Oh, this was awful.

Tenlee sniffed, shivering in the cold. She was in Kurt’s favorite thinking place, naked, freezing, staring up at the man in the moon who cared nothing for her. Kurt had told Gunner who had killed his mom. And oh, she’d broken over the pain in Kurt’s eyes when he admitted mountain lions had killed his mate.

This was it. A dead mate was what had broken him. He’d bonded, had a son, had a family, had everything, and he’d lost it. And now Tenlee couldn’t stop crying.

That woman was dead, but she’d still had everything that Tenlee would never have. She’d had a family for a little while. She’d had Kurt. She had him still.

Oh, Tenlee had wondered about Gunner’s mother. Wondered where she’d gone to. Wondered if she’d abandoned Kurt. In her head, Tenlee had always hated her because she’d left something great. But now things had changed. Kurt’s mate hadn’t left. She’d been killed, and Kurt would’ve belonged to her still had she been alive.

No wonder Kurt felt at home on Two Claws Ranch in a Clan of bear shifters. He’d paired up with one. His son bore the blood of bears.

And who was she? Just a squirrel, and not even a proper one. She was an Origin, fucked up completely, and she would never be enough for a man like Kurt who had known a normal pairing. She would never be enough for Gunner who deserved a fearsome shifter mother. Warm tears rained down her face as she drew her knees to her bare chest and buried her face against them.

She was hurting for herself, yes, but she was also hurting for the man she would never have.

****

Find her. The words echoed from Laney’s lips. You deserve more.

Kurt lurched up in bed, gasping for air. What the fuck? He hadn’t had a Laney dream since he’d first lost her. Completely shaken, Kurt scrubbed his hand down his face and tried to forget the pleading in her voice. Find her? Find who? He needed whiskey. No. No, no, no, whiskey didn’t solve anything. All it had done was dull the pain and make him worthless to Gunner. No, he needed to stay sober and deal with his own shit, not mask it. In the dark, he looked over at his son’s bed, but Gunner was sleeping soundly. Kurt needed to Change. Needed it. His skin tingled, muscles hurt, bones ached. His wounds from the Alpha battle were throbbing, but they wouldn’t hurt if he was a cougar. They wouldn’t hurt until he Changed back, but for a few hours, he could find relief from the pain in his body and in his mind.

You awake? He texted Colt out of desperation.

Now I am, asshole. What do you want?

Need a Change. Can you watch Gunner?

There was a pause before his cell phone lit up again. Karis is coming over.

Two minutes, and Kurt’s sensitive hearing picked up the sound of the front door of the cattleman’s cabin creaking open and then Karis’s soft footsteps splashing through the mud.

Body on fire, Kurt stood and made his way out of the apartment, then out of the sliding door of the barn. Karis met him at the corral. She looked tired as hell, all bundled up in her jacket, bags under her eyes, mouse brown hair all mussed. He could see the scars Trig had talked about on her neck from here, even in the dark.

“I’ll keep him safe,” she promised softly, and Kurt believed her. Karis was a force to be reckoned with, and someday he was going to earn her forgiveness for every scar that painted her body. But tonight, he just needed to be in the wild. He just needed to ease the ache of the dream.

He knew exactly where he wanted to Change—out in the woods in his favorite place where there was a small clearing so the moonlight wasn’t blocked by evergreen branches. He was a creature of habit, and he’d always had a place in the woods to go to when life got overwhelming.

Only something was wrong with his spot. He sensed it way before he got there. Something was off. There was sadness in the woods, an ache in the wind that whipped through the trees.

There was heartache here, and it wasn’t his.

He got quiet before he approached. He walked slower, was more careful. Toes into the soft ground first, and then heels, to soften the sound of his movement. Someone was here in his woods. Someone was here in his Changing place.

He didn’t recognize her scent, but he could hear her…she was crying.

And then he saw her, this stranger in his place. Each vertebrae of her backbone protruded, her skinny arms wrapped around her legs. Her frail shoulders were shaking with her heartache, and he drew up, just watching her. Who was she, this phantom?

There was a small sniffle on the wind, and suddenly, she turned, quick as a cobra strike, but she didn’t look like a snake.

She looked like an angel.

Her eyes were dark and round, like some ethereal creature come to these woods. Her nose was small and was the only thing on her that moved. It twitched as if she were a little mouse. Her cheeks were damp underneath all that wild hair.

She looked equal parts feral and frightened as she scrambled to her feet and stood to her full height.

God…Kurt couldn’t breathe. This must be a dream, but he didn’t want to wake up. She was beautiful. And naked. Perfectly symmetrical little tits. He hadn’t even realized a perfect set of matching tits existed. As if she had no modesty at all, she didn’t cover her thighs. He hovered his hands over his hardening dick and wished he’d worn clothes.

The wood nymph parted her full lips, and he prepared for her to utter something profound, but when she spoke, all that came out was, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Uuuuh,” he uttered not-so-poetically, “I live on this property? Wait, you’re trespassing.”

“I am not!” Did she just stomp her foot? “I’m no trespasser. This is mine.” She pointed to a log. “And these woods are mine, and those trees are mine, and Colt and Trigger and Ava and Karis and Norman and you and Gunner and everything is mine! Except Harley. He is a jerk.”

“Everything is yours?” Alarm bells were clanging in Kurt’s head. “How do you know Trig and Colt?” he yelled, taking a few steps toward her. If she was what he thought she was, he was going to throttle her. “Are you a fuckin’ crow?” His accusation echoed through the night woods.

The girl flinched back as though he’d slapped her face. “Take. That. Back.”

“Who are you?”

“Take it back! I ain’t no crow! If I was, I woulda offed myself the second I hatched from an egg!”

“They don’t hatch from eggs,” Kurt said.

“Well, whatever! I woulda rolled out of my nest and cracked myself. I ain’t no fuckin’ crow. You say that again, I’ll bite your ankle and your neck and your right index finger.” She pointed to his extremities as she called out the places she would make him bleed. God, this girl was weird. “And I’ll fuckin’ eat your left nut, and I’ll pluck all your perfect eyelashes out while you’re sleeping ’cause it don’t make no sense that boys get the best eyelashes either. It’s a waste! And then I’m gonna bite—”

“Enough, lady!”

“I ain’t no lady!! That’s as big an insult as the crow one!”

Kurt had no more words. He simply stood there with his hands out, palms up, and his mouth hanging open.

Suddenly, the woman looked around the woods, and then up toward the branches above them. “I have to go. I have to go! Stop looking at me like that!”

“I knew it! Crow!” His blood came to an instant boil. The tingling sensation of the Change erupted across every nerve ending. Burn a death oath on his friends, the crows had lost their goddamn minds! And then this spy was here, in bear territory, too close to his friends and way too close to Gunner. She was dead. She was so fucking dead.

The snarling mountain lion ripped out of him before he’d even sprinted three steps to her. With a feral scream, he closed the gap between them in moments and reveled in the look of fear in her wide, dark eyes. Bunching his muscles, he leapt across the log, claws outstretched to end this she-devil.

Only the second his claws touched her bare, pale skin, she disappeared. Just…was gone. Kurt landed hard on the ground, skidded through the mud, and slammed into a tree. When he turned around to search for that phantom, all he saw was a small, gray squirrel scrambling up the nearest tree. Kurt froze.

Genie?

What the hell?

All four legs splayed, Kurt watched the tiny critter run to the end of a branch and go sailing to the next pine, and then the next, until she disappeared into the night.

Holy. Fuck.

Genie was a shifter.