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She dashed from the bakery, and I swore under my breath as everyone turned to look at me. I didn’t have time to excuse her bad manners or explain what she meant. I swore again. Scott was gonna bust my balls for not keeping my mouth shut.
I pushed the door open just in time to see the hem of Salta’s sundress disappear around the corner. Shit! She didn’t know a damn thing about Heartville and even less about the woods which she was headed towards. I sprinted ahead trying to catch up with her before she disappeared. She was just as elven as I was and her small size allowed her to squeeze and weave through the people walking around the village.
A sob tore from her throat and echoed around as her feet thumped onto the path that headed into the woods. She was breaking my damn heart.
“Salta!” I called for her, but she didn’t even look back.
I sped up. My heart pounding in my ears as my mind raced through all the things that might happen to a little girl lost in the woods. Sure, these woods were safer than average, because the pack considered them part of the village. Salta was eleven and had only been away from home once before. This time she didn’t even have a destination in mind.
“Salta!” I tried over our family link instead. “Sweetheart, please! Stop running! I don’t want you to get lost in the woods!”
She didn’t answer me then either.
“Let me!” my hound howled into my thoughts, and I skidded to a stop at the edge of the woods.
This time he came out fast and fiercely with his nose to the ground. Salta’s scent path wasn’t crimson like Scott’s was. Hers was pink and yellow, like a field full of spring wildflowers. Salta raced faster. Her breathing played in my ears, but she couldn’t out run the hound. She shrieked as he closed in on her and grabbed her up by the back of her dress.
“Help! Help! Terrick!” she shrieked.
“This is me,” I said over our family link as the hound turned, still carrying her in his mouth as we headed back to the village.
“Then put me down!” she shrieked.
“No! We’re going back to the house to talk about this! You can’t go running off in the woods by yourself. You’re eleven!”
“I’m almost twelve!” she said, switching to protesting on the family link.
“Stop! You’re drawing attention to us!”
We were already back in the village proper and the hound didn’t care about all the onlookers. He was hauling a naughty pup back to the house. A few of them chuckled. Fortunately for me, most of the shifters were wolves or married to them. They knew how canines reacted to things.
“Terrick?!” Scott’s voice broke through my thoughts about a block away from the house. “What happened?! We heard her shrieking all the way at the house.”
Blithe was with him, looking exhausted but ready for a fight.
“She ran away because she figured out I wasn’t moving back to the coven,” I sighed. “Right into the woods and I wasn’t having it. She’s not getting herself killed. That’s a death I won’t survive, Scott. That’s when I’ll just pretend I’m in a bad vampire novel and crawl into a coffin.”
“Don’t talk like that!” Scott scolded me over our mating link.
“Salta!” he scolded, putting on a tone of voice I never heard from him before.
“What?” she cried.
“Stop wiggling around. You’re going to show off your underwear.”
Salta froze and looked at Scott for what to do next.
“Are you going to be a big girl and walk back to the house or does Terrick have to carry you all the way there?” he asked.
“I can walk.”
“Will you?” Scott asked. “Will you hold my hand and walk back like the brave young lady with the sword I first met?”
She nodded and the hound sat her down in front of Scott. He took her hand and then the hound relented and allowed me to return to my human form. Scott was right. That got easier every time. Maybe being a canine shifter wouldn’t be so bad after all.
None of us said anything as we walked back to the house.
“Take it easy,” Blithe said, giving his brother a one-armed hug when we arrived home. “And thanks for telling me all that. It’s given me a lot to think on and when it’s a better time for us both, I’d like to talk about it some more.”
