It was along the grassy riverbank that I heard the meadowlark.
Chapter 24
No backpack, no imperial mountains to climb, no restrictions. Twilight and a long jog through a warm summer evening. Even broken with periods of walking and catching my breath, it felt almost perfect. I gave myself a tailwind which not only hastened my progress but cooled in the late evening heat. Soon enough, I’d want to be warming up. I had phone and flashlight in pockets of the jacket tied around my waist. For now, though, I was sweating and loving the trail.
There was so much to love tonight. We’d hiked out far enough to change and hide their clothes, then go. I was sure at first they were only tracking normal coyotes—and other critters. They’d scared up cottontails, chased deer, and dived after prairie dogs. This had excited Jed’s pet hobby of digging and he’d spent probably half an hour expanding prairie dog tunnels, much to the chagrin of the natives.
Now, for this past half hour, I was sure they were on the trail of something important.
The only “almost” in the beauty and perfection—and just plain fun watching them dash about in the grassy hills at sunset—was, again, a personal relationship snag.
Zar wouldn’t change. No backpack, no need for him to tramp around on two feet “like an ape”—Kage’s laughing words—when he could be a real part of the hunt. Leave me to be the only baggage. I wouldn’t have come at all myself, let them get on with it, except that this country was so much easier to travel, and I wanted to be there in case I was needed for any reason, whether they found something or not. They kept me in orbit. One or two wolves always within sight while the rest ranged ahead after their quarry. Though, of course, I was slowing them down, I also felt they were glad to have me along. I couldn’t run with them on all fours, this was as close as we were going to get, but it was still incredible to run through golden plains grass of rolling Wyoming hills, miles from any human being, with a pack of wolves.
And Zar.
“Zar, please, enjoy this space. We’ll be coming back to camp tonight so just leave your clothes. Have fun.”
“I am, Cass.” We slowed to a walk again and he rested his hand on the small of my back. He kissed my ear, moving his hand to my hair. “You belong here. Like dew on grass, ink on paper, you keep telling us to enjoy it, but you’re happier here than you ever were in England. You need to take this in just as much.”
“Who said I wasn’t?” I looked at him and he kissed me, still trying to walk. I tripped and had to stop, catching his arm.
“You’re worrying about us, that’s all.” He took the opportunity of our pause to bring both hands to my face. “What about you?”
I broke a kiss. “I want you to have a chance to be free here and to find these shamans.” Lips turned to teeth. “It would make me even more happy if you would change.”
He nibbled along my lower lip. “I can change later.”
I held his face, but took a step back, running into something. We were in a wide open field, sloping upward, a wood ahead. Here, though, no fallen trees or park benches to walk into.
I jumped, tripped over some great thing against my legs, and fell.
Zar caught my arms, pulling me to him and allowing me to keep my feet. I twisted as he grabbed me and I saw it.
“Kage?” I stepped away, more into Zar.
Kage gazed up at me, head slightly tipped.
Zar shifted to kissing my neck as he held me in. “It makes no difference where I am, Cass. Being with you is what matters to me.”
“I love being with you also.” I was still looking into Kage’s eyes, but turned and found Zar’s mouth again. “Right now, you are both needed. Your noses, your speed. Please help search.”
“I’ll change.” My face between his hands, he stroked my hair, my jaw, my neck, and I parted my lips for his tongue.
It took a minute before either of us could speak, while I kept thinking of Kage, standing close enough against me for his whiskers to brush my hip.
“Soon?” I finally gasped, trying to push Zar away.
“What?” He went for my throat.
I pulled back, hitting Kage again, my pulse pounding. “Are you going to change soon?”
Zar gazed into my face, running his fingertips along my hair. He leaned to press his nose in, inhaling slow and long. He did the same at my neck, one soft kiss and a very long breath of my skin.
I thought of the changes I’d made to soaps and toothpaste since meeting them. I’d never been a perfume wearer in the first place. A good thing. More vial odors, surely. Now, though, there was sunscreen and bug repellant that couldn’t taste all that great. Not much today, though. This was mostly me.
I’d never thought of being sniffed as sexy. Until Zar moved to my hair like that and held his face against my neck. He didn’t say my eyes were moon drops or my voice was wind song. He just stood and breathed and inhaled a part of me and it was so much better than poetry, so much more personal. Somehow, much more erotic.
I didn’t move, counting my breaths to think of something else. Thinking of drumbeats and shamans while my skin tingled and my pulse felt more and more thready, body hot, aching for him and deflecting myself like a stream branching two ways around a rock.
Being pinned back against Kage was enough of a problem, yet I felt other pairs of eyes boring into me as well.
What did they want? To go for Zar if he started on my clothes? To join in? To watch and wait for him to change—to play fair—and then attack him?
I’d just mended things with Kage. And we were out here for work. I couldn’t blame him for stationing himself where he was.
“Okay,” I murmured to Zar as he was still breathing through me. I pushed back his long, wavy hair, kissed his cheek, and stepped out from the sandwich I was trapped in. “Change and help them.”
I looked down at Kage again. “They’re out here, aren’t they?”
He cocked his head more.
“Not yet? I’m sure they are.”
“Cass—”
“Please, Zar.” I kissed him again, backed away, a hand at his chest, then out between us as if telling a dog to stay. “You can leave your clothes at the edge of the woods.”
He knew I didn’t like to see or hear such a thing and walked up there to change on his own, pulling off his shirt and leather bracelets as he went.
I kissed the top of Kage’s head also. “I love you too. Please don’t do that when I’m with someone else.”
He tilted his head the other way.
I almost laughed. “What do you mean, ‘What?’ Follow me, get in my face, interfere. Don’t. I spend time with you too. I’m sure we’ve talked about this before.”
It was only while I was speaking that I noticed Jason in the gloom lying twenty feet away in the long grass. He’d been settling in to watch and wait on what Kage would do. I wondered what mischief they’d had in mind, then saw another dark bulk off to my left.
Jed had been standing behind Zar, not so near as Kage, but still rudely close.
“Why are you also still going around staring at me?”
Jed raised his head—it had been sunk as if to stalk prey—and met my eyes in the twilight gloom.
“All of you: work. Zar is going to also. Leave him be, please. Let’s find these people.”
No one seemed especially eager. Jason didn’t even stand up.
“I should go back to camp. I’m distracting you—”
Kage mouthed my hand, taking the whole thing into his massive jaws.
“There’s no reason for me to be out here with you if I’m disrupting your work.”
He pulled me forward, Jason got up and moved off, Jed melted into the shadows. Up ahead and to our right, Zar had changed at the edge of the wood.
“Okay. But focus, right?”
We went on, harmony restored by a uniform fur pack. Even while I should have been glad they were getting along, as the moon rose, I wished, guiltily, that I had an upright companion again. Not all night. We
didn’t have to disrupt the search. Only … a break. Like Zar had wanted. Without an audience.
Perhaps if he came back to me now as we wandered and the others were away? But I couldn’t let him change back and forth, hurting himself, just for a chance to “take a break” out here.
We loped, jogged, trotted, and walked through the fresh night. I kept to the open so I could see while they vanished in all directions, sometimes into forest, sometimes miles ahead in the clear hills, far out of sight even had there been daylight.
Isaac picked up some scent that drew all of them away in pursuit aside from Kage, who guided me to the trail and followed behind with me. He wasn’t interested in breaks, however, also riveted by the scent. He trotted ahead or paused to wait for me, checking ground and air for dispersed odors.
Jason, almost invisible, came flying back down the trail and tackled Kage. They sped around, chasing and knocking each other over for several minutes as I walked on.
Jed rejoined me, startling me as he also loomed from the darkness.
“Jed? Have you smelled shifters out here?” I held out my hand.
Jed touched it with his nose, wagging his tail, which I could also hardly see in the dark.
“I knew it. But you’re not getting anywhere? Like the bears? I hadn’t thought they’d be so shy.”
He walked on beside me and I rested my hand on his head for a sense of security, trying to walk out here in the dark without a flashlight—even though I knew I shouldn’t be touching him. I felt bad for our interrupted conversation earlier and my scaring him with the magic that morning.
“I’d love for you to tell me more about yourself sometime,” I said as we walked. “Why’d you give up on coming here before? I’m glad we’re here. I know I shouldn’t be—not like that. It’s selfish … but I am. Glad you could all come here. Especially you.”
He looked up at me as we walked, his eyes glinting in moonlight.
“You know what else I’m glad about?” I smiled at him. “The weather. It’s not even that cold tonight.”
I’d still been jogging off and on and hadn’t even put on the jacket. It swished against Jed’s fur.
Kage and Jason tore past and tumbled over in a scuffle. Yet the yapping and yelping I heard wasn’t from them. Far off, ahead and to the left—northwest—came the cries of coyotes.
Jed and I stopped.
Kage and Jason sat up in the grass.
On the peak of the hill ahead, I saw two, then three figures appear as black cutouts in the night. I caught my breath, running forward, only to realize it was my own pack.
The four of us came up to their slope as the coyotes’ cries expanded to long screams and moans. They weren’t just coming from the northwest anymore, but multiple vantages, maybe even all around us, yet so far away, it wasn’t as if we were surrounded. More like a dozen cries echoed off a dozen valleys and canyon walls.
This was it. Right place. Maybe even right time?
Kage and Jason bounded to the hilltop with Isaac, Andrew, and Zar, all turning, listening. Jed and I followed.
For a moment, the seven of us simply stood. Then I looked down at Jed, tense beside me, ears pricked, on edge as yaps and shrieks bounced around us.
“Why don’t you answer?” I asked softly.
Jed looked sharply up.
The others turned from listening as well, all five staring at me.
I stepped away. “It’s time we said hello.”
They started out whining, uncertain. They paced, or nudged into each other as if for second opinions. Jason licked Kage’s muzzle. Isaac walked over to me and away after I stroked his head.
After this dithering, Jed tore his gaze from me to the surrounding hills, the invisible coyotes and tantalizing cries. He lifted his great head and howled.
Isaac, Kage, Zar, then Jason and Andrew joined him, their voices strained, quavering. It took a minute as the reedy, almost hushed sounds grew. From each member struggling to find their place, as if knowing the words but not the melody to the song, they gradually settled into their own voices.
Isaac stood with his head out more than up, his voice low and sad, like a gloomy old ballad of long journeys and love lost. Kage’s ranged on the scale like a piano while Jason stood against him with the sweetest, most perfect tenor notes. Zar sat back on his haunches, starting very soft, lost in the others, but growing to match the ballad. Andrew’s voice was light and smoky, almost drifting away. Jed ignored building harmonies of the others, stepping forward toward the moon as he sang, nose pointed to the yellowish goddess as she grew once more toward the second full moon of the month.
I moved back and sank to my knees, tears in my eyes.
Their voices continued to grow and strengthen as they sang and harmonized, all those distant sounds gone as the wilderness held her breath to listen.
Chapter 25
We didn’t meet the shifters that night. We could have stayed, gone out again in the same place, but instinct was telling me to keep heading deeper into their territory—keep hunting. We moved camp just into the national forests around Yellowstone, Shoshone and Bridger-Teton.
Andrew stayed in fur all day for us. He lay on the Pacifica’s floor between the middle seats, chewing on a PayDay that he held between his paws like a bone. When that ran out and he tried to get Jason to unwrap another, Jason gave him the rope toy to chew. He gnawed meditatively on that instead.
Another campsite, another hike with Andrew leading the way, leaving everything in a set camp again, only getting out to a quiet lake to change. Which they did—all of them.
They’d changed last night in a different way. They’d hardly spoken all day, any of them, and never argued about the van or anything else. Something so much more than just a song had happened for them.
They couldn’t put on fur quick enough this time, taking off into the forest in the shadow of the Grand Tetons. It took half an hour before anyone even came back to trot with me—Isaac—and we all went on.
This was real forest and rough ground again. They seemed to be off in all directions. I began to doubt if they had any important trail at all. Had we gone too far? Should we have stayed around the border between the reservation and the national park?
Zar traded with Isaac, then Andrew found me and leapt about in a great show of joy to see me, knocking into Zar like he wasn’t there until Zar went for him. He couldn’t catch Andrew, teeth snapping together on air, but Zar relinquished his spot after the abuse. Andrew frisked beside me for some time before losing interest and chasing a small animal off through the forest.
He yelped, gone from sight. Something roared. I jumped and spun around as the black bear that Andrew had startled from the trees charged out, straight at me.
I called up magic, throwing up my hands, but my own sudden shock and speed of the bear left me able to muster nothing more than a quick pop in its face, much like the punch I’d given Jed.
The charging bear jumped and stopped as if at the sound of a gunshot. It looked around, dazed, while I retreated backwards, hands still out, heart pounding.
Make a noise, right? Yell and wave, use the magic like an explosion and it would go on. I drew this up, shaking as the bear reared back on its hind legs to get a good look at me with those tiny eyes. Perhaps not running because it just had run from something that had startled it so it felt trapped here.
I drew up wind energy to shove it, shouting, “Go!”
Wham, Andrew plowed into it, sinking his teeth into one of the long-clawed forepaws. The bear bellowed, whipping around.
“No! Andrew, don’t—”
It caught him across the shoulders with the second paw and sent him flying.
Zar burst in among us and I also shouted at him as he dove for the bear, using my own force to knock both of them back. The bear clubbed Zar in the head just as Jed also raced from the forest and jumped for its face. His teeth locked for a second on the bear’s neck, then the mighty animal had torn away from him, running flat out on a
ll fours.
The three wolves chased it while I went on shouting at them to stop—as useful as spitting on a bonfire.
In another minute, while I was still standing there, trembling, Isaac, Kage, and Jason all showed up to surround me and sniff out the scene.
“It’s okay. It was just a bear. A black bear,” I added as no one else seemed to think this was okay—running about and sniffing.
Andrew soon returned, limping, flat-eared.
I knelt. “You poor thing. You were very brave.” I held his head which he leaned into my chest, and parted the fur across his left shoulder where he’d been clobbered. “But, you know what? I don’t see any blood. And I told you not to. That bear was just startled. It would have gone away on its own with a warning from me.”
Andrew looked up, eyes wide, rolling until the whites showed. He offered his left paw.
“I looked already.” I felt all up his limb and shoulder again. “Sorry, Andrew. I think you’re all right.”
He fell over on the ground, gasping.
“Nope, you’re good. If something’s broken we’ll have to take you to a vet in Jackson.”
Andrew was still considering that when Jed and Zar returned, puffing and pleased with themselves.
“Please don’t do that.”
They stared at me.
“It was fine. It was going on its own.”
Jed pinned back his ears, affronted. Zar came over, stepping around the prostrate Andrew, to nose my hand.
“I’m in the way out here. You all keep searching. You can come and get me if you need to—but remember we’re in a human camp tonight. Take precautions.”
Kage cocked his head.
“Yes, wolf territory now. I don’t think it’s a big deal if you’re seen by campers here—they’d probably love it. Just don’t be seen by anyone who keeps livestock, and don’t think you can sleep in camp. Unless you need me, stay out here and we’ll meet up in the morning. With good news, I hope. They know we’re here. If they’re still avoiding us now…” I sighed. “Good luck tonight.”
I started back with the sun sinking through trees. Flashlight this time.
Moonlight Journey: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 6) Page 17
