“Not if he’d never seen or heard or smelled whatever was out there. Something brand new he wouldn’t know.”
The golden-haired, golden-eyed, golden-skinned man scoffed at me. “And what could that possibly be?”
“I don’t know; that’s the point!”
His brows lifted, and he pressed his lips together and shot me a look like I’d crossed over from annoying to certifiable.
“Listen, I know everybody wants me gone, and believe me, if Quade would let me, I would be outta here tomorrow, but––”
“No,” he stopped me, gracing me with a smile that fired his eyes. He was a handsome man, the lion shifter who made his home on the property. “No one wants you gone.”
I made a pained sound. “Linus hates me, so everyone else does too.”
“Hates you for what?”
I was not going to discuss ancient history with him. “Never mind. Just believe me when I tell you there’s a… something”—I waved my hand vaguely—“out there.”
He winced like, how in the world did I draw the short straw, and now I have to talk to the crazy person?
“And it has to be big to frighten everything out of the forest.”
“As I was explaining, Kelvin was just in the woods, and if anything was going to strike fear into the animals, it would be him.”
Jon’s mate was a werewolf and shifted into the largest timber wolf I’d ever seen in my life, but even saying that, Kelvin was still just a single wolf. Without a pack around him, where was the danger? Yes, if a prey animal saw him, they would exercise caution, but not run all the way out of the woods. They would give themselves space, but not feel the need to cross into a wide-open area. Whatever this animal was, it had to be big to inspire fear, and Jon, as a lion, was even bigger than Kelvin in his shifted form. Hell, I was bigger than Kelvin in my jackal form.
Other shifters thought we jackals were like coyotes, small, rangy, but we were Egyptian jackal shifters, descendants of Abydos—if one held to that belief—and further, of his father, Anubis. But mythology or not, the fact was that in our shifted forms, we were all about the size of a black bear. Not as big as a grizzly, but a jackal was scarier than a wolf, at least one on one. And every shifter I’d ever seen was bigger, stronger, and faster than their pure animal counterparts. The difference, of course, was in the shift. There was different musculature involved. The metabolism had to sustain transforming from human to animal and back again. The forming and reforming of bones required a ridiculous intake of calories, and because it was also a great strain on the heart, we shifters had to run constantly to ensure that particular muscle stayed strong and healthy. Because I had not been able to run in weeks, I was foul- and short-tempered and, I knew, was also feeling extra sorry for myself. So because Jon was there, and because he annoyed me the least of all the other people on L’Ange, I was dumping on him.
“Listen, I’m not crazy. Something is going on in the forest.”
Jon grimaced. “And yet—” He took a breath. “—we can’t find anything.”
“I swear to you, all kinds of animals have run behind my cabin and crossed the river to get to the other side of the property, which would take them into town, not deeper into the forest. That’s not normal.”
“Agreed,” Jon said with a shrug, “but there’s no sign of anything out of the ordinary.”
I stared at him. “Think about it logically; what would drive other animals from their normal hunting or feeding grounds?”
He was trying to work it through with me.
“Either a substantially larger pack of wolves…” I suggested.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “or something really big.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “A Kodiak bear, maybe.”
“But would the animals run from that?”
“I don’t think so. Not any more so than a black bear or a grizzly,” Jon concluded, arms crossed, studying me as he stood beside the fire.
“What about a mountain lion?”
He made a pained noise. “I’ve seen very few, and still, one cat?”
“True.”
“I mean, I’m bigger than a mountain lion,” he reminded me, “and when I’m in the forest in my shifted form, the deer always look at me like I’ve personally affronted them by being in their vicinity.”
I smiled at him; I couldn’t help it. He was funny and self-deprecating and vain and cocky all at the same time. If every big cat was like him, I wish I knew more of them.
“When I run on the grounds in my human form, the deer don’t react,” he explained. “I think it’s because the animals, predator and prey, have never been given a reason to be scared of people. They’ve never been hunted by humans. Generations have lived and died on the preserve, and while they know their natural predators, they don’t know about guns.”
“I agree,” I stressed to him. “Nothing on L’Ange, man or animal, would freak the animals out, so that’s why I’m asking you, why are animals that have never been scared before, suddenly running? What does that tell you?”
We were silent as he moved to drop into the large wingback chair near the couch where I sat with my broken ankle elevated on the coffee table, a throw pillow shoved under the cast. He looked tired.
“What are you thinking?” I asked when the quiet began to stretch.
“That the timing couldn’t be worse for any of us to go on a wild goose chase for an animal or a crazed shifter.”
“Well, no time is good for that, but what makes now worse than, say, two days ago?”
He rubbed his forehead and huffed out a deep breath. “Nothing makes it worse than two days ago, but two weeks ago? Yeah. Big difference.”
“Why?”
“We’ve recently had an influx of visitors to L’Ange.”
“You mean people needing shelter?”
“No.”
“People here to see the antiques?”
“No, no,” he assured me. “The house is closed from the day before Christmas to mid-January. There are no humans on the property right now except for the staff.”
“So then, who’re you talking about?”
“There are shifters who’ve just showed up, but they’re not… what… um, normal, I guess.”
“Define normal.”
“We’re overrun with deer princes.”
I squinted at him.
“Yeah, I know how it sounds, but Linus says that one of the guys who showed up, Luco Ansgar, is their king’s son.”
“I didn’t know there was any one person that ruled over an entire group of shifters except for the wolves. I thought all the rest only had territorial leaders like we do.”
“I did too.”
“Do the lions have one king?”
“No, just like jackals, there’s an individual rex per territory, however that was originally carved out. Some prides are large, and some are much smaller.”
“But deer have only one?”
“Apparently, much like the Queen of England and not at all like the Faoladh, the high alpha of the wolves, the King of the Glen is more a figurehead than a ruler. Each deer fain has their own royal family and, therefore, their own prince.”