Ellison spun away from the porch and started down the street again, worry piling on worry. The sky was blue, the sun bright, another beautiful day in Austin. The sunlight would sparkle in Maria’s dark hair, dance on her smile.
Footsteps sounded beside him, and then Ellison got a full dose of Broderick’s unwashed scent. “So where is she?”
“Would I be here ready to kill you if I knew?”
Broderick didn’t answer, but he didn’t leave either. “I’m coming with you,” he said.
“The fuck you are.”
“You aren’t doing a very good job of finding her, are you? Two heads better than one.”
“But I want your head on the ground,” Ellison growled.
“That’s where I want yours. But we find Maria first. Sure she’s not with one of the Morrisseys?”
“No. And they don’t seem worried.”
“Fucked-up Feline bastards.”
Ellison ignored Broderick the best he could as he made his way back to Liam’s house. Connor and Tiger were still bent over Dylan’s truck.
Ellison stopped outside the property line and hauled Broderick back before the man could run up to Connor, likely to close his hand around Connor’s neck and demand the cub to tell what he knew.
If Broderick did that, he’d lose his arm, because Tiger was already straightening up from behind the hood and glaring at them with those weird eyes of his. Tiger, though only adopted into Liam’s family and clan, was seriously protective of Connor.
Tiger hadn’t been born of Shifter parents—he’d been bred in a research facility and raised in a cage by human scientists for about forty years. They’d been trying to create a super-Shifter—one who was better, stronger, faster, and all that shit, than your average Shifter. They were trying to do what the Fae had done a couple thousand years ago, except without the magic and possibly not the maniacal laughter. The single-minded cruelty had been there, though.
The result was Tiger—superstrong, barely controlled, and not happy with people who messed with Connor. He wore a Collar, but Ellison was one of the few who knew the Collar was fake. Liam had tried to put a real one on Tiger and it hadn’t worked, so a fake one had to do for now.
The man didn’t have a name, either. Tiger didn’t know what it was—the humans who’d created him had called him Twenty-Three. The woman who’d rescued him had decreed that Tiger could pick his own name, but so far, he hadn’t. So everyone called him Tiger.
Tiger wasn’t growling, but he didn’t need to. The stare from the yellow eyes was enough.
“Connor,” Ellison said.
“Yep?” Connor answered, wiping his hands.
“You take Maria somewhere this morning?”
“Nope. But if you’re asking if I’ve seen her, I did. She came out the back door bright and early, said hi to me, said she was going to help Ronan look after Olaf, and said to tell you she could hear you snoring all the way across the street.”
Broderick made a sound that was a cross between a snort and a laugh. Tiger said nothing at all.
“Damn it.” Common sense told Ellison he was running around Shiftertown making an idiot of himself, but his hackles still wouldn’t go down. Something was wrong—didn’t matter if he didn’t know what. Didn’t matter that everyone else was being logical and unworried.
“Thanks, Connor,” he managed to say. “If she comes back, tell her to stay put, will you?”
“Sure thing.”
Tiger’s gaze remained fixed, the big man with his mixed black and orange hair focused in silence on Ellison.
“We go to Ronan’s then?” Broderick asked.
“I’ll go to Ronan’s. You go home.”
“Like I’m letting a Lupine from another pack tell me what to do. I don’t like wolves from my own pack telling me what to do.”
Annoying asshole. Ellison tried to ignore him as he plotted a course for Ronan’s, and started between the houses to get to the common.
“I will come with you.”
Tiger stepped into their path before Ellison saw the guy move. He was about three inches taller than Ellison, as big as a bear Shifter. He’d be great to have on hand if Ellison needed help with a fight. On the other hand, Tiger was unpredictable, stronger than any Shifter he knew, and not quite stable in the head.
“You need to take care of Connor,” Ellison said.
Tiger remained in place, a wall Ellison wasn’t going to get around. “I will come with you.”
“It’s all right,” Connor said, more to Tiger than Ellison. “I’ll be fine.”
Tiger nodded once and turned away, starting off in the direction of Ronan’s.
Connor stepped to Ellison and spoke in a low voice. “Keep an eye on him. Tiger, I mean. He’s usually fine, but when he gets upset . . .”
“Yeah, I know what he does. I’m having a great morning—my girl’s missing, and now I’m babysitting a crazy Shifter and a wolf from a rival pack.”
“Tiger’s not crazy,” Connor said. “Just . . . intense.”
“Intense. Right.”
The way Tiger turned around and stared back at them told Ellison he’d heard every word.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him.” Ellison growled again, ruffled Connor’s hair, and walked rapidly after Tiger and Broderick.
***
One of the foster kids at Ronan’s—Cherie—told them that Maria had come for Olaf early and the two had gone off together. Cherie was a cub going on twenty-one, with brown and lighter brown hair that marked her as a grizzly. She was yawning, the only one at Ronan’s house, and barely awake. Ronan had asked Maria to look after Olaf today, Cherie explained, while everyone else was out. Maria had seemed happy to.
Cherie looked annoyed to be roused out of her sleep-in, but bears were like that. They loved their sleep.
“Where did she take him?” Ellison asked.
“Walking.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maria’s trustworthy, and Olaf likes her. They’ll be fine.” Cherie looked over the three male Shifters as though they didn’t impress her, named a park outside Shiftertown where Olaf liked to go, and retreated with a decisive bang of the door.
The park wasn’t far, a good brisk walk out the other side of Shiftertown and down a few streets. The roads were quiet here, with little traffic. No drivers to stare at Ellison, Broderick, and the giant Tiger with his orange and black hair bringing up the rear.
The park lay vast, green, and open, the eastern edge of it running up to a little ridge full of dense trees. A few joggers shuffled around the paths, but kids had already gone to school, and most adults to work. One or two moms pushed kids in strollers, but the park was largely empty.
No sign of Maria’s dark hair and lovely body, no woman tugging a ten-year-old boy with white hair with her along the paths.
Ellison made for the ridge on the other side. Something pulled him that way, a sense of wrongness. He walked faster and faster, running by the time he took a path that led over a stream, up some stone steps, into the woods that led up the side of the hill.
Tiger heard her first. He grabbed Ellison by the shoulder and silently pointed a broad finger into deeper shadows, where the hill climbed high.
Ellison let Tiger, with his better hearing and sight, lead. Tiger moved noiselessly, fading into the woods like smoke. If Ellison hadn’t kept a sharp eye on him, he’d have quickly lost him.
“Olaf!” Maria’s voice came to them before they’d walked another twenty yards. “Olaf!”
The word had an echoing quality, as though she’d gone into a cavern or tunnel. Ellison jogged to catch up with Tiger, who quietly led him down another little hill into a tiny valley.
The valley ran between the ridge and another hill on the other side. On top of the second hill was a road shielded by a concrete barrier. Cars raced along it, the drivers paying no attention to what was below them.
A wide culvert opened under the road. Maria stood a few feet inside it, hands around her mouth, calling despera
tely for Olaf.
Chapter Five
Maria peered into the darkness, straining to see Olaf. She’d taken two steps into the chilly culvert into which he’d disappeared before she’d frozen, unable to move.
The press of the concrete walls, the cold dampness, the dank smell, very like that in the basement of the warehouse in which she’d been kept, triggered memories too powerful to stop. Her heart constricted, her throat working while she fought down the screams.
Only Olaf’s little growls—telling her he’d shifted into his polar bear cub—kept her from running out, back into the sunshine, back to Shiftertown.
“Olaf, please come back.” Her voice was shaking, but she knew her pleas would have little impact. Olaf would have decided by now that Maria wouldn’t come in there after him.
She heard footsteps behind her, heavy ones, made by the firm strides of Shifters.
In her state, Maria’s mind told her they were Miguel’s Shifters, come to find her. She clamped her mouth closed over her cries of panic and fled into the tunnel.
“Maria!”
The sound of the warm voice made Maria stop, her breath hurting her. Even with his worry, he kept the Texas drawl.
Ellison. An anchor, shelter from the cold. Maria turned back, something heating in her when she saw his tall silhouette at the tunnel’s opening, his big cowboy hat a comforting sight.
She took a few running steps toward Ellison, then stopped again as two other Shifters appeared behind him. One was Broderick—what was he doing here? The other was the Tiger man who lived in Liam’s house. Maria wasn’t afraid of him exactly—Tiger had never paid her much attention—but his bulk was frightening in the darkness of the culvert.
Ellison didn’t wait. He came into the tunnel, his long legs bringing him to her in a few strides. “Maria, honey, you all right?”
He slid his arm around her waist. He did it without thought, the most natural thing in the world.
Maria managed a nod. “It’s Olaf. He’s gone exploring and won’t come out.”
Ellison was like a rock. His arm steadied her, and his warmth at her side quieted her fears. His hat touched her hair, and then she felt his lips on the top of her head.
“Stay put,” he said. “I’ll get him. Tiger—look after Maria.”
“I’ll watch her,” Broderick said, too quickly.
“No. You’ll come with me.”
“Chase bears yourself, Rowe,” Broderick said with a growl. “I’ll take Maria home.”
His arrogance snapped something inside Maria. The fiery temper she’d been ashamed of before her abduction reared up. “You get in there and find Olaf,” she said to Broderick, pointing her finger down the tunnel. “If he doesn’t come out, or one hair on his pelt is hurt, you can explain to Ronan why you didn’t go in after him.”
Ellison chuckled, more heat. “I know who my money’s on.”
Broderick growled again. “You’re going to leave her with the crazy?”
Tiger said absolutely nothing, but when his yellow eyes flicked to Broderick, Broderick swallowed.
Maria took a step closer to Tiger. “I’ll be fine. Get Olaf.”
Broderick made another snarling noise but took off down the tunnel.
“Be right back,” Ellison said. He touched his hat brim, gave Maria his big smile, and jogged down the tunnel after Broderick.
***
The wolf in Ellison didn’t like the tunnel of the culvert. Wolves preferred wide meadows, where they could run, or the quiet of woods that flowed for miles. Wild wolves did hole up in dens, but those were shallow caves, not deep tunnels.
The dislike of caves came from racial memory, maybe. The Fae had liked caves, not to live in, but as a place in which to keep their slaves. Slaves meant Shifters; that is, until the Shifters had told the Fae to go fuck themselves and had fought a long, bloody war for their freedom.
Ellison’s Lupine Shifter ancestors had been thrilled to be free of the underground, to run in the wild, where they belonged.
Bears, on the other hand . . .
“Why does he want to explore down here?” Broderick asked, a shudder in his voice.
“Bears. Damn things like caves.”
“But he’s a polar bear.”
“So maybe he likes ice caves.”
“Let’s find the shit and get him out of here,” Broderick said. “It’ll make the woman happy.”
The woman. That was how he talked about Maria, the beautiful lady Broderick said he wanted to mate-claim. Dickhead.
Ellison had drunk in the beauty of her, even as he’d worried for Olaf. She wore form-hugging jeans today and a tight-fitting shirt, a black elbow-sleeved T with spangled red and blue flowers on the front, two small buttons holding it closed at the very top. She was a delicious package. Ellison wanted to find Olaf quickly so he could return and enjoy it.
“Olaf!” Ellison called, his voice falling against the dead air of the tunnel. “Where are you?”
If they lost Olaf, it wasn’t only Maria he’d have to face. Ronan loved the kid. Olaf was an orphan of unknown clan who’d needed a home, and Ronan had volunteered his. Ronan was always doing things like that, the big, giant softie.
The big, giant softie had foot-long claws, and teeth that could rip a tree in half.
A trickle of water sounded up ahead, the tunnel built to carry runoff from creeks when they overflowed. Ellison always found it fascinating that Austin was crisscrossed by creeks and wetlands, while other parts of the vast state, not very far from here even, were bone-dry. Texas and its amazing diversity went on forever.
Ellison heard Olaf growl. A long, low growl, from a baby animal throat, at something that had the cub surprised and worried. Olaf was a fairly fearless little guy, so anything that worried him worried Ellison.
Ellison stripped off his boots, ready to let his wolf come out.
Shifting wasn’t always instantaneous. Ellison’s body fought it today, both human and wolf wanting to hurry and find Olaf and take him out. He willed himself to be wolf—easier to track, easier to fight in that form.
He shucked his jeans as his legs started to bend to the wolf’s, fur swiftly erasing his human flesh. Once Ellison’s four wolf feet hit the ground, the struggle ceased, and the wolf took over.
He pinpointed Broderick’s rank smell right away and ran past it, Broderick a smudge in the darkness. Up ahead, Olaf was still growling, throwing off agitated bear cub smell.
Ellison also scented Tiger and Maria behind him. Tiger was the musky male at the top of his strength. Maria was the gentler of the two, like the cinnamon and honey she put on her buñuelos. She smelled of home and things of light, a beacon in the darkness.
Ellison knew she’d hesitated following Olaf because the underground reminded her too much of her captivity. Ellison and she shared that hatred of the close darkness, which represented to both of them imprisonment, slavery, and terror.
Another odor assaulted Ellison’s nose and had Broderick growling. Humans. Human men not as afraid of confronting a polar bear Shifter as they should be.
They weren’t afraid yet. Ellison sped up and charged around a corner into a second culvert.
Three human men stood inside the tunnel, blocking the way to daylight behind them. LED lanterns threw pale shadows on the ceiling and over the polar bear cub who stood defiantly before them. One man had a tranquilizer rifle, pointed at Olaf, and the other two held a large net between them.
Ellison took this in with rapid calculation before he gave in to his wolf’s rage. He charged, his Collar sparking hard.
The scent from the men changed to panic. Facing a full-grown Shifter wolf was a different thing from facing a bear cub, though they’d have found Olaf a handful. But the gunman still had the tranq rifle, and he raised it to point it at Ellison.
Ellison let his body hit the ground, under the rifle’s aim. He slammed himself at the gunman, sweeping him from his feet. The man yelped as Ellison ran into him, and dropped the rifle, which we
nt off as it spun around, the tranq dart flying. The dart hit nothing, clattering to the floor to be lost in the darkness.
In the next moment, Broderick came running in, in the form of his timber wolf. He hurtled toward the men with the net, his Collar snapping sparks, but Broderick didn’t let the Collar slow him down. The net men spun with quick reflexes, ready to snare him.
They’d done this before, Ellison realized. The three men worked as a well-practiced team, the rifleman rolling to pick up the rifle and reload it while the men with the net regrouped. In a second, they’d have the thing over Broderick.
Ellison went for the gunman again. His heavy wolf body crushed the man into the nearest wall, making him drop the rifle once more, and Ellison heard a bone snap.
Sparks zapped Ellison hard, and pain ran like fire through every nerve. Fucking Collar. Ellison could control the Collar when he fought in the rings at the Shifter fight club, because his brain knew then that he didn’t really want to kill the Shifter against him.
But these humans had threatened a cub, and Ellison wanted them dead. The Collar sensed his need to kill and went to work trying to stop him. The Collars evened the odds, in spite of the gunman’s broken wrist, and the net had started to tangle Broderick.
Olaf ran back and forth between the men, growling up a storm, grabbing legs and heels, biting.
“Shoot him!” One of the net men yelled. “Grab that damned bear, and let’s get out of here.”
“He broke my arm!” the gunman shouted back.
“Sixteen million! Think about sixteen million.”
Sixteen million dollars? Did they mean for Olaf?
Screw the Collar. Ellison slammed his body into the human’s again, letting his Collar’s sparks strike the man’s flesh. The man screamed, another bone or two definitely breaking.
Broderick fought and writhed, but the net, which appeared to be barbed in places, had closed around him. One of the men dropped his end of the net and dove for the rifle, coming up with it and the dart full of tranquilizer before Ellison could stop him.