Page 4 of August

The next afternoon, August was busy in the employee parking lot, working on the security booth’s broken gate. The large wooden bar, covered with red and white stripes and reflective tape, had started to corrode from the elements and needed to be replaced and cleaned.

His gorilla was giving him so much trouble with the hooting and calling in his head and the general feeling of something is coming, that he stripped the bolts on the bar twice and nearly jabbed his eye out with a screwdriver.

“You okay, man?” Nathan asked.

“Yeah. No.” August let out a deep sigh and dropped his head to his chest. “I have no idea.”

Nathan finished connecting the wires to the security bar. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t felt right in a few days.” He rubbed the space over his heart as his gorilla hooted in his mind.

Nathan hummed but didn’t say anything.

“What?” August asked.

“You think your soulmate is around? Or maybe coming?”

August froze and stared at his friend. No, actually, he hadn’t thought of that. Searching his feelings, he heard the answering hoot of his gorilla.

“Holy shit.”

Nathan grinned. “We were just talking about this yesterday! Okay, so the question is, where the hell is she and why are you feeling so weird now?”

“I have no idea.”

Nathan ducked under the arm and grabbed his tools. “Let’s head back to the maintenance shed and put our gear away. Maybe your soulmate is coming into the park today.”

“That would be amazing,” he said.

August was cautiously optimistic, but also curious. Why now? And where was she?

His gorilla let out a sharp call in his head and he caught the scent of something amazing, sweet and sultry and calling to him on a cellular level.

“Whoa, you okay?” Nathan asked with a low voice.

Scanning the parking lot, August didn’t answer his friend as he stared at the vehicles that ranged from sedans to SUVs and vans. August saw one of the SUVs rock slightly as if someone had just shut the door, but no one had been in the lot since they’d been working on the security gate.

He moved forward, his gaze on the SUV.

The engine started and he raced to follow, reaching the end of the aisle in time to see her smash through the newly erected security bar.

“Holy shit,” Nathan said as he stopped next to him. “Someone just stole that SUV.”

“It’s number 223,” August said, pulling the walkie from the holster on his belt. “This is August, Jupiter are you there?”

“We’re a little busy with some fucking jackals trying to break into the park. What’s up?”

“Jackals?” His mind raced. Shit, Lucius had told him about the jackal shifter in hiding. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Jupiter asked.

“Does she have brown hair?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Because she just stole one of our SUVs.”

“What?” Jupiter bellowed, loud enough to wake the dead.

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