Page 26 of The Buck Stops Hare

“Just follow them.” Buck pointed toward the truck as Storm and Rayne came out of the house with Vida in a carrier. They started the truck up easily and peeled out after a few moments, leaving us to follow in their dusty wake.

I wasn’t certain what I expected, as everything abnormal had happened in such a short period of time, but the swampy little backwoods community wasn’t it. Tons of little breadbox houses lay built in a meandering grid, no two bigger than the other, save for an odd extra room added on here and there. Streetlights running off home power lit the gravel ways between homes where lights lay off or dimmed.

“Watch for wolves. We have pups about.” Buck’s warning had me scrutinizing the dusk-dimmed landscape as I rolled in, following Storm’s truck at a crawling pace until he stuck his arm out the window and made a few hand gestures that had Buck raising a brow. “Turn left at the next drive and go two rows back. The green house.”

I did as I was told, and we pulled up to an empty house with a lawn a week or two out from needing a mow. The weeds gathering between the walkway stones told a story, too. “This us?”

Buck nodded, slipping out of the truck with Jacque before carrying him through the patch of a front yard and onto the porch. For his part, Jacque seemed relatively unbothered by the ordeal, not even flinching as the first of many howls echoed about the neighborhood. And in each of their eerie keens lay a message, welcoming gods to their land.

With a nod, he searched about, finding a key in the usual spot beneath the doormat before letting us into the small breadbox house. And, inside, aside from the slightly stale scent of disuse, it was clean and kempt, barely furnished with the bare necessities. “Guesthouse. It’ll be ours in time, or we can build our own. Storm has no qualm with us dwelling in his territory.”

“He better not. He’s my brother-in-law.”

“And my brother. Siblings fight though.” Buck inspected the house and sat Jacque down to inspect it, too. He peered beneath cabinet counters, fiddled with the HVAC, and pulled somecleaning chemicals out of the bottom of the sink and sat them out of Jacque’s reach. “I’ll invest in some latches.”

My heart melted a little, but I pushed my reaction down as I wandered the place.

The bed needed sheets and blankets, which I thankfully had plenty of, but the way Buck stared at the full-sized thing made me wonder if he was about to test it out right there and then. With me.

“I’ve never slept before.” His quiet whisper drew my attention as I processed it.

“Not even when I slept? I don’t think I can go without sleep, Buck. You okay?” I took a step forward to rest a hand on his shoulder, drawing his bewildered gaze to me. Something about his eyes held a new kind of pain, an ache I was familiar with.Exhaustion.

“It’s not common for what we are to sleep. Storm never slept until Rayne. I think I… I think I will, now.”

I thought about my short time with Grim, the deep exhaustion in his eyes. The longer I stared at Buck, the more of that familiar exhaustion I saw in his eyes, the earthen green of them pools of eternity. “It’s not going to be some fifty years of slumber?” I eyed him as Jacque rooted under the bed.

“Storm said it lasted a few hours at first, curled up with Rayne the first time. It hit your brother hard, and he passed out. Likely you did after all you went through.”

“Dude, I was drugged. By the time I woke up, I was in meat-beating mode.” I shrugged. Getting walked in on by Buck hadn’t been the worst moment of my life. Sorta welcome, if I was honest.

Buck gave me a half grin and rooted around cupboards for linens that I didn’t need. I’d get my own later. For that moment, though, I wanted him against me, his reassuring mouth, his breath and firmness.

When I approached and pulled him from the oak cabinet, hinges creaking, he leaned his head down for a soft kiss, as if reading my mind. It was a bare brush of lips, stubble rasping, tongue following. The whisper of his earthen breath made my skin crawl and tighten until he cupped the side of my face.

“We better get moving before someone starts looking for us,” Buck’s thick voice croaked out in a dry sort of way. I yearned to keep going, to hide away for another day, to experience the new pleasure. I wanted nothing more.

“Or we can—” I started, but the rapping of sharp knuckles on the thick front door made my shoulders tense.

“We can join the wolves. Bring Jacque.” He placed a finger on my lower lip and traced the curve of it, his expression lost.

I parted unwillingly as I went to retrieve my bunny. The door opened and pounding paws cascaded over the linoleum and wood flooring in succession. A fluffy gray pup with a brindled white buddy charged in and Jacque barked at them with matching excitement.Friends!

His life passed before my eyes. Years of my little baby bunny came to a screeching halt as I waited for the horrible sound of dogs on prey. Instead, only excited whimpering met my ears as a chorus of puppy thoughts and speech broke into my mind like Jacque’s little words.Friend! Play! Different! Special!

Two fluffy wolf pups lapped and pawed at an equally excited Jacque who jumped over and around them teasingly, ears perked.

Biggest ears, Hail!

“Easy now, Clay.” A rather stocky young male at the door gave me a wary smile that turned soft when Buck leaned down to pat the brindle-furred pup.

“Evening, Mattias. How are our namesakes?” Buck’s once-lust-laden face turned sweet and warm in an instant as the large blond male stalked in, bare-chested and paler than he had anyright to be in these parts with swampy weather and sweltering summer suns.

“Same as always. Hail ate a bee this morning. Didn’t you, sweetie?” A gray pup with soft blue eyes pinned his ears back in shame as he distracted himself momentarily from Jacque. “Teenie about had a conniption.”

Distraction over, they went back to mouthing and playfully leaping about Jacque as I awaited an opportunity to ask them nicely to—

“Easy, my tether. This beast is my mate’s ward.” Buck waved the pup I’d guessed was Clay down and they gentled their play.

---