Page 75 of Shifter's Homecoming

Rowan took out her own breakfast plate and coffee. She had pancakes, eggs, sausage, and bacon. She ate a bit of her pancakes, but mostly she watched Trent. He was done with the first plate and almost done with the second. The man could eat. No one in the room spoke, and the air was heavy with everything that wasn’t being said.

Her phone rang. She let the machine pick it up. Her message played, and then a male voice filled the room.

“Dr. Atenboro, my name is Dr. Remington Gilman”—Troy and Trent both snorted at the same time—“and I’ve got a bit of a situation here. I’m looking for someone who might be able to tell me why a locally-developed vaccine for an obscure disease process in mammals is lethal to females but efficacious to males. This is important, a matter of life and death. Please give me a call.” He recited his number, and then hung up. The machine beeped once and fell silent.

“He’s one of ours,” Trent said.

“A cat,” Troy added. “But a good guy. He’s talking about the vaccine I was telling you about. Why is he calling you?”

Rowan half-shrugged. “That’s my specialty. That’s what I’m good at. That’s why I got this job.” Excitement fluttered in her gut. Dr. Remington Gilman would be able to answer all of her questions. If they put their heads together—

“Can I get my hands on the vaccine?”

“I’ll get him out here with it,” Trent told her. “Today if I can.”

He seemed like he was going to say more, but he stopped and lifted his head slightly instead. So did Troy. Rowan exchanged a look with Reed, not sure exactly what was going on. Trent got up and went to the door. He opened it and looked out, and for just a moment, Rowan smelled it, too. The poison. She frowned.

Trent turned to her. “How often does the poison fall?”

“Once every 24 hours,” she said, “But not always at the same time.”

“I scented it last night, too,” Troy said. “Twice.”

Trent’s voice turned dark. “So did we, right when we were leaving the tree house.”

Troy put his coffee down. He put his breakfast on the table next to him. He stood. He and Trent said one word at the same time.

“Rex.”

Troy swore. “Rex and Soren both. Grey is working with them, too.”

“I figured,” Trent said, and the thread of barely-controlled anger in his voice made Rowan look at him.

Both men shifted without even taking their clothes off. Reed squeaked and pulled her feet up onto the couch, looking startled. Their clothes mostly fell into messy piles, but Trent had to bite at his pants to get them all the way off.

Troy had already shed all his clothes and was running a zig-zag line through the maze of her counters, his nose to the ground. He looked like an overgrown hound dog on a scent. Trent started a similar zig-zag pattern. They smelled every corner, then they both ran up the stairs, sounding like a whole herd of heavy animals.

Rowan pushed her food away. Before she could think what to say or do, the two wolves were back downstairs. First one, then the other jumped straight up on to her counters! Rowan got up and ran to the couch where Reed was and pulled her feet up off the floor like Reed had.

“There’s wolves on my counters!” she told Reed, watching with something like amused horror as Trent hopped directly to her main work place. He pawed at her notebooks and spent a lot of time smelling them. Troy leapt across the gap and smelled the notebooks with him. Their claws tick-tick-ticked on the surface.

They both jumped down and headed for the sliding glass door together. Rowan was about to get up and open it for them, but one of them was already pawing at it. He got it open, and then they were gone.

“Rex,” Rowan whispered under her breath. She knew who that was.

“Rex can… he can just appear from nowhere,” Reed said, still on the couch with her feet up. She hugged her knees to her chest, her eyes far away like she was remembering something awful. “Him and the other one, Soren, they both can, and so can Khain. When they do, they smell like your poison smells.”

“Damn,” Rowan whispered. The reality of the danger that was her birthright fell in on her in a way that it hadn’t before, making her chest feel heavy and her throat tight.

She got up and went to the sliding glass door and locked it, watching out back for the two wolves to return.

***

Within only a few moments, both wolves were back. Rowan unlocked the door as soon as she saw them on the porch. Troy was first. He shifted to a man, completely unconcerned that he was naked. Rowan turned the other way, her eyes wide, looking at the wall, the floor, the ceiling – anything other than Troy.

But then Trent was inside, and naked, and that was what she pinned her eyes on, his glorious ass and his strong, muscular legs. He was dressed in under a minute. Too bad.

Trent spoke to her and Reed. “It’s hard to tell what the situation is. Rex and Soren don’t necessarily have to move around if they just pop over for a second to take a look-see, plus the scent of the pool of poison outside confuses everything, and it even seems like they are masking their scents.”

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