by Roxie Noir
At least she doesn’t get teary-eyed with relief every time I come home from work anymore, Olivia thought.
Then she heard voices on the main walkway: two women and a man, murmuring about something or other.
“And,” one of the women’s voices said, “Pierce wants me to help with the fundraiser for his cat sanctuary. He really said that to me, Lois.”
The other woman’s voice, who Olivia assumed was Lois, scoffed. “He’s got more than enough money to feed and house every feral housecat from here to Oregon,” she said. “And he wants you to help him? I swear, lions have some nerve.”
“Have you been to the cat sanctuary?” the man’s voice asked. “I’ve heard it’s quite nice.”
The three of them came into view, starting down the short dead-end path that ended in Olivia’s bench, and stopped short.
Olivia sat there with her mouth open and one hand on the book she’d brought with her, staring.
The two women were barely there, as far as she was concerned. The only thing she could see was the man towering over them.
He looked like a lumberjack who’d been stuffed into a suit: good, but it was obvious that it wasn’t what he should have been wearing.
He should be wearing nothing, Olivia thought, and then gasped.
Her bear sat up and roared, and she clapped one hand over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut.
No, no, no no no, she thought desperately. She took a deep breath and thought about marshmallows and indoor plumbing and all the other reasons to control her bear and not go tearing through town.
Olivia started sweating everywhere. She could feel it pouring down her face from her hairline, her underarms and back quickly soaking through the shirt and cardigan she’d bought so she’d look more like a librarian.
Still, all she could see in front of her eyes was him, naked, holding himself up over top of her as she lay on her back, his dark hair flopping in his face, his nearly-gold eyes lighting up. Her legs wrapped around his back.
She crossed her ankles and squeezed her legs together, her bear hardly staying inside.
“Oh,” she heard one of the women say acidly, and Olivia could practically feel the woman’s eyes raking her up and down. “Wrong turn. Let’s go.”
Olivia could barely hear their retreating footsteps over the sound of her own pulse, her blood rushing through her veins at top speed. At last, she opened her eyes again, only to get a final glance at the young man who’d been with them.
He looked straight at her, then smiled, like he was about to say something.
“Jasper, are you coming?” one of the women said, and then he disappeared behind a bush.
“It’s that feral girl,” the voice went on. “Feral for ten whole years, and they’ve let her out into the community. She’s positively a menace...”
Olivia slumped back against the bench for a moment, nearly shaking. By now, she was pretty much used to people talking about her like she was an animal. She was just glad they were gone.
Could you have handled that worse? She asked herself. Her shirt stuck to her with sweat. The most attractive man you’ve ever seen, and your reaction is to close your eyes and cover your mouth?
That’s not how normal people act.
She couldn’t be there anymore. She had to escape. Olivia jumped to her feet, grabbed her empty lunch bag and her trash, and walked out of her formerly-peaceful dead end. Right away, she started planning what she was going to do next: go to her car, pick up the milk and butter her mother had requested, and take the long way home. A nice drive always calmed her down; it was a good way to be alone but also close to nature — and there was less chance she’d shift, since shifting while driving was basically a death sentence.
Just as Olivia began to calm down, the sweat no longer running down the back of her neck, she heard footsteps behind her.
“Hey!” the voice called.
It was him.
Breathe deep, smile, exchange pleasantries, thought Olivia. Come on, you practiced this in therapy.
She turned. Jasper jogged toward her down the path, his eyes locked on hers.
Olivia took a deep breath. She smiled.
“You left this on the bench,” he said, handing her the book.
“Oh,” said Olivia. She reached out her hand and took it back from him.
Exchange pleasantries, she thought.
“Thanks,” she said out loud.
“I loved A Wrinkle in Time when I was kid,” Jasper offered. He had an easy smile that reached his eyes right away, and something in them seemed to light up.
Olivia’s bear growled, and she swallowed.
“Me too,” she said. “I re-read it all the time now. It’s kind of comforting, you know? Like a security blanket. But a book.”
Good job! she told herself.
“I should re-read it,” he said, then stuck his hand out. “I’m Jasper, by the way.”
Olivia stared at his hand for one moment too long, then remembered about shaking hands, and shook it.
“I’m Olivia,” she said, though she had a feeling that he already knew. After all, her face had been on the front page of their small-town newspaper not long after she’d become human again, and people in Granite Valley weren’t shy about expressing their opinions about “that feral girl.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” he said, his gaze still boring into hers, and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, back toward the library and toward town. “Listen, there’s this new place in town—”
“Jasper, what are you doing,” asked an exasperated woman’s voice, and then the two older women came around a corner, stopping short when they saw Jasper talking to Olivia.
He quickly rolled his eyes at Olivia, then turned for a moment to tell them something.
Olivia bolted. She dropped the book and her lunch bag and sprinted to her car in the library employee parking lot, buckling herself in with shaking hands, before driving away as fast as she could get her ten-year-old Chevy to go.
She forgot the milk and butter, and instead drove around back roads for an hour, until she felt brave enough to go home.
2
Jasper
When Jasper turned back around, the girl was literally running away, down the brick path that led out of the garden.
Chase her! his bear roared, but he quieted the animal down. He knew better than to think he could go chasing girls through gardens — particularly when he was giving two of his father’s biggest donors a tour of the attractions of Granite Valley.
Instead he stood there, her book in his hand, and watched her go.
Deep down, he knew it wasn’t over.
It was her. He couldn’t believe it. Her! Here! Sitting on a bench and reading, of all things. He and Craig had been totally certain that they’d never find her again, not that they hadn’t been trying.
“Jasper, that’s just the feral girl,” Lois said behind him. “Haven’t you seen the news?”
The feral girl?
“I guess not,” he said. He collected himself, turned to face them, and put on a smile. “I’ve been in Redding most of the time, with the campaign.”
“Ah, that explains it,” Alice said. She stepped up to him and took him by one elbow, holding her body close to his.
That was one of the things about his job: when someone on Senator Sargent’s staff had to spend time with campaign donors, the older ladies tended to request his son, Jasper Sargent. Lois and Alice’s generation — both women were in their late sixties — had a lot of shifters who hadn’t been able, for whatever reason, to live in a happy triad. Usually, it was social pressure keeping the union to just a man and a woman, both yearning for a third to complete them, but unable to consummate if they wanted to keep their social standing among humans.
A lot of those couples split, and Jasper didn’t blame them. He couldn’t imagine knowing who your third was supposed to be, and having to pretend that they meant nothing to you. Thirty years with that kind of stress cou
ld do anyone in.
His own father, Senator Sargent, hadn’t acknowledged his male mate William until after Cascadia was granted statehood. It had been the topic of more than one fight in their household when Jasper was growing up.
Alice’s hand gripped him a little harder, and Jasper looked down at her, smiling.
“It began ten years ago,” Alice heard, keeping her voice conspiratorially low. “A couple towns over, this girl, Olivia, goes missing. Her family used to live in Granite Valley, so we knew them pretty well. Nice people.”
“Don’t forget about the son,” said Lois. Not about to be left in the dust, she took Jasper’s other arm and held herself close.
Jasper wished that she were Olivia, but he didn’t make a fuss. It was his job, after all. Sometimes a Communications Manager had to communicate in creative ways.
“I’m getting there, Lois,” said Alice. “So Olivia goes missing, and there are a couple sightings of her, in bear form, for a year or so, and then she’s just gone. We thought she’d been poached or something.”
Lois made a sad clicking noise with her tongue.
“How awful,” Lois said.
“Her brother just about lost his mind looking for her,” Alice went on. “Joined the army, got sent to Afghanistan, he was discharged for shifting in combat or something.”
That sounded vaguely familiar to Jasper. His father had been one of the sponsors of the bill that ended the army’s policy on shifters, and he was fairly certain that the brother’s story had come up at some point.
“He comes back, still looking for her,” Lois volunteered. “But in the meantime, she’s gotten into it with the wolves, somehow.”
“Allegedly,” said Alice.
Lois rolled her eyes behind her glasses.
“Allegedly, she killed two wolf shifters,” said Lois.
Jasper’s eyebrows went up. “Why?”
Alice lowered her voice to a whisper and looked around. The three of them were no longer walking, just standing in the middle of the path, gossiping.
“She says she doesn’t remember it,” Alice whispered. “There’s no proof it was really her, of course, but who else would have done it?”
“A real grizzly?” asked Jasper.
Alice just gave him a don’t be an idiot look.
“Anyway, the brother finds her in a cage on a wolf ranch and he manages to bring her back,” said Lois. “After ten years, too. That’s pretty impressive.”
“He’s pretty impressive,” said Alice. “Have you seen him on the news? If I were twenty years younger, I’d eat him with a spoon.”
“My god, Alice, those biceps.”
Jasper cleared his throat, interrupting the two women.
“That was her?” he asked. “The woman who was feral for ten years?”
Both women nodded.
Jasper’s heart sank, but it explained a lot. Like why he hadn’t been able to find her, for one.
“She was in a cage?” he asked.
“That’s what her brother and his mate claim,” Lois said. “The wolves keep changing their story. You know how wolves are.”
“Interesting,” he said.
Then he looked at his watch, his mind racing.
“Would you ladies like to get a cocktail in the lobby of the Hotel Feliz? It’s got the oldest wooden bar in Cascadia.”
The ladies tittered, and the three walked toward the sidewalk and down Main Street until they reached the old hotel. The women went on about something but Jasper’s mind raced.
The moment they were settled in the bar, both ladies with dirty martinis and Jasper with a whiskey, he pretended to get a call and went into the hotel lobby.
Instead, he called Craig.
“I found her,” he said without preamble.
For a moment, all he could hear was chainsaws in the background. Then Craig answered.
“Her?”
Jasper exhaled hard. It felt good to have finally told his mate.
“Of course I’m sure. She’s in Granite Valley.”
Craig shouted something to someone, and Jasper couldn’t quite make it out.
“No she isn’t. We looked there. We practically turned over every rock and dragged the river.”
The chainsaw sounds were muted now.
“You make it sound so creepy,” Jasper said.
“She wasn’t there,” Craig said. “We checked, you know we did.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Jasper said, half rolling his eyes.
Craig hated being proven wrong. Really hated it.
“Her name’s Olivia,” he offered. He felt his stomach tie itself in knots at the mere mention of the girl’s name. Despite himself, he saw her green eyes and gold-red hair in front of his face.
What would she look like with her hair down? He wondered. What would she look like on her back, moaning—
“Olivia,” said Craig. Jasper could picture his mate, sitting in his truck with his crew outside, staring ahead and saying the name to himself, over and over. “Where is she?”
“I told you, she’s here.”
“Is she there with you?”
Jasper could practically see the other man stop in his tracks.
“No,” said Jasper. “She kind of ran away from me, actually.”
Craig growled into the phone.
“We’re not wrong about her,” he said.
“She was feral,” Jasper said.
This was met with silence on the line, thought Jasper could hear Craig’s steps crunching over the leaves on the ground, as his mate considered this information.
“Really feral,” he went on.
“So?”
Jasper swallowed. He felt like he wasn’t conveying the gravity of the situation very well over the phone.
“Ten years feral.”
Craig grunted. Jasper sat on an overstuffed leather couch, trying to look like a guy just having a phone conversation, not someone whose heart was desperately trying to escape his chest.
“Let’s go find her,” Craig said. “You got that fancy phone on you? Google her.”
“I’m not googling her in the middle of a donor event.”
“Do you want her or not?”
Jasper pressed one hand to his temple, trying not to growl in polite company. Two humans walked through the lobby, toward the elevators, and he nodded at them.
“She’s not going to disappear overnight, Craig,” he said. “I think we need to talk about this first. There’s more.”
“She disappeared before.”
“That was different.”
Jasper heard a car door open and seconds later, shut. Suddenly the background noise on Craig’s end was quieter.
Jasper waited for Craig’s irritation to run its course.
“Where was she?” Craig finally asked.
“Sitting on a bench, eating lunch,” Jasper said, and then smiled. “I had these two old ladies with me, and I was so blown away that I almost didn’t say anything.”
“What did she do?”
She covered her mouth and closed her eyes. I think she might have had a panic attack, actually, Jasper thought.
“Nothing, really,” he said.
They’d talk about it later.
“I’m heading back into town,” Craig said. “You?”
“I think these ladies are getting tanked on martinis,” Jasper said. On cue, he heard a shriek of laughter from the bar. “I’ll probably call their drivers for them and head out. Want to get a drink at the usual?”
“Sounds good,” Craig said, and Jasper heard the rumble of his truck engine starting up. “See you in thirty.”
You didn’t tell him about the wolves, Jasper thought as the phone line went dead.
I didn’t want to do it over the phone, he told himself.
He stood, straightened his shirt, and walked back into the bar, a smile plastered on his face. When he walked through the door, both women squealed, and he noticed that they were each on a second martini.
/>
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Where were we?”
Twenty minutes later, as promised, Jasper called Lois and Alice’s drivers, and they were both heading back to their mansions in the mountains overlooking Granite Valley. If he’d done his job, they’d be breaking out their checkbooks to donate to his dad’s campaign again. It had been a long twenty minutes, listening to gossip while all he wanted to do was shout I FOUND HER from the rooftops.
Most days, Jasper liked this job. Sure, lots of people were quick to scream nepotism when they found out that he worked for his dad, but it was a hard job, and he was good at it. He’d grown up with a politician, a politician’s wife, and a Papa who’d gotten very good at deflecting the truth by the time his parents came out of the triad closet.
Of course he was good at talking to rich people and convincing them that what he had to say was what they wanted to hear.
Heart hammering, he pushed the door to the Bear’s Den open and was immediately greeted by the slight smell of stale beer, the red lights that surrounded the bar, and hair metal on the jukebox.
Exactly where I want to be, he thought, pulling his button-down shirt out of his pants as he walked, undoing the first button as he did.
Craig was already there, drinking a beer, and he gave his mate a quick on-the-lips kiss before sitting down next to him.
“If we’re not going to go out and grab her right now, at least tell me what’s going on,” he said dryly.
“She was feral,” Jasper said.
“You told me that part,” Craig said, with a shrug.
The bartender slid a paper coaster in front of Jasper. “Whacha want?” he asked. Dave the bartender was a paunchy human with a long, raggedy beard, best known for getting surprisingly good beers for a dive bar, and also for ruling the jukebox with an iron fist.
“Anything new?” asked Jasper.
“Got that fancy IPA from Russian River,” Dave said.
Jasper’s eyebrows went up.
“I’ll take it.”
Dave pointed at Craig, whose beer was near the bottom.
“Another Coors?”
