Shifter Origins (Series-Starter Shifter Variety Packs Book 1)

by Aimee Easterling

  A cousin who was probably being driven further and further away from our current location with each moment that we wasted discussing muzzles. Muzzles that Cinnamon wouldn’t care less about even if he were awake.

  “Okay,” I agreed for the lot of us, grabbing Ginger’s arm and pulling her out of the vet’s line of sight. Without looking behind me, I gave the redhead a push away from the conversation, and I felt more than saw that Glen immediately pulled the unhappy female into the confinement of a hug. As usual, my second was ready to deal with every problem I threw his way, both literally and figuratively.

  “We’ll put any restraints on him that you want,” I added. Just hurry, I finished silently.

  I could have sworn that Dr. Anderson read the unspoken words in my eyes, which I guess wasn’t so surprising since he was trained to deal with animals who couldn’t speak in words. Whatever the reason, the vet nodded and left through a back door rather than launching into the lecture I was pretty sure we had coming about the dangers of keeping even a half-wolf on a leash.

  I’d heard it all before. Canis lupus is inherently unpredictable, the vet would tell us. A wolf isn’t a dog, willing to do what you tell him to while looking up at you with soulful eyes and begging for a treat. No, a wolf is always striving for increased power, watching and waiting for the moment he can tear you down and take his rightful place as the leader of your pack.

  Despite myself, I met Hunter’s eyes across my friends’ heads and shivered. The vet’s lecture—or the one I imagined Dr. Anderson wanted to make—resonated far too well with our current situation. I hadn’t been lying when I said Cinnamon was as gentle as a lamb, but maybe Ginger had been right about the wolf who I’d recently allowed to wiggle into both my pack and my heart.

  But, with only moments to spare before the vet returned, I shook the notion out of my mind and instead got the group moving once again. “We don’t all need to be crowded around here while Dr. Anderson stitches Cinnamon up. Glen, maybe you could call Mrs. Abrams and let her know we won’t be coming today after all? Quill, could you make a spot in your van where Cinnamon will be more comfortable once the vet’s done?”

  I cringed as I thought of the way we’d tossed the wounded wolf into the back of our car atop that already bloodstained tent fly during our most recent journey. The repeated visual—first a dead SSS member then a nearly dead pack mate—didn’t escape me. Whether or not Cinnamon would indeed be more comfortable in Quill’s van, I’d definitely feel less guilt-stricken about the arrangement.

  “Sure,” Glen agreed, and Quill also offered an easy nod as the two males walked out together.

  “Ginger,” I began, trying to think of a task I could set for the trouble twin in order to get her out of our hair while Dr. Anderson operated on her brother. I figured she’d be better off not seeing the extent of Cinnamon’s injuries with fur shaved away, and she clearly had issues with the concept of her twin constrained by a muzzle.

  But before I could dream up a suitable assignment, Ginger had turned her anger back in my direction. “I’ll stay right here,” she said. “I’m not leaving Cinnamon’s side while that traitor is present. I can’t believe you even let him come in here with us in the first place.”

  In my defense, I hadn’t actually let Hunter go anywhere. When we’d returned to the small gravel parking lot, we found a shiny new SUV sitting between Quill’s faded VW bus and our old, dented jalopy. Hunter had deftly removed the unfamiliar vehicle’s key from a magnetic hideaway beneath the wheel well, then he’d donned a slick suit that made him look like an entirely different person from the bloodling I’d recently gotten to know.

  From the beginning, I’d understood that Hunter was the primary enforcer for the regional shifter Tribunal. But seeing his fancy wheels and the strong semblance of humanity he now wore like a second skin put his presence in an entirely different perspective. It was more than obvious that I had neither the right nor the ability to prevent the uber-alpha from tagging along on our journey.

  Not that I’d tried very hard to send him away. Okay, I hadn’t tried at all. Instead, it had soothed my pinched gut to glance in the rear-view mirror and find that Hunter’s SUV remained part of our entourage during the hour-long journey to the nearest veterinary clinic.

  Of course, that explanation would definitely set the trouble twin off. So I decided to deal with the elephant in the room instead. “Hunter, maybe you could tell Ginger how you were able to find us this afternoon?” I prodded. Honestly, I wanted to know the answer to this question myself, the uber-alpha’s previous evasion of the issue having niggled at the back of my mind ever since Ginger threw the challenge up in his face back in the woods.

  Despite the fact that his wolf was probably lying in wait just beneath the surface, Hunter now looked like an after-hours businessman with his white shirt unbuttoned just far enough to show a little chest hair. And his response to my question was urbane enough to match his new appearance. “Is that something you really want me to share?” he asked smoothly. One eyebrow raised as he directed the question at the trouble twin instead of at me.

  Ginger glared back at him, her own efforts at humanity becoming more lackluster by the moment. In fact, I was pretty sure the female’s canines were longer than usual when she opened her mouth to reply. “Why wouldn’t I want to know?” she demanded. “It’s pretty fishy, don’t you think? You buttering up my naive little cousin, then Lia suddenly going missing mere minutes before you show back up in our lives. Are you trying to say that’s all just a coincidence?”

  Before Hunter could answer, a thin whine brought all of our attention back around to the wounded wolf lying atop the cold steel examining table. As one, we allowed the argument to drop as we clustered in a little circle surrounding Cinnamon. My relief at finding him awake and alert actually made me a little weak in the knees.

  “You’re going to be okay, you big lug,” Ginger said soothingly, stroking her brother’s ears gently and pretending not to notice the blood rubbing off from his fur onto her fingertips. Her previous show of lupine aggression had disappeared as quickly as it came, her body language now both calm and calming. “You’ve just gotta be brave and put on some BDSM ware for the sake of the good doctor,” she added, managing to sound wry instead of annoyed.

  I could have sworn Cinnamon grinned despite the intense pain he must have been experiencing. But the battered wolf shook his head as if to push the focus of our conversation away from his lacerations. Then he stretched his neck over so he could stick his nose into Ginger’s pocket.

  “I don’t have anything good in there,” his sister replied, but she dutifully disinterred the contents anyway. “I know you missed lunch, which has got to be way more traumatic than any mauling,” she continued to patter as a couple of napkins with scrawled phone numbers, a tube of lipstick, and finally her cell phone came tumbling out to land on the metal surface beside Cinnamon’s wet nose. “But once you’re all stitched up, Fen will buy you the juiciest hamburger you’ve ever seen. Or maybe a steak. How about that?”

  In a completely uncharacteristic display of fixation, Cinnamon showed no interest in the delights on his culinary agenda. Instead, he struggled to his feet, pulling open partially scabbed-over wounds in the process so blood once again started dropping splat by splat onto the now smeared operating table.

  “Hey, shh,” Ginger said, trying to push her brother back down. “You need to stay calm for just a few more minutes....”

  Submissive Cinnamon generally did whatever his sister said. But now he ignored Ginger’s admonitions and poked at her cell phone with his nose. Despite lacking thumbs, he managed to swipe the device to life—and leave a smear of wolf boogers on the screen in the process—before the phone tumbled off the edge of the table and clattered to the tile floor.

  Ginger’s attachment to her cell phone was a subject of frequent teasing in our little pack. Still, the look on the trouble twin’s face as she peered down at the screen went above and beyond any obsession wi
th possibly damaged electronics. “Oh no,” she whispered, one hand covering her mouth.

  “Oh yes,” Hunter said grimly, picking up the cell phone and handing it to me so I could see what had gotten everyone so riled up.

  For a moment, I was confused. I barely used my own phone except for planning out driving routes and stopping points. So it took me a moment to realize what I was seeing.

  There was Ginger’s Facebook page, five thousand friends proving that she was as popular in the electronic world as she’d been on top of that bar table last night. There was her profile icon, in which she appeared to be wearing nothing at all except a smile.

  And there was her most recent status update, telling precisely when and where we’d decided to hunt for our lunch.

  Chapter 16

  The realization that she had been the one setting the SSS on our heels all this time shut Ginger up long enough for Dr. Anderson to repair her brother and send us on our way with one bottle of antibiotics and another of painkillers. “With any other patient, I’d offer to keep him overnight,” the vet said quietly as Ginger fluttered around her twin and Hunter scooped the wounded werewolf up off the operating table as easily as if the hundred-plus-pound animal was a grocery bag full of toilet paper. “But I really don’t want to risk a wounded wolf waking up around people he doesn’t know.”

  The man’s eyes bored into mine, and the lecture I knew was coming created a near-solid wall in the air between us. I sighed and caved.

  “You’re going to give me the phone number of a wolf-rescue agency now,” I said, providing the human with the opening he needed to rebuild his own peace of mind. It was the least I could do when Dr. Anderson had been so kind despite being less than thrilled to have a supposedly wild animal on his operating table. The vet had been a consummate professional regardless of his reservations, his hands gentle on Cinnamon’s lacerated skin. He deserved this opportunity to vent his feelings.

  “No. Well yes, but....” Dr. Anderson closed his eyes for a moment, and I could tell he was wavering between speaking his mind or just letting us go.

  And as much as I wanted to get out the door before Ginger lost control of her inner animal or Cinnamon accidentally went two-legged, I paused. My sleepy wolf was nudging me wordlessly, as if she’d noticed something about our preceding exchange that I’d missed. And since my animal half seemed unwilling or unable to clue me in further, I figured I’d better get the doctor’s feedback after all.

  So I used everything I’d learned about body language to put the veterinarian more at ease. I rounded my shoulders, dipped my chin down, and opened my mouth in unstated question. It seemed like a lot of effort just to bring on the same spiel I’d heard a dozen times before. But if the gesture would make my inner wolf happy....

  And Dr. Anderson took the bait. “I know this sounds unbelievable since large predators were eradicated from this area centuries ago,” he said quietly. “But I’m certain I’ve seen a pack of gray wolves around here multiple times over the last few weeks. Not coyotes, but wolves. So, if you don’t want Cinnamon getting torn up a second time, it’s probably safer to keep your pet indoors for a while.”

  The human rubbed one hand across his close-cropped beard as if second-guessing his assessment even as he made it. But I held no doubts on that score. From what little Hunter had told me, the SSS had thoroughly claimed this portion of outpack territory as their own. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the same rogue shifters ignored the rules against being seen by humans and simply ran when and where they wanted to as a pack.

  “Any place in particular?” I asked carefully, trying not to put my growing excitement on display. This might be the clue we needed to discover where Lia and Savannah Abrams were being held, and it was all I could do not to grab onto the veterinarian’s shoulders and shake the information right out of him.

  “Multiple locations,” Dr. Anderson answered, confusion evident on his face. I obviously hadn’t produced the reaction he was expecting, and I kicked myself for not throwing a little shock and worry into the mix before diving directly into question time. Oh well, what was done was done, and it looked like I’d gotten all the information I was going to get.

  I opened my mouth to thank the vet. But before I could speak, Dr. Anderson dredged up a little more data.

  “The one place I’ve heard about them the most is out on state route 603, down past the county landfill. A couple of farmers who live in that direction said a wolf pack shows up like clockwork every Friday evening around dusk.” The vet smiled, amused by the idea that wild animals planned out their lives by clock and calendar. “I’d be willing to bet that any howls are just high-school kids having a good time, though,” he added. “There aren’t many unattended places to go around here if you’re underage and want to yuk it up.”

  Dr. Anderson shrugged, and I let the subject drop, thanking him profusely for his time and for the care he’d taken with Cinnamon. But, inside, I was dancing with glee.

  Because, Hunter had told us that the SSS didn’t kill their prey right away, that they instead seemed to save the captured half-wolves to be murdered ceremoniously. And what better place to disembowel a young female than down a deserted country road where even wolf sightings barely caused the neighbors to raise an eyebrow?

  WE HAD FORTY-EIGHT hours until Lia would be frog-marched across a secluded pasture, tied down, and used to fill some void within the SSS’s darkened souls. Forty-eight hours to make a plan, to do enough legwork to ensure said plan wouldn’t result in our youngest pack mate’s demise, and to rebuild the inter-shifter connections that I was certain would be critical to our strategy’s eventual success.

  So what did we do first? Take a long nap, of course.

  It seemed that Hunter’s role as Tribunal enforcer had some perks after all, the most evident of which was a credit card with no apparent limit. I could almost see the word Suh-weet! appear in a thought bubble above Cinnamon’s lupine head when our not-quite-pack-mate showed us the entire floor of a nearby Holiday Inn that he’d rented out for our use. Then, after a couple of hours of shut-eye, a delivery guy dropped off what appeared to be enough food to fuel a moderate-sized army, and even Ginger started looking at the uber-alpha with a bit more fondness in her eyes.

  We ate with the wild abandon of wolves, our animal halves understanding that warm calories would go a long way toward easing the ache that had taken up residence in the pits of our stomachs. The meat and carbs were gone in a heartbeat and our paper plates were bare save a few stray florets of broccoli when I finally I broke the silence. “We need to make a plan,” I told the shifters spread out across the giant king-sized bed, chairs, and floor in the room we’d gravitated toward. What can I say—you can lead a crowd of werewolves to separate rooms, but you can’t make the pack sleep apart.

  “A plan sounds good,” Ginger agreed, but her tone wasn’t as agreeable as it might have been. I’d hoped that a couple of hours of sleep followed by the vision of her brother limping around on his own four paws would set the young woman’s mind at ease. But, instead, she remained just as prickly as she’d been ever since stumbling upon Hunter’s and my first kiss.

  “Problem?” I asked, figuring we might as well get that bee out of her bonnet. Ginger didn’t so much smolder as seethe. And the longer you let her stew, the hotter the flames of her anger became when they eventually erupted out into the open.

  “Yes, since you ask, there is a problem,” Ginger agreed. She gave Hunter the evil eye and proceeded to beat the dead horse that we’d already pounded about half a mile into the earth. “Our plan should be shared with pack mates only. And he’s not pack.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before speaking to make sure my own words didn’t come out sounding equally bitter. “We’ve been over this already, Ginger. Hunter may not be part of this pack, but he cares about Lia. And, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, it’s his job to track down the SSS. That’s why he can afford to put us up here.” I waved my hands
around at the spic-and-span furnishings that put our previous night’s accommodations to shame.

  “Oh, and now your head is turned by money?” the trouble twin demanded.

  The issue was a ludicrous waste of time, especially after Ginger had proven to all of our satisfaction that she, rather than Hunter, had been the unwitting traitor in our midst. Luckily, there was one easy way to shut her up.

  “Okay, we’ll vote on it,” I caved, knowing that everyone else had a more rational understanding of our need for the uber-alpha’s support during the hunt ahead. Surely our other pack mates understood that there was no reason to dive into a rescue with only butter knives when we could take a machine gun to the fight.

  To my surprise, the pack bond flickered to life in the air before me as I spoke, and I slid my gaze around the room to see if anyone else had noticed the strange phenomenon. Nope, no dropped jaws and expressions of surprise. No inventive swear words and half-baked theories. So the glowing lines that now bounced back and forth between us as if alive were only there for me to see...assuming I wasn’t hallucinating the image.

  To test that hypothesis, I tugged gently on the strand connecting me with Glen. And to my surprise, my second spoke up as if I’d nudged him physically. “Yes, definitely. We need every shifter we can get our hands on to protect Lia. Hunter is an asset.”

  I nodded with approval and reached forward next to tweak the tether connecting me to Ginger. This strand of starlight was twice as wide as the others, as if the energy the trouble twin had invested in her misplaced crush had built up our connection beyond ordinary levels. I hope that means she’ll start to see reason soon, I thought as I plucked the glowing thread like a guitar string.

  “Ow!” Ginger flinched back as if I’d struck her and I raised my hands skyward in apology. Sorry, I mouthed. I guess I hadn’t realized the full power of the pack bond after all.