Gunner, are you ok? I had a bad feeling. Humor me.
She kept her eyes on her phone as she brushed her teeth and kept glaring at it as she undressed. She stepped into the shower and worried about her mate, her phone horribly silent. She texted him again, half dressed in her room. Her heart was racing.
Gunner is in danger.
Gunner is in danger.
At breakfast, her leashmates knew something was wrong. Jan and Naomi teased until Lane told them to stop. They all knew it was about Gunner. Megan didn’t care. Megan didn’t care about anything at that moment outside of Gunner’s safety.
She carpooled with the girls to work and walked in, on high alert, her eyes going straight to his office. The room was locked and dim, and she could see through the blinds that he was not there. He generally arrived at work the same time she did.
It was early, she told herself. Too early for texting if you were in a rush and maybe he was running late. She told herself not to panic. Maybe something had happened but it was small; a flat tire. Perhaps her bond to him was just sensitive.
Megan hovered outside her office, sipping coffee from her to-go mug and staring at the dim and empty office visible through Gunner’s blinds. Whenever she hung around outside of her office for more than five seconds, people suddenly decided they needed to ask a question or have something clarified or just kiss ass, and she found herself suddenly busy for an hour as she stood there.
By ten, Gunner was an hour late to work.
Megan went to Bryan’s desk because he was the person to call if somebody was late or unable to work. She already knew what he was going to say. She was absolutely sure of it. Her terrible feeling was starting to make her blood run cold.
“Has Gunner called in?” She said, her voice sounding a little too high and shaky. “He’s an hour late.”
“No,” Bryan said, raising his eyebrows. “John hasn’t called either and he’s three hours late.”
Megan knew some shifters had powers beyond shifting. There were psychic shifters out there, just as there were psychic humans. She had never considered herself to have any extra powers of note herself, other than the occasional coincidental prediction that could potentially have meant something more. She supposed there was a place where instinct collided with psychic ability and there was also the matter of this bond she shared with Gunner and perhaps anything related to Gunner. But she knew now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Gunner Dylan and John Byeler both having gone missing could not be a coincidence.
To Bryan, she only said, “Okay. Let me know if one of them calls in or shows up.”
She went to her office and closed the door and shut the blinds. She leaned against the door and closed her eyes. She couldn’t think of where she would start if she had to be the one to track down Gunner, which she had every intention of doing. Reflexively, most shifters tried not to involve human law enforcement in their internal matters if they could possibly get away with avoiding it. Her leashmates would help her out of a sense of loyalty, even if they couldn’t understand how she could love a wolf. But she couldn’t imagine contacting Gunner’s pack for help. That was too big a risk. It could even put Gunner in further danger for all she knew.
“Ah love, what’re we gonna do,” she muttered to herself.
She was wearing a skirt suit that day and suddenly felt overdressed for the occasion, as if she shouldn’t be dressed up with Gunner missing. She should be in jeans, she thought.
She composed herself finally and turned to go to her desk and just check to see if he’d emailed.
On her desk, there was a note written on a sheet of printer paper in black Sharpie. The handwriting was bold and plain:
JOHN BYELER KNOWS WHERE GUNNER IS.
HE IS CURRENTLY LOCKED IN YOUR FIRST FLOOR SUPPLY CLOSET.
SINCERELY,
A FRIEND.
Megan picked up the note and frowned. It was hard not to want to know first, just who had written this note. She had friends, sure, but nobody who could know what was happening even a little bit outside of her leash, and her girls would’ve just told her to her face. Besides, the handwriting didn’t look like theirs.
She had a distinct feeling that she would never know who had written the note. But she might know where Gunner had gone off to. She scowled in the general direction of the supply closet, and growled under her breath.
Fox shifters were not particularly prone to anger. Not like wolves were. When she was angry about something, Megan usually figured out the best way to resolve the problem in as cunning a fashion as possible. She wondered now if Gunner had rubbed off on her a little bit as anger poured through her veins and she stomped her way out of her office and across the floor and to the door of the supply closet. She unlocked it with her key and threw it open.
John Byeler was sitting on the floor in the corner, looking for all the world like a drunken delinquent in the county lock-up waiting for his bail to be posted.
The sharp and pungent scent of him hit Megan all at once.
Wolf!
John looked up at her passively, as if he’d expected her but was determined not to be impressed by whatever was coming.
“Where’s Gunner?” Megan asked, fighting to keep herself calm.
“Probably dead,” John said, shrugging. As if it was nothing. “He will be soon, anyway. I’m sure his pack will have something to say about it.” John grinned broadly and said, “There might even be a war.” He sounded downright gleeful.
Completely disregarding all propriety and everything she had been taught about keeping shifter business away from the humans, Megan abruptly shifted and pounced on John.
Megan was a fast shifter and always had been. She could turn from human to a cunning and admirably powerful fox before you knew what you had seen before your eyes. She did not give John time to know what he was seeing much less shift himself. He was sitting back with his head turned away and his knee folded up and she immediately went for the exposed bit of chest between his shoulder and his neck.
John screamed, attracting the attention of the entire staff. He also attracted the attention of Lane who had already been running for the supply closet when she’d suddenly smelled a sharp wolf scent wafting through the office that didn’t belong to Gunner Dylan. She appeared in the doorway just in time to see John shift into a scrappy looking wolf bearing huge fangs that darted towards Megan who reared up on her hind legs.
Lane screamed, “NAOMI! JAN!” She shifted immediately and dove into the fray.
It was all happening so quickly that Naomi and Jan had run over from the coffee bar and then there were four foxes on one wolf, quickly forcing him into submission, before any other staff appeared.
Chapter Eighteen: Bryan
The human staff looked up with vague interest at the commotion coming from the supply closet but only Bryan ran to see what it was about, as everyone was locked into their work brains and not expecting much serious trouble from a closet full of heating pads and essential oils.
Bryan had no idea where Megan and the others had gone off to, but there were apparently four foxes and a wolf fighting in the supply closet. He was certain he was having some kind of out-of-body experience or thought perhaps some bougie San Franciscan had become overly creative with pets who had escaped. He thought quickly on his feet and shut the door of the supply closet, locking them in. His hands shook as he took his phone from his pocket, thinking that he ought to call animal control...or the police… He wasn’t sure which one he was supposed to call first.
He felt strangely calm and supposed that something so surreal and inexplicable happening sometimes made a person act strangely calm.
The rest of the staff was calmly working, only occasionally frowning in the direction of the closet where it sounded like a few people were playing soccer with some crates of tea.
Bryan stood between the staff just down the hall on the floor and the supply closet, and stared blankly at his phone. There was no longer any commotion coming from
within the room. He dimly wondered if all the animals had killed each other. That would be an ugly thing to have to clean up. It would probably be John’s job but John had not shown up to work.
“Bryan!” Megan’s voice was unmistakable coming through the door.
Bryan stared at the door of the supply closet and frowned. He was sure of what he’d seen. He was also sure that for the rest of his life, he would not forget it. There had been four foxes, like burnt orange, classic looking foxes like he’d never seen up close outside of a zoo and they had been furiously fighting with a very large sort of mangy looking brown wolf. He hadn’t exactly been able to work out who was winning as it had been a blur of flying fur and tails whipping around but he had seen some very large teeth before closing the door. The room was so small. He had not seen any human beings inside it. He would have remembered that. He would have let any humans out. Humans, he was reasonably sure, definitely shouldn’t be locked in small rooms with dangerous animals in violent moods.
“Bryan, it’s okay! Let us out!”
Bryan was starting to doubt his own sanity and he stared at the door as if he half expected it to abruptly burst into flames or turn into a dragon or who knew what, At this point, the morning had become something way past normal so there was no telling.
Bryan watched himself unlock the door and almost felt as if he were hovering outside his body as he slowly opened it.
Very calmly, four disheveled women walked out. Megan was dabbing a bloody lip with her sleeve and her hair was a mess. Naomi was grimacing and rubbing her arm. Lane was glaring toward the back of the room as she muttered to herself and slightly limped. Behind them trailed Jan who was licking her lips and breathing heavily like she’d just gone six rounds and wanted to go a seventh.
The four women nodded politely at Bryan as they walked past, excepting Megan who stopped and quietly said to Bryan, “Don’t say a word to anyone about the animals. You and I have to talk. I’ll deal with John. Close the door and come to my office.”
He watched the four women walk away and looked back into the room to see John Byeler sitting on the floor. His hands and feet were bound with duct tape and there was a strip covering his mouth. He met Bryan’s eyes and gave him a look that Bryan had never seen on a person before which made him gasp and shut the door, instinctually deciding that whatever was going on, he was on Megan’s side.
Everyone gave the women funny looks as they calmly returned to their offices, but no one had bothered to see what was going on with the supply closet. WellDrop had only recently launched and they were very busy and two important staff members had not shown up to work. There was simply too much to be done to bother with whatever was going on in the supply closet.
Bryan’s heart palpitated and he went to Megan’s office and stared at her blankly, hovering in the doorway.
“Close the door and shut the blinds,” Megan Flannery said.
Bryan obeyed and Megan proceeded to explain to him that she and her three co-founders of WellDrop were something called “shifters” and that they could turn into foxes at a moment’s notice. She directed him not to scream and then demonstrated for him before turning human again. She told him that his star hire, Gunner Dylan, was also a shifter except that he was a wolf...like John Byeler...who had apparently kidnapped Gunner, and now Megan and her friends had to go save him. So if he would be so very kind as to take this information to the grave and make sure John Byeler did not come out of the supply closet, she would be very grateful and never forget it, especially once performance reviews came around.
Bryan agreed to Megan’s terms, having no idea what else to do, and returned to his desk where he sat silently for about a half hour.
He spent most of the half hour trying to figure out whether this job had just become even more complicated than his prior job at Facebook. He came away without an answer.
Chapter Nineteen: Delilah
John Byeler, the lone wolf, had gone to all the trouble of dooming Gunner Dylan because he wanted a war between the foxes and the wolves.
Delilah suspected he might have succeeded. Megan and her pack would hopefully be working on finding and freeing Gunner. Delilah thought she might dip her toes in some diplomacy, a field she had less than no experience in, and see if she could prevent some bloodshed. Talking people into peace, she did not consider her forte. It was why she had failed in her first job with the Angelic Dimension in the Department of Redemption and De-Corruption. It had involved a lot of persuading people to do “the right thing.” Delilah barely had a complete picture of what that was and certainly couldn’t think of many reasons why humans with short lives on earth should want to do it barring knowledge of the afterlife and the penance they would later be paying. But you weren’t allowed to tell the mortals about that.
Byeler, from what Delilah had now gathered, had taken Gunner to a large and pretty unforgiving fox leash outside of town. The leash belonged, of course, to the clan that feuded with the wolves for so long.
Delilah found herself feeling an emotion she could not remember feeling for several decades. She was something like nervous and the sensation made her uncomfortable and itchy. The only experience she could compare it to was wearing a bad sweater. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been nervous. It had certainly been back during her mortal life on earth. She could, however, remember plenty of itchy sweaters.
Oracle was at least useful enough to inform Delilah that the grand alpha of the region’s fox clan was an elderly old fox named Charles Blakely who lived in a stately yellow Victorian house in a particularly tony area of San Francisco. He was known to have been a warrior in his day; his day having been many decades ago now.
Delilah considered that to accomplish this bit of diplomacy, she might need a boost. She went to the fanciest looking coffee house she could find and bought the biggest mocha available, resisting the urge (for now) to add whiskey, and made her way to Charles Blakely’s house.
Delilah knocked on the door and took another sip of mocha. The man who answered was a few inches shorter than Delilah - who was herself petite - owing to the hunch in his back. He craned his neck to look up at her, peering over the rims of his glasses.
“Yes, hello?” He said in a curt but raspy voice. “Oh. An angelic agent. What do you want?”
“How did you know-”
“Never mind that,” he said, waving a hand. “What leash did which this time? Is it those delinquent little kits in Monterey again? I told them to leave the otters alone-”
“Ah, no. No, I need to talk to you about Megan Flannery and...and some wolves.”
“Wolves,” Charles said sadly. Delilah had expected more agitation at the very idea of wolves but instead, the old man’s expression collapsed on itself. She saw an old man who had fought too many wars and was perhaps tired. “What about the wolves?”
“Let me tell you a little story, if you got a minute?” Delilah said, giving him her most charming smile. “It’s a love story.”
Charles sighed heavily and threw up his hands. “Alright, why not. I’ve got no business today and there’s nothing good on Netflix. Come inside. Do you like guacamole?”
“Oh, I love guacamole.”
“We’ll have some guacamole, then.”
Chapter Twenty: Megan
“What do we do?” Lane sighed.
They were all packed into Megan’s car, having declared that they were all taking the day off and leaving poor Byran to deal with not just managing a work day with a sizeable chunk of the staff missing, but keeping one of them locked in a supply closet without anyone knowing.
Megan rested her hands on the steering wheel and said, “We go save my wolf boyfriend from our own people.”
The thought was daunting and, she considered, probably impossible. She could see no way around it. Gunner was her mate, of that she was now certain. And beyond that, she now had a feeling that even if he wasn’t, she might insist on saving him anyway. The idea that he was being penalized for bein
g a wolf, caught in the crossfire of a shifter feud, the cause of which nobody could even remember, was too infuriating. Saving Gunner was simply the right thing to do.
She had no idea how it was going to work.
She wasn’t going to attack her own people...or at least not initially. And if she tried, she knew she would lose. She was, she knew, likely on a suicide mission. She had no one but her leash to ask for help and she was going up against not just the leash who had taken Gunner prisoner from John, but her entire clan. She was inevitably ostracizing herself and the rest of her leash, too.
Her heart was pounding at the implications.
“You guys should go back to work,” Megan said flatly.
She could feel the abrupt agitation between them. She stared out the front window at the street.
“What are you talking about?” Lane snapped.
“I know you guys don’t approve,” Megan said, “of me and Gunner. But the truth is, I’m in love with him. I believe he’s my mate. That’s why I’m going to save him. But it could get you guys banished from the clan or worse. You might not even be able to see your parents ever again and that’s if they don’t kill us. You guys should go. I’ll go to the leash that’s holding Gunner and I’ll just…” She rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know what I’ll do, to be honest. I’ll do something. But you guys don’t have to be involved in this. I’m sorry I was assuming you would be.”
“We got in the car, didn’t we?” Jan cracked. “I didn’t think we were going out for ice cream.”
“Yeah, we’re not assholes,” Naomi said. “Besides, I’m not letting that dickbag Byeler get away with this shit. He almost bit my ear off!”
“Megan Flannery,” Lane said, “why do think we jumped into the fight in the closet to begin with?”
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