About two hours into the drive, just as they were passing through Chattanooga, Tennessee, Ryan realized that he was falling asleep at the wheel. By that point it was getting damn late at night, and they had been going without a stop since they headed out.

Dylan probably felt the same way, even though he wasn’t the one who had been wracking his brains trying to concentrate on the road for untold hours at a time. Overthinking could exhaust a man. Plus, Dylan hadn’t been in great shape before this.

“Dilly?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“I’m beat.”

It was a miracle that they hadn’t had another close call like they had with that semi-truck. It seemed almost impossible that that had happened only a few days ago, when enough had transpired since then to fill a lifetime. They were both going to reach their limits soon. Even if they could continue after those limits were passed, they wouldn’t be useful.

After a minute of silence, during which Ryan struggled to keep his eyes from staying shut whenever he blinked, Dylan let out a pained sigh. “Me, too. But we can’t stop. Hunter...”

Hunter was in need. They couldn’t stop until they found him. Unfortunately, getting into a wreck and turning into bloody smears on the highway would mean they never got to find him. He supposed they could just pull over and swap who was driving, but that was no way to get the rest they needed.

A sudden thought occurred to Ryan and he sat up straighter in his seat. “I bet they’ve stopped for the night.”

“What? Why would they?”

“Because Hunter is a kid. They’re probably fresh if they were waiting at the cabins for that fox and his friend to arrive, but Hunter wouldn’t be. Dylan, I...can’t figure out why they have him, but I don’t get the feeling that he’s really in danger.”

He could feel Dylan’s sharp disagreement but he plowed on, knowing that they were both thinking about different things.

“I bet they’ve been feeding him, making pit stops. And they don’t really suspect that anyone will be following them now, because they said they’d be in Baneberry. Why wouldn’t they stop for the night?”

While Dylan mulled over this idea, Ryan kept driving. He flexed his fingers, rubbed the steering wheel, shifted in his seat, trying his damnedest to stay focused and awake even though every blink was torture. His vision was hazy around the edges, like he was looking into a perpetual bank of fog.

The headlights glanced across a sign for a town coming up at the next ramp, named Wildwood. If they didn’t get off here, he would just have to keep holding on, he guessed. How he was going to do that, he didn’t know. He was tired real down deep in his bones.

Just as they were about to pass the exit, Dylan finally spoke up. “Okay,” he whispered. “But only for a couple hours.”

Ryan silently thanked whatever deity was watching over him and wrenched the wheel around to the side. The truck barely made the turn, spraying up gravel as it hit the shoulder before straightening out again.

The town of Wildwood was bigger than he would have thought it’d be, and the area wasn’t exactly rough on the eyes. It would have been a pleasant surprise at any other time, since these off-ramp towns tended to be lacking, but all he could think about was finding a motel and getting some sleep.

Though the town was bigger than he’d suspected, it was also quieter. That was surprising given its relative closeness to Chattanooga, but Ryan wasn’t going to question the lack of traffic. It just made things easier on him.

“Motel over there,” Dylan said, pointing helpfully towards a flickering neon sign that said Wildwood Motel.

These Wildwood folks seem to be pretty forward, Ryan thought, and laughed. Dylan looked at him quizzically but didn’t ask, and Ryan was glad because he wasn’t sure he would have been able to explain what the joke was.

The motel parking lot was mostly empty, with a few cars that likely either belonged to permanent guests or staff. Every light in the motel lobby was on, a sure sign that the place was open, but it sure as hell didn’t look open. He couldn’t see anyone behind the desk, nor did he see any of the usual outside loiterers who had left their rooms to grab a smoke. There was always one or two.

Just, not here.

That might have been a sign that he should be worried, but he couldn’t manage to find the strength for it. It was just a weird town, was all.

They went inside. Only when they had to squeeze together to get through the automatic door did Ryan realize that they were holding hands. They hadn’t thought about it. It had just happened.

Once they were standing in the tiny lobby, which looked like every motel lobby in the history of the universe, Ryan figured out why he hadn’t been able to see anyone from the outside. The person standing at the desk looked to be all of 13 years old, and a rather underdeveloped 13 at that.

“Oh, hi!” the girl at the desk said. She bounced up on her tiptoes and smiled at both of them. “You two are out late!”

All at once, Ryan wasn’t tired anymore. He was just baffled. He looked to Dylan for clarification but the omega just looked back at him with the same confusion.

God, this is a weird town.

“Uh, hi,” Ryan said. How was he supposed to act around a little girl? “Are your...uh...do you...work here?”

“Sure!” she piped. “My daddy owns the motel, but he’s asleep. I got insomnia so I get to stay up until Amelia comes in a few hours to take over. I like to clean. Do you want some coffee?”

While this wasn’t exactly an arrangement that he would have declared acceptable, Ryan supposed he could see the benefits. In any case, the girl seemed capable and it was probably better for her to keep busy when she couldn’t sleep instead of letting her sit there in her room growing anxious over her difficulties.

“No, thanks,” Dylan said. He was smiling, more at ease than Ryan was. Ryan was pretty sure the reason for that was because a kid was involved, and it made his heart melt a little. He’d never seen Dylan really interact much with his son—hadn’t seen Dylan’s son much in general—but this was enough proof for him that his friend was a good father.

“No coffee for us,” Dylan continued, “but we’ll take that room.”

In no time at all, the girl had them checked in and was handing over their room key. The room itself was nice, though nothing spectacular. Ryan didn’t care. There was a bed and he was going to sleep on it if it killed him.

Luckily, it didn’t kill him and he woke up three hours later to the smell of fast food.

“Wha...?” he grunted, and sat up. It was still before dawn and the room was incredibly dark, but his predator eyes had no problem piercing through the shadows. Dylan was at the door, sliding the chain in place with one hand. In the other, he held a grease-stained brown bag. When he turned around, Ryan saw a small white stick protruding from the side of his mouth.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” Dylan apologized softly. “Except I was going to. But, you know.”

“You got hungry?” Ryan asked, standing up and stretching. He was stiff as hell but the stretches limbered him up, his joints popping like popcorn.

“Not really.” Dylan sat on the edge of the bed and placed the bag down. His voice was slurred slightly around that white stick. “I woke up after like, two hours. Couldn’t go back to sleep. I went for a walk and picked up some McDonald’s on my way back. You’re welcome.”

“That kid still out there?”

“Yes. She’s the one who gave me this.” Dylan removed the stick from his mouth, revealing it to be a blue raspberry lollipop. His tongue was stained from the artificial coloring, and his teeth were tinted cyan around the edges. “Nice kid.”

“I guess she’s okay.” Ryan dug around in the bag and brought out the first thing that he grabbed. The long nap had refreshed him, but he was still running on empty and needed fuel, no matter how low quality that fuel was.

Dylan picked at his own hamburger, mostly tearing the bun into shreds. “You don’t like kids?” He sounded a bit apprehensive, and Ryan realized that he had best be careful with how he answered this. When all of this was said and done, they were going to have to address the whole mate situation. It was too soon to really think about any of that, but if he decided to mate with Dylan, he wasn’t just going to get Dylan. He was going to have to accept Hunter’s and Arden’s presence as well. It was a package deal.

“I’ve never really thought about it much,” Ryan said truthfully.

And that seemed to be good enough.

“Maybe you should,” Dylan said.

And that was good enough, too.

They finished eating. Ryan’s stomach was satisfied at having been given something to work on, but he felt as though he still could have eaten three times that amount. Being a shifter meant having a naturally rapid metabolism. He couldn’t remember having ever seen a fat shapeshifter. Chubby, yes. But obese? Not once.

After eating, they showered together. The process took up more time that way, but it was a decision they made together without saying anything out loud. The shower was hardly big enough for one person, let alone two, which meant they had to press together the entire time, but that was what they would have been doing anyway. They needed each other’s comfort, letting their jittery nerves calm down.

They washed each other, and Ryan discovered for the first time that he liked being taken care of. He had no idea what to do with this new knowledge, but he filed it away to examine later. He was always the one to take care of others, but there in the shower, being washed so carefully by Dylan’s tender touch, he thought it might be something he could eventually grow to like on special occasions.

He washed Dylan with equal care, loving the way that their complimentary bar of soap slid over the omega’s curvy muscles. Dylan leaned deeply into him, almost limp. His eyes were closed and the moisture on his face might have been tears or just shower water.

Dylan had very little hair to wash, though Ryan noticed with a tiny spark of amusement that it was growing out in random, weedy offshoots. He slid his soapy hands through it nonetheless, scrubbing until Dylan grabbed at his wrists and tried to push him away.

“Stop!” he chuckled. “I’m clean!”

Ryan stopped obediently, and with that came another realization. Alphas might have a commanding voice that others were compelled to listen to, but omegas had alphas wrapped around their little fingers even without that. An alpha was urged to always impress. Omegas were taught to be who they were, and their mate would find them, be drawn to them.

All those silly little omega housewives might not be so silly after all. They were probably some of the happiest people on earth, being themselves and being loved for it.

Dylan had his own hands lathered up, with shampoo instead of soap, and he reached out to start attending to Ryan’s hair. Ryan allowed this, closing his eyes to prevent any from getting in them.

“You look like you’re thinking really hard,” Dylan whispered. “Does it hurt?”

Ryan scowled at him, though he had to open his eyes to do it and was rewarded with a stinging sensation. “Not everyone can be a genius like you, you know.”

“How sad for them.”

Groaning with playful disgust, Ryan pushed Dylan away with both hands and then wrenched open the shower curtain. “I’m done here.”

“Wait!” Dylan called. “Your hair is still all soapy!”

Shampoo was running down his face in filmy white streaks, and it was very cold to be running around naked and wet. Plus, he was slipping and sliding all over the tiled bathroom floor, and it was a wonder he didn’t break his neck on the way out.

“Doesn’t matter,” Ryan said. “I’m leaving. Goodbye.”

“Wait!” Dylan repeated. His voice was full of laughter.

Ryan walked at a snail’s pace through the bedroom, dripping everywhere. He heard the shower shut off, followed by the wet slaps of bare feet against tile. The slapping of feet turned into a moment of sudden silence, followed by a heavy thump.

Ryan went back to the bathroom and stood in the doorway to find Dylan lying on his side, looking up at the ceiling.

“I’m dead,” Dylan informed him. “You have to kiss me to bring me back to life.”

Ryan tapped his lips, thinking this over. “No. I don’t think so. Good luck in the afterlife.” And he started off again.

Dylan lunged after him and grabbed onto his legs. “No!” he wailed softly. “I promise not to wash your hair anymore!”

“Augh!” Ryan cried. “A zombie!” He stood on one leg and shook the other, trying to dislodge his undead assailant, but Dylan was committed. He hung on and started inchworming his body up Ryan’s leg, and then to his waist, and even higher, until he was plastered to Ryan’s chest with his arms and legs around him.

“Caught you,” Dylan teased, looking up at him. “Now I’m going to bite you, and you have to be with me forever in eternal undeath.”

Ryan plopped his wet ass on the bed, surrendering. Holding Dylan by the waist, he looked into his best friend’s eyes. “If anyone is going to do any biting around here, it’s going to be me.”

Dylan slid up a little more and touched their lips together softly. Their wet bodies pressed together, igniting passion, making their manhoods stir and reach for each other, but neither of them made a move to follow the urge. Ryan just sank deeply into the kiss, sharing breath with the man who meant more to him than anything else.

Drawing back first, Dylan whispered, “Thank you.”

Ryan hugged onto him tight and then let go. “You’re welcome. Now, get dressed and check us out of here. I need to rinse out the last of this shampoo before it makes me go blind.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were back in the truck. Dawn was nowhere to be found, the hour still so early. The sky was incredibly dark, and a scattering of stars glistened overhead. Ryan used to know a few things about stars, but now he’d be hard-pressed to find the big dipper. That boyhood passion hadn’t aged well, and living in a city didn’t give a person much time to practice their astronomy skills.

He wondered if there was a perfect world out there where things like this didn’t happen, where kids were never stolen and fathers never had to worry. He wished that there was. He wished that somewhere was a planet where its people knew nothing bad, and that they didn’t know how good they had it, which would prevent them from knowing how bad some others did.

But those were only idle thoughts, idle fantasies.

Been reading too many books, he scolded himself. I wasn’t made to use my imagination.

He looked over at Dylan, but Dylan was asleep in his seat, cheek vibrating against the window. He was effectively alone with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company, and so his thoughts returned to the distant, perfect world he’d imagined.

Maybe somewhere out there was a different version of himself, a Ryan who had realized from the very start that he was meant to be mates with the special man at his side. He envied that imagined version of himself, because that pretend Ryan didn’t have to figure out how to make the transition from best friend to lover. There was a difference, and he didn’t know yet how to reconcile it in his own mind.

Being Dylan’s mate would be more than just being best friends who had sex. Wouldn’t it?

Eventually he wore out that line of thinking and turned to another, which was that all those investigators he read about in his detective novels would be very disappointed in him for being so utterly dense. He should have figured all this out sooner, shouldn’t have been so blind.

I’ll pay more attention from now on, he promised.

Dawn crested over the horizon, appearing not so much like light as a different shade of darkness. The winter sun was slow to rise, but the gradual lightening of the sky revealed something that Ryan hadn’t been able to see before.

Mountains.

He hadn’t even known Alabama had mountains, but here they were, as vast as they were tall, and covered in dormant trees. It wasn’t as cold this far south, which meant the winter decay wasn’t nearly as advanced. A few trees here and there were still mostly green, while the hibernating trees tended more towards russet and yellow than brown. It was a beautiful sight gradually revealed to him over the course of half an hour, during which the mountains angled steadily closer and he continued to drive almost parallel to them.

The highway started to move beneath the truck, no longer a static straight line, but a dynamic thing that wove with the land rather than through it. They crested hills, wove through valleys, mimicking the winding path a serpent might take. It was at this point that Dylan stirred.

“Are we there yet?” he murmured, blinking around.

“Don’t make me stop this car,” Ryan growled. He glanced over to consult the ancient GPS on the dashboard, which they’d had to dig out of the glove box because Dylan’s phone had died a while ago. It really didn’t make that much of a difference, though it was a bit concerning since they hadn’t heard anything from Arden or the police since setting out on this journey.

Not for lack of trying. Dylan’s efforts to raise a response from Arden had indeed been valiant.

Ryan just figured that the woman was pissed at them and was giving them the silent treatment. No skin off his nose. He figured this would eventually all come tumbling down around them sooner or later, but he had expected it to be sooner. He had expected much more opposition in Baneberry, and he was fully prepared to wiggle his way out of that, but nothing of real consequence had occurred.

It felt wrong, somehow. The police weren’t normally so lax. Sometimes he suspected that the officers reveled in their hold over civilians, cracking down on certain things because they could rather than out of necessity. Others were just extreme sticklers for the rules.

He and Dylan were rogue elements, which were the bane of a policeman’s life. So, where were the police attempting to corral them, to control the situation?

Where was Arden, who had to be stressed to the absolute limit—as much as he didn’t like her, Ryan was sorry about that—and wondering why her ex-husband wasn’t shouldering his half of the burden?

Where were the paparazzi, who somehow managed to know things that they shouldn’t?

He didn’t like it, but that was one mystery he couldn’t solve. And he couldn’t focus on it, couldn’t let himself be distracted.

A few more miles down highway AL-21 South, a right turn, and they were finally in Sylacauga. They had been catching glimpses of it in the distance for a while now, but they had truly arrived. For some reason, Ryan had been expecting...more. He had built up this destination in his mind, marking it as a place of great importance, but in reality it was only a small city that looked as if it might only hold about 10,000 people or so. Even that sum might be pushing it.

Mountains still loomed in the distance, covered in those brightly-colored trees, but their brilliance was muted somehow from here. The sky seemed not to be blue but tended more towards grey, though there didn’t seem to be a developed cloud in the sky. The city itself was unspectacular.

“Must not get many tourists coming through here,” Ryan mused out loud. He had to admit that the city wasn’t doing much to boost its popularity in the tourism circuit. There had to be a park nearby, or a few trails, something worth mentioning, but only businesses were being advertised. The roads were especially wide, which he appreciated, but the main color scheme seemed to be gray. Not silver, as skyscrapers were, flashy and beautiful in their own right, but gray.

Dylan stared around and the hopelessness in his expression was easy to read. Small as it might be, unimpressive as it was, a city was still a city and there were an infinite number of places to start looking. It wasn’t like Baneberry where they could effectively deduce the best place to look. They had no information and could gather no information from just looking around.

The people they were looking for might have already moved on, but there was no telling what the next destination might be. That fox shapeshifter had mentioned Mexico, but there were tons of roads between here and there, and Mexico was an entire new country. Any guess they might make was doomed to failure.

“What are we going to do?” Dylan said. He practically moaned the words. The light ease of their hotel room banter was nowhere to be found. He almost seemed to be a completely different person.

I don’t know. I really don’t.

“There’s only one thing we can do,” Ryan said cheerfully. “Let’s drive around. Take a look. Never know what we might see. If they’re here, if they’ve been here, we’ll know when we see it.”

He was speaking lies, talking right out of his ass, but he couldn’t let Dylan falter when they were so close. How was a person supposed to know when they were seeing “it” when they didn’t know what they were looking for?

But he hid his doubts, blocking the omega from feeling them. They would get through this.

So they drove around, taking it one block at a time. They drove up and down every single street in a manner that would have been incredibly suspicious in a smaller town. They’d have the cops called on them in an instant, though that wasn’t so much because of the way they were driving around as it was the way both of them stared so intently out the window. They were searching and townspeople didn’t like to be searched, didn’t like their peaceful little lives to be intruded upon.

But this city was just large enough that the people had developed a sort of blindness, focusing only on their own thoughts. The world around them didn’t so much cease to exist as it just became irrelevant.

For all the people here, they were just two tourists who’d wandered a bit off the beaten path and were searching for something worthwhile. That was if they were noticed at all.

Ryan saw absolutely nothing to catch his attention. Though he hated to admit it, he was bored as hell. The people he saw on the streets also looked bored. Even the children seemed lethargic, like flies on a very hot summer day.

What an awful place. It’s a damn shame.

But he kept driving.

After only a few more slow, meandering blocks, during which they passed an electric plant and a few adjacent factories of no real importance, the silence in the truck was broken by a sudden abrupt chiming.

Ryan nearly jumped out of his skin, imagining all sorts of wild scenarios in a single second, before realizing what the sound was: his low light had just come on.

“For fuck’s sake,” Dylan muttered.

“Sorry.” Of course he was sorry about the inconvenience, but there really wasn’t much he could do about it. The truck got surprisingly good mileage for what it was, but that didn’t mean it could go forever.

Dylan shook his head. “No. I meant I nearly had a heart attack.”

“Me, too. At least we’d go out together.”

“Yeah,” Dylan grumbled. “That’s exactly what I’d want on my tombstone. Look.” He pointed out the windshield and then crossed his arms. “There’s a station up ahead.”

Ryan obediently set course for the gas station and arrived within a minute. The station was bustling in a way that the rest of the town wasn’t, becoming a center of activity. Clearly, the citizens flocked to places which provided what they needed, and gas was at the top of the list. All the pumps were occupied, most of the parking spots were taken, and cars were arriving and leaving again in a constant unsteady stream.

The play of vehicles weaving in and out in such tight quarters reminded him of the off-ramp towns, where no one seemed to stick around and everyone who did was dour. And just like that, he had Sylacauga figured out. It was a thoroughfare, a place where tourists passed through without ever stopping unless they needed something. It wasn’t a destination. If there were trails nearby, if there was anything of value here, it was in the mountains themselves. Maybe those trails would be inside the city limits but they didn’t really belong to the city in spirit.

“God, this is a mess.” Dylan stared out at the gas station, frowning enough for ten unhappy people. “Go find another.”

“I’m not a big fan of running on empty,” Ryan retorted. “And besides, we’re already here.”

Another twenty feet and they would be in the thick of that mess, joining the tangle of cars. His opportunities to jump ship were disappearing rapidly. The closer he got, the less organized it looked and it was a wonder that there weren’t fender benders occurring all over the place.

He paused for a stop sign and looked to the street in either direction. There were no cars coming, just ones lined up already waiting. The idea of joining that line was daunting indeed, and he was halfway through turning back in the direction of the downtown area when a gap in the line of cars suddenly opened up. It was like the Red Sea had been parted. Several of the cars had moved up, but there was one which stayed idle, the driver clearly distracted.

Ryan took the chance and slid himself neatly into the space, or as neatly as a gigantic truck ever could. Several horns beeped behind him as other drivers protested his line-jumping, and he could see the driver of the car behind him flipping him off with both hands. A few moments later, the pump nearest him became free and he pushed his way in there, too.

“You’re going to get your ass kicked,” Dylan commented. He didn’t look pleased by this development at all.

Ryan reached over and stroked his thigh, trying to offer comfort, but this gesture was ignored. He didn’t mind very much.

“Mind if I head inside?” he asked. There were some things which couldn’t be ignored, no matter how hard he might try.

Some of the impatience cleared from Dylan’s gaze. “Sure. And when you come back, I guess I’ll head in. Promise not to drive off without me?”

Ryan shrugged a little. “I’ll do my best. Ow!” Dylan had punched him lightly on the shoulder. It didn’t really hurt, but he rubbed his arm anyway, playing it up.

“Get out and pump gas,” Dylan said.

Ryan obeyed. He knew a few people who absolutely hated pumping gas, but he thought it was interesting to see all the different things that people did for that minute or two when the world was holding still for them. He thought it spoke volumes about a person whether they decided to do something productive or to simply stand there.

He noticed that a few people were glaring at him, their stares piercing right through him with burning anger, but he ignored it. It was first come, first serve. They should be blaming that distracted person, not him.

Leaving the truck to fill with gas, he headed into the convenience store and sought out the men’s room to take care of business. The bathroom was exactly as grubby as he would have expected, and he really wished he didn’t have to be in there at all, breathing in who knew how many days’ worth of germs. Normally pristine, white surfaces had gone clouded with a smeared layer of grime.

He was washing his hands very thoroughly, contemplating how effective a bottle of hand sanitizer might be in getting rid of whatever airborne diseases he might have picked up from this place, when two other men entered. He glanced at them idly in the mirror, not even really curious, but just taking note of their presence.

The men ignored him and wandered over to the far side of the sink against the wall, huddling close together. Whatever they were doing, he really didn’t want to know. He just dried his hands and got out of there.

He wasn’t the kind of person to take advantage of a place without buying something, so he wandered over to the cold section along the back wall of the store to fetch a couple of sodas. As it turned out, whatever cooling system the store used was broken, so he ended up with a couple of lukewarm bottles.

He was browsing for that bottle of sanitizer when he caught the tail end of a conversation coming from behind him. “I don’t see them.”

“Can you chill?” a second person said. “They’ll be here, alright?”

Ryan’s ears perked up but he didn’t turn around. Certainly an interesting conversation but he had no reason to suspect anything.

“I guess so,” the first person muttered. There was a sound of shuffling, as if the person rocked uncertainly back and forth on their feet. “It makes me nervous, waiting. All these humans.”

The last sentence was whispered hurriedly, hardly more than a breath. However, the meaning of it came in loud and clear for Ryan. One of these people was a shapeshifter, and the other probably as well. It was impossible for him to have scented them out, to have even been aware of a shapeshifter presence here other than his own, because there were just too many smells here that mingled. Car exhaust and the unique reek of gasoline flooded in on a wave of air whenever the door was opened. People were constantly coming in and out, bringing with them various smells of perfume and soap. The strong odor of cheap hand soap and harsh cleaner, and the different smells of so many kinds of candy, all combined into one multifaceted smell which was never the same from one breath to the next.

Despite himself, knowing that Dylan was waiting in the truck for him to return, Ryan continued to browse over the selection of hand sanitizer as if it was the absolute most important decision he’d ever made in his entire life. Something about the nervousness in the other shifter’s voice made him wary, and he couldn’t bring himself to leave just yet in case things went south. Sure, humans and shapeshifters were very different, but it was an important part of being a shifter to learn how to blend into human society. After all, it was a shifter’s society too, even if they had more to deal with.

Shifters who were nervous around humans tended to be bad news, in a variety of ways.

“Maybe they’re outside?” the first shifter ventured. “Waiting for us?”

The second speaker let out an irritable growl. That confirmed for Ryan that he was a shifter as well, because only someone who was part animal could produce such a deep tone. “Fine. We’ll go out and check. Just to get you to shut up. God, she’s not paying me enough to deal with you.”

Wonder what that’s about.

Having heard enough, Ryan grabbed a bottle at random and turned to leave. As he did, something struck hard against his shoulder and then bounced off.

“Ow! Damn!”

Ryan turned to see that one of the shapeshifters had run into him, the nervous one by the sounds of it. Recognition sparked inside his mind and he realized that these two were the same men he’d seen entering the restroom after him.

“Sorry,” the shifter said. “Didn’t see you there, buddy.”

The sentence began ordinary but suddenly trailed away. The shifter stared at him by the end of it, jaw dropping open slightly. Ryan stared back blankly, puzzled at this reaction.

They were close enough now that he could tell more about them. The shifter looking at him was a coyote, and an omega if his physical stature was anything to go by. He had sandy brown hair and nervous brown eyes that flicked everywhere without ever seeming to focus on anything.

The other shifter was a black bear beta, twice as large as the coyote. He was a massive, stocky man with dark eyes and olive skin that hinted at Hispanic blood running in his veins.

“Whoa,” the coyote said. “A wolf! So, you’re...with them, right? Where’s the other guy?”

Ryan stared at him. An odd feeling settled in the pit of his stomach at this case of mistaken identity. Alarm bells were ringing in his mind and he’d be damn stupid to ignore them.

“He’s waiting outside,” Ryan said. His heart pounded. He just knew that he was going to be found out, that this wily coyote would see right through his thin ruse.

“Cool,” the coyote said, nodding. “Yeah, that’s probably best. But you guys are late, you know? Everything cool on your end?”

“Keep your voice down, Corey,” the black bear said, swinging his massive head around to look at the other people in the store. He called the coyote Corey after a slight hesitation, as if that wasn’t his real name. “Don’t want anyone to hear us.”

“Whatever, Barry.”

Barry the bear and Corey the coyote. They really put a lot of thought into these fake names of theirs.

Ryan said, “Everything’s fine. Just ran into some construction on the way here.” This lie made his spine tingle. If they’d come the same way he had, they would know there was no construction work being done nearby.

“Sure. Anyway,” Corey said. “We’ve got the delivery. So if you want to go on out and tell your partner, we’ll find somewhere for the exchange.”

Bells chimed above the door as someone else entered the store. This sound would have normally been inconsequential, but the person who came in was now walking right up to them. Their footsteps were incredibly heavy, as if the person caused miniature earthquakes with every step.

Ryan turned and found himself face to face with a ragged-looking wolf shapeshifter, with another just behind. Their unfamiliar reek was strong, igniting aggression inside him.

“What are you doing with this other guy?” the ragged wolf growled. “We’re here to pick up the kid.”

And now his suspicions were confirmed.

Corey looked back and forth between his companion and the three wolves, looking absolutely baffled. Then, he gave a yipping little laugh and bolted for the door as fast as he could. Barry let out a frustrated snarl but stood his ground, shaking his massive head. “Looks like we’ve fucked up, guys. Thought this one was one of you.”

One of the wolves let out a derisive sniff. “I don’t think so. He’s a pretty boy. Ain’t done a bit of rough work in his life. But now he’s heard too much.”

Barry reached out and grabbed onto Ryan’s upper arm, letting his bear claws slide out and press threateningly against his bicep. “I’ll take care of him. Corey’ll be out with the car. To the right. Make the swap. I’ll be back soon. This won’t take long.” To Ryan, Barry growled, “Don’t put up a fight or it’ll get ugly. Real ugly.”

Ryan snarled back but it was useless to protest, risky to fight back. The burly bear-man dragging him along felt as if he might snap at any moment, trembling with aggression. His hooked two-inch-long claws were out, prepared to cause some serious hurt.

Barry guided him around to the rear of the service station, where the loud rumbling of a heater would disguise his cries of pain and no one could see him being ripped to shreds.

He was abruptly released and thrust forward. He reacted without thinking and thrust out his hands to catch himself against the ground, swinging around at the same time as he was pushing himself up.

The black bear cracked his knuckles and pushed up his sleeves to his elbows. “Nothing personal,” he grunted. “Just business. Can’t have you going around telling people we’ve got that kid.”

Ryan braced to attack, just in time to catch a switch punch to the stomach. It felt as if he’d just been struck with a cinder block, his insides compressed beneath crushing weight. He staggered backwards, gasping, getting no oxygen. His heart raced and his pulse pounded in his ears, fear and rage battling for control inside of him.

Somehow, without meaning to, he had stumbled upon the very people who had stolen Hunter. This was what he and Dylan wanted but he’d been hoping for this confrontation to go down in private, with the advantage of surprise on their side. This was meant to be his chance to do what so many other people wished they could do, to rescue someone important to him.

He was going to lose that chance, have it beaten out of him by this man.