by Helena Ray
Bo pulled one of the crumbling papers from the stack and carefully unfolded it on the table. It was a complex spiderweb of names and dates in everything from nearly faded light-brown ink to what was obviously ballpoint pen. Clay’s eyes came to rest on the calligraphic script at the top of the page, and after a moment, he made out the name “Pope” through the swooping text.
“Here.” Bo pointed to a date nearer the top of the page, and Clay leaned forward to decipher the faded script.
“Amelia Sullivan, born in 1887, died in 1928,” Clay read and then looked up at Bo. “Sullivan? The Sullivans and the Popes are related?”
“Indeed they are,” Bo said with a chuckle. “I had forgotten about that. But I remember the old legend that my father told me about when his father was the shaman. Back at the turn of the century, all the pride families hung around together, like you boys. The Popes had known Amelia all their lives—they were all only a few years older—but they had never felt anything but friendly feelings.
“Then on her eighteenth birthday, when she had reached full sexual maturity, legend has it that bang!”—Bo spread his arms and eyes wide—“the Pope boys were head over heels for her and following her around pantin’ like cats in heat.”
“Literally.”
Bo laughed and shook his head. “I had forgotten about that until you told me about Anya, but I guess it can happen. I had always thought that worked because she was a daughter of one of the pride families, but maybe that was just one of the strange tricks of the universe.”
Clay’s heart raced, a small hope kindling in his chest. Never before had he felt this tension, this all-consuming anxiety mixed with arousal. He needed to know.
“So Anya,” he said as Bo placed the family tree back in the box and returned it to the shelf. “She’s our mate?”
“Maybe. Mates are a random thing, and I thought it would never happen again that someone with such a close connection would be a pride mate.” Bo picked up his beer and leaned against the wall, studying Clay. “But if, in fact, it can happen again I don’t see why Anya couldn’t be your mate. If you and Jack both feel this way about her—”
“I don’t know that yet,” Clay confessed. “But I also don’t know if Jack’s ever met her. He was still in school when she used to spend her days around Savage Hunger, and she’s only been back in town a few days.”
Bo gave an exaggerated sigh and started to the door. “You don’t even know whether or not your brother will mate her and you’re already over here? What is this, a repeat of the Pope boys?”
Clay laughed, remembering how Sam, Phil, and Mel Pope nearly didn’t mate because of a family disagreement. “Nothing like that, Bo. No near-irreparable splits between Jack and me.”
Bo opened the door, signaling it was time for Clay to leave. “It’s been great seeing you, but just call me next time, okay? I don’t need everyone seeing me in my skimpies.”
“I did call. You just didn’t answer.”
“Yeah, yeah, technicalities.” Bo motioned for Clay to leave, and they said their good-byes. When Bo shut the front door, Clay stood on the front porch for a moment, taking in the outline of the fir trees in the cloudy night. The sky looked as tumultuous as Clay felt inside. Joy and apprehension warred within him at the thought of Anya, each emotion overtaking the next as he imagined their mating.
A strong wind blew, chilling Clay to the bone. As he walked to his car, he braced himself against the wintry air. Something was blowing into Savage Valley and into Clay’s life.
* * * *
The bell on the door to the Ninth Time sounded, and Jack looked up from the copy of Classic Motorsports he had spread on the counter. Sam and Phil Pope were both away from Savage Hunger today, and Ira Sullivan was in court, giving Jack a blissful reprieve from their lengthy inner monologues and an opportunity to catch up on some reading.
“Hello?” a female voice sounded from behind one of the circular racks. “Is anyone here?”
“In the back,” Jack called out.
A black stiletto stepped out from behind the rack, followed by a tall, thin woman with comically large and obviously fake breasts and bleach-blonde hair. She was dressed modestly in slacks and a V-neck sweater, but Jack could tell from the way she sashayed toward him that she was the type that usually wore skimpier attire.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
She batted her eyelashes at him and held out a piece of paper. “I understand you’re looking for a bookkeeper?”
Jack took the résumé from her hand and set it on the counter, giving her a forced smile. She obviously wanted some sort of attention from him, but Jack preferred the exotic, dark features of the woman from the woods. God, he needed to shift back and see her. If only the next few minutes would pass quickly, it would be lunch, and he could find that exquisite creature once more.
“Lemme get Clay. He handles the hiring,” Jack muttered as he turned toward the door the back room. “Clay, there’s someone here for the—”
Jack slammed into Clay’s emotions like a brick wall. His brother was in the corner, painting in a raggedy flannel shirt, but Jack could smell his frustration and excitement hanging in the air. Since they were young, Clay had learned to shield his thoughts around Jack, but overpowering emotions still flowed into Jack’s consciousness. And whatever Clay felt now, he felt it at a fever pitch.
“C–Clay,” he managed to choke out, “someone’s here for the bookkeeping gig.”
Clay slowly withdrew his attention from the painting, the intensity of his feelings lessening when he looked away from the canvas. He headed toward the door, a pained look on his face telling of the emotions he was now shielding. Jack grabbed his brother’s elbow just as he reached the door.
“What’s going on? When you were painting, I nearly crumbled under the weight of your feelings.” Jack kept his voice lowered, aware of the woman still lingering by the counter. “You’re my brother. I can feel you as well as hear you. You remember that, right?
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell you later,” Clay whispered back. “Shit’s about to change, Jack. In a big, big way.”
With that cryptic statement, he pushed past Jack to the counter, greeting the prospective employee with his trademark cloudy demeanor. Sensing that this would not be an interaction to miss, if only to watch his brother fend off the plastic woman’s flirtations, Jack maneuvered into the office and left the door open a crack.
“I was just so delighted to see the job opening on the Denver Craigslist,” the woman yakked after introducing herself. “You see, my parents just moved to a retirement home in Craig, and I was so worried about not being able to find a—”
“Jocelyn, was it?”
“Yes, that’s exactly it?”
Did she just bat her eyelashes?
“Can I just see your résumé?”
Ah, Clay. Always the charmer.
“Oh, but of course.” Jack saw the woman slide the document forward across the counter, revealing her expensive cleavage at the same time. He closed his eyes and tried to sense if his brother had any sort of reaction to her physical presence, but found nothing.
“Huh. Harvard.” Clay’s emotions spiked for just a moment, and Jack held his breath. “I see you interned at NormCorp. You know they’re not too liked around here, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. I read a story about the ordinance the city tried to pass a few months ago. I think it’s just awful that anyone would want to destroy the environment in order to make some tacky ski resort.”
Clay only grunted in response, and his emotions calmed once more to a level that Jack could not feel.
“Well, frankly,” he began slowly, “you look plenty qualified, and I want to take that ad down so idiots stop calling my store. How about I check on a few of these references and we’ll say you’ve conditionally got the job?”
Anger heated Jack’s awareness. What was his brother doing? Couldn’t he see what a proudly silicone phony
this woman was? Yes, she may have had a degree from Harvard, but something about her struck Jack the wrong way. One hardly needed telepathic powers to tell that something wasn’t right here. He vowed to say something before Clay handed her the position, and he watched as she thanked his brother profusely and made her way back toward the entrance to the shop.
“What are you doing?” Jack said in a sharp whisper.
“Relax. I still have a chance to check her references. I was planning on consulting you about it.”
“I don’t know. I’ve got a funny feeling about this. And after what you were feeling…what was that, Clay? I’ve gotta know.”
Clay pushed the door to the office open then slammed it shut behind him. “Listen. I talked to Bo last night.”
“Bo? What on earth does Bo have to do with—”
“Let’s see. I’ve got to meet with Bryce for lunch, and then it’s back to the police station. It is so damn wonderful to see the Kinmans so excited about helping out with this. Oliver said they wouldn’t, but he just doesn’t have faith that our modern pride can overcome our prejudices to embrace our fellow shifters in Savage Valley. Is Marta here today? Chelsea said that she needed to talk to her today. Some sort of wedding business…”
Jack doubled over as Roarke’s thoughts assaulted his mind, drawing him away from the situation at hand and to Savage Hunger. Jack watched through Roarke’s eyes as he scanned the diner, looking for any signs of the Popes’ mate, and new diner manager, Marta.
“Lunchtime.” Jack’s voice came out strangled as he backed toward the exit. He needed out. He needed his lion form. He needed some sort of quiet. “You can tell me about it—”
“I can’t believe Roarke actually wants me to help out with protecting against NormCorp. This is so cool! I’m the youngest one in the pride, and I’m one of the pride elders. Isn’t that contradictory? But whatever. It’s so awesome that I can—Oh. There’s Roarke!”
Once Bryce Sullivan’s inner monologue joined Roarke’s, Jack knew he could only stand a few more moments in his human form. If he could shift, he could run far into the woods, away from the voices and back to what waited for him there.
“Can you tell me about it when you get back?”
“Pride elders meeting this afternoon. It’ll be dinner before I get back.” Even through the attack on his mind, he could hear the pity in Clay’s voice.
“Fuck. Tonight then. At home.”
He rubbed his temples, fighting the numbing pain caused by too many voices talking at once. Jack swore this was the worst it had ever been, especially with so few shifters. He didn’t know how much longer he could go on with this level of pain eating at his mind day in and day out.
“Go, Jack. You need it.”
He leaned against the bar, and the back door flew open, pouring him out into the crisp, frigid air, and he had shifted before he hit the pavement.
In his lion mind, he didn’t sense any of the world around him. All he saw was the girl from the woods, turning and looking at him through the snowy branches. Silently it played. Over and over and over again.
Chapter 4
The sky was darkening rapidly as Anya ran up to the door to the Ninth Time. The clock on her cell phone said it was 5:50 p.m., just enough time for her to deliver the box of linens she had stashed in the back of her car. Luckily, the warm orange glow from the shop still illuminated the slick sidewalk outside.
Even though she’d repeatedly told her aunt that she would take the linens to the secondhand store that day, her afternoon had been spent holed up in her room, attached to her laptop. Kenny had been recruited as a last-minute replacement for a major international competition, and Anya wanted to support her friend enough to put off her much-anticipated trip to the Ninth Time. Through her aunt and uncle’s fuzzy Internet connection, she’d watched as he’d easily skated through his long program. But this time, his quadruple toe loop had only been a triple. When Kenny stepped off the ice, most of the world saw Christopher as a consoling coach, patting his back and telling him he was still proud. But Anya saw the real Christopher Birkhead, the mouthed curses as they stepped up to the kiss-and-cry, the hard glint in his eyes even when Kenny took the silver medal. It had pulled at her heart, but seeing her best friend had given her a warm feeling inside. Even though she adored being back in Savage Valley, memories of her old life still crawled into every moment.
The crisp smell of snow brought her back to the present, and Anya noticed the day grow sharply darker. As she turned, the lights on the wooden sign advertising the Savage Herald flicked off. She found it odd, considering that the paper should have been going to press in the next few hours. Shrugging it off as another example of the bizarre doings of the Valley’s wacky townsfolk, Anya pulled at the door to the Ninth Time. It was locked. She tried again, but with the same results.
What was going on? There were still ten minutes until the store closed! It occurred to her that the town may have been battening down the hatches for the storm the local weather channel had announced, but in Anya’s experience, those were only ever a problem for—
Right. They were a problem for people in rural areas. Like Savage Valley. She looked up at the sky and saw the flat, dark clouds. She had attributed the declining light to the autumnal sun, but now it felt not as if the sun had been blocked out, but erased entirely. The dry air whipped against her face, blowing a loose strand of hair against her cheek and calling her attention upward. The dark, rolling clouds let her know the blizzard was impending.
Suddenly frantic, she knocked on the door to the Ninth Time. When she heard no response, she began pounding in earnest, desperately hoping she wasn’t about to be stranded in the middle of a wintry attack. After what seemed like forever, but was probably only a few minutes, Anya heard a rustling inside the store. Suddenly, she didn’t need to be rescued from the cold. No, what she saw had her blood rushing through her veins and heating her from the very core of her being.
Once Clay Abbott caught sight of her, he came striding to the front of the store, a vision of magnetic masculinity. He wore a white wifebeater that clung to the muscles of his chest, clearly chiseled from hard work and not from hours in the gym. Tattoos covered his upper arms, and Anya recognized the work of a few famous Surrealists in the ink laced over his skin. His jeans were slung low over his hips, revealing a narrow strip of flat, toned abs between the waistband and the hem of his shirt. He padded barefoot to the door and quickly unlocked it.
“Anya, what the hell are you doing here?”
His brusque reaction to her presence hurt a little in its contrast to their interaction the day before. Maybe she really had misconstrued what transpired between them.
“I was just bringing some linens from the Woodland. My car’s around back if you want to get them.”
“It’s about to storm like crazy out there,” he said, his tone softening. He took a step toward her, reached around her, and clicked the lock to the store. “I was just about to put the storm windows up.”
“Really? It’s only November.”
Clay shook his head as he crossed to the area behind the window display to the left of the entrance. He reached up to pull the storm windows down, revealing more of his stomach as he did so. Anya felt a distinct tingling in her pussy when she saw his shirt lift to show hard lines near the bottom of his torso. Those lines mimicked the shape of another part of Clay that fanned the flames growing inside her cunt.
He finished securing the storm windows and turned back to her, shoving his messy blond hair out of his face. It was only then that Anya noticed the streaks of paint through his hair, one staining his cheek.
“You were painting?” she asked as he headed back toward the counter.
“Yeah, with the storm coming, I decided to close up earlier and work a little on the piece I’m doing right now.”
“Oh.” Anya suddenly felt even more awkward, having interrupted a moment of artistic inspiration. “I guess I’ll just tr
y and get back to the Woodland then,” she said tentatively, nodding toward the back of the store. “Can I go out the back to get to my car?”
Clay started to nod and move to the door to the back, but stilled as he put his hand on the doorknob. He turned back to Anya. “You have tire chains, right?”
Oh, shit. In her rush to flee her life in Colorado Springs, she had neglected many normal preparations for relocating to rural Colorado.
“Those aren’t totally necessary, are they? I mean, the tires on my car should provide enough traction, shouldn’t they?”
“Not for driving up to the Woodland, darlin’.” He sighed and shook his head, only increasing Anya’s uneasiness.
“Oh. Um, well, I guess I’ll see if I can call anyone to come and get me then.”
“Nonsense.”
She looked up to see Clay’s ice-blue eyes pinned to hers. Even though they stood several feet apart, she swore she could feel the heat rolling in waves from him.
“I can get you home, no problem. If it’s okay by you, can I just finish something on my painting real quick?”
“That’s okay.” Anya couldn’t hear her own voice over the pounding of her heart. The idea of being in such a small, confined place as a car with Clay sent lightning bolts of electricity rushing to her pussy. She didn’t care if a relationship with him was completely improbable. The fantasy of Clayton Abbott had stuck with her for so long that she would never pass an opportunity to see it fulfilled even in the tiniest way.
He opened the door to the back room then turned and motioned to Anya. “You can come take a look, if you want.”
Oh, I want.
“Sure,” she squeaked as she followed him into the room. The back of the Ninth Time was a cross between a studio and a drab office. To the left of the entrance was a large, wooden desk topped by a Macintosh computer that looked like it belonged in a museum of ancient technologies. Past the desk was an easel with a canvas on it covered in an abstract painting of reds and oranges, but the colors didn’t bleed into each other as they would in an Impressionist painting. Instead, they stood distinct from one another, like the constituent hues of a flame separated from one another and turned into a puzzle of geometric forms. Traveling around the world as a coach had given her a taste for art, and she could easily see that Clay was exceptionally talented.
