by Dakota West
Charlie thought about it a moment. She still hurt, but she hurt less. She felt sluggish and stupid from all the sleep, and more than almost anything, she really wanted to shower.
“I feel a lot better,” she said.
Then she yawned. The paste on her back tingled and then numbed her, feeling warm.
“Daniel,” she said, feeling her eyes falling closed again. “Why’re you with him? You’re so nice.”
He stopped putting the ointment on her back for a moment, his gentle fingers pausing.
His dark eyes locked with hers, and right away, even through the drugs and the soft arms of sleep pulling her down, Charlie knew she’d fucked up.
“It’s pretty simple,” Daniel said. He still spoke just as quietly, but now there was hard iron in his voice. “I love him.”
But why? Charlie wanted to say, thinking of the scowling man who sometimes stood in the background, looking at her like he wanted her dead.
Instead she gave in to sleep.
The next time Charlie woke up, she knew it was for good immediately. Even though it was night time, everything was crystal clear where it had been murky before: the moonlight falling through the windows, the crackle and snap of the fire in the next room. Even the clean, sharp scent of the forest seemed better, more real than it had in days.
I’m okay, she thought. She lifted one hand to her forehead.
Can you even tell if you’ve got a fever yourself? She wondered, staring at the ceiling. Her back hurt and itched all at once, but it felt better — the pain no longer felt like a knife through her entire body, but only like her back was being sliced into.
It was some kind of improvement.
Slowly, carefully, she pushed herself up on the cot, thankful for the hundreds of pushups that the FBI academy had forced her to do, and soon enough she was sitting up on the cot, her knees close into her chest.
Something moved in the dark, halfway across the room. Charlie froze, her eyes still adjusting.
She waited for the shape to turn into a wolf and charge her.
I knew I wasn’t really awake, she thought. I knew it seemed too real, too good to be true.
Then, as she saw more and more of the room, she realized it wasn’t a wolf.
As Charlie squinted in the moonlight, she finally made out the face of a sleeping man with pale skin and light brown hair that was almost red. Asleep, he looked peaceful for once, instead of angry.
It was Kade, watching her sleep.
Charlie gritted her teeth and stood, pulling the bathrobe around her. Then she walked to the bathroom very, very slowly, but by herself.
Chapter Six
Kade
Kade snapped awake the moment the cot creaked. Even though it hardly made a noise, he was so on edge, even in his sleep that it woke him instantly. The past few nights Charlie had been so deeply asleep that she’d barely moved at all, and he’d gotten used to waking up several times each night and walking over to her, just to make sure she was still breathing.
He slept on the floor near her because he didn’t want to let her out of his sight. The wolves could come back any time for her, and when that happened, he was going to be there. And he was going to go down fighting.
Charlie sat up, slowly, a tiny noise of pain escaping from her throat, and Kade squeezed his eyes shut, forcing his breathing to slow. She couldn’t know that he was awake, or that he felt the pull to watch over her, day and night.
If she knew, she could use it against him, or worse, against Olivia.
Just because he wanted her didn’t mean he trusted her. She’d lied about what she was doing in the woods. She hadn’t realized that he saw her point a rifle at him, even if it had been a rifle loaded with a tranq dart.
With a deep breath and more creaking from the cot, Charlie stood slowly, wrapping Daniel’s bathrobe around her, wincing when she pulled the belt tight. Then she walked, very carefully, to the bathroom.
Kade pretended to be asleep again, but it wasn’t until after Charlie was safely in bed, her breathing even, that he actually fell asleep himself.
He snapped awake again the moment the sun heaved itself over the horizon, just like he always did. Even though he couldn’t see it from where he lay, he knew, with some kind of finely-honed, animal instinct.
Kade was glad to be awake. He’d been having the dream again. It was the same every time: his armored truck rolling through the desert. Him jumping off, then jogging thirty yards to take a piss in the dust. The truck lurching forward, his crew teasing him, pretending they were going to leave him there. Him shouting and flipping them off, good-naturedly.
All of them in a great mood, because there was only a week left in their deployment.
Then the explosion, the truck flipping over and bursting into flame, the shockwave hitting Kade as he zipped his pants. It knocked him twelve yards backward.
In the dream, that was always where he woke up.
He lay perfectly still on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, and went through his mental calming checklist.
You are safe, it always started. You’re in the house that you and Daniel built. He is in the bedroom, probably still asleep, or maybe making coffee.
He sniffed the air. No coffee. Daniel was still asleep.
The doors are locked. The windows are locked.
On her cot, Charlie stirred gently, and he added a new item.
Charlie’s safe. You don’t know where Olivia is, but that’s nothing new.
Kade felt his heart slowing, the adrenaline fizzling out of his veins. After a few more moments, he tossed off the blanket and scratched his naked belly, walking to the kitchen to start the coffee as the sun just barely began to peek through the windows.
It wasn’t like they had internet, and the newspaper sure didn’t deliver to their cabin, so most mornings, Kade drank his coffee naked and stared out the window, watching the forest slowly come alive. He found it very soothing: the garden that he and Daniel had grown, the birds who flew from tree to tree, the squirrels fighting for territory.
This morning it was a deer in that pink early-morning light. A doe, from the looks of it. She stepped gingerly out of the forest toward the garden, took a few sniffs, and retreated quickly.
Kade smiled.
I ought to bottle grizzly pee and sell it to farmers, he thought.
Actually, it wasn’t such a terrible idea.
“You might want pants,” Daniel said behind him.
Kade turned to see Daniel, wearing a simple pair of black cloth pants that hung loosely from his waist.
“Where did you even get those?” Kade asked, raising his eyebrows.
Daniel looked down.
“I thought they were yours,” he said.
“So you’re just borrowing my stuff again?”
Daniel had the grace to at least try to look sheepish.
“Sorry,” he said.
Kade rolled his eyes and shrugged.
“She made it through,” he said.
“I told you.”
Daniel poured himself a cup of coffee into an ugly mug that looked like the first attempt of a novice potter, brown and lumpy.
“I wish I could just let the wolves get her,” Kade said quietly.
The only sound was Daniel replacing the coffee pot on the machine.
“No, you don’t,” he said.
He walked over to his mate and slid an arm over his waist, resting his chin on the other man’s shoulder, looking out the window with him.
“You’re right,” Kade muttered. He took a sip of his coffee, leaning back against Daniel’s warm body just a little. “But it would be easier.”
“Since when has anything worthwhile been easy?” Daniel asked.
“It would be nice if it happened just once,” Kade said. “Don’t most bears find their third mates by going on, I don’t know, wine tours or speed dating or whatever that website is that I see billboards for all over the place?”
“Shifter Sex Maniacs?”
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“Yeah,” Kade said. “Why couldn’t we try that instead of rescuing a federal agent from a wolf pack?”
In response, Daniel kissed the side of his neck, and Kade felt the heat begin to gather in his lower belly. Since they’d brought the girl home, they hadn’t exactly been getting it on — there had been bigger things to worry about.
“It’s more of a hookup site,” Charlie’s voice said from the doorway.
Kade froze, leaning into the counter a little more to hide his half-erection. Daniel’s lips moved away from the side of his neck.
“How are you feeling?” he asked Charlie.
The girl looked wobbly and slightly unfocused, but she was miles better than she’d been the past few days. For one thing, she was awake, and for another, she was on her feet and talking.
“I’ve been better,” she said.
All three of them paused. Kade felt like all the words he could think of had simply dried up.
“Is that coffee?” she finally asked.
Kade nodded.
Daniel moved away, grabbing a mug from a high shelf and pouring her some.
“Kade was just putting pants on,” he said.
Charlie moved past him and toward the coffee maker, her movements awkward and shuffling but better than he’d hoped for.
He didn’t move. The very last thing he wanted her to see was his erection.
Really? He thought to himself.
Even though she was moving stiffly and wearing a bathrobe, he could just barely see her shape: generous bosom, cushioned hips, narrow waist.
I could be very, very gentle, he thought.
It didn’t help his erection.
At last she was past him, and while her back was turned, he strode to his bedroom as quickly as he could.
He had to get out of the house, away from her, or he might just lose his mind.
Chapter Seven
Daniel
As Kade rushed to their bedroom, stomping his feet as he went, Daniel suppressed a smile. Kade said things like give her to the wolves, sure, but he’d also spent four nights on the cold, hard floor of their back bedroom, watching her sleep.
He could tell that Kade hadn’t been doing a lot of sleeping himself. If he knew his mate, Kade was waking up every hour or so to listen for her breathing.
Besides, he’d watched the look on Kade’s face as Kade checked Charlie out from behind. It had been a look of pure, unadulterated lust, and just seeing it there on his mate’s face made Daniel’s heart thump in his chest.
He poured Charlie a mug of coffee and handed it to her.
She held it up in front of her face, reading it carefully.
“Ewe’s not fat, ewe’s just fluffy?” she asked, her eyebrows raised.
The mug had a cartoon drawing of a sheep wearing lipstick and heels. Daniel was dimly aware that they owned the mug, but it wasn’t like he looked all that closely at their dishes. They were just a means to an end.
“I think it’s a hand-me-down,” he said. “Someone must have been cleaning out their kitchen. Kade’s mom, maybe?”
“She’s the one who made the stew?”
Daniel nodded.
“It’s really good stew,” Charlie said, blowing on the top of her coffee.
“She used to catch all the rabbits herself, but now that she’s getting older, all the cousins take turns bringing her stuff.”
The look on Charlie’s face said that she didn’t quite know what to make of that, so he charged on.
“Do you want sugar or anything?” he asked.
He had no idea whether they even owned sugar.
“Do you have milk?” Charlie asked, still blowing on the coffee. She looked grateful that they were no longer discussing hunting.
“Maybe,” Daniel muttered. He opened the fridge, a small, old clanking thing that was probably older than him. It had an enormous dent in the front but seemed to work just fine.
There was no milk. There was mustard, the very last of the rabbit stew, a wilted bunch of greens, a bottle of water, and a bowl of eggs.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s ok,” she said with a shrug. “I’m just glad I’m awake again. I had the weirdest dreams. Mostly of wolves chasing me.”
A tiny tremor moved through her body, and Daniel had to fight the urge to squeeze her tight and tell her that the wolves would never, ever get her again.
Instead he walked back across the kitchen, motioning her to follow him, and he sat at the table that had been stained with her blood.
“You got the stains out,” she said, a little surprised.
“I had to sand it,” he said. “It took a while, but while you were asleep I sanded it and refinished it and now it’s as good as new.”
She ran her fingers along the grain as she sat, her back very straight. Pain flashed across her face, but she fought it off.
“You made this?” she asked.
He nodded.
“You made everything,” she said, like it had just occurred to her, her eyes roaming over the furniture, the ceiling, the walls, the shelves in the kitchen.
Daniel just nodded again.
“It’s beautiful,” she went on. “We had no idea.”
Daniel took another long sip of his coffee, trying to parse that sentence and finally failing.
“Who’s ‘we,’ and what did you have no idea of?” he asked.
“The task force,” Charlie said. She wouldn’t look him in the eye, but kept running the fingers of one hand over the freshly sanded wood, the ewe’s not fat mug in the other hand. “And we didn’t know that Kade had a mate.”
Daniel swallowed coffee, watching her finger trace patterns on the table top.
“It isn’t a secret,” he said. “Not that I’m aware.”
“I don’t know how we missed it,” she said. “It makes me wonder what other intelligence we got wrong.”
Before Daniel could think of and then articulate a response, the bedroom door opened and Kade walked out, wearing both pants and a shirt, though he was barefoot.
“I’m going to go grab a deer for dinner,” he said. He only looked at Daniel, practically pretending that Charlie wasn’t there. “Back in a couple of hours.”
Daniel nodded once.
“Watch for wolves,” he said.
“They know better than to come for me,” he said, and then he left through the front door, still barefoot.
Charlie shook her head slightly, still looking down at the table.
“Not used to shifters?” he asked.
She chewed on the inside of her lip like she wasn’t sure how to phrase what she was about to say. It took her a while.
“I’m not used to... bachelor pairs, I guess?”
She paused.
“Do you have a female mate somewhere?”
As she asked, her cheeks turned a pleasing pink color, and Daniel found himself fascinated by it.
“No,” he said quickly. “Definitely not. Not even a little. Zero.”
Could you be more awkward? He thought.
Briefly, he had the urge to shift and run off into the forest, where beautiful human girls weren’t sitting across the table from him in nothing more than his dead mother’s bathrobe.
Charlie just turned redder and drained her coffee mug, like she was trying to hide her blush.
“I actually grew up with a lot of shifters,” she finally said. “Back in Cumberland.”
“What are you doing out here?” Daniel asked. His coffee was finished, too, and he itched to do something with his hands.
“Figuring out who killed those wolves,” she said. “Shifter-human relations are fucked up enough as it is. We don’t need shifters killing other shifters over territory disputes to make things worse, you know?”
Daniel stood, unable to contain himself anymore, and walked to a workbench across the room. He grabbed a few tools: a whittling knife, an exacto, and a half-carved, half-round wood sculpture of a mountain lion.
“They
sent you alone?” he asked.
“They didn’t want it to be a big deal,” she said, and he could hear in her voice that she was nervous, on edge again.
There was something she wouldn’t tell him. Whatever she was really doing there, it wasn’t just information gathering, like she wanted them to believe. He turned the lion over in his hands, holding in it one and considering where the next cut was going to be.
“At least, that’s what they told me,” she said. “They picked me because I had the most experience with shifters, growing up with them and all. Though there weren’t many wolves or grizzlies in Cumberland. Lots of lions and foxes.”
She spun the mug between her fingers, the ceramic thumping against the wood.
“They told me Kade was feral,” she said, suddenly.
Daniel cut a small chunk of wood away from the lion’s tail. It wasn’t the farthest thing from the truth that he’d ever heard. The other man certainly didn’t have a lot of human graces, that much was for sure.
“That’s not hard to disprove,” Daniel said. The knife hovered over the wooden lion and he looked up at Charlie. “He forgets to wear clothes a lot, but he’s sure not feral.”
Charlie shook her head. “I wish I knew why they told me that,” she said, slowly. “Whether it was an honest mistake or something else.”
“He spends a lot of time as a bear,” Daniel said. “That’s his job, after all.”
“What is?”
Daniel looked up.
“He tracks down feral shifters,” he said.
Charlie blinked. “That’s a job?” she asked.
“Sure,” Daniel said. “Can’t have a bunch of smart, deranged bears and wolves and lions roaming the countryside.”
“I didn’t know there were other shifters who... did that.”
“Who better?”
Charlie slumped a little in her chair but straightened immediately, sucking in a breath through her teeth, pain flashing across her face.
Daniel half-stood, dropping his tools on the table, ready to do anything she needed.
