Page 19 of Jacob

“Well, if we’re looking for an animal or a shifter who stays in that form for most of the time, they’ll be in the forest.”

He and Tony both turned toward the other side of the street.The station faced a bunch of trees.The forest here wasn’t as dense as it was around the pride house, but if a shifter was trying to be inconspicuous and move back and forth between the town and the forest, Jacob was bound to find their scent in spots where the forest ended and the town started.

“I think it would be best if I shifted,” he offered.It would help the awkwardness between him and Tony, too.In his tiger form, Jacob couldn’t speak.Tony wouldn’t expect him to say anything.

Tony nodded.“Your sense of smell is heightened in your tiger form.”

“It is, and it’ll be easier to traipse through the forest on four paws than on two feet.”Jacob grinned.“Unfortunately for you.”

Tony gestured at the forest.“There’s no need to boast.Where do you want to shift?In there, or at the station?”

There was no way Jacob was going back inside the station with Taylor waiting there.“We can walk a bit inside the forest and find a private spot.It’s not like there are dozens of people around, anyway.”And Jacob was a shifter, which meant he was used to shifting and getting naked in front of people.

The problem was that he’d never done so in front of his mate.So far, Tony had been incredibly nice and accepting of everything, but Jacob kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.What if Tony found something he disliked in Jacob’s tiger?

The tiger in question roared in the back of Jacob’s mind.It was displeased with the direction in which Jacob’s thoughts were going, but there was nothing Jacob could do about them.He couldn’t ignore the possibility of something going wrong, no matter how much he wanted it not to.

“If you’re ready, we can go,” Tony said.

Shit.Jacob had been standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring ahead like an idiot.“We can go,” he confirmed.

There was a moment in which neither of them moved.Jacob huffed and finally stepped forward, relieved when Tony followed him.

This was only the beginning.The two of them were supposed to work together for most of the day, unless something happened that meant that Tony had to get back to the station.

Jacob wasn’t sure how he would survive it.

* * * *

THINGS WERE AWKWARD, and Tony wasn’t quite sure what to do about it.He suspected it was a mix of him and Jacob, and them both being uncomfortable around the other, which made sense.They were strangers, but they knew that they were supposed to be together.That meant that there was a certain expectation in everything they said or did, and it wasn’t easy to deal with that.Tony wanted to get to know Jacob, but at the same time, he was terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing.He didn’t want to send Jacob running for the hills.

He suspected Jacob felt the same way.It was why they were cautious around each other.That would change eventually, but it was the first time they were alone together and only the second time they’d spent time together at all since they met.They were also working, which didn’t help.

Tony didn’t think that the shifter they were looking for—if itwasa shifter they were looking for—was dangerous.Even if he was right and this shifter had been living in the woods and stealing to survive, they hadn’t hurt anyone.Hell, no one had ever even seen them from up close.All the sightings had been from a distance, which was why people were freaking out.They couldn’t tell what the shifter was, and people seldom dealt well with things they didn’t know.

He and Jacob were silent as they walked between the trees.There was a small trail, a sign that others had done this before them.Jacob didn’t say anything about it, so Tony assumed that whoever it had been, it wasn’t their shifter.

“Do you know all the shifters in town?”he asked.He wouldn’t have the opportunity to talk to Jacob once Jacob was in his tiger form.

“I don’t think I do, no.I did when there was only the pride, but more shifters have moved to town.”

“So you might smell shifters that you don’t know anyway.How will you know for sure that it’s the shifter we’re looking for?”

“I suppose I wouldn’t in normal circumstances, but Drake already smelled this shifter.He said they smell like a bear, but not quite.That’s something that’ll be easy to recognize.”

“Do different bear shifters have different scents, then?”

“They do.The bear scents I’m more familiar with are the most common ones in the area, like black and brown bears.I would recognize those, so if I smell a strange bear, I’ll know they don’t belong to either of those species.”

“You’ve never met a polar bear shifter?”

“No.If this shifter is a polar bear, it’ll be a first for me.”

Jacob sounded excited about that.It gave him a boyish charm, and Tony had to resist the urge to reach for him.He hoped they would find the shifter soon because he wanted some time alone with his mate.

It was still weird to think that.He was human, so technically, he didn’t have a mate.He was Jacob’s mate, but if he’d never met Jacob, he would never have known.He never would’ve had the opportunity to have this kind of bond.He was excited to find out what was next for both of them, but he was also nervous.

Jacob stopped walking and lifted his nose in the air.He sniffed a few times, which was an odd gesture to see in a human.Tony had spent plenty of time around shifters, though, so he knew what to do.

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