Justin had paced for the last ten minutes and finally gave up.

Elianna had only wanted five minutes. If he showed up at her door thirty minutes early and she wasn’t ready, he’d wait in the hallway, but he had to get out of his room.

Maybe he should knock on the connecting door and show her how close he would be if she had any problem.

Herc chortled. Lie.

Justin started to argue with his bear, but arguing with the doorknob would give him better results.  He just ignored the joker and decided he’d point out the additional room access later.

When he reached her door, he listened for any sound. 

Nothing. Maybe she was sleeping.

Damn. He was starving.  She had to be hungry, too, so he should wake her, right?

Herc came alert.  Gone.

Justin forgot food and knocked.  “Elianna?”

No answer. Dammit. He dug out the extra key to her room and opened it.

Herc had been spot on. 

Where the hell had she gone? It was clear she’d left on her own. There was no other current scent in the room, just a tinge of smell left by humans in the past. 

Rushing out, he was halfway down the hall by the time her door snapped shut behind him.  He allowed Herc to come forward enough to take the lead, but not so much that a human looking into Justin’s eyes would see a change in his gaze. A shifter would know, but according to the alpha, he wouldn’t see any shifters while they were here.

Each of the Gallize shifters had a little extra power of one kind or another. For Justin, he could exert a push of energy that caused humans to avoid him, much as an alpha of a pack could do at will.  He didn’t do it often in public, because that same energy alerted shifters to a predator in their midst.

They wouldn’t know he was a Gallize, but their hind sense should warn them to avoid him unless they were too stupid to pay attention to their instincts or carried a suicidal ego on their shoulder. 

When he stepped through the hotel doors, he sniffed late-day air that held a blend of salt, city, and chocolate, because the hotel was in the Ghirardelli Square district.

So far, so good, because the only fresh shifter scent he picked up was Elianna’s and it headed toward the boardwalk along the waterfront. 

He ran a hand over his head, trying to not lose his temper. She was in a new country and probably just wanted to explore.

He’d explain to her—again—how she had to do what he told her.  He would do it calmly and show his patient side. 

Lie.

Justin growled at Herc’s censure and whispered under his breath, “What’s with this running commentary?”

When Herc didn’t answer, Justin said, “Well?”

Stupid words.

That meant either Herc didn’t understand what Justin had said or wanted to insult him. 

Usually the latter.

Using Elianna’s scent to determine his direction, Justin got busy tracking her.  He and Herc generally got along even if his bear could be one stubborn son of a bitch.  This was one of those times he needed the bear to work closely with him and get this woman off their hands in a day and a half, then Justin could drive back to Wyoming. 

Simple task. One the Guardian expected to be performed without any drama. 

Now, he just had to get that across to one misbehaving princess.

Justin more often spoke to Herc with his voice instead of his mind, but either worked. Keeping his voice down, he said, “We need to keep this woman safe and deliver her on time. Once we drop her at the Boudreaux Clan, we’re free to get back to Adrian’s land where you can have your way.”

Bad clan.  Wrong.

Not that Justin disagreed, but getting off on that topic would not solve anything.  “Not up to us. We’re just the delivery service.”

Not go.

“Herc, why are you fighting me on this?”

Follow scent.

Justin snapped his head up and inhaled.

Herc was right. He’d gotten off track, because he’d assumed she would be headed toward all the lights and crowd noise.  Swinging to his left instead, Justin wove his way through a loose trail of humans walking in the opposite direction toward San Francisco’s famous Fisherman’s Wharf.

He was headed toward the bridge.

Twilight eased in from all sides with the sun now out of sight.

The boardwalk ran east and west, fronting San Francisco Bay where it reached the Pacific Ocean via the Golden Gate Strait. The smell of fried fish hit Justin in the next block and his mouth watered.

When he did find his missing body-to-protect, first they’d eat, then he’d have a talk with her. 

He continued west on Bay Street where the Golden Gate Bridge stood tall in the distance.

Maybe she’d stayed near the water and hadn’t gotten off into some dark side street. 

In the next four blocks, his nose pulled him to the right, where he crossed an acre of groomed land between the road and a marina further west than the one where she’d arrived. Gravel and dirt gave way to a paved surface that eventually ran parallel to the water. 

She had been keeping on the path that ran closest to the bay. 

He searched ahead. Where had she gone?

But that wasn’t the only thing bothering him. 

Why hadn’t she waited for him? 

Was she trying to get away from him?  He rarely had an increase in heart rate, short of being in a tight battle, but that organ was pumping extra hard. 

Don’t overreact, he reminded himself.

Maybe she just needed to walk after being on a boat for so long.

With the bay on his right, he picked up his pace.

He couldn’t explain it, but he felt that odd sensation he had when he’d grabbed her arm.  His skin had tingled as if he’d touched a live wire. An odd energy he hadn’t forgotten.

It was buzzing through his chest right now.

Elianna’s scent still floated on the salty breeze, brushing across his face and bringing his dick to life. That part had no business in any of this. He could handle being turned on around a client as long as he kept his head straight.

Wolf, Herc huffed. 

Justin caught the new scent at the same moment he felt Herc growl.  Another shifter was on this path. 

That local alpha had better not cross the Guardian.

If any of the wolf’s shifters bothered Elianna, the alpha wouldn’t have to worry about meting out punishment.

Justin wouldn’t leave enough of the wolf to face his alpha. 

Herc growled again, letting Justin know they were in full agreement.  Justin wasn’t about to ask his bear why he was playing nice with this female bear shifter. He would just thank his stars that he might not have to deal with a grumpy Herc while they were around her.

Some wolf was about to get his ass handed to him. 

Rules were important in the shifter world, especially in the powerful packs and clans that wanted no part of being sent to an enclave.

That was a nice word for the equivalent of a reservation.  When humans found out about shifters, they did not want those abnormal beings living around them.

Justin ground his teeth. Abnormal beings.  They were supernatural beings.

Yes, like, Herc said, which meant he agreed.

When Justin reached the west end of the marina, he noted the humans out and about. They were all calm, which meant nothing noisy had happened like an attack or kidnapping.

The two scents he followed twisted together on the next breeze that slid past his nose.  Overhead lights had come on by the time he exited the hotel, but they did little to illuminate where the shore met black water. 

Fog continued to build until half of the bridge was nothing more than a translucent looking shape.

He picked up his pace, staying alert to everything in his field of vision.  He could not shift around all these humans.

Neither could the other shifter if he was part of the local pack.  Rogues followed no rules, but neither did they survive long when they trespassed into a local pack’s territory.

Even worse if they crossed into this particular territory.

Didn’t matter.

As a Gallize, Justin packed more power than the shifters most humans knew about, and he could actually handle those shifters in his human form. 

Herc snarled, Hurry.

While in human form, Justin’s bear came up hard and strong when he sensed danger.  As the trail passed the end of the marina, Justin reached a small park with a parking lot and trees casting long shadows.

He had an idea where she might have gone. 

San Francisco had an attraction created at the end of a jetty called the Wave Organ.  An artist and master stone mason had created an acoustic structure made of material from a demolished cemetery, and organ pipes made of PVC. When waves struck the structure, it emitted different sounds. 

With darkness swallowing him, he pushed his speed. If a human saw him, they wouldn’t see him long enough to identify him. 

Herc growled a warning.  Two wolves!

When he got Elianna back to the hotel, he was packing her up and driving her straight to Louisiana.