Highland Heat

Chapter 1

Ewan

It was the perfect day. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, or at least they would be if there were any birds around.

But being that I was in an open pasture with not a tree in sight except for the line along the road, there were no birds.

At least I told myself it was the lack of trees.

I knew better. They sensed I was a shifter, and despite not being a predator, birds always shied away from my beast until I was in my beast form…

then they stuck around cause I would attract flies.

There was a time when that would’ve bothered me. Not anymore. Life was too short for that. Instead, I was going to soak in the gorgeousness that surrounded me, the beautiful, long, lush grass. Best of all, it was fresh for the taking and absolutely delicious.

I was here doing a favor for my cousin. He said he loved the place, and I had to agree. It was perfect location for me to shift into my hooved form and enjoy lunch, basking in the sun. I couldn’t ask for anything better.

Or at least it was, until I found a rope around my neck, and then suddenly, I was being corralled into a stock trailer.

In a world where shifters needed to be scared about being discovered, where some had forms that were highly coveted by hunters and poachers, I was supposed to be among the safest. Who bothered a cow?

Not that I was a cow. I was a bull through and through, but humans had a tendency to call us all cows, and I just went with it. What did it matter to me what they called me? Now, wrangling me? That was a different story altogether.

It would be so much easier if humans knew about us.

I could shift, we’d laugh, and then go grab a beer.

But they didn’t, and it wasn’t as if I could break all the rules just because I wasn’t cautious enough not to be in this situation.

Instead, I bellowed and hollered as loudly as I could, thrashing my head every which way.

No one described my bull as small. With most people, I’d have had them on the ground long before now.

But the man who had me caught knew what he was doing, and if I kept going, it wasn’t going to work out well for either of us.

He could get hurt, which I wasn’t willing to do, and I didn’t like the idea of having rope burns on my neck. It was a lose-lose situation.

Once my head started making the decisions, I relented. I’d be able to get away soon enough. It wasn’t likely that they would keep round-the-clock surveillance on my beast. There wasn’t anything unique or special about me in most people’s eyes.

He loaded me onto the trailer. He wasn’t a complete asshole and didn’t poke or prod me when he figured out I was cooperating. He even had a fresh flake of grassy hay waiting for me. Nothing about the situation was ideal, but it could easily be worse.

This was not what I had envisioned when my cousin said to go check out the farmland that we had purchased. He was going to owe me for this one. Big time.

Sure, I could’ve stayed in my human form and gotten a feel for the property that way.

But you couldn’t just send a Highland bull shifter out to a big ol’ pasture and not expect him to sample the merchandise.

That was like having someone check out a bakery but not have so much as a nibble of sweets.

How could I not shift and sample this pasture?

Our plan was to buy the place so we could shift and graze. We needed to know everything about it, including the taste. And yes, I was working out all my arguments for when my cousin decided to blame me for this mess and laughed at me. That was how cousins were.

He’d be right, though, not that I’d ever admit it.

In my excitement to shift and graze, I messed up.

And from what I overheard of the jerk who roped me, I was now on my way to an auction.

The jerk was going to try and sell my sorry butt.

That was what I get for not paying attention to my surroundings.

My belongings were stuffed in a leather bag I’d hung on the corner post marking the start of the property line. Best-case scenario, my cousin was on his way to surprise me and would find it. He’d know something was wrong and figure out where I was and buy me.

Best-case scenarios were only in movies. He would probably text me and ask how things were and leave it at that. Possibly he’d text again in the morning to let me know he was grumpy about me ignoring him, but at no point would he suspect I was about to be sold to the highest bidder.

My captor was talking on the phone with someone, going on and on about the fact that he’d struck gold and found a stray Highland bull in his pasture.

I wasn’t a stray, as if stray cows were a thing.

And he knew it or he wouldn’t be taking me straight to the local auction. Also, it wasn’t his pasture anymore!

It would be interesting to see what happened when he got there. He didn’t have the paperwork that proved that I was his, because I wasn’t. They weren’t going to let him just show up and sell an animal without proof of ownership, were they?

I belonged to no one. Jackhole was going to pay. I didn’t know how or when, but stealing me and then using me to make a buck—heck no.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized just how much trouble I was in.

My attempts to convince myself it was no big deal, that they couldn’t sell me, that I’d have plenty of time to shift and get out of there, weren’t working.

The hard truth was that my breed was having a culinary moment, thanks to a local farm-to-table restaurant that made it onto the food channel with their famous beef dishes.

If I was sold for food, things could get ugly and fast.

As soon as I had the opportunity, I was going to shift and run. Part of me would feel bad about that. They weren’t the villain in this and were going to lose money. The only one coming out a winner was the jackhole who stole me.

I just hoped I didn’t travel too far from home. It was going to be a bitch getting back to my home. The likelihood of there being clothes nearby was nonexistent. With my luck, I was going to get caught on film running naked and it would go viral.

It was official, I was never going to live this down.

My cousins were going to have a field day making fun of me for this.

And to be fair, if it were one of them, I would be joining in the fun once it was all over.

I just needed to get to that point and not on the docket to be sold off to the highest bidder.

My cousins and I shared a house together.

It wasn’t ideal, but having a family home meant we could afford more than a shitty apartment while we saved up.

It was a decent deal all the way around.

The neighbors thought we were brothers, no matter how many times we explained we were cousins.

I was fine with that. We were as close as siblings.

They also thought we were human. If they only knew we were three omega bulls living together, all on a personal quest to find their fated mates.

It was a recipe for disaster, or perhaps the start of a really great sitcom that could last ten seasons on the local network.

Only time would tell. We all got into enough mischief being cooped up in town together, I was leaning sitcom.

We might not have been hunters, but we needed to let our beast out from time to time or they got angsty.

Which was why we needed our own grazing ground.

A few times we’d let our animals out in the back yard when we assumed everyone was asleep.

They weren’t, and it resulted in getting the local authorities involved.

By the time they showed up, the “cows,” which we weren’t, were gone, but they had a picture.

They left after handing us a fabulous citation saying we couldn’t have animals in the city limits.

What kind of ordinance was that? People had chickens and bees. Why couldn’t they have bulls? At least my bull wasn’t going to sting anyone. And besides, we were cute and fluffy.

People liked to cuddle with us. In fact, my youngest cousin made a really good living selling cuddles to college kids who needed to de-stress.

Cuddle with a cow, he called it. Never mind the fact that he wasn’t a cow, he was a bull.

The humans had no idea that he was the animal they were cuddling. He was kind of epic for that.

The trailer pulled to a stop. At first, I thought it was a stop sign or a traffic light. But then he cut the engine. We were here, wherever here was.

There was plenty of noise outside, but I wasn’t able to isolate any of the conversation, all of it coming at me at once.

To make matters worse, I could barely see through the slats of the trailer.

I’d spent the entire ride just trying to stay upright and attempting to hear any phone calls, and my legs were ready to give. Damn these metal contraptions.

A few minutes later, the trailer door opened and several people stood there, whistling and hollering at me to get out, as if I was still inclined to just march right straight toward them.

If this was how they treated their own livestock, they needed to give up the business and find an office job processing data.

I did as they said because I didn’t have much of a choice. It was a matter of doing it right away or after they escalated things. This was better.

Fuck. This was really happening. I was going to be auctioned off.

Maybe my new owner would have pasture for me to graze on until I figured shit out?