by Anya Nowlan
The one thing she still hoped and prayed for was that Marcus could really connect with his shifter side. She’d been patiently waiting for that primal part of him to wake up and demand dominance, with Austin reassuring her that he had no doubt it would happen if he roamed free and got his “forest legs” under him, but still, there was no sign that would lead Dahlia to believe that Marcus was truly following in his father’s footsteps.
Give him time, she reminded herself.
“Looking good out there!” she yelled to Austin and Marcus, grinning as she got a quick wave and a smile back from Marcus.
She got up from the swing and went inside to make some hot tea for the hardworking men in her lives.
A girl can really get used to this, she thought, adding some sugar into the drinks to sweeten it up.
Dahlia grabbed a tray of mugs and sauntered out with them, carefully balancing the tray as she made her way across the cold ground, her feet tucked in some warm boots.
“Thought you two could use a drink. Careful, it’s hot,” she said, letting both of them grab a mug.
Steam rose from their mouths as both Austin and Marcus took a sip. Marcus was breathing heavily, a healthy glow on his face and one foot on the heavy stump they’d been using. He looked… content. And that was an emotion she had very rarely felt about her petulant son. She shared a quick look with Austin, who gave her a reassuring wink.
They still hadn’t told Marcus that there was anything going on between them. Every day she found a new and perfectly reasonable excuse as to why she couldn’t do it yet, and every day it sounded perfectly feasible if she did say so herself. And Austin humored her, being the patient guy he was, but with time running out, Dahlia knew that she didn’t have that many chances anymore.
Standing there in the chilly October afternoon, with the sun already threatening to set, she felt at peace. Not only because Austin was standing next to her, giving her strength and inner calm, but because the one person she loved the most in this world seemed happy as well—her son. So it came as no surprise to her when she decided to spill the words and see where the chips fell, hoping for the best.
Dahlia put down the tray and decisively took Austin’s hand in hers. He was holding the steaming mug of tea with his other hand and a slight confused frown crossed over his expression, only to be turned into a guarded grin.
“Mom?” Marcus asked, surprised.
Since he had spent so much time out of the house, Dahlia had had no trouble sneaking around a bit with Austin over the past few days. But she was tired of hiding her happiness. She knew that if Marcus would let her then she could explain everything to him, especially the fact that no one could ever replace his father, but there was room in their lives for more love. And she wanted badly to get it out before it was too late—for her and Austin, for Marcus and her in Idaho, for damn near everything.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you this, Marcus,” she started, taking a deep breath. “You know I haven’t been together with anyone since your father died. But Austin and I, we’ve been thinking about giving things a chance between us.”
“What kind of a chance?” Marcus asked, his eyes narrowing as he glanced from Dahlia to Austin and back again.
“To see where things between her and I could go, Marcus. I know no one could take your father’s place, but I think you and your mother could be happy here in Shifter Grove. And I’d sure love to have both of you here,” Austin offered, keeping his voice level.
He squeezed Dahlia’s hand and she smiled mildly, grateful for the support. But Marcus looked like someone stabbed him in the back and left him bleeding, his face getting pale and his eyes sparking with anger. For a second, she thought she saw something deep yellow flash between his gray eyes, but it was gone as fast as she’d noticed it.
“So that’s why you brought me here into this goddamn brush in the middle of nowhere? So you could shack up with some has-been from Texas?! Screw that. Screw you! Both of you!” he hissed, spilling words of anger and bitterness. “I’m not going to stay here!” he said, turning around before Austin could grab his shoulder and taking off at a dead run, covering the ground with such ease and speed like Dahlia had never seen in him.
“Marcus! Marcus, come back here! Give me a chance to explain!” she called, running after him.
But he was too damn fast. Austin caught up to Dahlia and stopped her at the edge of the yard. Marcus had already disappeared into the think underbrush and only the rustling of leaves marked that he was still running somewhere out of sight.
“Well, that could have gone better,” Austin remarked with his trademark drawl, his face looking hard and on edge.
“You think?!” Dahlia said, exasperated. “Sorry, I’m just… I hoped he would at least give me a chance to explain. I thought now was a good time.”
“I don’t think there could have been a better time, no matter how carefully you picked it. I’ll go after him. Can you call Slate and the rest of the boys and let them know that we have a teenager on the run and he doesn’t know the area half as well as he thinks he does? I don’t want him to get lost in the dark. The numbers are in the kitchen,” Austin said, slipping his hand around Dahlia’s shoulders and giving her a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry, hon, I’ll find him. And we’ll talk to him... give him all the time he needs and all the explanations he needs, okay?”
Dahlia nodded weakly, fearing her knees might go out from underneath her. What she had feared the most was happening and she was powerless to stop it. Those tears she had been swallowing for years now when dealing with all the stuff that happened with Marcus came flooding back now, making her eyes water.
“I’ll go make the calls. Please let me know as soon as you find him. Shouldn’t I come with you?” she asked, frantic.
“No, someone needs to be here when he comes back. I’ll go.” Austin kissed her on the forehead and turned around, facing the forest into which Marcus disappeared.
He took a few languid steps and within that short time, his body started twisting and changing before Dahlia’s very eyes. Those broad shoulders and narrow hips she so loved tightened and warped, growing leaner and more streamlined. The powerful, bulging muscles contracted into themselves, packing clearly indented lines on the mountain lion’s body. Soft, tawny hairs covered him, creating a luxurious pelt. His long tail hovered above the ground, the white tip flicking slightly left and right as he perked up his ears, listening.
When Austin leapt into the forest, nails tearing at the ground, it made no sound. He was the perfect predator, not leaving any sign that he had ever stood there at all. Dahlia watched him disappear into the oncoming darkness, holding her breath without noticing that she was doing so.
God, let them both be all right, she prayed silently.
Dahlia ran into the house and picked up the phone in the kitchen, starting the process of calling the phone tree. Austin’s contacts were supposed to be Argo and Cooper, the wolves who had recently moved to Shifter Grove. She got their wife Claire and quickly described the situation. All the while, her mind was racing, trying to figure out where Marcus could have gone. When an idea sparked midway through her conversation with Claire, she couldn’t wait to put it into motion.
Chewing on her lower lip after her call with Claire, she dialed up Slate’s number. Austin had told her to stay put, true, but she was a mother with a child who had run off somewhere and she couldn’t simply wait around! She dialed another number on the phone.
“Slate! I need your help.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Austin
Austin huffed in the scents of the forest with big, heaving breaths as he stalked forward. His lean, powerful body carried him through the brush effortlessly, his gait never wavering, not even when crossing fallen trees or ditches. Every muscle, every sense was honed to the task and he was stalking down his prey, bit by bit.
It was dark now, the sun having set a few hours ago. They were well into the night and it was pitch
black and cold around Austin. The only times that the dark green woods were illuminated were when Austin stepped into clearings, the light of the full moon bathing him.
His mountain lion was getting restless. By all accounts, he should have found the boy in less than an hour, the scent trail being so fresh and Marcus having almost no lead on him. But within a couple hundred yards, Marcus’s scent changed and warped. It kept throwing Austin off his track, making him double back and recheck every once in a while and pick up a new underlying current he had mistaken for something else.
He thought he knew what it was, what it meant. But that wouldn’t help him at the moment. There was an angry, probably scared, boy lost somewhere amidst the Idaho woods and mountains and it was his job to bring him home safe. So that was all that really mattered.
Austin reached the edge of the woods that had started from his backyard and sprawled carelessly in every direction for miles and miles. He stood on the very border where the forest tucked into itself, mouth slightly open and pink tongue showing, heaving in breaths and trying to determine what direction to go to. He had hoped Marcus would stay in the forest. It was cold outside and the woods would allow for more warmth than the open areas. What made him really worry were the deep gorges that this forest snaked around, and the mountains rising on either side.
There were plenty of options of becoming so lost that Marcus couldn’t find his way back, or having an accident in the dark. The trail Austin had been following now led clearly out of the thick, healthy forest though, so he followed. There was a tang to his scent, something far beyond normal human sweat and fear. It was somehow grittier and the way it changed as the distance grew was more than a little bit problematic.
Within a few minutes, Austin found himself padding across the edges of a deep, rocky valley. Loose stones ripped and rolled down the cliff to the right of him, but his footing was sure. The trouble was, the smell was now coming from somewhere below and even his keen eyes couldn’t spy a way to get down without taking a plunge and hoping for the best.
Austin let out a snarl, an agitated, throaty sound, as he prowled onward until reaching the point where the mountainside and valley met in a strict, cavernous fall. It was straight down from there, but at least here he could spot a few outcroppings along the way that could provide footing for a mountain lion. It was undoubtedly too little for a human, though, but the smell was strong here.
Austin fell back on his haunches, quieting himself. He listened intently, inhaling the scent as if it would tell him all he needed to know. Somewhere below, he could hear the slightest of sounds, a yowl of sorts. That settled it. With one look to the seemingly endless fall, Austin got up and started the treacherous descent along the cliff wall, searching for footing and finding it as only a mountain lion could. He was half-expecting to find goats along the way, scaling the same path.
As he moved lower slowly, the little yowls and yelps became stronger and louder, but also intermingled with the heavy breathing of a stressed person every now and then. The scent was maddeningly strong now and sometimes, he could note little hints of what he knew as Marcus’s smell as well. He was not too far by the time he heard the unmistakable, heavy buzzing noise of a helicopter approaching.
Looking up, Austin made out the form of Slate’s approaching helicopter clearly enough, aided by the stark beam of light it cast in front of it.
Dahlia… he thought with an internal smile.
Of course she wouldn’t stay home. Leave it to a mother to find solutions when her baby was in danger.
The helicopter drew nearer as Austin continued with measured steps. At one point, there was nowhere else to go that he could see, and he stopped, waiting for the helicopter to get closer. He let out a call, a growling yelp, testing if the owner of the noises heard him. Sure enough, a similar sound welcomed him.
It was only when the helicopter found Austin, sticking to the wall like he was damn near levitating, that he could really tell what was happening. Marcus was flattened against the wall, his hands looking for support where there was none, on a ledge half as wide as Austin’s. But it took no effort to understand how he got there. Right before Austin’s eyes, and those of Dahlia’s and Slate’s, Marcus’s body contorted and twisted uncontrollably, tawny tufts appearing bit by bit and his already skinny body elongating even more until he stood as a juvenile mountain lion, precariously finding his feet. Marcus didn’t have anywhere to go either.
Judging the situation, Austin could only see one way out. The boy had little control over his shifted state, marked by the fact that he changed again a minute later, heavy sobs making his chest rise and fall. Austin had to help before it was too late. He couldn’t call the helicopter closer, because the wind from the blades might knock them both off the cliff—something that Slate had clearly understood and he remained at a reasonable distance.
Austin let the shift take him, trying his damnedest to find a spot on the wall that would at least give him some footing. He was large as a mountain lion, yes, but there was a lot more grace to him as the big cat than as a Texas cowboy. He held his breath as the shift took him, smushing his big body against the wall as close as he could. Marcus was watching him now with tear-streaked eyes, obviously having been there and scared senseless for a while now. His clothes were in tatters around him, the signs of an inexperienced shifter. Austin was too far to reach his hand to him.
Austin’s foot almost slipped as he turned and he laid his palms flat against the wall, hooking them into the tiny crevices to keep him in one place.
“Marcus, you okay?” he called, raising his voice so he could be heard over the whir of the helicopter.
“Do I look okay?! I can’t make it stop,” he sobbed.
The air was tense and Marcus kept glancing around himself, as if expecting a single limb or something to change without control. It happened to juvenile shifters, especially when they were learning their powers. Most started changing earlier, so it was easier for them to get accustomed to it. But others needed a traumatic experience, like this one, to really unlock that beast within them. Now, everything made perfect sense. Marcus hadn’t gotten far from the house before the sudden feelings of betrayal and anger finally let him tap into that shifter power within him, which was why his scent kept changing and why he could run so far so fast.
It must have only been when he fell into the gorge that the human side started battling with the big cat, leaving him stranded on that tiny ledge.
“Marcus, listen to me,” Austin said evenly, trying to coax the boy to look at him. “Listen!” he barked, finally getting Marcus to turn his whole attention to him. “I know how it feels. You think you’re not in control of anything, and that your body is fighting against you. And you’re angry at me and your mother. All of that is fine. But you have to realize that this is the first time in your life that you truly are in control of yourself. Of all of you.”
He let that sink in for a moment. Pebbles loosened and rolled down the cliff underneath Austin’s feet. He didn’t have much time. One wrong move and either one of them could end up flattened on the rocky floor below.
“You’ve been keeping this side of you locked away all your life. Today, you found the way to unleash it, to welcome the primal side of you. I know you feel like you can’t contain it, like it’s controlling you more than you are controlling it, but if you focus, you can harness it. Just calm yourself down. Take a deep breath. In and out with me,” Austin instructed, keeping his hazel eyes intently on Marcus.
With his coaching, they started taking deep breaths, all the while being nearly blinded by the light of the helicopter. But Austin was damn grateful to Dahlia for figuring out that Marcus could come to the mountains that he had been to with Slate—a place where he’d had fun—and had found them. The light was invaluable at that moment.
Slowly but surely, Marcus’s body relaxed until those wavers and twitches of an oncoming uncontrollable shift were contained. Some clarity arrived in his gray eyes and Austin coul
d afford a little smile, though he was teetering on the very brink of possible death, clinging to the cliff like that. Well, both of them were.
“Okay. Now, I need you to shift knowingly. Only way we’re getting out of here right now is if you follow my lead and jump to this ledge after I get off of it. I can’t come to you; there’s not enough room there. But you can follow me up. You’re small and strong and these jumps should be no problem for you,” Austin said, building the boy up.
They couldn’t wait for someone to come and get them with climbing equipment, though Austin had no doubt Slate had already radioed into Shifter Grove with the news. A stray gust of wind could wipe them both off the mountainside and Austin did not have the luxury of time.
“I can’t,” Marcus said, his voice trembling.
“Yes, you can. You are your father’s son. Like him, you can control your animal. Your mother taught you to be strong even without him around. Now’s the time to use it. Besides, if we get out of here, you can be as damn angry at me as you want. You don’t want to pass up on that opportunity,” he said, drawing a quick chuckle out of the boy. Small victories were still victories.
“Try,” Austin urged. “Close your eyes and go into that place that you felt when you were in shifted form. Let it take you. And stay in it, don’t struggle against it. Okay? I’ll be right here.”
There was doubt in Marcus’s eyes, but Austin was glad to see that he was considering it. Nodding slowly, Marcus closed his eyes and took a deep breath like Austin had shown him before, and a moment later, the shift claimed him. He was small and skinny for a mountain lion, attributed to his youth at the moment, with some spots still in his coat, but it was obvious that he was going to be a great big beast one day. Probably bigger than Austin himself.