by Holley Trent
Blue’s lips practically disappeared in his scowl, but he lifted the decoration higher.
“Right there! That’s good.” Deb turned her attention back to Lanie. “Diana had always been very matter-of-fact, but for as long as you were together, she said nothing.”
“She cared too much,” Willa said.
“Ridiculous,” Lanie said. “Nothing would have happened to me if people from the old pack found out about me. I may not be enmeshed in your world, but I’m not ignorant of it, and I know how to protect myself. In fact, I’m probably better prepared to survive shapeshifter bullshit than most shifters are.”
“I think she was right that Randall might have tried to eliminate you if he’d caught wind of you being a competing influence in Diana’s life,” Deb said. “Hell, after the divorce, even I was afraid to start dating again for fear he’d mess with the men just to teach me one more lesson. If it were up to him, I would never be happy.”
“But that doesn’t seem to be her excuse now,” Willa said gently. “Randall wouldn’t dare antagonize anyone in Blue’s territory. The last time he tried, he lost more than a third of his pack to us.”
“There’s something else going on with her,” Lanie said. “I’m trying to ferret out what it is, because as much as I love her, I can’t keep beating my head against a wall waiting for her to come around. It’s time, you know? I want to get married and start a family. I want to do those things with her, but she’s trying to shut me out. I can’t force her to come around. She has to want to do this.”
Deb twined her fingers in front of her belly and scrunched her nose.
“What?” Willa asked her. “You’re making an odd face.”
Deb breathed out the tiniest of grunts and gave her daughter-in-law a conspiratorial look. “Did you know that a female coyote shifter’s sense of smell is approximately ten times more sensitive than their male counterparts?”
“I think I heard Blue mention that once,” Lanie said. “Are you smelling something you want to tell us about?”
Deb canted her head, eyes narrowing again. “Maybe. You know, Randall didn’t like people knowing that I had some abilities that were unusual. He didn’t take pleasure in being able to boast that I brought some magic to the mix that didn’t exist in his family first.”
“You’re talking about your sense of smell in particular, right?” Willa asked.
Deb nodded.
“Ah,” Willa said, nodding too.
“Want to fill me in?” Lanie asked.
Willa turned to her, gaze flitting in her husband’s general direction, likely to check that he wasn’t near enough to overhear. “Before Blue and I got together, Diana told me that I smelled like him. Not just that his odor rubbed off on my clothes, but—”
“It’s inside,” Deb interjected. “It’s a hormonal rebalancing. All Coyotes can smell hormone changes to some degree, but most can’t discern subtleties. Not even the women. Most wouldn’t be able to tell—” she gestured to Willa, “if the smell is inside or outside without a lot of effort.”
“And you can?” Lanie asked.
“Yes. And obviously, Diana can. She inherited my nose. I’d actually be comfortable making the claim that hers is even more sensitive than mine.”
“So, she would know,” Willa said.
“Know what?” Lanie asked.
“That her scent’s clinging to you. Even if she has more or less gone numb to her own scent, after the two of you were apart for so long, she certainly would have noticed it when you returned.”
“Okay, so I’ve got her scent. What does that mean?”
“Scent branding is an evolutionary hallmark of certain ancient shapeshifter groups. Some individuals are better at it than others. Generally, if you’re carrying another animal’s scent, it’s because you’re a permanent partner to that creature.”
Jarred by the new information, Lanie stared agog. Deb had said “permanent partner.” Lanie had known that Diana was hers all along, but having science back up her gut feeling was like stumbling into a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
“So…” Lanie fidgeted with the lid of her hot chocolate and closed her eyes, contemplating. “I take it that is something irreversible?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s something she did on purpose? Because that wouldn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, given her behavior.”
“Oh, no,” Willa said. “Blue tells me that it happens when the animal part of a shifter has chosen a mate. The human part of the brain has nothing to do with it.”
That almost made too much sense to Lanie, considering Diana’s recent behavior.
At least the wild part thinks I’m irresistible.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Lanie opened her eyes in time to see Blue on approach, knocking pine needles off his shirt. “Why didn’t you ever tell me I smelled like your sister? Even if your nose isn’t as sensitive as your mother’s, you’re an alpha. You’re not an average dog.”
Blue’s brow creased. “I didn’t tell you that?”
Lanie glared at him.
He shrugged. “I thought I had. We’ve been surfing this ridiculousness for so long that I can’t remember what I have and haven’t told you, but yeah.” He pulled Willa against his chest and tucked his chin atop her head. “You do.”
“Otherwise, you wouldn’t have helped me.”
“Probably not. Most shifters nowadays don’t have mates in that way. They connect on a human level, but not necessarily on a magical one. Used to be that people would hold out, whether it seemed they would ever find that perfect mate or not, but not too many people do that anymore. They want to live normal lives as much as they can, and sometimes that means settling.” He made air quotes around the word “settling.”
Lanie’s bunched her lips quirked upward at one corner. “You didn’t settle.”
“Shit, I didn’t even know I was looking.”
Deb poked his shoulder. “The wild coyote in you did. He’s what made you call off that wedding to Bruno’s girl, what, three times?”
Blue shrugged again. “Lost count.”
Willa got pulled away by some smiley, smooth-talking member of the decorating committee, and Blue padded after her with a worried look on his face.
Deb edged in closer to Lanie.
Lanie watched her watch the couple.
They stood in companionable silence for a while, and then Deb said in a near-whisper, “I don’t know what Diana’s hang-up is, but I think I know my daughter well enough to guess that if she’s pushing away someone connected to her on such a rare level, there must be some serious anxiety getting in the way.”
“But what could possibly be causing it? Not the shifter stuff. I don’t buy that. Never did. It’s not my disgust over the things she might have done when she was still attached to your ex-husband’s pack. I know her heart. I know how wrecked she must feel over those decisions. I won’t abandon her for those. If she’s slept with someone else? I don’t care. Whatever. But this push and pull she’s doing—”
“You scare her.”
“What?” Deb’s out-of-the-blue statement was preposterous.
“That’s the only thing it could possibly be. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Scare her how? I’m not the one with fangs.”
“I don’t know how,” Deb said, “and I doubt she’d confide in me about it. She would tell me that everything is fine and that I have no reason to be concerned.”
“But you are.”
“Of course I am. Any mother worth a damn would be. In the years she needed me most, though, I wasn’t there. Maybe things would be different now if I had been. Maybe she would know how to sort through this murk on her own without messing things up even more.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Deb’s shrug was so redolent of Blue’s that there could be no doubt whom he’d inherited the body language from. “Fault doesn’t matter,” the older woman
said. “The effects are what matter. That’s what we need to overcome.”
“We?”
Deb’s shoulders fell and voice went quiet. “Don’t abandon her, Elaine. Maybe that plea doesn’t mean much coming from me, but I wish you’d listen.”
“I don’t want to give up on her, but—”
“I know.” Deb sighed and wrung her hands. “The waiting is brutal. I just think that if you find the right combination of words to tell her, or if you can sift out whatever it is that’s holding her back so the two of you can finally scream out your frustrations, you can get past it. Give her a little more time.”
“How much time?” Lanie asked, but she knew better. She knew already that the correct answer was forever.
Lanie was so used to having her life perfectly sorted and ordered—to making lists and checking off the items. To giving herself deadlines to achieve success, on both small and large scales.
But she was pushing against something she didn’t quite understand, and might never truly get. She may have earned advanced degrees in anthropology and folklore, but magic was something to be lived with—not read about. She could make all the lists and timelines she wanted to, but none of those would make a damn bit of difference until she could figure out what was preventing Diana from ignoring what the wilder part of her had already decided to have.
“Time for a change in strategy,” Lanie murmured, rubbing her chin.
“Can I do anything?” Deb asked.
Lanie shook her head and started walking toward Blue and Willa. They’d been press-ganged into attaching garland to the gazebo railings. Lanie could pitch in and help speed up the misery.
“No, but thanks.” Lanie took a final slug of her hot chocolate. She tossed the cup into the trash before reaching into the garland pile. “I’m going to give her everything she wants, and then we’ll see what happens.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Diana paused in the doorway of the nursing home’s rec room and emitted a tiny growl.
She should have known Lanie would turn up somewhere. She should have known Lanie wouldn’t have left town just yet, and certainly not when she still had antagonizing to do.
Apparently, Lanie had found time to change into less professional attire. Fitted black jeans. Stack-heeled black ankle boots. A heather gray turtleneck tucked into the belted waist of her pants. That was what Lanie called “dressing down.” Sneakers and sweatpants were for jogging, and Lanie was always out of those by eight in the morning.
She was currently overseeing the construction of pinecone tree ornaments by six Scout girls and four boisterous retirees.
Diana’s stomach lurched upon identifying them. Why those six?
Five wildling Coyotes and one unfiltered Cougar. Instinctively, she knew she needed to intervene.
Diana got moving, only to have her elbow grabbed and for her to be tugged into a debate.
Best friends Leslie Oppenheimer and Shannon Pratt were at it again.
“Tell her, Diana,” Leslie said, shielding her mouth from the paranormal-oblivious humans in the room. She was one of those Coyotes who couldn’t keep her fangs concealed when she was nervous, which was most of the time.
“Tell her what?” Diana asked, confused.
“Tell her that if Bibby gets fixed, that means his animal form is gonna shoot blanks, too. He’s telling her it don’t work like that.”
Diana pressed her lips together and tried not to give away any emotion on her face. The women’s expressions were stone-cold serious, but they all knew that Bibby Pratt didn’t possess enough sense to pour piss out of his boot, even if the instructions were on the heel.
“We’ve been talkin’ about it a real long time,” Shannon said, tilting her head toward the Scouts. Three of the girls at the table with Lanie were Shannon and Bibby’s, each born less than a year apart from the next eldest. They had five more at home.
“I imagine you have been,” Diana demurred. “But listen. I’m not an expert on this. Blue would probably be able to tell you better—”
The ladies gave their heads vigorous nope shakes.
“No, no, no. Not gonna catch me asking the alpha about getting the snip,” Shannon said.
Diana sighed. “Okay. From what I understand, if he gets it done far enough outside of the full moon’s rapid healing window, that physiological change is going to carry over to his animal form. Coyotes heal best the closer to the full moon we are, right? So, he’d need to get it done two weeks before or after and not shift into his animal form for the entirety of those two weeks. If he shifts, the transformation magic is going to try to repair any recent wounds.”
“You know anyone it’s worked for?” Leslie asked.
Diana nodded. “Lots of people, actually. Some had to do it twice because the tubes regenerated, but that’s a rare occurrence.”
Shannon nodded with finality. “I’ll tell him you said so.”
“Don’t get me tangled up in your marital strife,” Diana said with a laugh. “If he comes to me bitching, I might have to kick his ass. You know I’m trying to turn over a new leaf.”
“I don’t care if you beat him up a little,” Shannon said solemnly. “Might help him shake off some of that lustfulness of his.”
“You know, condoms are a thing.”
Shannon gave her a bored look.
Diana knew what it meant.
Coyote men were so whiny about contraceptives. They were driven to multiply. The unfortunate truth was that the most fertile amongst their kind weren’t necessarily the ones who were good at realizing the long-term effects of such decisions.
“I’m going to go play with glitter and glue,” Diana told the ladies. “If Bibby comes a-stalkin’, I’ll be ready.”
“Thank you!” Shannon called after her.
Diana made her way around the room, gathering up the Scouts who’d arrived at the same time she did and getting them grouped with waiting seniors.
The group at Lanie’s table had arrived earlier than the start time and apparently, the nursing home staff had immediately put them to work.
What Diana still wanted to know was why Lanie was there at all.
She made her way to her table slowly, trying to look as though she had no special interest in what was happening there, when in truth, Lanie was all she cared about at the moment.
Kneeling between Bonnie Pratt and Barbie Pratt, Diana cleared her throat and made a show of looking around the table at the projects. “My, you’ve been industrious.”
Babe Pratt held a sparkle-covered pinecone out to her. “Easiest when you paint the glue on and dip ’em in the glitter vat.”
Lucille Moreno adjusted the tube of her oxygen machine and gave the girl a teasing nudge. “Who’s gonna spray ’em? Someone said somethin’ about a spray to keep all the glitter on. I can’t spray ’em.”
“Oh, no,” Babe said, wide-eyed. “You’d probably die from the fumes.”
Lanie turned her head to the right, obscuring her expression, but Diana could see the red creeping up her neck and the way that one vein pulsed more prominently whenever she was stressed. Lanie wasn’t going to laugh, though. She was far too civilized for that.
“I’ll spray them all,” Diana said, snickering. “I’m taking them down to the auto body shop to use their painting stall. They’re equipped for that sort of stuff.” The idea had been a rare stroke of genius on Diana’s part. She was expecting a pinecone or two per person, not a bushel each. The town’s festivities committee would certainly find something to do with all of them, though. She just hoped she wouldn’t have to participate in attaching them to those miles of garlands.
“Why’d you girls get here so early, anyway?” Diana asked.
Barbie, the eldest of the Pratt brood, sniffled pitifully and turned a curiously deformed pinecone to its underside. “G-got the t-t-time wrong. C-couldn’t find the paper with the stuff.”
“Oh?” Diana edged a little closer to her. There was a bead of sweat forming at Barbie’s ha
irline. Although the retirement home was heated to seventy-two degrees—which would have been downright stifling for any hot-burning shapeshifter—Barbie’s light attire should have been a foil to overheating. That wasn’t the problem. Diana could smell her distress rolling off of her. The girl’s hormones were ping-ponging and teasing before receding back to baseline, only to ramp right back up again. That wasn’t puberty. She’d started that a year ago. Barbie’s problem was supernatural.
Diana draped an arm around Barbie’s chair and watched the girl dab glue onto the bottom of the pinecone. “You should get a planner,” Diana told her. “A Pratt planner. That’ll keep all your stuff organized.”
“There’s so many of you, I don’t see how you ever get anywhere,” Estelle Collier said. She straightened her wig and sprinkled glitter onto the cone of the quiet little girl beside her.
Diana had always tried to follow her mother’s rule of giving old people the benefit of the doubt—their verbal filters weren’t what they used to be—but those Pratt kids couldn’t help their situation. They didn’t ask to be born virtually on top of each other.
Lanie got the words out first, though. “Oh, I don’t know. If an Army unit can organize hundreds of men who’ve just left their mothers’ bosoms using only a lean, mean staff, I’m sure the Pratts can manage just fine. And let me tell you, there’s nothing worse than a bunch of eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds who think they’re men but have never even cracked an egg for themselves yet.”
“I’m g-g-good at cracking eggs.” Barbie carefully nestled tiny silver plastic doodads onto the ends of the pinecone “branches.” She added, “I crack…a dozen every morning. That’s my job. I do the eggs and toast. Mama taught me…when I was eight.”
“And what do you do?” Lanie asked Babe.
“I make the sandwiches for the lunchboxes while Mama’s in the shower.”
Lanie smiled at her. “That’s very helpful, I’m sure. I used to have to take my lunch to school, too.”
“School lunch is…t-too expensive for all of us,” Barbie stammered. She’d set down her glue brush and sat with her eyes closed.