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That was something I had never experienced before.
Finding that a badger had been in while I was in Buckley and stolen the bag of potatoes I’d brought with me from Mallory’s, I went to work on the door first. It was a simple frame job and latch, meant to serve its purpose for the near future. After I sorted the roof so it wouldn’t collapse on me, I would find some five-inch saplings to bind together for a proper door, complete with a mud plaster to weatherproof it.
The power saw, with a new blade I’d picked up that morning, made quick work of building the door and framing it. The support beams went in easy, too, but only as a stop gap measure because I wanted to shore up the foundation.
Pausing my efforts after five hours of going full speed non-stop, I grabbed the footlong sub I bought at the truck stop earlier and pulled the empty five-gallon water jug from the back of the truck. A spring started about a mile east of the cabin. I had visited it the night before. Purified by the rocks it pushed through to reach the surface, the water was crisp and probably the best I had ever tasted.
Prior visitors to the cabin had seeded the path with blackberry bushes, so I grabbed the plastic shopping bag from the hardware store, shoved the sub inside, and literally “picked” my way toward the spring.
Only problem with those ripe, juicy berries was I couldn’t sing or whistle while I walked because my mouth was stuffed full. The noise would have served to keep more than my tastebuds entertained and to warn most critters away before my scent as an alpha predator hit them.
But I couldn’t stop stuffing my gob. The berries were too juicy, too plump, their dark, fleshy pulp surrendering to the efforts of my tongue and teeth before I swallowed them with a delighted growl.
Then a twig snapped and I suddenly remembered I was a world away from the near total isolation I had enjoyed at the base of Mt. Saint Helens.
Another snap had me lifting my nose and scenting the air to determine what kind of animal was in my vicinity. The breeze was coming from my right, but the noise of something moving through the woods was coming from straight ahead of me.
I hit the narrow clearing where the spring started just in time to see a dark head of long hair on the other side dipping down to cupped hands. Not just cupped hands, but definitely feminine hands colored a golden brown. Mesmerized by their delicate movement, it took me a few perilous seconds to realize what my nose had already tried to tell me.
The adult female sipping from the spring was a shifter, something familiar in her scent. Before I could figure out what I was smelling, her head jerked up. Emerald eyes stared at me first in confusion, then fear, then panic.
“Stop!” I shouted, pushing my alpha at her as she began to flee.
She didn’t obey, just kept pumping her deliciously thick legs and arms, dodging tree stumps, the backpack slung over one shoulder bouncing wildly. No way was she prey to me, but her acting like it riled up my wolf, especially my alpha strain.
I dropped the jug and food to give chase. She was maybe five-foot-five, likely shorter. I topped her by a full foot. The stride of my long legs quickly demolished the distance that had existed between us at the start of the chase.
Trying to calm the woman before I caught her, I pushed my alpha ahead of me. Something swatted it right back at me. I wasn’t sure what. It wasn’t the push of another alpha. But it wasn’t anything I’d ever felt from a beta.
I almost had her, my right hand reaching out to grab the length of hair trailing behind her.
She had a secret up her sleeve, something about the terrain that I hadn’t learned in my walkabout the night before. There was a cliff this side of the mountain.
And the damn fool woman—the ledge’s end in clear sight—was running straight for it!
My voice froze in my throat even as I gave one last tug at her with my alpha. She batted it away just like before then vaulted forward.
Just as she went over the edge, I heard her snarl.
Damn, she was a cat of some sort!
I stopped short at the edge, not willing to jump blindly. Looking down, I saw the tree she had landed on. I saw a helluva lot more than that because the lush woman was already stripping off her clothes as she fought to keep her transformation at bay while she was tangled up in clothing.
No discernible tan lines. That gorgeous baked brown was all her. And the woman’s curves went on forever, with a gloriously full pair of breasts, a firm swell of tummy, an even more generous ass, and those thick thighs I already wanted to use as ear warmers as I licked and sucked her into a mewling submission.
I growled again, the appreciative nature of the sound definitely not one I wanted her to hear before she was ready to hear it.
“I am not going to hurt you,” I repeated, my voice gentle this time. Still, I had to amend my words. “As long as you’re not here to hurt anyone in Night Falls.”
As the town’s name left my lips, she completed her transformation. A sleek panther with the strap of a backpack clenched between her teeth stood gracefully on a tree limb half her foot’s width.
I wondered if I should just let her go. Half-wondered. I already knew the answer. First, I had to find out if she was a danger to the pack I was trying to join. Was she passing through, here to seek refuge, or was she part of one of the many groups who had the makeshift community in their crosshairs for breaking boundaries and the taboo of taking another breed of shifter as mate?
“Don’t make me chase you,” I warned, kicking off my boots. “It won’t be my beta form that runs you down, little girl.”
She snarled one last time through tightly clenched teeth, then started the game anew.
CHAPTER9
