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The cowbell clanged again on my downward stroke, irritation causing me to bury the blade in the ground less than an inch from the toe of my boot. Growling, I headed for the cabin, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans as I went.
“You need a girlfriend,” I grumbled as I stepped inside. Cool air caressed me and I forgave him until half a second later when he lifted his glass and jiggled it at me.
“Don’t need a girlfriend when I’ve got a maid,” he answered with a mostly straight face, just a little lift at the right corner of his mouth and a twinkle in his gaze assuring me he was going to play this game as long as it amused him.
Well, not that long. I was on a six-month probation within the pack, less than that if I managed to gain the trust of the right shifters before then. For the most part, it was easy to figure out who the right shifters were because a stroke of genius had led them to adopting the power structure of a motorcycle club. Mallory was the Secretary for the Woodsmen. That meant there was a Vice-President and a President above him. Only recently retired from the position, the prior President, Taron Murphy, was still around and had maintained substantial influence in the group.
“You gonna fill this for me, Sweet Butt?”
Mallory struck me as a man with many layers, but the top layer was all smart ass. Not just with me, the newbie, but with everyone. He also gave off the vibe of being the wildcard in every fight.
I replied to his question with a growl but grabbed the glass because my skin was beginning to itch. That was never a good thing with me. It itched because it was moving—not in some skin crawling way because of Mallory’s lame joke of calling me a sweet butt, and not because I felt the urge to shift into my wolf or alpha state. My human skin and the muscle beneath it were their own canvas, marks rising up to reflect my mood. Right now, I was tired and a little irritated.
I was also worried—I didn’t know yet if what my skin did was unique among shifters. I just knew from past experience that the nail that sticks out is the one that gets pounded.
“Better get yourself one, too,” Mallory suggested, his wily gaze studying my face.
He was after something, but I was thirsty, so I filled a tall glass of sun tea for each of us, then sipped at mine while I leaned against his kitchen counter.
“Wondering what you look like in shifter form,” the old wolf said after a third of his drink was gone.
“Man-bear-pig,” I joked, hoping to delay the inevitable.
“Going by the size of you, I’d half believe the bear part,” Mallory said, finishing off his glass and taking it to the kitchen sink. “Only Woodsman taller than you is Taron.”
I nodded. Taron was a grizzly shifter. He was also part of the reason I had come to Night Falls. He and the wolf shifter who had since become his mate had made a video the year before. It was done as a warning to the pack that had driven the she-wolf out of Illinois, a pack that had then followed her to wage war on the shifters of Night Falls.
Four months had passed from the time the video was made until I saw it, then several more months as I made my way to the small Wisconsin town, my progress slow as I moved through the territories of other shifters without the usual protocols and protections that marked such incursions.
That was what I loved about the Woodsmen. They had told the old guard of shifters to go fuck itself. Pack members could like or love according to their heart, not protocol. The club’s President was married to a human who knew what her husband and his friends were. His Vice-President was a cougar married to a wolf. Carnivores and herbivores sat down at the same table and downed beers together.
“You smell all wolf to me,” Mallory continued, trading his empty glass of sun tea for a cold bottle of beer that he surprisingly fetched for himself.
I grunted, my collar bone beginning to itch from him pressing the issue.
“So?” He probed. “What are you hiding? What am I gonna find out about you that might make me regret standing for you in the Woodsmen?”
The light playing in his gaze had changed. Its playful notes were gone. Now it was a glittering of frost. Putting down my glass, I shrugged, walked to the end of the counter where the cutting block and knives were at, and picked up the meat cleaver.
Before he could say anything, I brought the cleaver down on my left index finger, completely severing it halfway between the tip and middle joint.
“What the fuck!” Mallory shouted, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around what was left of my finger before dropping to all fours and searching for where the top section had fallen. Finding it, he rose and reached for the makeshift bandage in which he had wrapped the still attached part of the finger.
I stepped back, taking the severed tip with me, tossing it down his garbage disposal, and flicking the power on.
“You’re a maniac, is that what you’re telling me?” He asked the question with a soft, but fearless, voice. “You should have let me stitch that back on.”
Tilting my head, I grimaced at the old wolf.
“That’s not how I heal,” I said, sidestepping him to grab a beer for myself. I popped the lid with one hand as I kept the other pressed against my chest to hold the towel in place.
Watching me, Mallory shook his head. “So now you’re going to be a four-fingered idiot and I’ve got to explain why. That’s not exactly the kind of stable personality the community is looking for, son.”
“Tell me again what the problem is…after I finish this beer.”
He sat back, arms folded against his chest, and watched me drink. I wanted more than the beer. A couple shots of whisky would have helped the burn of bone regrowing. But the Woodsmen were having a meeting tonight, one that was likely to include a discussion about me. Even with my shifter metabolism, I needed to be prepared for anything.
“Okay, beer’s finished you four-fingered idiot. Take the towel off.”
