Eight
Cam
He’s here,” cal called from the front room. i dropped the dish i was trying to put away.
“Who?”
“Who d’ya think,” Cal replied, just as tires stopped crunching on the gravel of the driveway.
“That’s early,” I grumbled. Cal loomed in the doorway, glowering at me.
“Get,” he said, and I glanced at the dish on the floor, then scrambled to get into my fur and into my pen at the same time.
I winced as my paws landed on the floor, sending shudders of pain through my injured shoulder. I turned myself around three times and curled up on the blanket, listening to Cal greet Wyatt at the door.
“He’s doing good, I think,” Cal said as they headed toward me, the door falling shut behind them. “I’m not bothering with him too much, giving him some space, you know?”
“Probably wise,” Wyatt said softly. He sounded tired.
Maybe it had been a long day. It was spring, after all, which meant most of the farm animals around here were giving birth, which meant a lot of work for vets.
Burt always bitched about the long hours Vern worked in the spring, same as Vern bitched about the long hours Burt worked in the fall.
Cal and Wyatt appeared at the mouth of the hallway, cast in shadow until Cal flicked on the overhead light. I squinted at the brightness, half-ready to snarl at my brother. I barely registered his smirk before I turned my attention to Wyatt.
Wyatt, who looked like he’d been up since dawn and then dragged through a cattle field, streaked with mud and God-knew what else, hair both windblown and matted at the same time, cheeks red and chapped from the wind.
Wyatt, who somehow smelled amazing.
Wait. That didn’t make any sense. I crinkled my nose, trying to take in the scent further.
From the way he looked, he’d probably been helping on one of the ranches today, so if nothing else, he should have smelled like fresh earth and hay.
Maybe manure, depending on where he’d been and how long. Or, at the very least, animal.
But he smelled much fresher, something like the crisp scent of new fallen snow: clean and wild and pure, and I wanted to go on smelling that scent—and nothing but that scent—for the rest of my life.
I rolled my tongue toward the roof of my mouth without thinking. I whimpered involuntarily, my eyes flashing wide. I looked fretfully at Cal, whose shocked expression likely mirrored my own.
Before he could speak, though, I was shifting. It was involuntary; I couldn’t have stopped it if I tried.
In a matter of seconds, I went from being a coyote to my human shape, lying there naked on the blankets, and in wicked danger of showing off my dick to the cute new vet.
The cute new vet, who was an omega.
An omega in heat.
“What the fuck,” Wyatt spat, eyes wide and round.
At the same time, Cal cried, “What the hell, Cam!”
“I’m sorry!” I barked. “I couldn’t help it!” I turned to Wyatt. “You—”
“What the fuck did I just see?” the vet demanded. “There was a coyote here—an injured coyote—and now you’re …” He gestured to me. Then he screwed his eyes shut and shook his head. “Oh my God, are you werewolves?”
“We’re not wolves,” I pointed out helpfully.
“It’s not a full moon,” Cal offered.
Wyatt shook his head again. “How—what—how?” he stammered, hands coming up to rub at his temples. “Were-coyotes, you’re human, but you’re not? But you change shapes, but you—”
He drew a sharp breath. “Am I dreaming? Am I hallucinating?”
“No,” Cal said, remarkably calm given the situation.
I suspected I’d feel the full weight of his wrath later, for revealing our secret to a human outsider.
But, for now, he realized the best thing to do was keep calm and carry on.
Us freaking out was only going to make Wyatt’s meltdown harder to manage.
Wyatt turned wide eyes on my brother. “Have I gone crazy?” he asked, his voice falling to a whisper.
“Also no,” Cal said helpfully. He shot a look at me. “Cam, go get some pants on, so we can talk about this in a civilized way.”
Grumbling, I tugged the blanket around my waist and got to my feet.
“Civilized,” Wyatt huffed, almost like a laugh.
Cal gave him a look. “Why don’t you come sit down, and I’ll get you something to drink, Wyatt? It’ll help calm the nerves.”
“Sure,” Wyatt huff-laughed again, then followed Cal to the kitchen. I watched them go, then headed upstairs to get pants.
I didn’t know how Cal hadn’t noticed Wyatt’s scent.
Or maybe he had, and he just wasn’t commenting on it?
I felt myself bristle at the thought—Cal was acting real calm, but there was no way in hell he hadn’t noticed there was an omega in heat standing in our house.
And that was why he’d sent me upstairs to get pants.
Because while I was out of the room, Cal was going to woo Wyatt, claim him, and—
I nearly broke my neck rushing down the stairs. My bum arm jarred and complained with every step, and it was harder to balance without it, which meant I slammed into the wall as I took the corner into the back hall too tight.
I burst into the kitchen, bellowing, “Keep your paws off him, Cal!”
Both Cal and Wyatt blinked owlishly up at me, Wyatt over the rim of the chipped coffee mug he was nursing.
“The hell are you talking about, Cameron?” Cal’s face clouded over. “Sit your ass down and help me explain this mess. After all, it’s your fault.”
I pursed my lips, then slowly sank into one of the honey-colored, round-back chairs at the table.
Cal glared at me for a second or two, a silent threat.
Then he turned his head to look at Wyatt again.
“We’re shapeshifters,” he said, as gently as he could.
“There are … I won’t say lots, but a fair few of us around at least. As far as I know, shifters—that’s what we call ourselves—have been around for as long as humans, maybe longer. ”
“Since time immemorial,” I said, echoing some of the tales our MeeMaw used to tell us, which she had heard from her great-grandma, who heard it from her grandma, and so on.
“We don’t much like humans, so we tend to keep to ourselves.” Cal paused, looking up at the ceiling. “Or maybe that’s the other way around—humans don’t much like us.”
Wyatt took a pointed sip from his mug, his hazel gaze pinned to Cal. He pressed his lips into a thin line, but he said nothing.
I used the moment to study him—the red of his cheeks wasn’t from the wind but a low fever. His eyes were bright too. And here, sitting this close to him, his winter-fresh scent washed over me in waves. I had to fight the urge to nuzzle right up to his neck and inhale as deep as I could.
“Anyway,” Cal said when Wyatt remained silent, “it is what it is. Either way, humans and shifters tend to avoid mingling. We’ve got our own little towns and enclaves—Coyote Creek is one of ’em.”
Wyatt licked his lips, and I tried not to stare. God, he looked kissable. “You mean there’s more of you?”
Cal offered him a sheepish grin. “Sure,” he said.
“There are humans here too, but a lot of the folks in this town are shifters. I won’t tell you who, but there’s us, for starters.
The whole Carlyle clan’s one big coyote pack.
And there’s at least one fellow who’s a horse shifter, and another couple of bovine shifters live on nearby ranches. ”
“I see,” Wyatt said very slowly. “And it’s not … like being a werewolf?”
I cleared my throat. “Not like in the movies,” I said.
Relief washed over me, along with something like pride, as the brunet turned to look at me.
I had his attention at last. Our eyes met, and I held his gaze as steadily as I could, swelling with the profoundness of the moment.
“We can shift anytime we want,” I said, “not just when the moon is full. And we can control it.”
Cal shot me a look, and I wilted into my chair. “Well, most of the time, anyway.”
Wyatt twisted around in his chair so he was facing me. His brow crunched with worry. “You mean you shifted accidentally there?”
I felt heat in my cheeks. “Well, yeah—” I certainly hadn’t meant to shift in front of him and reveal that shifters were a thing, especially not when Cal had told me specifically not to do that.
Wyatt’s frown deepened. “Why? Is it because you’re injured? Does that have something to do with it, is it interfering with you being able to shift or—”
“It’s you,” I blurted, feeling my own cheeks warm as his got redder.
He blinked. The mug trembled in his hand. “What do you mean?”
I glanced at Cal quickly, then took a sharp breath. “Wyatt, this might be hard to hear, but please don’t freak out. I … think you might be an omega.”
Wyatt stared blankly at me. Which I supposed was better than freaking out. Then he said, in measured tones, “What’s an omega?”
“Not this again,” Cal muttered, slapping the table as he stood up. “All right, that’s enough. Wyatt, I’m gonna drive you up to Vern’s, all right? You’ve had quite the shock, so I don’t want you out there on the roads by yourself—it’s getting late, and you look bone-tired.”
I shot up out of my seat. “I’ll drive him.”
Cal and Wyatt both gave me a pointed look. Slowly, Cal’s gaze lifted from my hastily wrapped sling to my face. “You can’t drive yourself anywhere right now, Cam.”
Shit. I’d forgotten about that. I clenched my hands into fists, letting my nails bite into my palms. I couldn’t let Cal separate me from Wyatt. Not while Wyatt was in heat.
Not even after that. Not ever again, I realized. I didn’t want to be away from my mate ever.
I blinked. Mate? Where the hell did that thought come from?
Wyatt was getting to his feet now too. “It’s a real nice offer, Cal, but I think I’ll be okay—”
“You can’t,” I said, desperation bleeding into my tone. Oh God, I sounded like some lovesick teenager.
Both Wyatt and Cal turned to look at me, Wyatt with confusion and Cal with derision. “Can’t what?” Wyatt asked.
“Leave,” I blurted, then bit my lip. I shifted my weight from foot to foot as the silence weighed on us.
Cal’s expression clouded over. “Right,” he said. “Wyatt, go get in the truck. Get Vern to bring you down here tomorrow to get your car. It’ll be fine here overnight.”
“O-okay,” Wyatt said, clearly confused and startled by this turn of events.
“You can’t,” I gritted out, reaching for his arm as he hurried out of the kitchen. Cal slapped my hand down.
“When I get back,” he growled, and if I’d been in my fur, I would have flattened my ears against my head. Maybe even rolled over and showed him my belly.
Without another word, Cal turned and strode out of the kitchen. I heard the back door close, shoes on gravel, the sound of a car door opening.
My mate was leaving. My mate was leaving me.
I couldn’t stop the shift this time either. I found myself with all four paws on the kitchen tile, and I tossed back my head and howled.