Page 123 of Beasts of Mine

That got my attention immediately.

“Oh, damn.” I muttered as I lifted my wrist closer and mentally calculated how long the return route would take.

“What?” Luca asked as he stepped away from the tree beside me, the ease leaving his posture when he saw me checking the time.

“I can still make six if we start back now, but I wanted another twenty minutes farther upstream before turning around.” I pulled the radio from my belt while answering Luca, glancing toward the route map with growing annoyance that I hadn’t checked sooner.

“Then we head back.” Malek answered as he moved toward the trail leading to the eastern fork, already prepared to leave without making an issue of it.

“I don’t want to head back yet.” I corrected Malek while checking my position against the map and extending the radio antenna. “I still have daylight, and this area has been worth the extra time. I’ll update Mara instead.”

Malek stopped and checked the stream continuing northeast before giving me a short nod without arguing. Tavian returned from upstream while I stepped several yards toward a thinner section of canopy where reception tended to be clearer.

“Station, this is Evie. Mara, you copy?” I spoke clearly into the radio while pressing the transmit button, watching the signal indicator as static crackled through the speaker.

“Copy, Evie. Everything okay?” Mara answered a few seconds later, the slight distortion in her voice doing nothing to hide the more alert tone she used when I called outside a scheduled check-in.

“Everything’s fine. I’m continuing a little farther northeast along the smaller stream, so I’m updating my return to six-thirty.” I checked the map once more while giving Mara the change, keeping the message concise. “I’ll call again if that changes.”

“Copy. Smaller stream northeast of the eastern fork, six-thirty. Weather still looks decent from here.” Mara repeated the location and time while faint scratching came through the speaker, probably from her adding the update to the station log.

“Same on my end. Evie clear.” I glanced toward the pale patches of sky visible between the leaves before releasing the transmit button.

“Mara clear.” Mara signed off through the radio, her voice disappearing beneath the returning static. I clipped the radio onto my belt and turned back toward the men. None of them treated the check-in like an inconvenience or suggested that having three shifters beside me made the station’s safety system unnecessary. Malek simply moved out of the middle of the trail.

“Lead the way.” Malek motioned toward the path following the stream, stepping aside so both the direction and the decision to continue remained mine.

I headed northeast with Tavian moving a few yards ahead after checking which side of the water I intended to follow, Luca settling near me, and Malek taking his usual position behind us. Their formation was familiar enough now that I barely thought about it, even though nearly everything else about the day had changed.

Malek’s scent covered the side of my neck strongly enough that every few breaths reminded me of his mouth. Tavian’s feather waited safely inside my camera bag. Luca had looked me in the eye and told me that courtship meant they needed to figure out how they fit into my life too.

And I had said yes.

Not to mating them, leaving my life behind, or moving into a hidden temple after knowing them for only a handful of days. I hadn’t decided what the rest of my future looked like. I’d simply agreed to see where this went, and considering the way my lips still tingled from kissing Malek, that was already going to be complicated enough.

Talking animals, I was discovering, were much easier to deal with than three men I actually wanted.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EVIE

The call came while I was halfway through breakfast. Mara’s phone rang from the far end of the station table, startling a small anole stretched along the sun-warmed edge of the window.

Too loud. Too loud. The anole complained as it scrambled behind a stack of field guides, its tiny feet scratching over the sill. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing while Mara wiped one hand against her cargo pants and reached for the phone. Explaining why the station’s resident lizard thought her ringtone was personally offensive seemed unnecessary. I kept eating, only half listening to her side of the conversation until the words cover photograph carried across the room. That got my attention, and Mara noticed immediately.

“Hold on a second.” Mara covered the bottom of the phone with one hand and looked across the table at me, one brow lifting. “How attached are you to whatever you planned to do today?”

“That depends entirely on what you’re about to ask me.” I lowered my spoon into the bowl and leaned back in my chair, already suspicious of the interest on her face.

“A wildlife magazine just lost the photograph they were supposed to use for an upcoming rainforest issue.” Mara kept her palm over the phone while glancing toward the notebook beside my camera bag. “There’s some kind of last-minute licensing problem, and their editor remembered you were already working down here. They want to know whether you have anything they could look at for a replacement cover.”

“What kind of image?” I straightened and reached for my notebook, breakfast forgotten for the moment.

“Something alive, preferably.” Mara’s mouth twitched before she lifted the phone away from her chest. “I’m putting her on speaker before I misquote whatever extremely specific thing she actually wants.”

Mara tapped the screen and set the phone between us.

“Evie? This is Caroline Mercer with Wild Terrain.” The woman’s voice came through the speaker with the rushed politeness of someone who had probably been solving problems since before sunrise. “Mara says I caught you before you went into the field.”