by Keri Hudson
Caleb was hurt in the struggle, but not badly. In his lupine form, the wounds would heal in a matter of a few minutes, so he didn’t shift back. There was little more to do than turn to Jonathan. There was no disguising the truth of his nature at that point, and Jonathan seemed to be revealing his own true nature—a scared little man in way over his head.
Jonathan held his hands out as if they might hold Caleb back from an attack, and Caleb let him go on thinking that. All the better, he thought, that this normalo get a better understanding of how weak and craven he really is. Rape Abigail? Abuse that poor kid? No, not anymore.
There was still much to learn about what was really going on at Armstrong House, and Caleb knew he’d only discover it in his human form, but there was much to be gained by retaining his lupine form.
“Okay, look, I… um, I… whatever you want, okay?” Jonathan’s voice quivered with his new humility. “I… I admit I was… attracted to Abigail, sure, who wouldn’t be? And, y’know, she never told me she didn’t like me in that way, but… I see how things are now, with you two, so… it’s fine, it’s… it’s fine.”
Caleb couldn’t deny enjoying seeing the great man cower, and he let him go on cowering for his own good and for Caleb’s pleasure.
“I won’t hurt her, I… I never would have, but… look, you can stay in the house if you want, take one of the rooms… next to hers, if you want. It’s fine with me. And… y’know, you’ll eat with us, meals, it’s fine.”
Caleb growled and stepped forward, mostly to test his fast-healing wounds, but also to drive the point home to the so-called Master Armstrong.
“Maybe… maybe we should talk about a promotion,” Jonathan offered, urgency in his tone. “Groundskeeper? For a man like you? No, you… you should be my head of security, you’re practically that already! And… y’know, a big raise too, of course.”
Caleb snarled, feeling that his injuries were sufficiently healed. He shifted back into his human form, standing naked in front of Jonathan. Jonathan nervously pulled off his hunting jacket and handed it to Caleb, who nodded his thanks and put it on.
“Let’s get back to the house,” Caleb said. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Caleb showered and changed and met with Jonathan and Abigail in the living room. Daniel already knew about Caleb’s true nature, and so did Edith, but there were things about his father, and his mother, that neither Daniel, Abigail, nor Caleb knew yet.
But Caleb wanted to know, he felt he needed to know in order to get to the bottom of his brother’s fate.
“You went to Europe,” Caleb said, believing then that it was true. Jonathan gave no sign that he was a shifter, so the theory that he was lurking around didn’t hold much water unless he was just playing possum. Caleb noted it as possible, but not likely. But he seemed to know something, and to be hiding something too. “To find your wife.”
“That’s right,” Jonathan said, clearly uncomfortable in his own easy chair.
“And you did.”
“No, she… she and her lover disappeared, I never caught up with them.”
“Then your return was a coincidence?”
“No, Edith here told me about your brother, and I decided it was time to come back, check you out. No reason to stay there, I didn’t think.”
It seemed reasonable, but something about it stuck in the back of Caleb’s brain.
Or maybe you did catch up with her, Caleb didn’t say. Maybe you found her in Milan or Paris, with her lover, and killed them both.
But unlike himself and his brother, Caleb knew that some people were actually what they appeared, and the man before him didn’t seem to be much more than a pompous ass who’d finally been deflated. That only decreased his suspects list by one.
“All right,” Caleb said, “let’s review. There’s an ursine shifter in the area, killed my brother. Those bears today, the coywolves, there just here to kill me, probably were attracted to the area by my brother. It’s their natural impulse to kill us if they can, so there’s nothing surprising there. We drew them, but something drew my brother; has to be the ursine.”
Jonathan repeated, “Ursine?”
“Bear shifter,” Caleb said, “as opposed to a wolf shifter, like me, a lupine. But the ursine was drawn here first.”
“Maybe it just lived here, but he got all riled up with your brother in town.”
Caleb nodded and he gave it some thought. “Possible.”
Jonathan went on, “So maybe if you leave, the thing won’t have any… any shifters to be pissy about and it’ll just… do whatever they do. What do they do, by the way?”
Caleb wondered how much the two were prepared to hear. “There’s been tension between the two for centuries, as long as any of us can remember. The ursines think we lupines want to rule the world, and honestly, some of us do. Not me, not Carl, but some are… ambitious. The ursines consider themselves protectors of the human race. And, in a certain way, they are; they keep the lupine population in line, maintain the balance.”
“Sounds like you’re the bad guys,” Jonathan said.
Caleb huffed a little chuckle. “Good guys, bad buys, you sound like Daniel. The world is filled with complex individuals, Jonathan. I’d hoped that was something you’d have learned by now.” Jonathan nodded, humble and awkward. Caleb went on, “But this particular ursine, brought here… my brother was no threat to the normalos, no threat even to the ursine if it’d had a choice, I imagine. But this one… it’s overly aggressive, it killed my brother. This one has to be put down.”
Jonathan nodded. “All right, I understand that. But… how? It could be anybody, couldn’t it?”
“Whoever it is,” Caleb said, “it’ll want to kill me. So I’m the best bait. But I’ve been here over a week and he hasn’t bit yet.”
“We’re not… we don’t socialize,” Jonathan said. “I suppose that’s my fault. I drove my wife away, made my son a… a dimwit—”
“Daniel’s not a dimwit,” Abigail said, “not at all!”
“She’s right,” Caleb was quick to agree. “The boy’s hiding in his shell, and you’re a bad father.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.”
Abigail held her hands out between them. “Gentlemen, please, we… we have a real problem here.”
“She’s right. And I still think if the ursine was just lying low, my brother would never have been brought here. There’s something else here drawing it.” He turned to Abigail. “Abigail, I have to ask you…”
She seemed to give it some thought, eyes suddenly wide. “Not me, Caleb, I already told you! I’m a… what do you call us, normal-os?”
“Nor-mah-lows,” Caleb corrected her. “It’s just a… a nickname, shorthand.”
That brought Caleb back to Jonathan, who said, “What about Edith, or maybe… Lulu?”
Caleb shook his head. “Possible. They’ve been around a while. How long have these attacks been going on?”
“They haven’t been,” Jonathan said. “Things only got ugly when I left Armstrong House, to find my wife.”
Caleb nodded. “Because they saw an in,” he said. “But that would mean the ursine would have been afraid… of you, and that there was something here the ursine wanted to kill.”
“Or…” Jonathan glanced at Abigail. “Do these things interbreed with humans?”
“We do,” Caleb said. “But she’s not the only young woman in the area. To think some ursine has a… a crush on Abigail here—”
Jonathan asked, “Why not? You did.”
Caleb couldn’t argue the point, but it didn’t bring them any closer to identifying the ursine.
“Maybe I should just leave,” Abigail said. “Then there won’t be any danger to Daniel, at least. If one of these things wants me so bad…”
“No, Abigail,” Caleb said, “you’re staying right here; we both are until this thing is taken care of.”
Jonathan
said, “May I remind you whose house you’re in?”
“You may do as you wish, but she stays here.”
The two men stared each other down, the tension thickening around them. Finally Abigail said, “Well, if we’re all going to face this together, shouldn’t we… y’know, stick together?”
After a long, tense pause, Caleb said, “She’s right. We have to pool our resources, join forces. And once that thing is no longer a threat, well, we’ll see what happens then.”
“Yes, we will, young man,” Jonathan said. “Yes, we will.”
****
But the next day brought no attack, only a bright spring day. Although he was no longer the groundskeeper and had moved into the big house, Caleb was still happy to take Daniel for a ride on the big mower, to the boy’s cackling delight. But Caleb couldn’t help but see Jonathan standing in the third-floor window, watching him interact with his boy. Caleb could chalk that up to any number of things. The man clearly had no connection to the boy, and Caleb obviously did. That had to be irksome to the great man. Caleb had won the heart of the pretty young woman whom the old man craved; he had the admiration of the boy, which his father clearly desired but could not win. And, of course, Caleb was a shifter, which meant the so-called master of Armstrong House could no longer truly consider himself that, unless he meant to make himself Caleb’s master as well.
That would figure, Caleb thought. What would I be to a man like that other than another big dog, to be trained and used to guard his home, to be fed and rewarded and punished as necessary?
I don’t think so.
After the ride on the mower, Daniel was fed his lunch of a chicken salad sandwich, potato chips, a small salad, and lemonade. Edith brought sandwiches for Abigail and Caleb too, but he wasn’t hungry. They sat at a table in the backyard, a cool breeze wafting over the yard.
“You’re worried,” Abigail said.
Caleb nodded, but Daniel said, “You killed the bears, you said.”
“No, we injured the bears, pretty badly too. It’s… it’s not them that I’m worried about.”
Daniel shrugged. “Then what?”
But Caleb could hardly tell the boy that he was worried about his father’s integrity, about what plans the man might be making and what plans he might have made. “Well, Daniel, there’s more than one bear out there.”
Abigail said, “Could Edith or Lulu be this… this other shifter?”
Caleb had given it some thought. Neither was around when the big ursine struck that Caleb could recall.
“No,” Caleb reasoned out, “they’d have attracted its attention long before these attacks began. They started when he left, but… he’d be no deterrent to a lupine shifter, never mind an ursine. And honestly, had Edith or Lulu been a shifter, either one would have joined the fight with my brother. Two lupines could take an ursine, maybe. Why wait it out? It just doesn’t follow.”
Abigail nodded and took a bite of her sandwich.
“I keep thinking about the master’s… business in Europe.” Abigail tilted her head; he knew she understand what he was referring to, and that he wanted to keep the conversation vague for the sake of young Daniel. “I wonder… what if it’s the subject of that European business who was the lupine? She would have attracted the ursine, and her spawn would still be a target. That would bring the ursine around in the absence of his protector… not Jonathan, but his wife.”
Abigail leaned forward a bit. “Wouldn’t that mean that…?” She looked at Daniel, and Caleb only needed to nod to confirm her guess. “But… I’ve been here over a year, I haven’t seen anything like that, not at all.”
“It’s often not apparent until puberty.”
Daniel looked up from his lunch. “What’s pe-berty?”
“Being a teenager,” Caleb said, returning his attention to Abigail. “If that’s true, my original theory may be right; the shifter may not have left for Europe at all, she might still be in the area.”
Abigail’s pretty face twisted a bit, confusion pushing her brows up toward the center of her freckled forehead. “Why would she abandon her son? If it were me, I’d go down swinging… the way your brother did.”
“Yeah,” Caleb had to admit, “that only stands to reason.”
“Your brother, I… I didn’t know him well, as I’ve said. Did you?”
Caleb gave it some thought, cracking a bittersweet smile. “He wasn’t an easy person to know; withdrawn, angry. He… he hated himself, what he was, what we were. We both went into the service, but he went, I think, so he could die in battle. We tried to get along. Then the question of the war came up, between the ursines and the lupines. He wanted a… a call to arms, to storm them and kill them all. And he wasn’t alone. There are calls for this all across the United States, the whole of the Western world and beyond that, tell you the truth. But I never saw things that way. I always felt that a certain amount of manageable conflict was acceptable, but that it should be kept at that level. Just like everything else in the world, we’re part of the natural balance; some live, some die, the world keeps turning.”
Caleb shook his head as Abigail put her reassuring hand on his muscular forearm. “Anyway,” Caleb said, “it came to blows between us, and we finally had to just… just walk away. My turning up here? He never called me, I saw it in a dream; it’s one of the facets of being a shifter, an increased awareness of what’s happening or what’s going to happen.”
After a moment to consider, Abigail asked, “And that’s what brought you up to the house the other night?”
“That’s right,” Caleb said. “It was Jonathan and you… in your room… at night.”
Her green eyes flashed. “Caleb, I’d never—”
“It wasn’t your choice,” Caleb said, not needing to say more. But he’d moved into a room next to hers, so Jonathan wasn’t about to try anything, especially knowing what he did about Caleb’s incredible power.
But that could also be a disadvantage for Caleb too; there was no telling what Jonathan was planning. He’d have to remain on his guard.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was more than a matter of respect. Caleb wanted privacy and so did Abigail. They wanted to protect the boy, Daniel, and his father both, having no desire to corrupt the one or antagonize the other.
But they couldn’t keep their hands off each other for another minute. Once in the apartment on the second floor of the cottage, they left the lights off so as not to attract attention. Abigail was ravenous, tearing at Caleb’s clothes, pulling his shirt off, buttons flying. She kissed him hard, tongue aggressive, breath panting. Her kisses pushed down his neck to his shoulder to his muscular chest, her teeth biting in. Her fingers dug into his strong arms, clawing at him as she nibbled her way down his sculpted torso, battle-hardened and trained to kill.
But that night, it would be his training in different arts that would be put to the test. She pushed him against the wall and sank to her knees, his manhood already filled with hot blood, rock hard and reaching out to her. Abigail grabbed it with both hands, one at the base and one mid-shaft, squeezing hard and beginning a pumping action that sent a wave of pleasure passing through him. Abigail opened up and took him in, lips folded over her teeth as she wrapped herself around his head, burning with sensitivity. She swirled her tongue around it, pushed it in and pulled it out as she squeezed and pumped.
Abigail kissed and licked that purple knob, blowing little streams of air onto it before rubbing it against her cheeks, her chin, her nose. She slipped it back in, and Caleb could feel her opening wider to take him in. She seemed to be worshipping it, devouring it, gobbling it down like a hungry animal, like a predator.
She slid her hand under his sack and raised it up a bit, bobbing the twin spheres in her palm. Caleb was happy to give her as much room as she needed, his hips rising up to her sensual instruction. She slipped her head down and under, taking one into her mouth, lolling it on her hot tongue, wet and wild, the other hanging over her cheek. But it w
ouldn’t be ignored for long as Abigail went on treating him to that exceptional sensation, the future of his family in her warm, loving mouth, the source of penultimate pleasure.
But there was still ultimate pleasure, and that was soon to come.
Caleb climbed back onto the mattress and Abigail crawled on top of him. She spread her legs and placed him between her thighs, positioning him perfectly before dropping down just a bit, locking him into place. Her clench was warm and wet and perfect, squeezing as she lowered herself slowly down and then up again. She sat on her shins, thighs controlling her body as she rose and fell over him. He looked up at her, and she looked like some kind of tawny woodland creature, her animal self seeming to rise to the surface as she ground down on him. Her shapely legs kept her in the perfect position for them both, up and down over the first few inches of his incredible length.
Then she sank down further, pulling up and going down again a bit faster. Caleb’s hips rose up to meet hers, her hips swirling to add a pleasing pressure, heightening the sensation for him as much as it clearly was for her. Abigail pouted, milky shoulders rising up to her ears, red curls falling around her gorgeous face.
Caleb’s hands reached up, cupping those firm breasts, supple undercarriages resting in his palms, nipples ringed with goosebumps as he pulled at them just a little bit. That only inspired Abigail to grind with a greater fever, tipping her hips to bend him to the side just a bit, a pressure he found exhilarating. She went down further and pulled up faster, up and down over his mid-shaft in chaotic combinations of swirling grinds and lateral slides.
