Escaping Monsters: A Reverse Harem Wolf Shifter Romance (Grayhaven Book 1)

by Rita Stradling

  “Did I say that… no, I think I said something more along the lines of…” he startled at my basket of food in an exaggerated way, “Look at that. You ate that fast. How about I grab you another burger?”

  “It’s okay, Declan. I’m a stray wolf that’s bringing all kinds of danger to Jasper’s territory and pack. He has every right to keep tabs on me.” I paused to consider the situation, playing with the back of my earring while I thoughtfully chewed my french fry. “I’m just shocked that someone followed me around for almost twenty-four hours without me noticing. I’m more out of touch than I thought I was.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. Jasper is…” Declan looked at a loss for words, and he went with, “Different.”

  “What do you mean by different?” I froze with another fry halfway to my mouth. “More powerful? Sneakier? Is it something magical?”

  Declan grinned. “You’re just going to have to see for yourself.”

  “Fine.” I sighed. “So, does the pack run a store or restaurant or something?”

  “Nope.” Declan pushed another burger into his mouth, and when I say pushed, I mean he had to shove the last bit in to fit it.

  “Okay…” I squinted at him. “Then what job are they offering… exactly?”

  Declan’s eyes went wide, and he raised a hand while he continued to chew.

  “There isn’t a job, is there?”

  “Well, there’s not technically a job… as of this moment, but we could come up with a job pretty easily,” Declan finally said. “There’s more than enough to do… cooking, cleaning, gardening.”

  “I see.” I hadn’t really been considering working for the pack, except as a last resort, but if I was going to stay in Grayhaven until my hand healed, I wasn’t going to make it without making some more money. I held out my bandaged palm. “Well, it’s appreciated, but those are all jobs that take a lot of hand stress, and the whole reason I’m here is to let my torn muscles heal. It would be a little hard to do all of that left-handed.”

  Declan winced as he looked at my palm. “Well, I put my foot in it, again. Here’s the thing, Teagan…” He wiped his mouth off with a napkin and threw it in his empty basket, before sweeping it aside. Leaning his elbows on the table, he threaded his fingers under his chin. “I know for a fact that Jasper wants all werewolves in Grayhaven under one roof where he can make sure we’re all safe. The pack has money. We pool our resources together now and from our lives before. Some of us were rich when we came in, and most of us have skills that are in high demand by this town. However, we don’t have much use for cash in Grayhaven. Only witch businesses accept money, and they prefer trade—which we get a better deal for. Most of the businesses here don’t pay in money. They don’t have it or need it.”

  “What do you trade in?” I asked.

  “Venison, mostly. It’s worth a lot here. I bring down bucks on four legs, but I also trap other prey on two.”

  “You’re a hunter? Officially, a hunter, I mean,” I added because all werewolves were hunters.

  “The burger you just ate was probably half venison or more. They make beef last around here because the only importers are witches, and they can get everything but one thing.”

  “And, what’s that.”

  Declan’s whole face scrunched up. “Let’s just say, the butcher is a witch, and he pays me when I bring my rabbits and wild turkey in. It’s all humane, but, you know… a bit stomach churning if you think about it.”

  “Death magic,” I said, realizing what he was getting at. I didn’t know much about witches, but I’d heard that they could use the energy released during a death to cast spells.

  “They also trade in feral cats, crows, and birds of prey,” Declan said. When I glared at him, he shook his head. “Hell no. Only as familiars. I’m not a monster. I sell the rabbits and turkeys for meat, anyway. What I’m trying to say is that most people here don’t have money. If they did, they gave it away to the witches a long time ago. You can try to get a job with the witches.”

  “I think I already did try that.”

  “Well, they don’t hire outsiders as a rule and they pay their workers in goods, usually. The cash is used to purchase the imports, and that’s how this whole system works.”

  It wasn’t good news, but someone in this town had to have money they were willing to part with besides Jasper. I stood and started to bus our table when Declan joined me. He went to throw out his malt when I grabbed his arm. “Wait.”

  “What?” he asked with a grin.

  I reached into his cup and pulled out the maraschino cherry. “It’s the best part.” I popped the sweet, sugary cherry in my mouth and smiled. “Sorry, carry on.”

  He tossed his cup out. “Where are we going?”

  “I was planning on scouting out a spot to spend the night somewhere in the woods nearby. Everyone keeps telling me to stay off the streets, and so I’m guessing it’s another ‘don’t reach into trashcans’ type of thing.”

  “That would be accurate, but it’s fae parties you have to worry about there. They want everyone to go and no one to leave.”

  It didn’t sound all that bad. I needed a place to sleep.

  “Let me put it this way,” Declan added, “Lucas got caught up in a fae after-party once, a long time back, and he ended up dancing until his ankle broke, and he kept dancing. I think it was a month total before he finally escaped, and he’d thought it had been about an hour.”

  “Yeah, fuck that.” I shook my head, but I headed down the street, walking down the road toward the forest line anyway.

  “Their parties are somewhere in the forest, Teagan, and the location changes all the time. They go through the streets like the damn Pied Piper and gather people up.”

  “Then how come there are people sleeping on every corner?” I asked in a low voice as we walked past a homeless man with a sign that simply read: Will Trade Luck for Meat.

  “Here, I’ll show you.” Declan walked over to the homeless man and crouched down. He pulled a paper-wrapped bundle out of his pocket and handed it to the man. “Hey there, Nature. A rabbit leg, raw, for trade.”

  “This came from a lean coney,” the man sitting on the street corner said as he took the meat and sniffed it, and I couldn’t help but notice his fingers glittering with colorful rings. He looked barely older than a teenager. His trench coat was the kind of dirty that took weeks to build up. I knew the feel of that level of grime firsthand.

  Declan rolled his eyes. “Fern would give me two spells for it, and I saw her a few blocks back.”

  The young man glared up at us, and his purple eyes shone out from a layer of thick black makeup. “What do you want for it?”

  “A spell to see through glamour.”

  The man’s nostrils flared, but he unwrapped the paper and took a big bite of the rabbit leg. I saw blunt teeth in the young man’s mouth, but the bone snapped under his jaws like he had rows of shark teeth. Within seconds, the raw meat and bone were gone.

  The man plucked a dandelion from beside the curb and raised it in front of Declan.

  “For her.” Declan threw a thumb over at me.

  Nature blew, and the fluff detached from the flower and danced up toward me, catching on my eyelashes and in my hair. I reached up to dust it away when the street around us changed.

  A pair of colorful wings sprouted up behind the young homeless man’s back. They looked as if they were made of thin sheets of stained glass, but they folded like flesh. Nature smiled and waved, and his grin bared a sharp set of teeth. He turned a finger in the air, “You’ll want to look up.”

  The moment I did, I gasped in amazement. Every shop on the street had a second level of colorful storefronts. People in flowing gowns with multicolored fairy wings flew from shop to shop. The colors filled the air like stained glass... and then it was gone.

  The street-level caught my eye again as the same woman from last night pushed her cart past with bags of trash. I caught the quickest glimpse of the wilting
wings on her back before they vanished, and the woman once again looked entirely human.

  “There’s a fae town on top of Grayhaven?” I asked.

  “More like, this is the fae neighborhood,” Declan said, “And it’s the only neighborhood in town where you’ll find people sleeping on the streets.” He grimaced, and his nose scrunched up. “Can you guess why?”

  “Because it’s only safe for fae to sleep on the street.”

  Nature laughed. “You weren’t thinking of sleeping on the street, were you?” He pointed up to the sky. “The queen is planning a feast for tonight. I’d be indoors before the dancing starts.”

  Declan clapped Nature on the shoulder. “Thank you for a good trade.”

  “It was fair.” Nature smiled, and for just a second, I could see the sharp points of his teeth before they grew blunt. “Next time, bring me venison, and I’ll really take you beyond the veil.”

  We strolled for a few minutes in silence, and then I stopped and turned toward Declan.

  He held his hands up in front of him. “Just consider coming to the packhouse. That’s all I’m asking you to do. We have unlimited food. You’ll have your own room for as long as you want to stay. No one will order you to do anything.”

  I ran my teeth over my lip. “I’m sorry Declan, but, no. I’m still sleeping in the woods. I appreciate how you, Lucas, and your whole pack are treating me. You’ve let me into your territory, and you’ve helped me and fed me twice. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done. Please don’t think that I’m ungrateful. I wish twenty-four hours could restore my faith in werewolf-kind, but I’m not sure that part of me is ever going to be fixed.”

  Declan rubbed the top of his head and rolled his head on his neck. “Fine. We’ll sleep in the woods.”

  I winced. Declan had orders to keep tabs on me. I was an invader. Which meant I was putting him in a bad spot. Gritting my teeth, I suggested, “How about you show me where your territory ends, and I could sleep beyond that.”

  Declan laughed, long and loud. “It feels so normal to be around you, I completely forgot that you don’t know me at all.” He gestured out toward the woods. “Lead the way. I’ve been coloring in the lines for too long now anyway.”

  Chapter Six

  I leaned into a tree and unbuttoned my fly, shimmying out of my jeans and folding them up.

  “You sure you don’t want to even take a peek at my American flag thong?” Declan called from the other side of the tree, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

  Chuckling to myself, I shook my head. It said something about my life that the safest option for me was walking into the forest with a perfect stranger and getting naked. I meant that he was perfect in more than one sense of the word. To say that I was tempted to peek around the tree and see how far his tattoos reached was a massive understatement.

  It had been a very long time since I enjoyed a man looking at me with desire in his eyes, and I had been flirting with not one but two gorgeous werewolves today. It would be reckless to get intimate with anyone while I was on the run, though. Added to that, Kane would make it his personal mission to hunt down anyone I took for a lover and rip them limb from limb. And, that was not whatsoever the reason for us getting naked right now.

  Shifters had resistance to most magic in animal form. Neither Declan nor I was sure that included fae magic, but turning into a wolf seemed like a better bet than staying human. I stripped off my bra and tucked it in my bag before slipping out of my underwear.

  The cool evening breeze made my skin prickle with goosebumps up the length of my naked body as I went to my tiptoes to lift my backpack onto a tree branch. My calves ached as I stretched. The backpack just touched the branch, but I wasn’t quite tall enough to slide it up there. I jumped, trying to push my backpack up. The bag smacked back into my hand, making me hiss in pain.

  “Want help?” Declan asked, and his voice was very close.

  I jumped and pushed the bag up, but it did no good. The first branch was just beyond my reach, and that was one hundred percent why I was going to accept Declan’s help.

  “Please.”

  Declan rounded the tree, and my goodness, my whole body felt sensitive just at the sight of his naked chest. His tattoos spanned both of his muscular arms and over his shoulders and chest. He was massive in clothes, but I could swear he was even larger standing there naked. My eyes dipped lower, and a laugh burst out of my lips.

  “You’re not the only one who doesn’t joke about American flag thongs.”

  I met his laughing eyes. “Yes, but those are briefs.”

  They were very snug briefs that left almost nothing to the imagination, but they were definitely not a thong.

  He stepped up next to me, tugged my backpack from my hands, and set my bag in the tree. “I could make them into a thong. Just give me a minute.”

  “I’m all ready to change now,” I told him.

  His mouth made an oh, and his eyes slid down from my face. I felt the weight of his brown gaze as he took in my naked curves. “I’ll just… give you some privacy then…?”

  There was a question in his words, and that question was if he should stay here instead. My gaze traveled down to his tight American flag briefs and the bulge outlined within, and liquid heat pooled in my center.

  Down girl.

  This was not the time to go around screwing perfect strangers—

  perfect being the operative word.

  I bit my lip and nodded. “Privacy is the right choice.”

  “If you say so.” Declan turned around, and I stole one last glance at his muscular back.

  Hot damn. I needed to get my shit together.

  As soon as he was gone, I hunched down on hands and knees. My palm seared first, pain licking up the length of my cut, and I gasped, and the pain radiated out through my arm, rippling down the length of my body. My skin itched like a million mosquitos were biting me all at once. Coarse gray fur slid out of my skin as the bones of my jaw stretched and reformed. The pain was almost too excruciating, and I was sure it was too much for one last moment of effort, and then I collapsed onto four paws, panting.

  All around me, a strange scent grew increasingly more pungent. There were the typical smells of the forest of pine and wet earth, but layered over that was a nose itching aroma of overripe fruit, but it wasn’t any kind of fruit I’d ever smelled before. The odor made my nose itch, and I sneezed and then sneezed again.

  There was a rustling nearby, and then I inhaled the intoxicating musk of a dominant male wolf. Well, fuck. My nose worked as a wolf, which meant my inability to smell around Grayhaven was likely due to some sort of magic. Meaning, if Kane came here in wolf form, he could track me straight to where I slept.

  My only comfort was that I’d left a web of trails all over the city, and it might take him some time to think of tracking me as a wolf if he couldn’t smell me with his human nose.

  The biggest werewolf I had ever seen in my life circled the trunk of the pine tree. Declan was as massive in wolf form as he was as a man, and his dominance and power tingled over my fur. His fur was dark with gray scruff on his chest. Immediately, I rolled to my back, showing him my belly, and he moved in and ran his cold nose up the soft flesh of my stomach. He licked the side of my muzzle, and happiness flowed through me, so I licked the coarse, dark fur of his snout back.

  Declan backed up a few feet and lowered his haunches with his butt up in the air. He wanted to play, and damn how I wanted to wrestle around with this wolf, but I needed to be good.

  I let out a low whimper and rolled until my injured paw was in the air. My transformation into a wolf had likely sped up my healing a couple of days, but it had also made my paw ache and swell.

  Declan sniffed my paw, and then he leaned over me and bit the bandage lying discarded on the ground. In a very human-like move, he slid the bandage back on my paw.

  I chuffed and nuzzled his side, showing him my thanks.

  Declan’s massive form plopped
down just beside me, and he licked my snout once more. I rolled into him, laying my head on his side. If being around Declan in human form felt disconcertingly natural, it was nothing to how comfortable I felt around him as a wolf. His warmth enveloped me, and I felt safer at this moment than I’d felt in a decade. Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe this would all come crashing down at any second, but as it was now, contentment warmed my heart and lulled me into a deep sleep.

  Low voices pulled me out of my slumber, and I opened my eyes to slits as two familiar men crouched over me. Jasper and Lucas looked down from where they huddled a few feet away in the forest. I should have been feeling terror that I was surrounded by three dominant werewolves, but instead, I just felt like curling up closer to Declan and going back to sleep. The werewolf behind me was still snoring softly.

  “She’s awake,” Jasper whispered, and then both men turned, and a pair of bright blue eyes and gray eyes found mine.

  “Teagan,” Lucas crawled over to me and knelt in the dirt. “I just want to check your paw.”

  Behind him, Jasper stood, turned his back to us, and grabbed the hem of his shirt.

  “You’re distracting her,” Lucas called over his shoulder, though amusement laced his voice.

  “I’d sense it if she was scared.” Jasper turned his head halfway, and then he reached down for his fly.

  I turned my attention back to Lucas and rolled further into Declan to hold up my paw.

  He lifted my paw, shining a penlight on it. “The stitches held, but a few dissolved, which is good. There’s some dirt here.” His thumb pressed on the side of my toe pad, and I yipped from the sudden sharp pain. I nuzzled Lucas’ leg, and he caressed my head. “Sorry, Teagan. You’ve still got some damage in there. It’s better if you stay…”

  Lucas trailed off as in a whirl of motion, Declan dashed out from behind me. The massive dark wolf hunched over me, teeth bared in Lucas’ face. A low growl rattled from his throat. I was looking up from the underside of the situation, and even from here, Declan towered over the veterinarian.