“Yeah, yeah, Gunner’s amazing,” Lane said, sighing.
Megan blushed and softly said, “Well, he is.”
The first orders started coming in steadily. There had been some buzz about the app and they’d accepted a trial number of memberships to start with. When the first driver returned, having delivered a buckwheat pillow and a box of dark chocolates and receiving a good tip and a five-star review, everyone cheered as they watched it happen on the projector in the conference room. Naomi and Jan had insisted on champagne. Meg applauded and clinked her glass against Lane’s and then Naomi’s and Jan’s. It felt like New Year’s Eve. She half expected to be kissing somebody and when she spun around and found herself face to face with Gunner, she thought to herself: I wish.
She did wish. She had dated plenty but she’d never had that sensation she’d heard shifters got when they met their mates; that closeness and connection and longing. She felt all that pouring over her now as they stood staring at each other, champagne in hand.
“Congratulations,” Gunner said. “This is gonna be great. And you deserve it.”
“Thanks,” Meg said. He was right, she thought proudly. She did deserve it. “I’m so glad I found you-” She blushed crimson and opened and closed her mouth. She saw Gunner’s flash briefly. “Bryan, I mean. Found you. He gets the credit. But thank goodness, you know. You’ve made this launch really smooth. It’s nice to be able to enjoy it.”
Gunner smiled but he looked a little sad as he held up his glass and said, “Cheers.”
“Are you alright?” She asked, but she didn’t get to hear his response because somebody was pulling her away again.
The rest of the day went by in a blur and she ended up going home very late. But her leash agreed to go on their run anyway. Their inner foxes were all riled up and excited from all the activity and anxiety lately and needed a release. They went home and ate a light dinner, all of them counting on having a good hunt that night.
Megan found she had butterflies in her stomach. They were going to Muir Woods again. She was sort of hoping she’d run into Gunner. Of course, she hadn’t mentioned that to the girls. It made her stomach flip over and over to think of it; the two of them both shifted. They’d recognize each other this time. There’d be no reason to hide if they could be alone. Megan’s pack usually split up eventually at some point on runs to go off on their own for a while. She got the impression that Gunner only occasionally ran with his pack and often ran by himself. She wondered just how lonely he was.
Maybe he would sniff her out, she thought. She had a vague idea of where his house was. She made sure she was the one driving and had them go into the woods not too far from his place.
There was a chance, she thought, that he would be out with his pack. That would be a terrible coincidence. But if she smelled any wolf but him she was going to make a run for it. She was under no illusions about the wolf versus fox feud anymore. She wanted no part of it. If she had to run and be thought of as a coward by some random wolf she didn’t know...well, whatever.
“This is a nice spot,” Naomi said, when they got out of the car. It was late and quiet. The air was cool and crisp. The ground would still be muddy from the rain. Megan couldn’t wait to play in it.
“I thought so,” Meg said. She shoved her hands in her pockets and the four of them headed off into the forest. She thought she perhaps smelled Gunner somewhere out there; it was probably only the remains of his scent or maybe him in his house carried on the breeze. It made her smile to herself.
They shifted and started off running together as a pack and then played for a while and chased each other and ran up trees. Lane kept nipping at her and Meg retaliated, chasing her over logs and through a creek. The wind was brisk on her fur and she felt happy. In her fox form, she was even more determined to see Gunner, but she couldn’t smell him anywhere now. None of this intense attraction made sense, she thought. Wasn’t it against nature? A fox wanting to be with a wolf this much? The wild idea that he could be her mate?
She was just about to signal that they could split up for a while when she got a scent on the breeze and tensed. It was wolf alright, but it wasn’t Gunner. She picked up six separate wolf scents wafting through the trees. She doubted they were Gunner’s pack. He would be with them, she thought. And somehow she felt strongly just by the scent of them that they weren’t his pack as she’d imagined it. They smelled too...angry. She ran to Lane and the four of them clustered together.
She heard a rustling through the trees. They were close, much too close. She didn’t know how they’d snuck up so quick and she didn’t care. She made to run but the girls were looking back in the direction of the pack that she clearly heard now running through the bush, howling and yelping.
Let’s fucking go!
She saw Jan show her teeth. Naomi made those growly fighting noises of hers. Lane pawed at the ground. Megan signaled again and nipped at them and turned in the direction of the road.
We go! NOW.
They couldn’t hear her through, of course. But they knew each other’s expressions and body language well enough. She was giving them the signal to go with her. They were ignoring it.
She bared her teeth at them, pulling rank. They caved and made to run with her but suddenly it was too late. The wolves were there, coming from every direction.
They were surrounded.
Four foxes against four wolves was a tough fight but in a life or death situation, Megan liked her odds okay. Four foxes against six wolves?
We’re going to die, she thought.
The wolves were licking their chops. Maybe there hadn’t been a “major skirmish” between the warring fox and wolf clans in twenty years, but there had been plenty of minor ones like this that had ended in fatalities.
Megan’s blood ran cold but she bared her teeth and pawed the ground. It was too late to run now. If she was going to go down, she was going to go down fighting. The wolves paced slowly, their heads lowered, their ears flat.
Great idea, Meg, let’s go get murdered the day we launch our company. Well, it’s been nice knowing you, San Francisco.
Meg didn’t like to wait for a first move and if foxes had any advantages they were quickness and surprise. Now she abruptly leaped in the air and dove at the alpha. Everyone began fighting at once. Megan had a scruff of wolf neck in her mouth and she clamped down as another wolf came at her from the side. Pain tore through her shoulder and she let go to twist away from the both of them before skittering up a tree to dive from below, ignoring the awful stab of agony rushing through her front leg. Naomi and Jan had always been good at strategically dodging and getting in their hits when they were least expected. They’d about torn a wolf’s foot off and torn through another’s haunch enough that the blood made even Meg taste iron. It was furious and brutal and Meg had no real strategy herself except to keep moving and make sure her mates kept moving. Wolves tired quicker than foxes. If they could just keep them on the run, they might have a shot at this.
Up one tree and down another.
Keep them running.
Tire them out.
She lost track of where she was for a minute and got turned around. She’d headed off somebody chasing Lane, luring them away from her pack mates. The girls were far away, fighting the other three. Maybe two. She thought she’d seen one of them retreat. She saw another coming at her, and that made two, and she spun to scramble up a tree again to dive bomb, because that had been going okay so far.
Except when she turned around, she was up against a stone wall.
A third wolf had appeared.
The wall ran along the road through the park. She knew that. She hadn’t thought they were that deep into the woods. Everything seemed to have slowed down for a moment and she realized with a cold kind of dread that she hadn’t been running the wolves around and exhausting them.
They’d been cornering her.
Three huge wolves stared her down, growling. They would eat her. She would be e
aten. Foxes were good climbers but the wall was completely flat. Feeling painfully helpless, she spun anyway and scrambled at the wall, pawing ineffectually and jumping only to slide down the smooth, stone surface again.
She was trembling, she realized. She did not care for that at all. She didn’t want to go to her death trembling.
The familiar scent, when it reached her nose, made her dizzy with a kind of euphoria.
Gunner.
In the passage of a second, Megan knew two things beyond a shadow of a doubt:
Gunner was coming to save her against all laws of his own clan.
Gunner was her mate.
He appeared, running at them from behind, under a beam of moonlight. Gunner’s wolf was a silvery gray, his eyes as blue as ever. They were cold as ice now as he charged at the wolves who turned to face him. Megan could practically smell their confusion.
The most shocking part to Megan, as the two of them fought off the baffled trio of killers, was not that Gunner was now fighting his own kind in defense of some foxes, it was how well Megan and Gunner fought together.
It would be impossible for her to doubt that Gunner was her mate now, as they seemed to predict each other’s moves. Now Gunner was ducking under her as she jumped over him to charge at one of the wolves. Now they were back to back and Gunner was the muscle as Megan ran the three ragged so her mate could move in for the kill. There was blood gushing. Megan could smell their fear.
Megan and Gunner had them on the run.
All at once they turned and ran off with shrill yelps and howls, signaling their compatriots. Megan nodded at Gunner, who immediately understood, and they ran to find the rest of her leash.
Lane and Naomi looked fine, but they were huddled around Jan who had a bleeding foot and now that Megan glanced at Gunner, she saw that his shoulder was bitten. Her own only felt bruised. Her three best friends stared at Gunner and even in fox form, Megan could read the open shock on their faces. It was obvious what had just happened.
Megan shifted back into human form, wincing at the stretch of her sore muscles. The rest followed. It was Jan’s foot that was hurt and she stood now to hop on one leg, grimacing as Naomi knelt to tie her jacket around the foot.
“She’s gotta get to the hospital,” Naomi said. “She’ll probably heal really quick but it should get wrapped.” It was always weirdly jolting the first time someone spoke after shifting in a group. But now Meg thought everything felt exponentially more surreal.
“Probably just some stitches,” Jan muttered.
“Were you fighting with us?” Lane asked, still gaping at Gunner.
He looked wild-eyed now that she saw him in human form. His shoulder was bleeding through his t-shirt. “Yeah,” he said flatly.
“Holy shit.”
“I know.”
“We should take you, too,” Meg said to him.
“No, no,” he said, waving a hand. “It’s just a scratch. I can bandage it up at home.”
Meg pursed her lips, doubtful. She wanted to take care of everyone, and she didn’t want to let Gunner out of her sight either. Her loyalties felt divided. She couldn’t imagine how Gunner was feeling.
Lane was practically laughing and Meg saw her exchange a knowing look with Naomi and Jan. “He lives nearby, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s how I sniffed you out.”
“We’ll be fine,” Lane said firmly. “Why don’t you go with Gunner?”
“They could come back,” Gunner said, sounding hesitant.
“I think if they did, they’d go for you first this time,” Meg said apologetically.
“Exactly,” Naomi said wryly. “It’s fine, Meg. We’ll text you when we get there.”
“Okay,” Meg said, feeling everything inside her start to unclench. The very thought of leaving Gunner had seemed painful. She had an urge to put her arm around his waist and help him walk, but he really didn’t need it.
The two groups headed off in their respective directions and Gunner and Meg were quiet as they made for the house, staring at their shoes, listening to the puff of each other’s breathing and the song of crickets.
Finally, Meg couldn’t stand it any longer. “That was something,” she said, if only to attempt to break the tension.
“I can’t believe I did that,” he said in that flat voice. “I can’t believe…”
She glanced over at him just as he was caught in the moonlight. His thick mop of hair was a cute disaster and he looked like he had three days’ growth of beard, though she’d seen him clean-shaven earlier that day. His eyes were wild, disbelieving, glittering, helpless. She had a terrible urge to take him in her arms and tell him everything was going to be okay as long as they stayed together because it suddenly felt like the truest thing she knew.
“Why did you?” She asked softly.
He didn’t answer her and they kept walking.
She tried again. “Do you know that pack or anything?”
“No.” He shook his head. “They didn’t even smell like they were from around here. Within the clan obviously but…” He shuddered and reflexively she reached out and rubbed his back through his t-shirt. She felt the way he breathed in suddenly at the touch.
‘Why’d you do it?” She asked again. “You could have let it go, just ignored it. I just mean…because you don’t believe in this war between us. You could’ve-”
“I couldn’t,” he muttered.
“Why?”
He looked at her like she was crazy and said, “Let’s just get to the house.”
His cabin, when they arrived, sort of made her want to cry. It was the kind of place she’d thought about in flights of fancy and like nowhere she’d ever dreamed of seriously living because serious people lived in things like fancy condos in the city and they didn’t have a deck with a short flight of steps that led out right into the woods. Serious people didn’t have a garden gnome in their front yard like Gunner did. She saw it as they came trudging over from the side of his yard. It was the oddest little touch and like being a Star Trek fan, a kind of adorable quirk that she never would have expected from somebody like him.
“Nice gnome,” she said quietly. She glanced over and saw a faint smile on his face.
They trudged up the stairs and now she did wrap an arm around his waist and didn’t question why she was doing it. They were both groaning and wheezing a little as if they were coming back from some protracted battle overseas and not from the equivalent of a quick and dirty street fight.
“We’re getting old,” Gunner said.
She snorted at that and said, “Shut up.”
He let them in the back door and the house was warm and homely with its walls of wood paneling and tapestries and oil paintings that hung here and there. She went with him into the bathroom and helped him off with his shirt, wincing in sympathy as he hissed in pain. His shoulder had stopped bleeding but there was a bit of a gash. She wasn’t sure if it was a bite or if a wolf had knocked him into a rock or a tree. She flicked on the light to get a better look and stepped close to a shirtless Gunner who was exactly as well built as she’d imagined, and sweaty from all the exertion. She bit her lip, inspecting the wound. It was dirty and a little oozy.
“Still think you need stitches,” she said, looking up to meet his eyes. She could feel the tremble of his breath.
“‘S’fine,” he murmured. “There’s first aid under the sink.”
She ducked and found a big white tin and set it on the sink and went about cleaning the little wound. His eyes followed her every move and they were bright and intense. She couldn’t stand to look into them. She’d thought she’d fall in.
“Are you sure you aren’t hurt?” He whispered, as she gently disinfected the wound a second time and spread a bit of antibiotic ointment on it. His muscles rippled under her touch.
“Me? No…”
He reached up and pushed her hair behind her ear and she breathed in, unmoving, watching him. He frowned and traced a finger to a
sore spot near her temple. “Scraped right here.”
“I’ll live.”
He didn’t seem to like that answer at all and looked unhappy as she peeled the backing off a big bandage and spread it over his shoulder, perhaps unnecessarily patting the dressing and rubbing his arm to console him a little.
“Why did you do it?” She asked him a third time. His scent was making her lightheaded. They were standing so close, she could practically feel his heartbeat.
Say it, she thought. Please say it’s not just me.
“You know why,” he said softly.
“Tell me.”
“I couldn’t…” He looked down at her hands as she wrung them and covered them with his own. “I couldn’t let you get hurt. I couldn’t… If...if something had happened to you-”
“Gunner.”
“Jesus,” he whispered, and they both lurched forward into a kiss. His mouth tasted hot and like the woods and like sweat and like him. She sighed against his mouth and parted her lips, aggressive with her tongue as it met his. She gripped his shoulders and pushed him back against the wall, forcing herself to show a little restraint as he was hurt, but his arms wound around her and squeezed and she moaned into him. She pressed her hands to his chest and bit his bottom lip hard enough that he chuckled and smiled against her lips.
“Alpha,” he whispered.
She grinned, her heart sparking fireworks as she slid her hands up the sweaty, muddy, heaving wonder of his chest to cradle his cheeks in her palms. “You’re goddamn right,” she said, and plundered his mouth again.
They stumbled into his room and she peeled off her shirt and her bra, delighting in his wide-eyed reaction before she pushed him down on the bed and climbed on top of him, pressing his hands above his head and ducking down to attach her mouth to his neck.
“Oh my God, Meg,” he breathed, and she ground into him, feeling him getting hard beneath her and impatient to feel him. He clutched her ass and squeezed and she bit his neck harder and tugged his hair, just as quickly going over the little bite with her tongue, as if in apology.
Starcrossed Shifters Page 7
