“Yeah. Thanks. I’ll clean up the mess here before I take off.”
3
Shawna bit her lip and shifted her weight in the tree. She hated heights but she was high enough that her scent wouldn’t be easy to detect. She glanced at her watch. It was almost dusk. The bonfire had been lit and shifters were arriving slowly. A few were already dancing by the fire as the smell of cooked meat wafted over from the barbeques by the main house.
All packs handled their runnings differently. She knew the Nightwinds usually ran wild in the woods. They spread out, and it was easy to get a partner alone, but these shifters seemed to be more social about it. Unlike Nightwinds runnings, it wasn’t rural, dark and quiet, with random wolf howls echoing from woods glowing in moonlight. This was one big-ass party, with no privacy in sight, and that complicated things.
Most shifters liked to have sex on the full moon, but werewolves were especially notorious for it. It was nature’s version of Tinder for single wolves, and date night for the mated ones, where everyone fucked under the moonlight and walked around smiling and happy for the next week.
She had spied on a Nightwinds running as a teen. Her parents wouldn’t have risked bringing her, even if she’d been adopted by the pack and her life had been with them. They claimed it was too dangerous for any human, but she’d wanted to know…especially after she agreed to mate with one particular wolf once she was old enough. Shawna considered it essential in the name of education, but like her parents, Jeremiah hadn’t seen it that way.
He’d caught her before she could see much, tracking her to the spot behind the gas station where she sat crouched with binoculars, as if he’d known all along what she’d been planning. It wasn’t one of her prouder moments, but she’d been a frustrated teenager. He, on the other hand, was always so desperate to protect her, and stubbornly determined to ignore the attraction between them until she was old enough to handle what he truly was.
Even if she hadn’t wanted to wait.
Shawna shoved those memories away. After two marriages, she was pretty sure thoughts of her first love shouldn’t still hurt but the ache only seemed to get worse.
Maybe if she’d slept with him.
Maybe if their love had had time to grow old and boring, then she wouldn’t still feel the ache and burn of lost love most nights. She sighed softly.
There is no going back.
Shawna had been tempted a few times to check into his life. She hadn’t done it. She didn’t want to know who had become his mate and how many children they had. It would burn her up inside. That was the life she should have had. Any pups he helped conceive should have been hers. She should be the female he climbed into bed with every night and his face should be the one she woke up to.
Don’t go down this road.
She still couldn’t help doing it. When she was sitting sometimes, waiting for her target to show up, her mind tended to drift to why she’d ended up a hunter. Sad, lonely, and desperate to fill up that spot inside her that no amount of hunting could take away. And it all went back to Jeremiah Adam Zackary Zendell, otherwise known as the love of her life…whose father had destroyed everything.
She shifted her weight again, so her limbs didn’t go numb sitting on the wide branch high in the tree. Miserable and uncomfortable, she remembered the day Jeremiah claimed her as his.
She’d been fourteen and had gone to a pack gathering with her folks. Her dad always warned her to be careful with the male wolves, to stay close to him and other adults. She’d been chasing after a baby bunny that had somehow become separated from its mother. It was a cute little thing, probably just a month or so old, and then suddenly she’d been surrounded on all sides by Dean Hills, Tommy Radcliff, and Joe Blackhawk.
She shivered at the memory. She’d gone to pack classes with all of them and knew their families. Suddenly she felt the danger as they surrounded her in the woods with dark looks in their eyes that didn’t bode well for her. They weren’t shifted, she’d have felt safe if they’d been in fur, but they’d been in their skin.
She had always been small for her age. Slight. The males in the pack were naturally taller and huskier. She’d looked up at the three boys she’d once played tag with and knew she was in deep shit. A day out from the full moon wasn’t a time to end up alone with a bunch of horny teenage males.
They started to softly growl and close in on her, blocking off all escape. They’d sniffed at her, and she knew in that instant what they wanted. She’d had the birds-and-bees-and-wolves talk with her adopted mother. Wolf males had extremely high sex drives, but teenage pups had none of the control a full-grown male possessed—and they’d wanted her.
She didn’t want to think they were capable of something terrible. But when Dean Hills reached for her, she stepped back and tripped. A scream burst out of her from the shock. She wasn’t hurt, but she felt considerably more vulnerable sitting there in the dirt.
Before she could scramble to her feet, Jeremiah, the alpha’s son, was suddenly there in the woods with his best friend Desmon at his side. Both of them growled at the other teenage males, their gleaming human teeth growing long and wolflike in warning.
“Who told you it was okay to corner her in the woods?” Jeremiah’s voice was a low, animalistic growl of warning. “What made you think that was a good idea?”
“We were just trying to talk to her,” Dean Hills growled back. “I mean, shit…smell her.”
Dean’s words were a mistake. Jeremiah jumped at the other males, already half shifted with blond hair sprouting from his strong arms and face. It made him look vicious, unforgiving, and extremely alpha. He had attacked all three boys, his fists brutal and fierce with surprising fury. She flinched, wanting to look away, but not daring.
“I think they got the point,” Desmon warned Jeremiah after a few minutes. “If you can’t control your wolf, you’re as bad as them. It’s a weakness.”
Jeremiah growled, his light eyes narrowed as he met his best friend’s gaze. He shared a knowing look with Desmon, then he let go of Joe Blackhawk’s shirt and crawled to his feet. He took one step back, and then another, like he was waging a battle between fury and logic.
Desmon’s words must’ve hit home. The hair on Jeremiah’s face and neck receded. He finally turned his back and left his opponents bleeding and moaning on the grass. He walked over to her instead and dropped down on his knees. He studied her face, his blue gaze startling in the afternoon sunlight, and her breath caught with something other than fear.
Longing rushed through her body, warm and electric, as she looked up at him, and she hoped to God it didn’t show on her face with all the boys around.
The truth was, she’d had a crush on Jeremiah for a long time.
“Are you all right?” His voice was still gruff.
She nodded and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You had really good timing.”
“I keep an eye on you. I saw you leave, and—” His face and neck turned red like it did sometimes when he was angry. He had to take a long, cooling breath before he went on. “That was dangerous, especially near the full moon. When you want to walk in the woods, come get me first. You’re always safe with me.”