“Come on. Let’s get going.”

Corey looked up as Dell poked his head inside the door and stared in at him with those golden eyes. “Where are we going?” he asked, but he was already standing up and hurrying toward the door. He would go anywhere, with anyone, just to end this boredom of sitting around all day. All of his fear and confusion about the past week had been replaced by a sense of monotony, the hours broken apart only by meals and sleep. This was something new.

“To the mountains.”

Corey looked off toward the cold blue mountains on the horizon and then back at Dell. “Are we driving?”

“No.”

Well, that was a welcome change. He’d been treated like an invalid for the past week, not allowed to walk anywhere or do anything for himself, and now they were going to walk to the mountains.

But, not as humans.

He stopped in his tracks and looked over at Dell, unable to stop himself from admiring the way the alpha’s muscles moved beneath his shirt. His slim hips swayed with his walk, marking out a tempo of raw sexuality and purpose. At this point, there wasn’t any questioning whether or not he was gay. If he hadn’t been already, he certainly was now. Maybe that was the whole lesson he should be taking from this, to not judge himself by the past he couldn’t remember, but the present he was living.

“You’re going to make me turn into one of those creatures.”

“Quiet,” Dell murmured, nodding his head in the direction of an approaching woman, dragging one child behind her in a wagon while another followed behind on a skateboard. “We’ll talk in private.”

It felt like a thousand years before Dell deemed them far enough away from the city to talk, although in actuality it was only a few minutes. They headed down a slope together, almost side by side with their hands dangling between them. Both men were extremely aware of their proximity to one another. Corey found himself growing breathless the longer they walked together, every instinct in his body screaming for him to grab on.

Then, Dell pulled out ahead of him and turned around with his arms folded across his chest. “Listen now, okay?” he said. “You don’t ever have to do anything you don’t want to. There are some shapeshifters out there who hardly ever transform. It all depends upon your own preferences.”

That was new information to him. “You don’t… have to shift?”

“No, you don’t. But you need to know how to control it. Only when you know what to do, can you make the choice not to do it.”

That made sense. He nodded and took a deep breath. “Okay. So, what do we do?”

“Does it look like we’re at the mountains yet?”

“You’re seriously going to make us walk all the way over to the mountains?”

And Dell coughed out a soft laugh, but even though it was soft, it still sounded as fierce as a lion’s roar to Corey. “No. Not quite that far. We just need to get much farther from Eureka. You’re faster than me but you don’t know how to run yet, so I need the distance to be able to catch up to you if things go wrong.”

“I don’t know how to run?”

“You don’t know how to do anything,” Dell retorted. He turned around and started back up the next hill. “Come on. Get a move on.”

As they walked, he thought that he might recognize this part of the hills. The little scattered trees seemed familiar to him. Especially that one tree in particular where he was being led. “This is where you found me, isn’t it? Why are we back here?”

“I have hopes that the location will help you remember what it’s like to be a wolf, so you can shift again.”

I’ll never forget what that was like. A monster.

Dell gave another of those laughs, setting Corey’s insides to trembling. “I’m actually hoping you won’t be able to get enough traction to run here. The ground is pretty loose over here.”

“Oh.” Then, “You have the ground memorized?”

“No. I can smell it. It’s dry.” Dell shook his head. “You’ll learn. I’m going to show you how. You just stick with me and I’ll show you the right way.”

Corey smiled but it twisted on his lips, and he wished he had some semblance of control over himself. These days, his own body might as well not have belonged to him and his thoughts betrayed him by adding double meanings to what Dell said. There was no secret in that gruff voice, no subtext beneath the growl.

They sat together on the ground under the shade of the tree, facing each other. Dell’s folded legs drew the material of his jeans tight over his crotch, exposing the soft bulge of his package. Making sure not to look there anymore, Corey focused on everything else but that. “So, what are we doing? Do I transform?”

“No,” Dell said, patiently. “What do you hear?”

“You,” Corey replied, knowing very well that wasn’t the response the larger man wanted to hear. Dell didn’t sigh, didn’t blink. He just waited. Okay then, it was time to stop screwing around and get serious. Looking around himself, he listed off what he could hear. “You. Me. The wind. The grass is blowing.”

“And?”

“And? That’s it.”

“But it’s not. You’re a wolf. An animal. Your senses are primed for survival in the wild, especially since you’re an omega. Your senses should be better even than mine, and I can hear that vole downwind of us thirty feet away. You should be able to do the same and more.”

Corey leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees. “Better than yours?

Dell growled, looking a great deal less patient than he had before. “You aren’t ever going to learn anything, are you? All you do is sit around and repeat what you’ve already been told without absorbing any information.”

“Maybe you’re a shitty teacher!” Corey snapped. All at once, he hated the alpha and his arrogance. “I wasn’t born this way, dammit. I’m a fucking monster. A hideous monster!”

Dell stood up, not threatening, but simply standing. He looked down at Corey as if he was nothing. “You were born this way. It’s not like a werewolf curse. You didn’t get bitten, and no one cursed you. The time you first shift means nothing. It’s always been in your blood. You are not a monster, Corey. I know you saw my drawing. Did that look like a monster to you?”

He could see the notepad as clearly as if it was right in front of his face. Him. That was him. Or, at least, he thought grimly, that was an ideal image of himself. He was a mere ghost, a shadow of that beauty. “It didn’t,” he admitted, quietly. Shameful tears pushed at the backs of his eyes but he blinked them back as best as he could. “But it’s different for me.”

“I know.”

He looked up in surprise at the tenderness in Dell’s voice. For the first time, it wasn’t a growl, or even rough. It was raw and stark in its flatness.

“I know it’s rough for you. Our pups grow up knowing themselves. Hell, some of us are running around in half-grown wolf bodies before we even learn to stand on our human legs. I know it’s harder for you and it has to feel impossible.” Dell reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes. Normally so dexterous, his fingers fumbled with the cancer stick because they were shaking so hard. “Like learning a new language in school. It means nothing. But if someone dumped you in Germany, you’d learn pretty quick just to survive. So, what’s it going to be, Corey? Sink or swim?”

Corey asked, his voice quiet, “Can wolves swim?”

Please don’t think I’m being a smartass.

Dell’s eyes glowed as the sun came out from behind a cloud; a shaft of light cut across his honeyed irises. “Yes,” he said, hoarsely. “Yes, they can. I’ll wade out with you as long as I can, but you’ll have to be ready to swim on your own.”

Something seemed to pass between them in that moment, something without words to put to its name. Corey knew from the look in Dell’s eyes that all his imagined double meanings were true, and his stomach flipped around inside him at the realization. What they were to each other had changed and he could only breathlessly await what came next.

Dell sat back down, but this time he was close enough so that they could touch. Their knees brushed together, and Corey didn’t even bother hiding the bulge that formed in his pants this time. Let it. It was natural, wasn’t it?

“Listen to the world,” Dell breathed. His eyes were closed, his own ears already pricked and listening. “It’s safe here. If anything happens, I’ll stop it.”

If anything happens, you’ll be here for me.

Corey closed his eyes and let it happen. It came to him all at once in a rush; all the things he’d been aware of that had so terrified him when he transformed for the first time. The barrage of sound and scent assaulted him, cascading across his face with every breath of wind that blew. Nerves turned his stomach and he tasted bile at the back of his throat, but swallowed it down and just let it all keep coming to him. The rustling, the movement, the perfume of life. It mingled in his mind, forming a confused blur of colors and impressions that not even an Air Force pilot would have been able to make sense of.

And as he let it come and crowd him, something changed. It was so subtle he missed it, but then the same thing happened again and again and he could no longer be blind to it. Here and there, an impression solidified and became an image. Rather than drifting in and out as the wind tossed scent in its wake, the scattered trees took root in the landscape of his thoughts and held themselves there as a constant. It happened again and again, the confusion making sense of itself.

Opening his eyes, Corey saw the world in front of him exactly as he had pictured it with his lids shut tight. He was aware of all of it at once, as a sort of background hum.

I’m going to smell the grass, he thought, and the green, earthy smell came into focus. I’m smelling that mouse, then, in a flash, he listened only to the pattering of a tiny heartbeat and could very nearly taste the seed residue he could smell left on the mouth and whiskers of the animal, the remnants of its lunch. Anything he wished to choose from the image in his mind, and the mirrored image before him, he had only to think of it and his instincts did the rest.

He felt the animal inside him as strongly as if it stood at his side, black tail waving in the wind like a victory flag. If he concentrated hard enough, he felt that his arms were legs and his hands terrible, ripping paws. He could feel fangs in his mouth just waiting to be summoned, and a strength lay coiled and sleeping in his muscles. The wolf was in him.

No, he was the wolf.

“I’m a wolf,” Corey whispered.

“Yes, you are,” Dell whispered back. “You are a wolf and you are man, one and the same. It’s as natural as breathing.”

And Corey breathed.

The shift was slow but measured, tentative but not panicked or stammering. He crouched in the grass with the feel of the sun on his pelt and beneath his paws, listening to the way the wind streamed through his fur. And he wasn’t afraid, not even when he looked around behind himself to inspect the darker-than-black stripe running down his spine, all the way to the tip of his tail where it curled neatly over his front paws.

The wind carried a scent to him, familiar and warm and edged with smoke. Corey turned his head, almost in awe of the way his body moved like a machine too perfect for existence, and looked right at Dell. The alpha grinned at him, smelling as much of smoke and heat as if he was a fire.

I feel drawn to him.

A shiver rippled down his spine upon recognizing the intent behind his own thought. He was of age, and all he had to give Dell in thanks was the one thing he had never given to anyone before. Would Dell take it, if offered?

Paws trembling, nails teasing at the ground, Corey rose up onto his long legs and started to turn around. He acted without thinking, letting his tail loll up over his back to expose his rear opening in a simple, unabashed offering of himself. He wanted this, needed this, felt almost as if he was required to do it.

Something nudged against his hip, near the base of his tail. Fur brushed against his, raising static and tingles. Corey turned his head but he didn’t have to, as Dell came up beside him and then turned to face him so that their twin quivering black noses touched. A whine rose up in his throat, part plea and part beg, as he looked into those golden eyes. They were a human’s eyes in the face of a wolf, and he appealed to the man inside, asking to be taken.

Dell’s hackles rose up, the line of fur on his neck bristling. His pelt bushed out along his shoulders and haunches as well, before slowly laying down flat again. His body was loose and relaxed, yet he easily dwarfed Corey even without being puffed up. The message in his body language was clear: Not the time. Stand down.

Corey lowered his tail, coming back to himself just enough to be embarrassed about what he’d done—though he didn’t regret it. He was an omega, the wolf inside him knew without words, and so he knew it too. His place was beneath, to be governed by those above him. If it wasn’t time, then it wasn’t time.

Lifting his head, he flicked out his long pink tongue and lapped at Dell’s chin in a gesture of submission and apology. Dell’s golden eyes glowed with approval, though it was unknown whether he was pleased at being submitted to or happy because Corey had gotten the hang of things. Perhaps the two were the same, in the end.

His apologetic lick was returned in kind, Dell’s tongue lapping him right between the eyes to leave a thin trail of wetness. The alpha licked his furry head again and again, lapping his nose and his ears and all over his muzzle until he was entirely covered in lupine kisses. Then, he took Corey’s muzzle in his mouth and gently shook it before backing up and dropping down into a bow over his front paws.

Taking the cue to place, Corey let out a yip and bounced backward, wagging his tail high over his head while bouncing around on his toes. Dell remained motionless, seeming to wait for some signal that hadn’t yet been given. Catching on to this as well, Corey dropped out of his bounce and flattened himself to the ground in an imitation of the other wolf.

The second his chin touched the earth between his front paws, Dell lunged at him. Corey felt absolutely no fear at all, no pain as his body was flung gently sideways as Dell pushed out at him with one foot while racing past. Rolling over and over, Corey reached up with all four of his furry limbs to grab onto the alpha as he pounced.

Though Dell was three times his size, Corey was stronger than he had been. They rolled over and over in the grass together, occasionally breaking apart from one another before crashing back together again. Dell knocked him over with a lazy bat of his paw again and again, sending him rolling with a touch or nudge from his broad head. Corey barked as he rolled around, enjoying the way he was tossed about, as if he was made of nothing but air. And like air, he was swift, and he could just as easily weave through Dell’s longer legs and avoid the blows that came his way.

After a particularly lengthy tussle that left them both slightly out of breath, the wolves sprang apart again and then just stood there with their faces close together. Tails wagging, they tasted the wildness of each other’s breath and couldn’t help but to be locked together by the gaze that passed between them. Pale green met gold, and it seemed as if words might be shared between them without being spoken.

This is it, Corey realized. The level of warmth in Dell’s gaze alternated between hot and slightly-less-hot as the alpha debated with himself about whether or not this is something that should be done. In the end, those wild sunlight eyes burned hot and stayed that way. Dell reached out with his mouth, jaws parting to flash white fangs. Whatever the meaning behind that was, Corey lowered his head to accept it. He wanted to accept. The wolf inside him demanded it, and he felt Dell’s wolf desiring for it as well.

And then, Dell stopped just as his breath ruffled the fur of Corey’s thick neck ruff. His ears flattened back against his skull, eyes going so wide they were ringed with white. Corey spun around to see what had frightened the other, and found himself being pushed back even farther behind Dell’s body. He would be protected behind the other man, and the fact that he had to be protected chilled him to his very core. His erection, the one on his wolf body, and the one he’d been hoping to satisfy in his human form, shrank and withered down as if trying to recede inside him.

A group of gigantic cats stood on top of the nearby ridge. Corey counted eight of them, four on either side of a tall man with bronze skin and short hair. Every cat was black, though many had a brownish tint to their fur where the sunlight struck them.

Maybe they were friendly? He doubted it, even as much as he wanted to hope for that outcome. Dell wouldn’t be acting like this if those cats were friendly neighbors who dropped by Eureka with fresh-baked cookies because they were passing by. And the cats themselves had a military-esque feel to them, as every single one of them stood in the exact same position. Their tails even flicked in time together, and their blinks were synchronized. They were killing machines, and they did not look pleased.

“Wolves!” cried the man standing in the middle of the line. “Become human and no harm shall come to you.”

Corey trembled, deep down in his bones. His heart beat at twice its normal speed and every single hair he possessed stood on end. All that kept him from running away was the fact that, if they caught him, he would be dead. A few days ago, that might not even have mattered, but he quite suddenly just didn’t want to be dead.

Then, he became aware of another set of eyes on him. Dell looked at him and gave a barely imperceptible nod, then twitched his ears. The message was clear. “Do as they say,” Dell was saying. “But be ready.”

Corey nodded back, a tremor running through his jaw. He shifted, but it was without grace, and he ended up falling forward onto his hands while the cats up on the ridge watched in judgmental silence. Once Dell had also shifted, he reached for Corey’s hand and held it tightly.

At any other time, holding hands with Dell would have been a dream come true. Instead, it was an actual nightmare. Corey hoped against hope that he would have a chance to wake up, to try this hand-holding thing again.

“What do you want?” Dell growled, glaring at the cats.

The man must have given a signal, because he and his entourage started off down the slope together. The cats moved with lethal grace, walking in that same uncanny, synchronized way. As they approached to within spitting distance, Corey shriveled in on himself.

I might as well just get ready to die.

He hadn’t properly judged their size from so far away. He’d known they were big, but now he saw just how big. They dwarfed even Dell, and that was just the smallest one. They only got bigger from there. Panthers, they were. Black panthers, which meant some were black leopards and others were black jaguars. So close now, Corey saw which was which. The blackness of their rosettes and spotted rosettes was darker even than the rest of their fur, identifying their species.

The man said, “We meet again. Or, perhaps, for the first time.”

“What the hell do you think you’re talking about?” Dell asked, growling. “Never seen you bastards before in my life. What’s the meaning of this?”

The man ignored him, however. It seemed answers would come only when he deigned to give them. “And what luck that it just so happens you are a police officer. It’s almost poetic.”

Hadn’t Corey heard a mention or two of panthers when he was around the cops?

“Poetic my ass. What’s the meaning of this?” Dell repeated, slower now. “Ambushing us like this. It’s not proper. “

“I would think the time for being proper was over before it even began,” the man said. He lifted his head, thrusting his nose up in the air as if the two wolves were something that reeked. “Since that is how you wolves operate. You take and you take, don’t you? Always moving in on the territory of others, the territory you don’t need.”

Corey sensed something within his companion, a switch being flipped. Dell understood something that he didn’t, and that information was no doubt the key to surviving this confrontation.

“All that time and you’ve been doing… what? Watching us sow tobacco seeds and eke out a living?” Dell shook his head. “Your uprising is foolish. You’re a group of idiots hellbent on carrying out some crusade that you don’t even understand. It’s people like you who make me sick. You’re nothing more than trouble-makers.”

Okay… Corey struggled to put the clues together, but it was like he held two colored pieces up to an all-white border. Even if the tabs fit, nothing made sense still. So, the wolves did something to the panthers in the past, ages ago, and now these guys want their revenge for their ancestors.

Dell was right. That was foolish.

But, the man was shaking his head and clearly not done yet. “Oh, that is where you’re wrong. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Ian Blackwell, leader of the Blackwell clan and direct descendant of the alpha panther whose clan you foolish dogs banished from the hills.”

Dell rolled his eyes and gave a grunt. “Okay, Your Highness. You’re related to someone important, separated by hundreds of years. Go back far enough and we all are.”

“Ah, but I am spoken of in the prophecy of our people!” Ian exclaimed. For the first time, the cats at his side went into a movement that hadn’t been rehearsed. They bared their fangs and looked as pleased as kittens at a bowl of cream. “I am the one who was chosen by the ancestors to lay claim to our mountains once more! I have come of age and rallied my forces, and now I bring to you a message for that stupid alpha of yours. I told him I would be back. Now, tell him I have returned.”

“And if I choose not to deliver your stupid message?” Dell folded his arms. He seemed relaxed, but his forearms bulged with muscle, a clear message that nevertheless went ignored. “It’s fools like you who give our kind a bad name, holding a grudge like that and talking about prophecies and ancestors. You’re you. This is the world now. These petty debates will only ruin us and expose us in the end.”

“Petty?” Ian let out a harsh laugh, gesturing with his arms to stir up his gathered warriors. “If you call such racism petty, then I won’t spare you any sorrow when I slit your fucking throat with my teeth.”

Corey flinched. He couldn’t help it. Such terrible, terrible rage, bottled up inside a person…

His flinch brought Ian’s gaze to him, taunting and unthreatened. And who would be threatened by him? He was only an omega.

“And you. A little bitch, fit only for whelping. This man…” Ian gestured to Dell, who bared his fangs. “He doesn’t value you as anything but a toy. Dogs never do. He’ll drop you as soon as you’re…”

“Enough.” Dell wore a look twin to that of the eight panthers. It was pure murder, plain and simple. “One more word.”

Ian flashed a grin that was almost suicidal in its glee. “Silence me, then. Just as you did my forefathers.”

Dell took a step forward; startled out of his frozen state, Corey lunged and grabbed at the alpha’s hand. “Don’t!” he whispered, urgently. “Don’t do this, Dell!”

Dell yanked his hand away, the separation like a slap. “Run back to the station. Fetch any wolves you can find. Quickly.”

“But…”

Several things happened all at once then. Dell became a wolf and lunged toward the panthers, his dark back windblown and rippling like a cape. Ian shapeshifted into a jaguar and leaped to meet him, and they fell down onto the grass in a tangle. A heartbeat later, the rest of the jaguars joined the deadly pile. Shrieks and terrible, pained barking burst up into the still mountain air and silenced all the other little sounds.

His heart in his throat, terrified and not knowing what else to do except to obey Dale, Corey whipped around and started racing away. Had he really thought that he’d run so fast when he’d shifted that first time? It was nothing compared to this. Before, he had only been running away; now, he was running for his life.

His ears were full of the sound of ripping flesh and gnashing teeth. He could feel hot breath puffing against the back of his neck, but when he stumbled on a soft patch of soil, he turned back to look at his pursuer and saw nothing. His legs still moved beneath him, regaining their rhythm even as he took in the sight below.

Dell fought like eight wolves, somehow managing to keep the panthers at bay. He was lightning, leaping and spinning and using everything he had to attack. A lash of his paw here, and a neck-breaking whip from his tail there, all of it perfectly executed and perfectly timed. Yet, as beautiful as his violence was, he clearly didn’t stand a chance. Every blow he landed, three were placed on him in return. Blood sprayed in a mist through the air with every attack, but it also dripped from the ragged lacerations splitting the grey patterns of his fur. The red liquid of his life was so thick in some areas it seemed to be just a continuation of his black markings.

As Corey watched, Dell slipped in a pool of blood, tried to regain his footing, and slipped again. His shoulder hit the ground and all nine panthers converged on him at once.

Damn fetching the rest of the police. He wouldn’t make it in time. The cats were going to kill Dell. What did they care if one messenger was gone, as long as the other remained to repeat their words to the pack leader?

His mind made up, without even knowing that he had made it up at all, Corey spun around and ran back the way he came. His mind cleared of thoughts. Fear threatened to paralyze him, but his legs just kept running, and his heart knew what was right.

The wolf took over. A howl pulled from his chest, whistling up through his throat. His first howl, thin and reedy, but it felt as good as he imagined sex to be. Back legs bunching at the end of his next pace, the silver wolf propelled himself up into the air and then came down hard again on top of a panther. Though he didn’t know this at the time, the cat in his grasp was none other than Ian Blackwell himself. The identity of his victim hardly seemed important at the time, as he clutched at hard, angular shoulders and used his hind legs to claw at its back. Clumps of fur flew into the air around them as the panther started to buck in an attempt to throw his attacker.

Jostled around, Corey felt his front legs protest their treatment. His grip weakened and, as he started to slip, he did the other thing he could think of to save himself: he bit.

Clamping his jaws down on the back of Ian’s neck, Corey was rewarded with a scream of agony. The panther beneath him shook and bucked, tossing his body around like an unbroken stallion desperate to lose its rider. For only a moment, Corey lost his grip and flapped up and down. His jaw hurt so badly he felt it all the way down to the tip of his tail, before he came crashing back down hard against Ian’s back. It was like belly-flopping onto the flat, chlorinated surface of a swimming pool, an activity he suddenly felt certain he had done before and regretted for days. However, his legs automatically wrapped themselves back around the cat when contact was made and then there was nothing in the world that could dislodge him.

Ian struggled for a few moments longer, during which the other panthers around him started to notice that something was wrong. Their baleful eyes suddenly flickered with blankness before the situation fully registered, and then a whirlwind of confusion filled in the blank. They hadn’t been expecting this. With minds full of the scent of blood, they struggled to comprehend what to do. Continue attacking the true threat, the alpha they had come for, or rescue their leader from the omega who wanted to scar him? Corey registered all that in a second.

In the end, their loyalty to Ian won out over their common sense. The panthers turned on their leader, bodies converging into a thick, clumsy mass. Pain seared along Corey’s sides and legs as they scored blows on him, but they were bumping into each other and getting in each other’s way.

The panther beneath him heaved, and Corey felt his grip loosen again. Then, he was tossed through the air and landed roughly so that all the breath was knocked from his lungs. He lay there stunned and watched as the huge black cat stalked toward him with blood dripping from its whiskers.

Then, his vision was blocked by Dell stepping in front of him… in human form. “Stop,” the alpha rasped. He held one hand over a particularly bad gash on his stomach, scarlet trickling between the gaps in his fingers. “This isn’t fair. You want to be remembered as a bastard who won all his battles by ambush, or do you want to do this the right way?”

Ian hesitated, tension rippling through his massive form. Corey could only stare, uncomprehendingly, as the panther raised his tail in a signal to back off. As quickly as the attackers had come, they were gone again. It was almost possible to convince himself that the attackers had never been there at all, if not for the torn earth and blood they left behind.

“Dell!” he cried out, standing up so fast his head spun. He staggered up to the alpha and grabbed onto his shoulders, not knowing if he needed support or if he was trying to give it. “What the hell was that about?”

“Bad blood,” Dell grunted. He removed his hand from his stomach, examined the way the blood ran and then replaced his hand. “Why did you come back? I told you to get help.”

“You needed my help,” Corey whispered. He trembled as adrenaline started draining from his system, leaving him empty. “They were going to kill you. And then I… I’d be without somewhere to stay!”

Despite the fact that he must have been in an extreme amount of pain, Dell let out a short laugh. It was agonized but sincere. “Yeah, that’s the biggest concern here, kid.”

“We need to get you back to Eureka and to the doctor right away!” Corey bent down and grabbed at Dell’s hand, feeling the tingle in his blood as he tried to urge the other onward. “You’re hurt really bad.”

The alpha didn’t shake him away, but neither did he seem particularly bothered. “I’m not dying. I didn’t get a chance to tell you that shapeshifters heal really damn fast. I won’t be bleeding anymore by the time we get to town. I won’t even need stitches.”

How? He wanted so badly to ask the question aloud, but he knew that he would only be answered with a shrug and another talk about how it wasn’t his way to be interested in such things. Dell’s lack of interest in some things was astounding and frustrating as hell sometimes.

Instead of speaking, he just kept pace with the other and kept a tight grip on his hands.

They walked along in silence, and it was a true silence. Corey had thought that he would never know quiet again, when he had such strong wolf senses now, but all the birds and the little animals in the grass had gone away at the sound of the fight. Even the wind seemed to have fled.

Eureka was fully in sight before they spoke again. “I know I need to explain what happened,” Dell said. “I mentioned some of it when I first met you.”

Corey wracked his brains for the memories of that, though they were fuzzy from the stress he’d been under. “You mean how you wolves settled here.”

“Right. The rest of it is vague to me but, apparently, we must have chased out a group of panthers and perhaps some other species that were here. I don’t know why. I don’t think anyone knows why anymore. They must have just been hiding all this time, plotting their revenge.” Dell sighed. “I don’t know why people can’t just be allowed to live the way they will.”

Which means that you think the panthers shouldn’t have been chased away in the first place.

“Our Police Chief, and our pack leader Michael, had a run-in with a panther several months back, when his husband Tim first came into town. That Ian Blackwell is the same panther. He swore he’d return.” Dell’s lips twitched grimly. “He did.”

Corey held Dell’s hand tighter as they walked into town, and he wondered why he couldn’t get Dell’s lips out of his thoughts. It was hardly the time for that, but for some reason he just couldn’t.