Page 43 of Claimed

I’m steaming mad at her pack’s alpha for making her vulnerable this way by not allowing damn wolf shifters to shift. Can’t fuckin’ find any sense in that. I have a hundred questions, but I’ll savethem. Today, she gets what she wants. Tomorrow, she does too, but tomorrow I’ll also get some answers.

“You want to rest for a couple minutes or go now?”

“Go now,” she replies, getting to her feet. She shifts to wolf.

“If you get into trouble, shift back and talk to me. Don’t just try to do what my wolf does, okay?” I put my hand to the top of her head and sift my fingers through her soft fur. She barks once in reply and then runs ahead of me, back toward Roxy’s, so I shift and follow.

***

It’s already dusk when we get to the banks of Tyson’s place. The house is dark, but I see her nose twitching as she looks at it. She knows it’s his house. She looks nervous. Her expression clears when she catches me watching her.

Time flew. I’ve shown her a good portion of the woods nearby and I can see she’s tired. I shift back and she follows, immediately yawning. Her eyes point at the waterfall.

“That’s a really beautiful waterfall,” she says, taking a deep whiff of the air. “So much clean water around here.”

“I’ll teach you to swim another day, then we’ll go under it to the cave that’s on the other side.”

“I’d love that,” she says. “Or you can get me some water wings or a pool noodle and I’ll just stay in this shape and kick my feet until we get there.”

Grinning at the big smile on her face, I wrap my arm around her and we sit on the grass. I gaze at her as she stares at the waterfall with a happy expression I like. But it doesn’t take long for me to sense her thoughts shifting to fear, to worry.

I bump her shoulder with mine. “How’s some roasted chicken sound to you?”

Her stomach rumbles in reply and she looks embarrassed.

I laugh. “Walk back as human or run back as wolves? Faster as wolves and we don’t have clothes nearby.”

“We need clothes?” she asks.

“Tend to stay clothed out on the village streets, especially when there’s been drama, which there’s been a lot of lately. Our village is accessible by outsiders so unless we’re in the forest, we’re careful in both forms.”

“Ah,” she says. “Makes sense.”

“Size of our pack, it’s practical. That’s why we keep the areas around us undeveloped. Lots of room to roam without worrying too much. We have a code system, too, to keep people aware of how safe things feel. If there are threats. Things went amped recently with Mase and Amelia’s mating and some drama with her ex, so we haven’t come down to code green yet. Yellow is caution, orange is extreme caution and red… well, we generally lock down or evacuate when it’s code red. Thankfully we don’t have those too often.”

Her expression drops, but she tries to hide it. And I sense she fears things will go extreme.

She offers no feedback, and I’m grateful I can sense who she is otherwise I might be suspicious based on her silence. She’s come from a pack determined to harm us, a pack where she was ordered to bring that harm. She needs to feel comfortable enough to talk to me and I need to summon patience. Because I sense down to my bones that she doesn’t have a deceitful bone in her body. She’s afraid. And it’s my job to ease her fears, make her trust me so she’ll open up.

11

Stacy

“What’s on your mind?” Greyson asks, eyes on me as we eat the reheated chicken dinner sent over by his mom and sister.

I finish chewing what’s in my mouth and dab with a napkin as I swallow before I shoot my shot and ask the question plaguing my mind.

“Would I be able to … make a phone call?”

He drops his napkin. “Of course.”

I swallow again, heart beginning to race as I watch him move to the counter where his phone is charging. No hesitation. No questions. Just…of course.

“To who?” he asks belatedly, setting the phone down beside me.

“My brother,” I reply, wondering how many times he’s called my phone, which is in my backpack, definitely out of battery by now. And maybe out of minutes.

He gestures to his phone and sits down again. “You know the number off by heart or you need your phone?”

---