Chapter Seventeen
Rowe
He looked down at Cheryl, tempted to lean over and give her a kiss.
Fighting down the sensation, he reminded himself of how hard it had been to simply slip out from under her arm and exit the bed. Twice she’d woken up and mumbled something in her sleep. Cheryl was a light sleeper, and it made his midnight washroom an absolute pain in the ass. Both times she’d not fully woken up, but he’d frozen, not wanting to disturb her any further. She was just too cute when she was asleep.
Yawning, he passed by a bank of windows, uncaring about his nudity. The lights were off. There was no way the dog out there could see him. He took another three steps before his sex- and sleep-befuddled brain kicked in.
There were no dogs on the farm, and certainly none that should be out late at night. Hurrying back to the window, suddenly conscious of his nudity, he peered out into the darkness. Whatever he’d seen had disappeared into the shadows, obscured from his view.
Calling to his dragon, he let his vision slip into the infrared. There! A red shape moved across the open yard on all fours. A wolf, judging by the size. They had come right up to the property now. Arrogant little fucks. He’d hoped by beating up the twins, whom he figured to be the two wolf shifters that had left the graffiti, that maybe they’d tone down their actions.
Turns out they were just ramping it up. Snarling furiously he stalked downstairs, flinging open the door, uncaring of his own nudity. He did manage to catch the door at the last second so it didn’t bang around and make noise.
“You!” he hissed, jumping down the steps.
The creature was a wolf, he could see that now for certain. Its head came up and yellow eyes glowed brightly in the dark. A paw scraped at the ground, pulling at the frozen earth in a silent challenge to him. A wolf shifter; there was no doubt in his mind that the beast wasn’t natural. None of them had been, just like the men he’d encountered in the forest that afternoon hadn’t been human. They’d been shifters.
The burning question was who the hell were they, and what did they want with the farm. He’d talked to Palin at the time. There had been no names on Rusty’s will, no listed next of kin. There had been absolutely nobody. That’s why the transfer of ownership had been able to happen so swiftly. With nobody in the way, the bank simply auctioned it off to the highest bidder. Palin. So who the hell were these people?
“You don’t want to do that,” he snapped, pointing a finger as the wolf prepared to charge. “Truly, you’re going to find out in a very painful manner that coming at me is a bad idea.”
The wolf ran at him.
“I gave you fair warning, mutt. But in this form or the other, it wouldn’t make a difference.” He glanced down, remembering his nudity. “Yeah, even butt-ass naked I’m gonna give you an ass-kicking. I’ll bet your friends would love to know that.”
The wolf ignored him and leapt right at his throat. Young and untrained then. Either that or this wasn’t one of the wolves from earlier. It must not realize that he was superior. After all, in his haste and nudity he was walking a little awkwardly, perhaps helping to conceal his true nature. Oh well, not his fault.
Rowe turned slightly to the side, just to better brace himself, and stuck one hand out straight. The leaping wolf tried to avoid it at the last second, but it was too late. The dragon’s hand tightened and the wolf came to a very rough and abrupt halt in midair. It let out a soft yelp, but was too dazed to do much more than that.
“I warned you,” he said, letting his boredom show. Then he shook it like a ragdoll and tossed it to the side.
The wolf bounced several times and lay still, its flank rising and falling slowly.
Now to get some answers.
He stalked over to the beast as it sat up, shaking its head slightly.
“Oh no you don’t,” he said, lunging for it as the slate-gray animal got up.
The wolf was faster than he’d expected, and it slipped from his outstretched hand, leaving him with nothing but a handful of fur. Rowe recovered his balance and gave chase. The wolf was fast, but his legs propelled him in great leaping bounds that closed the distance. He was not about to lose this race again.
They raced across the fields, heading north, to exactly no surprise at all. Whatever they had in the way of shelter was clearly up that way. There was no further point in hiding that. If the wolf could make it to the forest though, its speed would allow it to lose Rowe among the trees. He couldn’t run the same way with trunks blocking his path and branches overhead.
Thus he had to prevent the creature from getting there at all costs. Things were coming to a head, and while Rowe wanted answers, he would be just as happy to start eliminating the mysterious shifters as well. One less of them was one less danger to Cheryl, and that was all he cared about.
When it became clear he wasn’t going to catch the wolf, Rowe employed a different tactic, something he’d yet to reveal to any of the shifters who may have been watching him or the property.
With a wave of his arm a thick wall of green rose up from the ground in front of the wolf, directly between it and the awaiting safety of the forest. Let’s see you run through that, he snarled mentally as the creature came to a halt, flanks heaving. It padded up to the impenetrable mist, but quickly backed away as it realized its corrosive nature. Turning, it faced Rowe, the only sound heavy breathing.
He eyed the beast, tongue lolling out to the side, trying to help keep it cool. Saliva dripped to the ground, sizzling softly against the frost that had formed over the top everything. Yellow eyes stared at him. Resigned. Waiting.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked, stepping forward.
The wolf just stood there, unmoving.
“What do you want?’
A flicker of doubt passed through Rowe. Had he gotten it all wrong? Was the creature not actually a shifter? No, of course it was. No natural wolf would have stopped so instantly at the appearance of his gas wall, nor would it just be waiting for him like this one. It was cold. Calculating. It had something planned.
Crouching, he also waited. The running in the nude had put some serious strain between his legs, and the tingling pain that was pulsing out from his dick was far from pleasant. Thank the gods for dragon healing powers. He would not want to deal with that for a long period of time. Dick strain. Seriously. Next time he was putting on underwear at a minimum. This was ridiculous.
Something must have alerted the wolf to his flagging attention, because while he was complaining to himself about the pain in his junk, it bolted to his left.
Roaring in anger, he went back after it, calling upon his dragon powers to create a wall of ultra-corrosive gas between it and the forest. It didn’t matter though. The wolf wasn’t going for the forest. That’s what caught him so flat-footed. It ran right past him, headed back toward the ranch and farm buildings.
Still, Rowe was a trained warrior and he shoved his surprise aside, racing after the creature, intent on catching it this time. No more games, no more playing polite.
Concentrating on his left hand—his right thoroughly occupied with holding something else still—Rowe focused his powers there, building the pressure for a few moments. Then he lobbed the ball of dark green swirling mist into the path of the wolf. It exploded, forcing the creature to dodge wildly to the left.
They repeated this game over and over again, the constant dodging allowing Rowe to close the distance. Finally he was right on top of the beast. Reaching out, he flicked a line of gas across its hind legs. The wolf shrieked in pain at the top of its lungs and lost its footing, tumbling sideways end over end until it came to a stop in a heap.
Rowe was on it instantly, hooking an arm around its neck. “Change, you mongrel,” he roared, wrenching its head back painfully.
In seconds he was holding onto a lanky youth who was grimacing in pain from the lacerations to his back leg.
“Better. Now I’m going to release you, but if you try to leave I’ll not hesitate to end your life before you get more than ten feet. Understand?”
The shifter nodded sullenly. Rowe got to his feet.
“What the fuck?!”
He spun at the sound of a voice. Cheryl stood at the top of the steps leading in to the ranch house, arms crossed, clad in nothing more than her robe.
There was a noise behind him. The shifter was leaving. In wolf form.
“He just did it again!” Cheryl shouted. “He changed into a wolf. Rowe, what the fuck is going on?”
Angry at himself for not realizing they’d ended up smack in the middle of the ranch grounds, he walked toward the house.
“You’re naked,” she observed mildly. “Little cold for mud wrestling, don’t you think?”
He stopped dead, trying to figure out if she was joking or trying to hang onto her sanity.
“Did I just see what I think I saw?” she asked quietly as they stood staring back and forth at one another.
“Yes.” There was no point in lying, or in trying to keep things secret anymore. Cheryl had just seen it happen not once, but twice. There was physical evidence on the ground if she went out and looked at the tracks. Nothing Rowe could do would ever convince her that she’d been seeing things.
So he may as well just tell her the damn truth about it all. Hopefully she believed him.
“Let’s go inside. I’ll answer whatever I can to the best of my abilities. But we should head inside.” He pointed at the door behind them.
Cheryl’s head lifted, looking out beyond him to where the wolf had disappeared into the darkness. She shivered and went into the house without another word.
Rowe climbed the steps, casting one last glance behind him to the north. In the darkness a pair of wolf eyes gleamed. They belonged to the one who’d run away, he knew it. The bastard was out there still, taunting him that he’d let his quarry get away. He almost sent a ball of power at the creature, but the appearance of another set of eyes off to the right gave him pause.
More eyes blinked into existence, and as Rowe counted them he swiftly realized that there were more than just the three wolf shifters out there.
A lot more.