Chapter 2
FRANKLIN
FOUR YEARS LATER
Iswayed precariously in the breeze, my body shifting from side to side in a way that made me want to puke.
“Absolute freaking twat-waffle.”
The child across from me squeaked. “What’s a twat-waffle?”
I ground my teeth. “Obviously something you should keep in the fridge. Shirley Sue, we have to stop doing this. It’s the third time this month you’ve been caught at the top of the tree.”
I was absolutely fucking terrified of heights, but I didn’t tell the cub that. She had to think I was ten feet tall and scared of no one and nothing.
Most of the time, I lived up to the hype, but up here? All I wanted to do was call Talbot and get him to fucking rescue me from this tree.
“It’s just that Bohdie can go really high.”
“Bohdie is a lion shifter, and if they fall, cats always land on their feet. You know what bears land on, Shirley Sue? They land on their asses.”
Or snapped their fucking necks. Goddess, I hated this bullshit. I’d radioed Vance, but all he did was laugh for a solid two minutes before I dropped my walkie-talkie in the snow, God knew where.
“Just like last time, you’re going to climb over to me, onto my back, and then hold on for dear life, okay?
” I wondered if we should get her to shift, but I decided against it.
I didn’t shift either because you know what would be even more precarious?
A fifteen hundred pound bear this high in a damn tree.
Shirley Sue didn’t seem to have any qualms about climbing along the branches and then swinging onto my back.
I was beginning to wonder if she wasn’t a double agent set up by my brother to accidentally get “stuck” in the tree every time I was on cub explorer duty.
Shirley Sue never got caught up in trees when it was Talbot’s turn.
She squeezed my neck hard, and I shifted her arms down before she choked me out and we both ended up on the snow-covered ground because she put me in a sleeper hold.
I set my eyes on the horizon and pushed down the fear that locked up my joints, then I slowly lowered myself down the tree, one branch at a time.
One to the left, sturdy branch right below. A fallen branch stump made a good hand hold just to the right.
Finally, my feet hit fallen snow, and I let out the breath that was trapped in my burning lungs.
Shirley Sue swung off my back like she hadn’t traumatized us both and ran off to play in the snow with the other cubs, shifting in what I liked to call the cub onesie.
One of the sleuth females had gotten fed up with finding clothes everywhere in the halls or losing them in the snow or woods, so she’d created a cub onesie from super stretchy Lycra that kind of shifted with them.
Basically, furry bear cubs in wrestling leotards were rolling around in the snow.
I went behind a tree and shucked my own clothes, finally shifting into my bear.
He released an annoyed breath and shook out his fur.
Both the bear and the man hated heights.
I grabbed my clothes in my mouth and lumbered out of the woods, letting out a chuffing sound, making all the cubs look at me.
Their excitement made them all but vibrate in the snow drifts.
It was time to play their favorite game—snow chase. I couldn’t lie, it was my favorite too.
They all let out high-pitched squeals of joy and lumbered toward me as I set off through the woods at a steady pace in the direction of the den.
I weaved through the trees, my lips pulled back in what would probably look like a snarl but was actually a grin.
A tiny paw swiped at my back foot, so I knew they were getting close.
We’d run a little more before I “accidentally tripped,” and they’d all attack me with their best ferocious baby bear growls. So cute.
We were getting close to the den mouth, so I did a fake tumble, eating snow.
The chorus of roars was fucking adorable.
It was hard to imagine that in ten years, most of these cubs would be six hundred pound beasts, capable of pulling off a grown man’s arm.
Right now, they were basically overgrown puffballs.
Their teeth were still sharp though. One was a little too close to breaking skin, and I swiped at whoever it was—maybe Ellison—with a large paw, knocking him down. I carefully swiped them all off, but between the six of them, they did a pretty good job of keeping me busy.
Well, until I smelled blood. Ah crap. If one of them had bitten another again, the sows were going to kick my fucking ass.
As I sat up, I realized the smell was coming from farther away, and it was mixed with a scent that shouldn’t have made it onto sleuth lands.
I grumbled low in my chest, a primal sound that made all the cubs pause in fear.
Back to the den now, I told them. I put every ounce of dominance into the command, and they did as they were told.
I ran with them back to the mouth of the den and sent them scuttling inside.
I shifted back to a man, pulling on my pants as I unhooked my radio from my belt.
“Guys, we have a trespasser on the den lands, two hundred yards northwest. I think wolf, but I can’t be sure. Over.”
“I’ll be there in thirty seconds. Over.” Vance’s reply crackled, but I could tell he was already moving.
“I’m on the south side of the den. I’ll circle around and check that it isn’t an ambush,” Talbot responded immediately after.
I shifted back to my bear, smiling at the sleuth members so they didn’t freak out. I didn’t smell more on the wind, but wolves were wily as hell. Sneaky.
Not bears though, we ran headfirst into trouble and then slapped it in the face.
I loped quickly toward the foreign scent in my woods, fast for my size.
When the scent wrapped around me, the smell of blood and festering infection hot in the air, I wondered if I wasn’t smelling a wolf shifter, but its more natural forebearer.
Did we have a sick wild wolf on our land?
If it was, we’d run it to one of the wildlife rescues in town, or we’d put it down humanely.
Outcast from its pack, it would already be suffering.
I was disappointed to say that I was almost on top of the wolf before I saw it due to its pure white coat. Well, white except for the different shades of red coating its belly and the snow beneath it. A low whine told me the wolf definitely wasn’t a native, one-natured type.
A white wolf. I inhaled deeply. An Omega white wolf.
The only white Omega wolf I knew of was…
No.
As if she read the denial in my eyes, she shifted. In the snow lay the girl who had broken my heart, Dawn, and she was clutching a wound on her stomach so large, I worried her intestines might fall out.
I didn’t even realize I’d shifted back to human form until my knees hit the snow. “Dawn? Is it really you?”
“Franklin… Help me,” she rasped, her voice hoarse like it was painful to speak.
That shook me. I stood, bending down and scooping her into my arms, berating myself as she hissed in pain.
“I’ve got you now.” I wouldn’t fail her again.
I ran as fast as possible toward the den and the infirmary inside.