by Selena Scott
It was a Zen-like state of existence that Raphael had always enjoyed more than his brothers, who had a much harder time letting go of their logical minds. Raphael relaxed back into his wolf, and in doing so, found himself. The heart of him was still there. He was still Raphael Durant, regardless of the shape his body took.
***
Bauer stood there in the dark night, freezing cold. He shoved a hand down his face, surprised at the tears that had insisted on gathering at the corners of his eyes. He wasn’t usually a sensitive man, but still, it didn’t surprise him that staring at the red wolf in front of him would make him cry.
He was in too deep with this family.
He’d been training Jackson, Raphael, and Seth for a year and so far, Seth was the only brother who’d managed to shift outside the parameters of the full moon. Jackson had once as well, but that had been a shift born of rage. That didn’t count. Seth had asked his body to shift, and then he’d done so. He’d also been able to do so over and over again since then.
Raphael, on the other hand, had never been able to shift outside of the full moon, but Bauer had never been particularly worried for him. It was because of his allegiance to the moon that Bauer had known that Raph was particularly in tune with his wolf. Whenever Raph was in wolf form, he was the most himself of all the boys. In fact, he could even understand English still, which was something that Seth had only just started to begin to do in wolf form.
Each boy had their strength and Bauer had to admit he had formed a soft spot for each of them.
He worried about Seth the least. The boy had a good handle on his shift and now he had a good woman to create a life with. His heart was light. That was good.
He worried about Raph a bit because anyone could see that he was lonely, longing for love and coming up short. But the boy was gentle and most importantly, he loved himself. Which meant that Bauer never had to worry about how far south things might go with him.
Jackson, on the other hand, was a constant worry to Bauer’s old heart. The poor boy had taught himself control from an early age with no finesse whatsoever. He controlled the wolf within himself merely with a hateful, iron grip. And every once in a while, that grip slipped. Which led Jackson to be an erratic, uncontrollable wolf. He was the most dangerous of the brothers.
Watching Raphael shift on command, unbeholden to the moon, lightened something within Bauer. He felt as if he were one step closer to safety for these three boys. He felt as if for one moment, as he allowed his tears to fall, he could acknowledge how much he cared for them. How important it was to him that they become fully trained shifters, like himself, so that they could remain protected, remain secret.
The large, red wolf nosed at Bauer’s hand and Bauer obliged him with a scratch behind his ears. Raphael flapped onto his wolfen back and wiggled on the ground, scratching at an itch the way only a canine could. Bauer smiled. The boy was happy to be in his wolf form, reveling in it, even.
“All right,” he said to the wolf. “But it’s only a real magic trick if you can shift back into your human form on command.”
Sure enough, that was even harder than shifting in the middle of a moon cycle. Untrained shifters had to wait until they fell asleep to be able to shift back into their human forms. Seth was the only brother who’d mastered the shift fully yet.
Raphael sat back on his haunches, his tail moving against the ground, and looked up at the sky. Bauer watched as the half-moon reflected in the wolf’s eyes. Raphael tipped his head back and howled, long and mournful. And then, he was rising up, tall as a man, he was changing, he was smooth-skinned and grinning, he was falling back to all fours with a triumphant whooping joy as he hopped up, naked as a jaybird, and did a victory lap around the yard.
“That’s what I’m talking about! Hell, yeah!”
Bauer grinned and threw Raphael’s pants at him. “You did good.”
Bauer gruffly got back into his own clothes. If Raphael hadn’t been as controlled as he’d been, and the boy had gone off into the forest for the night in his wolf form, Bauer had been prepared to shift into his coyote form and go with him. He never wanted the boys to be alone in these woods. Not with the shifter hunters who’d taken up the sport in the last year. But he was glad to see that it wasn’t necessary for him to shift. Tonight, Raphael had had a huge breakthrough. He’d shifted into his wolf form and back. And Bauer could celebrate by sleeping in his human form, in a warm bed in a warm house.
Didn’t get much better than that.
“Oh my gosh!” said a voice from behind him.
Bauer stilled, halfway through pulling on his shirt, when he felt two warm, strong arms come around his middle.
Elizabeth stood behind him, hugging the hell out of him. He felt her warm cheek pressed to his back. Her grip on him kept his shirt from being able to fall and her palms were flat against his stomach. Bauer just sort of froze. She’d never really hugged him before. And she’d definitely never touched his bare middle.
“You did it!” she said, giving him one last squeeze and unhanding him so that she could dance across the yard and into the arms of her son. “You did it, Raph! I’m so proud of you!”
Bauer watched the mother and son jump and laugh and hug each other, both of them so excited they could barely speak.
He numbly tugged his shirt down the rest of the way and toed his shoes back on. Bauer found himself clearing his throat a few times. He’d been dimly aware of Elizabeth watching through the kitchen window, but mostly when he was working with the boys, he tried not to think of her. She was a distraction and he needed all of his wits about him for this hard, often punishing work.
Lately, he had to admit, she’d become even more of a distraction.
He brushed his hands over the places on his stomach where her palms had just been. He felt burned there, over-sensitive, like she’d left behind some sort of tingling fairy dust or something. He brushed his hands again over those places and he wasn’t entirely sure if he was trying to brush off her touch or seal it in.
They danced back across the yard, laughing and grinning and looking very much alike, even though her children were adopted. It didn’t matter. Their energy was remarkably similar. Their joy.
“I, uh, think this calls for chocolate cake,” Bauer said gruffly.
“How’d you know I made chocolate cake?” Elizabeth demanded. “I made sure to do it when you were out of the house today!”
He pointed one finger at himself. “I’m part coyote, remember? We’re scavengers.”
Raphael laughed and led the way into the kitchen, reaching up on top of the fridge and pulling out the domed cake stand that Elizabeth had hidden back behind the flower vases.
She laughed, rolling her eyes. “Serves me right for trying to hide chocolate cake from a bunch of animals. That was supposed to be for your brother’s rehearsal dinner tomorrow.”
“Oh.” Bauer, who’d taken the cake from Raphael, froze, a huge knife balancing tremulously over the gigantic iced creation. He was uncertain now, as if she’d just told him that that cake had been sprinkled with holy water and blessed by a priest. Everything about the upcoming nuptials gave him pause. He didn’t want to mess anything up. As a fifty-six-year-old man who’d been on the run for most of his life, he’d seen a lot of life. But he’d never been involved in a wedding. “Sorry.”
He went to put the dome over top of the cake again, but Elizabeth stilled him with a hand to his wrist. “It’s all right. I’ll make another one tomorrow morning. You’re right. This is cause for celebration. Raph, go grab some of the good whiskey.”
Her son whooped and dashed off to the living room where there was a sideboard with a few bottles of liquor. Bauer would have smiled at Raphael’s boyish reaction, but for Elizabeth standing so dang close to him.
Her hand was still over his wrist, her hip pressing into him a few inches below his, such was their height difference.
All at once, she stepped back.
“Go on, then.”
She reached into the cabinet and pulled out three plates for the cake and Bauer didn’t waste any more time standing around like a fool.
He cut three gigantic slices of cake. Raphael poured three glasses of whiskey rocks and the three of them sat at the dining room table together.
They cheersed and went over the events of the evening, talking about Raphael’s shift in great detail.
Bauer noticed that Raph didn’t mention the fact that he’d been with a woman to his mother. That was to be expected. Some things needed to be private. But what was unexpected was the strange emotion that swelled within Bauer when he thought about the fact that Raph had told him. He’d told Bauer something that he hadn’t told his mother. He’d trusted Bauer with a secret kind of information.
After Raphael had gone to sleep in his old bedroom, due to the whiskey, Elizabeth and Bauer sat at the table still.
She was sitting across from him, but as her palm prints still burned brightly against his middle, he almost felt as if she were sitting right next to him.
Abruptly, Bauer stood and piled her plate on top of his, gathering their empty glasses as well. Raphael had taken care of his own dishes already.
Bauer walked mechanically into the kitchen and rinsed the dishes. He opened the dishwasher and piled them in.
He turned back to see Elizabeth standing in the doorway of the kitchen, looking like he’d just slaughtered a chicken in front of her.
“What?”
“What, yourself,” she replied, her hands on her hips and her eyebrows at her hairline.
He looked at the dishwasher. “So what? I can load the dishes occasionally.”
“Bauer, you’ve lived here for a year and you’ve never so much as thrown your napkin away.”
He resisted the urge to wince. So, he hadn’t been the best houseguest. They’d long ago decided that if he was going to be doing the daily work of teaching her sons how to control their shifts, then he didn’t owe her rent.
He’d never really lived in a civilized house before and none of the ensuing housework came naturally to him. Honestly, a lot of it didn’t even make sense to him. He’d watched Elizabeth clean before and wondered internally why the hell someone would ever need to dust underneath the couch. No one could even see underneath the couch!
He cleared his throat and shrugged, wishing she’d stop seeing through him like that. “I can load the dishes occasionally,” he repeated stubbornly.
“All right,” she said, skepticism clear in her voice.
He stepped around her and down the hall toward the relative safety of his room. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” she said behind him.
He kept walking until he got to his room and closed the door behind him immediately. Only then did he let out a long breath. Only then did he let his hands travel back to his middle, directly where she’d been touching him.
***
A man, stiff with cold but vibrating with excitement, crawled down from the deer blind he’d been sitting in for the last five hours.
He’d heard something very, very strange tonight. Something that thrilled him in a base sort of way.
He’d heard the howl of a wolf, clear as day and less than a quarter mile away from him. And before and after that, he’d heard the voices of humans. They’d seemed almost… celebratory.
There’d been a man’s voice, or maybe two, and definitely a woman’s voice. Now that was very curious. He’d calculated that the wolf and the human sounds had come from the same direction. If people had observed a wolf howling in the wild, they very likely wouldn’t have shouted at it. Unless they weren’t scared of the wolf. Unless they were celebrating something else about the wolf, like the fact that it had shifted off the full moon.
Race fastened his gun across his back as he started the long, cold trek back down the mountain. He’d heard a shifter tonight. And it was coming from a very sparsely populated direction. There were only three parcels of land that way.
Looked like he had some neighbors to drop in on.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“You chewed your lipstick off again,” Kaya informed Nat as their car sliced though the darkening evening, cutting a path up the mountain toward Elizabeth’s house.
“Shit.” Nat let her bottom lip pop out of her mouth, knowing that she’d been worrying it and ruining the bright hot shade of lipstick she’d chosen to wear that night. She’d chosen not to fade into the background tonight, even though it made her stomach bungie jump off the high dive to think of seeing Raphael. She still didn’t want to hide from him. So, she’d worn an autumn rust-colored sheath dress, and deep blue heels. Her lipstick clashed gorgeously with both and her hair hung in loose curls around her chin.
“I have no idea why all of that works,” Kaya had told her, eyeing her outfit. “But it does.”
Nat pulled into the driveway of Elizabeth’s house and flipped down the visor to fix her lipstick.
“What are you so nervous about?” Kaya asked, eyeing Nat speculatively.
Nat kissed the air at her reflection, deemed herself perfect, and flipped up the visor. She looked over at her sister. They hadn’t discussed anything that had happened between Nat and Raphael and they weren’t going to. Nat and Raphael both knew that it was far better to keep this quiet, at least until they really knew what it was. And it was going to be intense enough to see him tonight without also feeling like she was under Kaya’s observation. So, instead of outright lying to her sister, Nat chose an evasive tactic. “What are you so nervous about?”
“Me?” Kaya glanced down at her own hands which were twisting nervously on her lap. She was quiet for a minute. “What makes you think I’m nervous?”
Nat immediately recognized her sister’s use of pretty much the same evasive tactic that she herself had just used. She didn’t want to lie, but she also really didn’t want to tell the truth. Fair enough.
“I think you’re nervous because you dressed like you’re wanting to disappear into thin air.”
Kaya looked outraged for a second and then she turned her face away and laughed. “That obvious, huh?”
Kaya wore a gray dress that covered her from knee to elbow. Her light brown hair was in a low, tight bun that was meant to be neat and severe, but Kaya had hair that couldn’t really be contained. Tendrils had unraveled at the bun and given her a slightly ethereal, princess-like look. She wore no makeup, and honestly, didn’t need any. Her knee-high boots would have to be taken off at Elizabeth’s front door anyways, which would leave her barefoot. Nat didn’t have the heart to tell her sister that as demure as she’d tried to be, she was still utterly stunning.
“Pretty obvious. As obvious as my getup, you think?”
Kaya looked Nat up and down. “So, we’re both nervous about stuff we don’t want to talk about and you’ve chosen to blind everyone with your outfit and I’ve chosen to match the carpet in Elizabeth’s living room.”
“That about sums it up.”
The sisters burst into laughter before headlights flashed in their rearview mirror and they knew that another member of the rehearsal dinner had arrived. They couldn’t sit in their car for the whole night.
“Kaya,” Nat said, grabbing her sister’s arm before she could jump out of the car.
“Yeah?”
“I know we’re not telling each other everything right now. And probably for good reason on both sides… but would you just promise me that you’ll tell me someday? Especially if whatever your thing is starts to get hard?”
For a moment, Kaya’s eyes went sad. But then she nodded her head resolutely. “Yes. I promise.”
***
The three brothers stood outside on their mother’s back porch. Jackson was focusing very hard on the chicken he was grilling. In part, this was because he could actually feel the moment that Kaya had arrived in the house. But it was also because as much as he was a pessimist, he believed in Seth’s marriage to Sarah and he wanted the chicken at their rehearsal dinner to be pe
rfectly grilled. Not that he would ever admit to either of those things.
He’d been standing in the kitchen when he’d heard the front door open and Nat call out a hello. It was almost as if the air indoors had changed. Kaya was there. The hairs on Jackson’s arms had raised, each breath was wired with a static electricity that made him feel like he was choking. He’d immediately fled to the back porch and to the kitchen.
To Jackson’s surprise, Raphael followed. Normally, the second Raph knew that Natalie was somewhere, he was immediately drawn into her orbit. But tonight, he’d followed Jackson outside, unusually quiet as he stared out at the tree line, fiddling with his tie.
Seth followed them out a moment later. “You didn’t have to wear a tie tonight, Raph. Just tomorrow.”
“I know. I just didn’t want to look like a scrub.” He frowned down, fiddling with it. “I can wear a tie two nights in a row without dying, you know.”
Seth bounced on his heels and looked out at the yard which they’d lined with chairs and a small gazebo they’d spent the day setting up.
“Wow,” he muttered under his breath.
“Second thoughts?” Raph asked, a grin on his face. They all knew there was no way on God’s green earth that Seth would second guess marrying Sarah. They were way too far gone for one another.
Seth rolled his eyes. “I just can’t believe it’s happening, you know? I spent my whole life thinking that love was never in the cards for us. And now, look at all those white chairs lined up perfectly. Waiting to watch me get my happy ending.”
Jackson’s stomach tightened down with guilt. The reason that Seth and Raph had grown up thinking that love and partnership were off the table for them was because of him. He’d known, from a young age, just how dangerous he was to the outside world, and certainly to any woman he might let close. His wolf was different than Seth and Raph’s. He was harder, wilder, angrier. More dangerous. For a long time, it hadn’t seemed like a bad thing. Their mother was single. They’d all be single, too. But then his twenties had hit and the loneliness had started to kick in.
