Gunner’s house was a small wood-sided place he’d inherited from his parents. It had passed through generations of shifters in his family. The Dylan wolves had been running through Muir woods for a hundred years. Yet they kept themselves quiet this close to the city. The bulk of his clan lived further out toward Big Sur where the redwoods were. But Dylan’s little pack had always been more acclimated to city life among humans.
His pack were three guys he’d met as an adolescent wolf shifter, an arrangement by their parents within the clan. They weren’t hugely close but he got along well with them and he liked hanging out with them when he got a chance. The whole pack was made of Gunner and two other busy urban guys who made more time for clubbing than shifting. Then there was Sean, a professional surfer. Even by the standards of people who believed in magic, he was considered kind of an oddball.
He’d thought about calling up his pack to see if they felt like running that night. But the wolf in him wanted to go solo this time. And anyway, one wolf was a lot less obtrusive than four if you happened to run into anyone, considering he was going out pretty early.
Gunner pulled up in front of his little house with the Japanese Maple in front of it just as his phone buzzed. It was Sean.
Have you quit your job yet?
Gunner snorted a laugh. Sean well knew how unhappy Gunner was at work, probably because he couldn’t stop talking about it after a couple of drinks. He texted back that he was actually working on it and Sean threw him some generally happy emojis. Sean was a pretty laid-back, hands-off alpha. But Gunner knew that if he didn’t quit his miserable job soon, he was going to at least get a long lecture.
Gunner blew into his house and paused for a moment inside the door. Nothing was wrong exactly. He had somebody come by to clean it every other week, just because he considered himself hopeless with housekeeping and he could afford it. The place felt just slightly off. Gunner’s cheeks burned as a more and more familiar sensation settled in.
The place was just too empty.
He’d been single for a year, since the break-up, and every once in a while he came home and the house just felt much too lonely. He hated that he felt such things. He was quite a handsome guy, with a wide full mouth and bright blue eyes. He had a little cleft in his chin that seemed to drive women wild for some reason, and a mop of soft, brown hair he was constantly having to tame but which had been deemed “sexy” by several lovers. He had a good body because running around in the woods and expending extraneous energy on free weights had kept him chiseled. He was successful and he had money. Even if he was single, he should have been on top of the world. Yet despite his cavalier sensibilities, he knew that more than anything he wanted a mate. That was why he had stuck it out with Candace for so long. He’d wanted someone to wake up in bed with.
“Candace,” Gunner hissed spitefully. He hoped she’d become a cocktail waitress at a really shitty casino.
“Fuck this,” Gunner said to himself. He was hungry for dinner, but the wolf whined and pawed at his insides. He stripped off his shirt and kicked off his shoes. His house was far enough away from any prying neighbors’ eyes that he could shift in his own backyard and easily hit the deep of the woods before anyone saw him. He’d hunt once he was out. His human self grimaced, but the wolf licked his chops for rabbit.
Outside, the cool, crisp air of Northern California hit his bare skin; bracing and refreshing all at once. Gunner took a deep breath and allowed himself to shift as he stalked through his unfenced yard toward the trees. His wolf sighed in relief as his muscles shifted and flexed, reshaping themselves in an instant so that all at once there was a wolf trotting into the woods.
Gunner’s muzzle twitched as he made sense of the riot of scents around him, and he felt like a kid in a candy store. He took his time as he went, sniffing everywhere, fascinated by everything. He grinned, his tongue hanging out as he trotted along. His stomach rumbled again and he broke into a lope, heading deeper into the forest, seeking out game.
An hour later, he was tearing through his second rabbit, his muzzle caked with blood. Every time he went out shifting, he told himself he would do it more often. It always felt so good. It kept him sane if he was honest with himself. He vowed to get his packmates out in the woods soon.
At the scent of fox nearby, Gunner looked up from his rabbit. Not just foxes, but shifter foxes. Unless they were from thousands of miles away, they would be of the fox clan that had feuded with his own for a century. It wasn’t as if wolves and foxes got along to begin with. They were such different creatures. Foxes hadn’t historically even run in packs, preferring to form a clan as individuals. Though they had started clustering in packs some decades ago. Gunner couldn’t begin to imagine how foxes in packs worked. They were such individualistic creatures.
He was nearly done with his rabbit anyway, and now he rose and trotted away in the direction of some strong-smelling jasmine to mask his scent. It wasn’t as if he had any fear of some foxes, even if there were several of them and even if they were his enemy. It was only that he thought the ongoing feud between the clans was stupid and needlessly violent. But if he came across his clan’s rivals and was challenged, he’d be expected to fight. Still, he was in no mood to pretend he cared about that little war.
Instead, he hit in a shrub and bided his time. If he’d been with his alpha, Sean, there might have been a fight. Sean didn’t seem to care one way or another about the feud with the foxes, but the rest of his pack was impressionable, and easily riled up. Sean would have let them get their rocks off fighting a few foxes.
They never would have hid in a shrub anyway. Too much pride. Gunner didn’t believe in calculating pride that way. Instead, he rested his muzzle on his front paws and watched the foxes.
There were four of them and they were females. If he’d been a fox too, he might have thought they were beautiful, particularly the alpha who was a little bigger than the others and had fur of a lustrous burnt orange that glittered when the moonlight hit it just right. She smelled him, he was sure. Or she thought she smelled something, as he watched her from his shrub far across a clearing. One of her leashmates climbed a tree and chirped at her to join. The others followed but the alpha looked around, ears perked, sniffing for him.
Don’t make me rip your head off, pretty fox, Gunner thought. I have better things to do.
It was perhaps optimistic to think he could take four foxes but he’d always been confident in his fighting skills. He watched her slowly approach his shrub. Surely she’d sniffed him out. He wasn’t nearly far enough away. Yet all at once, she backed off, trotting back to the trees where her leash was playing. For a moment, Gunner wondered if she was like him, and didn’t believe in the seemingly eternal feud between the clans. But despite his disdain for the feud, he still had a kind of bias about the foxes. It was hard to think they were particularly thoughtful, the way they jumped around like idiots and played in the trees.
When the foxes had gone, Gunner made for home, feeling better and more settled. He shifted back into his human form, admiring his own abs in his reflection as he let himself in through the sliding glass door. He grabbed his phone off the kitchen counter, while pulling a Gatorade from the fridge, and grinned from ear to ear as he saw the new email from Bryan at WellDrop.
He had the job.
Chapter Four: Megan
“It’s not raining!” Megan threw open the doors of WellDrop and everyone looked at her and blinked, rightfully baffled.
“That’s good,” Lane said. “Because you’re really bad with umbrellas.”
Megan cast her a mild look of annoyance, receiving a smirk in response.
It was Monday and she found herself excited for the week. Her calves were also no longer sore at all and she couldn’t believe the difference it made. She’d given completely up on the platforms and switched to a nice heeled boot that was much more comfortable. It saved her on the walk up the hill. Megan had also decided that office lattes were just as good as the place
down the street and that she’d probably been swayed to think they were better because of the artwork on the walls. Now Bryan handed her a fresh latte in the travel mug she kept at work and she thanked him, sighing with relief.
“I hired a staffing manager!” Bryan said, his eyes big. “Was that okay? I didn’t know if you definitely wanted to see the hire first-”
“No, that’s good,” Megan said firmly. “I’m trying to get better at delegating anyway. When does he start?”
“He’ll be in today!” Bryan said, so excited he was bouncing on his toes. “Should get here before lunch.”
“Good,” Megan said, feeling a keen sense of relief. The sooner they had a staffing manager in, the sooner they could get going on their delivery drivers and service providers.
Megan spent most of the morning discussing what products and services would be distributed through WellDrop with some vendors. She’d suspected that side of it would be more complicated than anything else and she’d been correct, but it was also fun. It was especially fun because the vendors were bringing over lots of samples of their products and that meant swag for everyone, and a certain number of hours spent playing with foot massagers and eating varieties of dark chocolate.
At eleven, Lane found Megan in her office, wearing hemp pajamas and rolling her bare feet on a wooden foot massager. She was also wearing a hot lavender eye mask and drinking a smoothie.
“Hard at work?” Lane asked. Megan couldn’t see through the mask, but she could practically feel Lane’s smirk.
“I am actually,” Megan said. “And I want you guys to test this stuff too. Tell me if you don’t think something works.”
“Oh, twist my arm,” Lane said, laughing. “I’ll put that on my agenda for the rest of the day. Hey, I think Bryan’s staffing hire is here. He’s doing paperwork in the back.”
“Oh good,” Megan sighed happily, pushing the eye mask up to her forehead. “I feel so good today!”
Lane looked her up and down. The hemp pajamas were pink and covered in plump, white kittens. She also had a warmed, weighted buckwheat pillow wrapped around her neck. “Wow, I wonder why.”
“No, not just this!” Megan said. “At first I thought it was because it wasn’t raining or because I wore different shoes. But I know it’s because we took some time to go shifting on Friday. I always forget how good I feel afterward. We really need to make time for it.”
“We do,” Lane said. “Maybe we should schedule a regular time?”
“A couple quick runs during the week,” Megan said firmly. “And a long one on Sunday nights.”
“I think most of us can make that,” Lane said.
“My fox gets so riled up when I don’t shift,” Megan muttered. Lane made a move to walk into the bullpen and Megan followed her, though she felt a little silly wearing the jammies with the eye mask on her head and a pillow around her neck. On the other hand, she felt incredibly relaxed.
Until she smelled wolf.
Megan stopped short in the middle of the floor, all her senses on alert. It was not just the scent of wolf. Running into a wolf shifter would be a potential cause of some alarm. She had run into wolf shifters before when both of them were living their human lives. There was usually a cold look exchanged, maybe a few passive-aggressively hostile words. But there was a kind of unspoken understanding not to bring the fight into the human world. Though your more aggro types waited around until they got a chance to attack once everybody was on equal and shifted footing.
Still, this was Megan’s workplace, her company, her baby, and she smelled wolf on her territory. It made her fox self jump around like a maniac inside her. Worse, it had to be somebody from the clan that had feuded with her own since forever and worse still, she knew the scent exactly. It was the wolf she’d smelled in the woods on Friday night. She hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Of course, there could be wolves in Muir Woods. Her pack used to take the time to drive to a different spot a little more remote. But their new, shared apartment and the new Welldrop offices were closer to Muir. It was simply more convenient.
She’d sniffed out the wolf pretty quickly, but kept it from her girls, waiting to get the lay of the land. There was only one and they could take one wolf no problem, especially since wolves always underestimated foxes. Then she’d sensed that he was hiding in a thicket of jasmine. He didn’t want to be found, which was potentially dangerous. Instead, he just sat there. She couldn’t see him but she got the distinct sense somehow that he had no intention of fighting.
Megan couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard of a fox from her clan and a wolf from his clan coming across each other while shifted and not spilling at least a little blood. But she found herself letting it pass. It had felt like a relief more than anything. She had not thought about her own feelings concerning that feud much herself. It simply was and had always been. She’d never had to challenge a wolf before but she’d never asked herself if she would. Now she’d found herself walking away and keeping the peace. She never mentioned a word of it to her leashmates, though she thought of it from time to time over the weekend, wondering who the peaceful wolf was who’d silently declared a truce between them.
Now she smelled him again. He was somewhere around, possibly outside on the street. She grabbed Lane’s wrist.
“Lane,” Megan said quietly. “Do you smell him?”
“Of course,” Lane said, leaning in so they could be discreet. “I figured it was somebody outside. I mean that clan in his region is huge, right?”
“Yeah, it probably is,” Megan said. “They are, yeah. They’re mostly outside the city though.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Lane said. “I’ve smelled them around before. Out shopping or…”
“But this is my office!” Megan hissed.
“Chill, foxy lady.” Lane smiled, conciliatory. “No one’s taking your baby.”
“Good,” Megan said darkly. “I’d eat their intestines first.”
“I know you would,” Lane murmured.
The office in the back that was so far mainly used for miscellaneous supplies that didn’t have a home yet opened and Bryan appeared, followed by the wolf.
That it was him was obvious as his scent entered the room like a slap in the face. Not that it was bad, if Megan was being objective. But she had several alarm bells instilled since birth going off in her head as one of the best looking men she had ever seen, who was absolutely not just a wolf but one of those wolves swaggered into the room. He was wearing a tieless suit with an open shirt. He also smelled very faintly of cologne which, for her powerful sense of smell, must have meant he’d put on about an eighth of a drop or something. It was just enough to be enticing. His human self, in general, smelled fantastic, the promise of it a little hidden by his shampoo and soap and the tease of the cologne.
Megan tensed up, ready to fight at a moment’s notice.
She was also incredibly attracted to the man with the slightly cocky smile and flawless cheekbones walking toward her.
It was very confusing.
He could smell her too, of course. She could see him trying to cover his astonishment, taking care to look especially relaxed and devil-may-care as he slipped a hand in his pocket. But his jaw was set too tight, his eyes flitting around the room, probably looking for threats. His brow twitched. He looked slightly confused.
Unless he was a phenomenal actor, Megan suspected this was all a mistake. He’d had no idea he was walking into a company owned by a bunch of foxes. He had not sought them out deliberately.
Bryan’s eyes lit up when he saw Megan. The poor human had no idea what was going on. Lane gaped at Megan, and Jan and Naomi came running in, doubtless having smelled the wolf too. They stopped short, immediately looking to Megan.
“Bryan!” Megan cleared her throat. Her voice had come out high and tight. She grabbed him by his sleeve and started dragging him to an empty office. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
Chapter Five: Delilah
“No, no, no!” Delilah sighed, watching through a window as Megan pulled Bryan away from Gunner. She was perched on a stone wall outside one of the windows as she chewed on some beef jerky. She checked her Oracle. Oracle showed Megan’s emotional state as highly agitated. Delilah typed in a request for a prediction, an Oracle feature she had only just discovered. Although if Oracle was as wonky as she’d heard it was lately, who knew if it was correct?
How likely is Megan to let Gunner stay on right now?
Oracle’s screen filled with a spinning, green wheel and then a number popped up.
17%
“Ugh!” Delilah shook her head. She’d need to step in, perhaps work on Megan’s conscience. On the whole, it didn’t seem fair that she wouldn’t hire somebody just because, basically, they came from the wrong tribe. She had no real reason to suspect Gunner of anything, except that they’d come across each other in the woods. Delilah had watched them. She’d thought, if anything, it would make them both amenable to giving each other a chance. It didn’t seem that way though, from the way Megan was acting.
Delilah sighed and hopped down off the stone wall and lit herself a cigarette, thinking.
This called for a little emotional manipulation.
Her Oracle device doubled as a cellphone or nearly anything Oracle decided it could double as, and now Delilah dialed up Megan and waited as it rang.
Chapter Six: Megan
“We can’t hire him,” Megan said, looking Bryan dead in the eye.
Bryan paled and his mouth quivered. He looked like he was about to pass out. “Why not?!”
“Because…” Megan licked her lips, trying to think of a reason she could articulate to a human.
Because he’s a wolf shifter and I’m a fox AND he’s my clan’s arch enemy!
“I don’t like his face,” Megan blurted.
Starcrossed Shifters Page 3
