by Dakota West
“At least you turned out okay,” she said encouragingly.
Hudson laughed, and he could see Julius smile in the front seat as he turned into the motel parking lot.
“What? Pull around back,” she said. Julius obliged.
“It took me a while to turn out okay, and that’s still up for debate,” Hudson said.
Julius pulled into a parking space and turned the car off.
Quinn raised her eyebrows.
“What do you mean?”
Don’t, thought Hudson. Don’t ask her.
“It’s a long story,” he said. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
Right away, he saw Julius’s hands gripping the steering wheel, a withering glare in the rearview mirror.
Quinn turned a pleasing pink color.
“Probably just working on the website,” she said. She sounded both nervous and befuddled. “Why?”
“Let us take you out,” Hudson said.
In the front seat, he could practically hear the steam coming out of Julius’s ears, but he didn’t care. She’d be gone soon enough, and besides, Julius might get shot soon. Time to live a little.
“Oh! Well, yes, sure, but um,” Quinn said, turning even pinker and fumbling her words, “... my parents.”
Hudson met Julius’s furious eyes in the rearview mirror.
“We’ll think of something,” he said.
“I’ll think on it, too,” Quinn volunteered, sounding eager.
Hudson’s bear was practically drooling.
“See you tomorrow, then,” Julius said, his voice sounding tight.
Quinn got out of the car and walked around the motel, and Hudson switched into the front seat.
Julius glared at him.
“You might die in two days,” Hudson said. “Does anything else really matter?”
Julius took a deep breath, one hand resting on the gear shift.
Then he took Hudson’s hand in his and kissed it.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t.”
Chapter Eight
Quinn
Quinn couldn’t sleep. Instead, she laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering why she’d even bothered trying. Finally, after an hour, she got up and went out to the motel’s small, crummy pool.
There she sat on a half-rusted pool chair, staring at the water. The highway was right behind it, but this time of night, no one was going anywhere.
Just like home, she thought.
From the way her parents had talked about it, she’d thought that Granite Valley would have some sort of crazy red light district, and that shifter were up all night, driving around, fucking in the backs of cars, but that was totally wrong. It was just another small town, really.
How was she going to get out of her parents’ clutches tomorrow? Despite herself, she really did want to go out with Julius and Hudson. It wasn’t like anything was going to happen, and besides, she’d be getting out of Cascadia ASAP as soon as the assassination attempt was over.
Obviously, no one was going to want the daughter of the would-be assassins to stick around.
Quinn could still scarcely believe that her parents had arranged it. Sure, she knew that they were hateful in the extreme, about shifters more than anything — but having someone killed? It just seemed beyond the pale.
I wonder if I know them at all, she thought. What else are they capable of?
One more time, she went over the plan in her head. A SWAT team, made up of people not just from Granite valley but from Long Prairie and Canyon City as well, would be hiding out and watching the rooftops, ready to take down anyone who even appeared to have a gun.
Meanwhile, a huge plainclothes police force would be in the crowd before the trial, most on the protestor side. They’d gone over it from every angle, every possible place at the courthouse where someone could shoot Julius from.
Quinn still had a horrible sinking feeling about it, no matter how many times all the shifters had tried to comfort her. Julius and Ash had chosen this way over pushing the trial back further and trying to catch the shooter without putting Julius at risk, even over Hudson’s protestations.
Julius wanted the culprits arrested and the whole thing over with.
Hudson, at that point, had mostly sat in his seat and glowered.
Quinn rubbed her eyes in her hands, watching the stars reflected off the rippling surface of the pool. As guilty as she felt, she was glad they’d decided to do it this way — the sooner they got it over with, the less time her parents had to figure out that she knew their plan and she’d talked to the authorities.
She pulled her hood over her head and leaned back, staring at the stars. Also just like home: Orion’s belt, the big dipper, the little dipper, the north star...
“Quinn!” her mother shouted.
She jerked awake, realizing that she was slightly damp and freezing. Her eyes came open and she looked around, and for a few moments she was utterly lost, feeling unmoored from reality.
I’m dreaming, she thought.
“Quinn!” her mother shouted again. Then there was the sound of a metal gate rattling, and Quinn finally remembered going out to the pool the night before.
Apparently she’d finally fallen asleep out there.
“What on earth are you doing out here?” her mother scolded, finally getting the gate to the pool open.
“I couldn’t sleep inside,” Quinn said, guiltily. Her mom had probably flipped out when she hadn’t answered her motel room door.
“Anything could have happened out here, Quinn,” her mother said, hands on her hips. Her face was receding into its usual scowl, but there were still worry lines between her eyes that spoke of the panic over her daughter.
Quinn felt a pang of guilt.
They arranged for someone to die, she reminded herself.
“Sorry, mom,” she said. “I just wanted to get some air, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“Metal fences are no barrier to these perverts,” her mother hissed.
Quinn felt a little less guilty.
“They drag off human women,” she said. “They don’t have feelings the way you and I do. They’ll just have sex with anything.”
Quinn managed not to make a face at her mother, but she felt revolted again.
Does she really believe this stuff? She wondered. If she does, is that why she can do all this?
“I’m fine now,” she said. “Just a little damp. Sorry to worry you.”
By now, Barbie Taylor’s face was in its natural state — a full scowl.
“You’re okay this time,” she said.
Quinn said nothing.
“Anyway, we need you to work today,” she said. “The website needs a full overhaul. The trial starts again tomorrow, and we’re expecting a lot of supporters to rally to our cause. Your dad and I spent a lot of time last night coming up with a list of changes and new items to sell.”
Quinn blinked.
Is this a way out? She wondered.
“I can do that,” she said cautiously. “But the internet at the motel is pretty slow.”
“Then go somewhere with faster internet, Quinn,” her mother said. “This is very important.”
Quinn stood, brushing rust flakes off of her pants and trying to think fast.
The library will have internet, she thought. Mom can take you there, and then Julius and Hudson can pick you up.
“Let me shower, and then can you take me into town?” she asked, trying her best not to smile.
By eleven in the morning, Quinn had been at the library for an hour. The front page of the site looked totally different, and the store looked like there was more stuff in it. Trying to actually buy anything just brought up an error, but she didn’t really care. She just wanted it over with, especially since updating ShifterSexManiacs.com in the Granite Valley public library had been interesting.
Mostly, she’d had to switch windows every time someone walked by, which took a lot of time.
At last, she p
ut her laptop back in her bag and pulled out the sheet of phone numbers that she’d been given the day before.
Heart beating fast, she dialed Hudson’s. He answered on the first ring.
“Hey there,” he said, a smile in his low, rough voice.
“Hey,” she said, already feeling the flush creep up her cheeks. “Is the offer still good?”
“Of course it’s still good,” he said, half-laughing. “Quinn, that offer is always good.”
Julius said something in the background that Quinn couldn’t quite hear.
“Could you pick me up at the library?”
“That I can,” he said. “Fifteen minutes?”
“Sure, sounds good,” Quinn said. She stared at a poster with two kids on it, reading books under a tree.
“We’ll be right there,” he said.
Quinn lowered the phone, her palms sweaty. She was still worried that someone might find out what she was doing and tell her parents. Or, worse, that whoever the shooter was would find out and simply take matters into his own hands.
Then she took a deep breath, wiped her palms on her pants, and walked to the front steps of the library. She wasn’t even the target. The least she could do was be brave.
Fifteen minutes later on the dot, a dark blue SUV pulled up in front of the library and Julius popped out of the front seat, bounding up the steps to her. He looked serious until he reached her, and then his face broke into a wide grin.
“Shall we?” he asked. “Hudson kept the car running so we can make a quick escape.”
Quinn had to smile as he led her down the steps and into the front seat of the waiting SUV. As soon as she was buckled, they sped off down Main Street.
Before long, they were winding up a mountain, through the woods.
Every warning her mom had ever given her was sounding in Quinn’s head.
They’re stealing you away so they can do whatever they want to you, her mother screamed in her head. These perverts do horrible things to human girls.
She swallowed and cleared her throat.
“So what’s the plan?” she asked, forcing her voice not to shake. She peeked around the front seat at Hudson, buckled into the back.
Cars just weren’t made for triads.
She blinked at the thought.
I just called the three of us a triad, Quinn thought. She wasn’t exactly sure how that made her feel, but it wasn’t bad. There was something soothing and alluring about the thought, at least.
Hudson grinned and reached over the back of his seat, lifting a picnic basket out of the trunk space.
Quinn raised her eyebrows.
“You actually own a picnic basket?” she asked.
Hudson chuckled.
“Julius’s mom gave it to us when we moved in together,” he said.
“It’s made by a this local craft store,” Julius said. “Most picnic baskets have space for two of everything. This one’s got three.”
“Mrs. Bloom isn’t always subtle,” said Hudson.
“It could be worse,” Julius offered. He turned left, onto a gravel road. “My cousin Hunter’s mom gave them a baby blanket and a copy of The Complete Guide To Shifter Pregnancy when his human mate moved in with him and Ash.”
“Was she pregnant?”
“Nope.”
“Shifter parents can be pretty intense,” Hudson volunteered from the back seat. “There’s three of them, after all.”
Quinn sat in silence for a moment, trying to figure out exactly how to phrase her question.
“So... Ash’s female mate is human,” she said.
“Yup,” said Julius. “Cora.”
“Cute as a button,” said Hudson.
“If she has kids with them are they half-shifter?”
“That’s never really happened,” Julius said. He slowed down, going over some rough parts of the road, and Quinn was glad that they were in a high-clearance SUV, not the Prius. “All the female humans we know, the kids seem like they’re full shifters.”
“It’s apparently a very dominant gene or... whatever,” Hudson said.
“Everyone’s got some human ancestors,” Julius said.
“Is it always the woman who’s human?”
“Usually,” Julius said. “Though there have been a few instances where one mate was a male human.”
They came to the end of the road, where there was a small clearing. Julius pulled off to one side and parked. Then he turned his head and looked at her.
“You up for a quick walk?” he asked.
The forest was so gorgeous that Quinn’s mom’s voice had finally gotten out of her head, and she could just enjoy the scenery. They were surrounded by massive trees and boulders, the sort of lush forest that seemed to only exist in fairy tales. The path they were on was vague at best, but Julius had no problem knowing exactly where to go, and Hudson followed behind her, carrying the picnic basket in one hand.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“This is Rabbit Mountain,” Hudson rumbled behind her. “One of the lower Cascades.”
“It’s actually a volcano,” Julius volunteered.
Quinn slipped slightly on a tree root. Instantly, Hudson caught her arm.
I’m not usually clumsy, she wanted to say, but instead she felt herself blushing slightly at his touch.
“Thanks.”
Hudson just smiled.
“It’s not active, I guess?”
“Nah. Most of the volcanos this far south are dormant. The ones up north are another story.”
Quinn could hear the sound of rushing water, getting closer through the trees.
“Why’s it called Rabbit Mountain?”
“It’s got rabbits, I guess.”
“Rabbit shifters?”
Julius didn’t answer, but stepped forward through a gap in two trees, and suddenly they were in a small clearing. One one side was a creek, rushing over a set of rapids, and the whole green expanse was strewn with boulders.
Somewhere overhead, a hawk cried out, perfectly on cue.
“This is beautiful,” she said, walking forward into the space. “We weren’t even on a trail. How’d you find this place?”
“We turn into bears sometimes, remember?” Hudson asked. He set the picnic basket on a rock.
Quinn walked to the end of the creek. It was ten feet across, maybe a little more, and so perfectly clear that she could see every rock and stick on the bottom.
She dipped her hand in and then yanked it back out.
It was freezing.
“Glacial melt,” said Julius. “No skinny dipping, I’m afraid.”
Then he winked at her.
Quinn just laughed. With every step they’d taken into the forest, Julius and Hudson had finally seemed to relax. It made sense. Quinn didn’t think anyone could follow them, let alone someone from her parents’ organization. There wasn’t even a trail.
Here, in the forest, they were all perfectly safe.
“All right,” said Hudson, opening the picnic basket. “I’m starving and thirsty. Quinn, you want some wine?”
“There’s wine in there?”
Grinning, Hudson held up two bottles of red wine in one hand and three wine glasses in the other.
“That’s a hell of a picnic basket,” Quinn said, laughing. “What else is in there?”
“Plates, cups, silverware, a cheese tray, a cheese knife, a tablecloth, matching napkins, salt and pepper shakers, and a box of matches. That’s not even counting the food.”
“No martini glasses?” Quinn asked.
Hudson grinned. “Bring it up with Mrs. Bloom,” he said.
Julius groaned, behind them.
“Or don’t,” said Hudson. “She’d probably have kittens if she knew Julius had talked to a woman.”
Then Julius and Hudson looked at each other, and there was an awkward silence.
“I’d love some wine!” Quinn said, just a little too loudly. She had the same strange feeling she’d had in the car, whe
n Julius had called the three of them a triad.
It definitely wasn’t a bad feeling.
Chapter Nine
Julius
It only took them thirty minutes to finish off a bottle of wine. Julius and Hudson were still fine, but Quinn was definitely feeling the effects, noticeably, as she laid on her back on the checkered blanket, shoes off, nearly-empty wine glass resting on her belly with one hand on the stem. In the center of the blanket was the cheese board, along with a few half-finished cheeses and a bunch of crackers.
Quinn’s chest rose and fell as she breathed, and Julius was having a hard time watching anything else.
“So are there rabbit shifters?” she asked, wriggling her toes into the grass.
“No,” said Hudson.
“Well, not that we know of,” Julius said.
“I think we’d know by now.”
“What about squirrels?” she asked, ignoring their minor disagreement.
“Also no,” said Hudson.
“All the known shifter species are carnivores,” Julius volunteered. He took another sip of the wine, stretching his long legs out in front of him.
“Why?” she asked
He just shrugged.
“It would be kind of a bummer for an animal to eat something and then realize that you killed another guy, you know?” Hudson said.
That made Quinn sit up, just a little.
“You eat things as a bear?”
“Sure,” said Hudson.
“When we’re bears, we’re bears,” Julius told the girl, shrugging.
She glanced from one man to the other, suddenly looking uncertain.
“Can you think at all? Or can you only think, like, bear thoughts?”
Julius frowned. How could he explain how it felt when he was shifted to someone who’d never done it and never would?
“You can still think,” he said. “And it feels mostly the same, except you think about different stuff.”
“You get very concerned with salmon,” Hudson said.
“And sniffing trees where other bears have peed.”
Quinn wrinkled her nose.
