Clea (Gillham Pack Book 17)

by Catherine Lievens

  “This is our dog,” Clea said. He had to say something.

  “That’s not a dog.”

  “He’s a rescue dog. We’re not sure what breed he is.” That was plausible, right?

  “Is this the guy from the video or is it another one? Are you one of them?”

  “We’re just two guys walking their dog.”

  The guy behind the first one moved and Clea knew the situation was going to be a clusterfuck. The man pulled out a gun and pointed it at Christian. His hand was trembling and he looked like he’d never shot anyone. He probably hadn’t, but he was scared, and Clea knew fear could make people do things they wouldn’t normally do.

  Like shoot an innocent man they’d just met in the woods.

  * * * *

  Christian moved in front of Clea. He didn’t care how stubborn Clea was or how much he was trained. Clea was his mate, and he’d defend him in any way he could.

  He raised his hands. “Put the gun down.”

  The guy looked like he wouldn’t hurt a fly, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t shoot. It would probably happen by accident since he was shaking so much, which heightened the possibility of someone being hurt. Since Christian and Clea were the ones held at gunpoint, it didn’t take a genius to understand who would get hurt.

  “Are you one of them?” the guy asked again, and Christian wasn’t sure what to do. He could probably say he wasn’t until he was blue in the face and the guy wouldn’t believe him. What would happen if he admitted he was a shifter, though? Would the guy shoot him or would he be so scared that him and his friend would turn tail and run?

  Christian looked at the other guy. His eyes were wide and he was staring at the gun as if he’d never seen one.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked.

  His friend briefly looked at him. “It’s my dad’s.”

  “Why did you bring it? You’re not going to shoot these guys. Right?”

  The guy with the gun swallowed heavily. “They’re—they’re monsters, Dan. That wolf is probably a guy.”

  Dan shook his head. “It doesn’t mean you have to shoot him! You don’t even know for sure. Maybe they’re telling the truth and they’re just walking their dog.”

  The guy with the gun lowered his hand. It wasn’t much, but it would probably be Christian’s only opportunity. He started to move forward, but before he could, Clea appeared next to the guy with the gun. He put his hand on the gun, kneed the guy in the nuts, and disappeared again, with the gun this time.

  The guy grunted and grabbed his balls while the other one looked around and ran the other way. Victor, the wolf shifter, was there, though. He jumped onto the guy’s back, pushing him to the ground. Dan yelled as if the wolf was killing him, but Christian knew better. They’d been trained to incapacitate first, not to kill.

  “Oh my God, Anthony! Help me! He’s going to eat me!” Dan yelled at the top of his lungs.

  Anthony was still folded in half and Christian didn’t think he’d be a danger. He looked around, trying to see where Clea had shimmered, but he wasn’t anywhere in sight. Christian knew he was probably safe, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to see his mate to make sure of it. He’d need to spank Clea for putting himself in danger as soon as they were alone.

  Christian went to crouch beside Victor, who was still on top of Dan. “Let him go.”

  Victor grinned and Christian thought he looked like he was enjoying himself a bit too much. Dan was whimpering under him, repeating that he didn’t want to become wolf chow, and Christian kind of pitied him. This obviously wasn’t going to make him change his mind about shifters. He’d probably be traumatized.

  “Victor, let him go.”

  Christian turned to see Kameron standing by them, Clea next to him. At least Clea had had the presence of mind to go get the alpha. He hadn’t just disappeared without telling Christian anything.

  Christian still wanted to spank him.

  Victor climbed off Dan, but Dan didn’t get up. Victor went to sit in front of Anthony, who was watching Kameron with wide eyes and still cupping his groin. He took a step backward when Victor came closer, but his back hit a tree, so he couldn’t go further.

  Christian grabbed Dan’s arm and hauled him up. Dan whimpered again and tried to fold himself into a ball, but Christian held him up. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

  For some reason, Dan didn’t look reassured. Christian rolled his eyes and looked at Kameron.

  “What happened?” Kameron asked.

  “I was walking in the woods while Christian was... having fun. I followed him here, Victor found me, then these two guys popped up. The one holding his dick had a gun,” Clea said.

  Christian thought there was no use in avoiding mentioning he was a shifter and that he was flying around, since both Dan and Anthony had seen Clea shimmer twice, but he wasn’t going to mention it. Instead, he glared at Clea, who carefully avoided looking at him. He knew he was in trouble.

  Kameron looked at Anthony, since he wasn’t whimpering as loud as Dan was. “What were you doing here? This is private property.”

  Dan swallowed. “We wanted to find you.”

  “Why?”

  “Just... because.”

  “And you brought a gun with you?”

  “I didn’t know he had a gun,” Dan said. “We were just curious, I swear. We weren’t going to hurt anyone. I wasn’t going to hurt anyone.”

  “Hey!” Anthony protested.

  Kameron arched a brow at him. “Why bring a gun if you didn’t want to hurt anyone?”

  Anthony shrugged. “Because we didn’t know if you were dangerous.”

  “You didn’t know,” Dan muttered. Anthony looked like he wanted to strangle him.

  “You thought he was going to eat you!” Anthony protested.

  “I still didn’t pull a gun on him!” Dan responded.

  “Because you didn’t have one. You’d have shot him if you did, trust me.”

  “But I didn’t have one. I’m not an idiot.”

  “Are you saying I’m an idiot?”

  “You were the one who brought a gun, and look what it got us.”

  Christian looked at Kameron. He couldn’t believe those two were for real. They’d gone shifter hunting with a gun, had found them, had been terrified, and were now fighting with each other instead of cowering.

  Kameron looked amused instead of angry, but then Christian thought they probably all were. Those two weren’t dangerous. They were idiots who shouldn’t be trusted with a gun, but they weren’t dangerous. He didn’t know why exactly they’d come looking for Kameron, but he didn’t think Anthony had meant to hurt anyone. He’d just been scared, which he obviously wasn’t anymore.

  Kameron cleared his throat, and Dan and Anthony’s heads snapped toward him. “Why are you here?” Kameron asked again.

  “We just wanted to see the guy that turns into a wolf,” Dan said. He looked at Victor. “And we were wondering if you could do it too? Can you? And are you the only one who can do it? You obviously aren’t, because I really don’t believe you found this guy in a rescue. That’s a wolf, so either you guys are wolf whisperers or he’s a werewolf too.” He looked at Christian. “Are you a wolf too? You look like you could be.”

  Clea made a strangled noise. “Why did you ask him and not me?”

  Dan looked at him. “You look kind of small.”

  “I’m not small! I’m well-proportioned, thank you very much.”

  “Yeah, but you look too small to be a wolf.”

  “I’m not!”

  “So you’re a wolf?”

  Clea scowled. “No.”

  “See? I was right.”

  Christian nodded at Kameron. “What are you going to do with them?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know. I was going to call the cops for trespassing, but...”

  “They look harmless.”

  “Yeah. I don’t think they wanted to hurt anyone, although I wouldn’t give either of them a
gun ever again.”

  Christian looked at Dan, who was still bickering with Clea. “You know what this means, though.” It wasn’t good. If Dan and Anthony were able to find out where Kameron was, it wouldn’t take someone more intelligent much to reach the same conclusion. It meant if word got out about Kameron’s presence in Gillham, the town would soon swarm with journalists and the like. While that might be a good thing for the town, it wouldn’t be for Kameron or the pack. Pack territory was wide enough that Kameron couldn’t possibly cover it all. As Dan and Anthony had shown, it wasn’t that hard to get through.

  Kameron sighed. “Yeah. Some of the Gillham inhabitants obviously know where I am.”

  * * * *

  “What are you then?”

  Clea scowled at Dan. He couldn’t stand the guy, yet he was going to have to stick with him for at least another fifteen minutes. “It’s none of your business.”

  “You said you’re not a wolf. Does that mean there are other kinds of werewolves out there?”

  Clea rolled his eyes. “They’re not werewolves.”

  Anthony snorted and almost fell on his face as he stumbled on a branch. Kameron was just in time, grabbing his arm and pulling him up before he became one with the forest ground. “This guy becomes a wolf,” Anthony said, pointing his thumb at Kameron. “What do you call that?”

  “I call that a shifter. Werewolves are something else, and trust me, you don’t want to meet one if shifters scare you.”

  Anthony puffed out his chest. “I’m not scared. Dan is.”

  “Hey!” Dan protested. “I’m not scared.”

  “Don’t eat me! Don’t eat me!” Anthony squeaked, laughing at Dan. Dan slapped him, and Anthony almost went down again in the attempt of avoiding Dan’s hand.

  Clea wasn’t sure how those two had managed to get so deep into pack territory. They looked like they wouldn’t be able to fight their way out of a wet paper bag. It was a miracle Anthony was able to walk without falling every five minutes or slamming into a tree. The thought of him having a gun was scary.

  “Shut your whore mouth,” Dan spat out. At least they weren’t paying attention to Clea anymore.

  He sidled closer to Kameron. “What are you going to do with them?”

  “Send them back to town.”

  “Won’t they run their mouths about you, though?” They looked like they’d tell anyone who listened about the wolves in the forest. The entire town would know as soon as they set foot there again.

  Kameron sighed. “I can’t keep them here against their will. Besides, I’m pretty sure that most of the town already knows exactly where I am. I might have stayed in pack territory since the video was uploaded, but I used to go into town often. People have to remember me. It’s a miracle no one has called the press yet, but I don’t expect it to last.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Kameron eyed Clea. “Well, I’ll probably need a PA to balance everything. I already have so much stuff to do with the council, I can’t afford to lose time with the press. I need someone who’ll answer my phone for me and tell me only what I need to know.”

  Clea shook his head and smiled. “You know, you really should work on your convincing. You’re lucky I’d already decided to leave the enforcers and come work for you, because your little speech wouldn’t have made me want to.”

  Kameron grinned. He reached out and grabbed Anthony’s arm again, pulling him sideways before the man could hit the tree he’d been about to walk into. The guy needed a keeper. “So I have a PA?” Kameron asked.

  “Yeah, I guess you do, although I’m thinking I made the wrong decision.” Clea didn’t particularly want to have to deal with the press, but he knew he’d have to. “You need to have pack territory fenced.”

  Kameron’s brows shot up his forehead. “I’m not sure how we went from you being my PA to fencing pack territory.”

  “I know it’s a huge chunk of woods, so maybe you could stick to fencing around the pack’s houses, but it needs to be done. If those two,” Clea said, tilting his chin toward Dan and Anthony, “managed to get here, anyone can. And really, it’s not hard. You just have to walk into the forest and keep walking until you stumble either onto a guard or directly onto one of the houses. When the journalists get here, and they will, you’ll find them on your porch spying through the window if you don’t fence the houses off.”

  Kameron looked at Clea for a few seconds. “All right. Find someone to do the job. If they’re humans, make sure to pay them appropriately if they keep their mouths shut.”

  “You want me to pay them for keeping what they’re doing a secret?”

  Kameron waved. “Make them sign a confidentiality thingy. I’m sure famous people do it all the time.”

  Anthony stumbled again and Kameron held him up. Clea didn’t know why Dan and Anthony didn’t seem scared anymore, but he wasn’t sure that was a good thing. What would keep them away if not fear? Clea could imagine finding them on Kameron’s porch every morning, like lost puppies.

  The thought made him laugh.

  An arm wrapped around his waist and he leaned against Christian. “What’s so funny?” Christian asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You look good when you smile.”

  Clea’s smile widened even as he blushed. “I guess you’ll have to make me smile more often then.”

  “Hey, are you guys together?” Dan asked. Yeah, he wasn’t scared in the least anymore, maybe because Victor had stayed in the woods. Kameron was in his human form, and Dan and Anthony had no idea what Clea and Christian were. They probably felt safe. That, or they were crazy, which seemed to be a strong possibility.

  Christian looked at Dan. “We’re mated, yes. Is that a problem?”

  Dan raised his hands. “Nope, no problems. I mean, it’d be kind of hypocritical since I’m gay and everything.”

  “Are you with Anthony?” Clea asked. At least this way Dan wasn’t trying to guess what Clea was.

  Dan looked horrified. “God no. That’s just disgusting.”

  Clea looked at Anthony. The guy might be a mess and apparently not able to walk in a straight line without hitting something, but he wasn’t bad looking. “Why?”

  “Because he’s like my brother or something. That would be incest. Ugh. So is the big guy taken?”

  Clea’s eyes widened. “You want to hit on Kameron?”

  Dan shrugged. “Why not? He’s hot.”

  “He’s a wolf shifter. I thought you hated them or something.”

  “Who said I hated them? I was curious, and okay, I was scared because I thought that wolf was going to eat me, but I don’t hate them. They never did anything to me, or to anyone I know. I don’t have any reasons to hate him.”

  “People don’t usually need reasons to hate someone.”

  “True, but really, I don’t. So, is he taken? Because I don’t want to be a home wrecker. I bet he has a wife and a hundred kids, right? I mean, I’d certainly spend most of my time in bed with him if he was mine.”

  Clea laughed. “He is taken, but Zach doesn’t have the necessary equipment to have a hundred kids.”

  Dan wriggled his nose. “Figures. He’s gay, but he’s already taken. I’m always too late.”

  Clea kind of wanted Dan to stick around. He was entertaining.

  “Are there any single guys around?” Dan asked, looking around the woods as if hot guys were about to pop out.

  “Yeah, we have some of those.”

  Dan’s eyes lit up. “Maybe I could chat with them.”

  “So you wouldn’t have problems having sex with shifters?”

  Dan blushed furiously and looked at his feet. “I never said anything about having sex.”

  “I thought that was what we were talking about?”

  “I’m not a wham bam thank you man kind of guy. I like to get to know people, and you guys are so fucking interesting. I could talk with one of you for hours and still have questions.”

  Somehow, Cl
ea didn’t doubt that. “I don’t know what Kameron is going to decide to do with you two.”

  Dan narrowed his eyes. “Decide to do? Is he going to kill us?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Good. So what is he going to do?”

  “Send you home. Probably ask you to keep your mouth shut about where we are and how you got here.”

  Dan blinked. “Keep our mouth shut about where you are? Uh, I’m sorry to tell you this, but the entire town knows where you guys are. It’s not like a bunch of people living together on the same patch of ground for the past sixty plus years isn’t noticeable. We might be human, but we’re not stupid.”

  “So the whole town knows where to find Kameron?”

  “More or less, yeah.”

  Why hadn’t anyone tried to come to them sooner? Why had no one talked to the press after the video had come up? What the fuck was happening?

  * * * *

  Christian couldn’t believe what Dan was saying. It did make sense, though. The pack had been in Gillham for dozens of years, under different alphas. No matter how inconspicuous they tried to be, someone was bound to notice something. That was why Christian’s colony moved every twenty or so years. That way no one suspected anything.

  Anthony stumbled again, and Christian held him up without looking away from Dan. “So everyone in town knows about the pack.”

  Dan’s eyes widened. “The pack? You mean there’s an entire pack of—of wolf shifters here? Seriously?”

  Christian didn’t get this guy.

  Anthony slapped the back of Dan’s head. “Of course they’re a pack. What did you think they were? Big guy here is a wolf, right?”

  “So? It doesn’t mean that everyone living here is a wolf. Small guy isn’t.”

  “Small guy has a name,” Clea grumbled.

  “Yeah, well, since you haven’t told us yet, I’ll call you small guy.”

  “My name is Clea.”

  Anthony cocked his head. “Isn’t that a girl’s name?” His gaze slid to Clea’s groin and Christian growled. Anthony took a step backward and his back hit a tree. “Sorry. I was just... checking.”