A Shifter's Claim (Pale Moonlight Book 4) Read online

  When she moved in for a “Hey, how are ya, haven’t seen you around here much,” he hadn’t skittered away, afraid of her and all people. His brown gaze had been direct, intent, and the only time he’d broken eye contact was to brush his gaze down her shoulders, across the dangling hoop earrings she used to wear, and back again. He’d never ogled or leered, but his interest had been clear.

  So was the fact that he was hers.

  Had been hers.

  You cannot mate him. We don’t know his history—can’t have him leading our people into the new world.

  He’s mine, Mother.

  If he’s yours, then we’ll find a new successor.

  The panic of being disowned had haunted her. Of course it hadn’t bothered Waylon. One or both of his parents had dumped him in the middle of the woods, likely expecting him to die. The people of her colony had thrown around various tales and she’d listened intently, a young girl not knowing they were talking about the mate she hadn’t met yet.

  Maybe it was human poachers and they got his parents?

  No, there were no signs of a fresh kill.

  She’d listened, wide-eyed, at the doorway of pack meetings.

  What if his own pack tried to kill him but didn’t want to come back smelling like blood?

  Who’d kill a young, fail, and then return without him?

  No one had had an answer. They’d brainstormed Waylon’s past and pondered what to do with him. No families had raised their hands to take in a young male with the Mother only knew what kind of temperament.

  He’s packless.

  Then he’s rogue. We kill him. Do what his own pack could not.

  Father had cut that line of thinking off. A child cannot be rogue.

  What if he grows into a teen who’s bordering on feral?

  Mother’s voice rang loud; the practicality of her tone had stayed with Shilo. Then we kill him, a full beheading. No rogues will come out of the Ironhorse Falls colony. If this young proves to be predisposed to going rogue, then he’ll be swiftly dealt with, as we do.

  Mother and Father had barely waited forty-eight hours after Waylon had taken off before declaring him no longer one of the Ironhorse pack. Just like that, they were done with him.

  That could’ve been Shilo, but she’d made her choice.

  She doubted it was a coincidence Christian had found him and offered him status as one of theirs. Waylon had done nothing violent or wrong. He was a good male. Why did no one see it?

  Why hadn’t she tried to make them see it?

  Bringing her empty dishes to the sink, she stopped long enough to wash them. Once they were on the drying rack, she grabbed her shoes. “Are we going on two legs or four?” Uncle Wolf’s cabin was two miles from the colony and the trek would take them at least an hour in their human forms.

  “Two,” he said gruffly and headed for the door.

  What was that about?

  Oh, the nudity. Waylon probably wanted to walk through the cabin like this and not as a wolf. If they ran their wolves there and shifted back, they’d be without a stitch of clothing, which didn’t usually bother their kind. But they were trying to keep as much emotional distance as they could and still have sex. It was a fine, nearly nonexistent line.

  She stepped into her athletic shoes and followed him out, wearing her cotton-blend armor.

  Jumping from a jagged rock jutting out of a hillside, Waylon tried not to puff. Since he’d moved in with Shilo, he hadn’t had to make this trek to town, had forgotten how strenuous it was. It was like Uncle Wolf had chosen the most rugged terrain to keep between him and civilization.

  And knowing Uncle Wolf and his distrust of everyone, that was exactly what he’d done.

  Shilo leaped down and caught up with Waylon. She hadn’t broken a sweat while he’d perspired less after an hour-long boxing session. The forest canopy caught the brunt of the sun’s rays, but the humidity had sunk below the trees. Clouds had gathered and were moving across the sun.

  Shilo lifted her face and inhaled, a pleased smile spreading. “It’s going to be a killer rain. Good. The crops need it. I think Mother was going to harvest some potatoes and leave some in front of my door.”

  Waylon grunted, trying to keep his breathing under control. Shilo pranced through the woods like a contemporary nymph who’d shunned her tutu for denim. Her hair hung down from a messy bun and her face glowed. The muscular build of her arms was a turn-on Waylon couldn’t deny, and her ass… He couldn’t go there.

  Sex with her every night was going to his head. Both of them. Each day, he watched the clock. Was she in bed yet? How much more work before she called it a night and he could appear in her doorway? How long would her parents tiptoe around Langdon, giving him more time with Shilo?

  Her parents. They tolerated him. Did they suspect he and Shilo were sleeping together again? They tried to be quiet. He was fast—and thorough. But if he lingered, the part of his brain that was more man than shifter started thinking about the what-ifs. What if her mother lightened up? What if Langdon lost interest in Ironhorse Falls? What if Shilo accepted him?

  Weatherly and Shilene weren’t any friendlier than before, but they’d reverted to their previous aloofness when it came to him. They ignored him during the gatherings, but the burn of their stare stabbed between his shoulder blades when they thought he wasn’t paying attention.

  For two leaders who treated the Covet situation with kid gloves, they seemed oddly comfortable shoving Shilo at Langdon any chance they got.

  Waylon scowled at his boots as he stepped through the fallen branches and the tall grasses that survived deep in the woods. Should he bring up the observation with Shilo? Had she noticed herself?

  The contractor hasn’t called. You should set up another meeting with Langdon.

  It’d been three weeks since that meeting. Waylon’s experience watching Christian run the bar was that humans delayed their projects all the time. Langdon probably was interfering, but her parents were rushing to act just how he wanted them to, shoving her in front of Langdon like some virginal peace offering.

  “Oh my gosh. I see it.” Shilo pointed to the faded wood cabin in the distance. The lone stone wall with the crumbling chimney had seen better days, but other than a vine that accepted the challenge of encompassing the entire structure, it looked the same.

  He could almost hear Uncle Wolf’s rumbling voice. Don’t waste the emotion, he’d said when eight-year-old Waylon had cried after breaking his leg. Survival should be instinctual, not a mystery. That was during a nasty blizzard that had kept them holed up for a month. Waylon had panicked about food sources and supplies. The earth provides. She doesn’t hold our fucking hand and read us the instruction manual as a bedtime story.

  The reluctant guardian. Uncle Wolf had a head of gray hair in Waylon’s earliest memory of him, but he’d never said how old he was. Centuries. He’d answered few of Waylon’s questions over the years. Yes, he had mated. No, she wasn’t alive. But the question of whether he had young of his own had ended badly. Uncle Wolf had descended into a melancholic state that had lasted for two weeks, leaving Waylon to prepare all the food at ten years old. He hadn’t been old enough to venture into town on his own, and even if he had been, there’d been no money. Waylon had hunted as a wolf and turned his one successful kill into a stew that had lasted the first week.

  The second week, he’d picked greens from the garden to steam but hadn’t realized he’d picked rhubarb greens and poisoned them both.

  The next time you try to kill me, boy, use a blade, not a supper that tastes like shit before it makes me regret living to see the next day. Then he’d laughed, the first sign Uncle Wolf had busted out of his rut. If shifters could die from poisoning, I’d have offed myself with liquor long ago.

  Reaching the cabin, Waylon forced the memories back. The pull of this place had been weighing on him since he’d returned to Ironhorse Falls.

  Shilo circled the small structure. “Is it safe to go inside?” />
  “I’ll go first.” The cabin collapsing on them wouldn’t kill them, but it’d suck to be stranded under a pile of rubble with no way to call for help.

  He tried the doorknob. Uncle Wolf had never believed in locks. If they want to finish the job, they can come and get me. I got nothing to steal.

  Waylon had always thought that if someone ventured out this far, they weren’t here to take anything, but it didn’t mean their reason was a good one. But until he’d rented the loft over the offices, he hadn’t had a place of his own to lock, so he hadn’t argued with the old man.

  The familiar smell hit him, washing glimpses of the past over him. Uncle Wolf looming over him on his pine-bough mat, growling at him to wake up. Failing over and over to start a fire one wet spring when the fire pit had flooded until Uncle Wolf rolled his eyes and withdrew a Bic from a box of cigars he’d seemed to produce from thin air. Prepping skins of the wild game they caught to use as rugs half the year when stepping on a cold wood floor would leave him shivering for hours. Cleaning their guns after target practice.

  Damn, Waylon had hated cleaning guns. But Uncle Wolf had made sure he excelled at physical fighting and target practice. At first, Waylon had thought it was for the hunting, but no. Again, boy. Center mass. Again, boy. You only hit four out of five.

  Uncle Wolf would go to town and trade pelts for lead. But Waylon didn’t mind. It beat the boredom and he’d rather lose to the male on targets than get his ass walloped in hand-to-hand. Uncle Wolf had had a mean left hook.

  Watch your peripherals, kid. Human or wolf, fight smart.

  “Wow.” Shilo eased past him as he was lost to his memories. “It really hasn’t changed.”

  Oh, it had. Dust covered every surface, from the smooth, varnished tree-stump end table to the hand-carved mantle above the fireplace. Sun streamed through the windows, somehow still intact. Particles filtered through the beams, casting an overlay over his childhood home. Even the firearms he’d used for hunting and target practice had lost their shine. Part of him felt compelled to sit down and clean them.

  Waylon’s steps landed heavy on the wood planks, leaving footprints in the grit that had blown in over the years. He went to his old bedroom, an eight-by-eight addition Uncle Wolf had constructed after Waylon had moved in. The neatly sewn mat was still on the floor. Handcrafted bins that had functioned as his dresser were empty by the wall. All his possessions, nothing but a backpack of clothing, had moved out with him.

  Being mates doesn’t solve every problem between a couple. Her parents will never think you’re worthy.

  Then I’ll have to find out who I am so they can trust me.

  Uncle Wolf snorted, his eyes flashing with a feeling Waylon couldn’t identify. You’d better hope they never find out who you are.

  Waylon had asked what that meant, but Uncle Wolf had shucked his canvas trousers, shifted, and never come back. The next time Waylon had seen him, he’d been dead on the stoop.

  What had Waylon expected? Uncle Wolf hadn’t been a dying-of-old-age male. Waylon rubbed his chest.

  “It wasn’t your fault.” Shilo hadn’t missed the move. “Not even we live forever. You staying here wouldn’t have changed that. He had unfinished business and he waited until you were on your own.”

  Waylon hadn’t said a word since they’d arrived. His throat was clogged with emotion, and the longing to know who he was and where he’d come from charged back. Without Uncle Wolf, Waylon was adrift in the world, back to the same state he’d been in as a little boy before he’d gazed up at a scraggly old shifter who’d grudgingly taken him in. He’d had a home with Uncle Wolf, then again with Shilo.

  And he’d lost both of them.

  He wandered to the next room, the door only feet away. This space was larger, rectangular and nearly as sparse. Before Waylon’s addition, it had been open to the rest of the cabin. But Uncle Wolf had walled it off. He’d wile hours away in there. Waylon had never known what the male had been up to.

  Waylon walked in. He ran a finger over the furniture Uncle Wolf had carved and buffed out of fallen pine. So much work, so many hours put into pieces that would eventually rot out here, unused and unappreciated.

  “Not even a dream catcher.” Shilo skimmed her fingers over the bare log walls. “That’s odd in Ironhorse Falls. Even those without native ancestry have ’em.”

  “He made it clear he wasn’t from here. He pledged his allegiance to your pack only to be left alone.”

  “I always assumed he’d been born and raised around here. He knew too much about living off the land, this land, to have moved from anywhere else.”

  Waylon nodded. “I guess we’ll never know.” He stepped to the side to check the clothing bins, the urge to have just one memento of the only father he’d known driving him.

  He hadn’t even grabbed a carving when he’d left. At the time, he’d just felt abandoned by everyone.

  He’d never asked Shilo what she’d done with the carvings. That would’ve been too…intimate. If she still had them, the knowledge might disrupt their little arrangement. And if she’d burned them… That would disrupt their arrangement, too.

  A shelf of tiny carved figures was mounted against the far wall. He stepped toward it.

  A board creaked.

  “Huh, I’m surprised he didn’t fix this.” Waylon put pressure on it again. The groan was louder than any other board in the house.

  “Maybe it was just one of those things he never got around to.”

  “Yeah.” Waylon couldn’t quit with the board. There was no basement and he doubted there was even a subfloor, but this piece sank like nothing was underneath it. He dropped to his knees.

  Shilo squatted down with him. “A hiding spot?”

  “Maybe, but I gotta see.”

  He pushed and pressed along the length of the plank. At the end, he spotted an odd piece that didn’t blend. Palpating it, he frowned. Putty?

  Peeling it away revealed a well-worn screw. The other planks had two screws in each end, but this had a screw that looked like it was frequently removed.

  Waylon jumped up and dug in a bin. Uncle Wolf’s whittling tools. He grabbed one with a small blade that could fit into the screwhead.

  The screw was out in seconds. He pulled the wood away to reveal a small, square hole dug into the dirt. The cigar box sat inside.

  “Huh,” Waylon said again. He dug the box out, and both he and Shilo sat back on their butts. She scooted close. He lifted the lid and chuckled. The Bic. He lifted it out and set it on the floor. “This thing saved our asses more than once. I never thought about where he kept the box, just that he had the lighter when we needed it.”

  Two other things were inside. A stone and a picture of a happy couple with a little baby. The color had faded and the box had suffered water damage that had seeped into the photo.

  Shilo gasped. “He had a family.”

  Waylon squinted at the picture. “I don’t think that’s Uncle Wolf.” The male in the photo had hair and a bushy beard, but it wasn’t gray. The picture itself was newer than the Polaroid years. Waylon turned it over. The date was printed on the back.

  “That means the kid’s not much older than me.” Shilo turned the photo back over. “No, that isn’t Uncle Wolf.”

  “The date might just be when the picture was printed. It could’ve been taken earlier and not developed.”

  Shilo pointed at the top the woman was wearing. “They’re both dressed more modern than my father.”

  “All the colonies dress more modern than Weatherly.”

  She giggled. “True. I wish he’d update, but then I couldn’t sew him bell-bottoms anymore.”

  Waylon inspected the couple. They both had dark hair. Hers was long and draped over one shoulder and while she was smiling, her eyes were tired. On the surface, they were happy, at least for the split second the shutter opened and closed. His eyes were hard, fathomless, his grip on the baby tight. Her hand came around, not overlapping his, but gripping
the baby’s foot like she was hanging on for all it was worth.

  “They were having problems,” Waylon said.

  “Yeah.” Shilo tilted her head. “I see it now, too. I wonder if they’re still alive. Son? Daughter of Uncle Wolf?”

  “Or was he legitimately an uncle?” No, that didn’t feel right. “I bet he used the moniker to stay hidden. No one would think of him as a father.”

  “But why would he want to stay hidden?”

  Wasn’t that the million-dollar question. Was Uncle Wolf a rich recluse who shunned the modern world? Or just a recluse who couldn’t function in the modern world?

  He’d had a family. He wouldn’t hide and hold on to a photo like this otherwise.

  Who had left first? Uncle Wolf, or the people in the photo?

  “I guess we’ll never know the story.” Waylon tucked the photo and the Bic under his arm and stood up. Shilo rose and stretched.

  Suddenly, what they’d found didn’t matter. Her body was sun-kissed and her sweet-clover scent teased his nose.

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward his old room.

  “Oh, good idea,” she said, apparently sensing his desire. “I’m tired of being quiet.”

  Chapter 12

  With her legs wrapped around him, he pushed inside. Waylon’s eyes rolled back in his head. Morning, noon, and night he could be inside of Shilo. Their long separation had made the need stronger, like nature’s way of keeping them from parting again.

  If only it were possible.

  She rocked her hips up. After stripping down in a frenzy, they’d bypassed kissing and fallen together on the mat. Over the last few weeks, he’d done everything to her but claim her.

  The urge was getting harder to resist. He rocked out and thrust in. She arched her back, shoving her breasts in his face and baring her neck.

  The urge was getting harder for her, too.