by Amy Green
“Anna is studying us,” Heath said to Brody. “More accurately, Anna is studying Ian.”
“I’m studying anyone who will talk to me,” Anna said.
Still standing behind the bar, Brody swigged his beer and looked at her. “Welcome to Shifter Falls,” he said.
“Thanks,” Anna replied. “I like it here.”
Brody barked a laugh. “Then you’re nuts.” He looked at the back of Devon’s head, since Devon was sitting with his back to him. “Devon, I don’t see any blood in here. Did you take your meds today?”
“Fuck off, Brody,” Devon said without turning around.
“I have another question,” Anna broke in.
They all looked at her, quiet again.
Anna looked around at them. “Why is it that ever since I came to Shifter Falls, I haven’t seen anyone use a cell phone? I mean, you all seem to go to a lot of trouble to talk face to face.”
It was a fair question; Ian remembered that humans were attached to their technology. “Shifters hate cell phones,” he explained to Anna. “The signals are irritating to our senses. The signal isn’t very good out here, anyway.”
“Face to face was good enough for thousands of years,” Devon added in a grumble. “You need to talk to someone, you go find him.”
“And try to rip his throat out,” Ian added, glaring at Devon. “And fail.”
Heath leaned back in his chair. “Also, Anna, you may have noticed that our objective is actually to avoid each other. Cell phones are the opposite of that.”
“Well, I for one wouldn’t mind a few goddamn cell phones,” Brody said, slamming his beer down on the bar. “I keep trying to tell you guys, we need to talk.”
“About what?” Heath asked.
“John Marcus and his son, Crazy Ronnie,” Brody said. “That grizzly bear fight wasn’t the only thing that happened last night. Gus Wallace was found in the basement of the old Titan’s warehouse this morning, torn to pieces. Someone killed him. And since Gus was high up in our father’s pack, I think we know who it was.” He looked around at them. “If it was John Marcus or Ronnie, we have no choice, shitheads. We have to hunt them down.”
13
Anna felt Ian go tense next to her. It wasn’t fear, but anger, and agitation. She didn’t think it had to do with his brothers, but with something they’d said.
“Gus Wallace,” Heath said. “One of Charlie’s old-timers. I had no idea he was still around.”
“He was still around,” Devon said. His brows were lowered. “I didn’t hear that Gus was killed. Someone would have told me.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you’re not as connected as you thought,” Brody said. “The body was found a few hours ago, but it was cold, so he was killed sometime last night. I just talked to Chief Oliver about it. Face to face, instead of on a fucking cell phone.”
Ian spoke, and his voice was low with fury, so intense the other wolves went still. “If you think I’m going to avenge Gus Wallace, think again,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s overdue.”
Brody frowned at him. “Well, Gus wasn’t exactly a graduate of charm school, but—”
“No.” Ian put his hand on the table, flat, palm down. “He was a piece of garbage. He was Charlie’s drug dealer, or have you forgotten?”
Anna held her breath. She remembered what Ian had told her during the drive here—that his mother had died of an overdose. No wonder he had no interest in avenging a drug dealer.
“It isn’t about who Gus was,” Brody insisted. “It’s about the fact that someone—most likely John Marcus—ripped him to pieces and got away with it. We need law and order in Shifter Falls. The cops sure as hell don’t provide it. Charlie was an evil piece of shit, but at least he kept the violence under control.”
“He kept people like John Marcus under control because he was worse than them,” Ian said. “He controlled them with fear, just like he controlled everyone with fear. And he kept the drug dealers under control because he was their kingpin, the biggest dealer of all.” He looked around. “No one avenged my mother when Gus Wallace sold her enough heroin to kill someone five times her body weight. A deal good old Charlie, with all his law and order, approved.” He looked at his brothers one by one, and Anna could see how painfully controlled he was, how he was keeping his anger leashed beneath his muscles and his skin. “So no, I don’t care who ripped up Wallace. I’m glad he’s dead, and I hope to fuck it hurt.”
There was a beat of silence. Heath dropped his gaze to the table. Brody shifted his weight. Someone say something, Anna thought.
But it was Devon who opened his mouth. “Maybe we guessed it wrong,” he said, giving Ian a level stare. “Maybe it was our ex-con here who killed Wallace. He sure as hell had a motive.”
Anger came off of Ian in waves. “And if I did,” he growled at Devon, “what the fuck are you going to do about it?”
He didn’t do it, Anna wanted to shout at them. He couldn’t have. He was with me last night. But she knew the interruption wouldn’t be welcome. The brothers were working something out here.
All it needed was just one word. Just one word, from any of them, saying they didn’t believe Ian had done it. But there was only silence.
Ian pushed back his chair and stood. He looked down at Anna and touched her arm briefly. “Good luck with all your bullshit, you guys,” he said. “We’ll see you later.”
“Ian,” Brody said.
But Ian didn’t answer. He strode from the room on his long, strong legs, and Anna quickly followed him. She wanted to touch him, to put a hand on his shoulder or his arm, but she couldn’t quite get up the courage.
Only when they were out on the street did Ian turn to her. His green eyes held a mix of anger and concern. “Sorry about that,” he said, touching her again, just a brief brush of his fingertips against her upper arm. The touch seemed to reassure him as much as it reassured her, and she felt it through her like an electric shock. “I warned you about my brothers.”
“They’re a little insensitive,” Anna agreed.
“Yeah, well, it runs in the family.”
He turned and walked down the sidewalk, moving slow enough this time that she could follow. “Are you okay?” she asked him.
He was quiet for a minute as they walked, as if he was thinking over the question. “I’m actually pretty good,” he said. “I’ve wished Gus Wallace would die horribly for a long time.”
“They don’t know that you found her, do they?” Anna asked, taking a guess based on his anger, the tension in his big body. “Your mother. When she overdosed. They don’t know that you’re the one who found her.”
“No,” he said quietly.
Anna thought about her own mother, tucked away in a library, studying medieval manuscripts. How in the world would she feel if she’d found her mother dead? How would she feel toward the man who had sold her the drugs that killed her? Anna had been raised to live, let live, and forgive, but she’d never been tested the way Ian had been. It was a side of life she’d never been exposed to, and she found herself trying to understand. “But you never took revenge,” she said.
Ian glanced at her, and she saw reflected in his eyes the knowledge that he couldn’t have committed the murder, because he was home in his apartment with her. “I’m not a killer,” he said. “Not of humans, anyway. Deer and rabbits, okay. But I don’t get off on violence.” He turned a corner and led them down a side street that seemed to be a dead end, with the woods beyond. “I’ll admit I fantasized about it. But hell, I fantasize about a lot of things.”
“Really?” she asked, provoking him. “Like what?”
That made him laugh, which it was intended to do. “Oh, no. I’m not telling you that, Anna. That’s not part of the study.”
It could be, she thought wildly. She really, really wanted to know what Ian Donovan fantasized about. Women? What kind of women? One woman in particular? He’d already told her he didn’t have a girlfriend, but that didn’t mean ther
e wasn’t a woman he liked. One he fantasized about.
“Where are we going?” she asked him, to change the subject. The street they were on ended at a chain-link fence, and Ian swung over it easily, his body moving with quick grace. Beyond the fence the ground sloped upward, crusted with thin snow, and disappeared into the trees.
“I need to run,” Ian explained, holding out a hand. “I’m tense, and I can’t think.”
Anna climbed the fence, then gripped his big, warm hand as she swung her legs over the top and climbed down the other side. “Why are you taking me with you?”
“Because it’s safer,” he said. “I don’t plan to hunt, just shift and run. Fifteen, twenty minutes, that’s all I need.”
“Changing for so short a time makes a difference?” she asked him as they started up the slope toward the trees. The air had a clear, crisp bite to it, cold but pleasant. Anna loved the air in Colorado; it was like a drug in her lungs.
“It does,” Ian answered her. “I’m always better after I’ve been in touch with my wolf. He centers me, clears my head.” He tapped his temple. “A wise shifter learns early to listen to his wolf, because the wolf is the best part of you. Your wolf is always the one who knows the answers. It’s the man who tends to think too much and tie himself in knots.”
“And what do you need answers for?” she asked him, trying not to think of the possibility that she was about to see him naked again. Be cool, Anna.
“What the hell I’m going to do next,” Ian said. “That’s what I have to figure out.”
14
His wolf was howling. He needed to shift and run, badly. The meeting with his brothers, unexpected and tense. The news that someone had killed Gus Wallace after all these years of Ian imagining it himself. The memories that dredged up of his mother and the way she died. The entire situation in Shifter Falls and the mess Charlie had left.
Charlie himself, that bastard, who had done nothing for Ian but beat him up, break his mother’s heart, get her killed, and leave the Falls in disarray, dying before Ian had the chance to tell him how much he hated his father’s black heart.
And Anna.
It was safer if he brought her with him—that much was true. What he left out was that he didn’t want to leave her behind, to go alone into the woods while she sat waiting in the apartment. He wanted her with him.
He was growing used to her presence, her scent that was so thoroughly mixed with his. The way those blue eyes watched everything around her and missed almost nothing. The way he could feel her attuned to him—tensing when he was angry, calming when he did—and the way he was attuned to her, always on alert for her fear or her distress. He had spent his entire life alone, with no one to look out for, and no one looking out for him. He was surprised how quickly he felt that was inadequate now. He was starting to rely on her presence nearby. He was starting to feel less alone.
“You did good back there,” he told her as they got to the top of the rise and entered the trees. “You didn’t let any of my brothers get to you. A lesser woman would have been intimidated.”
“Oh. Well.” She shrugged, the corner of her mouth quirking. “You’re all different, but you’re all Donovans. I’m getting used to it. Though there was a lot of testosterone in that room. I may have ovulated a little.”
He gave her a look with a raised eyebrow, but he had to admit that was funny.
He unbuttoned his coat and dropped it, and watched her eyes follow his hands, her cheeks reddening. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not gonna make you look this time. I’ll go into the trees.”
“You don’t have to. I mean, um, I’ll just go over here.” She actually stammered a little, shoving her hands in her coat pockets and looking away. The wind caught a strand of her dark hair and blew it across her forehead, and he caught the scent of agitation from her, and anticipation, and pure female arousal. His gaze dropped to her lips. What he could do to this woman. What he wanted to do to this woman. Her mouth, her flawless skin, the curve of her hips in her jeans below the hem of her coat. He wanted to tangle his hands in her long hair and taste her skin. But that was a terrible idea. She shouldn’t be anywhere near a wolf like him.
She turned away, heading for a clump of shrubs to give him privacy, but he reached out and curled a hand around her elbow, stopping her. “Hey,” he said.
She turned and looked at him, biting her lip.
“Twenty minutes,” he said. “That’s all. Set your watch.”
“I don’t have a watch,” she said, then winced, as if she thought she’d said something foolish.
“Then set mine.” He dropped her arm, took his watch from his wrist, and gave it to her. “Hold this, too.” He unclasped the thin leather from his neck and held it out.
She took it, looking at the charm, which was a single silver claw. “This is beautiful work. Where did you get it?”
“It’s the only gift my mother ever gave me,” he said. “Christmas, the year before she died.” God knew where she’d gotten the money for it; he’d never asked. She’d been relatively sober that day. She’d told him when he opened it that despite everything that had happened with his father, she was proud to have a werewolf son. Four months later, she was dead.
Anna closed her hand over the necklace and gave him a small smile. “Okay,” she said. “Twenty minutes.”
He pointed to the watch. “Starting now,” he promised. Then, pulling his shirt off over his head, he turned and jogged for the woods.
15
Anna found a fallen log and sat on it, slipping Ian’s watch and his necklace into her pocket. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and checked it, surprised to see that the reception was good, probably because she was on the top of a rise.
She had a message from her advisor and another from her mother. She didn’t want to talk to her advisor right now, but she owed her mother some reassurance. So she dialed her mother first.
“Anna,” her mother said when she answered. “Are you all right? Where are you right now?”
“I’m fine, Mom,” Anna said, stretching her legs out in front of her. She was glad Ian had taken the time to run, but she hoped he would stick to his time limit. Could wolves even tell time?
“I hadn’t heard from you,” her mother complained. “You let your apartment go, and then you were going to prison to get your ex-con and going to that place, and then there was just nothing. I was worried.”
“It hasn’t been that long,” Anna said. Had she only arrived here yesterday? Already she felt different, as if her mother’s voice was coming from a world far away. “Anyway, I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
“It isn’t dangerous?”
Um. Grizzly bear fights, feuding brothers, men being murdered and torn to pieces. She decided to leave those parts out. “Everything is fine,” she repeated. “I’m getting a lot of material for my research.” Including exactly what her subject looked like naked, and the best way to kill him if she had to. “I think it’s going to be really valuable. I’m learning a lot that we can add to what we know about shifters.”
“If you say so,” her mother said, unconvinced. “I just hope no one is bothering you. I’ve heard that shifters can be rather impolite with women.”
“Not at all,” Anna lied, thinking of Ian saying, The best way to make you smell like me is if we fuck. Your choice. “I’m being treated like a professional.”
“Is the hotel okay?”
“It’s fine.” Anna actually cringed, thankful that her mother couldn’t see her. She’d never lied this much to her mother, and the longer this conversation went on, the faster she was going straight to hell. “It’s very safe. The security is excellent. How are you doing?”
She listened to her mother talk about grading assignments and class schedules and incompetent teaching assistants and her sister’s kids, making agreeable noises. “There’s something I heard that I should tell you,” her mother said at last.
“What is it?”
�
��I saw that friend of yours, Carol, and she told me that Daniel is getting married. The date is set for April.”
Anna was silent for a second in shock. Daniel, the boyfriend who had cheated on her, was getting married?
“Anna, are you there?”
“Is it Isabelle?” she asked. “Is she the one he’s marrying?”
“Yes, it is.” Isabelle was the woman Daniel had cheated with. “Carol says they fight a lot, but who knows? Maybe they’ll work it out. I’m just sad you two couldn’t make a go of it.”
“Mom.” Anna suddenly felt tired. “I’ve told you a hundred times, he cheated on me. That isn’t the same as not making a go of it.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” her mother protested. “Anyway, honey, I have an appointment with a student in a few minutes. Call me and let me know how you’re doing, okay? And if you want to come back before the three weeks are up, there’s no shame in that. At least you tried.”
Anna hung up. That was typical of her mother—the back-handed insult that sounded like motherly concern. It was also typical of her mother that she would wait until the end of the conversation to mention Daniel’s engagement, as if it wasn’t important, and then blame Anna for the breakup. Her mother knew a lot about books and medieval monks, and almost nothing about real life, twenty-first-century people and how they felt. Her sister was someone her mother understood easily—married to a professor, mother to two children. But Anna had always felt like she didn’t belong. She didn’t want a life in academia, and she didn’t want a husband and kids. She wanted… something else.
Adventure. Fulfillment. Excitement. To help people. To see the world, to understand it. To experience things outside her comfort zone. Love. Passion. Life. All of it.
She tilted her head back and looked up at the sky, where a few large, lazy flakes of snow were falling. Ian’s image came into her mind again, the way he’d sat on his windowsill in his black t-shirt and black drawstring pants, so easy in his own body. Even his brothers were interesting, though they all growled at each other like half-human animals. Even with the drunken grizzly bear fights, you had to admit there was never a boring day in Shifter Falls.