Page 103 of Moon Tamed

I laughed. “Are new shapeshifters prone to violence?”

Calden shook his head. “Not really. We just like making a fuss because we can. Are we going to your parents’ place, Marko?”

“Of course. Dad wants to meet your girlfriend and evaluate if she’s good enough to be your dad’s executive secretary.”

“She’s good enough to be his secretary,” Calden muttered.

“Ah, but he wants to decide that for himself. You know how my dad gets. Just go along with it. Once he meets her, he’ll set her loose in the library and try to lure her over to Legacy, I’m sure.”

“No chance in hell on that one,” I informed Marko. “I’ve been to Legacy enough when working as a temp to understand I would go insane within a month there permanently.”

“Told you,” Calden muttered.

“Dad wants to try anyway. He couldn’t try to steal your mom from your dad. But your woman is fair game.”

“She’s not fair game.”

“Does that mean I’m your woman now?” I asked, unable to keep the laughter out of my voice.

“Yes,” the men chorused.

“I thought it was not this obvious, Calden.”

“Dad probably snitched about your new living accommodations to a loudmouth.”

“He did,” Marko confirmed. “It’s also part of why we’re just letting you shoot us, Coraline. You haven’t had a lot of time to adapt, and Calden’s a handful.”

He was? “If you say so.”

“Calden, I don’t think she agrees with me.”

“She skins her own rabbits, Marko. I’m going to have to drag her a buck and posture over it if I want to even annoy her when it comes to my general hunting habits. And she’s better at skinning rabbits than I am.”

“I see. You finally found one of the rare women who actually hunts.”

“I found her first.”

“I’m married. Control your zeal a little. If she wants to get jealous, that’s a different matter altogether. A little jealousy might help her put on her fur coat a little faster, although we might get whiplash over how fast she’s gotten ready to shift.”

“She has an advanced gene for shifting. Her genetics don’t have an aligned animal, but she’s been primed for a while, or so says Dad.”

Interesting. Somehow, I’d left enough room in Mr. Stephans’s schedule to cause me more trouble. As soon as I had a fur coat and had secured the man’s son, I would make some adjustments to make certain he didn’t have time to cause me any more trouble. “I see your father has been talking about me to you.”

“He has. He’s been keeping an eye on you to see if you have symptoms of shifting. You’ve been growling without realizing it for three days now, and you were downright snarly when you wanted to get some work done, and people were bothering you. He’d be sending any other member home to prep for their first shift at your symptom level.”

I eyed Marko, who sat behind the wheel and started the SUV’s engine. “Is that true?”

“It’s true. The paintball shooting and general aggression is a fairly obvious symptom. It’s part of why nobody has been showing you any prey instincts and have calmly accepted being shot. We didn’t want to startle you into shifting without Calden around, and you were having fun with the hunt, which is good development in general. Halfway through the first day of the hunt, Mr. Stephans passed on word you were getting jumpy and probably in your final stage before your first shift. And that means making sure Calden here also stays relatively calm unless he’s trying to goad you into shifting.”

“It’s true, Coraline. We do this sort of thing all the time. I was a little slow on the uptake, but mostly because I was enjoying watching you go all out on the faction.”

Men. “Isn’t this a lot early?”

“You have advanced genetics, and your love of animals is also playing a role. That’s why so many Hunters are also animal lovers. We have an easier time shapeshifting because we just love animals that much. In some cases, we love to eat rabbits that much.”

“Like you,” I stated.

He grinned and nodded. “I was born the perfect wolf, possessing a strong hunger for rabbits.”

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