Page 20 of Wrong Number, Right Cougar

“Don’t look away.”

I leaned on the wall, fingering my car keys, when fur rippled over Wilder’s arms and face. A tail curled and flapped from his behind, and he fell on all fours as his face morphed into a… a… cougar!

Oh shit. I placed a hand on my chest, willing my heart to slow down. Now was not the day for a heart attack, not that there was any perfect time for that.

“You’re a… wild animal.”

But he didn’t speak. I guessed this kind of cougar wasn’t a talking one like in the movies.

The animal padded toward me, and I picked up the scrapbook and studied the photo of Uncle with the cougars. This was why he and the others weren’t scared, and the image hadn't been manipulated.

I gingerly put my hand out the window and placed it on the cougar’s head. If I was wrong, I’d lose my arm and possibly my life. But the beast purred as I patted him, and he rubbed his head on my arm.

But it was his eyes that drew me in. They were the ones from my dream. This was destiny.

The wild animal transformed and a naked Wilder appeared. Grabbing his clothes, he leaped in through the window.

“I was so scared you’d doubt me and either call the hospital saying I needed to be admitted or you’d run.”

I couldn’t lie. “I considered both, and I’m sorry.” While I had jumped to a judgment, it wasn’t really a failing this time. Who would believe that humans were not alone on earth and there were other people who roamed among us that appeared to be the same but were so different?

“It’s a lot to take in. Uncle knew of your existence, I take it.”

Wilder explained that he’d stumbled on one of his cousins shifting, and as most people in the town were shifters, they’d accepted that Alexei was a part of their clan.

Alexei. Was Uncle’s fake identity tied up with the shifters?

“But you said there were few cougars in the area.”

Wilder nodded. “That’s true. Most of my extended family have left the area, but most of the townspeople are shifters, just not cougars.”

“We have to repopulate the cougars.”

He snorted. “Are you saying we should do that single-handedly?”

12

WILDER

Visiting my grandmother’s grave was something I didn’t do often, mostly because seeing all of my family that had gone before me was always rough—a reminder that we were only on this planet for a blip.

But this time… this time, it felt like it was where I was meant to be.

It was a small graveyard, mostly cougar families from the area, including mine. I was the only one here and took the opportunity to stay a while. I had a lot I wanted to tell her, but since she was with the goddess, this was as close as I was going to be able to get.

I told her about the scrapbook with her picture in it, and about finding my mate—and how Thorn was human and that he accepted my beast so readily. I left no details unshared, minus the naked ones, of course. And when I was done, a sense of peace washed over me. But that wasn’t the powerful part of the visit.

The part that really changed everything was seeing my grandfather’s plot right next to hers. Obviously I knew it was there and had always been there, but for some reason, when I stood up to leave, I caught it out of the corner of my eye and emotion slammed into me. I hadn’t even met him, he was gone before my time, but in some ways, I felt like I knew him.

He and my grandmother had been together until he left this world, and she’d never stopped loving him. She kept him alive with her stories.

That got me thinking. What if? What if my grandfather had waited to ask her to be his mate? They’d have lost time—time they couldn’t get back. And it gave me the resolve to be brave and ask my mate to be my mate. I didn’t want to miss time with him, not even a second.

It was all I could do not to go home and mark him. But I couldn’t. I wanted to do it right. I wanted to do it the human way, to give him the choice. It would break my heart if he turned me down, but it would break my heart more to know I hurt him by taking the choice away.

I called my cousin on the way back and asked him how that worked—the human side of things. He lived among them and understood them far better than I did, that was for sure.

Paul and I didn’t talk often. He hadn’t stayed in Cougar Lake, but instead, moved to a small city not too far from us. He loved his career and life there, or at least said he did. But he wasn’t one of those shifters who left and never looked back. He always made time for family and picked up on the first ring.

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