by Amy Green
Heath turned back to Tessa. “You okay if I leave you in charge?”
“Go,” she told him.
A muscle in his jaw flexed, and then he turned and followed his brother out the door.
3
Blood had soaked into the damp ground—a lot of blood. It made Heath’s wolf restless. Not to hunt—his wolf knew the difference between live rabbit blood and dead human blood, and was repulsed by the latter—but in an alarm of danger.
To his wolf, cold human blood meant the presence of a rival predator. A big one. Right in the middle of his territory.
Kill it.
Heath took a breath. He looked around at his brothers, ranged in a half-circle in the clearing where the dead man had been found. The Shifter Falls police had taken their photos and evidence, and now they were gone, leaving only yellow crime scene tape behind. Heath’s brothers’ expressions mirrored his own feelings—tense, their jaws tight, their spines rigid. Devon was scowling behind his black beard, and Ian was pacing.
“What do we know?” Brody said.
“Nothing yet.” This was Ian, still ranging around the edge of the clearing, unable to stand still. “We don’t know who he was. We can guess by the tent and the campfire that he was a hiker.”
“I don’t smell a wolf, do you?” Heath said. He squatted, ignoring the distaste that rose in his throat as the blood smell rose from the ground. To a werewolf’s sense of smell, the stench was overwhelming. He closed his eyes and tried to inhale, sorting through the scents underlying the overpowering blood smell. “If it was a wolf, I would be able to smell it.”
“I agree,” Brody said. “I don’t understand it. But whoever did this came into this clearing somehow, and he left it again. That means a trail.”
Heath ran a hand through his hair. He’d been sensing trouble on the horizon for months now—they all had. That was why the four brothers had been doing extra patrols. Some good it had done, since this hiker had been killed regardless. Heath had the terrible feeling in his gut that something bad was descending on them. His wolf was uneasy, and he’d barely been able to make himself leave Tessa alone at the bar.
That made no logical sense, because the threat was here, where a man had been torn open, and not at the Black Wolf. He reminded himself that it was daylight, and Tessa was surrounded by others—most of them werewolves—while she was in the bar, and that Tessa was tough and smart and took no shit. And still he felt unbalanced, as if he’d left her unprotected.
Because anyone who laid a finger on Tessa Keefe would be in deep fucking trouble.
He dragged his fingertips lightly through the dirt, letting the earth tell his wolf its story. There were echoes of something there, but with his human side dominant, he couldn’t quite catch it.
Heath stood and pulled off his shirt, heading for the trees. “Fuck this,” he said to his brothers. “I’m changing. This is wolf’s work.”
They didn’t argue. He heard the other three split off in separate directions, to change and run. The change into a wolf was a private thing; Heath knew his brothers better than he used to, but not well enough to change in their presence.
As soon as he was in the shadows of the fragrant pines, Heath felt his wolf begin to rise. He dropped his shirt, kicked off his boots, undid his jeans, dropped them along with his underwear. He pulled off his rings and bracelets. The cool air slapped his skin—it was only June, and not warm yet, especially in the mountains where it had snowed only two weeks ago—but it didn’t matter. Werewolves were impervious to cold.
His feet bare on the carpet of needles, Heath began to run. A few rapid strides, speed that quickly ramped up past any human speed, and his wolf came free. Heath leapt into the air, and in a split second he’d changed, landing on the ground in his wolf form. He felt his claws dig into the earth, centering him, focusing him, and he lowered his nose. Then he began to track.
The scent was confusing. Now that he had his full wolf’s senses, he could smell the killer, and there were traces of wolf in the smell. But it wasn’t a full wolf smell—it was mixed, doused with something else. Heath picked up the track quickly and gave a quick bark, signaling his brothers, before he followed it through the trees and down the side of the ravine.
The killer had been an expert in traversing the woods. He—the scent was certainly male—hadn’t made a mess like most hikers did, flattening greenery and leaving a swath any wolf could see for a mile. No, this killer had moved through the landscape with silent precision, barely touching the underbrush. Near the bottom of the ravine he’d turned and followed a ledge that led out to another rise, around to another clearing, and to a side access road, where the trail ended with the sharp tang of gasoline.
The brush rustled behind him, his brothers following the same scent trail. Heath turned and sprang, heading back up the side of the ravine over its steepest part, letting his animal stretch and run to its limit. The man buried deep inside him thought over what it had seen, but the wolf no longer cared. The wolf smelled the earth and the trees and the wind, and heard the scurry of small animals in the underbrush, and it ran ever faster, harder, patrolling its territory by instinct, looking for more signs of danger. The wolf only knew the things that hummed in its blood: Protect. Kill. Mate. As always when he ran, the wolf began to center the human half of him, put it more at peace.
He ran for a while, his brothers nowhere to be seen, and when he tired he circled back to where he’d left his clothes. In an instant he was a man again. He pulled on his boxers and dug up his socks, brushing pine needles off the bottoms of his feet and putting them on.
When he emerged back into the clearing where the hiker had died, he found his three brothers already there, dressed and in human form.
“You took your time,” Brody said.
Heath shrugged. “I needed to run.”
Brody gave him a sharp look. Heath was supposed to be the lazy one, the one who didn’t care. It wasn’t like him to need to run his wolf to calm down.
But Heath didn’t feel anything like his image these days. In fact, he barely recognized himself anymore. He’d bought the Black Wolf after Charlie died, thinking he’d have the chance to get out from Charlie’s shadow. He’d found that running a bar was harder than he’d ever imagined. More rewarding, too. More profitable. And he’d found her.
“Did you all smell what I did?” Heath said, to get his mind off of Tessa. Her platinum blonde hair, her big dark eyes, the sexy pout of her lower lip, the way she wore jeans like nobody’s business. “I think it’s pretty clear.”
Brody lifted the yellow tape, and the brothers all ducked beneath it, walking away from the clearing and through the trees in the direction of Brody’s SUV. “That wasn’t a wolf,” Devon growled. “That was a human.”
“Definitely,” Ian agreed. “Though he was trying to disguise his smell.”
“Wearing a werewolf’s clothes, most likely,” Heath said as they walked single file through the thick trees, the four of them making barely a sound even though they were all large men. “Trying to throw off the investigation. Only a human would think that would work.”
“You can’t get a car down that access road,” Brody said. “Too overgrown and rutted, and the branches along the sides would be broken. I’m guessing he used a motorbike.”
“So take the North Road up from the interstate, get on the access road, park your bike, and walk,” Heath said. “Doesn’t sound random. Sounds like something you do when you know where your prey is and what you’re going to do to him.”
“He wasn’t an amateur, either,” Devon added. “That man knew how to walk the terrain. Quick and quiet.”
“So we have a hunter or a trapper, maybe,” Brody said.
“Or military training,” Ian added.
“The kill was messy,” Devon argued. “No one with proper training kills like that.”
“No,” Heath said, “unless he wants to do it on purpose. To make it look like a wolf did it.”
They had
reached the back road, where Brody had parked his SUV on the gravel shoulder. “We need to get down to the police station and get an update from Quinn,” Brody said.
“Not me,” Heath said. “I’m going back to my bar.”
“Suddenly you’re a hard worker,” Devon quipped.
Heath turned to him, looked him up and down. “At least I do something. You know, something resembling work.”
“Right,” Devon said. “Wouldn’t have anything to do with trying to get into that blonde’s pants, would it?” He grinned. “She may be the only woman in Shifter Falls who hasn’t dropped her panties.”
His instinct was to launch at Devon—he didn’t like anyone even talking about Tessa dropping her panties—but instead he rolled his eyes, playing into the character everyone expected. “God, there’s nothing worse than a wolf who can’t get laid. Here’s a tip, Devon: It helps if anyone actually likes you.”
“All right, you two,” Brody said. “Jesus, it’s like I’m a babysitter. Heath, Devon works for me as top security for the pack, which you already know. And Devon, shut up. Heath has been behaving lately, and I’d like to encourage it.” He turned to Heath. “That wasn’t an option, it was an order. We have to show unity until this guy is caught. Now let’s go.”
They piled into the SUV, and Heath was silent, his jaw flexing. This was how it always went—how it would always go. Heath has been behaving lately. His brothers saw him as a spoiled child. He had been too many years under Charlie, lazy and satisfied, doing whatever he wanted. He’d been their father’s favorite, and while Ian had been living wild, Brody had been holed up in the woods, and Devon had been desperately trying for Charlie’s approval, Heath had been mostly sleeping in, partying, and screwing every woman who wanted him—which, most days, seemed like every woman in the Falls.
He’d hated Charlie as much as his brothers had. Charlie had been a cruel alpha, selfish and increasingly paranoid, ruling the pack through violence and fear. But he was the rightful alpha of the pack, and Heath had been loyal to him out of pure self-preservation.
He’d also been lazy. Charlie’s sudden death—from natural causes, of all things—had jolted him awake. He’d been shocked at how savagely happy he was that his father was dead. And he’d been ready to do… something. He wasn’t sure what. But something more, something better, than what he’d made of himself so far.
He’d spent the past year doing things he’d never thought of—buying a bar and working, getting to know his brothers, learning the business of running the pack and keeping the Falls safe. None of it had been easy, but most days he thought it was worth it.
Until his brothers treated him, yet again, like a spoiled brat.
He glanced over at Ian, sitting next to him in the back seat. Ian hadn’t piled on that little exchange, which was unusual for him. He turned to see Ian’s sharp green eyes on him.
Brody and Devon were talking in the front, so Ian said quietly, “Something’s getting to you. I can tell.”
Heath looked away. Ian was the only brother who was mated; his mate, Anna, had come to the Falls a few months ago, and since she’d arrived, Ian had been different. Calmer, less wild. He also was more perceptive about Heath’s love life than Heath would like.
“It can’t be Tessa, can it?” Ian asked when Heath didn’t speak.
Heath still stared out the window.
It can’t be Tessa, can it?
She’d worked for him for nearly nine months now. She’d seen the worst of him, which was his own fault. Her opinion of him was probably even lower than his brothers’, if that was possible.
And still, she was the woman whose scent he remembered last before he fell asleep every night.
“No,” he said to Ian, the words growling from his throat. “It can’t be.”
4
Heath was gone for hours, which left Tessa in charge of the bar. She liked being in charge—bossing the one waitress who was on day shift, checking the stock levels, talking to the plumber who came to fix the faulty drain in the sink in the back. She thrived on it. She even went through the paperwork, to see if Heath had overlooked anything. He hadn’t, which just made her want to give him sass.
She loved being the boss, but the Black Wolf was always more fun when Heath was here.
But no. She didn’t miss him—that somehow dirty smell of male skin mixed with clean laundry, the naughty spark in his gray eyes, the easy way his hands moved when he talked. Talking was one of Heath’s gifts. He could tell a story like he was born to it, enrapturing his listeners, making them hang on his every word. Tessa had heard him tell stories so bawdy they’d made his listeners roar, or so funny they’d laughed until they cried. Tessa hadn’t roared or laughed with the others—it was too dangerous, too risky, to encourage him—but she’d secretly wondered what it must be like to be able to talk like that, so freely, sometimes bluntly about things so private.
No one had ever talked about anything private at Tessa’s house growing up. And anyone who talked too much paid the price.
Which reminded her that someone was dead in the woods. Looks like wolf’s work.
She put the paperwork away, walked out into the bar, and froze.
It was getting to late afternoon. The June sun was still high, but the afternoon drinkers were starting to drift in—a couple of wolves and a couple of bears, including Edgerton Tucker, Police Chief Quinn Tucker’s brother. Edgerton was known to drink too much—bears, unlike wolves, could actually get drunk—so he’d probably need watching. But he seemed cold sober at the moment. In fact, he was turned in his chair, staring at the man who had just walked in.
He was human, a tall and bulky guy of about twenty-five who obviously frequented a gym, wearing jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt. His dark hair was cropped short, and despite the fact that he was the only human customer in a shifter bar in Shifter Falls, he seemed completely unconcerned. His gaze fixed on Tessa and he grinned.
Tessa swallowed down a lump of dread and tried to appear unconcerned. “Scott,” she said. “What do you want here?”
Scott shrugged and held his hands out. “Man, Tessa, you look great. Can we talk?”
Tessa didn’t move from behind the bar. “No.”
“Aw, come on.” He gave her a smile that she couldn’t believe she’d ever thought good-looking, even for a second. “It’s been a while.”
Tessa crossed her arms. “Tell me why you’re here, Scott, or get out.”
Scott looked around. Now two of the wolves were watching, along with Edgerton. It was sometimes useful, Tessa realized, to be surrounded by shifters. “Look, it’s okay,” he said to the other men, a little loudly, as if being a shifter meant they were hard of hearing. “Tessa’s my ex-girlfriend.”
That didn’t appease the shifters; they looked at Tessa, trying to take their cue from her. Tessa realized the shifters could sense her discomfort, probably through their sense of smell, and they didn’t know what to make of it.
She felt a strange pulse of unease in her gut, but pushed it down. She didn’t want a fight in her bar today. “Correct,” she said clearly to Scott. “Ex-girlfriend. And I’m busy.”
“Five minutes,” Scott said, his grin dropping a little. He did look a little desperate. “I just need five minutes to talk to you, that’s all.”
Tessa thought it over. She hadn’t dated Scott for long, and it had ended a year ago. She couldn’t quite remember why she’d gone out with him in the first place. Probably because she’d been lonely, and in need of good sex, which he certainly hadn’t provided. It turned out he spent most of his time smoking pot in his parents’ garage, talking about what a big shot he was going to be someday. A few sessions of that, and some godawful wham-and-bam sex on his parents’ ratty old couch, and Tessa had gotten out.
Story of her life.
In any case, here he was again. She didn’t know why she felt uneasy. Scott had never been threatening. It was daylight, and there were shifters here, including the brother of the chief
of police. If she said no and turned him out, it made it look like she wasn’t over him.
“Fine,” she said tightly. “Five minutes. And then you’re out.”
He grinned again and came up to the bar, where he pulled up a stool. “Have a drink with me.”
“No, thanks. I’m working.”
“Then pour yourself a soda or something. Come on, Tessa. I don’t want to drink alone.”
So she drew him a beer and poured herself a soda water, and reluctantly sat on the stool next to his. “Spill it,” she said.
He looked at her, smiling again, his gaze going up and down. “You look good,” he said. “You really do.”
Oh, gross. No way was she going there again. “Scott. Five minutes.”
He shook his head. “Tessa,” he said. “I just… I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about you. I think you’re the hottest girl I’ve ever dated.”
This was obviously his version of a compliment. “So?” Tessa poked her straw into her glass, making the ice clink. She was sexy; she knew that much. “So what?”
“So, do you think I have a shot at getting you back?”
She blinked at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’ve changed,” Scott said. He raised a hand as if to touch her, but for once he got the message and put his hand down again. “I’m turning my life around. I want to try and deserve you.”
Tessa opened her mouth—she really didn’t know what to say—but one of the wolves had come to the bar with his empty glass, and Amanda, the waitress, was busy at another table. “Hold on,” she said to Scott, and got up to draw the wolf a beer.
“You okay, honey?” the shifter asked in a low voice when she slid his beer to him.
She nodded. “I am, thanks,” she said, wondering why the hell her mother had told her that shifters were no good. They might be half animal, but right now they were more courteous than any human man bothered to be.
And that made her think of Heath again.