This time, when the clerk flinched again, Maddox knew he rattled the poor Ant. A wave of sudden terror hit Maddox in the snout, burning the inside of his nose. Okay, Maddox allowed, watching as poor Franklin pushed his chair back away from his station, called out that he was going to the bathroom, then scurried away. Maybe he might have shifted a little more than he thought he had.
Whoops.
Biting back his frustrated growl, Maddox took a deep breath and forced his features to return to normal. Then, because there were no other windows he could go to and no one left to help him at the D.P.R., he left. He nearly slammed the door on his way out except he could tell the entrance's glass wasn’t protected like the glass partitions. If the glass door shattered, he would have to pay for it. Bad enough he was already looking forward to a bill for the counter.
Wonderful.
Standing in front of the D.P.R., Maddox took stock of his situation. His bond was still eerily quiet, which meant he couldn’t track down Evangeline on his own. The D.P.R. did jackshit for him. He had the clothes on his back, twenty bucks in his wallet, a brand spanking new P.I.D., and that was it—
Well, no, he admitted. That wasn’t quite true. He had Colton, and while Maddox refused to let the rest of the pack know what was going on—including his parents—until he had formally claimed Evangeline entirely, he knew that Colt would help him with whatever he asked.
And it wasn’t like the trip to the D.P.R. was a complete waste of time.
Evangeline was undeniably alive. He didn’t realize how much he was harboring a quiet fear that Colt was wrong, that the warden and the prison board had made a mistake, until the clerk confirmed that she was, at the very least, still alive. Not married, not bonded, but breathing… he’d take it. It was some kind of closure.
And based on where Colt spotted her in the first place, he had a starting point. Fuck if he didn’t have every little thing about her ingrained in his very soul. Maddox didn’t actually need those bureaucrats to find her. He was just trying to be nice. Law-abiding. A fucking Ant.
But he wasn't an Ant. He was an alpha wolf shifter who was going to do whatever it took to track down his mate and revive their mating bond. Starting with going to the last place he knew she had been.
After he went to see Colt, that was. He’d refused Colt’s offer to come pick him up when they finally let him out of the Cage. His brother had done enough already and Maddox needed to prove he could do something for himself.
Now, though?
Now he had no choice.
Maddox didn't have a vehicle of his own, not since the crash. He would have to borrow Colt’s truck. And then, for the first time in three years, he'd have to climb behind the wheel again with the nightmare of his Angie's last screams still haunting him.
But he would do it.
For Evangeline, he would do anything.
7
Colton lived in a Bumptown about an hour’s drive out from the Cage—or, in Maddox's current shape, close to a two-hour run.
Bumptowns were what you got when too many Paras settled close together. They were neither planned nor officially sanctioned; they just sort of happened. First a vampire would move in, then maybe a shifter family or a banshee, and boom! There went the neighborhood. Humans fled and Paras took the area over.
Just like Paras referred to human-only neighborhoods as Ant Farms, Paras found sanctuary in aptly named Bumptowns. Because that was where things went ‘bump in the night’. Fucking humans.
Ah, well. At least it was better than Ant Farm.
The ruling government—the powers that be that supposedly controlled the entire population, both humans and paranormals—liked to think that there was a seamless blend of both factions in society so they turned a blind eye when Bumptowns sprang up. The closest they got to acknowledging them was by making sure each settlement had a delegate on-site to sign off on bonding licenses; after a while, they were the only places where you could find one. So, even if you were like Maddox, who chose to live in a cul de sac with both human and paranormal neighbors, you visited a Bumptown eventually. Because his brother insisted on living in one, Maddox actually visited Colt’s Bumptown pretty regularly—at least, before his time in the Cage, he had.
Maddox had always felt uncomfortable heading into the strictly Para-only settlements. It was no secret that he was the more human-friendly wolf in his family, and it was no surprise when his mate turned out to be human herself. To him, the image of Bumptowns conjured up some idyllic scene of the different paranormal races living in peace together. What bullshit. Get too many predators living in close quarters and it was like a powder keg ready to explode. He would never expose his Evangeline to that.
Colton, on the other paw, seemed perfectly at ease living in the Bumptown. Though everyone who lived there was some sort of paranormal, even the residents chose to segregate themselves based on their kind. In Colt’s settlement, the Dayborn vampires lived on Sunset Boulevard; the Nightwalkers hid out in the dark corner they called Little Transylvania. The ghosts haunted along Cemetery Row.
And the shifters? They built their houses on the edge of a 5,000 acre plot of federally protected woods, perfect for a shifter who wanted to burst out of their skin and just run free for a while without worrying about a backside full of buckshot. Due to the mix of predator and prey shifters who seemed to co-exist somewhat peacefully, that corner of the Bumptown was referred to as the Zoo. Maddox almost bust a blood vessel laughing the first time he found out.
Even now, even with all of the thoughts and worries warring in his head, he had to smirk to himself as he loped easily through the protected trees. The Zoo. Well, it made sense. What were shifters anyway if not their animal?
It had been three years since he last ran this trail. Not much had changed while he was in the Cage. Maddox caught a whiff here or there of several new predatory shifters on a tree or a bush, but he could tell that Colt was still the top Alpha in this Bumptown.
Maddox stopped only once to add his own marking. There was an old oak tree that he liked to visit whenever he made this run. Colt thought of these woods as part of his extended territory so he didn’t overdo it. Just a little piss to show the rest of the Zoo that big brother was back before he ran through the trees and followed his nose to Colt’s backyard.
When he was in his skin, Maddox recognized the back of Colt’s house by sight rather than relying on the power of scent. The wide wraparound porch, the weathered shingles that gave the single-story house a rustic feel, the piles of wood and stacks of lumber that Colt hoarded in case inspiration struck. In his fur, he followed his wolf’s nose. And his brother marked his immediate territory with a fervor that had even Maddox's wolf thinking twice before breaching the border.
Deciding it might be better to approach Colt’s den on two legs instead of four, Maddox spit out the bundle he was carrying securely between his teeth before crouching low in the dirt and preparing himself for the shift.
He'd heard his dad explain to an Ant once what shifting felt like. The human thought shifting must be painful, but Terrance described it more like a sting. Like a rubber band snap, he had said, where the anticipation of the shift was worse than any other part of it. That's why most shifters went full shift without thinking about it. It was partial shifts, or when a shifter was trying to hold the change back, that the sensation grew annoying. That, he explained, was more like an itch you couldn't scratch.
When Maddox was done, he stretched, arching his back and exhaling roughly as he chafed against the feel of his human skin. His wolf whimpered that his time out wasn't anywhere near long enough. After three years without a shift, his beast wanted to run for days reveling in the grass underfoot and the feel of the wind threading through his arctic white fur.
Later, he told his wolf. Evangeline first.
Mate first, his wolf agreed. There was only a hint of grumbling before the other part of himself curled up to wait. Without the mating bond for his instincts to follow, his beast kne
w that this was a job for the man’s brain.
As soon as he was sure his wolf was calm—it would be pointless to dress right away if his wolf would burst through again, turning his clothes into tattered rags—he reached for the bag at his feet.
When he was out on a run, Maddox didn't usually bother carrying around a spare change of clothes like a pack mule. Shifters were too used to nudity to be bothered by mostly human concerns like modesty so long as there weren’t any pesky Ants around waiting to cry out about indecent exposure. He couldn't tell you how many times he burst naked into Colton’s house, only to remember later when he felt a breeze on his cock that he was sitting bare-assed naked on one of his brother’s chairs.
Evangeline had tried to talk some modesty into him when they started sleeping together six months into their relationship. It hadn't worked. Maddox was a stubborn wolf who couldn't understand putting on clothes when he was going to have to take them off again to shift. She tried pointing out that if he was sitting bare-assed on the chair, how many other asses had sat there before him? That predictably led to a comment about where he'd like her bare ass to sit. Hint: nowhere near anything of Colt’s.
It wasn't until his sweet Evangeline growled at him and told him that she hated the idea of anyone else seeing what was hers that Maddox promised to be naked only in front of her. Because possessiveness… that he understood.
Normally he would just borrow something of Colt’s rather than tote around a bag between his teeth. But these clothes were special. He was wearing the same shirt and jeans the last time he saw Evangeline—it was what he'd gone into the Cage wearing, and the only personal belongings Wright grudgingly handed over upon Maddox’s release. Even after all of this time, if he breathed deeply enough, he could still smell his mate on the fabric.
Until they were together again, he wouldn't wear anything else.
He didn't have any underwear so Maddox went commando as he took special care to zip up his jeans. The black tee stretched tight over his chest, another clue that he was even bigger than before. He strode across Colt’s backyard barefoot, making a mental note to borrow a pair of his brother’s boots. He would need them when he took Colt’s truck.
Pausing on the back of Colt’s porch, Maddox listened for some sign of Colt in the house. The buzzing coming from somewhere off to his left told Maddox that his brother wasn’t inside but, instead, busy working in his private shed on the far side of the property.
His brother was a talented architect who not only drew beautiful houses on blueprints, but he could build them with his own two hands while working for Wolfe Construction. That was his job. Constructing wooden furniture from scratch, carving a structure, and staining the pieces before selling them off to the highest bidder... that was his labor of love. Not many people knew of his skill—Colt was quiet like that—but his “hobby” brought in more than enough to keep the pack wealthy on top of their family’s construction business.
Maddox found Colt hunched over some monstrosity inside of the massive shed. The structure was about half as big as the cabin in the woods that the pack owned, that was how much of his free time Colt spent there. Tools hung precisely in their proper place on pegs lined up along the wall, half-finished pieces of furniture stood against one wall while a large rectangular table held about fifteen different cans of stain. Colt’s carving knives were spaced exactly a half an inch apart, sized largest to smallest. A broom was propped in one corner; Maddox didn’t see a single speck of sawdust on the entire cement floor. The two bay windows on opposite walls allowed in enough natural light to reveal the pristine state of Colt’s workshop.
Maddox looked on with pride. Ah, Colt’s anal-retentive attention to details. Thank Alpha some things never changed.
Even with the sander going and his protective headphones covering his sensitive ears, Maddox had no doubt that Colt knew he was there. His brother would have picked up on his arrival as soon as he approached the shed, then decided whether or not Maddox was a threat to him. Since he wasn’t, Colt kept his attention on his work.
Ten seconds later, Colt finished sanding the corner of his project, turned the sander off, and removed both his safety glasses and his headphones. There was a peg for both. He made sure to put them in their right place before he turned around to face Maddox.
Colt’s movements were slow, precise. That… that was different.
“Hey,” his brother said, a strange look on his face when he nodded at Maddox. “Wasn’t expecting you so soon. I bet Dodge the warden would dick you around some more, find a reason to delay your release. I’m glad to see I was wrong.”
He took a ginger step toward Maddox, winced slightly and stepped again, obviously favoring his left leg. For Colt to show even that much of a reaction to pain, it had to be excruciating.
Maddox froze, his senses focused on Colt’s left ankle. He could actually feel the heat radiating off of it. If it wasn’t broken just then, it had been shortly before. Considering how fast a shifter’s natural healing abilities worked, it had to be one hell of an injury if it was taking so much time and power to heal.
Whoever did this to him, whatever caused his brother pain… Maddox had the sudden urge to chase them down and rip out their throats with his fangs. Coarse white fur tinged with grey sprouted along the length of his arms. He swiveled back and forth, to and fro, searching out any immediate threats.
Only two people in the world roused Maddox's protective instincts. One was his mate. The other? Colton.
He knew it was ridiculous. Colt was only four years younger than he was, an alpha wolf in his own right, and he'd proven time and time again that he could take care of himself. It didn't matter. Try telling that to Maddox's wolf. His dad was the only wolf in their pack more dominant than Maddox, and since Terrence fiercely protected his mate, Maddox knew his mother was in good claws. But ever since he was a young pup, his dad had pounded the notion that it was up to Maddox to look out for Colt into his thick skull.
He took that job very seriously.
“What happened to your leg?” Maddox demanded when his surveillance revealed that they were the only two on the property.
“Don't snarl at me, Mad. I’m glad to see you, but I’m not in the mood. My leg’s just fine. It’s nothing.”
Maddox wasn’t about to let Colt brush him off. “It had to be bad if you're still limping. What happened?”
“I said it’s nothing. Drop it.”
“I’ll drop it when you tell me why you’re walking on a broken ankle, Colt. And don’t you fucking dare say ‘nothing’ again. You should've healed already if it was nothing.”
“You don't think I feel like an idiot already without you badgering me?” Colt snapped. “It was a dumb accident. I dropped a dresser I was delivering on my foot and crushed my ankle, okay? But the bone’s already knitting back together. I'll be a hundred percent by tomorrow. There are more important things to worry about than my fucking clumsiness, you know. So I’ll say it again: drop it.”
Maddox pointedly continued to ignore the warning in Colt’s tone. “Clumsiness? Since when are you clumsy?”
Colt’s icy blue stare went nearly glacial as he glared up at his older brother. “Since now, I guess. How the hell would you know, anyway? When did you ever ask about me when you were in the Cage?”
Forget imaginary threats—suddenly he had a real problem right in front of him that he couldn’t pretend didn’t exist. Maddox's wolf sat up a little at that barked comment, bristling at Colt’s tone and eyeing Colt’s burgeoning snout and elongated fangs with interest. Sometimes it was a bitch to be an alpha, especially when his beast was seriously thinking about ripping Colt’s throat out for what it saw as a clear challenge. But if Terrence refrained from killing his boys over the years, Maddox could indulge his younger brother.
Now wasn't the time to assert his dominance after an absence of three years. That could wait until after he found Evangeline.
Colt must have realized how close to the edge he was a
t the same time that Maddox made a conscious effort to not notice Colt’s attitude. His brother took a deep breath and dropped his stare. Turning his back on Maddox—an obvious sign of submission and trust—he picked a sheet up off of the floor and shook it out before covering his project. When he turned around again, he looked embarrassed. And entirely human.
“Sorry about that,” Colt said, running a hand through his short hair. His downcast eyes were back to their bright blue color. “I didn't mean it.”
“Don't worry about it.”
“No, it’s just—”
Maddox shook his head. “Colt, no. You’re absolutely right. I have a lot to make up for. But first—”
“First you have to find Evangeline. I know. While I was waiting for you to get here, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do next. I’ll do anything I can to help you.”
“If I ever find her.” Maddox exhaled. All of his adrenaline rushed out with his breath.
Suddenly the weight of his expectations, the strenuous run to Colt’s Bumptown, and, of course, the disastrous visit to the D.P.R. came crashing down on him. He grabbed one of the wooden chairs waiting to be stained, dragged it closer to him, and sank down into it.
Hanging his head, Maddox rubbed the ruined skin around his throat.
Colt froze.
Staring across the workroom over at Maddox, the sight of his brother slumped in the chair disturbed him. The pose was too eerily similar to the way Maddox reacted while he was still in the Cage. Colt immediately pushed his own troubles and the nagging pain in his stupid fucking ankle away as he perched on the edge of the stool closest to Maddox.
It was easy to fall back into the old routine, Colt the savior trying to draw some sort of positive reaction out of Maddox.
“We talked yesterday, when they said they were letting you out as soon as the release came through. There was no if. What changed, Maddox?”
Hungry Like a Wolf (Claws Clause Book 1) Page 6
