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

by K. R. Alexander

  Even in my own fear and shock at the explosion, I could see in thirty seconds what was happening—and that Zar had already won. Jed would fight and fight, though. He wouldn’t back down. He wouldn’t concede that Zar had put one over on him and beat him. He would fight until he was exhausted and possibly do horrific damage to his throat and jaw in the process.

  I thought of the magic I’d used to break up fights before. For what? So they could wait until they were out of sight of me, and Jed would jump Zar? In a normal face to face, Jed outweighed him by so much—and surely could out fight him by so much—Zar wouldn’t have a chance. Which, of course, was why I’d never heard of Zar picking a fight with his brother. But, if he was going to, he knew how. Zar simply outthought him.

  Zar had won. But how many minutes would it take for him to actually wear Jed out and drive him to the ground?

  Myself shaken as the two wolves stumbled around in a vicious circle, churning up dust in the gloom, I went to them. I channeled a glow into my hands to catch their attention so Jed wouldn’t bite me as I reached down to Zar’s neck.

  Jed snarled at the light, cowering back, but of course unable to get away.

  Zar shut his eyes tight, teeth still locked in his brother’s throat and face, ears flat, ready for retribution to be showered upon him, yet never slacking his grip.

  I slipped my arms around Zar’s neck and held onto him on my knees, whispering to him.

  “It’s okay. Shhh… It’s okay, Zar. That’s enough.” I stroked his head, and Jed’s, the light gone from my hands, one arm still around Zar’s neck. “Shhh, Jed, it’s over. Go on.”

  Jed stumbled, trying to pull back, forearm still across Zar’s shoulders but no longer snarling, eyes wide.

  I lifted his paw and pushed it back to him.

  “Let him go, Zar. It’s over.” I kissed the top of Zar’s head. “Let go, please. Jed’s going to walk away. It’s okay.”

  Zar let go.

  Jed crouched back from us, ears flat, growling softly.

  Zar drew back his lips, mouth open, to show all his teeth in a silent gape. Like giving him the finger, it seemed to me.

  Jed skulked away into the gloom of the forest, tail and head down.

  “Thank you, Zar.” I stroked his face, smoothing his ruffled fur, his wet whiskers, then let go. “I’m going to bed.”

  Chapter 16

  I’d needed to reach a certain level of exhaustion out here to be able to sleep. I found it that night. After the first hour of my mind playing over what I’d learned that evening from shifters about my own magic and myself, I fell asleep with my face in the fur of Zar’s ruff. Isaac lay along my back.

  I dreamed of school: classrooms, teaching, walking in on my first day. Then I stepped through a classroom door, eager and nervous, and found myself stepping out into the stars.

  The Milky Way stretched around me. Tiny meteors drifted past, the stars glowed dazzlingly. There was the Earth and Mars, moon and sun.

  And there, perched on a puff of stardust, sat Nana.

  My eyes filled with tears as I spotted her.

  It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.

  You haven’t looked, she answered serenely, admiring Venus.

  Everything has changed, I said.

  You mean life is happening.

  Yes. I suppose so. Why am I here?

  A little reminder. She tipped back her face, savoring the glow of the universe around her. What you can accomplish, what you are, what you are capable of, is limited by … what?

  Limited by my own perceptions. I looked around to infinity.

  So what went wrong? She glanced at me.

  I lost … who I really was for who I wanted to become. I was afraid of the horrible things that happened to you and Mother because you are casters. I thought I could spare myself and future family that suffering if I wasn’t a witch at all. If I was someone else—someone … simpler.

  What do you think now?

  I think … that was yesterday. But I can’t dwell on me right now. I’m trying to save people I love and their families. We need to find shaman shifters. My scrying has been attacked. I don’t know how. What should I do?

  Use your strengths, Cassia. You’ll find everything you need every time you do.

  Then you do think I should use magic to try to find them?

  That’s up to you. Is magic one of your strengths?

  To which I simply stood there, mute, as the dust rolled around and the scene began to fade. Then I knew, and shouted before it was too late.

  Yes! Magic is one of my strengths!

  Nana smiled as she drifted away on her star dust.

  I woke to a tent gray with dawn and sat up in the sleeping bag.

  Zar and Isaac raised their heads.

  “The bears didn’t come?”

  They glanced to the tent mouth and to me.

  Tracks by moonlight, the compass, the western meadowlark.

  I shut my eyes and saw the bird singing from a post of a barbed wire cattle fence, a coyote jogging along the fence, below a splendid purple mountain range. I saw a grizzly watching us from the forest in the dark—two, three, four of them. I saw a fire and many people gathered around. I saw tracks along a riverbank, tracks of every major North American predator still alive today, then a flood of elk through a great valley and a herd of bison grazing in the shadow of a mountain.

  “Let’s go,” I said softly, opening my eyes. “We’re starting back. We’ll make a loop and hopefully pick up more trails. That bear was a shifter. Maybe he’ll talk and maybe he won’t. We’ll head on to Wyoming, one way or another. That’s where that bird is.” I looked up to the tent flap, partly open. “Jed?”

  A dark blob on the outside of the tent detached itself as the wolf got up. A moment later, he poked his head in.

  “Watch for the bears. We need a word if we can. Don’t worry about trying to find them, though, if they don’t want to be found. We’re going to Yellowstone.”

  Chapter 17

  The grizzly bears followed us southwest that day while we hiked through deserted valleys and over rocky ridges without official trails—where we were not supposed to be, but I followed my pack.

  Even I felt them watching. The pack stayed close. Isaac in skin beside me with the backpack, Zar hovering. Jed trotted back and forth, sniffing after them, then returning when I called him. Every time any of us stopped or started back toward them, the bears were gone.

  “Come on.” I rubbed Zar’s ear, watching back through the last valley as Jed padded after us. “If they have something to say, they will.”

  When we found a stream plunging down the slopes, amounting to a real waterfall in places, we took a long break: Andrew, Jason, and Kage playing in the water, running up and down the more level parts, snapping at falling whitewater sprays; the rest of us still inclined to look back.

  “How did you know they were shifters?” Isaac asked as we stood at the water’s edge, our backs to the stream.

  “A little bird told me, I suppose.”

  He talked to the apparently empty spruce forest: saying why we were here, who we were looking for, and that we were going to Wyoming, but it would be a help if they might care to talk to us first.

  They wouldn’t come out.

  Again, Jed slipped into the forest. I let him go, but I glanced at Zar and removed his Malamute sack. Zar followed.

  I turned to Isaac with a shrug. “Just shy?”

  He rested his hands on my shoulders and kissed my forehead. “All we can do is ask, arä. Lunch?”

  “Yes. And I think I’ll wash my hair.” I smiled past him to the little waterfall.

  “Need help?” His green eyes held most of his smile, merely brushing his lips.

  “We’ll have an audience. But maybe you could fill water bottles for us? The tablets are in your backpack. Although I can’t imagine I need them for water like this. Have you eaten anything since the bighorn sheep?”

  “The what?”

&
nbsp; “The bighorn? By the pond?”

  “Was that what it was? No, but don’t worry about us. We might turn something up this evening. And by tomorrow evening we’ll be on the road again, in a world of hamburgers and barbecue.”

  I looked into his eyes for a moment before remembering to say what I was thinking instead of sidestepping. “I miss you. I enjoy spending time with all of you. Sometimes I wish we had a bit more … one on one.”

  “The next night we spend in a town—tomorrow—may I take you to dinner?”

  “I’d love that.” I stood on my toes, kissed him, wrapped my hands around his neck for a moment. “But probably not. We’ll have to see where we are and what’s happening with everyone else.”

  Isaac returned the kiss before I pulled away.

  “Now … water.”

  There was no great relief today to pull off my backpack. I’d used the magic energy of air to support itself and simply wrap around my shoulders to keep it guided in the right direction. No more trouble than having a dish towel draped around my shoulders. It was tiring, keeping mindful of the energy, but not as tiring as carrying a heavy backpack.

  Speaking of which, I called Jason over to remove the other Malamute sack—I still hadn’t been able to catch Andrew to get him to wear one. Maybe Isaac would help. We needed a plan.

  The sack was wet. I rested it on sunbaked rocks with my own things while Jason went back to water snapping. I stripped off shoes and socks, then shirt until I was in nothing but jeans and bra. Standing in the icy water with my tiny carry-on shampoo, soap, washcloth, and a microfiber travel towel close at hand, was freezing, but well worth it.

  Isaac filled water bottles from the same shower above me and Jason bounded over to put his head in the downpour with me. I held my hand flat into the spray to aim jets of water for him that he snapped and jumped after.

  Hair and an upper body sponge bath before fresh sunscreen and deodorant were not perfect, but still a blessing after two nights on the ground and three days sweating up and down these mountains in blistering sun.

  I had just rinsed out the washcloth and my hair when I heard a yelp and Jason looked around. Half blind with water and hair in my face, I turned to see Isaac had jumped from the rocks just above me and tackled Andrew, whom he had pinned in the red earth, churning up dust clouds.

  Isaac rocked back on his heels, one arm around Andrew’s neck in a strangle hold, the other around his ribs while Andrew thrashed like a landed fish. In Andrew’s teeth was my blue microfiber towel.

  Jason jumped from the stream to them and snatched the towel from Andrew’s jaws.

  “Wait, hold onto him!” Slipping on the stones, I hurried across to the other bank to grab a Malamute sack and rush it back to Isaac and Andrew. Returning, I ran into Kage and had to grab his neck, walloping him on the side with the sack as I caught him to keep my balance.

  I stumbled past him, taking the towel from Jason to wipe my face and hurry to Isaac and Andrew before the latter could get away. The rocks hurt my already achy and now bare feet, but they were still mostly numb from the water and a small price to pay.

  Andrew struggled as he saw me coming with the sack. He yelped and screamed as if Isaac was skinning him, snapped at Isaac’s face, clawed and twisted in a desperate scramble for freedom, and finally knocked Isaac over in his battle for liberty.

  I also fell upon him, pulling the chest strap down over his head. “I told you to change today if you didn’t want a turn with the dog packs. Goddess, Andrew, you’re being—”

  Andrew screamed much like the coyotes we’d been hearing in the distance. I wrestled the next strap around his ribs, just behind his elbows.

  “Maybe if your lust for evil deeds hadn’t sent you to steal from me just now you wouldn’t be in this situation.”

  With Isaac still clinging on with the tenacity of a bull rider, I finally got the third buckle in place around the last ribs, and stepped back, gasping, dust turning to mud in my hair and skin.

  The little red wolf stumbled from Isaac and fell, as if crushed by an elephant in that bag, flat in rocks and dirt, ribs heaving.

  “That looks very classy on you. I’m sure you’ll get used to it.” I turned back for a second sponge bath.

  The other two wolves stood there, watching appreciatively, wagging their tails, panting, Jason still with my towel in his jaws. He had his prong collar back on today. I had no idea how that had come about.

  I snatched it from him and returned to the shower. “Thank you.”

  Five more minutes and I really did use the towel, mud mostly washed away, bra liberally sprayed, but jeans just damp, the cuffs rolled well above my ankles.

  I toweled and turned to check on the victim, again bumping into Kage, who’d been right behind me on the bank. He licked water from my skin.

  “Andrew, please. Don’t you think you’re overreacting? If that is genuinely hurting you, you could have changed and worn the backpack. But you didn’t want to change. And you haven’t even given that a try. You’re the only one who hasn’t worn it.”

  Andrew had not stirred. Exactly where he’d fallen from Isaac’s hold, he looked like roadkill.

  I sighed.

  Kage was nibbling the hem of my bra. His whiskers tickled my skin, but I was far more concerned about him hurting the material since it was the only one I’d brought for the hike.

  I pushed his face away with the towel and wrapped it around my hair before crossing back to our bags on the other side. Isaac had the water bottles in neat rows and was fixing my lunch: peanut butter, banana, honey sandwich, chips, and beef jerky. He sampled none of it himself until I encouraged him to have a peanut butter sandwich as well since I had plenty to last one more night of trail before we’d be back to the van.

  Jason and Kage joined us then, Kage still licking my bare skin until he was distracted by licking at the spoonful of peanut butter I gave him.

  “Andrew?” I sat on a rock, taking in the sun to dry hair and bra, feet back in the water, while the four of us munched peanut butter in various forms. “I’ll give you lunch.”

  For the first time, he lifted his head from the dirt. He looked at me, ears flat, eyes miserable, deeply wounded.

  “Come on. I know you’re strong and have as good stamina as the rest or I wouldn’t ask you to carry a sack. It’s only for the afternoon. Then maybe you’ll change tomorrow for the last stretch? How long have you been in fur now?”

  Andrew sniffed and dragged himself along the ground. Crawling on his belly and side, mashing the side of the bag into dust, he crept about five feet, almost to the stream’s edge, then lay gasping once more, inert and wiped out by his efforts to get that far.

  “Okay.” I sighed again. “My mistake. I suppose we really should have brought a Malamute with us. Kage, do not hurt that strap. Leave me alone.”

  Kage was over his peanut butter tongue trauma and seemed to think he could nibble my bra off like a rodent and I wouldn’t notice.

  I finished lunch, sharing more with all besides Andrew, who never made it any closer. Then brushing my hair and teeth and redressing—with Isaac’s help and a foot massage that greatly irritated Kage, though not enough that he changed or did anything useful himself—before the bear scouts returned.

  It was Zar who changed and dressed before we moved on. He told me they were picking up five or six of them now, all keeping away when the wolves tried to follow.

  “Why are they treating us like this?” Zar asked miserably, watching the spruce forest. “If they were hostile about us being in their territory, that’s one thing. But … what’s this? Watch and retreat? If they don’t want to talk, why follow us? And, if they do, why not come out?”

  “I doubt they’ve ever seen anything like us.” I rested my sunhat on my damp hair. “Maybe they do want to talk, or maybe they just want us gone, but they’re not sure what to do about it. I’m still glad we found them. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but hopefully they heard our message. If they’re in co
ntact with any other shifters, maybe they’ll spread the word.”

  “Perhaps shaman shifters will find us?”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  Jed and Zar had a long drink, then the six of us crossed the stream to continue, following Kage and Jason’s lead back in a southeastern direction for the trail. With downhill trails ahead, I hoped we could be back at the van by tomorrow afternoon and be in Wyoming by tomorrow night.

  Kage wore the other Malamute sack and no one made any comment about Andrew as we past him.

  It was a rocky, dry stretch, often exposed in the glaring sun, with white dots of mountain goats in the distance and a couple of snake sightings which greatly interested and startled the wolves. A place which bears, it seemed, no longer followed.

  Zar, Isaac, and I talked about them, wondered about them, as we climbed, descended, and occasionally looked back through the long, blistering afternoon. I was totally breathless again, but they seemed to be holding up better.

  The conversation had turned to the altitude when Jed alerted ahead of us and we stopped.

  Kage and Jason had long been out of sight and I hadn’t spotted Andrew for hours—not since we’d left the body by the stream. Jed, though, pricked his ears, sniffed the breeze, and his hackles slowly rose as he looked into the sandy, rocky ridge up to our left.

  Isaac touched my shoulder, moving with me as he eased me toward the spruces rather than the rocks, all the time looking up to them. Zar followed with his back to us, watching the ridge, stepping slowly and carefully.

  “Bears?” I whispered.

  Isaac shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Jed trotted ahead for the spot where the ridge sank toward the rough ground we’d been walking along, apparently looking for a way to get up there and check it out.

  Isaac and Zar stiffened and, this time, I heard something also: a yowling, growling cry. Not a wolf. Not a bear.

  I knew what that sound was and I had just opened my mouth to yell at Jed to come back here and stay out of its way when a long, sleek, tawny mountain lion sprang from the ridge and straight into him.

  Chapter 18