Mate Bond

They’d been tracking all morning, and now the woods was crisscrossed with wolf, wildcat, and bear tracks. Somewhere in the mess must lie the tracks of the monster that had attacked, but so far, no sign of them had been found.

After a thorough search Kenzie returned to human form again and stood, clothed, her hands on her hips, surveying the scene. When she’d arrived this morning she’d thought tracking as Shifter would speed the search along, but they’d gone over this place with noses to the ground for hours, and found nothing.

“You’d think something that stunk like that would be easier to locate,” Jamie said beside her. He was on his two human feet, but naked, having just shifted.

Interesting that while Jamie had a tall body replete with muscle, tatts on his lower back and arms, and eyes of green flecked with gold, he never stirred a heartbeat in Kenzie. Not because he was Feline—she’d grown used to living with different species in the last twenty years, and had even gone out with a Feline for a while. No, she’d never looked twice at Jamie, because her mind and her heart were filled with Bowman.

“I’m realizing we’re not going to find it by thinking like Shifters,” Kenzie said. “We have to think like humans for this one.”

Jamie’s frown deepened. “What does that mean?”

“The thing wasn’t . . . right, was it?” Kenzie asked. “Not really an animal.”

“No? If you’re implying it was some kind of machine, you’re wrong.”

“Not a machine, no. Different smell.”

“Then what the hell are you talking about?”

Kenzie waited, sensing Jamie’s impatience. She was Bowman’s voice while he was down, but she was aware that the Shifters acted differently with her. Bowman was injured. Kenzie wasn’t Bowman. Her awareness of their awareness made her skin prickle.

“I’m talking about not running around like crazy, leaving scents all over the woods,” Kenzie said. “We need to think.”

“Fine, then,” Jamie growled. “Think about what?”

“How it could have disappeared.” Kenzie turned in place, her gaze taking in the space between the trees and the mud and undergrowth around them. “How do things disappear?”

“Mostly Cade eats them,” Jamie said, his irritation dissolving into a big cat chuckle. He had lightning-swift changes of mood, a bit like Bowman. “People disappear because they run, they hide, they get lost, or someone takes them away.”

“Exactly.” Kenzie remained still, letting her gaze rove the woods, looking with her human brain instead of her wolf’s. “Someone takes them away. There,” she finished, pointing.

There was a cluster of trees next to a deer feeder, a wooden trough that provided nibbles for deer in deep winter. Kenzie started for it, her feet squelching through mud. Jamie heaved a sigh and came after her. He wouldn’t disobey, not blatantly, but he didn’t have to like her decisions.

Cade saw them and came loping over in his bear form. His eyes narrowed as he clearly wondered what they were up to, but he fell into step with Kenzie.

No scent came to her at the feeder except that of deer who’d ventured there a few days ago and the metallic odor of car exhaust. Kenzie moved past the feeder and around the clump of trees. On the other side of the trees, a hill led down to a ditch with an inch or so of water in it, trickling from the thaw this morning. January could be cold and then suddenly give them mild days in the high fifties and up. Today would be one of the balmy ones.

Across the ditch were thinner trees—deciduous, rather than the old-growth pines around her. Beyond that, a road.

The road was paved, one of the tiny forest roads that crossed back here. Tracks of a truck with deep-tread tires had sunk through the mud on the side of it. A big truck, by the looks of it.

Jamie followed her, jumping the ditch with his long-legged stride. Cade remained a bear. No human was around to worry that a woman, a naked man, and a grizzly walked out of the woods together, so they didn’t bother to hide. Like the start of a bad joke, Kenzie thought with grim humor.

“So that’s the answer?” Jamie said skeptically. “The monster caught a ride?”

Kenzie wrinkled her nose. The smell of truck dominated, but over it, she caught a tang of the creature. Cade must have caught it too, because he rose on his hind legs and growled.

“Yes,” Kenzie said. “Truck was waiting here, monster got into truck, truck drove off.”

“Must have been a fucking big truck,” Jamie said.

“Eighteen-wheeler,” Kenzie observed. She looked down the curve of the narrow road. “Had to be tough to drive it back here, but whoever it was did it.”

Cade sat down on his haunches, growling up a storm. Kenzie didn’t know exactly what he was saying, but she got the gist. He was right—this was creepy.

“You’re saying someone put that weird Shifter thing together?” Jamie asked Kenzie.

“Or found it and tamed it.”

“Tamed it? Did you see what it did to Bowman? And to Cade’s truck?”

Cade’s growl grew louder, the look in his eyes murderous. No doubt about what he was saying now.

“Tamed it,” Kenzie answered. “How else would they have gotten it to a designated area and into the back of a truck?”

“Shit,” Jamie said softly.

The three of them stood looking down the road. Eventually that road would lead to a highway, which in turn would lead to highways and freeways connecting every city in the state, and then every state in the country. A big truck with plenty of fuel could be many miles away by now.