Page 81 of Wolf's Chance

He looked surprised for a moment. No doubt he was expecting to have to persuade me to “go” and instead I was letting him know. With a nod, he was on his feet, his hand held out to help me to mine.

“You’ll need to stay close,” he told me, leading me behind a tree, and I heard him kicking up the turf. “Try and squat here.”

Squat!“It’s just a…a number one.” My face was on fire for having to discuss my toilet needs and for some reason lapsing back to first grade as I numbered them.

“Okay, hover over here and then kick this back over it, okay?”

He knew I didn’t understand his bizarre instructions, andhe sighed with exasperation. “You’re in the mountains now,” he explained. “There’s more than us out here.”

“Shifters?”

“Mountain lions. Bears. Men.” He added the last with a grunt. “We cover our tracks so you don’t leave your scent behind.”

“My scent?” I quickly realized what he meant before he needed to explain further, and I instinctively covered his mouth with my palm to stop him from telling me that the smell of my urine would invite predators to us.

I was already internally freaking out. He didn’t need to confirm it out loud.

In the dark, I was never going to manage to do my business without falling over, especially when my legs suddenly decided to resemble Jell-O. With a low curse, I undressed my bottom half entirely, hoping it was only spiders and mice I was flashing my ass to.

The thought of a spider crawling up my bare ass almost made me shriek. I’d never peed so fast in my life. Caleb had given me a tissue before he stepped around the tree, and I knew he hadn’t moved any farther away from me.

“Don’t drop the tissue,” he told me suddenly. “I have a bag for that.” I was going to die of embarrassment. The thought was only cemented when he handed me a plastic food bag. “Drop it in here.”

Thank God it was dark and he couldn’t see my humiliation as I came out from behind the tree and stood silently as he squirted a drop of hand sanitizer in my upturned palms.

I bit my tongue when he went to my makeshift toilet and Iheard him stomp on the earth, covering my scent, as he called it.

“Get some sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

Keep watch? It all sounded very special ops, but again, I simply did as I was told and lay on the hard, unyielding earth.

The night had gotten colder, and I was sure I would never sleep, and it was with surprise that I was shaken awake.

Barely clear of the fog of sleep, I felt the prickle of unease trickle over my skin. Caleb was beside me, and I instinctively moved closer to him. His large hand clasped mine, and I felt him squeeze it slightly. Maybe in reassurance. Maybe in warning. I didn’t know, and at that moment, I didn’t care.

I was just so grateful he was beside me, and I knew to keep quiet.

Caleb went to withdraw his hand, and I felt him jerk in surprise when I clung to him tighter, my fingers linking with his, keeping a firm hold on him.

There was a sudden rustling in the dark of night, and me being so far from my comfort zone, I had no idea in which direction it was coming from.

But Caleb did.

I could just make out his outline in the blackness that surrounded us, and I could see his head turned to the left of where we were hidden.

“Stay behind me,” he told me, his voice low and commanding and so sudden that I’d jumped with fright.

He didn’t wait for confirmation as he rose and took me with him. I felt another squeeze of my hand, and then Caleb gently disengaged from my panicked hold. He stepped in front of me,and I fought the urge to throw myself forward and plaster myself to his back.

The small area we’d been using was suddenly lit with the light of the sliver of the moon that shone free from the cloud cover.

My eyes darted from tree to tree, desperate for whatever had alerted us both to remain in the tree line. When nothing immediately revealed itself, I took a step out from behind Caleb, and for the first time I saw his face.

His chocolate eyes appeared black in the night, and they were focused on that same area to the left with an intensity that caused my tummy to flutter with fear. I couldn’t take my eyes off him as I watched him.

I had no words to describe him. He looked completely different from the man I thought I knew. It was like he was someone else. His face looked sharper, tension and danger rolled off of him in waves, and I took a step back. His hand snapped out and caught me. He didn’t take his eyes from the tree line, but he pulled me back to his side.

“Withme,” he growled.

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