All I could do was stop, drop back, and follow at a greater distance. On four legs, where I was better able to see in the dark, I trailed it all the way to the road, where the shifter took his human form.
He took off at a run then, limping slightly from his injured foot.
In seconds, he was gone from sight, making me feel a sense of longing.
Who was he?
Seven
Sully
Fleeingthewoodswheremy waking nightmare haunted me once more, I got back to my clothes in record time. Seriously, I bet I broke sprinting records on a twisted ankle, too. I had no memory of how I found my way back to the road or the copse of trees where I left my things. Naked as well. One minute it felt like I was running for my life, then the next I was out of breath next to my clothes.
It had happened again! The dingo was still in the woods. I had to tell someone! Or did they already know? They’d clearly missed him four years ago. They’d obviously gone into the woods, because they found my stuff and returned it to me, so they hadn’t lied about that. Had they fibbed and said the place was empty? There had to have been signs of my struggle to get out of there.
Why would they make me out to be a liar instead of making up some excuse? Knowing there was a predator in the woods, one willing to attack unprovoked, would be a much better deterrent than making me out to be a fool.
I paused while halfway dressed, thinking the encounter over. Little things about it were off, or at least different from the last time I’d met a dingo in the woods.
Then it hit me: it wasn’t the same one.
Their scent was different from the one locked in my memory. That one, from four years ago, evoked terror. This one, just… didn’t. I felt warm under his gaze, because that was a male alpha dingo looking at me. There was no anger or aggression there either. He almost seemed amused and fond.
What was I going to do about it? Would anyone believe me if I told them? Did I really want them to go hunting this dingo?
The thought brought me up short. Why was I protecting him? He’d scared the living daylights out of me! Though if he’d shifted, I still would have been as scared. Random naked man in the woods was just as terrifying to a little omega as a big dog-like beast was to a quokka.
Once I caught my breath and finished clothing myself, I made the slow walk home. My ankle throbbed something fierce! I was sure it wasn’t broken. Twisted for sure. It had stung when I’d pulled it free of the branches.
Nearing home, I wondered what to do. My best choice was to be quiet and careful. I could sneak into the house wearing my now rumpled clothes, my hair a mess, and with my sore ankle, before my parents got up for the day, so I could avoid their inevitable questions. They probably thought I was still with Orson. Maybe they thought I spent the night with him.
I opened the back door silently, thanking whatever gods that Dad maintained the house regularly. I tried to tiptoe through and up to my room without being seen.
No such luck. Mom was sitting in the kitchen wearing a robe, her hands around a mug of tea. When she looked up at me, she frowned.
“What happened?”
I limped to a chair and slumped into it, letting my blazer fall to the ground.
“Funny story…” I could see her patience running thin. “There’s a dingo shifter living in the west woods.”
It just popped out. I hadn’t planned to tell her anything, wanting to keep it to myself.
“No, there’s not,” she automatically denied. “Not this again, Sully. We’ve been through this before. There was nothing there.”
“I wasn’t lying then and I’m not lying now. There’s a dingo in the woods. A different one this time.”
“There’s nothing in the woods because no one goes in there. They’re out of bounds.”
“There is. I was there. I saw him.”
“But you were out with Orson… you can’t have.” Her eyes snapped to mine. It was like watching her brain come to a screeching halt. “You went back there! You were in the west woods!” her voice rose in accusation.
“Mom—“
“Sully! That’s so dangerous!” Horror filled her expression. Her fingers clung to the edge of the table. She looked ready to fly into motion at any second.
“It was an accident!” I defended myself automatically. Not that it made anything better. She still looked fearful.
