by CK Dawn
One
Four years ago…
Shifters perceive the world differently. How could they not? A morphing body sets the stage for a morphing mind, Daisy Pavlovich’s father liked to say. One should always make the most of one’s mercurial nature.
Just as one should always enjoy a warm, summer day. Sunlight danced over the gray canvas of Daisy’s pack and onto her red hoodie, and she raised her chin to the sky above.
The ash and pine trees towered over the trail, all at least seventy, maybe eighty feet tall. The high branches scattered the late August sun as if it were water droplets. The light cascaded through the needles and cones, over trunks, and onto the single, bright patch of sun in which Daisy stood.
Rain had moved through two days ago, and the undergrowth off the trail still gave off the gentle humidity of plants not starved for water. The entire forest happily breathed. No parched birches here. No snapping kindling. Only the pines and the brush, and the amazing mineral dustiness of the many sandstone formations along the Wisconsin River.
Daisy’s boyfriend was still down the ridge. He’d stopped to pee on a tree and she’d kept going to listen to nature’s quiet.
Quiet rustling of leaves. Quiet chirping of birds and all of the small mammals of the forest. Quiet light and quieter scents.
Brad’s marking of territory screamed “human male!” and she was walking in nature to get away from people and their scent-scapes.
At five and a half feet above the ground—Daisy stood just shy of six feet—her Shifter bloodhound nose picked up the midlevel currents of the forest. She might not be a trained bloodhound—one of the Shifters who could pick up a bit of bleached bone and know just by sniffing what the animal was and when it died—but she did love the woods. And love meant paying attention.
Here, trees talked to each other with the clear, fresh scent that could only be described as green. Late summer pollen swirled and left a slight grittiness on her tongue. Decay from the forest floor smoothed out and added murky subnotes to the forest’s living scent.
And even though the humans who walked these trails rarely saw the animals that made their homes under the canopy, Daisy’s nose placed them perfectly into her map of the landscape. A bobcat had come through no more than an hour ago. At least six different squirrels darted through the trees. A snake hid under the brambles about ten feet to her left. Some small burrowing creature watched her from its hole in the ground. And…
She turned so she faced downwind. Brad had started up the ridge—she heard him as much as smelled his annoyance that she’d gone ahead—and was also off to the left.
Off to her right, no more than fifteen feet away, a fallen tree had broken into a mess of scrub and twisted branches. Under the main trunk, back in the shadows, was an excellent place for a predator to hide.
She got only a hint of him, since he’d hidden himself deeply inside the decay of the wood and the shadows of the bushes. But he was there, and he was watching her.
A wolf. A young male that had likely left his home pack in northern Minnesota or Michigan and followed the rivers south.
Loneliness mingled with the clear aware of a human wafting out from under the fallen tree—but also sharp, sour pain. He was hurt and he didn’t know what to do other than to hide.
Daisy set her pack on the ground and slowly, carefully squatted so she could see into the shadows under the log.
And there, in the dark, two wolf eyes stared back at her.
She was fifteen feet from a wounded wild gray wolf. He wasn’t growling, but the sour notes of canine fear flowed out from under the trunk. If she scared him worse than he was now, he’d bolt.
“Oh, you are a beauty,” she whispered, and extended her hand. “It’s okay.”
She wouldn’t hurt the wolf, nor would he hurt her.
Some Shifters morphed their bodies. Some produced calling scents—odorless, pheromone-like breaths that allowed the Shifter to control another’s emotions. Others healed with a touch of their hands.
Daisy’s father liked to say that her bloodhound nose was an “uncommon gem” of a Shifter ability, one that only a handful of calling-scent-producing enthrallers were blessed with. Smelling everything and everyone came in handy, even if it often made her life difficult. But her nose was tangential to her real gifts.
Daisy carried a true rarity among the wide-ranging and mercurial landscape of individual Shifter ability combinations—she enthralled and healed animals.
The wolf snarled.
She breathed out the ‘calm’ calling scent she used on the dogs who visited the campus veterinary clinic back home where she helped out, and followed it with another which to a human might mean ‘I will help,’ but to animals translated as ‘will soothe pain.’
The wolf sniffed. His ears rolled toward her, and he inched forward.
“It’s okay,” she whispered.
His wide, massive front paws appeared as he inched himself out from under the branch.
He was bigger than any dog she’d ever met, and she suspected he weighed at least one hundred thirty pounds, which made him large for a gray wolf. Brambles and thistles clung to his silver coat and thick neck ruff.
A nasty, inflamed gash ran down his left haunch.
“What happened to you?” It didn’t look like an animal bite or a horn gouge. In Wisconsin, he most likely had gotten himself shot at or caught on a farmer’s fence.
Daisy breathed out more ‘calm’ before carefully stroking the soft fur of his head. “Here,” she said, and placed her other hand over the wound.
The cut wasn’t deep, but it did feel hot. “I think you have an infection.” She rubbed his head again.
Heal, she willed at the wound at the same time she breathed a calling scent she knew boosted a dog’s natural immunity.
The wolf sighed, but raised his head. His ears perked. And he snarled again.
Brad stood about twenty feet away where the trail crested the ridge. The blood had drained from his face. His mouth gaped open and formed a perfect circle.
He held his hands out in front of him as if the wolf was about to leap the entire distance and rip out his throat.
Sweet-yet-sour, surprised terror wafted from Brad as if he were a giant jawbreaker gumball attached to jumper cables.
Brad’s fear lacked a note she couldn’t quite place. If she were a trained bloodhound, she’d probably recognize the pheromonal information Brad’s body produced. But her focus had always been on animals, and training to become a veterinarian. Brad’s random body odor pouts never seemed worth the effort to learn.
“Jesus Christ, Daisy! What are you doing?” Brad yelled. He pointed at the wolf.
The wolf, though, seemed to understand. He bared his teeth.
Daisy set her hand on the wolf’s neck. “It’s okay,” she whispered, and breathed out as much ‘friend’ and ‘calm’ as her body could make.
She was too far from Brad to give him the same treatment, not that it would have worked. She had yet to meet a human her calling scents affected.
Brad’s father owned a chain of truck dealerships in western Minnesota even though the family lived on a lake in Wayzata. Brad hadn’t had any issues getting into his fraternity. He was mostly outgoing and friendly, and she’d been charmed. He smelled good even if he was always horny, probably because he lived a remarkably clean life for a frat brother.
The trip had been his idea. He wanted to spend some quality time with his “Russian gangster’s supermodel daughter” girlfriend. At least he always winked when he said “gangster.”
Shit like that was what kept her from telling him the truth about her life. Brad liked her big, raven black curls, her amber eyes, her breasts, and the idea of her family’s international money.
Mostly, he just thought she was a regular—if physically attractive—Vet Medicine student.
“Daisy!” Brad’s scent took on a hint of grilled meat. Just a hint, which meant that some of his surprised terror had loosened into
his personal version of machismo.
Brad liked to wear his caps backward. He also liked to balance his sunglasses backwards on the bill of his backward cap. He was well-off and really did not have to fight for anything, but he did like to pretend that if the chips were down, he could hold his own—and his pretending smelled like meat grilling a little too long at too low of a temperature.
The wolf stood up. A wave moved down his neck to his back, and his tail fluffed out. The wolf did not appreciate the yelling or the stinks of terror and bravado rolling off Brad.
“Don’t yell!” Daisy half-yelled.
The wolf cocked his big head and nuzzled her arm.
Brad screamed. He let out a high-pitched squeal that sounded like a wounded pig.
The wolf seemed to think so, too.
“Hey!” Daisy flooded the area with another wave of ‘calm.’ It wouldn’t affect Brad one bit, but it would keep the wolf from ripping off Brad’s legs.
Brad screamed again and ran down the ridge. The sun hit his expensive sunglasses on the back of his cap and a flash of polarized yellow light popped in the air like an overheated fairy.
The wolf licked her arm.
“Sorry about that,” she said, and placed her hand over the wound again.
The wolf’s fear didn’t seem insufficient, the way Brad’s had. The wolf smelled concerned.
Pack, the scent said. Friend.
Daisy looked back at the ridge. Brad would be down the hill and telling the park rangers some tale about how the big bad wolf was about to eat his personally-chosen and curated girlfriend, and how that made him sad.
Because that was what had been missing from his scent-scape. A sense of pack and friend.
Why did she always end up dating douchebags? Selfish men seemed to make a beeline for her. She should’ve figured out how to scent them out a long time ago.
Perhaps her nose wasn’t as good as she thought it was.
Daisy patted the wolf’s neck. “You shouldn’t be here. He’ll tell the rangers.” Heat still wafted off the wound, but now it came from her healing, and not an infection. “You need to go home, okay? Back north to Canada. Go find a nice lady wolf and start a pack of smart pups, huh?”
The wolf twisted his head one way, then another, as if he understood.
“Go,” she said, and followed with a calling scent brew she hoped would send him on his way to safer grounds.
He shook like a wet dog. The brambles released, as did a fair number of the thistles attached to his fur. He pawed the ground once, then ran north, toward the river and what she hoped would be a long life.
Daisy peered down the ridge, and inhaled deeply. Brad’s scent lingered but he was already a good hundred yards up the trail.
Douchebag, she thought. He wasn’t the first. She really did have a problem with her taste in men.
Daisy zipped up her red hoodie. Time to return to the lodge, to civilization, and to sorting her man-mess once and for all.
Two
The porch wrapping the Rocky Arbor Park Lodge circled from the rear guest door, around the main door, to the second side entrance next to the ice machine and the building’s soda and candy vending machines. Rocking chairs, small tables, and a bench or two lined the west side while the south opened up into the reception desk and gift shop. The entire building was a lovely, low-slung log cabin. The rooms were small but tidy, and smelled surprisingly fresh. No bleach. No acrid chemical nastiness. Just lemons and vinegar.
It was a nice place, even if Daisy had wanted to go to the Boundary Waters. Brad had rolled his eyes and made some whiny comment about his family’s vay-cays up North and how he wanted to go somewhere new. So to The Dells they went. Camping first, then a stop at the kitschy fun of the water parks and attractions.
Daisy leaned against one of the porch’s log posts. The rose- and rust-colored sunset set the hills glowing, but it turned the vibrant green of the trees into a sad, semi-rotten shade of mud brown, much like how Brad had cast his lovely glow on her life and left a film of ugly.
She had her bachelor’s degree. She would be starting her veterinarian training in a few weeks. She had a handle on her Shifter gifts. Yet here she was all by herself at the lodge because she had shitty taste in men.
There’d been a fight. Brad had yelled. The staff had been concerned. Then Brad took the car and left her alone in a lodge inside the Rocky Arbor State Park. Alone, with no vehicle, four hours from her home off the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota.
Douchebag, she thought yet again.
Daisy pulled out her phone and dialed. “Hey, Dad,” she said. “Brad stranded me in Wisconsin.” He hadn’t paid his part of the bill, either.
The ambient noise of the bar at The Land of Milk and Honey flowed through the receiver. They must have a band playing tonight. Most nights her father’s massive entertainment complex outside Branson, Missouri, had some type of loud, crowd-pleasing adventure going on. The Land wasn’t all that different from the attractions around Wisconsin Dells.
“Do you wish me to have him killed?” Dmitri Pavlovich asked in his deadpan, aristocratic Russian accent.
Her father was a man who enjoyed using stereotypes and clichés against his opponents. He understood all the generalized flavors of Russian-ness and was more than capable of using each and every one of them to his advantage.
With her, though, he was himself. Mostly. Unless he was sitting in the bar.
Daisy chuckled. Life’s tough when your father’s a “Russian gangster.”
“No, Dad,” she answered. Bradley Mitchell Richardson was not worth the effort of killing, maiming, poking, making cry, or even the mildest of a normal’s revenges, much less those of any of the many high-powered Shifters in her father’s employ.
Shifters who had a wide range of frightening talents that could be used to kill, maim, terrorize, or otherwise cast a Russian fairytale-worthy vengeance upon any unworthy man-child.
Ice clinked against the crystal tumbler her father must have been holding in his other hand. He always had a crystal tumbler of something or other. It helped with his “image.” His own Shifter healing ability took care of any effects of the alcohol, and normals found the hard liquor both disarming and stereotypical, which often gave her father the upper hand.
One should never underestimate the great and terrible Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov.
“It is not a problem, daughter.” He clinked his glass again. “I will send Ben.”
Daisy sighed even though she knew damned well that sighing around her father—even over a phone call—was never a good idea. But she’d had enough male posturing to last her a long immortal’s lifetime. “Do not send Ben, Dad!”
Jacob, the sweet but bored older gentleman who ran the reception desk, stepped around the corner just as she raised her voice with her father. A wave of sour-citrus-like annoyance rolled off him, then a burst of pheromone-clearing shock after he realized she was one of the guests who’d been yelling earlier.
But then he smiled and began tidying the tables and rocking chairs.
“Perhaps not killed, then,” her father said. “Ben will make this Bradley never think of you again.”
Literally. Ben was a powerful and skilled Shifter enthraller, and could force an unsuspecting normal like her now very-ex-boyfriend to forget precisely what Ben wanted him to forget.
“Dad, no.” Daisy pinched the bridge of her nose. He might not be serious. Maybe. “Please. It’s okay. Brad left.” She looked out at the sunset. “There’s a car rental place in town. I’ll get a ride there and drive myself home.”
She glanced at Jacob. The staff would know what to do to get her a car in the morning. “I just wanted you to know why I’m charging a car to my Land credit card.”
She carried a Land of Milk and Honey company card even though she hadn’t worked at her father’s bar since high school. He insisted. For emergencies.
Which this was. No denying that. But not one she couldn’t handle.
&
nbsp; No clinking ice, though the background buzz of his bar drifted over the line. “There is no need.”
He was going to send someone to pick her up. “Dad, don’t send the plane, okay?” Not that she wouldn’t appreciate the gesture, just that it seemed extreme. And as much of a douchebag move as Brad’s abandonment in the first place. It screamed self-centered self-absorption with an extra-unhealthy dose of self-deception.
Her father laughed. “I will make a call.”
“Dad. Really. Don’t. I’m fine.” I’m not, she thought.
Daisy closed her eyes. Why would she think such a thing? Yes, Brad had left her in Wisconsin without a ride, but he was gone, and the anger and relief seemed to be balancing each other. And she’d gotten to help a wolf. A real wolf.
A wolf was infinitely better than Brad, any day.
So maybe she wasn’t fine, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to lose her composure. She’d been in much worse situations. Brad leaving her was a cakewalk.
Plus, she’d gotten to touch and heal a wolf.
Still, damned good thing she hadn’t said “I’m not” out loud for her father to hear.
His glass clinked again. “It is okay to ask for security,” he said as if she had said her thought out loud.
She would have hugged him, if they had been in the same room. He might be a bit of a hardass, but he would drop everything and drive from Branson to Wisconsin Dells himself if he thought Bradley would cause her one more tear.
“I need to get back to campus,” she said, to change the subject. “I have to pick up my graduate student ID.” Four more years, and she’d have a Ph.D. and vet licenses in both Minnesota and Missouri.
