by Erika Masten
If Rory hadn’t been so set on not playing the part of the psychic horse shifter, he might have seen it coming. Instead, it all came up at once, when there was no time left to intervene. No time to settle her.
As it was, the tall stallion shifter strode into the diner barely listening to Martin’s growly protest. Werewolves were just like that, pushy and oddly uptight in their predator mindset, and Odin Wolves worst of all. They took themselves way too seriously, but Rory supposed that swearing service until death to a war god might have that effect on someone. It just didn’t sit well that Martin was so intent on rushing to fulfill the finality of that oath. Made Rory feel like saving the stubborn wolf back in Arizona had been wasted effort.
Inside the diner, the smell hit Rory first. Behind the scent of seared meat and strong dark roast coffee was another shifter, female, not a predator, something else. Rory paused just inside the door and pretended to listen to Martin’s continued lecture about the importance of not letting the trail go cold on the Agency cell. The stallion shifter nodded and tried to frown, but he was really wondering if the name of the diner was a tell. Yeah, that was the scent of pony, of the owner maybe. It was everywhere.
The werewolf squared off at him. “Is there anything that gets through that horse skull?” By nature, Martin Falk was as angry as Rory was calm. All the more reason to keep things light, with the minds of two such different men—different supernatural species—mixed up as badly as they were now that Galloway had tasted Martin Falk’s soul. Feeling that magnitude of rage all the time, well, that was too damn close to being a warhorse. For a thoroughbred, even the thought of that breed made him want to snort and spit.
“You know how dangerous those weapons are in the hands of a strike team,” Martin said with that hard, sharp jaw locked as he spoke.
Rory was about to point out they had strayed into another shifter’s place of business, to remind Martin how violent things had turned when they’d stumbled across that Lakewood pack not too many miles back, to suggest making polite contact with the pony shifter might gain an ally and information on why the Agency trail led all the way from California’s Central Coast to the Appalachian Mountains. Everything went downhill too fast for Rory to utter a word.
The lights overhead started blinking, accompanied by the scent and distant sizzle of burning electrical wire. Everyone tensed and looked around in confusion, everyone but her. Rory couldn’t stop the instinctive reaction to open his senses when he saw the voluptuous, ripe young woman staring at him straight and hard. He didn’t understand what was happening, why the electricity in the building was crackling and popping like fireworks, but he did understand that more than a craving for a burger and an urge to sightsee had led him into the diner… and right to her.
The horse shifter started toward the trembling brown-haired girl even as that seeking force inside him, that superconsciousness, reached out for hers. Fear, hope, confusion, exhilaration, need. She was a pulsing knot of emotional distress, and that knot was tightening with every second that passed and every second that passed between them. Her scent rose up strong in Rory’s nostrils, her skin’s natural perfume of summer-warmed wood and orange blossom, newly bloomed and slightly tart. She was—there was no other way to put it—unrealized. His groin burned and ached in a primal response to the presence of a fey lady as yet unopened to the full intensity of her powers and her passions. She didn’t… she didn’t feel like a virgin, but she wasn’t mated yet, either, whoever and whatever she was.
Martin, sensing her all on his own, fell in step right beside Rory as they closed in on the girl. Was that what frightened her, what made her squirm unsteadily off her stool at the lunch counter and dart between them? Amid the flickering lights and the commotion of alarm rising among the other patrons, neither shifter reacted quickly enough to catch the girl. Galloway felt a distinct languor dulling his reactions, like his connection with the girl was a drug in his veins. She slipped away from Rory and Martin in a rush of warm citrus and a flurry of silky hair flying loose behind her like the mane of a gorgeous mare.
The stallion in Rory rose up hard and frothing when he saw a man near the door intercept the distressed girl who had obviously been drawn herself to the diner for her fated meeting with the shifters. Whether it was the instinctively possessive beast inside Rory or the embers of Martin’s anger flaring to life in Galloway’s portion of that shared soul, the horse shifter’s ire churned as the human reached for her.
That was right before she threw her hands up and, without touching the man, hurled him through the plate glass window of the diner.
Just that suddenly, before the shards of glass had stopped raining in a dissonant chorus against the sidewalk outside, the flickering lights and every person in the restaurant went still. Then the reaction hit like a tsunami wave. Kitchen staff rushed up from the back. The swinging door behind the counter banging open to unleash a barrage of foul language in a southern female voice. Pony shifters, Rory thought, always had bad tempers. No doubt the diner’s owner was fit to be not just tied but bridled, saddled, and branded. For her part, the little brunette, looking shocked and horrified, rushed for the exit.
One of the men who had been sitting in the booth with the fellow who had crashed through the window now jumped over the jagged glass remains in the frame to check on his friend. No, no, no, no, Galloway thought as the third man then started toward the little fey girl. Too late. A wave of rage overflowed from Martin as the Odin Wolf responded to both the challenge of a fight and the protection of the girl. Fury bled into Rory like a toxin, instantly blurring his reason. Fists clenched, cock hard, and the coarse hair of his stallion prickling just under his skin, Galloway used his last few moments of rational thought to shoulder Falk toward the door with all 200+ pounds of his weight behind him.
Outside, the blast of summer warmth pushed back Rory’s rising transformation enough for him to resist the shift. The dark-haired werewolf, though, with muscles bulging and growing unnaturally under his t-shirt and jeans, spun back toward the diner with that wild look in his eyes and the otherworld glimmer to his skin. Rory punched him hard in the shoulder, hard enough to spin Martin back around toward the parking lot.
“The girl, Falk.” The reminder was the only thing that kept the wolf shifter from mauling Galloway. Martin’s hollowed, flushed cheeks tensed as the werewolf seethed and panted through clenched teeth. Still snarling, he glared at Rory but complied, wary and resentful for denying his bloodlust.
A second later, the shifters had the girl flanked, and each took her by an arm. Predictably, she shrieked and struggled. What Rory hadn’t expected was for her to look up at who had her and stop fighting when she recognized them.
“We gotta get you out of here,” Galloway told her, wondering if she’d argue and he’d have to convince her she could trust two strangers who had just charged her in a diner.
Instead, she nodded fervently. “Yeah, we do, but that’s not going to be easy, even if you are shifters,” she agreed in a southern accent that hit Rory harder than most, stirring that ache in his groin once more. Then there was the fact that she knew—just knew—what Falk and Galloway were. That hit him between the eyes, too. She was definitely fey, and in trouble, and scared. Rosy and breathless, chest pumping lightly with impending panic, she made him itch to gather her up again his chest for shelter. His first instinct was to want to seek out her spirit again with his, to soothe her soul to soul. His second instinct, as he smelled all that skin perfumed like tart summer blossoms and felt the lush flesh of her curves beside him, was not nearly so spiritual.
Along Galloway’s neck, under the dark blond ponytail, the stallion in him bristled again as firm, quick steps came up on the girl and her shifter escort from behind. Before Rory could cast his senses outward to scan the threat, a hand clamped down on the girl’s shoulder and wrenched her backward, making her stumble to a halt and whirl.
It wasn’t like Rory to react so violently, to snatch a human up by the throat a
nd lift him off his feet with a stallion shifter’s strength plainly displayed. Galloway didn’t care just then who saw him hoisting the man clear off the ground or how unnatural it must have looked. Rory shook him like a dog with a rodent in its jaws. It felt good. It felt satisfying to show the human that his kind weren’t alone at the top of the food chain—and never had been.
For a few seconds, the horse shifter snorted into the man’s ghostly white face. Galloway reveled in how easily he could have crushed the human’s windpipe. The power gushed through his veins like a mix of alcohol and 180-proof adrenaline, making his fingers twitch and dig deeper into human flesh. Even when the man’s face started to turn red and then blue, as he suffocated, Rory felt a distinct lack of compassion or concern. The asshole had touched the girl, jerked the shifter’s charge away from him, made her shriek and panic and hide behind Martin. That outrage demanded blood.
Martin’s rage in Rory’s head agreed. That was the realization that stilled Rory’s hand and his wrath. This was the wolf shifter’s bloodlust, a war god’s bidding, the way a warhorse would have reacted—killing first and asking no questions, consequences be damned. Disgusted with himself, at how glorious it had felt to have that savage power coursing through his body and speaking to him in such a primal language, Rory dropped the man. When the human hit the cracked parking lot asphalt, sprawled helpless and gasping for breath, his shirt fell back to reveal the gun holster and the badge clipped to his belt.
“Fuck,” was all Rory could say as Martin dragged him backward toward the old rust-colored Chevy behemoth that had transported them cross country these last couple of weeks. Christ, really, he thought, it was the Odin’s warrior werewolf restraining him, holding back the stallion shifter? “Fuck,” he breathed raggedly again, shaking as the girl slid into the middle of the bench seat and pulled Rory after her into the cab of the truck. “Fuck.”
“It’s okay,” she said, and even with a tremble of fear and anxiety to her words she sounded like comfort itself with that warm southern voice so exotic to a California boy. The leeward side of the Coastal Range and the rural valleys of central California harbored families that had made their way west from the Appalachians generations before. Their route via Louisiana and Texas made for a mix of southern spice and cool California reserve in their manner of speech, so there was something of home to her voice, as well.
Calmed enough looking into those dark eyes of hers that he could breathe without stuttering and cursing, Rory muttered, “I could have killed that man, that cop. I wanted to.”
“Well, you liked to, but you didn’t.” She shook her head as she ran one hand up Rory’s chest to his shoulder. The girl apparently had no idea what that was doing to his already tensed body. Need throbbed from the base of his balls and the root of his cock, demanding he take the fey beauty—now. She was sitting sideways on the seat, one leg folded under her to raise her up closer to Rory’s considerable height, and she was pressing that lusciously soft body too close. How easily he could have hoisted her up onto his lap, to settle her on his demanding erection and explore those curves with hands just itching to feel her. “He was fixing to give me a beating, so I can’t be mad you stopped him.”
Galloway sucked his breath in through gritted teeth as the girl’s fingers strayed to his stubbled face. He caught her hand. “You don’t understand. I’ve never so much as been in a fistfight.” When a boy hit six feet tall by thirteen, there wasn’t much call for fighting. And he was a horse shifter besides, not a warhorse with too much human in the mix to be anything but violent. Not a warhorse.
A look of such heartbreaking concern gleamed in the girl’s eyes, just before she leaned forward and pressed that glorious, sweet mouth full against Rory’s.
CHAPTER THREE
He wanted to be comforted, despite his size and strength and obvious power. When wants could be such complicated matters, hidden even from the hearts that craved them, such a pure and simple desire spoke to Kendra. This man, this shifter, spoke to her at some deep down level with that boyishly handsome face but savagely powerful body. With hunger like an animal but a soul like an angel.
At least that was how Kendra justified it to herself, the way she leaned over so brazenly and kissed this perfect stranger, emphasis on perfect. And Lord but how they fit, their mouths when she parted his lips with hers and slid her tongue inside against his. The man’s tongue was firm and warm as it twined with hers and tickled the inside of her cheek and the roof of her mouth with a fluttering, teasing delight she felt all the way to her clitoris. Kendra mewed and pressed her thighs together, leaning in closer, warmer, weaker in mind and body. His hot breath swirled against the skin of her cheek and reminded her of a great beast momentarily soothed. He huffed, snorting lightly as he roughened their kiss and nipped her lower lip.
A horse; that was what Kendra saw in a flash of memory. The sleek sable flank of a powerful stallion. He was the second shifter, the blond lover she had dreamed up in her midnight fantasies. Who in the world had ever thought of a stallion shifter, Kendra wondered as she broke the kiss with a last lick along those full, pale lips and looked into the clear blue eyes that had so struck her in the diner. Cougars and wolves, that was what she knew, from the Gunn and Comyn Clans west of her Upcountry mountains. They didn’t mix too much with the psychics of Clan Nacey these days, not since her people’s fall from prominence, and deservedly so.
A pothole in the crumbling asphalt bounced the truck just then, and a thickly banded arm from behind Kendra looped around her waist to steady her. She ended up dragged back with the curve of her ass pressed tight to the muscular thigh of the dark-haired one driving now with just his free hand, the werewolf, and Lord…. He was a hot one, hotheaded and hot-blooded. It felt like a furnace being pressed up against him, but even the summer heat couldn’t make her regret it. His aura was such that Kendra instantly felt both protected from any outside danger and threatened by the hunger that was ingrained in his predatory nature.
The werewolf turned his smooth, tanned face just enough to mutter into her ear, “I’ve got you.” Kendra didn’t know to take that for reassurance or a warning. Tentatively, she turned her own head little by little to peak up at his hard-sculpted features. He’d have been painfully good-looking, with perfect gold highlights in his hair to catch the gold flecks in the irises of his eyes, but for the harshness of the tension he seemed to hold in his expression all the time.
When Kendra leaned a bit toward him, around him, to see what was peeking out from under the short sleeve of his blue tee, she caught a glimpse of a strange tattoo. The dark, precise ink marked out three interlocking, stylized horns along his rounded bicep. Looking at the mark, sensing something meaningful about it, Kendra shivered. Or maybe that was the smell of werewolf beside her filling up her head and her senses with musk and loam like sex—like wild outdoor wolf sex—about to happen. The realization that he was staring steadily at her instead of the road panicked the girl for more than the obvious reason.
It took the sound of a siren from a sheriff’s sedan speeding past them back toward the diner to break the lock between Kendra’s gaze and the wolf’s. She swung her head about to stare after the car and only then really looked at where they were.
“We’re going east,” she said. Back the way she’d come. Kendra gripped the back of the seat and dug her nails in like she was digging in her heels. “We can’t go this way! I already….” Too much information, she chastised herself. Whatever she instinctively felt for these men, she didn’t know them. They weren’t even from around here, with those accents. Sexy, rough, Hollywood cowboy accents, but still.
The blond glanced back through the long, narrow truck window and then at Kendra and his wolf companion, and both men shook their heads. “Can’t go back that way, either. We’d have to pass the sheriffs again.”
The wolf shifter snarled low. “And the pack back in Tennessee won’t be looking to welcome us after that bullshit.”
“Well, we were in their te
rritory unannounced.”
“Really? I must have left my handy pocket guide to shifter territories in my other jeans. We were passing through. They laid into us before we even had time to pee on a tree.”
“Pee on a tree?” Kendra asked, brow furrowed. “Seriously?” Shifters out west, outside the clans, they actually…?
“No, not seriously, that’s just Martin’s sense of sarcasm. I mean humor,” the big stallion shifter explained. “But we seriously do have to get off this road before every law enforcement agency in the Carolinas comes looking for this truck.”
Heat flooded Kendra’s cheeks as she lingered a second on that thought. “Damn if I am not determined to get myself in every kind of trouble I can find. Bad enough my car is back there, but I left my pocketbook on the counter.” Shit, shit, shit, was all she could think. “The registration won’t come back to me, but….” The woman trailed off when she caught the blond shifter staring attentively at her face.
“Don’t worry. We know. We all hide, alone or with our kind, and use whatever methods we have to cover the digital tail the government tries to pin to everyone now.”
It was the strangest thought to only occur to Kendra now, that the pain in the ass licenses and registrations everyone had for everything under the sun these days might have been about tracing psychics and shifters and all the others out there back to their hiding places. And now she’d given the law her face and her ID—one of them anyway—on a silver platter.
