Chapter Two
Alexis
Wowza. The shifter who’s been assigned to show me around is ridiculously handsome, if you like muscular lumberjack types with huge biceps and perfect cheekbones, and who doesn’t.
Behind him, the tiny downtown of Cedar Run, Arkansas, looks like a postcard come to life. Brick storefronts with striped awnings, hanging flower baskets spilling over with petunias, a coffee shop with a swinging sign that says “Has-Beans”,
At the far end of Main Street, tents and tables from the Saturday farmer’s market stretch across a wide open space, glittering with jars of honey and lush with pyramids of plump red tomatoes.
The air hums with the sound of chatter, country music, and the faint scent of barbecue drifting in from somewhere nearby.
My gaze snaps back to him, drinking in every inch.
He’s six-five of broad shoulders and lean muscle, all wrapped up in jeans and a dark Henley that’s working way too hard to contain him. His brown hair is artfully messy, like he just rolled out of bed after doing very wicked things.
I immediately don’t trust him.
Want him? Yes.
Feel my nether regions aching at the sight of him? Embarrassingly, yes.
Trust him? That’s a laugh.
The Moonstone Pack is being hilariously transparent, assigning me this walking thirst trap in the hopes that I’ll be too distracted to notice whatever they’re hiding. Newsflash, guys — I can drool and dig for dirt at the same time.
I paste on my sweetest, most professional smile and stalk up to him. I have to tilt my head way back to meet his gaze. His eyes are brown, rimmed with gold — like sunlight glinting through whiskey — and right now, they’re fixed on me with a terrifyingly intense focus.
A long, loaded moment stretches between us.
“Hello, I’m Alexis,” I chirp, sticking out my hand. “And you’re my babysitter.”
Yes, I’m being sassy. I think it’s because I’m annoyed that the pack thinks so little of me that they’re trying to distract me with this giant Himbo.
And I’m annoyed at myself because it’s kind of working.
His mouth curves into a slow, amused grin. “I’d think of it more as a tour guide.”
“So…I can go anywhere I want, then?” I challenge.
“Well, Miss Alexis, where do you want to go?” He stares at me steadily, his mouth still quirked in that lazy smile. There’s a gleam in his eyes that says he knows exactly where I want to go. His bedroom.
“Uhh…” I stammer, and my mouth goes dry. Great. I’m a journalist. Words are my thing. They used to be my thing. Now I’m an ogling fangirl who’s one step away from asking him to autograph my boobs. “Well, before I drop my suitcases off at the Cedar Run Motel, I uh…I wouldn’t mind some coffee.”
I point down the street at the wooden sign that says Has-Beans Coffee and Baked Goods.
He glances that way, then shakes his head. “Let’s check out the farmer’s market instead. That’s only on weekends, so I’d hate to have you miss it. They’ve got a coffee booth there. We can go to the coffee shop some other time.”
And just like that, he turns and strolls away, long-legged and maddeningly confident, without even checking to see if I’m following.
I thought he was supposed to be trying to charm the pants off me.
Now why did my mind have to phrase it like that? Pants will be staying on, thank you very much.
Annoyed, I scamper after him.
We step into the farmer’s market, which is buzzing with shifters. You can tell by the way they move: too graceful, too alert, too predator pretending to be casual. A few of them glance my way, looking friendly, nostrils flaring slightly.
Cole keeps his hand on the small of my back, steering me like I’m an errant shopping cart. It’s annoyingly hot. His hand, not the market. Although, okay, both.
“So,” I say, trying to sound breezy instead of flustered, “is this where you guys buy all your organic, free-range, gluten-free wolf chow?”
His mouth quirks. “We eat regular food. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Unless it’s a full moon.”
I look at him suspiciously. Is he mocking me? I can’t tell.
He stops at one of the booths that has a sample section, and grabs a cracker that he holds out to me. It has a gleaming dollop of something pinkish on it.
“What is it?”
“Peach jam.”
I scoop a bit onto a cracker and pop it in my mouth — and moan aloud as the sweet, tart taste floods my mouth. “Oh my God.”
He grins at me. “Would you and the cracker like some time alone together?”
I swallow the cracker and meet his gaze defiantly. “Maybe. This is the most satisfied I’ve been in quite a while.” Then my cheeks instantly redden.
He stares at me, his gaze seizing mine and holding it prisoner. “Sounds like a challenge.” His voice is a low sexy rumble.
Well, I totally brought that on myself.
“Anyway!” I quickly hand over a ten dollar bill to the woman who’s selling the peach jam. “One jar of your incredibly delicious jam, please.”
“Well, thank you, aren’t you sweet!” She beams with appreciation as she puts a jar in a brown paper bag and hands it to me.
We resume walking.
As we walk, I take in the sights of the Moonstone farmer’s market — and it’s similar to a human farmer’s market, but not completely.
A booth manned by burly guys in flannel features venison jerky with a sign that says Locally Hunted.
A couple of women with unnervingly bright golden eyes are arranging wildflowers in mason jars, and I swear one of them just sniffed the air in my direction.
There’s laughter, the scent of cinnamon and woodsmoke — and an undercurrent of something sharp and wild that makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
“Are all three packs at the farmers’ market?” I ask. Cedar Run is home to three packs, the Moonstone Pack, the Shadowpine Pack and the Frostbane Pack. The town’s population is about 8,000. Some of the shifters live in town, a lot of them live on their respective pack’s properties.
Cole nods. “Yep. Every week.”
“And all three packs get along together?”
“Sure do,” he says cheerfully, after the tiniest micro-second of hesitation. I file that away for future reference.
I pass a jewelry booth and a young girl, maybe nine, steps out and walks up to me. She’s wearing a white flower print dress with a swirly hem. She stands on her tiptoes and solemnly places a daisy crown on my head. It matches the one on her own.
“Now you can be a princess,” she announces.
My heart melts. Lane told me that the shifter children are adorable, and she’s not wrong. “Thank you, it’s beautiful! How much?” I ask.
“It’s a gift.” She curtsies and dances back behind the booth. Oh, my heart.
“You said you wanted coffee. There’s a coffee truck down there,” Cole points at a truck at the end of the farmer’s market.
“Would it be all right if I took some pictures first?” I ask. “It’ll be so great to show people that shifter towns are just like human towns.”
And everyone will get used to seeing me with my camera out.
It will look like I’m just shooting fun pictures of people and scenery, but I’ll already have my camera out if I spot anything suspicious.
My boss, the owner of the Blakesville Beacon, has told me to keep my eye out for anything that might be going on “behind the scenes”, as he puts it, but he wouldn’t tell me what.
“Just let me know if anything strikes you as off,” he urged me. “You have good instincts.”
“Take all the pictures you want,” Cole smiles. “We’re all about the human-shifter relations.”
I pull my Canon from my purse and start snapping pictures, and as I do, I feel a sharp twinge of guilt.
I’m not exactly here under false pretenses, I tell myself.
If I don’t spot anything off, I’ll just end up writing a feature article about a rural shifter town, which is the kind of thing few humans have been exposed to.
Or rather, the kind of thing that humans choose not to see.
Humans are still scared of shifters. The two species were at war for centuries, ever since humans first discovered that some groups of people among them could also turn into wolves.
Shifters are much stronger and faster than humans and they have miraculous healing powers, but they also make up about five percent of the total population, so there’s always that tension.
And if I do spot something off, I’m obligated to report on it, right? That’s what journalists do.
Still, that adorable young girl, the lady who beamed at me when I bought her peach jam, the people who are smiling at me as I walk by…I feel like I’m plotting to betray them and I’m not even sure how.
Nonsense, I tell myself sternly. If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about.
A man and a woman walk over to a wooded area that borders the market, strip their clothes, and dash into the woods.
I decide not to take a picture of that; to respect their privacy, even though shifters are pretty casual about nudity from what I’ve heard.
It’s common for them to strip in public so they don’t ruin their clothes while they’re shifting, go for an invigorating run, and then return for their clothes later.
My best friend Lane, who just joined with Jesse in a mating ceremony, told me that.
As I’m snapping pictures, I hear some kind of commotion coming from somewhere on Main Street.
I jostle to see, but I’m surrounded by a crowd, and a man who’s backing away from a booth accidentally knocks my camera down. “Sorry!” he cries.
Cole bends down to pick it up for me at the same time as several other people.
There’s a minute of jostling before Cole manages to retrieve it, and he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully brushes dirt off it.
He examines it critically, and then blows a little bit of dirt off it before handing it back to me.
“Check the camera. Is it still working?” he asks. “If not, the pack will replace it.”
I check it quickly. “It’s fine,” I assure him.
It’s odd, but I could swear that the pack was working together to make me drop my camera. And did Cole brush the dirt of the camera to be nice, or to stall for another minute?
“What just happened?” I ask Cole. “I heard something from…” I wave in the general direction of Main Street.
Cole gives me a polite, quizzical look. “Did you? I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, and shifters have pretty amazing hearing.” He turns away and walks off, leading me between a couple of booths.
I turn back to look in the direction where I thought I heard something, but there’s nothing there. Just businesses and people strolling calmly down the street. Cole stops to look back at me. “There’s a lot of noise from the market. People get pretty rowdy here,” he adds.
I nod, frowning. I’m not convinced, but other than an enormous wolf running into a wooded area at the far end of Main Street, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. And that’s only unusual to me because I’m human. Here, it happens all the time.
“I guess it was nothing,” I say slowly.
“Well, let’s go get you that coffee then,” he says, putting his arm around my shoulders and steering me towards the coffee truck.
The smell of him, woodsy and with a pleasant musk, drifts through the air. The feeling of his muscular arm around my shoulders floods me with a hot, tingling awareness of my own body.
Every muscle in my body goes tight. His hand is warm and heavy where it rests on my arm, and I can feel the solid strength of him at my side. My pulse skips. It’s ridiculous — I’ve dated plenty of men before. None of them ever made my knees turn to jello before.
His hand is big and warm. The feeling of his fingers pressing lightly against me short circuits my brain.
It’s almost enough to distract me from the fact that something is very clearly off here.
Almost.