pocketknife. It was a good knife, but nothing about this was ideal. There was no time to tuck myself away and discreetly shift, and having them catch up with me during a shift would be no good at all. I didn't have a lotta options.
I spotted a ponderosa pine with a good looking branch and marked it as my best option. I ran, leapt, and positioned myself in a crouch, one palm against the rough trunk and the other gripping my knife, ready.
The pursuant wolf stopped a ways off. He shifted his weight until his paws took better hold of the ground. I got the thought in my head that he wasn't sure what he was about to do next, and that was fine by me. He could take all the time he needed. I could have stayed crouched in that tree for days. The next move was all his.
We stared at each other. I gave nothing away. He looked irritated, like he thought it was unfair I didn't simply lay my body out for him to prance up and rip apart. I immediately didn't like him. Chasing me down was one thing, believing you were owed certain rights… there were too many folks like that. If I had to kill him, I wasn't going to lose sleep.
His breath hitched, so I knew it was coming. He planned to leap and knock me out of the tree. I waited until he started running to jump to the ground, but he was faster than I'd expected and we nearly collided. The wolf's breath filled my nostrils; he'd gotten so close to my face before I fell out of his reach. He barely touched the branch before leaping down to give chase. Running would have done me no good in that form; I'd
already decided that when I'd taken up position in the tree, so I stepped to the side of its trunk, readied my hand with the knife, and watched him gracefully bound toward me. I rolled with the impact when he hit, knowing he'd knock me off my feet, and instead focused my strength on holding on to his wide body with my free hand while the one with the knife jabbed into his side. He backed away from me only a few inches, widening the wound on his side, changed angles, and shoved his body back into mine, slamming me into the tree and knocking the air right out of me.
He'd turned the tree I'd used as an obstacle against him into a weapon against me. He held me tight against the tree, not moving a muscle even when I wiggled the knife in his side, widening the wound further. If I could shove him hard enough, get myself some air and room to move, I could try a new tactic—go for his eyes, use my knees, heck, I'd heal, I wasn't scared to stick my arm down his throat and grab on to something—but I was stuck. He wasn't killing me, he was holding me in place.
"What are you doing?" I griped.
I stopped fighting, and he backed up as soon as my muscles relaxed, dropping me to the ground and getting the knife out of his side. I didn't need time to recover, the moment my feet touched ground I shoved forward to jump onto the wolf's back, but he expected it, and somehow—I don't even know how—he got his big flapping jaw around my forearm, piercing the skin. I paused in surprise when I realized it. That's all a good opponent needs—one moment of surprise. He knocked me to the ground and stood on top of my chest with both of his front paws, my arm hanging out of his mouth at an awkward angle.
"Bastard," I spit.
We stared into each other's eyes. He looked so annoyed. He tightened his jaw slightly, as if in reprimand, and then released me. My arm dropped to my chest like a dead weight. He yawned, offering me an up-close and personal view of his teeth, drenched in my blood. My brain ran through ideas for attack or escape in the background, but the reality was clear. He didn't want to hurt me, he was a messenger. They'd send another if I escaped this one. I nodded at the guy, encouraging him to move this moment along. His jaw closed, his tongue rolled around his lips, and when he'd gotten his point across, he pushed down hard on my ribs, using them as a springboard before he got up off of me. He pranced back a few steps, head down, ready to jump me again if I did anything funny.
"I get it, I get it," I said. He could have hurt me worse if he'd wanted to, but he didn't. He backed up a few more steps before he began the shift. I looked away, because even to some jerk who'd tried to kill me and seemed like someone I wouldn't like besides, it was rude to stare someone down while they were managing their pain. Shifting hurt. There was no getting used to it, no making it better. It was slow and painful to rebuild your body into something new.
Sitting up was less than comfortable. I'd cracked a rib; the sharp sting of a mending rib was a too familiar discomfort. My arm was stitching back together neatly in front of me. The punctures were small enough; it'd heal clean before I got home. It was a good thing I hadn't been wearing my leather jacket. If the bastard had torn up the arms of my favorite coat we'd be having some discourse, pain of his shift be damned.
I scooted back to the tree and leaned against it, all in all feeling okay about my current state. He hadn't wanted to kill me, he'd wanted to hurt me. He must have been with the pack. I'd annoyed them already. It wasn't all that surprising. That they'd sent someone I didn't know, in wolf form, to chase me down in the woods… didn't sit too well. That he'd managed to get me so easy sat even worse. I needed to get my head in the damn game. I was better than this.
The naked man stood before me, hands on his hips. No attempts at modesty for that proud bird. Blood dripped down his side from the wound I'd given him, but he wasn't drawing attention by fussing with it, so I took that to mean he wasn't making an issue of it. He'd heal soon, but I had to give him credit for not being a jerk about it.
"Howdy," I greeted him.
"You didn't check in with Gretchen when you entered our territory," he proclaimed. "Why?"
"Oh, is this your territory?"
He narrowed his eyes.
"How am I supposed to know it's your territory when I don't know who you are."
"I am Graham, beta of the Lassen Pack."
"Oh," the word slipped out, betraying my surprise. I'd checked in proper when I'd slipped through the area ten years back. Angela had been beta. I'd liked her. She'd have made a good alpha someday, if she had to fill the position or if she set her sights on it. Folks felt safe as soon as they were graced with her presence, protected. "That's too bad," I said, before giving it enough thought. Graham, beta of the Lassen Pack, didn't respond. "I only just got settled," I told him. "And after meeting so many of the pack today, I figured the job had been done."
"Depends on what you think the job is," he said.
"What do you mean by that?"
"If the job is paying respects, you did a poor job at it."
"Maybe you're not so bad, Graham, beta of the Lassen Pack," I told him. "On the other hand, you might have shifted to talk to me when I was in the tree. Or before running after me. Or waited back at my home, in a form you could have introduced yourself to me in. You might have done any of those things instead of what you did."
"We hear you shoot visitors."
"That was a particular situation," I told him.
He tilted his head back, an invitation for me to explain.
"He jumped on my cattle gate."
He tilted his head forward, an invitation for me to explain my explanation.
"You've met Nathaniel."
He nodded like it all made sense to him, and I caught a glimpse of a smile under all that business focus covering his face. Maybe he wasn't all bad. "You will run with us on the coming full moon."
I considered pretending I thought it was an invitation and declining, but it seemed like nothing but a waste of time. "And what is the 'or else' in this ultimatum?"
"I didn't ask her."
"Message delivered," I said. "I'll take it under advisement."
"Is that what you want me to tell her?"
"You can tell her I have no interest in joining your pack," I said. "You can tell her that I have no intentions of interacting with the pack in anyway at all. I'm interested in going out of my way to avoid interactions like this." I stood up and dusted off my backside. "You can tell her she already knows this, and that it hasn't changed. Running under the moon together wouldn't change it, living on my property won't change it, and sending lackeys to attack me in the woods won't change it. You can tell her that I, politely, ask her to stop asking."
"She's not the only one who's asking," he said.
"Yeah, yeah," I said. "I'm not interested, messenger boy. That's what you should tell her—and anyone else asking—I'm not interested."
"Are you difficult for only the sake of being difficult, or do you have reasons?"
"Oh, I have reasons, Graham, beta of the Lassen Pack." I shook a finger at him. "I have reasons."
With my mind sufficiently muddled, I walked back home.
NATHANIEL WAS STILL ON my front porch, swinging his legs. Stubborn man, almost as stubborn as me. Options ran on a marquee through my mind. I could go in the back, lock my doors, and pretend he wasn't out there no matter how much noise he made or how long he sat there. I could get in my truck and leave. I could run to the road and leave. I could shift and spend the night in the woods. I could go inside, grab my rifle, and shoot him again. All of those thoughts only served to distract me from the fact that I knew what I needed to do.
I sauntered directly up to my porch, kicked my left boot up to the side of him, and leaned against it, putting us eye to eye. "You're not wanted here," I told him straight to his face, so there could be no doubts about it.
"You don't know what you want. You've only ever understood wanting one thing, Julia." He sighed. "You forget you can't fool me."
"You don't want to talk to me about that."
He had the grace to slide his
gaze away. He looked at the stars above Lassen over my shoulder, a view I should have been enjoying alone, but the man couldn't let me have any peace. Torturing me, it's what he did best.
"Hey," I said. "What do you need me to say to get you to leave on your own?"
He looked at me then, his eyes a storm I couldn't read. The resulting blush crept up my back, hit my neck. I could almost convince myself it was caused by anger, that I just wanted him to leave me alone.
"The sky's pretty tonight." He reached up to push my hair behind my ear, and I moved back, breaking the eye contact. "Sit with me," he said, unperturbed by my rejections.
I must have been tired because I did it. The wood creaked under my weight. The porch was just big enough for the two of us. I let the edge of my leg hang off, so I didn't touch him with my other side.
"Do you spend much time in cities these days?"
"What?" I asked, thrown by the question.
"Do you spend much time in cities these days?" he repeated. "It just keeps getting harder and harder to have a piece of the world to yourself, without the noise or light or air pollution. We gotta cherish these stars while we can still see 'em, or we'll hate ourselves for not bothering to do it later."
"You're offerin' me life advice? Really now?"
He breathed out silently, but the cold night showed off the puff of air, betraying his large exhale of exasperation. Or was it amusement? When he shifted his eyes to look at me, I decided it was amusement. "Even I get old. I'm a big ball of life advice these days."
"It's a phase," I assured him, using the view as an excuse to keep from having to meet his eyes again. "You'll grow out of it."
"Right," he agreed. "Because wisdom couldn't become one of my personality traits."
"It wouldn't fit you."
He leaned over to rub his shoulder against mine, but I shifted away so he wound up nudging my back. When I righted myself, I caught his look of disappointment. He swallowed hard. "What're you doing back?"