by Amy Green
He was teasing, but she said, “Shifter Falls is the next county over. They’re our neighbors. It makes some sense to get to know them, don’t you think?”
“Don’t bother,” her daddy said with the confidence of a long-time cop. “They’re not worth knowing, trust me. They’re like stray dogs, all of them. You only need to know enough to lock them up—otherwise they stay in the dump Shifter Falls. We only need to think about them right now because one of them is your killer.”
“But don’t you see?” Nadine couldn’t help but argue. “If a man did this to put us off the track, then you’ve just done what he wants, which is look at shifters instead of a human. We keep looking at shifters for this, and he gets away scot free. The fact is that a human could have done this. That means I can’t rule it out.”
“Or it’s simple, and a shifter did it,” her dad said. “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, my girl, it’s probably a duck.”
Nadine closed her eyes briefly. This was too much like the conversation she’d just had with her deputies. “We’re going in circles. I’m the sheriff, and this is my investigation.”
Now he sounded offended. “I was just trying to help.”
“Sorry, Daddy.” Nadine felt like the worst kind of heel. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m just used to having to boss Tate and Ben around all the time, since neither of them does a damn thing unless I tell them.”
“They’re just not used to a woman boss yet,” her daddy said. “Give them time. They’ll learn.”
We don’t have time, she wanted to shout, but she bit the impulse back. Just because she was stressed out didn’t give her permission to shout at her father.
The fact was, even though he meant well, he couldn’t help her with this. No one could. She was alone.
She got off the phone with him and went through the files again. This was the backbone of police work: not wandering the mountains or ogling (admittedly hot) werewolves. Not even talking to her daddy. The buck stopped here, so this was where the work began.
8
The Burned Wolf was half full this time of night, the hum of conversation lively as shifters sat at the bar, drinking. The Burned Wolf was Shifter Falls’ biggest and best shifter bar. It was named after its first incarnation, the Black Wolf, which had burned down during the fight with the Martell pack. The Black Wolf was Heath’s bar, and when it burned down he’d bought and rebuilt a new bar four blocks down the street, gifting it outright to Tessa as hers. Thus the Burned Wolf was born.
Tessa was working the bar. She’d first met Heath when he’d bought the Black Wolf and become her boss, and the rest was history—sort of. There were the minor problems like the fact that Tessa had once hated shifters, and that she had been born human to a rival pack. But with all of that out of the way, she and Heath were happy, and Tessa was back pulling drinks in the bar she now owned, doing the job she loved so much every night.
Devon pulled up a stool and sat at the bar, waiting for Tessa to notice him. The other shifters in the place had already noticed from the minute he walked in the door, but since Tessa wasn’t a wolf with a wolf’s sense of smell, she continued chatting and pulling drinks for a minute without turning around.
There were two good reasons the Wolf was such a popular bar. The first was that Tessa Donovan was outright gorgeous, a blonde with long, silky hair, creamy skin, and a hell of a figure. She was Heath’s, and any man or wolf who looked at her sideways would lose his balls, but it didn’t make her any less pleasant to look at. She was a great business owner and an equally great bartender, hard-headed and sassy. As long as you looked at her respectfully, she certainly brightened up the room.
The second reason the Wolf was popular, of course, was Heath. Heath had always been the most popular Donovan half-brother, even during the dark days of Charlie Donovan’s rule as alpha. Good-looking, easy to talk to, a killer with women—pre-Tessa, of course—Heath was everything Devon was not. Heath had been their father’s favorite, while Devon… Devon had just been a foot soldier in his father’s army, trying to please and failing. They were the two half-brothers who had stayed the longest in Shifter Falls, dealt the most with Charlie, and had butted heads the most often.
Though Devon had never actually tried to kill Heath, like he had tried to kill Ian, he had always hated Heath the most. Had always been hardest on him. Had always seen him less as blood than the others. They looked nothing alike, thought nothing alike. They had different mothers, but though they had the same father, to Devon Heath had seemed like he was from another planet.
So Tessa’s eyebrows shot up in surprise when she turned around and saw Devon sitting at the bar. “Oh,” she said. “Devon. Hi. You want a beer?”
Devon rested his elbows on the bar. He hadn’t been in this place yet, and had only rarely been inside the old bar before it burned down. “Sure,” he said, trying it out. “A beer would be good.”
She blinked her beautiful blue eyes at him once, still shocked, but she grabbed a glass and pulled him a beer. Werewolves biologically couldn’t get drunk, but they liked to drink anyway—most of them liked the taste. Only bears could get drunk, which everyone agreed was a hell of a bad idea. When you’ve seen one drunken grizzly bear fight, you never have a need to see another.
“Here,” Tessa said, sliding the beer across the bar to him and looking at him curiously. “You need to see Heath? He’s in the back.”
Devon sipped his beer. The truth was, he had no idea why he was here. He only knew he didn’t want to go home, and he didn’t want to hunt. So he’d wandered in here for no reason he could think of, because he was restless after spending so much time with Nadine Walker. “It’s all right if he’s busy,” he said finally, answering Tessa. “I just came for a drink.” He didn’t really want to see Heath, anyway. There was no way, no reason he ever wanted to see Heath. Forget it.
As if on cue, his annoying half-brother came through the door from the back. He was wearing a gray t-shirt with a faded ink design on the front, worn jeans, and motorcycle boots. His dark blond hair was brushed back from his forehead, his scruff of beard neatly trimmed. He had a silver chain around his neck, three silver rings, and a leather bracelet on his left wrist—and somehow he managed to look just as masculine as any other man in the room. His eyebrows rose when he saw Devon, just like Tessa’s had, but he walked to Tessa first, stood behind her, put his hands lightly on her hips, and kissed the side of her neck—sweetly, passionately—before speaking.
“Well, brother,” he said in his easy drawl as Tessa briefly leaned into him in bliss. “What can we do for you?”
“I just came to drink a beer,” Devon said again.
Heath stroked Tessa’s jean-clad hip lightly and then let her go as she moved down the bar to serve another customer. “Is that so?” he said, his voice disbelieving.
Now this was starting to piss Devon off. It wasn’t that weird that he would come here. “Isn’t that what most people do here?”
“Most people,” Heath said. His tone had humor in it, but his gray eyes were sharp and missed absolutely nothing. In fact, the Burned Wolf was the center of intelligence in Shifter Falls—anyone who knew anything brought their information here, to Heath, who relayed it to Brody and the other Donovans. Devon had to grudgingly admit that as the head of a shifter intelligence network, Heath wasn’t half bad.
Still, all Devon wanted was to be left alone.
It wasn’t going to happen. Heath came around the bar and pulled up the stool next to Devon’s, leaning just close enough to be confidential. “What’s going on?” he said. “Tell me the truth.”
Devon sighed and gulped his beer again, wishing that wolves could get good and drunk. “I just came for a beer,” he said again, this time in a growl. “I fucking swear. I can leave if you want.”
“I don’t want,” Heath said. “You usually have the personality to drive half of my customers away, but tonight is different. Something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s
wrong,” Devon growled. “And I don’t need personality tips from you.”
Heath laughed. He really had changed since Tessa, Devon thought. Devon’s digs used to land harder. “Ah,” he said when he was finished. “I get it.”
Devon gave him his best glare, which of course went unnoticed. “Get what?”
“This has to do with a woman.”
Devon froze in place. Goddamn Heath—goddamn him. When it came to anything to do with women, it was like he was a fucking psychic. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Right,” Heath said. “Except you have an even bigger stick up your ass than usual. The only thing that can wind up a wolf this tight is a mating problem. Believe me, I know the feeling.”
Devon stared into his beer. Was this why he had come here, really? Because Heath might know something about this kind of pain? He’d never thought anyone knew about this kind of pain. Years and years of it. Things came so easy for Heath, even mating with Tessa in the end. Heath had had to win her, but he hadn’t had to burn for most of his life like Devon had.
So he scratched his beard and stared into his beer and thought about what to say, how to word it. The last thing he wanted was his most hated brother to know his deepest, most humiliating secret. It took some time, but Heath sat quiet, apparently waiting with patience for him to spill whatever he had to spill.
Finally Devon put words together. “When your wolf has chosen his mate,” he said slowly, “but she doesn’t know it. What do you do?”
Heath put his elbow on the bar. All of the humor had left his expression. “You suffer,” he said.
Devon glanced at him sharply. “There’s nothing else that can be done?”
Heath narrowed his eyes as he thought it over. “Does she have any idea?” he asked.
Devon shook his head. “No.”
“Does she like you?”
“No.”
“Have you been to bed with her?”
It was a humiliating question, but if anyone would ask it, it would be Heath. “No.”
“Is her name Sheriff Nadine Walker?”
Devon sighed and got off the stool. “I should have gone to Brody.”
“Wait.” Heath put his hand on Devon’s wrist. “Okay, sorry. It’s just that I figured it out, that’s all. She interviewed me about those murders, and I gathered that you two have a history. I won’t say anything.”
Devon didn’t move. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was as surprised as he’d ever been. He’d never heard Heath apologize before. Maybe there was hope yet that they wouldn’t kill each other. “Just leave her out of it,” he said finally, sitting down again. “She lives in another county, is a human cop, and wants nothing to do with any shifters, including me. It isn’t going to happen. Not now, not ever.” He gave Heath a sharp look. “So what do you do when there’s no chance, you who knows everything about women and mating?”
Heath bit his lip and looked serious. His gray eyes searched Devon for a long minute. Wolves, especially Donovans, didn’t have to talk all the time to have a conversation. Silence was valued among werewolves. “Devon,” he said finally, “I’m not shitting you, and I’m not trying to rile you, when I say you have a big fucking problem.”
“Thanks,” Devon growled.
“I mean it. A wolf who has chosen his mate, and can never have her, lives in a state of unrest. He doesn’t sleep properly, and he can’t take solace in other women. Am I close?”
Devon swigged his beer and said nothing.
“Jesus,” Heath said. “I get it now. Why you’re always so on edge. I thought you were just grumpy and pissed off.”
“I am grumpy and pissed off,” Devon argued.
“But you have a reason. The thing is, you’ve been like this for so long, I’m starting to wonder—how long ago did your wolf choose her?”
Devon didn’t say anything. At the moment, he couldn’t.
Heath’s voice was deadly serious. Neither wolf was paying any attention to the rest of the bar. “Tell me,” he said.
Devon swallowed. “She arrested me on suspicion of murder five years ago,” he said. “A guy died in a back alley in Pierce Point, and I was in town, at a bar nearby. Of course the cops figured I did it. She arrested me and put me in a holding cell, and that was when I knew.” He swallowed again. “When my wolf knew.”
Now Heath looked shocked. “Five years?” He got up off his stool, walked around the bar, and poured them both a beer. “Fuck, brother,” he said when he rounded back again. “I bet you wish you were a fucking bear.”
He meant the bears’ ability to get drunk. “Every day,” Devon admitted, taking his second beer from Heath and starting on it.
“I had no idea.” Heath scrubbed a hand over his face, thinking. His gaze found Tessa, at the other side of the bar, tallying up some receipts during a lull. She wasn’t looking at him, and his gaze stayed on her for a long moment. “I’ve misjudged you,” he said finally, surprising the hell out of Devon for the second time that night.
“Yeah, well,” Devon said when he could talk again, “the misjudging has gone both ways. I never understood you either.”
Heath nodded, accepting that, but he looked troubled. “You have a problem,” he said again.
“Yeah, I got that part. I know.”
“No, I mean you have a serious problem. A wolf who can’t have his mate can become… unbalanced.” Heath tapped his temple. “He can even go rogue.”
Devon barked a laugh. “Heath, I’m not going to kill anyone.”
“Not now. But what state will your wolf be in in ten years, or twenty, or thirty?” Heath said. “You’ve already lived five years like this, which frankly I can’t imagine. Can you say your wolf will still be sane after that much time?”
Devon blinked. He couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t, and so did Heath. Maybe that was why he was here tonight—because seeing Nadine today, having her in his house completely oblivious, had brought it home in the worst possible way. “I never sleep,” he confessed. “I hunt relentlessly. I roamed the mountains for two weeks, looking for the Silverman, and I barely turned human in all that time.” Heath only nodded, so he let the words spill out. “I don’t talk to anyone. You, Ian, and Brody are the only ones I talk to, and that’s not much—and only because we run the pack together. The injury in my leg…” Just thinking about it made him ache deep in not only his body, but his soul. “I have nightmares that it made me weak. That I’ll be attacked and I won’t be able to fight. I have dreams that I’m dragging my useless, bloody leg through the snow, being attacked by beasts stronger than me, and watching the blood from my ripped throat soak the ground.” He flexed his hands, trying not to keep them in fists, where they wanted to be. “And the worst thing about the dreams is, somehow when I die I’m taking everyone down with me. I’ve failed everyone I’ve ever known.”
Instead of looking at him like he was insane, Heath just listened. “A wolf who never meets his mate,” he said calmly, “is miserable and lonely. It happens sometimes—the wolf never meets that one woman who completes him. Usually what he does in that case is fill his time with women who mean nothing to him at all.” He was talking about himself—Heath’s bedpost was legendary before he met Tessa—but he didn’t have to elaborate. “It’s a momentary distraction at best, but it can get him through one night, and another. But the wolf who has met his mate and can’t have her… that wolf is in danger from himself. He will drive himself crazy until his own nature turns on him, and possibly turns on the others in his pack.”
Devon looked at him, and the two half-brothers locked gazes for a long minute. “You’re saying,” Devon said, “that me having Nadine is a matter of life and death.”
“Your life, yes,” Heath said. “Your death. Never hers—your wolf will die before he hurts her, which is something you already know.” Devon nodded, and Heath continued. “So, yes, you will eventually die if you don’t have her. It might be suicide, your wolf putting an end to his own misery,
though our kind doesn’t commit suicide the way humans do.”
Devon knew this. He’d heard stories—when a shifter wished to end his own life, he shifted into his animal and vanished into the wilderness, never to be seen again. Shifters didn’t resort to humans’ messy methods of doing away with themselves.
“And if you go rogue and don’t kill yourself,” Heath continued, his voice calm, “then it comes down to the pack to put you down.”
The pack. The pack was his brothers. If Devon went rogue, his brothers would put him down. The idea didn’t alarm him, or offend him. It was exactly what he would do for one of his brothers if the roles were reversed.
“I don’t care much about my life,” he told Heath. “I’ve lived five years like this already. It’s like I’m on fire every day, and I can’t put it out.”
At those words, Heath’s gaze flicked to the flame tattoo climbing up Devon’s neck with new understanding. “I know you don’t care about your life. But you’re already afraid of the other half of it—that you, or your wolf, will take others with you first. If you kill, Devon, you know we will put you down. The question is, whose life will you take before we have the chance?”
9
Grant County didn’t have a big budget for the sheriff’s office, so usually Nadine drove her own SUV instead of the ancient, unreliable sedans owned by the county. But to interview the parents of Kyle Bryant, one of the murder victims, she took one of the county cars marked with the insignia of the sheriff’s office.
She’d interviewed the Bryants before. They lived about thirty miles out of town, on a small farmstead. Kyle had been the Bryants’ only child, a young man who had grown up close to nature and loved the outdoors more than anything. He’d been alone on a four-day hiking trip, taking a break before moving out of state to start a job as a ranger in the Arizona Badlands.
Instead of starting his job, and his life, he’d been cruelly killed and left next to his campsite, his blood soaking into the ground.
