Chapter 15 Arden
ARDEN
Arden should have been terrified by the question itself. Knowing that her new friends were all shifters was one thing. Actually seeing them in their huge, bestial animal forms was something else entirely.
But she couldn’t imagine that Baz would ever hurt her. And she was delighted by the possibility of finally seeing him as his other self. Nervous anticipation thrilled through her.
“No, of course not.” Arden released his hand and stepped back. “Go ahead.”
Baz had been looking anywhere but at her. Now, with relief visible in every line of his body, he looked her square in the eyes—and a teasing smile touched the corner of his mouth. He began taking off his jacket, right there, in the rain.
“Wait, what are you doing?” she asked wildly.
“I can’t shift without destroying my clothes. Could you hold these for me?”
Without waiting for a response, he began passing items to her. Jacket, T-shirt—oh no, now she got to appreciate the full view of his naked torso, the rain coursing across the curly chest hair, the rippling of muscles in his pecs and abs.
He began to unfasten his jeans.
“Those too?” Arden squeaked out, and he looked up and flashed her a quick grin.
The jeans joined the rest of the pile in her arms, still body-warm. His low-topped boots were as soaked and muddy as her shoes, so rather than handing her those to hold, he placed them on a low tree branch, with his wet socks stuffed inside.
He was now standing before her almost naked, with nothing but his boxers—and soaked as they were, nothing was left to the imagination. Arden’s face felt hot enough that she could have warmed her cold hands on it.
Where she really wanted to warm her hands was on his gorgeous body. The chest. The shoulders, the flexing muscles—
He skimmed out of his underwear, putting them in the tree as well, and she had a brief brain-melting glimpse of all of him, a half-hard cock nestled in light brown curls.
And then he shifted and splashed to all fours as an enormous grizzly.
Arden took an involuntary step back, nearly losing her balance in the swirling ankle-deep water.
It wasn’t that she was afraid. It was just—that was a lot of bear.
The muscular hump of his shoulders was nearly as high as her head. She knew grizzlies were big, but she never realized they were that big. His shaggy fur was dark with rain, although she thought if he was dry, it might have been similar in color to his hair as a human, light sun-streaked brown.
He swung his big head toward her. Some primitive part of her hindbrain tried to tell her that she ought to run. But there was no real fear in her. His eyes were intelligent, the same gold-hazel color as Baz’s eyes. Because of course it was Baz, and Baz would never hurt her.
“You’re ... big,” she managed.
He gave a grunting cough of a laugh and began to walk forward. Arden moved against the tree where he had stored his boots, stood with her back against the trunk and watched him explore the overgrown clearing, sniffing everything above the waterline.
The wishing well in particular seemed to interest him, and he used his claws to tear away some of the vines and blackberry canes.
Arden could see more of its structure now.
There was a circular base made of large stones, standing about as high as her waist, then a wooden structure supporting a shingled roof and a bucket winding mechanism.
It really was an old-fashioned well. She wondered if it was capped off or open, because that might be a hazard they would need to do something about.
She thought she saw flashes of color among the vines and canes as Baz ripped into the overgrown mess with his paws.
After Baz moved away to sniff something else, Arden splashed to the well and discovered that what she had seen were—toys?
There were a few small plastic items embedded in the wild overgrowth that had covered the well, too tangled up for the water to pull them away.
She saw a toy horse, a doll, and what looked like it had once been a stuffed animal, though it was so decrepit by now that she couldn’t even make out its original shape.
“We used to bring little gifts for the well,” Baz said.
Arden whipped around and found him human-shaped again, standing by the tree as he reached for his shoes.
“We would leave them when we made wishes. I can’t believe everything is still there.
I guess that shows how often people must come here.
Could I have my pants back, if you don’t mind? ”
But what if I do mind? she could have said.
However, now that he was human again, she saw gooseflesh prickling his bare arms and legs, so she splashed over to give him his clothes back.
Not that it made a huge amount of difference at this point.
They both were as wet as if they had been standing under a waterfall.
“What did you find out?” she asked.
Baz’s head emerged, with a struggle, from the neck hole of his wet and clinging T-shirt.
“It’s hard to tell in the rain, with all the flowing water, exactly what happened.
A bear’s sense of smell is hundreds of times sharper than a human’s, and I can smell Fern all over the place, and that . ... guy.”
Arden could sense the expletive in the pause.
“But I don’t think he hurt her, necessarily. I mean, nothing I smelled here suggests it. His scent is fresher than hers. I think he found her here like he said.”
“Baz ...” Arden ventured. “I know the forest shifters got pretty confrontational with me, and I—I appreciate you defending me, I really do, but I don’t think they’re actually trying to hurt us.
It’s going to make it hard to get along with them if we go into every interaction thinking they’re wrong. ”
“Who said we want to get along with them?” Baz growled.
Then he sighed and rubbed his forehead, pushing back his wet hair in a way that was unfairly distracting.
“No, you’re right. It’s—it’s hard to explain to a human.
We’re very territorial, us shifters. To be honest, now that I’ve felt it for myself, I think that’s the biggest problem that we’re having with them.
This town isn’t within their territory, because they consider it human space, but they don’t like having a new shifter clan move in on their borders. ”
“Oh,” Arden said. She turned it over in her head. Then she shivered. “You know, it’s really wet out here, and if you’re done—”
“Yeah, we need to get back to find out how Fern’s doing.” But he turned back toward the wishing well. “Hold on a minute. Stay here.”
The water was noticeably deeper than when they’d first arrived, Arden couldn’t help noticing as he waded over to the well.
It was above his boot tops now. Bending down, he carefully untangled something from the thorny shrubs surrounding the well.
He returned to Arden, splashing through the water, and she saw he was carrying the toy horse.
“It was going to get washed away,” he said, sounding slightly embarrassed.
“Can I hold it?”
Arden held out her hand, and Baz placed it in her palm. The toy horse was about six inches high and tan-colored. Up close, she could see it had been out in the weather for a while. One side was still a bright chestnut; the other was faded to a pale yellow from sitting in the sun for years.
“Which one of you left this at the well?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. I think it was Lexie. Or maybe Maida, Declan’s sister. You haven’t met her yet. She was kind of a horse girl when we were all kids.”
Yet? she thought, and something in her chest swelled like a warm sun, in spite of the cold, rainy day. Baz clearly thought she would be sticking around for a while.
I’m going to have to tell him about Grant. EVERYTHING about Grant. That awareness cooled the sun in her chest; in fact it was a good internal match for the cold ice water trickling down the back of her neck.
But not yet. Not quite yet.
“Baz—” she began, then suddenly had a confused sense of something—huge? and dark? swooping over her.
Whatever it was, it flew in near-total silence. Arden looked up quickly, just as the vague dark impression of an enormous something vanished into the roiling fog and low clouds. It was like a huge bird, just above the treetops.
Arden realized she had grabbed Baz’s arm.
“Baz, what on earth was that?”
“What was what?” Baz asked, wearing the world’s least convincing innocent face.
“That—that thing!” Arden was already struggling to make sense of what she’d seen.
Maybe it really had been a large bird, an eagle or something.
But surely no eagle was that huge. It was like a small airplane had passed overhead, except it had made no noise at all.
A crashing airplane, after something had gone wrong with its engines?
No, that made no sense either. She would have heard it hit the ground, or the engines start up again, or something.
“Look, let’s deal with this later,” Baz said, steering her with a hand in the small of her back. In spite of her confusion, she leaned into the touch. “We need to get in out of the wet and check on Fern. We can talk about this later.”
Arden recognized that tone of voice. Approximately as soon as I’m going to tell him about Grant. But she looked up repeatedly as Baz ushered her under the trees towards the backs of the houses.
There was something else in these woods, something other than feral shifters.
Something even scarier.
Arden heard the low noise of a generator as they got closer to Lexie’s blacksmith shop, and light streamed out of the windows into the gray, rainy twilight of early evening.
When Baz opened the door, welcome heat washed over them.
There was a fire burning in the stove, and delicious food smells made Arden’s stomach growl.
“Oh good, we were just about to send out a search party!” Lexie called. “Or maybe launch an ark.”