by Lia Bevans
“Do you want a ribbon?”
He smirked. “Can I try Door Number Two?”
“You probably won’t like what’s behind there.”
“I’m intrigued. What will I get if I decide on that door?” He put his other hand on the table until he was leaning toward her while she stood back as far as she could go. Eyes shifting completely to green, Blaez surveyed her—not like a criminal to his superior, but like a man at a woman.
Her wolf stirred, knocking the breath straight out of her lungs.
What the hell...?
Before she could figure out the bizarre reaction, her door tore open and Terry flew inside. Her eyes snapped to Chantal’s and she heaved the words out on a frantic breath, “The hospital just called. One of the kids that visited the farm this morning is missing.”
“What?” Chantal rounded the desk. “Which one?”
“Connor.”
A picture of the bright-eyed eight-year-old burst into mind. Connor was one of the first patients she’d met through her program. He and the shifters simply... connected. It was like magic. The dogs revived him, gave him something to smile about. His gentleness and care in turn warmed the hearts of those who came into contact with him.
Connor was a sweet child. Why would he run away from the hospital?
“Apparently, he was released into hospice care two weeks ago. He was severely depressed and the hospital suggested that he join his friends from the ward on the trip today. His parents can’t find him. They asked if we could check to see if Connor returned to the farm on his own.”
“No, no, no.” Chantal started running. “It’s dangerous if he tries to walk the trail alone. He could get lost.”
“Go.” Terry nodded. “I’ll hold down the fort here and get the others to start searching.”
Her heart squeezed painfully. Her housemates wouldn’t be much help, especially since most of them had lost their advanced abilities already. She had to do this on her own, and fast, before Connor hurt himself.
Suddenly, Chantal felt someone grab her hand and tug her firmly. She glanced up, letting out a little breath of surprise when she noticed Blaez in front of her. She hadn’t even heard him following her outside.
“I’ll take you,” he said, pointing to a fancy convertible across the street.
Chantal jutted her chin down once and let him escort her to his car. Right now, all that mattered was finding Connor safe and sound. She’d berate Blaez for hauling her around later.
BLAEZ WATCHED AS CHANTAL tapped her tennis shoes against the floor mats and stared out the window. Her profile was striking, her face dainty and innocent compared to the generous curves of a body that promised a good time. Her lips pointed down and her fingers tipped her cell phone around and around.
“You mind telling me where we’re going? I don’t mind driving blind, but I’ll run out of gas eventually.” Now was not the moment to crack a joke, but he was uncomfortable with the silence. And, of course, he needed to be pointed in at least a general direction.
She turned around, blinking at him as if she had forgotten he was even in the car. Blaez figured he could forgive her this once since she seemed very upset. Whatever the crisis was about, it was enough to snatch the fire from Chantal’s eyes and replace it with genuine fear.
“You okay?”
She blew out a breath. “I’m fine.”
Chantal gave him directions in a quiet, worried voice. He swerved the car around and headed out of city limits. Silence reigned in the cab. He fed off Chantal’s concern. He was a jerk, Blaez would admit that in a heartbeat, but he wasn’t cruel.
A kid was in danger. Not just any kid. One with a terminal illness. He leaned over the steering wheel and eyed the darkening sky. The faster they got to him, the better.
“Maybe we should call search and rescue,” he mused, realizing they wouldn’t reach her place before dark.
“We can’t.” She massaged her forehead. “There are shifters on my property. They’re older. They can’t control their transformation like we can. It’s too dangerous. Besides, there might be a chance Connor’s not on the farm. His parents have no idea where he really is.”
Blaez kept his thoughts to himself. Chantal spoke like someone living in a pack. She had people to protect. Not even a human boy in danger could break her loyalty. Blaez couldn’t relate. Outside of his brother, there was no one he really cared about to the point that he would risk anything for them.
At least, not anymore.
Thirty minutes later, his headlamps shone on two large wooden gates. Darkness shrouded the bush growing on either side of the dirt path and the moon crept above the treetops in the distance. He turned to ask Chantal to open the gate when he saw an empty chair and the passenger door swinging open.
“What the...?”
Blaez glanced out his windshield and spotted a figure on four paws wiggling through the slats of the gate and disappearing from sight. That woman... Blaez fumbled with his seatbelt until it snapped away and leapt from his car.
Shifting came as naturally as taking his next breath. One minute, he was running on two legs, the next he was pounding the earth on four. Every sensation was heightened—his eyes pierced the shadows with ease, his paws measured the subtle movements of the earth, his nose scouted the air.
Blaez shook his coat and headed in the direction he’d seen Chantal go before she was swallowed up by the darkness. Her scent caught his attention, and he headed deeper into the woods.
Trees sprouted from a steep incline, growing closer and closer together until he felt like he was twisting around and beneath laser beams instead of trunks and branches. The path had to be a shortcut to wherever Chantal suspected the child had ended up because Blaez couldn’t imagine any human trying to use this route for sightseeing.
At last his head freed the final twisted tree limb and he found himself atop a rock ledge overlooking the valley of trees below. The wind blew into his face, pushing his fur back and chasing Chantal’s scent. He huffed, prancing forward in the hopes of recapturing the lead.
A howl pierced the air, shattering the songs of the toads and cicadas. The fur on his neck stood to attention and Blaez knew that Chantal had found the child. The desperation in that howl, however, whispered bad tidings.
Perhaps this rescue would not have a happy ending.
Blaez sprinted down the ledge and stumbled upon a break in the tight cluster of bushes. The moonlight fought past the treetops to spotlight two figures sprawled on a bed of fallen leaves. Chantal—in wolf form—licked at the face of a pale little boy.
He tiptoed closer, scanning the child’s small body. His eyes were closed and his head was bald save for scraggly patches of thin blonde hair. He wore a blue T-shirt with the picture of a dog on the front and brown khakis. On closer inspection, Blaez realized he was shivering.
Chantal’s head whipped up. Her gaze shifted to his. He could read her thoughts as if she’d barked aloud.
Connor wasn’t going to make it.
A fire lit in her brown eyes as if he had cursed her by agreeing the boy was in danger. She sprang forward and curved her body around Connor’s small frame, warming him with herself. Her brown eyes glowed, teetering on the edge of frenzy.
Blaez watched her with the child. A memory of his own mother surfaced, riding on the tense air. His sides heaved as he pushed the thought away. Now wasn’t the time to dwell on his sob story. Connor needed help. Human help.
He debated racing back to the car for his cellphone. It was kind of hard to haul a phone around when he had paws instead of hands. He took a step back, his nails rasping the dried leaves all around, when he heard it.
Chantal let out a small moan and hopped to her feet, her tail thwacking the ground. She bent over the child and tipped his chin up with her nose. Blaez trotted beside her and looked down. Connor’s body had ceased all movement. He was still. Deathly still. The moonlight cast a silvery sheen on his waxy skin.
Sorrow washed over him. Connor
was somebody’s son. Somebody’s brother. What if this was Caldon? His heart thumped painfully at the thought.
Blaez bowed his head and hung his tail in a sign of mourning when Chantal let out another low, tortured groan. He glanced over to comfort her, but she was no longer beside him. She was doing something to the boy. Something that would change his life forever.
CHAPTER THREE
PAIN. IT FLASHED IN her eyes, in her paws, in her heart. She was the reason Connor had laid there, cold and alone, waiting for someone to save him. It was her selfishness that rejected Blaez’s suggestion that they call search and rescue. She’d chosen to protect her secret over protecting an innocent little boy.
Agony shuddered through her spine, tunneling her vision until Connor’s body was all she could see. He was so frail, his muscles ravaged not just by his sickness but by months and months spent lying on a hospital bed.
Behind those closed eyelids, his eyes were blue. Like the sea. Like the sky. Open up, Connor. Look at me. Tiny hands fell limp in response, crashing against the leaves that crackled from the slight touch. His body surrendered to death. She could hear his heartbeat slow.
He was an angel in the moonlight. An angel prepared to make his way to heaven. And there was nothing she could do. Nothing...
There is.
But there wasn’t much time.
Moving on autopilot, Chantal bit her leg with enough force to draw blood and limped to Connor. Nudging him up with her snout until he was slightly sitting, she bent down and let her blood drip into his thinly parted mouth.
She’d only gotten three drops in when someone rammed into her side. Chantal went flying. A whimper tore from her throat when her back slammed into a tree. The trunk shuddered with enough force to rain leaves down on her head.
Blaez stomped toward her, green eyes glowing furiously. Chantal picked herself up and shook her coat, chasing the pain from her limbs. She didn’t have time for this. Once Connor’s heart stopped beating completely, she could not revive him with her blood.
She whipped her chin to the left and growled, “Move.”
Blaez planted his feet on the ground and lifted his head in a stance that said, “Make me.”
Panic blossomed in her throat, but she channeled that nervous energy into movement and charged across the clearing. Blaez stood frozen, waiting until she drew near. When they were only two feet apart, he leapt into motion.
His wolf was large, powerful. A thick silver coat covered his body. He was bred to live somewhere cold. She took note of it and then threw the observation to the back of her mind. Didn’t matter to her. All that mattered was Connor.
Chantal raised her arm to swat Blaez aside, claws glinting in the moonlight. He ducked to avoid her paw and threw his weight against her, knocking her into the ground. Without leaving a second for her to squirm away, he locked his paws on either side of her body, caging her in.
The powerful wolf held her gaze as he pinned her down, giving her a look one would expect a principal to land on a tardy student. She narrowed her eyes and kept on fighting, snapping her jaws to bite him. Blaez backed out of harm’s way and then chucked the sensitive skin beneath her jaw in chastisement.
At the brush of his nose against her body, dread and anxiety gave way to something else. Something she had never felt before. The clearing fell into silence, a hush broken only by their mingling breaths. Chantal stiffened, horrified at the reality of losing her focus because of Blaez’s touch.
Connor was dying.
She had to remember that.
“Mom?” A voice croaked behind them. Blaez turned his head to stare at Connor. Chantal used that opportunity to knock him off her. He tumbled into the leaves, but a moment later scrambled up and followed her to Connor’s side.
The little boy rubbed his eyes and struggled to sit. Relief melted her heart at the sight of him alive and breathing. The deathly pallor of his skin slinked away, leaving a much healthier glow in its place. She felt like whooping in victory, but two things held her back.
The first was Blaez. He kept staring at Connor in horror as if a tiny eight-year-old human had become a zombie.
The second was Connor. Like a newborn pup, he was blind and sensitive to light and sound. The quieter they were, the better for him.
“Mom? Why can’t I see? Mom, everything’s so dark.”
Chantal stepped forward to comfort him when the thrum of feet crashing through the woods caught her attention. She spun to survey the sound. Blaez did as well, ears pointed and alert. She caught a whiff of Evie’s scent and relaxed.
Help had arrived.
Flashlights danced in the distance and a moment later, a woman and six dogs crashed into the clearing. Chantal wagged her tail at Evie, the woman leading the pack. Her dark brown skin blended into the shadows. Thick white hair puffed up around her head like a halo.
Evie took one look at the crying boy and jumped into action. “Connor? Are you okay, chile?”
“My eyes.” He sniffed and waved his arms in front of him. “They’re not working.”
Evie flashed a look at Chantal who glanced away. The woman grunted, a sound promising that Chantal would be duly questioned later. For now, she took control and swung Connor into her arms.
“Your parents are looking everywhere for you. I’ll take you to them while Ms. Chantal gets ready to go with us.” The words were more of a warning to her than an assurance for Connor. Chantal nodded and joined the dogs who sniffed her curiously.
“I’ll explain later,” she said in a low bark.
They let her walk beside them in peace. There would be plenty of time for their interrogation later. Now that Connor was safe and sound, Chantal had a whole host of explaining to do. The dogs cast her worried glances. They all knew the punishment for what she had done.
She lifted her head and pranced cheerfully. If she thought about anything beyond this moment, she’d start shaking in fear. At the end of the day, she had saved someone’s life. Connor was alive. She could live with the consequences.
BLAEZ WAS STILL IN shock over what Chantal had done. He’d left his pack and lived as a lone wolf for nearly ten years and even he understood that she had broken the shifter’s most sacred code tonight. The ramifications were endless, the ripple effects reaching the most obscure were-person.
A human was dead.
Now he was alive.
Because of her blood.
Blaez stood frozen as the clearing came alive with the bop of flashlights and the thud of paws on the forest floor. A tall black woman with the scent of a shifter emerged from the clearing, scooped Connor into her arms and disappeared the way she had come, taking Chantal with her.
By the time Blaez had come to his senses, the group had already covered a significant amount of ground. He figured Chantal would take care of the child and sprinted in the opposite direction to his car where he shifted in the shadows of the night.
His claws scraped the earth. In his mind, he pictured the wolf legs fading. The thought became reality as human hands and feet dug into the dirt. He pushed himself up. Blaez was confident in his unclothed body, but figured Connor and his parents wouldn’t appreciate seeing him walking around butt-naked.
Quickly, he plucked his clothes from the ground and slipped them on. After pushing back the gate, Blaez drove his car up the winding path to an old farmhouse. It was large and statuesque, giving off a regal air despite being carved from wood and bearing the tattling hue of old grey paint.
The house was ten times more appealing than Chantal’s building in the warehouse district. Flowers sprouted in the bushes lining the front yard’s gravel path and ivy wound its way up the spindly posts sprouting from the verandah railings.
A warm, golden porch light cast upon his head, inviting him forward. Blaez vaulted from his car and took the steps two at a time. Without waiting a beat, he tore the front door open and jogged inside, stopping short when he saw the most horrifying trio of saggy buttocks he’d ever witnessed in his life.
“Who goes there?” An old man spun, pinning dark blue eyes on him. A balding head clashed with a full and thriving moustache. “Wait... I recognize you. Weren’t you the one with Chantal and Connor tonight?”
Blaez coughed and trained his gaze to the ceiling. So much... sagging... “I was. Is Chantal here?”
“No.” A new voice answered. He glanced at the owner of the second naked behind. She was short and round with eyes that were so dark they were almost black. Her pink lips flattened into a thin line as she surveyed him. “Why do you want to know?”
“I’m sorry for barging in like this.” Blaez rubbed the back of his head. “Maybe I should come back another time.”
“Don’t go!” A second woman, chest jiggling, waltzed up to him and placed a liver-spotted hand on his shoulder. Blaez did his best to contain his shiver while she stuffed her wrinkly face in his space. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen a fine-looking man around here.”
“What am I?” The old guy who’d greeted him frowned so hard three square brackets appeared in his forehead. “Chopped liver?”
“Shut up, Ralph.” The woman with the dark eyes snapped. “And Cecil, give the boy some breathing room. You’re going to give him nightmares.”
“You’re just jealous, Mae Ling.” Cecil winked at him and placed a slender hand on her hip, drawing attention to the stretched skin on her stomach. “I may look like this now, but I used to be quite the femme fatale in my day.”
The short woman grabbed a nearby blanket and threw it over Cecil bony shoulders. She flicked him a look that said ‘can you believe her?’ and apologized. “We don’t get many handsome visitors. Please forgive us.”
Ralph threw his hands up in exasperation. “Again. I’m standing right here.”
“Shut up, Ralph,” both women said.
Blaez shook his head. “It’s my fault for walking in without knocking.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I should catch up with Chantal in case she needs my help.”