Chapter One
Pack Rat Central
“Stay!” Adrian yelled in vain at the mound of papers and books toppling over the side of the table. “I told you to effing stay…” fell from his lips as he crumpled to the floor. After three days of sorting through the cabin, it still looked just as—if not more—disorganized than it had three days earlier, when he had first begun.
Adrian wasn’t sure why he had to organize his late mentor’s cabin, but he did. It was beyond a compulsion at this point. He was on a mission. To what end? That, he hadn’t figured out yet. Quite honestly, the first time Adrian entered Rosemary’s cabin, it had been every bit as much of a disaster as it was now. The old woman seemed to like living among the clutter. Piles of books here. Piles of papers there. Herbs hanging everywhere. There was no doubt in Adrian’s mind that if the fire inspector ever saw this place, he would deem it a hazard.
Adrian had never minded the clutter before Rosemary passed. This little cabin hidden in the woods had felt more like home to him than anywhere else he had lived. Now, however, he felt an urgency to get it organized and clutter-free. Adrian knew he was falling into his old self-comfort strategies, but he had to. Stopping to think about all he had lost was too much.
Adrian had originally come to Three Rivers hoping to find his bear. His bear was in there, he could now feel it, but the animal never came to the forefront. Adrian could and did shift, but he was simply a human in a costume. The bear in him—that part of him that was truly animal—stayed dormant. No bear senses. No bear instincts. No bear. Period. He was just a human running around in fur.
Rumor had it that the woods in Three Rivers held more secrets than the FBI, and that one of those secrets was a Unicorn Healer named Rosemary. Unicorn Healers had been thought by many to be the stuff of fairy tales—humans assumed that was what made sense. They often dismissed anything they couldn’t understand or explain away with science. As for the rest of everyone, Adrian never really understood why they didn’t believe in unicorns’ power. They knew people could shift and that wizards and witches were real. Why was it such a stretch that unicorns could heal? Not that the unicorns did themselves any PR favors. They basically kept to themselves.
Rosemary was a perfect example. Once Adrian had arrived at Three Rivers Valley on his barely working, piece of garbage, this-is-all-you-can-buy-with-wheels-and-a-motor-for-three-hundred-dollars motorcycle, it had taken him six days to find Rosemary. Everyone in town seemed to know who the old woman was, but no one seemed to know what she was or where she lived. The only thing people seemed to know was Rosemary would come into Old Town to pick up things from Cramer’s every couple of weeks. They all agreed she was a “nice old lady” but had nothing else to say about her. Adrian couldn’t be certain, but he didn’t get the sense any of them knew Rosemary was anything other than human.
Adrian had been quickly spending the last of what little money he had at Three Rivers Inn. Paddy, the owner, was a nice enough man and his rates were fair, but Adrian had been living paycheck to paycheck before he decided to take charge of his life and fix his inner bear. That meant his savings were zilch, and after selling all his things, he’d barely had enough for his crappy motorcycle and a bit of money to get him to Three Rivers.
Adrian had assumed finding Rosemary would be easier than it had turned out to be. After all, he had overheard a shifter mention her in the bar he used to work at. If the old woman was famous enough to be chatted about three states away in a predominantly human establishment, surely her own town knew about her. Once again, Adrian was wrong. It seemed to be a constant in his life.
Maybe the only constant.
Goodness, even Paddy didn’t seem to know about Rosemary, and he was the town gossip. Adrian had heard far more about who was sleeping with whom and whose eyes wandered where than he had ever wanted to. Paddy loved to talk, and if it wasn’t gossip, it was about his cats. Poor Paddy was the epitome of every garrulous innkeeper cliché Adrian had ever heard.
Every day, Adrian grabbed a cup of Yummy Beans coffee and sat on the bench outside Cramer’s like a good old stalker. Back in his previous town, if he had done that, he would at the very least have been questioned about his odd behavior. The police would have assumed he was either a homeless derelict or a drug dealer. Here in Three Rivers, there were so many secrets, you could practically see them floating around. It was probably why people left Adrian alone. They didn’t want others prying into their lives, so they in return didn’t pry.
By day six, he had only two more nights’ worth of money left for his room at the inn, but he was not going to think about that. In his gut, he knew this was where he was supposed to be. It had to be. He refused to give up and live a completely empty and lonely life. He deserved more. Thankfully, that was the day he met Rosemary.
Rosemary took a seat beside him, instead of continuing past into the store.
“I have a few things to pick up and then we’ll be on our way home,” she said, as if continuing a conversation they’d already started.
Adrian blinked at the old woman, who gave him a side hug. “Meet me back here in a half an hour,” she instructed.
Then she stood up and marched into the small store as if nothing interesting had occurred.
Adrian had not gotten in a word—not even a complete hi when she sat down. Still, without hesitation, he ran to the inn, checked out, and was seated on his bench in front of Cramer’s again within fifteen minutes.
No wonder no one in town knew where the old woman lived. She dwelled in the woods, as many shifters preferred, but Rosemary also used her gift of illusion to hide her cabin. Apparently, even a town as filled with shifters and other nonhumans as Three Rivers still wasn’t safe for a unicorn. The false rumors of power that could be obtained by procuring a unicorn horn were still rampant.
Six months later, while Adrian hadn’t found his bear, he had found a home. Rosemary had welcomed him with open arms and taken him in as an apprentice. Adrian discovered he had a knack for healing and as a result, he and Rosemary had become very close. They sold their cures online as all-natural herbals under the guise of a small, crunchy, mom-and-pop store. The once-a-month shipping policy kept business slow, but all their customers came back. It was plenty to keep the cabin going.
But with Rosemary gone, Adrian felt even lonelier than before he arrived. He was also on borrowed time.
This cabin was not his. The business was not his. Nothing here, other than a small backpack, a broken motorcycle, and a drawer half-filled with clothes, actually belonged to him. All the rest belonged to Rosemary’s relatives, whoever they may be. Police Chief Richards promised to find and inform her heirs of her passing. He told him until they came forward he was fine staying at the home, since it had been his home, too. Perhaps simply because the chief had no idea where the cabin was.
It had been two weeks since a drunk driver hit Rosemary. No amount of healing could have saved her. The jackass who killed her walked away without a scratch. He had been drinking straight from a bottle of cheap vodka while he drove. The police told Adrian the driver was a human on his way through town to get to a lover—a woman who had been with a few additional people while visiting friends in Indianapolis. Adrian, who had been standing on the side of the road, waiting to cross, thought he had hit Rosemary on purpose. The driver swerved and hit Rosemary head-on.
But the guy claimed his eyes were so fucking blurry, he thought he was swerving around Rosemary. If only Adrian had been closer, maybe he could have pushed his friend out of the way. Instead, they had split their errands up that day—and fate took her from him.
There was no funeral for Rosemary. The police chief mentioned something about a town meeting, though. Not to be left out, Paddy was there to see what all the hoopla was about. He made a side comment about the meeting being a hunting party and not to worry about being there for a trial. Good old-fashioned shifter justice was going to be the drunkard’s fate, and Adrian was more than fine with that. He only wished he’d been included because he had enough rage to take the guy down on his own. Probably why he was left out. It was for the best. Without his bear, he would have all the human emotions a killer would normally face, and that would never sit well.
Wiping the tears from his eyes, Adrian stood up. “Well, fuck this wallowing. It’s time to get this place as good as new.” Walking around the table, he picked up the papers that had fallen everywhere. The only place in the cabin usually clutter-free was the table, and since Adrian had gone into Mission: Organize mode, it was no longer a clean space. He would, at the minimum, need to get it cleared off by the morning. He had orders to fill. There was no way he was going to allow the business Rosemary had worked so hard to build to fall apart before her relatives showed up—if they showed up. The sheriff had not been too forthcoming.
The papers and books in this pile were mostly recipes for salves, powders, and teas. Those were the most important ones because they were the cornerstone of the business. Forget this. Adrian needed a better method. These piles were just not working. He needed to create a working system. He’d sworn he would never go back to his overachieving, hyper-organized ways. He’d lied. This project called for a set of filing boxes, folders, and a label maker.
“Besides,” he muttered to himself, “I could use some fresh air.”
Grabbing his backpack, he headed into town. They didn’t really have the kind of store he needed there, but with his motorcycle not working, he would have to make do. The university bookstore should have most of what he needed, and he had to pass Yummy Beans on the way. Well, not really, but he needed a coffee fix if he was going to walk as much as it looked like he would today.