by Anna Zaires
When Adriana was a senior in high school, her dad had gotten a job transfer to Florida. Celeste’s mom was kind enough to let Adriana stay with them, so she didn’t have to change schools for her last year. She could’ve gone down to Florida to live with her folks, but she loved New Jersey and didn’t want to leave. Celeste had gone right to work after school, while Adriana went to beauty school. Her parents didn’t really think much of her career choice, but Adriana was happiest when she was doing nails. Maybe someday she and Celeste would be able to open their own salon, but for now she was content.
“Okay, so the mailbox is prophetic,” Celeste said as she came into the apartment and put the mail on the kitchen counter.
Adriana straightened from where she’d been peering into the refrigerator to find something to make for dinner. “How can a mailbox prophesy?”
Celeste handed Adriana an envelope. The return address read, ‘Amazing Adventures Safari Park’.
She raised a brow, but Celeste said, “Just open it.” Adriana could see that she was holding a similar envelope, already opened.
Adriana slid her finger under the flap, tore it open and pulled out a colorful postcard.
She read out loud, “Adriana Stephens, you are cordially invited on a VIP tour of the Amazing Adventures Safari Park. This voucher qualifies you for free parking and one tour. Tour dates are listed below; please call immediately to schedule.” Glancing at her best friend, she asked, “How is this prophetic again?”
“You said we needed to do something different to find eligible guys. I bet there’s a ton of single guys at a place like this.”
“Do you think so?” she asked, staring at the images of the park on the front of the postcard.
“Maybe. Besides, you said you wanted a guy who loved animals, so that’s your zookeepers. Tour guides probably love kids, and then the food-stall workers can cook.”
“I’m not marrying three different guys – I want all those qualities in the same guy,” she pointed out.
“Oh ha ha, you know what I mean. Let’s call and see when we can take a tour. I haven’t been to the park since I was a toddler. It’ll be so cool. Let’s live a little!”
She loved how enthusiastic Celeste was. Her attitude was entirely contagious. “All right. You set it up, and we’ll have a great time.”
Celeste did a little happy dance. “Woo hoo! Now, how about dinner?”
CHAPTER 3
Zane heard his dad’s heavy steps as the alpha came into the garage where Zane was working on one of the safari Jeeps. Pushing himself out from under the vehicle, he sat up. “What’s up?”
“The first tours have been scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. They’ll run every hour from four to eight, so you’ll need to be shifted and in position by three-thirty.”
His heartrate spiked as he thought about the chance of finding his mate. Zane didn’t really believe that he’d be so lucky on the first weekend, but it was hard not to get his hopes up a little. His thoughts had definitely turned to sweeter things lately; having a mate, starting a family, and planning for the future.
He knew it would be a lot for a human woman to take in right away, since shifters were unknown to them, but it was widely believed that the mating connection between a male and female ran deep enough for humans to get over those differences. There were some human mates who lived underground, but they were from his father’s generation. He hoped his own mate would love the zoo as much as he did. He loved when schools came for tours, allowing Zane and his band to entertain the kids with their antics.
“All right. We’ll be ready.”
“I know you will be. I hope you find your mate, Zane.”
“Why aren’t you interested in finding someone for yourself?”
“I’m not actively looking, but if I happened to feel the mating call, I wouldn’t say no.”
Zane smiled at his dad, and said something that had been on his mind for a while. “Do you think that if humans knew we existed, we’d have less difficulty finding our mates?”
“It’s possible, but it’s safer for us to remain unknown. Humans wouldn’t be happy to learn that there are people in this world who can change into animals. They’d want to experiment on us, or kill us. Neither of those options are good.”
Zane rubbed his thumb on the cool metal of the wrench. “I know. It’s just been hard to live alone all these years.”
“You’re still young.”
That was true, but sometimes he didn’t feel so young. He felt like he was wasting his best years waiting around for his mate to wander into the zoo. He knew the situation was unlikely to change, though. He was certain that the council would never vote for shifters to come out to the humans.
“I’ll be ready for the weekend, Dad.”
“It’ll be her lucky day when you find her,” Atticus said, smiling gently.
It would be Zane’s, too.
His dad left, and Zane leaned back and pulled himself under the Jeep, returning to work. The zoo was well-maintained. Each shifter group handled different aspects of the park: the bear shifters handled the food, manning not only the food stalls, but also the cafeteria underground, where hot meals were served all day long. The elephant shifters handled the welfare of the ordinary animals – which shifters called the “norms”, from the chimpanzees to the giraffes.
Lions handled park security, gorillas handled park maintenance, and the wolves handled merchandise sales and the tours. The wolves were the biggest shifter group in the zoo, but very few of their people had found mates either.
Someone kicked the heel of his work boot, and Zane knew who it was before he rolled out from under the Jeep. Jesse, oldest son of the alpha wolf, and all-around asshole.
“Why aren’t you working on my Jeep?” Jesse demanded as Zane took his time coming out.
Zane put his feet on the ground and rested his elbows on his knees, looking up at the male. Jesse stood with his hands on his hips, eyes blazing.
“I’ll get to it when I get to it.”
“Mating tours are starting this weekend. It needs to be done now,” Jesse said, his voice rumbling with a growl.
Zane stood slowly, towering over the male. They were the same age, but Zane was a monster compared to Jesse, heavily muscled where the wolf was lean. There was no mistaking that Jesse was a predator, but Zane would have no trouble putting him down. The two had been butting heads for years; the male’s arrogance just rubbed Zane the wrong way, and always had.
“There’s a tear in the seat cushion. That’s hardly a priority.”
“The council said everything had to be perfect. You’d better have it ready for the first tour on Saturday.”
Zane’s hand tightened on the wrench. He could thump the male on the head with it and toss him in a maintenance closet. No one would miss him.
As if sensing that Zane was considering how to get rid of him, Jesse’s nostrils flared. “Get it done.”
“I’ll get to it when I have time. If you’d bothered to read the repair guidelines, you’d see that cosmetic repairs, such as torn seat cushions which don’t present a danger to the public, are low on the priority list. I will take care of it when the other, more pressing repair issues have been resolved.”
Jesse’s upper lip curled, and Zane decided he’d had enough of the male posturing and making demands in his garage.
He took a step forward, letting his beast out enough that his eyes darkened and his skin flushed with a hint of fur.
“Hey, whoa, shit,” Win, a gorilla and one of Zane’s fellow repairmen, said as he stepped between the two. He was a natural peacemaker. “Jesse, the work will get done in order of priority. If you’d been more careful in the first place, you wouldn’t have sat down on the seat with a screwdriver in your back pocket and ripped the cushion.”
Jesse snarled, and Zane smirked.
“See that it gets taken care of,” Jesse ordered. Zane’s hold tightened on the wrench until his knuckles were screaming in protest.
“Don’t threaten me,” Jesse said, but Zane saw the flash of fear light his eyes, and it gave him a small measure of happiness.
Win pointed at the open doors of the garage. Jesse glared at them for a moment longer, then turned on his heels and stormed out.
“You absolutely can’t kill him,” Win said, facing Zane.
“It would feel so good, though.”
“Yeah,” Win sighed, “but then you’d have to explain to the pack why you killed him, and it would be a whole thing. So next time, just ignore him.”
“It’s hard to ignore someone who’s so annoying.”
Win looked over his shoulder at the empty doorway. “He’s always hated you.”
Jesse had a ‘wolves rule’ mindset. To him, all other shifters were inferior, even though the wolves were physically the smallest of the park’s shifters.
“It’s been worse since that night at the bar,” Zane said.
Last summer, Zane and his band had been at a local bar to celebrate August’s birthday. The big male hadn’t really liked the attention of the whole bar singing “Happy Birthday” to him, but he’d definitely liked it when a human female offered to give him a birthday kiss. Jesse and a few of his cronies were there, and when they saw the female kiss August, they demanded equal attentions from her. When she refused, they grew aggressive. The human bouncers had stepped in, but Jesse and his friends seemed to be spoiling for a fight, and easily overpowered the human staff thanks to their enhanced strength. Zane and his band, bigger and stronger in their human forms, neutralized the situation. They bought a round of drinks for the whole bar, paid the owner for damages, then hustled Jesse and his buddies out. They’d been punished by their alpha for starting a small riot in a human business, and weren’t allowed to shift on the next full moon. For wolves, who were so closely tied to the moon, being unable to shift made them feel as if their skin was crawling.
“His buddies got over it, but Jesse’s held a grudge ever since,” Zane said. “I could care less about anything to do with those furry assholes, though.”
“They’re not all assholes; just Jesse and a few of his pals. Maybe it’s an evolutionary thing. Maybe they evolved into assholes because they can’t fight for shit.”
Zane snorted and clapped his hand on Win’s shoulder. “Thanks for stepping in. I was trying to figure out how to get rid of his body.”
“Incinerator, obviously. Not that I’ve thought about it.”
“Of course not.”
“Everyone’s bitching. I think its nerves coming out for the tours.”
Zane hummed. “What if our mates aren’t even here in New Jersey?”
Win shrugged. “I believe they are. It’s where we live. It makes sense that our mates would gravitate toward us.”
He raised a brow. “How on earth can you believe that?”
“Because if I didn’t think that my mate was making her way here eventually, I’d go balls-to-the-wall apeshit. Maybe not this weekend, but someday, I believe my mate will walk through the front gates and fall head over heels for me.”
“Hope’s a good thing,” Zane said.
“It’s all we’ve got.”
On Saturday, the first private tours began. Zane and his band stayed in their shift the entire time, scenting the air as each small Jeep stopped in front of the gorilla fence, letting out two wolves – one driver and one guide – and one VIP guest. The guide would escort the guest close to the gate with the pretense of getting ‘up close and personal’ with the gorillas as they recited information about natural gorillas. Some of the females were afraid to get too close to the fence, timid creatures who hid behind the guide, or demanded to simply stay in the vehicle. With each tour that passed by, Zane scented the females and hoped that his mate might be among them. But by the time the last tour had passed by on Sunday evening and none of his band had found a mate, he was beginning to think it was going to be a very long and lonely summer.
CHAPTER 4
“What do you mean we can’t ride in the same Jeep?” Adriana asked as she stood in line with Celeste at the VIP tour station in the safari park. “Why would we need to be in separate vehicles?”
She and Celeste stood in front of two vehicles that were painted in vibrant blue camouflage. Adriana stared up at the man who’d told them they weren’t able to go in the same vehicle.
“It’s a private tour, ma’am,” he said stiffly, not hiding his annoyance very well. The line stretched behind them, and Adriana noticed that it was made up entirely of young women.
Celeste elbowed her and said, “It’ll be an adventure.”
“What’s with you and adventures lately?”
“Come on,” Celeste pleaded. “Live a little.”
“I’m trying, but I thought we were going to be able to be in the Jeep together. I still don’t see what the deal is.”
“Each vehicle is equipped to hold only three people,” the man said. He was tall and lanky, wearing a blue uniform and a ball cap that identified him as security. Adriana looked past him to see that there were only three available seats in each Jeep because of a large duffel that had been placed in the second row. As she opened her mouth to argue that they could put the duffel in the storage area, Celeste said, “It’s fine, really. Let’s not hold up the line, hon. We’ll talk after the tour.”
“Okay. Have fun.”
“I will. You, too!”
Celeste walked past the security officer to one of the four waiting vehicles. Two men stood next to it: one wore a blue uniform, and the other wore an olive-green one. They smiled at Celeste, and the man in the olive uniform helped her into the second row. The Jeep pulled away quickly and Celeste turned around and blew a kiss to Adriana, who waved back.
The officer gestured to the next Jeep in line, where two more men were waiting, one in blue and one in olive. Adriana wished she had her cell so she could take photos with the camera. Phones and other personal items weren’t permitted on the tours. One of the security officers at the check-in gate told them that there would be photo opportunities provided by the guides, who each carried a professional camera.
Adriana walked past the guard to the next vehicle.
“It’s nice to meet you, Adriana,” the man in olive said. He was just a few inches taller than her five-foot-five frame, with short, dirty blond hair and piercing blue eyes. The man in the blue uniform looked similar to the first man, with the same blue eyes, but his hair was cropped so closely to his skull that he almost looked bald.
Adriana took his outstretched hand and climbed into the Jeep, settling next to the duffel. “Thank you.”
The two men climbed into the vehicle, and the olive-uniformed man turned around to face her. “We’ll be leaving shortly. My name is Jesse, and this is Alfie. He’s part of the security team for the tours.”
“You have separate security for the tours?” She glanced at Alfie, who was watching a GPS screen intently. There were several different colored triangles moving on the screen. She guessed they were other vehicles, since they seemed to be moving on a marked trail.
“Normally, our regular tours have a guide, which is what I am, a security person like Alfie, and a driver, but because we’re running a lot of private tours on the weekends, we streamlined to only two staff members on each Jeep. Don’t worry, Alfie and I will keep you safe; right, Alfie?” Jesse smiled at her; it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
“Um, thanks,” she said, leaning back against the seat to put as much distance as she could between herself and Jesse, who was looking at her as if he could see through her clothes. Suddenly she wished she’d worn several more layers on top of her pink plaid button-down, white tank-top, and faded jeans.
Jesse kept staring at her. She was starting to get the urge to jump out of the Jeep and ask for another guide when Alfie said,
“Hold on.”
The Jeep lurched forward; Jesse laughed when Adriana squeaked in surprise and clutched the seat in front of her.
Alfie glanced over his shoulder with an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said, releasing her tight grip on the seat and trying to calm her flying pulse.
The Jeep left the station, and Adriana glanced back at the other women waiting in line. The vehicle followed a dirt trail around a curve, before they quickly disappeared from view.
“So, we have a ton of animals here at the park,” Jesse said. She turned slowly around and stared at him. He was now sitting backward, leaning on the seat back and smiling at her.
She hummed in agreement, wishing he would stop leaning over the seat and crowding her. Her skin was starting to goosebump, and her inner panic button was flashing red. There was something off about this guy.
The vehicle slowed to a stop. Jesse climbed out and held out his hand to her.
She blinked in surprise. “What are you doing?”
“It’s a private tour. That means you get to go closer to the fences than regular park guests. We’re at the elephants’ paddock.” When she simply stared for a long moment at his hand, he said, “You have to get out so I can get the camera. You get a photo at each paddock, and then one of the merch guys will upload them to a photo album for you, free of charge.”
“Merch?”
“Merchandise. Come on, out with you.” He wrapped his hand around her wrist, and tugged.
She got out of the vehicle quickly and extracted her wrist from his grip. “Please don’t touch me like that again,” she said firmly.
“Touchy, touchy,” he said. He leaned into the back seat and unzipped the duffel, removing a large camera.
