Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
In the forest, while running for my life, I scream as I bounce off a naked man’s chest.
He catches me, setting me on my feet before I can land on my ass. Flashing me an embarrassed grin, he says, “Uh, sorry about that.” Then he steps around me and keeps sprinting toward the lake.
The collision scared the shit out of me. The cheerful grin and taking off like that confused me enough that I’m no longer as terrified as I was before.
Then three wolves sprint around a tree and charge right at me.
A scream tears out of me, and I back up.
Before I can think about running, they flow around me and disappear as well.
I stop screaming, confused again.
“What is happening?” I whisper.
“Shelby?” Averie, Vaden’s younger sister, pops up from behind a tree, scaring the shit out of me.
My feet leave the floor. I jump that high.
She’s in green flannel pajamas, and her copper-red hair is in two braids. “Sorry for scaring you,” she says sheepishly. “I thought you could hear me. Do you want to come to the house with me while we wait for Vaden? I sent Fisher ahead while I came to get you.”
I hurry toward her, relieved to see a familiar face and glad there are no more wolves running at me. “Do you know what’s happening?”
“Vaden howled, and that howl means trouble. I figure you must have been with him to howl like that. He usually deals with stuff on his own instead of calling for help.”
“There are different kinds of howls?” I ask, following her to the farmhouse.
“Of course,” she says as if it’s perfectly normal to communicate through howls.
I’m reminded once again that I’m in a completely different world from the one I grew up in, where I learned the rules. In this world, I know none of the rules.
“Of course there are,” I mutter. “Silly me.”
She looks at me and grins. “Sorry. Vaden told me he was going to tell you about what we were. You’re probably struggling with information overload, huh?”
I return her smile with a weaker, shakier one. “Yeah. Vaden just told me what he was, and it’s a lot to get used to.”
She glances over her shoulder. “What happened back there?”
It’s quiet now. There are no more howls and there’s no sound of fighting. I hope Vaden’s okay, but I can’t imagine he won’t be. He seems so invincible.
I shrug. “I have no clue. We were just talking by the lake when he told me to run, and he changed into a wolf. I didn’t hear or see anything.”
“Well, he did. He used to patrol our pack’s borders, so his senses are pretty sharp at detecting threats. Someone must have been getting close, and he went to chase them away.”
Concerned, I glance over my shoulder. “Will he be okay if he catches them?”
Just because he seems invincible doesn’t mean he is. He told me shifters heal faster and are harder to kill. But he’s not immortal.
She links her arm with mine and gives me a reassuring smile. “He’ll be fine. Wolves are fast, but that howl would have been a big warning about what’s after them. If whoever it was is smart, they’d have run for their lives.”
“Yeah,” I murmur. I recall my own instinctive reaction to that howl. I swear my legs had started moving independently of my mind. Shivering, I ask Averie, “Could Vaden have just not told me what he was? He said he was breaking a pretty big rule.”
We step out of the forest and into the clearing I failed to find earlier. All the cars are still parked nearby, and this time the house is not dark. A few lights are on downstairs, and a couple upstairs as well. That howl sure did a number on everyone.
Averie walks up the porch and says, “He had to, not just to prevent you from wondering where he went during his night runs.
A relationship between you two wouldn't work if he kept secrets from you. My brother can be temperamental, but he always prefers honesty and facing the consequences rather than lying.”
She’s right. From the moment Vaden saw me, he said what he felt and hasn’t tried to hide what I am to him. Even though I nearly pepper-sprayed him in the grocery store. And even when I thought he was crazy when he told me he was a shifter.
“The kids are sleeping, so we have to keep our voices down,” Averie explains, keeping her voice low as we step into a brightly lit family home.
She steers me through the entryway and into a large Shaker-style kitchen.
It’s warm and cozy, and we’re not the only ones there.
A couple is standing near the kitchen island, talking, but they stop and turn to face us when we walk into the room.
The man is dark-haired, and the woman is curvy with curly blonde hair. Both are wearing pajamas.
“Kids?” I ask, smiling at the couple, who smile back at me.
“Dayne and Talis have two kids,” Averie explains, leading me to the large dining table. “Jenna and Marshall have a daughter. Savannah is pregnant and probably still sleeping, so you won’t meet her until tomorrow. You would have run past Jeremy outside. He’s her mate.”
“I don’t know if he was the naked man or one of the wolves,” I say, taking a seat at the dining table alongside Averie.
The man at the kitchen island winces. “Yikes. What an introduction. I’m Dean.” He gently bumps his shoulder against the woman beside him. “This is Madi, my mate.”
She flashes me a bright smile, which almost immediately morphs into a yawn, which she covers with one hand. “Sorry. I’m tired.”
Dean wraps his arm around her shoulders and drops a kiss on top of her head. “Go back to bed. You didn’t have to come down with me.”
“Yes, I did. That howl meant someone was in trouble, and I want to be around to help any way I can.” She turns to me.
“It took a while to learn all the different howls. Honestly, I’m still figuring it out.
But from the way everyone was up and sprinting out of the house, I knew this was a big bad one. ”
“You’re human?” I ask, surprised.
She nods, and both she and Dean join Averie and me at the dining table. “Yep. It took a while to get used to living in a house where everyone can turn furry, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
I glance toward the brightly lit entryway. “Who else went out?”
“Dayne, Marshall, Jeremy, Gavin, Nathan, and Blair,” Dean explains. “Fisher is still too new a shifter to be in a fight, so he’s upstairs with Clara, keeping watch in case trouble reaches the house. Everyone else is asleep or outside, patrolling nearby.”
My mind seizes on two pieces of information. “Wait. I saw one naked man and three wolves.”
“Oh, there was definitely more out there,” Dean says. “Nathan isn’t as fast at shifting, but he sometimes stays up late, so he might have been the naked guy you ran into.”
I don’t know whether to be relieved or terrified by that. A wolf could come at me, and I might not even see it coming.
“You’re safe here,” Averie says, patting my shoulder reassuringly, as if she senses my fear. “No one would hurt you. If the howl wasn’t that important, they’d have gone around you, and you wouldn’t have seen them at all. No one would have wanted to scare you.”
“But Vaden could be in trouble,” I say, worrying about him the longer he’s out there. “Do you think he’ll be okay?”
“My brother was the head enforcer for my old pack,” Averie says. “He knows how to fight, and he’s good at it. He’s fine.”
“What were you doing out there in the middle of the night?” Madi asks.
I make a face. “Uh, I was running away.”
Dean’s eyebrows shoot up. “Running away?”
“I thought he was crazy,” I reluctantly admit. “He told me he was a shifter, and I didn’t believe him. I was going to steal his car, but I got lost and ended up by the lake.”
Averie and Madi grin at me, and their response makes me feel a little less guilty about bolting.
Dean laughs. “That’s freaking hilarious.”
I smile despite myself. “I didn’t anticipate how good his hearing was as I bumped into every object on my way to sneaking out of the cabin. He probably heard every step I took.”
Almost in unison, Averie and Dean turn toward the kitchen’s back door and wince.
Dean mutters, “Oh boy. We should’ve seen that coming.”
“Seen what?” I bounce my gaze between them. Madi looks as confused as I am so I’m not the only one wondering what’s going on.
“Dayne and Vaden aren’t exactly friendly,” Averie explains.
“I thought you all were friends… or is it a pack?” I ask hesitantly.
Vaden has thrown so many new words at me that I’m not sure if I’m getting any of this right.
“Pack is the right word,” Madi confirms with a smile. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t sometimes fight. It’s never violent.”
Dean lifts a dark eyebrow at her.
“It isn’t always violent,” Madi corrects herself. “Mostly it’s playful tussling.”
“But Vaden isn’t really a member of the Blackshaw Pack.
” Averie looks at the back door, her brows furrowing.
"I mean, he’s my family, and we were both members of Pack Rowe, but he wasn’t sure about staying in Colorado.
Since meeting you, he’s definitely not leaving.
But he and Dayne have clashed before. I think Dayne hoped Vaden would leave once he knew I was okay and settled here. ”
“He doesn’t like Dayne?” I ask.
“It’s not that simple. My brother was the head enforcer for my dad, who was the Alpha of our pack,” Averie explains.
“Our dad died, and Vaden left Oklahoma to look for me. A head enforcer usually stays with his pack forever since his role is to keep the Alpha safe. Finding ground that Vaden and Dayne agree on isn’t easy since Vaden grew up knowing how things work in Pack Rowe.
Dayne does things differently, and so they clash. ”
“And also Vaden called Dayne a psycho,” Dean adds.
I’m asking why Vaden would insult Dayne when the back door slams open and the furious argument that wolf ears heard long before I did spills into the kitchen.