Chapter Two

Savannah’s lips wrinkled in a wordless smirk as she popped up out of the foxhole near her family’s restaurant. The whole town of Foxhaven was riddled with underground tunnels, and she knew the location of every one of them. Austin didn’t know the area like she did, and he was no fox, so he’d never catch her in these woods.

Ditching Austin had been a breeze. That part had been fun.

Losing that big fat bounty? Not so much.

Her smile faded. She’d won the battle but lost the war.

A warm breeze rustled her fur, stirring the underbrush and whispering through the towering Douglas fir trees that scraped the blue sky overheard. The fox hole would be all but invisible to an outsider, set among wild grasses and sword ferns and thorny blackberry bushes.

She slid through the prickly branches into the open and shook herself hard, scattering the dirt off her fur. Then she let her human self take over. Fur sank back into her skin, her tail vanished, colors brightened, and the thousands of scents swirling in her nostrils faded. The air around her shimmered as she quadrupled in size. She knelt there for a moment, letting herself mentally readjust as her fox settled down inside her. Then she climbed to her feet from a crouching position.

“You don’t look happy. Why don’t you look happy? What went wrong?” her younger brother Niall called out as he trotted over to her. She was stark naked, but shifters were very comfortable with nudity.

She shook her head and snapped open the lid of the plastic bin full of clothing that they kept near the family foxhole.

“Austin, that’s what went wrong,” she grumbled, pulling out a pair of underwear. As she quickly dressed, donning jeans, sneakers, socks and T-shirt, she explained what had happened, and Niall’s face twisted in dismay.

“I can’t believe you let the mark go,” he groaned. He was a redhead like her – like all fox shifters – but where she was short and curvy, he was a tall, skinny beanpole. With his thick thatch of red hair sticking straight up, he looked like a match that had been struck. “That was five thousand bucks. We really needed that money.”

“I know,” Savannah said glumly. “But we wouldn’t have had the money either way. Austin would’ve taken it. And there was no way I was letting that dickwad take my bounty.”

“Do you think he would have at least split it with us? Since you did all the work finding the guy?”

“Him?” Savannah scoffed. “Hell to the no. If you look on the periodic table of the elements, there is a compound called asshole-onium. And guess what Austin is composed of?” She pulled on a pair of sandals.

Niall arched an eyebrow. “Um, if I have to go along with this tired attempt at science humor, I’m guessing he’s pure, one hundred percent asshole-onium?”

“No, actually, he’s about eighty percent asshole-onium, twenty percent dickbreath-onium. And no, he wouldn’t have split the bounty with me.”

“Yeah, whatever. I might as well start packing now. To get ready for being homeless,” Niall said glumly, and headed back towards the restaurant.

As she followed him, she wondered if she was right.

Ever since Austin had shown up in Greenville, the town bordering Foxhaven, three months ago, he’d been a hard one to read.

He was temperamental and deadly in a fight, but she knew that in his off time he went hunting and donated all his catch to the local food bank. Rumor had it that he came from an extremely wealthy wolf pack in North Dakota, the owners of Bronson Pharmaceuticals, one of the richest of all the shifter packs in the world. He was actually a billion-were. But he’d left them behind after some disagreement with his family. And apparently he wouldn’t touch a cent of their money.

He certainly didn’t live like a rich man. He was renting a little trailer in Greenville, he drank at that godawful Watering Hole, he drove an old truck, and he wore cheap jeans and scuffed boots.

So did money really mean that much to him?

She hadn’t even asked if he’d split the bounty with her – she’d just gone in hot and tackled him, because she’d wanted to show him up. And also, maybe, if she was absolutely forced to admit it, because rolling around on the floor writhing under Austin’s rock-hard body hadn’t been the worst experience ever.

Had her stubborn pride just cost the family money that they desperately needed? Twenty-five hundred dollars would have been better than nothing.

As she trudged through the woods toward the restaurant, with her brother hurrying on ahead, she tried to imagine herself asking Austin for half the bounty.

Ugh, what if he’d made fun of her and demanded that she ask nicely?

And then what if he’d said no?

She imagined her rage, her humiliation. Her fists clenched just thinking about it. Years of schoolyard teasing rang in her ears. Fatty, fatty, two by four… She instinctively sucked her stomach in.

But she didn’t know that Austin would have turned her down. Her mother always said she loved to borrow trouble. Personally, Savannah found that anticipating the worst and sometimes being pleasantly surprised was less painful than thinking everything was fine and having her heart broken.

Her heart sank as she realized that if the situation happened again, she would probably have to swallow her pride. She’d have to at least try to be nice to Austin Bronson.

That sucked, because torturing Austin was her favorite way to distract herself from her family’s money problems.

Her body had its usual reaction when she thought about their sparring. Nipples hardening, skin tingling, a rush of moisture between her legs. She suddenly felt exquisitely sensitive; every tree branch slapping against her skin, every caress of the warm breeze whipping through the trees, made her bite down on her lip so she didn’t whimper with need.

She was like a bitch in heat.

It was so ridiculous. Why did he affect her like that? If the old wives’ tales were to be believed, that kind of reaction meant that he was her True Mate. But that was impossible. Not only did he drive her insane, and she was pretty sure she hated him – they weren’t compatible. She was a fox, he was a wolf. End of story.

Or was it? She didn’t know of any fox-wolf pairings, but that didn’t mean it never happened anywhere.

Fox shifters tended to lie low, even more so than wolf shifters, because they were the low shifters on the totem pole. They couldn’t defend themselves against bears, wolves, or big cats. Whenever possible, they kept their existence secret from all other shifter species, because as soon as other shifter species found out where fox territory was, they tended to move in and take over. Like they had when they’d created the wolf-shifter town of Greenville twenty years ago, encroaching on fox territory and daring the foxes to do something about it.

Fortunately, the wolf pack in Greenville was pretty wimpy. Their Alpha was not a Dominus, and in fact he barely deserved the title of Alpha. Otherwise, the foxes might have found themselves driven right out of Foxhaven, forced to find a new territory.

Foxes, unlike wolves, didn’t form packs. All shifters needed to socialize with others of their own kind if they didn’t want to turn feral, but foxes did it in family groups.

Up until recently, shifter packs, prides, clans and families had kept pretty much to themselves. They all lived in remote areas; they shunned the outside world. There was a certain level of cooperation necessary, to help keep their existence secret from humans, but there wasn’t a lot of intermingling among different types of animal shifters.

In response to the increasing difficulty of hiding their existence in an overpopulated, technologically linked-up world, a national database had recently been created, set up to help shifters around the country work together, but that was very new and mostly served the wolves.

So were there any cases of fox-wolf matings?

She pushed it out of her head. Why was she even giving it that much thought? It was irrelevant. Austin was a thief. He stole her marks from her. She had no respect for thieves. That was what she would keep telling herself, over and over again, until she believed it.

She trotted out of the woods and into the clearing where the To Dine For restaurant nestled among the tall pines, as it had for generations. In an adjacent clearing, her family’s two-story white clapboard farmhouse sat on a lot that was choked by weeds that none of them had time to cut. They were too busy scrambling night and day trying to earn enough money to pay off the lien on their house.

That was why she had first gone into bounty hunting five years ago, when she was seventeen. She’d always been a whiz at self-defense and tracking, and bounty hunting paid a heck of a lot more than waitressing at the family restaurant.

They had a month left. They had taken out a massive loan from Algernon, Lord of All Foxes, and they were still sixty thousand dollars short.

They’d never get the money in time.

Her younger sister Jessamine spotted her and came hurrying across the yard. Jessamine, a born rebel, refused to accept the flaming red hair color that nature handed out to all fox shifters. She had dyed her bangs and the tips of her hair black. Then she’d gone out and gotten piercings all over her face. Septum, stud on the side of her nose, lip ring, eyebrow ring.

She was working today, which was why her apron partially covered her favorite shirt, the one with fishnet sleeves and a picture of a cartoon kitty with a Mohawk and nose ring.

Jessamine pointed at the side of the house. “Where were you? Mom’s doing it again!” she complained shrilly, with a stamp of her combat boot.

Savannah bit back a curse as she looked at where Jessamine was pointing. Yep. Old Man Herbert was chopping wood by the side of the house.

That meant that the jerk had just eaten for free at the restaurant, and now he was doing chores to pay for it. Savannah was sympathetic to people who were just having hard times, but Herbert wasn’t one of them. He had a gambling addiction. All the money he should have been paying for meals with went to the horses.

“And those stupid Haymarch kids are in the restaurant! And Mom is letting that thief Anthony work as a busboy, even though we don’t need him and we can’t afford him and he always steals food. Six pies went missing last week. And he just called me sweetcheeks, and I slapped him! You’d better go deal with him, because if he even looks at me cross-eyed again, I’m gonna knock him into next week.”

Frustration surged through Savannah as she walked into the restaurant.

The eight Haymarch kids and their parents were sitting around the biggest table, tucking into bowls of stew. Mr. Haymarch, a carpenter who was a heavy drinker, kept getting fired because he showed up sauced or didn’t show up to work at all.

Anthony was sitting at the counter, chowing down on an entire pizza instead of working. Looking around the dining room, she saw twenty people, which should have been good news. But she estimated that only half the people eating were paying customers.

She marched into the kitchen, smacking open the swinging door with the palm of her hand. Jessamine followed her in.

Her mother Laurel, a plump, smiling, thirty-years-older version of Savannah, with streaks of gray in her wavy red hair, looked up from chopping onions and smiled.

“Mom!” Savannah hissed.

“Oh, hello, dear! Back already? Did you collect the bounty? How did it go?”

Savannah leaned against a wall, crossing her arms over her chest. “It went terribly. We lost our mark. No money.”

“What? You moron!” Jessamine screeched.

“Thank you, I didn’t feel bad enough already.” Savannah shot a disgusted look at her sister and then turned away.

Her mother’s face fell. “Oh dear.”

“That’s one way of putting it.” Savannah heaved a sigh. “I was thinking of a way with a lot more four-letter words.”

“But of course I didn’t raise you that way.” Her mother smiled gently and went back to chopping onions.

Jessamine made a very loud raspberry noise. “Yes, you did – she swears all the time.”

“Well, if it isn’t the dark queen of tattle-tales,” Savannah sneered. “Oh my Goth! You know what? The nineties called and they want their T-shirt back.”

Jessamine narrowed her eyes at her older sister. “Well, if it isn’t the plump princess of datelessness. The eighties called and they want that joke back.”

“Say, Jessamine, where it says over-easy on our breakfast menu, why did they use a picture of your face?”

“Twatmuffin,” her sister snapped.

“Slutbucket.” But Savannah wasn’t really feeling it today. Normally she’d be chasing after her sister and trying to strangle her, but she just didn’t have the heart at the moment.

“Savannah! Jessamine!” Her mother slammed her knife down on the chopping board. “I will wash your mouths out with soap. You think I won’t? Watch me.”

That was a legitimate threat. It was amazing how fast the short, chubby little shifter could move when she was mad, to say nothing of how strong she was. Savannah suppressed a shudder at the memory of the taste of soap burning her tongue. She had not called her sister a See You Next Tuesday since that day.

“Sorry, Mom, it won’t happen again,” Jessamine muttered, and hurried off. She paused in the doorway and pretended to scratch the side of her head, giving Savannah the finger before flouncing out.

Savannah ignored her sister and glanced through the kitchen window into the dining room. “I’m sorry too, but Mom. You are feeding the entire town for free.”

“Of course I’m not, dear. They’re doing chores!” her mother said reprovingly. “The Haymarches are going to pull some weeds later. Probably.”

“Chores won’t pay our debt,” Savannah said, with perhaps more bite to her tone than necessary. “Can we pay the Lord of All Foxes in chores?”

But still. She had a right to be upset. This restaurant was her family heritage.

Five years ago, when their father had suffered a horrifying injury at the jaws of a hunter’s trap, they’d been forced to turn to the wealthiest fox family in Washington State. Algernon, the self-titled Lord of All Foxes. He was a shady character who owned a trucking company and was suspected of smuggling all kinds of illegal goods.

They’d needed money to pay for a wolf healer to help their father, and wolf healers might help their own kind for free, but when it came to foxes, they charged big bucks. The mutation that had created shifters had failed to gift the fox species with healers.

So they’d borrowed a hundred thousand dollars from Algernon, at an insane interest rate, and used it to pay the healer from the Crescent Moon pack up in the northeast area of Washington.

It had spared their father a lot of pain, and it had brought them a precious year of their father’s life. It had been worth it.

But they’d had to put up their property as collateral, with a balloon payment at the end of the payment term.

And since their property was right off the main, secret, shifter-only road that ran from Washington State to Minnesota, it was an extremely valuable way-station. Algernon was salivating over it. They’d tried to re-finance, but no shifter bank wanted to go up against Algernon.

“Well, I could go tell the Haymarch family to stop eating,” her mother sighed. “Poor little Joey. He was so excited.” She peered out the window. “It was the first food he’d seen in days. He said grace first, before he started eating. Such a polite little boy. He’s only halfway done. Shall I take his food away from him, or do you want to do it?”

“Oh, good lord!” Savannah threw her hands up in despair. She knew when she’d been licked. She did a deep, fake bow. “I should have known better than to go up against a woman who’s got a black belt in the art of manipulation.”

“Yes, you should have,” her mother smiled, her eyes twinkling. “And I know that secretly, underneath that tough-girl exterior, you’re a big softie.”

“Am not,” Savannah muttered rebelliously.

“Whatever you say, dear. Would it be pushing my luck to ask you to go bring out some of my chocolate silk pie to the Haymarches, and also that nice little Anthony? I’ve got some more onions to chop.”

Was she serious?

The frikkin’ Haymarches had never paid for a meal! Ever! She’d tried and tried to make her mother see that they were taking advantage of her good nature, but her mother always just looked at her and blinked innocently. And handed out more food.

“Yes, it would!” Savannah shouted at the top of her lungs.

She turned and marched towards the door.

Then she stopped.

She could actually feel two holes burning into the back of her shirt. Her mother’s eyes. How did she do that? She didn’t have psychic powers, and yet Savannah was fairly sure that if she didn’t do what her mother wanted within the next sixty seconds, she’d burst into flames.

She turned around and glared at her mother. “Fiiiiine,” she gritted out.

“You’re just the sweetest little thing,” her mother cooed.

Argh. Had her mother been taking lessons in annoying from Austin?

“Don’t rub it in. And I hope your cooking skills include roadkill, because that’s what we’ll be eating when we lose our restaurant and our home and have to live in the woods.”

Savannah picked up the tray full of plates of chocolate silk pie that her mother had set out, and headed to the door.

Before she made it, her mother called after her, “Is he nice?”

“Who?”

“The wolf I smell all over you.”

“Mom!” Savannah cried, scandalized. Her cheeks were catching fire. Blazing red. She could feel it. Why was the floor not opening up and swallowing her? Why, floor, why? Trapped in the kitchen, holding a tray of pies for the biggest mooches in Fox Hollow when she wanted to just smash those pies in their faces, and having her mother quiz her about her non-existent love life. Was this what hell felt like? She doubted it. She couldn’t imagine Satan being quite that mean. “It is not like that! I mugged him for his keys, in fact. It was a work thing.”

Her mother shrugged and started chopping green peppers. “All right, dear, as long as there’s a reasonable explanation. Not that I’d be against you dating a wolf, mind you. But I’d be very upset if you were dating someone and not telling me about it.”

“No worries,” Savannah growled. She pushed the swinging door open with her foot.

“Because I would need to check up on him, his family, his friends, and the neighborhood he lives in, of course.”

“And that is why I’m going to die single. Hopefully really soon,” Savannah muttered.

“I heard that!”

Savannah hurried across the room and began handing out plates with pie slices to the Haymarches.

When she walked over to Anthony, who was wiping pizza sauce off his face with a paper napkin, she snapped, “Every time you work here, food disappears. You slack off on your work and take like six lunch breaks every shift. We are a business, not a food bank.”

Anthony, a wiry fourteen-year-old with a generous splattering of freckles on his face, grabbed the last pie plate from her hands. His mother was a drug addict and had multiple burglary convictions, and Anthony seemed at risk of following in her footsteps. He’d been suspected of shoplifting and was banned from most of the stores in downtown Foxhaven.

“Your mother’s a lot nicer than you.” Anthony smirked.

“She is a lot nicer than me.” Savannah scowled. “That’s why you don’t want to push me too far, because unlike her, I will whip the tar out of you.”

Anthony crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out at her. She smacked him on the side of his head, hard.

Savannah’s mother yelled from the kitchen. “I saw that! And you’re not too old for me to ground, young lady! You tell that nice little boy sorry!”

There was only so much crow Savannah could eat in one day. With a muttered curse, she walked out of the room with all the dignity she could muster, which was not a lot, given that her cheeks were still flaming red and she apparently reeked of wolf. No, even worse, she reeked of Austin.

But as she walked onto the diner’s front porch and saw who was pulling up, her heart sank.

Nope, she was not done eating crow today.

Because Algernon’s Hummer was parked in the parking lot, and he, his son Marvin, and his bodyguard Sylvester were strolling towards the diner.

Algernon wore a custom-tailored, pin-striped navy-blue suit, and he and his son had both slicked their hair back with generous amounts of gel.

Gross.

She couldn’t believe she’d dated Marvin, once upon a time. Apparently Marvin had a thing for chicks with big boobs, which she did indeed possess. And she’d been flattered that a rich, good-looking guy like him had showed an interest in her.

Algernon grinned at her, baring sharp little teeth as he rudely shoved in front of the Dimwoody family, stepping up onto the porch in front of them. Great. The Dimwoodys were among their few regular paying customers.

“Just surveying my new property.”

The Dimwoodys backed off, staring warily. Everyone was intimidated by Algernon and his men.

She felt her temper rise. “One month. We have the paperwork.”

He ignored her. “I’m going to go inspect the kitchen, so it better be clean. And go get started on some steaks. Medium rare.”

“No,” Savannah said loudly. “Not until you pay your bill for the last half dozen times you ate for free.”

Algernon’s face went red with fury. Customers were walking out onto the porch now, to see what was happening. In a tiny, gossipy town like Foxhaven, this was better entertainment than TV.

“What did you just say to me?” he screeched. Sylvester let out a low, menacing growl.

“You heard me. This is a restaurant, not a soup kitchen.” Well, that wasn’t strictly true, given how her mother insisted on feeding half the town, but a bully who rubbed his wealth in everybody’s faces and was charging them twenty-five percent interest on their loan didn’t get the benefit of her mother’s generosity.

Herbert hurried over, wheezing, holding his axe.

“You okay there, Savannah?” he asked, his voice hoarse and wavery.

Oh God. If he even tried to fight, he’d likely keel over and die from a heart attack before anyone threw the first punch. She tried to wave him off. “Fine, Herbert, nothing to worry about here.”

“You best move along, old man, unless you want me to shove that axe right up your ass. And it won’t be the handle end,” Sylvester snapped.

“There’s no reason to use that kind of language in front of a lady,” Herbert said indignantly.

Sylvester lunged towards him and snarled, letting his fangs descend, and Herbert dropped the axe and turned and ran, his shoulders hunching in humiliation. Marvin shrieked after him, “You better run!” and he and Sylvester high-fived and guffawed.

“Get off her property! You’re trespassing!” Anthony’s shrill voice sounded behind her. He hurried down the steps to stand next to her.

“Oh look, it’s the son of that slutbag from the trailer park.” Marvin’s voice turned nasty and gloating. “That bitch has gone down on everything but the Titanic.”

Anthony’s face went red, and his gaze dropped to the ground. It hurt because it was true. His mother worked the rest stops along the shifter highway. She did tricks for drugs. There was no need to rub the kid’s face in it, though.

“Watch yourself,” Savannah warned.

“She’s had more nuts in her mouth than a squirrel.” Marvin howled with laughter and slapped his knees.

Savannah felt rage sizzling through her. Anthony balled up his fists, and she could see tears burning in his eyes.

“She’s taken more loads than a washing mach— awwwk!” Savannah lunged forward and grabbed Marvin’s throat with her hand.

Sylvester raised his hand to slap her, and she lashed out and kicked him in the crotch without letting go of Marvin’s throat. He let out a yelp of pain, doubled over and vomited on the ground.

“Let go of my son!” Algernon screamed, his voice gone high, but he didn’t make a move to help him. Because he knew that if he tried, she’d knock him ass over teakettle.

She gave a hard squeeze, then released Marvin, who staggered back, face flushed with humiliation. All the customers from the restaurant were standing on the front porch now, watching.

“You…you man-beast! You’re not even a girl!” Marvin screamed at her.

She grimaced in distaste. Ugh. She had actually dated that. Gross, gross, gross.

And the insult hardly stung at all. She’d heard it enough over the years. She already knew she was no man’s dream date. She wasn’t soft, she wasn’t weak and helpless, and she could change her own tires.

“You little bitch,” Sylvester hissed. “I’m going to go talk to my banker about accelerating that timeline. I’ll be in here by next week!”

He turned and stalked off, with Marvin and Sylvester scampering after him and shooting her dirty looks.

Savannah’s heart sank. She’d just made things even worse for her family. Her mother, Jessamine, and Niall gathered around her on the porch, watching as the men scrambled into their Hummer and screeched out of the parking lot. Anthony hurried into the restaurant. His face was still red, and he was crying with humiliation.

“Savannah!” Jessamine wailed, and Savannah resisted the urge to slap her. She was not in the mood.

“He can’t accelerate the timeline. We have the contract,” she said glumly.

“If you hadn’t done that, he might at least have let us stay here and manage the restaurant! We could have lived in our house!”

“Yeah, and he would have charged us so much rent that we’d have gone broke and had to move out in a few months anyway.”

“It would have bought us some time! Why are you so damn sensitive? Someone hurts your feelings and you just have to show them that you’re the boss bitch, don’t you?” Jessamine yelled.

Savannah bit back a snarky response. She was in the right here, but she also knew that everybody in her family was on edge. They’d tried so hard to save the restaurant. This nightmare had hung over their heads for the last five years, day in, day out, and after working sixteen-hour days and scrimping and saving, they were still going to lose everything.

“Language,” their mother said reprovingly to Jessamine. “There are kits here.” She flicked a glance at the children standing on the porch with their parents.

Savannah gave her mother a woeful glance, and her mother stroked the side of her face, with a soft, gentle, wordless murmur of sympathy.

“Mom, why aren’t you angry at me?” she asked.

Her mother gathered her in her arms, and she was warm and soft and smelled of home cooking. “Because, dear, your heart’s in the right place.”

“Too bad your head’s up your ass!” Jessamine snapped at her.

Savannah shook her head glumly. Even the sight of her mother chasing Jessamine across the yard, with Jessamine screeching in panic, wasn’t enough to cheer her up.