by Selena Scott
She reached next to her for her backpack but came up empty. Squinting in confusion, she looked around her.
“I swear I had a bag.”
Ansel turned and looked toward the dusty road. He jogged toward where his truck was still parked haphazardly in the middle of the road. He narrowed his eyes at the skid marks left behind in the dust and cursed himself. That could have been bad. So bad. Sure enough, there was a bag, plopped down right next to where she’d been standing.
He picked up the worn black bag and dusted it off. He didn’t have to open it to know what was inside; his heightened sense of smell told him everything he needed to know. A few bites left of a peanut butter sandwich, a banana peel, half a bottle of water and a library book.
Ruby watched as Ansel jogged the bag back to her. His eyes were on the bag he was still dusting off, so she felt that, for once, she was free to study him. There was something about the way the man moved that was so… something. It was easy to watch and frightening all at once. Like watching a predator in his natural habitat. There was an animal grace, sure, but it was grace that comes from a creature doing exactly what that creature was put on this earth to do, not because he was actually graceful. In reality, the man moved like a bulldozer. Inexorable and sure of each step. She supposed part of that effect would be because he was twice as wide as she was, damn near a foot taller, and yoked with muscle.
His eyes flicked to hers as he jogged to the porch steps and she thought she saw a flicker of surprise there when their gazes clashed. She immediately dropped her eyes. Of course he’d be surprised that she was looking him in the eye. She never looked him in the eye. And for good reason, she reminded herself as her heart trembled in her chest like a rabbit in a hole.
Gathering her wits, Ruby took a deep breath and rose up from the porch steps. He held out her bag to her and she took it.
“Thank you.”
“Saying ‘you’re welcome’ after I nearly ran you down in my truck doesn’t seem quite right.”
The puff of air that escaped Ruby’s lips surprised her. It was a sort of laugh, she supposed, but it was foreign and strange to her. She didn’t think she’d laughed once in the entire year. Not once since Griff.
The thought instantly sobered her and she frowned down at the bag. “Well, regardless. Goodnight, Mr. Ke–” She cleared her throat. “Goodnight, Ansel.”
And there was that rosy red staining her cheeks again. Seemed she couldn’t say his name without blushing. Ansel got just a little window into what she might be feeling when he replied. “Goodnight, Ruby.”
He realized that the phrase sounded oddly intimate. Like one that he would be using if he’d brought her to her front porch at the end of a date. Or that he’d whisper in her ear as he reached over her to shut off the bedroom lamp.
She scampered up the rest of the steps, with a little wave behind her, and unlocked her front door. He waited until he heard the lock click back into place and the front porch light came on before he sidled back to his truck, still in the middle of the dang road.
CHAPTER TWO
“Good Christ, Ansel!” Kain howled, facepalming at the dinner table about an hour later. Ansel had just told Kain and Inka the story of almost running Ruby down. “All this time you’ve been sweet on her and then you nearly… God!”
Ansel’s mouth opened and then closed. Part of him wanted to deny it. But the other part of him knew it was true, and if he couldn’t tell his siblings, then who could he tell? “How’d you know I’m sweet on her?”
Inka, shoving about four mouthfuls of spaghetti into her mouth at once, talked right through it. “Ansel, please. Slow and patient you sure are, but subtle? You are not.”
He furrowed his brow and reached for his beer. “You think she knows?”
Inka swallowed and her eyes dimmed with sadness. “I don’t imagine she’s given it much thought. Not since her brother disappeared.”
“I scented her over by that waterfall again the other day,” Kain said. “Seems like she’s spending a lot of time there these days.”
“I think she goes almost every day,” Ansel affirmed. Her scent was always fresh whenever he went by that area. “She was there today for sure. She’d packed herself a picnic in her bag and her dress smelled like the lagoon.”
“You think she goes to wait for him? In case he comes back?” Inka asked, attempting to scoop some of the food off Ansel’s plate. He absently knocked her hand away without even having to look; he’d been dealing with Inka’s eating habits for years now.
“Who knows,” Ansel said quietly. “She told the cops that the waterfall glowed right before he disappeared into it. Maybe she’s waiting for that to happen again.”
“That waterfall is freaky,” Kain mumbled, pulling his ball cap over his eyes as he pushed his plate over to Inka. She’d always had a bigger appetite than he did. Both of his sisters did.
“Yeah,” Ansel nodded, knowing exactly what Kain was talking about. There were certain parts of the woods, that waterfall included, that he and his siblings naturally avoided. They were strange places that had sort of a magnetic, sleepy energy. They made you wanna lie down and nap at the same time they energized you, like a zap of slow-building electricity.
Kain paused, a question on his thin, handsome face. When they stood side by side, anyone could tell Ansel and Kain were brothers; it was the coloring, their skin and hair were bronze and gold. But they didn’t share much in common besides that. Kain was wiry and lithe. His features were refined where Ansel’s were blunt. Kain’s face was open and smiling almost always, whereas Ansel’s eyes were usually in a squint, his jaw generally tight and clenched.
“You think,” Kain started, running a thumb absent-mindedly over the attractive five-inch scar that lined one side of his face. “You think that Griff Sayers was like us?”
Inka and Ansel considered, knowing exactly what Kain was talking about. Ansel shrugged. “He didn’t smell like us. And he gave no indication of it in the months that I was working over there. Except he had sharp senses. But what do I know? That woman can’t barely look me in the eye much less tell me if her brother is a shifter.”
“Especially not after you nearly ran her down in the truck,” Inka said candidly, in that very Inka way of hers.
Kain smothered a burst of laughter at his brother’s expense. “I guess you get points for originality, Ansel, but I gotta say, there’s less dangerous ways to hit on a woman. I can teach you a few if you like.”
Ansel scowled at his brother. It was no secret that Kain had a way with the ladies. He was never short on company. Ansel, for his part, did just fine. But with Ruby, he was at a bit of a loss. If she’d been just a woman at one of the bars he and Kain liked to frequent, he might not have had a problem. But Ruby Sayers would never be caught in a bar, fishing for a companion. She was shy and sweet and a homebody.
Scowl still firmly on his face, Ansel rose, tossing his napkin on his chair. He kept his eye on his brother and Kain tensed, a knowing smile on his face.
“You think you got something to teach me, boy?” Ansel slowly paced around the table. Kain, full on grinning now, rose as well.
“If Milla were here, she’d tell you not in the house,” Inka said as she gulped the rest of Ansel’s beer.
“Milla’s not here,” Kain replied, tossing his hat off and then yanking his t-shirt off as well. He cracked his neck, decided he didn’t care enough about these particular pants to bother pulling them off. With his luck, Ansel would wait until the pants were around his ankles to strike and then Kain would really be screwed. He might have the finer tuned skills with ladies, but Ansel sure could fight.
“Alright then,” Inka said as she waved a forkful of spaghetti like a conductor at an orchestra. “Carry on.”
It was like she’d shot a starting gun because at her words, Ansel leapt at Kain. The men, grunting and laughing, rolled through the kitchen, smashing valuable body parts on the door frame. Ansel got a good crack in on Kain’s thick sku
ll, but Kain was fast. He was on his feet and skittering out onto the back porch in half a second.
Ansel barreled after him, gauging Kain’s mood and taking a dancing step from one side to the next, his fists up in loose form.
“Bare knuckle?” Kain asked, a sadistic grin on his face. He was wildly enjoying himself. He loved when Ansel was in a fighting mood. “You animal.”
Ansel, completely ignoring Kain’s words, as he was wont to do, swung unexpectedly and was thrilled when his fist made solid contact with the other man’s jaw.
“Shit, Ansel!” Kain swore, blood trickling out of his mouth. He spit two teeth onto the back porch floor. “You broke it!”
But Ansel was already charging Kain and Kain’s broken jaw was already clicking back into place, his new teeth pushing back up through his gums, not the most pleasant of feelings, but part of rough housing with his brother.
Ansel smashed into Kain, but Kain was ready, using his weight and agility to roll Ansel right off the porch and down the steps into their backyard. Which wasn’t really a yard, but more of an entryway into the forest. The two men regained their footing and danced around one another.
Ansel was slower moving but every punch he landed was a doozy. Kain was fast on his feet and his hands were like lightning. He got twice as many in as Ansel did, but none of them brought the giant man to his knees.
Inka wandered to the doorway of the house, barefoot and gnawing on a hunk of garlic bread. She watched idly as her brothers beat the shit out of one another.
Inka liked to fight every now and then, but not as much as her twin sister, Milla, did. Milla liked to fight the way other people liked to flop into bed at the end of a long day. Inka realized that fighting was just about the only stress reliever that Milla allowed herself. But for Inka? Her whole dang life was a stress reliever. She knew that people thought she was a weirdo. Or maybe that she wasn’t playing with a full deck of cards. But Inka knew that they were wrong. She was simply living her life in the pursuit of one thing and one thing only. Happiness.
Ansel landed a particularly vicious kick to Kain’s ribs and the younger brother screamed out in pain and fury. He’d had enough of getting wailed on and the air around him grew syrupy. It pulsed with a single beat of gravity-rich energy and then Kain was no longer Kain. Ansel allowed his brother the one-second lead, considering it would go a long way toward cooling Kain’s temper, and he found himself suddenly trapped under 1000 pounds of golden grizzly bear. Five-inch claws at either side of his head and a mouth full of gleaming, razor sharp daggers an inch from his face.
Well, that was plenty of a head start. The air around Ansel did the exact same thing, syrupy magnetic energy, and then there were two golden grizzlies in the backyard, wrestling and rolling in the shreds of clothing they’d just ripped to pieces.
They were some of the last shifters in the entire world. At one point, shifters had been fairly common and had lived amongst humans very peacefully. But sometime in the late 1800s, shifters had started disappearing without a trace. By the 1920s, there were no known shifters left on earth. There were all sorts of theories on it. Everything from strange illnesses to secret genocides to a mass shifter conspiracy. The Keto family didn’t know either. They knew of one other shifter family, a group of leopards down in the Bayou. But the one thing they did know was that they wanted to keep as low a profile as they could. Which was why they lived out in the mountains, and only shifted at night. It helped that they could smell humans for miles. It kept them from any close encounters.
“Hey!” Inka called down to her brothers. “Wait for me!”
She whipped her dress off over her head, as it was one of her favorites, and front flipped off the porch. She shifted in the air, faster and more graceful at the transition than anyone else in the family. She landed on all four paws, a bit smaller, and a darker gold than either of her brothers. She barreled through their scuffling tussle, breaking it up, and sprinted into the woods to go have some real fun, let off some steam.
And that was all she needed to do. Inka’s speed was a personal challenge to both of them. The three bears raced after one another. Golden blurs in the night.
***
Ruby frowned out her front window, a cup of coffee steaming in her hands. She needed to leave. She had a client she was supposed to be meeting a few towns over in an hour. But currently, her driveway was being blocked by a very familiar faded blue pickup truck. And a very familiar blond man was on his hands and knees yanking her mailbox right out of the ground.
Well, this was ridiculous! She hadn’t asked for any help of the sort and she wasn’t the kind of person who enjoyed being indebted to someone. Especially not someone who was as… whatever as Ansel Keto. She frowned when she realized that she couldn’t exactly finish that sentence.
What was it about him that got her all up and jumbled? Why was she a shivery mess whenever he was around? And more than that, why was she wasting valuable brain space attempting to figure it out? She had much better things to think about. Like how the hell to get her brother back.
She frowned harder. She really didn’t want to be late for this client. Because if she was, then the meeting would go longer and then she would have less time to be down at the waterfall. Since Griff’s disappearance, Ruby had spent as much time as she possibly could down at the lagoon. It was the only time she felt like she was actually doing something about Griff. Whenever she was up at the house or around town, she felt so guilty. Like he’d disappeared into nothing and she was just going about her daily life like it was no big deal. Well, it was a big deal. And she was determined to figure out what the hell had happened.
She glanced backward at the clock behind her and pulled her lip between her teeth. He didn’t look like he was gonna be done anytime soon and if she wanted to make her meeting on time, she was gonna have to go out there and ask him to move his truck at the very least.
So, frowning down at the cup of coffee in her hands, the one she’d already poured for him (despite her internal battle, some subconscious part of her must have known that her manners were going to win out in the end), Ruby stepped out onto her porch.
Today she wore neat red flats, a mostly white dress with red flowers, red lipstick, and her strawberry hair back in her usual braid. It was a perfectly modest, professional outfit, but with each step she took closer to Ansel Keto, she suddenly wished she were wearing something that would have… covered her a little more.
And sure enough, when he looked up from what he was doing, wheedling her mailbox out of the hole it was dug into, his eyes went first to her exposed legs, and then to her face. Ruby knew that she had nice legs. They were her finest feature. And this dress didn’t exactly show them off, but they were so nice that pretty much anything she wore showed them off a little.
“Morning,” he called to her, leaning back on his haunches and shading his eyes with one hand as she approached.
“Morning.” She came level with him and absently handed down the cup of coffee as she frowned at the mess he was making of her front yard.
He pulled off the leather work gloves he was wearing and tossed them aside, gratefully taking the cup of coffee. He’d already had two cups that morning, but this here was Ruby Sayers’s coffee, and no man in his mortal mind passed up Ruby Sayers’s coffee. His normally squinting eyes opened in surprise when he tasted it. “Cream and cinnamon?”
She nodded. “That still how you take it? I remembered from when you were working on the house.”
He nodded and cleared his throat gruffly. He liked that. He liked that quite a bit.
“So, Mr. Ke–,” She cleared her throat. “Ansel. What the hell are you doing to my front yard?”
He grinned then and set the coffee aside, sliding his work gloves back on. “I’m installing a new mailbox. One that isn’t so rusty.”
“Why?” she asked, utterly mystified. An early morning breeze tangled with a few loose pieces of hair and brushed them across her face.
As he
watched, something pulled in Ansel’s chest and he used the energy of it to finish full-on yanking the mailbox free. His muscles strained, but the dang thing popped loose and he tossed it aside.
“Well, I almost killed you yesterday, so I figure I owe you.” He glanced up at her and caught a rare glimpse of those big blue eyes of hers. “That’s about even, right? A life for a mailbox?”
She smiled despite herself. “Ansel, that’s really kind of you, but you don’t owe me anything at all.”
He pointed toward the back of his truck, where the hatch was flung open, and she sidled over to look inside.
“Really,” she continued. “It was nothing. Already forgot– Oh. Well. Actually I do like that.” She blushed as she looked at the brand new mailbox. It was the gleaming, cheery red of a poppy, and it sat on top of a polished, dark wooden post.
He grinned at her reaction and took another big swallow of the coffee before he rose and slid the new mailbox out of his truck.
She was eye level with his biceps and she found that she, weirdly, couldn’t look away.
“It’s my pleasure, Ruby. And it’ll do my conscience some good.”
She found that her mouth had gone dry. She swallowed a few times before she could get any words out. “It’s awfully early for you to be out doing favors for people, isn’t it?”
“I wanted to do it before I was scheduled to be at work.” He nodded through the woods toward Ms. Weaver’s house. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No, I’m an early riser. Besides, I have a meeting in Rosewood in an hour.” She looked back through the woods where he’d gestured a minute ago. “You’re doing some work for Ms. Weaver?”
“That’s right.”
“I’ve seen your truck over there the last few weeks, but I just thought…” she trailed off as a bright blush stole across her cheeks. She’d had the thought casually, but now that she was about to say it out loud, it mortified her.
“You thought what?” he asked, balancing the new mailbox at his side and turning to face her.
