Page 61 of Shifter's Dream

Shift or die, his wolf told him.

Troy stood up and worked some saliva to the back of his throat, his eyes on Rex. He swallowed again, and again, crouching on the ground, trying not to show he had one injured leg. The pendant moved a little “It ain’t as serious as all that,” he growled to his wolf, feeling around on the ground for anything he could use as a weapon. Or better yet, if he could fight Rex as a man, he would have a chance.

His throat opened wider than it should have been able to. Troy’s bones shifted around in his face and chest before settling. The pendant was down. Good deal.

“Why don’t you fight me like a man, Rexie?” he called, considering pulling out the ‘your ol’ lady sucked my dick’ line, but thinking it probably wouldn’t work with Rex. He needed to be smart, he needed to just hang in there until his brother and his pack showed up.

Rex snorted and shook his head, looking rather like a super-ugly bear with a twisted snout and too long legs and too much fur, the ugliest fox/bear mashup you ever wanted to see.

Grey stepped out from behind a big rock, making Troy growl. Grey snapped his fingers at him, his hair even longer than Troy’s,and pulled back into a ponytailat the base of his head. Holy shit were the guys going to crank on thatwolvenfashiondon’t.

Grey widened his stance and crossed his arms, standing next to, but a little in front of, Rex. “Oh! You’re scared to shift. Makes sense. I would be, too.” Grey paced a little in front of the rocks, arms still across his chest, keeping one eye on Troy. “I don’t think I would be able to think about anything else.” He turned to face Troy again, speaking quickly. “Because as soon as you shift and stay that way, that cute little mate of yours is going to be fair game. Your brother already has a mate, so he won’t try to tap that, but there’s plenty of other males out there who will. Hell, even Soren scented her last night and thought she smelled plenty fine.”

Troy lost his fucking mind, right there, knowing he was playing into Grey’s hand, still unable to help himself. His wolf held him back. Too late, he realized Soren and Bane were coming up behind him as men, but they were already shifting as they ran at him, clothes ripping off and falling to the ground. Troy twisted away from Soren’s leaping snap of the jaws and pushed off of Bane’s straight-ahead, face-first, bear plow, getting his elbow around the bear’s throat, holding on for his life, his back and ass and boots scraping against the ground as Bane dragged him. Soren came up from behind and grabbed him around his uninjured thigh with his teeth, pulling Troy from Bane’s back and shaking him like a rag doll. Troy gritted his teeth against the pain and levered himself into a sitting position in Soren’s mouth, using the eyeball move again. Soren’s hold loosened, but Bane moved in and snatched Troy by his other leg, shaking his head violently making Troy shout into the sky, then throwing Troy across the bluff’s rocky top.

Troy landed in a heap and lay still, in a pool of his own spilling blood.

37 - Fee Fi Fo Fum

Grey watched Troy, thinking it was a trick, and that Troy was going to shift and come at them at any moment, until he saw the blood. There was too much of it, and it was spilling too fast for Troy to be anything but unconscious, which meant he would be shifting to a wolf in any second, scared to shift or not, and his wolf could easily wake up biting.

“Shift and grab him,” he shouted to Soren and Bane while he sprinted close, intending to do the same.

But then something crazy happened. Grey saw it happen and he still didn’t believe it. He’d seen it happen before and he’d barely believed it then. Troy’s blood touched the root of the one tree there, an old monster that was fifty feet away from Troy, but with roots that twisted atop the rocky ground, all the way to where Troy was. When the blood reached the root, an entire mini forest sprung up around Troy from the inside out, a contiguous row of thin saplings, encircling him with a ripping sound, spraying rocks from the ground every which way. Another circle shot out of the ground, then another and another until Grey couldn’t see Troy anymore.

Bane had shifted but he shifted back and clawed at one of the trees. It grew bigger. They all did, cramming all up next to each other, and bowing in at the middle, making an impenetrable forest guard around the male.

Well, shit.

Grey knew the KSRT would be heading up the bluff at a run, maybe even calling out the helicopters and the heavy firepower.

“To the fallback position,” he called out roughly to Rex, Bane, and Soren, yelling the same inruhito the markedfoxenthey had lying in wait, not sure if they were all too far away to hear him. His ruhi did not transmit well to thefoxen.“Get under cover and don’t come out till I say.

He turned to Soren. “Wait, can you get a message to Khain?”

Soren nodded.

“Tell him to be ready on the other side of that spider crack, we’re going to start pitching wolves through it, starting with the one you’ve got tied up over there.”

But first, he would watch to see how the KSRT got those trees open to get to their male.

38 – False

Reed strolled along the river path with Sage, her body seemingly calm, but her thoughts in turmoil. Strange images flashed through her mind, making her think of wolves in the forest. She fidgeted in agitation.

An image flashed in her mind. Troy on the ground, on his belly, hurt. Blood around him.

“No!” she cried, reaching out like he was in front of her, but there was nothing but air.

Sage looked at her, then scooted a foot away. “What!”

“Nothing,” Reed mumbled, banishing the image, trying to calm her beating heart. “I’m a freak, ignore me.”

“You regretting running out on him?”

“You mean like a teenager? Yep.” She was silent for a moment, and so was Sage, so Reed added the thing that had been on her mind since Sage had picked her up. “He said he loved me.”

Sage moved back in next to Reed, strolling with her, nodding happily. “Good old Tom.”

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