HOTSHOT BROTHERS: Coyote Shifters

by Hunt, Sabrina

Book Three

  When Burr wakes up with the worst hangover of his life – he has no idea where he is.

  Or how he broke his foot.

  Or why he’s currently stuck in his coyote form.

  In a cage.

  In the dead of winter, the Hotshot Brothers had traveled north to Alaska to honor a comrade who had passed. Burr remembers that much. He knows he stayed behind, had gone out drinking with some buddies from the funeral, that his brothers were on their way to Montana, and that he was supposed to meet them there in a few days.

  Now he has no idea how much time has passed, why he can’t shift back to a man, or why, of all people, he somehow wound up in the care of the one veterinarian who has no love for him.

  Willow White-Eagle.

  They’d been rivals in high school, friends in college, and then together for a few months post-graduation. But after an ugly breakup, they’d gone straight back to hating each other. Burr hadn’t seen or heard from Willow in years, although she was never far from his thoughts.

  Now a storm is coming, rolling over the mountains, and threatening everything in its path. In its eye walks the Crooked Man, who somehow knows Burr is trapped and injured.

  With Willow in danger, his brothers far away, his gifts turned against him, and an enemy with the upper-hand – Burr realizes may have to sacrifice himself to keep her alive.

  Book Three: Coyote Storm

  Chapter 1

  Light seemed to crack through my skull and split it wide open. Pulse after pulse of pain lanced through my head. Forcing my eyes open, I vaguely made out bars of sunshine falling across my face and rolled over. My mouth was dry as sand and muscles leaden as sandbags.

  Way too many jäegerbombs, I thought vaguely.

  Usually I could hold my liquor, but since I hadn’t drunk much in the last five years, it wasn’t surprising I’d become a bit of a lightweight. And while I’d had my fair share of hangovers, this was by far the worse one yet. Closing my eyes, I considered never opening them again. Or moving again. Everything hurt. But as my thoughts began to straighten out, something struck me as being off.

  No, beyond way off. Completely wrong, in fact.

  I opened my eyes and tried to orient myself to my surroundings, as the scent of wood chips and wet dog wafted over me. Wrinkling my nose, I tried to move, wondering whose floor I was sleeping on. But my body protested, left arm aching dully and wrist numb with pins and needles.

  Glancing down, I tried to focus, but my vision kept going in and out. After a moment, it cleared. I started, then gaped as I tried to figure out what I was looking at.

  Reddish-brown fur. Paws. A tail.

  What in the hell–?

  Then I jumped to my feet – all of four of them – and agony splintered through my left arm. A whimper of pain escaped me. Heart pounding, I turned in a circle, limping.

  I was a coyote.

  That wasn’t unusual in and of itself. I was a Coyote Shifter, after all. No, what was unusual was why I was a coyote at all. I couldn’t remember shifting. I couldn’t remember anything. Questions began to pound through my head, making the pain worse.

  What happened? Why did I shift? Where am I?

  Better yet – why was I, a Hotshot Brother, a Guardian of the Wilderness, and a Coyote Shifter, locked inside of a goddamn cage?

  Panting, I sat heavily down and looked around. This was a first.

  I was in a large metal cage, shoved against a wall of a barn. Around me were a few other cages, empty, and the floor around them and me was covered with woodchips. A few feet away it became solid oak planks. It wasn’t like any barn I’d ever been in before – it was way too clean – and there was a desk by the doors. Peering through the shadows, something about it struck me as familiar.

  I shook my head. It didn’t matter. I had to get out of here. While I was extremely thankful to still be breathing and probably never going to drink whiskey again, I also had no recollection of how I’d gotten here or who had locked me up. They could come back at any time.

  Focusing, I put all my energy, what little of it I had, into shifting back into a man.

  Back into Burr Santana, 6’5, handsome, strapping, and never caught out for long.

  Nothing happened.

  I looked down and swallowed. Yeah, I was still a coyote.

  Panicking a little, I tried harder, but again I felt nothing – besides the screaming headache and sore left arm. Who knew Coyotes could get headaches? I tried to think, to keep calm, but my heart was taking off. The cage felt like it was closing in on me. I had to get out. I had to get out now. I’d been a kid with bad claustrophobia and some things never leave you.

  Oh, this was bad.

  There was no one here to help me, either. No one who knew what I was, at least. My four shifter brothers were probably already back in Montana. We’d come to Alaska for a funeral and I’d stayed behind, planning on staying for an extra week. They would have no idea that I was in trouble till at least a few days had passed. If I even made it that long.

  Shaking out my fur, I began to call to the wind. As a shifter, I had a gift for shaping the air. Then I hesitated. I was so weak – the weakest I’d been since I got pneumonia as a teenager. Would whipping up a gale knock me out cold? It always took a lot out of me.

  Before I could decide or try, my ears pricked forward. Someone was coming, I could hear their light footsteps outside. Then the barn doors slid open and a tall figure was outlined against the sunshine, letting in a blast of cold.

  Lights clicked on suddenly and I winced against the brightness. Then more light filled the space as I heard the rustle of curtains being drawn back. I almost moaned aloud at the pain.

  No longer relying on my night vision, I realized what this place had reminded me of. It was a veterinary clinic. I could smell the antiseptic, lemon, and latex now.

  Someone was walking towards me now and I went still. It was a woman; I could tell by the way she walked and I sniffed the air as silently as I could.

  A scent hit me. Springtime blossoms opening under leaves fresh from a rainstorm.

  Eyes wide, I watched as the woman crouched in front of the cage and smiled at me. Her long black hair was swept up in a bun, a pen stuck through it, and glasses slipped down her nose.

  “Glad you’re awake, coyote. For a second I’d thought we’d lost you there,” she said.

  If my head hadn’t been spinning before, it would have been spinning now. As it was, it seemed like the earth had suddenly lurched sideways.

  Of all places to wake up a hungover coyote – somehow I’d wound up here.

  In the care of Willow White-Eagle.

  Her dark eyes took me in and she smiled. My pulse sped up a little. Nineteen years later and she still had the same effect on me.

  The last time I’d seen her she’d been staring up at me, her lips set and eyes distant. It had been pouring out. Water rivulets had run down her cheeks, reflecting the street lights and making her face sparkle as though she were crying. But no, she’d been cold, indifferent. Almost bored as she told me we would never work out and that she was moving to Alaska.

  Closing my eyes, the torture of that moment went through me again. I tried not to think about it – ever. I tried not to think about her – to pretend she didn’t exist or mean what she meant to me. I tried not to remember how she hadn’t even cared enough to say goodbye.

  In a way, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised I’d ended up here. Willow and I had been best friends once. We had a habit of finding each other when things were tough.

  Although it had been so long, I had kind of been hoping I’d never see her again.

  Finally done assessing me, Willow stood up and I watched her walk away. She was still the same in a lot of ways. Tall, right around 5’10, she’d been gangly as a teenager, whereas she was elegant and poised now. Everything about her was slim, controlled, and graceful. I knew if she unbound her hair, it would fall to her waist, a straight sheet of black silk.

 
As though sensing my gaze, she glanced over her shoulder at me. My heart gave a painful throb. She was so beautiful, with high cheekbones, almond eyes, and a mysterious, curvy smile.

  “You hold tight, little coyote, I’ll be right back,” Willow said, and a chill crept along my spine. The way she said, it was like she knew what I was thinking. She’d always been able to read me like a book. And she said “coyote” like “ky-yote” – the way Aspen used to.

  Memories that hadn’t surfaced in years were starting to swim through my pounding head. Slumping a little, I remembered a cold Montana morning, where the snow had started to fall and a kid in nothing but a hoodie and sweats trekked determinedly up a trail.

  I saw a petite woman and a bear of a man laughing together at my vehemence, his hand reaching out to ruffle my head. Pulling a burr out of it.

  I saw Willow and her brothers, Juniper and Fox, sitting on Aunt Sil’s back porch on either side of me, as we watched the fireflies during a summer night, while Pea wove us story after story.

  And Willow, with her knobby knees, long limbs she hadn’t grown into yet, and pigtails, had leaned against me. With her head on my shoulder, we’d hooked elbows and smiled.

  I remembered how for the first time in my life I’d been happy, the kind of happiness that terrifies you because you don’t want to lose it or ruin it.

  And then, unwittingly, I found myself thinking back to a steel-dawn summer day, watching smoke curl up in the distance. It was summer, but it had felt as dark as midwinter. I remembered the clenching of fear in my stomach, unlike anything I’d felt before.

  Willow had been standing there with me, only nineteen, but as fierce as an ancient goddess. Her hand had gripped mine, our cold fingers looped together. That alone had kept me standing.

  But we’d never said a word. We were too afraid.

  Then Aunt Sil, Big Bear, Crowfoot, Fern, and Pea – the Elders, as we five Brothers come to call them – had appeared, along with Nikita, Willow’s mother. Their faces were drawn and Nikita had tears tracking down her face, even as she walked steadily towards us.

  Three were missing.

  Helaku, Willow’s father. And Aspen and Santana, my adoptive parents.

  The rest was a blur. I’d sunk down to my knees, hands gripping the earth and my body shook with anguish so acute I thought I might die then and there. Then I remembered Willow’s arms coming around me and I’d held onto her, my face buried in her neck.

  To this day, I believed she had saved me.

  It was something I was grateful for, always would be. But ever since she’d cut me out of her life over six years ago, my feelings towards her had also morphed into an ugly knot of resentment. I didn’t want it to be the case, but I had to be honest with myself.

  Sometimes I wished I could hate Willow.

  After everything we’d been through, you’d think we could at least stay friends.

  But then I heard a voice that sounded like Santana in my mind, chiding me for not being fair. I sighed. Willow had taken on a lot after Helaku died. While it had been hard to make her laugh before, after it was almost impossible. She became aloof and far more serious. Some people might have seen her as uncaring, but I knew that she was in hellish pain and now felt responsible for her family. Nikita’s grief slowly ate away at her and her brothers were distraught and angry.

  But I also remembered how I’d offered to move to Alaska to help her and her family. How I’d seen something in Willow’s eyes that had made me catch my breath. I think I’d taken her off-guard, at least from the way she had stared at me, unable to respond. And I could see it in her face, in the lines of her body, how much she wanted to say yes, how grateful she was.

  But then she’d said no, with some feeble excuse of not wanting to interrupt my life. Stuff like that always drove me up the wall when it came to Willow.

  Why was she so hell-bent on always saying “no” when she wanted to say “yes?” She hadn’t been that way when were kids, but as we got older, she’d held herself back more and more.

  I heard the padding of her feet as she came back and I suddenly wondered if Willow had grown into her gifts. She took after her mother, Nikita, who was like my coyote brother Rayner. They were able to “read” people and animals. She’d also had gifts like my brother Ben – healing. It was why Nikita’s grief had been so acute – she blamed herself for not being able to save them.

  Her husband, along with Aspen and Santana, had been shifters. And the first time I’d seen that hidden world, a world I was now a part of, was also the first time I came face-to-face with an Ash Walker. So much wonder and horror all in one night.

  In fact, five years ago, when my brothers and I had become shifters, one of my first thoughts had been to tell Nikita, Willow, and her brothers. They’d understand. But after the initial excitement faded, I decided against it and asked the Elders to keep it a secret. While surprised, they’d acquiesced and said it was my call.

  Willow appeared in front of the cage and I drew back. Her eyes went soft and I turned my head. I didn’t want her pity. Humiliation went through me like a thunderclap. Here I was, this supposedly powerful shifter, locked in a cage, hungover and sore. No way was I shifting back till there were at least a thousand miles between me and Willow.

  “I know what you are,” she said in a soft voice. “Last night I wasn’t sure, but now I can sense it.” I slid my eyes a fraction towards her. She was sitting cross-legged in front of the cage and placed a hand on it. “You’re no ordinary coyote.”

  I turned to look at her. She had grown into her gifts.

  “Shifter? Or a herald of Akba Atatdia, I wonder…” Willow mused. “Or both? Either way, I’m hoping I can trust you to understand me, coyote. You’re badly hurt. Fractured radius bone, fractured ribs and you seem…” I watched her bite her lip, adjusting her glasses. “Something about you is altered. If you are a shifter, I think you’re stuck like that for now. I don’t know why. But I can’t reach you with my mind – there’s some kind of block.” Her lips became wry. “Now I know what the rest of the world feels like without the gift to speak to animals.”

  Fractured bones? I looked down in surprise and realized there was a stiff plaster encircling my left leg. Man, I was out of it. How had I not noticed that before? No wonder why I’d been limping.

  Then her words hit me fully and my heart had sunk. Stuck. Some kind of block.

  What happened to me last night?

  This was far more sinister than a bit too much to drink. I couldn’t recall anything beyond getting to the bar last night and ordering the first round of shots, I realized.

  I thought back to the days I could remember. My brothers and I arriving a day before Travis Liu’s funeral, a friend who’d we worked with on countless jobs. A guy with a great laugh and a big heart. He’d passed from cancer. Originally from Alaska, he’d moved back to be with his family while he went through treatment. While the diagnosis had never been good, getting that call had been hard.

  It had brought up memories of the past I’d long locked away. Things my brothers did not know about me. And now the keystone of those memories was right in front of me.

  “My brother Fox and I brought you here,” Willow continued after a moment. She was still watching me as though expecting a reaction. “We were driving home and I saw you in the snow, bleeding and staggering. Then you fell.” Her voice sounded strained and she hugged her knees. “I couldn’t tell then you were, well, different, but I felt compelled to stop.”

  I stared at her. I recalled none of that. I tried to remember anything from last night beyond the bar. But all I had were disjointed moments from yesterday – packing my brothers off for the airport, visiting Travis’s grave on my own, and then meeting up with other firefighters and friends who’d stuck around as well.

  It gave me an uneasy, shaky feeling – like standing in the middle of a frozen lake when the ice begins to crack. I didn’t know where I was. I had no idea where Willow lived in Alaska. Then with a start, I
realized I also didn’t know what day it was. Just because my last memories were of the bar didn’t mean that was yesterday.

  I was so preoccupied, I didn’t notice Willow rising to her feet until I heard the creak of the cage door and I looked up. Was she letting me go?

  She may not have been able to hear my speech, but she’d always possessed an uncanny ability to read my thoughts. Squinting at me, Willow shook her head. “I’m not letting you go, coyote. But since you’re special to Akba Atatdia and in bad shape, I want you to come into the house so I can keep an eye on you.” An odd look flickered in her gaze. “I have a little room set up. We couldn’t put you there last night because a friend was with us – he doesn’t know.”

  He? I thought, my spirits flagging even further and I felt a twinge of jealousy. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.

  Strangely, as much as I hated that cage and my body screamed for forward motion, for fresh air and no walls, I didn’t want to leave it.

  Willow leaned down, her face kind and eyes bright. “I know you’re probably confused and in pain, but you can trust me.”

  Stepping out of the cage in spite of myself, carried by the force of her words, I also couldn’t help but wonder – can I?

  Chapter 2

  Keeping my eyes on the shaggy red-brown coyote, we walked slowly from the barn to my house. It was fairly big, tucked between hills heavy with snow and pines and the sea, with a tall, sloping roof, picture windows, and made from rough-hewn logs. A cookie-cutter Alaskan building.

  Right now, I was the only one home. My mother was visiting her family back in Montana and both of my brothers were two hours away at college.

  Snow, heavier than usual in mid-January, crunched under my boots as we continued to walk on, and in spite of the sunshine, I couldn’t help but sense the cold air currents above us, threatening more squalls and white stuff on the way. Not that I minded, I’d always loved the snow.

  Next to me, the coyote had his head down, his body dragging with the effort of continuing on. He was the biggest I’d ever seen. At first, squinting through the foggy window as my brother slowly navigated down Highway 9, leery of black ice, I’d wondered if it was a bear or large wolf.