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“What’s up?” Xander slurred sleepily. He pushed himself up from the mattress, his golden waves messy from spending the day in bed.
“I just saw something outside. A bright flash of light out on the lawn.” When I first spotted it, my heart had jumped into my throat. What if it had been an explosion? A bomb of some kind? But there had been no sound. Just a sudden brightness, gone as quickly as it appeared. “I think it might have been a camera.”
Xander was out of bed before I could speculate any further. Earlier, he’d woken up briefly to get undressed. He didn’t bother to get redressed. I scrambled to grab my own robe as Xander took off, bare-ass naked.
Thinking quickly, I picked up Xander’s robe as well. If he was running around naked, there was only one reason.
He was planning to shift.
It was difficult to match Xander’s speed. I’d barely made it halfway to the door, but I could already hear his feet thumping heavily down the stairs. He must have jumped the last several because there was a pause, then a loud thunk when he stuck the landing.
When I reached the stairs, he was already out on the porch.
“What’s going on?” Gena asked, meeting me at the bottom of the stairs. “I think I just saw Xander’s, um…”
She blushed, which would have made me laugh under different circumstances. I was unfazed by the sight of naked shifters by now, but Gena hadn’t spent as much time around them as I had.
“There’s someone outside,” I told her, heading for the door. “Can you grab Rylan and make sure he’s somewhere safe?”
“Of course. But—”
“It’s probably nothing,” I called over my shoulder. “But we can’t be too careful.”
On my way out the door, I grabbed Kingston’s baseball bat. He was still ashamed of his injury and hadn’t shifted since he’d lost his leg, so he’d taken to leaving the bat next to the coat rack for protection.
I’d never been great at sports, but if there was danger out there in the dark, I was more than prepared to thwack it in face.
I ran down the porch steps, then around the side of the lodge. My slippers slipped on the dewy grass, forcing me to go slower than I would have liked.
By the time I found Xander, he wasn’t alone.
His lupine form was huge and formidable. Creamy white fur rose in stiff peaks at his shoulders and down the ridge of his back.
Beneath his massive front paws was a woman. Her legs kicked furiously as she tried to push Xander off of her.
“You can’t hold me against my will!” she shouted. “I have rights!”
Confused and frowning, I approached them. The woman wasn’t a shifter. If she’d been one, she would have shifted already. By the light of the moon and the warm glow radiating from the lodge, I could just barely make out tight coils of blonde hair splayed around her head, and a leather strap a few inches away from her outstretched arm.
“That’s true,” I said, slinging the bat over my shoulder and stooping to pick up the strap. An expensive-looking camera dangled from the end of it, a long, heavy lens attached to it. The flash bulb on it was huge. I’d been right—this was the source of the light. “Funny thing is, we have rights, too. You’re trespassing.”
“I was… lost,” she grunted, still struggling beneath Xander. “That’s all. Let me go!”
“Lost and snapping pictures through windows with your long-range lens?” I let the camera dangle over her hand, just out of reach. “I’m sure that will hold up in court.”
She scowled at me petulantly. “Fine. You can have my SD card. Happy? Just call off your fucking dog!”
“Xander?”
He stayed hunched over her for a moment, teeth bared, chest heaving. She glanced up at him for just a second, then winced and turned her face away.
Xander let up after that, shifting back into his human form. I handed him the camera and his robe. He tugged the robe on, then popped the camera open and drew out the memory card. With a near-imperceptible smoothness that would have made a magician jealous, he slipped it into the pocket of the robe.
“Who the fuck are you?” he barked at the woman, who was still on the ground, catching her breath.
“I’m, uh…” Her eyes settled on the camera. “Leica. Leica…” She looked to the forest next. “Leica Tree.”
“Uh-huh,” Xander intoned, unimpressed. He arched a brow at her. “You wanna try that again?”
