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“Great!”
He sounded too happy to be injured. Shea needed to be near someone to use her talent, laying hands on them, using her sight to tell where they were hurt the most. Same thing with her empathy. It didn’t work over the phone, but she knew her brother enough to know he was fine.
Well, considering how excited he sounded, how fast he was talking, he was probably on the stuff, but what else was new?
Hudson was a Donor. A blood junkie. After all these years, it was just a fact. Nothing Shea or her grandmother could do would ever stop him from offering his blood up to a Nightwalker in exchange for the rush of power mixed with pleasure that the turned vampires gave to their donors.
It was, according to Hudson, one hell of a high. He said he imagined it was what it felt like to be a witch flooded with power, like their grandmother. Shea didn’t know, since her magic was backwards—and she didn’t mess with Nightwalkers.
“You okay, Hudson? Are you hurt? Or,” she added, her stomach sinking, “do you need a little help?”
She should’ve been expecting this. If it wasn’t money that her brother needed, it was usually a tune-up. Sometimes, when he was too twitchy to wait for his next donation, he tracked Shea down and begged her to give him a little healing. Just enough to get the blood pumping so that he could go in search of his next rush.
Her grandmother would be livid if she found out, but Shea did it anyway.
It was her brother. How could anyone expect her to say no to Hudson?
“Not me,” he said quickly. “I’m fine. But, listen, I’ve got this friend…”
Shea shuttered her eyes as Hudson continued to ramble on, already regretting having asked. She would’ve been better off dealing with Colton.
At least he was pretty to look at.
5
Colt sensed the intruder a few seconds before Dodge materialized into his workshop with the warning that a male had just crossed into his territory.
At first, he wondered if this was his father’s response to Thanksgiving. Despite his brother’s nagging and his mother’s request, Colt pointedly told his family that he was planning on staying home for the holiday.
Which he did. Sitting alone in his living room, swigging a bottle of beer that his shifter metabolism burned through before he could even feel a buzz, Colt gnawed on a turkey leg that one of his neighbors left on his back porch as a kind of offering and celebrated the holiday all on his own.
He even had the PFL—Paranormal Football League—game playing in the background, though he’d never been the biggest fan of the sport. Still, it was entertaining, watching the bear shifter linebacker flatten the othersider quarterback for a first half sack.
And, Alpha, that second half had been wild.
Of course, that was a week ago. His mother had been disappointed, and Maddox made sure to give him a play-by-play when it came to the fifteen different dishes served for their Thanksgiving feast, but his father gave him a pass. His absence was noted, but it wasn’t regarded as an insult to the Alpha.
So what was this unknown male doing on Colt’s land?
It couldn’t be a challenge. If it was, the air would reek of piss as another shifter tried to make their mark. Adrenaline oozed like an oil slick; Colt could sense someone either psyching themselves up or scaring themselves silly from more than a hundred yards. Whoever it was, they were playing nice.
Huh.
It wasn’t often that he got visitors. He might as well see what they wanted. And if it was bullshit? Well, there was more than one way to work off some of his aggression.
A little curious, especially when Dodge popped back out before he could ask any questions about the intruder, Colt removed his protective headphones, hanging them on the peg designated for them. His safety glasses went on the one next to it. He lined the two awls he was using side by side. As soon as he swept up the wooden curls from his carving and placed the broom away again, he left the shed.
After entering his house through the back door, moving purposely toward the front, Colt chanced a peek through the peephole before accepting that there was a good chance he wasn’t getting back to the chair he was working on anytime soon.
He yanked open the door.
It was a cop. Grayson PD by the look of the uniform. A tall guy, lanky and rangy, with thick black hair, shrewd dark eyes, a gun holstered on his belt, and no noticeable scent.
That last part was the most interesting.
Even a year ago, the cop’s lack of scent would’ve stood out; as a shifter, he used his nose to get a read on another person almost as much as his gut. However, with more and more Paras moving into human neighborhoods, the witches were making a killing, selling their potions-slash-perfumes that disguised and covered up scents. It wasn’t so unusual these days, even if Colt had to wonder what a human was hiding if it needed a scent-reducer.
Add that to his recent discovery when it came to shields, about how certain Paras had the ability to wield them so they could hide their status and pass as human—along with some other glamours—and Colt decided he probably should pay a little more attention to the man on his porch.
