by Kate Rudolph
Cam pulled her hand back.
What the fuck? Was this a magic wolf? Or was he covered in psychoactive drugs?
But her mind was as clear as ever. In the spirit of the scientific method, she laid her hand back on his fur. Nothing happened. There was no magic stress reliever, no connection. He was just soft and warm, like a giant dog she desperately wanted to cuddle.
Maybe she needed a dog. If she didn’t work so many hours, she’d head down to the Humane Society and find a companion, but it wouldn’t be fair to her or the animal to leave it alone all day.
When she tried to lift her hand up again, the wolf whined just like her aunt’s dog used to do when she wanted to be petted. But this wasn’t an ornery corgi. No, Cam was dealing with something with huge claws and teeth that could rip her apart if the mood struck.
She really should be scared of him.
But Cam found herself sliding down to the splintery wood of the porch and sitting beside him, curling her fingers into his fur. He rested his head in her lap like it was the most natural thing in the world and let out a contented canine sigh.
Was he really a wolf? Maybe this was just one of her neighbor’s dogs or a stray that had wandered over from town. Wolves wouldn’t act like this. She had to be mistaken.
“Who do you belong to, buddy?” she asked the animal. He gave a sleepy growl and turned his head so she could scratch under his ear. Cam obliged. “I can’t keep you,” she told him. She didn’t see a collar. If he stuck around, she would have to find animal control’s number just so she could find a proper home for him.
Why not?
She heard the voice clear in her head and she laughed. “Great, now I am going crazy. Dogs can’t talk, Rosie. Get it together.” Talking to a dog, calling herself by the nickname that only her grandmother had used, what was next on the nervous breakdown checklist?
Hear? The question was a bit garbled and Cam only made out the one word. It sounded less like an intrusive thought and more like actual conversation.
In her head.
From a dog.
Like a crazy person.
“One stay in the loony bin was enough, girl. Get over it.” It had only been three days, back when she was a senior in high school. The timing in her head had gotten out of control and she would wake up in the middle of the night, terrified of the countdown that she could feel but couldn’t understand. It had all culminated with her destroying a large, expensive clock that had been donated by a former student. Three days in psych hold had put her head on straight, more or less. But the school had refused to let her back and Cam had finished high school using an internet course.
The wolf blew out a frustrated—and she had no idea how she knew that—breath and settled in more firmly against her.
Someone knocked at the front door. The wolf stiffened and Cam put a hand on his belly to calm him down. But he growled and pulled away. He stared at her kitchen door for several moments and then looked back at her. And then he ran away before she could stop him.
The knocking got louder. Cam stood up and went back inside, crossing to the front door in long steps. At the last moment, she looked down at her clothes and noticed that she was covered in wolf fur. Dog fur. Whatever. But the person was knocking insistently and she didn’t bother to wipe it off.
Detective Litchfield had his fist raised above the door, ready to pound even louder, when she swung it open. He stared at her, jaw dropping and eyes widening. Cam looked down at herself. Sure, she was covered in fur, but that wasn’t too strange. Anyone who’d ever been around dogs ended up covered in fur at some point. “Can I help you, detective?” she asked. Could they have found the idiot who’d assaulted her store so quickly? And why wouldn’t he just call her?
Litchfield peered over her shoulder into the house and tilted his head to the side as if straining to hear something. “911 reported a call from this address. I was in the area and wanted to make sure everything was alright.”
She was an idiot. Had she really called 911 because of a sweet stray dog? “I’m sorry for bothering,” she said. “It was a misunderstanding. There was a wild animal and I didn’t know the number for animal control.”
Litchfield looked down at her chest. Normally when a man eyed her there she knew exactly what he was thinking. And right now, she knew that it was nothing prurient. “A wild animal?” he asked. “What kind?”
“Just a stray dog,” she said. She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘wolf.’ Something inside held her back. “He ran away.”
The detective sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “If you see any more… dogs in the area, call animal control.” He reached into his pocket and grabbed a card, writing a number on the back of it. “This is their number. They’ll be sure to help. We don’t want any panic because someone saw something a little scary.”
“I wasn’t scared,” she said. “Just startled.”
“Even so.” He held out the card and she snatched it from him. A minute later he was gone. Cam went back to her yard, hoping the dog was still there. But he was gone too, and she was even more alone than before.
***
“What in Rhen’s name were you thinking?”
Logan beat him to his house. Dom had known it could happen, but he’d gambled that the other man would run straight to Brenner to report him. That didn’t seem to be the case. As soon as he came up the stairs, entering from the tunnel in his basement, Litchfield was questioning him. He didn’t care that Dom was naked and that this was Dom’s territory. He even had a beer in his hand, purloined from Dom’s own fridge.
Dom ignored the pestering detective and grabbed a pair of sweats from on top of the dryer. He stepped into them and then grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. “You’re in my house,” he told Logan. “If Brenner thinks we’re friends, he’ll start giving you shit too.”
“You’re a blind idiot and more of a fool than I thought possible! What possessed you to go to her? She’s a human. I don’t give a shit if you want to fuck her. Take your fill. But you risk everything by showing her your true form!” Logan got into the lecture and stood, pacing back and forth as he yelled.
“You know it’s impossible for me to shift in front of her. Stop worrying. She thought I was a dog.” And Dom wished he’d waited for her to come back. He didn’t need a lesson from a displaced surfer.
“She called 911!”
“She’s sensible.”
“You let her pet you!”
“It felt good.”
“She’s human.”
“So?”
Logan sucked in deep breaths, searching for calm as none of his arguments had any effect. “You’re not yourself. Not since Thursday. What’s wrong with you?”
Dom wished he knew. He might have defended his actions to his fellow officer, but that didn’t mean that he’d been right. He should never have gone to Camellia’s house. He should have never sat on her porch. And the second she saw him, he should have run away. And yet at every turn, he’d taken the riskier action and moved one step closer to the woman he could never hope to keep.
Who do you belong to? She’d asked. That was a terrifying question. And the answer didn’t make any sense. Even more importantly, had she somehow understood ruhi, the telepathic language of the shiften? No, she couldn’t. Not unless…
She’d called herself Rosie.
Her name… was that a flower? Or was he holding onto some impossible thread of hope?
Logan shocked him with what he said next. “Go get her out of you system. Fuck her until sunrise if you have to. Just get this over with. I’ll cover for you with Brenner, say you’re following a lead on those foxen I scented. Just get yourself over this, man. We need you.”
He left without waiting for Dom to reply.
Dom leaned against the wall and sipped his water. Logan’s advice rang through his head. He didn’t give a shit what Brenner did. If his citlali didn’t want him on the Blue Valley PD, there were other towns. But he couldn�
�t pass up a chance at Camellia Watson. He’d barely spoken to the woman and yet her scent lived in his veins. He’d gone to her house and let her see his wolf. He’d fucking dreamed of her. He didn’t know how to deal with it, and the surfer might have the best advice.
Fuck her out of your system.
And if she says no? If she doesn’t want you? He couldn’t believe that. But if she said no, that was it. No more pining. No chasing. And certainly no more petting. The woman could send him away and that would be it. But not until he had his chance to work this out. Not until he could at least ask.
A sense of calm, of purpose washed over him. His course was set and at the end of it was the only person who mattered right now. And once they were through, he’d be over this crazed lust and could move on with his life.
He almost went for his car before he realized that he hadn’t showered in more than a day, and that his vehicle still sat at the station along with his phone, wallet, and car keys. He must have been crazy to go for that run. If he went back now, there was a good chance he’d run into Brenner, and who knew how that would turn out.
Dom went upstairs to his bedroom and took a shower as he imagined how to sneak into the station to get his stuff. While he was busy washing himself, someone rang the doorbell, but they were long gone by the time he made it to the door. Towel wrapped around his waist and hair dripping, he opened the front door and found his stuff sitting on the stoop in a plastic bag, Logan’s scent still whispering in the air.
Huh. Maybe he and the other male weren’t so distant after all. He might just have a friend in this town.
But that was for tomorrow. Tonight was all about Camellia.
Chapter Six
Cam needed to settle her mind. Normally, the precision recipes and hard labor of baking all morning was enough to keep her calm, but with all the excitement of the broken window, she hadn’t received her normal dose of physical therapy. Her mind raced, clocks ticking. She counted down the hours until the window would be repaired, the seconds until the shop could reopen, and then the minutes for some unknown phenomenon.
That was happening a lot lately.
But rather than obsess about what she’d need to deal with in fifty-seven minutes, Cam climbed up the stairs and opened the door to the guest bedroom. Well, what should have been the guest bedroom. When she moved into the house a year ago, she’d had every intention of setting this up with a spare bed and nice decorations. And she was going to do that, just as soon as she got through all her moving boxes.
Her Aunt Grace had used the excuse of Cam’s move to declutter her own house, offering her niece everything from an antique set of silverware to two boxes packed to the brim with Beanie Babies. Aunt Grace wasn’t a hoarder, but she’d lived in one house for more than thirty years and things added up. Since they’d been gifts, Cam hadn’t the heart to throw them straight out, not without going through everything.
The Beanie Babies she donated to a children’s charity. The silverware was stored safely on the bottom shelf of her pantry, under a pile of dishrags. Everything else was just sort of… piled around. Even more frustratingly, most of the boxes weren’t labeled. She didn’t know if she’d open a box of VHS tapes or her grandmother’s clothes. Unfortunately, she had little use for either of them. Even in the 1960s, her grandmother had conservative taste, and Cam wasn’t about to start wearing muumuus.
She pulled down the box from the nearest stack and walked it down the stairs to her kitchen table. When she’d first started the task, she’d tried to keep everything in the spare room. But when she did that, she quickly lost her focus and turned to uncovering treasure and trash and making exactly zero progress.
At the kitchen table, she had a sharper, meaner eye.
She settled in, lifting the lid off the box and smiling when she saw she’d made a good choice. Jewelry. Fun. It wasn’t expensive, but some was flashy, just like she liked. No one in Blue Valley wore precious gems, not outside of wedding and engagement rings. But Cam had always had an eye for the shiny. Though some of it wasn’t to her aunt’s taste at all.
Despite her name, Aunt Grace was an avowed skeptic. She had no time for crosses or angels or anything that hinted at any religion. I don’t know what’s out there in the great beyond, she’d once told Cam, but I don’t want to piss anyone off by declaring loyalty to the wrong guy. As a child, Cam had thought it a funny joke. Now she knew Grace took it deadly seriously.
So why did she have a heavy angel pendant?
Cam picked up the thick chain and let it pool in her hand. On one side, she saw an angel that could have come from any roadside flea market. On the other, a wolf growled. His hackles were up and a light band of fur crossed his eyes in a strip, while one of his paws was darker. Cam took a closer look, holding the pendant up close to her face, and laughed. The wolf on the pendant looked like her doggy friend from earlier. What a strange coincidence!
If she saw him again she was taking him to the vet, she decided. And if he didn’t have a microchip and a worried owner, he was going to be hers. She’d find a way to deal with a dog, no matter how complicated it turned out.
The pendant was warm on her palm. She flipped it over to study the angel. Something about it called to her and a forgotten memory tickled the back of her brain. Her mother had believed in angels. Cam couldn’t remember her at all, but she remembered that. And Aunt Grace had once said something really weird about it. It wasn’t just that angels were watching over her, that was something a lot of people thought. No. What was it?
Someone knocked at the door and Cam stuffed the pendant into her jeans pocket. She never got visitors, and now twice in the same day!
Her hair was a mess and she probably smelled like moth balls, but it would take two minutes and twenty-seven seconds to make herself presentable. Cam couldn’t just leave her guest waiting. And if it was just the UPS guy, she was going to regret having made the effort.
But it wasn’t any delivery service at the door.
It was Dominic Soto.
“I didn’t call 911,” she babbled. “No more stray dogs. I’m good.”
He narrowed his eyes when she said dog. “I know.”
“Then why are you here?” She didn’t know what to do with her body. She leaned on the door jamb and blocked the entrance of her home. Was he here to search? Did the cops think that she’d done something wrong?
“I wanted to see you.”
She couldn’t have heard that right. Here was the hottest man in Blue Valley, the man she’d been a little obsessed with for years. And he wanted to see her?
“About the vandalism?” she forced herself to ask.
“No.” His eyes were a little like that wolf’s. They weren’t the same color, but they stared at her with the same intensity. The hint of a grin pulled up one corner of his mouth and something crazy made Cam want to get up on her tip toes and kiss him.
“Okay.” The word dragged out, two syllables transforming into four or five and trailing off. What would he do if she invited him in? Invited him up to her bedroom?
Get a grip, the one remaining sane brain cell yelled at the rest. You don’t even know the guy.
But she really liked what she saw.
“Will you come somewhere with me?” he asked. He held out his hand.
Cam stared down at it. Thoughts of when and where and why flittered out of her head. She knew not to get into cars with strange men, not to go to unknown locations. But this was the chance of a lifetime.
She placed her hand in his. “Let’s go.”
***
Confusion, arousal, excitement, and a tiny note of fear weaved through her seductive scent. At first he’d planned to sweep Camellia off her feet and carry her to her room and stay there all night. But as soon as she opened the door, he knew that would never do. Fuck her for one night and get her out of his system? Yeah, right.
He’d retrieved his car from the police station before driving to her, and now he drove her out, west of town and into th
e soon to be setting sun. The enclosed space made her scent more potent and it took most of Dom’s energy not to close his eyes, tilt his head back, and drink deep.
She didn’t ask where they were going. And as miles passed under the tires and they left Blue Valley behind, she seemed to loosen up. She grinned as they passed the county line and reached over to place her left hand on top of his right, which was resting on the console between them.
“I haven’t left town for anything but a trip to Costco in… too long.” Cam grinned and her hand flexed.
Dom flipped his hand over and laced their fingers together. He could get used to touching her. Her skin was a little rough from all the work she did in her bakery, but he liked the feel of it against his own callouses. “I went to California a few months ago and saw something I didn’t think was possible.”
“Really?” She turned her body towards his, clutching the seat belt in her other hand. “What was that?”
But Dom couldn’t say. He couldn’t tell a human that he’d seen a young girl shift for the first time, something that should have been impossible. Their females were dead, and the girl had only been a quarter shiften. This was a time of miracles. So he found something else to say. “There were these seals just sitting all along the docks. Everywhere you looked: seal seal seal. And a bunch of the kids came up really close to them, tried to pet them. Most of the adults were watching. But there was this one kid, maybe thirteen years old. He got up really close and swatted the seal on the ass.”
“What?” She burst out laughing.
“I’m serious. And that’s not all. The seal reared around and started barking at him. Then the rest of the pack started to go at the boy until he got so scared that he jumped into the marina to get away from them.”
She didn’t laugh delicately. Huge guffaws ripped out of her, shaking her chest and crinkling her eyes. “I think you’re bullshitting me.”
“I swear I’m not. The boy climbed out covered in sea weed and smelling of… well, he smelled very bad. I heard his parents yelling at him all the way back to the parking lot.”