Six
Cam
Istumbled back into the door as someone slammed into me at light speed. i grimaced as i hit my bum shoulder against the solid wood, gritted my teeth against a curse, and straightened up.
I clapped my hands on the new vet’s shoulders. He looked up at me, eyes wide.
“What’s going on?” I heard myself ask.
“The coyote’s gone,” he said, and I could have kicked myself.
Of course the coyote was gone—I had shifted back last night before dinner, because being penned in the laundry room was uncomfortable.
I’d eaten dinner with Wyatt and Cal, then taken a shower and slept in my own (much more comfortable) bed.
I’d got up this morning and headed out to do some “light work,” as Burt, our lead hand, called it.
“Gone?” I asked, stalling for time. I hadn’t expected Wyatt to drop in this early. I needed to distract him somehow, so I could run off and shift, then get back into the laundry room in coyote form. Without him noticing.
“Y-yeah.” Wyatt sounded scared shitless. “I’m sorry, there’s a coyote running loose in your house—”
I frowned a little. I’d thought for sure that, since Wyatt was an omega, he’d know about shifters. Heck, I figured he probably was one. But it seemed like he hadn’t put two and two together, which suggested he didn’t know about shifters.
Which meant he either didn’t know he was one, or he wasn’t one at all.
But that couldn’t be right—he smelled like an omega. He had to be a shifter. Humans didn’t have omegas.
“Well, come on,” I said. “We’d better go find him, before he can get into any mischief.”
Wyatt blinked, apparently surprised at how calm I was. Honestly, I wished I could tell him that the number of times there had been more than half a dozen coyotes on the loose in this house was in the hundreds.
But I couldn’t risk it. We never knew who did and didn’t know about shifters when we got new blood in town, and Cal would have my hide if I accidentally revealed to a human that shifters were a thing that existed.
I clapped Wyatt on the shoulder, then dashed toward the laundry room. Maybe I could hop into the room and shift while he was standing there dumbfounded.
No, that wouldn’t work. He’d see me.
I rushed past the laundry room and slipped around the corner instead. I wound up in the family room. I heard hesitant footsteps coming down the hall after me. “Uh, Cam?”
Thinking fast, I dashed through the room, around another corner, heading to the stairs. “I’ll check the upstairs!” I hollered. “You check in the basement!”
“T-the basement?!” Wyatt sounded horrified, but I heard him tromp down the stairs.
Excellent. I didn’t bother heading upstairs.
Instead, I waited a beat or two, then shifted and trotted back to the laundry room.
I hopped over the fence meant to keep me penned in, wincing as I landed.
I settled down on the blankets Cal had so generously provided for me to sleep on—the oldest, most threadbare ones in the house. I put my snout on my paws and waited.
A few minutes later, Wyatt treaded back up the stairs. “I can’t find the coyote anywhere,” he announced as he wandered back toward the living room.
When he didn’t get a response, he called, “Cam?”
I pricked my ears and lifted my head, an instinctual response to hearing my name.
Wyatt stilled, then turned around. He stared at me, and I stared right back. He pursed his lips. Then, without a word, he charged off again.
I flicked an ear and tilted my head. What was he up to now?
I heard feet on the stairs, along with his muffled yells. “Cam? Cam!”
Then came the sound of his footsteps back down the stairs. There was a long pause after that, before he finally re-emerged—holding my clothes.
Ah, fuck.
He stared at me. “Did you eat him?” he asked finally.
I rolled my eyes—a difficult feat in this form. It was hard to look sarcastic without eyebrows.
He looked down at my shirt. “I just don’t get it,” he murmured.
Thank God Cal walked in right then. I yipped to get his attention. “What’s up, Ca—oh, hey there, Wyatt.”
Wyatt looked up at my brother, blinking. “Uh, hey,” he said, almost shrinking into himself. His pale cheeks were dusted with pink suddenly.
God, he was so cute. I blinked at my own thoughts. Cute? I hadn’t used the word cute to describe someone since high school, which was getting perilously close to ten years ago now.
Well, other than little kids—I’d always had a soft spot for kids.
Wyatt would probably have cute kids.
And there went my train of thought, runaway down a mountain, descending into a valley of utter fantasy, where Wyatt was a shifter omega and we hooked up—no, scratch that, got married and had cute little pups ever after.
Oh, fuck, that was a bad train of thought.
Cal snapped his fingers, drawing my attention back to reality. “Got out?” Cal was asking.
Wyatt nodded, then seemed to realize he was still limply holding my discarded shirt. He tossed it away quickly. “Uh—I guess he came back though?” He turned to look at me, frowning. “Although I guess he jumped the gate.” He gritted his teeth. “And on that shoulder …”
And I was back to thinking he was cute, especially when he was concerned about a patient. Sure, he was a little more on the waifish side than what I usually went for, but I could work with it.
Cal rubbed his forehead. “I see.” He glanced at me. “Well, he’s back now. I’ll look at getting a higher gate or something. Forgot these buggers are pretty good jumpers.”
Wyatt drew a breath, then said, “That’s not the weird part.”
“Huh?” Both Cal and I turned to look at him.
Face set in determination, he gritted out, “Your brother disappeared.”
Cal stared at him for a long moment, mouth twisting around possible things to say. At length, he said, “What do you mean, disappeared?”
Wyatt waved an arm. “He went upstairs to check for the coyote while I checked the basement. When I came back, the coyote was back, but Cam isn’t anywhere. I went upstairs to check”—he was blushing again, the little sweetheart—“but he wasn’t there.”
“Well,” Cal said.
“And his clothes were all over the place.”
Cal opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again. He tossed a furious look my way. Then he plastered on a smile, clapping a hand on Wyatt’s shoulder. “I’ll bet you that’s just yesterday’s clothes or something,” he said.
Wyatt’s brows knitted together. “But—”
Cal waved a hand and started forcibly steering the vet toward the back door. “Cam’s one of those guys that dresses like a cartoon character—same outfit, right down to his socks.”
“But where did he go?”
“Who knows? Maybe he went up in the attic or climbed out on the roof.”
“To look for a coyote? With a broken arm?”
Cal’s deep chuckle resonated down the hall. “I see you don’t know my brother very well yet.”
The door opened, then banged shut as Cal steered our guest outside, blocking the rest of their conversation.
I waited a moment, then laid my head down on my paws.
I could have shifted and gone out, put an end to Wyatt’s questions—but I didn’t want to, just in case they came back in for something.
We didn’t need the coyote “escaping” a second time.
“You fucking idiot,” Cal hissed when he stormed back inside nearer to sunset.
“What?” I asked from the pan I was babysitting over the stove. I’d shifted back about an hour ago, figuring Wyatt was long gone and I’d better get dinner on or Cal’d have my head.
“He’s suspicious as fuck,” Cal grumped, leaning back against the counter and folding his arms. He glowered at me.
I rolled my eyes and hefted the saltshaker, dumping a liberal amount onto the potatoes I was frying. I wasn’t much of a cook, but I knew my way around a potato or two. “What, am I supposed to hold my shift twenty-four seven, just in case the vet decides to show up?”
Cal scowled. “No,” he said finally. “But you might have guessed.”
“The last two days, he’s visited around supper time, not two in the afternoon,” I grumbled.
Cal shifted. “Maybe we can get him to call ahead,” he said.
“Maybe we can just get him to stop visiting,” I said, then clamped my mouth shut. The words left a bitter taste on my tongue.
Cal glanced at me. “He ain’t gonna stop until he’s satisfied his patient’s all healed up.”
I waved my arm, which was going stiff from being in the sling. “I’m healing up pretty good. I think I’ll be right as rain in another day or two.”
It was true; shifter healing abilities allowed us to recover much faster than a mere human would. It was pretty handy when you lived in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by farm accidents waiting to happen.
Cal sighed. “All right,” he said. “I’ll try to get him to call ahead for the next couple of days, though. He clearly doesn’t know about our kind, and we’re not gonna be the ones to let it slip either.”
I sucked in a breath. I knew better than to argue with Cal, especially about something like this. Still. “I’m pretty sure he’s an omega,” I said.
Cal paused. I ignored him, dumping the potatoes out of the frying pan into a serving bowl. Then I leaned down to check on the ribs, which were sizzling away in the oven.
“How do you figure?” Cal asked when I straightened up again.
I frowned. “Can’t you smell him?”
Cal pursed his lips, then shook his head. “Oh, great,” I muttered, “maybe my sniffer’s busted too.”
Cal gave me a funny look. He scratched at his cheek, then heaved a sigh and pushed away from the counter. “Right, well. Omega or not, he doesn’t seem to know, and my point stands. We aren’t gonna be the ones who let him in on the secret. Got it?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled, sliding on oven mitts and diving in after the ribs. “I hear ya.”