Moonlight Journey: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 6)

by K. R. Alexander

  Also, no, for the record, it wasn’t that the tent was difficult to put up. I’d been setting up tents since my teen years and there was nothing to this one. It was the principle of the thing. Even the quick mallet blows for the steaks didn’t rouse them.

  Were they faking?

  I didn’t think so. They’d had some sleep last night, but probably laid awake most of the two nights before, then spent two full days and a night in fur without changing—which seemed to have left them dazed and woozy. I just couldn’t see Jason ignoring me and not running to help if he was awake. Or Kage not taking this opportunity to paw at me while the three of us were alone.

  I was aching all over. I didn’t need him hanging on me. Yet I missed them also. Besides the help with camp, I was lonely to talk to both after a couple days of mostly fur around. Which made me think Andrew needed to change back also. Even Jed had been in skin more lately than him. I’d been hoping to spend some quality time with Isaac this evening as well. Plus Zar. How did one fit them all in?

  “Will he be able to find that collar?” I asked Andrew as he padded up to me, nostrils twitching. “You didn’t fling it up into a tree or something?”

  Andrew cocked his head, eyes lighting up.

  “Think that’s a good idea?” I smiled. “Andrew? Do you want to change? I have your things right here. I know you’ll be out in fur later, but maybe you need a break like the sleeping beauties?”

  Andrew glanced around at them, thirty feet from my smooth tent site. He sat before me, then up on his haunches and crossed his white forepaws.

  “I see… If you changed back you couldn’t beg for food as cutely? I’m sure you’d manage.” I gave him a forkful of my chicken and rice dinner. “You’re only getting that because it’s cold. I’m sure the boiling water approach is a lot more appetizing.”

  Andrew gulped, dropping his paws back to the ground, and cocked his head again.

  “What? You enjoy it cold?”

  He nudged my hand with his nose and I pulled away.

  “That’s enough. I really need it.”

  Andrew, to my shock, growled, nudging the packet, then stepped back, whimpering.

  “What? What’s going on?”

  He paced in a tight, frustrated circle, then nudged my hand and spun around again.

  “You’re going to have to change if it’s so important. I don’t know what you want.”

  Andrew bounded over to the nappers and aggressively pawed Jason’s shoulder. Jason swore at him and mumbled something in Lucannis. Andrew also whined at them and both finally looked up. Jason blinked from Andrew to me at the tent.

  “Did we doze off? Sorry, Cassia…” He frowned. “Did you put that up? We’d have helped.”

  “Andrew is wanting you to translate for him. He’s upset because I don’t understand what he wants.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “Pushing at my hand and stuff. I thought he wanted my dinner, but that’s not it.”

  Jason yawned. “What else?”

  “We were talking about food. I said he couldn’t have more. But I wished it was hot. He got all weird.”

  “Why don’t you heat it up?” Kage asked.

  Andrew gave a sort of barking yap at him, lashing his tail, and dashed back to me.

  “Heat it?” I asked him, incredulous. “Fire ban and not carrying a heavy camp stove and fuel out here in the middle of summer? I can live with a few cold meals. And there’s not an option, so—”

  He gave that bark right in my face and it made me jump—a sharp, piercing sound.

  “No…” Kage also yawned and pushed a hand through Jason’s black hair. “Heat it with energy. Once you’ve put the water in. With magic.”

  Andrew wagged his whole rear end, forepaws dancing in place before me.

  I stared at Kage. Then Andrew. I sank the pouch dinner down between my feet and rested my face in my hands on my drawn up knees.

  Andrew sat beside me, one paw on my arm.

  “What’s wrong?” Kage called.

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I envisioned myself crawling into a hole and pulling the earth in after me so I could sink into it and decompose like other brain-dead individuals. I wanted to cry and curl up and give up and go home. Here I was, supposed to be their silver. And I probably couldn’t find my way out of an open paper bag if my life depended on it.

  “Princess?” Kage sounded concerned then.

  “Just shoot me,” I mumbled.

  I heard them shifting on the grass, turning and maybe Jason climbing off him.

  “What’s up?” Kage asked. “Bad chicken?”

  “It’s fine. I’m a bad witch.”

  “No—” Jason started.

  I sat back. “Yes. I am. I can’t—”

  “Forgot you could heat your own dinner?” Kage asked. “Thought you were working on that? Witchy mindset and all?”

  I didn’t answer, sinking deeper into that hole I’d dug in my mind.

  One of them shuffled over to me—I suppose on his hands and knees. It didn’t sound like anyone walking.

  “Need a magic lesson?” Kage said in my ear. He put his arm around me, which made me think of how weird it was that he had nothing on and the dry sharp grasses and spiders. And he smelled like pine forests and wolf and something dead that he’d probably rolled in—even if it had faded mostly away with the removal of his fur.

  I was not going to sit and wallow in my own ineptitude and stupidity. I was not going to bitch and moan and say I was the worst thing to ever happen to them and I wished they’d found someone better. I’d felt way too sorry for myself and my own failings on this journey. The solution was not to feel guilty for not helping them, or to pummel myself for being too stupid and still too used to not using magic that it had never crossed my mind to magically heat up my dinner. The solution was to learn from another mistake and do better. Wiser, smarter, better for myself, better for them. Enough was enough. It was the middle of August. The blue moon month, a time of self-reflection, a time for change. The solution was to change.

  Because I wasn’t mundane. Not for right now. Not tomorrow. Not forever.

  I never had been mundane. I never would be.

  More importantly, right now, sitting with three shifters in evening sunlight of a Rocky Mountain meadow—with the tools in myself to make my own dinner hot or chill down my own warm bottle of trail water—I did not want to be mundane. Which, more than anything, was the change.

  All such a weird yet banal moment for a life-changing epiphany, the most significant one of my existence, and all so surreal.

  I sat back, rubbing my burning eyes and letting out a breath. “I needed … a lesson. That’s for sure. Thank you, Andrew.”

  He sat before me, paw on my shoe and, to his credit, ignoring the bag of chicken.

  “You also,” I added to Kage.

  He remained beside me, arm around me, nose an inch from my hair. “Want me to do it for you?”

  “I don’t think I can manage a lesson right now.” But I smiled and picked up the bag. I wasn’t hungry anymore. “You all can have it. I just—”

  “You’re fine, princess.” Kage did not take the offered bag. “Deer sees a car coming straight for her and what’s she do?”

  “Do? Freezes?”

  “Right. One of the quickest beasts in Britain and she freezes stiff and waits for it to hit her. Doesn’t mean she’s stupid, or she doesn’t have good instincts the other ninety-nine percent of her life. Now and then, we all see those headlights—forget we’re fast, forget we’re strong, forget we’re smart enough to solve a problem. Every now and then. Not often, not for long, not defining us. Only every now and then.”

  “I know.” I stared at the pouch.

  Kage kissed my temple and leaned his head against mine. “Sound like a big enough disaster to skip dinner? One moment forgetting how sharp you really are?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Magic’s the energy around us. You’re the one who know
s how to harness it.” He pushed the bag back to my knees. “Where’s that magic now?”

  I remembered him asking Jason where his fur was, telling him to change when Jason was delirious. Then the way he talked to the pup Helah about having a bath and the meanness or otherwise of her mother. Then his unflinching stance when he knew he was right—such as us needing to come to America. Then his ambitions that he kept mostly hidden from his pack.

  I sniffed and focused on the bag. “It’s just … fire energy. Find the elements in your mind. Reach out to fire and ask for aid, draw up the magic like a deep breath. Then focus on what you need to heat. Imagine the contents consumed by the fire, invite the fire in, target, keep an eye on your work, then let go as soon as it’s hot enough and you’re done.”

  Kage watched inside the pouch with me until steam was pouring out into the sunlight.

  Andrew eased away. Jason had followed to lie beside Kage, with Kage between us, and also tensed. Kage never moved from me, heads touching, gazing into the bag.

  I gave him a forkful of chicken, waiting a moment for it to cool.

  Kage swallowed it. “Perfect.” He kissed my hair.

  Tears swam in my eyes while I went on eating. I forced them down with dinner—which was utterly transformed by heat, if ridiculously salty. I supposed I needed it after a long day of sweating. The high calories and sodium seemed to be deliberate in these things.

  I sniffed and ate while Kage held onto me, kissing and rubbing my far shoulder with his thumb. I shared the odd bite with him, then Andrew and Jason when Andrew crept back over to me. All in all, I only ate half the meal myself, but it was all I could manage anyway.

  Not moping, not feeling sorry for myself. Going to do better. That was the thing. Right now, right here, in this moon, this was my world. Better. Learn. A good lesson.

  I kissed Kage and gave Andrew the empty bag to lick out.

  Kage slipped his other arm around me while Andrew held the pouch down with his forepaws to rip open the side.

  “Kage?” I spoke into his mouth between kisses. “We have to go to Portland.”

  “How long’s it take to walk from here?”

  “Not on our hiking trip. I mean, while we’re here in this country.”

  “Get your school notebooks?” Kage moved to my throat—his favorite.

  “Yes. And … personal matters to attend to.”

  “Going to admit to that school that they’ve got to find someone else before it’s too late? That you’re not coming?”

  I pulled away and he looked into my eyes. So was Jason from behind him.

  Andrew looked up from his bag polishing, licking his nose and cocking his head as he too waited for the answer.

  “I…” I blinked, tears in my eyes again, yet for reasons too complex to simply name an emotion to go along with them. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  Kage cupped my jaw in his palm, his hazel eyes suddenly serious. “What’s wrong? Still don’t want to?”

  “No, I do want to. But I … I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  “No…” He kissed me, then rested his forehead against mine. “You’re just now figuring it out.”

  Chapter 15

  A bit of a make-out session with Kage was aborted when he realized I was still in a fragile condition. Then I sat quietly for a long time with my head against his shoulder, Jason and Andrew dozing beside us.

  The sun was dipping below mountains and I was preparing my bed in the tent, all three of the others napping by it, when I heard a wolf trotting up. I slipped back outside to find Jed returning alone.

  “Everything okay?”

  He wagged his tail.

  “You didn’t knock your brother into a bear cave and run back here for more brushing?”

  Jed ignored me, going straight to my bag to sniff it over.

  I gave him his wool ball, then went around collecting our other things to put inside or against the tent for the night. Jed followed while I did this and I threw the ball for him to fetch. He was good at the game now, rarely teasing me by dropping it only to pounce when I reached for it.

  Andrew lifted his head from his paws to watch Jed running past after the ball but he didn’t get up to intervene. Jason, totally out again, curled up with Kage on the grass, didn’t even seem to have noticed yet that his collar was missing.

  Jason and Jed weren’t the only ones with something they cared about out here. In organizing our things in the backpacks and Malamute sacks before bed, I found a little plastic figure of a dingo from a pocket of Andrew’s cargo pants in one of the sacks. I’d seen that figure before in his bedroom on a shelf. I slipped it back in the pocket and rerolled his wadded up pants.

  Using the torn open chicken bag, I offered both Andrew and Jed water, then put away the wool ball—now staying in my own backpack—lit a flashlight inside the tent so the whole thing glowed like a blue beacon in the failing light, and sat at the tent mouth to brush Jed while we waited for the others.

  He sat with his eyes shut, occasionally turning a different side to me without prompting. He kept putting his nose in my hair, usually at the back of my neck, and I had to nudge him away or have trouble reaching him with the brush. After some silent back and forth about this positioning, I noticed Andrew watching us, chin still on his paws.

  There was something sly about his look that made me uneasy.

  Putting his head over her back?

  It’s contextual.

  Hadn’t he said one of the contexts was a sexual overture?

  Jed and I needed to have a talk about skin versus fur behavior when dealing with a worm. But how? When? What was I supposed to say that wouldn’t be either not getting the point across or terribly hurtful to him?

  We already had a communication problem. I was beginning to see it was far worse than I’d realized.

  I was relieved when Zar and Isaac came trotting back in the gloom. Less so when Zar stopped at sight of his brother, who sat with his head thrown back while I brushed his throat.

  “Learn anything? Anyone need to change and talk?”

  At my voice, Kage and Jason sat up, blinking around at the gloom. Kage yawned and stretched his arms over his head. Jason rubbed his own neck.

  Neither Zar nor Isaac seemed troubled.

  “If you don’t have anything to report, why don’t we all get some rest and you can go out as you want to around camp again tonight? If bears come to visit … someone wake me, okay?”

  Jed was pawing the brush in my hand since I’d stopped.

  “Cassia?” Jason said. “Have you seen my collar?” He’d noticed my having cleaned up with everything around the tent.

  “Last I saw it was heading south in the jaws of a red wolf.”

  Jason frowned at him. Andrew thumped his tail and yawned in Jason’s face.

  “I’m going to bed,” I said. “Look out for each other out here. Whatever that bear is, there’s something weird about it being here.”

  Before I could retire into the tent, however, Zar was there in my face, touching my hand with his nose and wagging his tail.

  I’d meant to brush him.

  Jed growled at him barging in.

  “Shhh. This is not just for you, Jed.” I repeated, pulling fur from the brush to give Zar a turn while he almost sat in my lap. “Just a minute, okay? I need bed—and no brushing in the tent. My sleeping back already looks like it was left in a grooming parlor.”

  “Hey,” Kage said irritably. “Who saved you from frostbite last night? If you didn’t want us in there you could have said so.”

  I sighed. “I’m grateful for some company. You’re right. I’d be too cold up here alone. That’s why you all need to stay in fur at night.”

  “Expect everything, don’t you?” Kage was still grumbling, though speaking under his breath. Also shivering. “Perfect, climate-controlled bed warmers, stay in fur, no shedding, everything just so—”

  Jed rested his chin on my shoulder while I brushed Zar and Zar stiffened. His eyes
darted sideways without moving his head—a quick, cutting look.

  “Jed,” I said quietly. “Will you back off? Zar gets a minute also.”

  Instead, Jed nosed the back of my neck. Zar was rigid, ignoring the brush.

  “All right, that’s enough. I’m going to—”

  I’d barely moved back from them when Zar moved much faster.

  Silent, never a growl, kicking off the hard earth and over me with all four paws, he timed the speed and precision of his strike like a snake. Jed, face turned away in my hair, never even saw him.

  Zar’s teeth slammed the base of Jed’s jaw, the lower canine teeth against his throat and windpipe where the fur was still short, while Zar’s upper teeth dug in below his ear. His jaws thus locked on the side of Jed’s head and throat, with Jed leaping back, twisting and snarling to return the attack, powerless to reach him.

  Jed snapped air as the fight exploded past me, Zar remaining dead silent, his teeth locked like a bulldog, making no effort to shift his grip or do anything at all but bite down and drag Jed over with all his perhaps hundred and twenty or thirty pounds hanging onto his brother’s face.

  In a flash Jed was spinning, snarling, snapping and raking at Zar with paws, making not the slightest difference.

  Isaac lifted his head and watched, ten feet away. Andrew sat up. So did Jason and Kage, themselves ready to change and get their warm fur back on, but watching with interest from beside the tent first.

  I didn’t move as Jed spun and struggled to break the grip, forearm over Zar’s face, fighting to drag him away, stumbling in a circle on three legs. Jed contorted his neck with great effort and still could do no more than snap into tips of Zar’s fur. He drove down, trying for a bite into Zar’s limbs instead. Zar was automatically ahead of him, merely moving around and around with him like the proverbial carrot on the stick that Jed could never quite reach.