by Kian Rhodes
The
Long-Eared
Easter Enigma
An Omega Auction Chronicles Holiday Short Story
By
Kian Rhodes
Nom de Plume Publications, LLC
PO Box 31506
Aurora, CO 80041
www.NDPPublications.com
ISBN: 978-1-945854-88-0
All content including, but not limited to, characters and situations are the intellectual property of the author and may not be used in any way without prior written approval.
Copyright © 2019 All Rights Reserved
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
Prologue
Antoine
“You’re doing what now?”
Quinn and I had never really gotten to know each other that well, but with so many of the other rescued Omegas having found mates and moved away from the Coruscation lands – and the ones who remained being caught up in other things – he was one of the few Omegas that I still ran into on a fairly regular basis. After all, he’d married a local and was still in school.
Regardless, he was suddenly staring at me in either shock or amazement. I really wasn’t sure which.
“I’m going back to Sharon Hill,” I repeated with a laugh. “To get to know the Sheriff.”
“That’s what I thought you said,” Quinn acknowledged, his head still cocked in confusion. “But you’re already on the waiting list for the police academy, aren’t you?”
I nodded, fighting the urge to roll my eyes.
“Okay, so why do you want to go hang out with the cops?”
“Not cops,” I corrected. “Cop, singular. Sheriff, technically. And the man was freaking gorgeous! I nearly popped off in my pants just looking at him!” I swallowed a laugh at Quinn’s groan. “Whaat? TMI?”
“Very much so,” Quinn agreed, his cheeks staining red.
“Sorry.” I shrugged. “Will you feel better if I tell you I’m mainly going to see Lee?”
“Are you?” Quinn narrowed his eyes suspiciously, making me laugh.
“Of course I am,” I assured him, mentally crossing my fingers. I mean, everyone knew that the minute Lee and Alexi had found out they were having a baby, they’d gone into full-on canoodle mode. Why on earth would I want to be a third wheel for that?
“And the cop?”
“Well, if I happen to run into him..” I trailed off with a laugh when Quinn shuddered. “Anyhoo,” I nodded to the bag at my feet. “I should get going. You’ll water my plants?” I brought the conversation back to the safe ground we’d started on.
“Sure.” Quin was still looking at me uncertainly. “How are you getting there?”
“Oh, uh, I rented a car. I just need a ride into town to pick it up.”
Quinn started. “Who rents cars to Omegas?”
I forced myself to laugh. “Not by myself, silly.” I thought fast. “Clint signed off on the rental agreement.” With a little bit of luck, it wouldn’t occur to Quinn to take my tale to the werewolf Alpha.
“Oh, of course.” Quinn relaxed visibly. “That makes sense.”
I nodded, breathing a sigh of relief. “The plants?”
“Of course, no problem,” Quinn finally agreed. “Tell Lee and his Alpha I said hi.”
“Of course,” I agreed quickly, snatching up my bag. “I better get going. Thanks!”
I headed for the packhouse, hoping Quinn would assume that Clint or Trevor was taking me to get my rental car. When I saw him duck into the library from the corner of my eye, I veered to the right and darted into the protection of the tree line. Then, in the cover of the shadows, I hoisted the strap of my bag over my shoulder and began the long walk into town.
“Is something wrong?” I tried to speak confidently as the woman behind the rental car counter stared at my fake driver’s license with suspicious eyes. She was human – I’d specifically chosen a location in the predominately human section of town – so I knew she couldn’t tell by my scent that I wasn’t the Alpha that my ID claimed. Even if she could have, I was pretty sure the Alpha’s Cloud pheromone spray I’d doused myself with in the bushes before walking in would have overridden my natural scent.
“I guess not,” she finally said, a sour note in her voice. “It matches the state database. The card just looks strange, I guess.”
I held back my relieved sigh. “Does it? It has been run through the wash a few times,” I said, forcing a laugh. “That’s probably why.”
“I guess.” She shoved her black plastic glasses up higher on her nose and handed me the card back before sliding a set of keys across the counter. “Thank you for your business, Alpha Coruscate.”
I grinned, reassured that my masquerade had worked, and slid the keys into my pocket. Ten minutes later, I was rolling down the road with the radio blaring and the chilly spring wind blowing in my hair.
Literally, since I’d decided to go all out and rent a convertible.
I’d been driving for nearly two hours when the radio announcer broke into the music for the evening traffic and news update. I listened with half an ear to the political updates and then tuned out the traffic report entirely. After all, I was already off the main roads and hadn’t seen another car in twenty minutes or more, but the words weather alert pulled my attention back to what he was saying.
Those dark clouds brewing are definitely harbingers of bad things, the metallic voice boomed out from the speakers. Current weather models are calling for upwards of twelve inches of snow before midnight, with another twelve anticipated before the storm moves on. This is going to be a bad night for anyone to be out in the storm, man or beast.
The radio man continued to prattle on, warning listeners to bring their pets in from the cold, but I turned my attention upward.
True, there was a huge bank of black clouds building in the western sky, but other than the chill in the air, it was a beautiful day. I shook off the warning and punched the dials on the radio until the air was filled with the beginning strains of a popular country song.
After all, weather forecasting is far from an exact science. Everyone knows that, right?
Keeson
“Sheriff?”
“Yes, Louise?” I looked up from the small stack of incident reports I’d spent most of the afternoon focused on and smiled at the polite young woman who was standing nervously in my doorway, chewing her lip. “Did you need something?”
She raised her left hand and I saw that she was gingerly clutching the small, battery-operated weather radio that had collected dust in the window sill since my father was Sheriff.
“There’s a severe weather alert out for our area,” she said softly. “What..should I do something?”
Interest twitched inside me. It wasn’t exactly unusual for there to be the risk of spring storms in our small valley, but there hadn’t been any mention of it in the morning weather report. And that was unusual.
“Really? What are they saying?”
“Um, extreme temperature drop and a couple feet of snow.” She was frowning. “And high winds with possible whiteout conditions.”
“Wow.” I swiveled my chair to look out the window, but, other than a few clouds, all I could see was blue sky. “You’re sure it's for today?”
Louise’s neat black ponytail bobbed quickly. “They said it is moving in fast and the snow should start in an hour.”
Well, okay then.
“Give me a few minutes to throw together an alert and then we’ll key up the notification system.” I could tell by the way her brow relaxed that Louise was relieved at my decision. She nodded again and scampered out of my office, presumably preparing the seldom-used database that would fire off public service notices to the local television and radio station.
“R911, too?” Louise called back, confirming my suspicion.
I considered it for a minute and then shrugged to myself. We’d only had the reverse 911 system for a little over a year, so we might as well get some use out of it. “Sure. Better safe than sorry.”
When I sat down at the microphone to record the brief statement five minutes later, I was surprised to see that the sky was already darkening. If I’d been harboring a secret fear that we were overreacting – and I definitely was – it was promptly dispelled at the violet shade I could see in the building clouds.
“There was no mention of tornados?” I questioned, just to be sure.
Louise shook her head. “No. Just high winds.”
“Okay.” I cleared my throat and held up my index finger, indicating that I was ready to begin recording. “Good afternoon. This is Sheriff Caraway. I am interrupting your regularly scheduled programming to bring you a severe weather alert.”
Chapter One
Antoine
It didn’t take long, maybe another hour of driving up the steep hills, for me to regret having ignored the radio announcer. And it wasn’t the snow he’d stressed that had me sweating. The occasional chilly breeze that I’d enjoyed so much when I’d lowered the convertible top had picked up, increasing in both strength and frequency until it became a howling mass of violence, threatening to wrestle control of the small sports car from me.
I was gripping the steering wheel in both hands, my knuckles white from the amount of force it was taking to keep control, when a fat white snowflake drifted down and landed on the tip of my nose.
“Oh, Gods no,” I groaned out loud as another large flake was whipped into my eye by the wind, the sting temporarily blinding me. I groped at the dashboard, trying desperately to find the button that would bring the canvas roof out of its clever hiding place in the trunk, but it was futile.
“Okay, Antoine,” I muttered, forcing myself to take slow, even breaths. “You can do this. All you need to do is find a spot to pull over.”
Slowing to a near crawl as I continued up the hill, I stared through the flakes being driven toward me at breakneck speed, but visibility was so poor that I couldn’t even see the hood of the car, much less the sides of the road.
Twin lights appeared in front of me with a suddenness that made me gasp. A horn blared, making me cringe as the noise assaulted my sensitive ears. I said a silent prayer and tried to move the car to the right, hoping it left enough room on the left for the oncoming truck.
When he blasted past me, the air trapped between our vehicles squealed and, unsure what to do, I slammed on my brakes.
That was not the best idea.
Not even close.
As slow as the car was moving, it was still fast enough to spin out at the sudden deceleration. I was sliding rapidly, spinning in a tight circle that absurdly reminded me of an ice dancer pirouetting. There was a brief instant where time seemed to stand still just before the car left the road, tumbling down the side of the mountain into the sheet of white.
Although it rolled several times, the car, thankfully, came to a rest more or less upright. It took me a bit to make sense of my surroundings, but, when I did, I realize that airbags had deployed from nearly every surface.
The snow was still landing on my head, but now it was light and gentle, and the punishing winds seemed to be gone. Still, with the airbags cocooning me, I couldn’t move enough even to attempt to see why. I forced myself to take several calming breaths – after all, no good ever comes from panicking – and then I thought back to my brief stint in the scouts when I was small.
“Check for injuries before moving a victim,” I repeated out loud, visualizing the emergency first-aid page in the book with what I would realize later was amazing accuracy.
Starting with my toes, I tensed and released each muscle group, hoping that that would be enough to alert me to broken bones, since I didn’t have much range of motion. By the time I’d worked my way through all of my body zones, I was fairly sure that, other than a broken wrist and a possible concussion, I only had cuts and bruises.
Relieved, I focused on my non-injured hand and worked on calling out my claws. Since I am more comfortable in human form than lupine, I’m not as skilled as most of the shifters I know and it took much longer than I’d be proud to admit.
Still, once my claws finally poked free, they snagged the nearest airbag, causing it to deflate rapidly. The weight on my chest eased and I was finally able to gulp in huge lungfuls of frigid air. From there, it was a simple matter to pop the remaining airbags, one by one, until the white I was staring at was snow piling on the hood of the car.
The seat belt release was jammed – of course it is, I scoffed to myself in annoyance – so I slashed through the stretched webbing with a claw as well. Wiping the melting snow off the dash of the instrument panel, I poked the roof up button and waited.
Nothing.
I poked it again, holding it down for longer this time.
Still nothing.
Crap.
“Find shelter and keep warm,” I said out loud.
Obviously, without a closing roof, the car wasn’t going to meet either of those needs. Careful not to jostle my injured wrist, I lifted myself up a little, trying to get a look at my surroundings.
The sky was dark, but I couldn’t be sure if it was the hour or simply the clouds. There was light of some sort reflecting off the blanket of snow, so the entire valley was lit despite the dark sky.
The car had landed in a copse of large pine trees – that explained the lack of wind and the lighter snow – but other than the tracks the rolling car made on the mountainside, there was nothing else to see, and even those deep ruts were rapidly filling with snow.
Options being what they were, I had to admit I wasn’t in a great place.
The first step to saving myself was obviously going to be shifting. My wolf had a warm, waterproof coat, a higher than human body temperature, and would heal faster than my human self.
Even though I’d acknowledged that to myself, I hesitated. Normally, climbing up the side of the mountain, even in a snowstorm, wouldn’t really be much of a challenge. An injured front leg, though, could be a serious threat. If I lost my balance and fell as I was climbing to the road, I could hurt myself worse.
Then there was the potential for a head injury. The only thing I could remember about a concussion was that you weren’t supposed to sleep. Without knowing how badly I was injured, how long did I need to stay awake?
That was the moment that the radio suddenly chose to squawk. “This is Sheriff Caraway. The extreme weather warning issued earlier is being expanded to a full travel advisory. All roads are closed until further notice. Stay inside and out of danger.”
I slumped back in my seat and groaned. “Now you tell me!”
“Well, we’ve been issuing warnings for the last few hours. You could have heeded one of those,” a slightly irritated sounding male voice shot back from behind me, making me jump.
I howled in pain when my wrist impacted the door frame.
“Shit! You’re hurt?” The
irritation immediately dropped, and warm compassion took its place. “Just your arm? Or anywhere else?”
I turned to look at my rescuer and my jaw dropped, leaving me gasping for an answer. The very man I’d set out to seduce was knee-deep in snow on the other side of the car door and, from the way his eyes widened when they met mine, he was just as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
Cha
pter Two
Keeson
The initial weather alert that Louise intercepted had warned of up to two feet of snow over the coming forty-eight hours. Even with the potential for white-out conditions, it still wasn’t anything that the residents of our mountain valley community weren’t used to, and, really, I wasn’t all that concerned.
Hell, I’d agreed to send out the emergency alerts and reverse 911 calls out of what I would have grinned and classified as an abundance of caution if my junior deputy hadn’t seemed so worried. You know, the same thing that most of the townsfolk would have called an overreaction.
When the snow finally started to fall, it quickly became very clear that this spring storm was going to be much worse than predicted.
Much, much worse.
Very possibly even one for the record books.
I hesitated to leave when my night shift deputies arrived. Granted, between the three of them, they had a combined total of thirty-two years on patrol, but, still, it didn’t seem right to leave them alone to respond to the inevitable car-off-the-road calls.
“Go already,” the oldest of the three, Pete, laughed, shaking the snow out of his grizzled hair. “I drove past the garage on the way in and Jack’s got all three tow trucks warming up. We’ll throw the chains on the four- bys and we’ll be fine.”
“I already chained’em up,” I admitted with a laugh. “And made sure they each had two tow straps in the job boxes. They’re all ready to go.”
“Great.” Ralph yawned, ambling over to pour a cup of coffee. “Any action so far?”
I shook my head. “Not really, but you know it’s going to be if the snow gets much deeper.” I glanced over at the row of empty holding cells. “Maybe I should just bunk down here for a few hours so I don’t get snowed in.”