Hope: Maybe you’ll meet Mr. Right.
Melody: More like the missing link. Talk soon.
I smiled and put my phone away. While I squeezed the ends of my wet hair and listened to Hank Williams Jr. growling on the jukebox, I noticed something peculiar. There weren’t any women. I didn’t recall seeing any on the other side of the wall, either. And I found that odd.
As much as I wanted to turn around and make sure I wasn’t imagining things, the last thing I wanted to do was give anyone the impression that I was checking them out. Men often outnumbered women in Shifter communities. That wasn’t the strange part. But guys, especially alphas, loved having their women by their sides. Even Shifters who lived in mansions liked to get out and socialize, including women. Perhaps I’d wandered into the Bermuda Triangle of the South.
Just as I found my location on the map, my burger magically appeared.
“Ketchup?” the bartender asked.
“No, thanks,” I said warily, eyeing my smashed bun. “Can I have some mustard?”
“There’s a gas station five miles up the road. Ketchup is all we’ve got.” He patted the bar twice. “I’m Red. If you need anything, just holler.”
My uncle Denver worked as a bartender, and if I knew one thing, it was how long it took to properly grill a burger. This wasn’t fresh. It was a precooked patty he’d tossed in the microwave. The bun had that distinct freezer burn smell bread gets when it’s been in cryosleep for too long and is then revived in a toaster oven.
“Is the city girl too good for our food?”
I swung my eyes to the man sitting three stools over—the one with a grizzly bear tattooed on his forearm and a camouflage cowboy hat atop his head. “Is the country boy too good for manners?”
The two men on either side of him heckled him. “She got you there, Jimmy.”
When the jukebox switched over to Patsy Cline, I resumed squinting at the map. Shikoba, the dealer I was meeting with, had provided directions that began with street names and ended with landmarks. “Turn right when you see a big rock” and “turn left at the white tree.” The rain needed to let up so I could see the big rock and the white tree.
“Something wrong with your burger?” Red asked.
When I heard the disappointment in his voice, I took a bite. No sense in insulting the staff. It required all the strength I could summon to swallow that bite, and I struggled not to gag when I realized it wasn’t beef. Probably deer meat, or maybe something else was added as filler. I quickly shoved a handful of fries into my mouth and washed it down with root beer. “Do you know where I can find a man named Shikoba?”
He rested his forearms on the bar, and I spied a grease stain on his button-up denim shirt. “Are you law?”
“No. Just a friend.”
Jimmy leaned over the bar to grab a stack of napkins. “You’re friends with an injun?”
“Quiet down,” Red snapped.
Oh, what redneck hell did I just walk into?
I’d visited Oklahoma several times, and usually the locals were amiable people. Then again, I’d never been around these parts. Regardless of the flagrant use of offensive words, I had a job to do, and someone in here might be able to point me in the right direction so I could be on my merry way.
Red leaned in and said quietly, “Don’t mind him. He recently lost his mate and ain’t been himself.”
“Do you know anyone by that name?” I asked Red.
Jimmy leaned forward and pushed up his camo hat with his index finger. “They all sound the same to me. Like someone hacking up a lung.”
My blood boiled. Thank the fates Hope hadn’t come with me, or else I would have gotten my arrows out of the car and taught Jimmy some manners.
The thought was still playing out in my head while I methodically folded my map, making sure each crease was precise. “I just assumed you guys were local and knew everyone around here. My mistake.”
Someone circled around to my right, slowly, so I would feel his presence as he appraised me. When the black-haired man spoke, it was edged with humor. “Twenty dollars says she’s a bobcat.”
I smiled up at him. “I’ve got thirty riding on you being an asshole.”
His eyebrows arched high. “Yep. She’s lippy. Definitely a predator. Grizzly?”
Jimmy spoke gruffly. “She’s not a grizzly.”
The bartender laughed. “And how do you know that, Jimmy? She bathes?”
Then the power flickered, followed by a crash of thunder. Several men in the back hollered, clearly enjoying the light show outside.
I ate more fries, amused by the banter among the men. It wasn’t uncommon for Shifters to have a little fun with the tourists by guessing their animal. It had become a recreational pastime, and my old pack had engaged in the same behavior numerous times back at Howlers on a slow night.
I whipped my head around when I heard a baaaa.
The bartender peered over the bar. “Will one of y’all get Freddy the hell out of here? Damn drunk. Hurry up before he shits on my floor.”
Jimmy slid off his barstool and picked up the goat. “Come on, Freddy. You ain’t supposed to be in here on the weekdays, anyhow.”
And just when I thought things couldn’t get any stranger…
A formidable man entered the bar. His brown hair, just past his shoulders, blew forward and tangled when a gust of wind carried in the strong smell of rain. Lightning flashed behind him, and he didn’t so much as flinch at the thunderclap. He stood at the entrance as if he were guarding it, his blue eyes arresting.
Chills swept over my arms, and for the first time, I felt butterflies in my stomach. Not the kind you got when danger was imminent but something else entirely, something that made me suck in a breath and hold it.
Lakota Cross, Hope’s older brother, had matured into a handsome man whose very presence commanded attention. It was as if he’d shed every last boyish feature he’d carried into his twenties. Now thirty, he possessed a magnetic aura—one that could easily be mistaken for an alpha wolf, even though he wasn’t.
The white T-shirt beneath his leather jacket hugged his body. Not an ounce of fat was visible. I was so used to seeing him in sweatshirts or long shorts that it took me a second to soak it all in. He tucked his hands in his jeans pockets and fell into a staring contest with Jimmy, whose lip curled at the sight of him. Just as Jimmy exited the building, two Natives entered the bar and flanked Lakota.
They garnered stares from a few men sitting at the bar. It was in that moment that it occurred to me that all the men sitting in the booths on the other side of the divider wall were Native American, and none of the men on my side were. It was as if I’d stepped into a time machine and transported myself to 1952, and not in a good way.
I patted my hand against the bar to summon the bartender. “Exactly what are the rules in here?”
He popped open a bottle of beer before answering. “No fighting, no shifting, and no skipping out on the tab.”
“That’s it?”
When he pointed behind me, I glanced up at the wall over the jukebox to a sign I’d failed to notice. It was wooden, and the red paint had faded. An arrow pointed to the right, and the lettering read TRIBES.
Which meant the place segregated patrons. Two black men were doing shots at a booth behind me, so it had nothing to do with skin color and everything to do with the local tribes. I’d never seen anything like it in Austin. Some Shifters resented Natives because they owned good land passed down from their ancestors—land that neither the white settlers nor the higher authority had gotten their hands on. Usually I’d seen the animosity in the form of a few grumbles between packs, but nothing like this.