“Helpless? You’re talking about Matt and Kyle, right? They’re hiding. Playing. Must be.” Graham hoped to the Goddess they were only playing.
“We’re looking,” Nell said grimly. “We’ll find them.”
But with all the Fae activity, and Matt and Kyle featuring in the dreams—or entering the dreams, or whatever the hell was going on—Graham went sick with worry. The Fae Oison had enthralled Graham, a big, badass alpha Shifter. Kyle and Matt were tiny and vulnerable. If Oison had touched them, Graham was going to kill the Fae outside a dream and make it stick.
“Dougal will you shut up!” Graham bellowed. At the same time, his phone rang. “What?”
“Jeez, Graham,” Misty’s voice came to him. “Do you ever just say hello?”
“Misty. Sweetheart.” Graham tried to pull back into a normal speaking tone. “I’m really busy right now.”
“You’re always busy. So am I. We need to talk.”
“I can’t talk. Matt and Kyle are missing. I find them first, talk later.”
“What?” He heard her concern escalate. “Graham . . .”
“I gotta go, Misty. I’ll call you back.”
Graham closed his flip phone so he wouldn’t keep talking to her. He’d stand here and pour out all his troubles and beg her to come to him. To mate with him. To be his forever. He’d do it in front of Nell and Dougal too and not care.
He would call her back, once he sorted out what happened to Matt and Kyle, and everything else. And they’d talk as much as she wanted to.
“Dougal, do you at least have an idea which direction they went?” he asked.
Dougal finally stopped howling—thank the Goddess. Graham’s ears were going numb. Dougal didn’t shift to human, but Graham could understand what he wanted to say.
The answer was no. Dougal had been fixed on Lindsay, walking around in a bikini with no top. When Lindsay had disappeared inside her house, Dougal had looked around, and the cubs had been gone.
Yes, he’d gone to Brenda’s to see if they’d run back there, and he’d checked all over Graham’s house, and he’d called Nell. Dougal knew he was a shithead. That he screwed up. That he should be punished. But why had Graham run off and left Dougal alone? He hadn’t known what to do.
“Dougal, you’re grown,” Graham snapped. “You don’t need me around all the time.”
Dougal’s muzzle was down, almost on the ground, his ears back, tail tucked underneath him. Graham balled his fists in frustration. Dougal needed reassurance, not more yelling. But damn it, the cubs, Graham’s responsibility, were gone, and there was an evil Fae on the loose.
Graham laid his hand on Dougal’s head. “The mating instinct is harsh. Trust me, I know this. It’s going to mess you up all the time. But that doesn’t matter right now. I need you. You have the cubs’ scent. Help me find them.”
Dougal lifted his head, looking slightly better, but he still cringed as he slunk out of the house and started sniffing around.
“Poor kid,” Nell said.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with him.” Graham went out the door after Dougal, Nell behind him.
Outside, they met Cormac, a huge, blue-eyed bear Shifter. He’d recently mated with Nell, and the two had stuck together since then like contact cement.
“If they’re in Shiftertown, we haven’t found them,” Cormac said.
Graham swallowed the raging curses that wanted to come out and said, “Thanks for looking.”
“We’ll look again,” Cormac said. Nell nodded, and moved off with him.
Shiftertown was abuzz. During the day, Felines usually napped, and bears did too—bears always found some excuse to sleep. But now Shifters were out, many in Shifter form, noses to the ground, helping search for the two little ones.
Graham shucked his own clothes, changed into his large black wolf, put his muzzle down, and sniffed.
What he mostly smelled was a maze of Shifter scents, going every which way. This was the problem with Shiftertowns—too many scents from different clans, packs, and species tangled together. Wolf packs needed to have their scents around them and no one else’s. Other scents meant danger. But here, with everything mixed up, Shifters couldn’t tell danger until it was too late. Which was probably what had happened with Kyle and Matt.
They searched. Dougal stayed close to Graham, both of them keeping to wolf form while they hunted, Dougal still needing reassurance.
A hatchback car came into Shiftertown, pulling up in front of Graham’s house. The door opened, and Misty’s scent came to him, even across the field where he searched. Misty didn’t drive a hatchback, and the scent of it was wrong for her, but that fact was peripheral.
As soon as Misty’s shapely foot touched pavement, Graham focused on her and nothing else.
It had happened. Last night had triggered it, or maybe the dreams or the spells had.
As Graham watched Misty, taking in her long legs under a loose, calf-length skirt, her shapely br**sts hidden by a white tank top with a little pink bow at the neckline, he knew his mating frenzy hadn’t come out of nowhere. It had started the first night he’d met her.
Graham had always told himself that he could give her up, walk away from her at any time. He needed a Shifter mate, Misty was human—and so it could never be.
Graham had reasoned that if he didn’t have sex with her, didn’t spend any nights with her, and kept her at a distance, he’d be fine. Then, when the time came for him to pick out a Lupine mate, he’d be able to tell Misty, Thanks, it’s been fun. Or better still, say nothing at all. She’d get it.
Now, more than ever, Graham needed to cut her out of his life. She was free of the spell, free of the Fae, free of Graham’s problems. Misty could go, and Graham would focus on his dilemmas and move on.
But Graham knew, watching as Misty walked around to the back of the car, her skirt swishing around her tanned legs, that he’d never, ever be able to send her away. She was rapidly filling every empty space inside Graham’s heart, and cutting her out of it would kill him.
Graham sat down on his haunches, wanting to point his nose to the sky and howl as miserably as Dougal had. He was so, so screwed.
• • •
Shiftertown was busier than Misty had ever seen it, except on ritual days. But all rituals, even mourning ceremonies, carried the element of a party. Right now, the Shifters were on alert, roving everywhere, tension high.