Page 53 of Fated to the Lone Shifter
The pull between us is magnetic and primal and maddening. But I can’t afford to be distracted. Not now. Not with threats circling us in the woods like sharks drawn to blood.
I need space. Air. Anything but her scent clouding my head.
“Stay here,” I order as I head toward Captain Greene, who has just arrived on the scene.
“What’ve we got, Benson?” I hear as I approach.
“Motel fire. No obvious cause…yet. We do have some evidence though.” I hand him the bag I just got from Sera. I consider whether to turn over the video camera I picked up or view it by myself first.
The Captain is looking off, unfocused, impatient. He smells like he forgot where the showers were. He’s got me worried.
I know his history. We’ve talked about it. How he came back from Afghanistan a mess. No good for anyone. Not the crew he had just started with at Firehouse 333. Not his wife. Or himself. He was drinking a bottle of rum everyday just to keep the memories at bay.
After two years of that and an over-achieving increase to two bottles per day, he was thrown off the crew, his wife left him, and he ended up in the hospital. The doctor told him his liver would give out before his next birthday…unless he changed something.
It took six months, but he did it. Of course, it was too late for his marriage. She had moved on. But he was able to return to the firefight on a trial basis. That trial lasted over thirty years and three promotions, and I’ve never seen him take a drop since. That can’t be easy.
He keeps the firehouse—and himself—disciplined and razor-focused, because there is no other choice. There is simply too much at stake.
Too much at stake? I know that feeling. I look back at the remains of the motel fire. The crew runs its final checks and searches for clues. Sera is in the heart of it all, holding out her hands to sense what others may miss. For the crew, the stakes have never been higher.
“Get back to your crew,” he fires at me, grumpier than usual.
I don’t stop him.
He is exceeding his limits. I fear what I have may push him over the edge. One more unexplainable image could break his carefully-crafted world, and then what?
No. I need more time with this. I leave the camera in my pocket and head across the street to where I saw the wolves in the trees earlier.
But as soon as I get twenty feet in, I hear the crunch of leaves behind me.
Damn it.
I spin, and she’s there—too close, too tempting, too much.
“I said stay back.”
She just lifts a brow and pushes through a branch like it’s her birthright. “Yeah, that’s not really my thing.”
Of course it isn’t. I increase my strides, already well into the tree line.
Of course she has to follow, smelling like smoke and power, stirring up everything I’m trying to hold down.
I try to cut her off before it’s too late. “You don’t understand—”
A sharp tang of blood cuts through my sentence.
Shit. It’s already too late.
It hits me fast. No warning. No time. Just a wall of scent—sweat, earth, old magic—and the hair on the back of my neck rises.
Too close. They're already here.
I throw out an arm, forcing her behind me just as the first growl shatters the silence.
“Run,” I breathe, but there’s nowhere to go.
A snarl tears through the darkness to our left, and before I can shift or draw power, six wolves break through the brush—big, vicious, and clearly not from any pack I know.
