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

  He stared out the windshield. Was there anything he shouldn’t tell her? Or should he be brutally honest about how bad it’d been?

  “I drove aimlessly for weeks, doing odd jobs for cash. Then I decided to get legit papers so I could get a job among the humans, and that brought me to my current pack leader. Christian and his mate are the leaders of misfits like me, shifters who don’t fit in anywhere but need a pack to keep from going rogue.” He gave her a sidelong look.

  But she didn’t even flinch. “Makes sense.”

  “You don’t look rogue,” he blurted.

  She arched a dark brow. “What’s a rogue supposed to look like?”

  “Unbathed. Ratty. Broke as hell because they don’t have the support of a pack.”

  “That sounds more like a shifter who’s gone feral. I’m not rogue yet.”

  “The rabbits?”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t on the edge.”

  If other pack members caught her in the woods as mindless and aggressive as the night he’d found her, she would’ve been detained until the pack decided how to deal with her. Which would only incite a borderline-rogue shifter.

  “Anyway, what else did you do?” Change of subject. Okay, he’d go with it for now, but they’d have to circle back soon.

  “Not much. I got a job as a bartender not long after meeting Christian and that’s what I did.” Poured drinks and fucked. “What about you?”

  “My role as ambassador ramped up. I don’t know if it was necessary or to keep me busy. You were gone. Charlie and Cass moved not long after and I was…listless. Useless.”

  “You’re never useless.”

  Her smile was small. “Beadwork doesn’t advance the colony. I get a lot of work for the annual powwow, but other than that, we don’t really need it anymore.”

  “It’s better than only being to tell when someone else is using an ability. That’s shaping up to be mine.” Maybe it’d be useful, but not more than killing an engine cold. “What you offer is not a tangible need, but your people need to remember their past.” Even with their long lives, their culture was getting lost in the hurry to modernize. Their human relations had long passed, taking their knowledge with them.

  “My people need more from me than a traditional jingle dress.”

  “It’s your gift for a reason.”

  “And you were my mate for a reason. Look how that worked out.”

  Ouch. Her retort had been quick, without much thought. Did that make it more honest?

  “We worked well together,” he said. “In the end, it wasn’t us working together. It was you and your parents.”

  “What did you expect me to do?” she snapped. “They’re the colony leaders. I’m the next colony leader. Am I supposed to shun their opinion and advice? We could’ve still worked at it, but you didn’t even try. You weren’t willing to give them time—to give me time. You left.”

  “Was I supposed to stay and be your pool boy?” He let out a disgusted grunt. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Look, I’ll service your needs until this Covet shit is done or you take a mate, whichever comes first.”

  Had he just said that? His stomach twisted. Shilo take another mate. He’d had a hard enough time watching her flirt in the bar. His temples had pounded and each minute, he’d come up with a new and eventful way to kill the innocent and oblivious dude.

  “Fine. I don’t really have a choice.” She stared out the passenger window. The moon was high, the only other source of illumination besides his headlights. The yellow dash lights chased shadows away from the high points of her face, leaving her expression haunted.

  “You always have a choice with me. I get the rogue thing, but being with me isn’t an all-or-nothing deal.”

  “A bodyguard with benefits?” she asked. “Do you think we can do that?”

  “It’s part of protecting you. And let’s be honest—we’re not going to be mellow standing aside while one of us goes off and fucks someone else.”

  The set of her jaw was clear in the dashboard glow. “What do we tell people?”

  “We’re going to smell like each other anyway. Let them assume what they want.”

  “You never marked me.”

  No, he hadn’t. So many times he’d hovered over her neck in the throes of passion, but he’d never committed. An instinct that sensed she hadn’t fully accepted him? But then she’d never offered her neck. “You didn’t seem ready.”

  He expected a rebuttal, but she stared straight ahead.

  He changed the subject. “What are your plans for the next week?”

  “More like the next month. I’m behind on orders for two traditional dresses. Can you believe it? I’ve made dresses for these girls since they were old enough to jump and now they’ve ordered the full-grown outfits they’ll wear for years. Decades even. I feel old.”

  He smiled. Back in safe territory, they talked about her orders and how long she planned to work on them. There was also a powwow planning committee meeting, but Shilo didn’t expect any drama. The annual powwow had been running for decades, and the major details had been ironed out long ago.

  “It’s a quiet week,” she murmured. “We wait and see if Langdon lives up to his promises. The contractor that’ll dig the line is supposed to contact Mother later next week.”

  All Waylon had to do, beyond looking after Shilo, was get a message to his employers. All he had to say was that the case was stable and handled. Any more and they risked Langdon intercepting it and taking advantage of the info.

  Waylon looked forward to the next few weeks. If all went according to plan, it would be blessedly drama-free.

  Chapter 10

  The sun’s rays snuck through a crack in her drapes and slapped a band of blinding light across her face. Shilo blinked awake and rolled over. She reached her arm out as she opened her eyes, knowing no one was on the other side of her bed. Waylon had serviced her and gone back to his room. It was their routine.

  After they’d returned from Freemont three weeks ago, she’d waited until the urge to charge out to the sidewalk, yank a male off the concrete, and drag him back home, cave-girl style was too strong to ignore. Waylon had either sensed her increasing desire or noted her short, cranky answers and the way she stomped around the upper level as she attached beads to a garment.

  When a two-quart canister of multicolored beads had hit the floor and she’d shouted every swear word she knew and a few she’d made up, he’d charged in and taken her against the wall. Then her craft table, knocking over another jar in the process that she suddenly didn’t care about. After that, she’d righted the chair and sat down to finish while Waylon had picked up beads and sorted them into their proper containers.

  Now that they’d settled on a nightly maintenance regimen of fast, hard sex, she was cruising on stable. The meeting with her parents last night hadn’t made her homicidal for bunnies. Mother had stressed the failure of the contractor to call about a timeline for getting the internet line in before winter hit. He wasn’t returning her calls either. Both Mother and Father had demanded Shilo investigate why. Shilo thought that was exactly what Langdon wanted, to see their urgency.

  It was early August and with hundreds of miles of cable to bury through dense woods, it wasn’t looking like this year was the year of wifi for Ironhorse Falls. Langdon had strategically delayed them long enough that any further delays, likely orchestrated by him, would make all progress come to a halt once temps dipped below freezing.

  And the maddening part? They shouldn’t need this motherfucking internet. Sure, it was better than what they currently had, but they had options in place. Her colony hadn’t been stuck in the Stone Age. Ironhorse Falls had satellites and cellular. But Covet controlled the towers sitting on their land, and weather made satellite connectivity difficult in the winter. Though the last year had seen some mysterious outages on perfectly cloud-free days.

  No, Shilo was going to make Langdon wait. These lines and the massive amount of money it
’d cost her people couldn’t be their last options, it just couldn’t.

  It was time to stand up to Covet.

  But it wasn’t time to pressure Mother and Father about it.

  Shilo sat up and swung her legs down. She was still naked, her body humming. Waylon never needed to stay long. No all-nighters. No clawing and shoving to get the level of stimulation her body demanded. Just him, giving her what she craved. She didn’t wake up angry in the mornings with stomachaches from the previous night’s slaughter of innocent creatures. Her meals now consisted of whatever magic Waylon created in the kitchen.

  She jumped in the shower. The normalcy of the days could get addicting. As long as she wasn’t stalling in her dealings with Langdon, she had an excuse to keep Waylon around. And times like these, she wasn’t sure she could trust herself.

  Toweling off and dressing in jean shorts and a pink tank top, she trotted downstairs. Her stomach stretched and woke up like she had just done, prepping for Waylon’s attention. Her sex drive wasn’t the only body part that liked having him around.

  She inhaled, her mouth watering. Sausage and eggs, with diced bell peppers and cheese, all encased in a homemade wrap. The guy didn’t have much to do while she worked and he’d been using his time to cook up a storm. If she didn’t know him, she’d say it was his special ability. But she did know him. And she’d tasted the charred remains of the stir-fry attempt from two nights ago. The overabundance of soy sauce had required an extra three glasses of water to flush out the sodium and he’d spent an hour scrubbing the remains off the bottom of the pan.

  But it was still better than any meal she could prep, so she hadn’t complained, just prepared ham sandwiches while he’d aired out the bottom floor.

  “Smells good.”

  “It is.” Waylon was sitting at the table, reading the Ironhorse Falls Daily. Today he was wearing a navy-blue tee and his standard blue jeans. He looked better than Langdon in his expensive suits any day of the week, though she might be biased—she knew how Waylon could use that body.

  What would he look like in a suit? A picture of Langdon formed in her mind—same stance, same slicked-back dark hair, but instead of Langdon’s haughtiness, Waylon’s brooding eyes stared back. Weird.

  Sliding into a chair, she was barely settled before she dug into her breakfast burrito. Three bites and it was gone. Waylon didn’t look up as he slid a plate full of four other prepared burritos toward her. “Eat up. I’ve already had my share.”

  She mentally added more eggs to her list. And they could stop by the Monroes’ and order another quarter pig for the freezer.

  A burst of savory flavor exploded on her tongue. “These are good. What’d you do different?”

  “Monterey jack cheese.”

  “Nice. It’s good.” She chuckled. “Unlike the coconut oil.” Last week, he’d tried using coconut oil for a change. The oil had actually tasted like coconut instead of being flavorless.

  “Weirdest-tasting eggs ever.” He set the canister of coconut oil on the counter. “Hey, I was thinking since we won’t use this for cooking, we could make lip balm and shit.”

  “Lip balm and shit?”

  An adorable flush tinted his cheeks. “Christian’s mate leaves magazines all over the break room. Waste not, want not and all that.”

  He was always full of surprises. One of the reasons she liked hanging out with him. “I know someone with a good supply of essential oils.”

  “We can head over there after I do dishes.”

  “I should just go on my own.”

  He shook his head and put the coconut oil back. “Never mind.”

  She swallowed her mouthful with her regret. She’d hurt his feelings. He’d been helping her for the last few weeks and now he thought she was ashamed of him.

  “Waylon, I can’t just show up at a friend’s house with my bodyguard in tow. And it wouldn’t be right to make you wait outside.”

  “I get it.” He turned his back to fill the sink with dirty dishes.

  She glanced down at her plate. Her appetite had left, but the food was too good to waste. She stuffed the rest in her mouth as the water ran and he added dish soap.

  Last week, she’d needed a break from bending over her sewing table and had taken her sewing toolkits downstairs. She’d been in the middle of Ocean’s Eleven when Waylon had plopped next to her.

  “I love this movie,” he’d said and begun sorting her faceted beads by color.

  She’d known. It had been one of their favorites to watch while doing tedious, stationary tasks.

  Her plate was empty. She took it to the sink and dropped it in, creeping close enough to Waylon inhale his heady pine scent. The coconut oil jar was to her right. She opened the top, stuck her finger in, then turned to Waylon and smeared it over his lips.

  He jerked his head back. “What the hell?”

  She grinned. “We’ll leave to get the oils after dishes.”

  He maintained eye contact as he reached around her and dipped his finger into the jar.

  “Don’t you dare,” she said, eyes narrowing.

  His wicked smile sent electricity down to her toes. “Don’t you want soft lips, Shilo?”

  She feigned an indignant gasp. “Are you saying my lips aren’t soft?”

  His gaze dropped to her mouth. “They’re as soft as down, and kissing them is like walking through the gates of heaven.”

  Her soft inhale wasn’t fake this time. “Waylon.”

  He blinked, like snapping out of a trance. “After dishes. We’ll go.”

  “Waylon.”

  “What, Shilo?” He scrubbed at a plate that was already clean.

  Message received. “Nothing.”

  He was helping her stay sane. She couldn’t let weeks of sex delude her into thinking they were more than an arrangement.

  Chapter 11

  “How many of these fucking jars do we have to fill?” Waylon grumbled. Shilo didn’t have to know that he’d enjoyed the afternoon making a beauty product. A task he’d never imagined himself doing in his life, but half the fun had been spending time with Shilo.

  Half the fun was betting who could spill the least amount of warmed, liquid lip balm into the small containers. It was like filling toy teacups. The kitchen was a mess of oils and the smell of lavender probably bloomed for a three-block radius.

  “Um…” Shilo’s gaze tracked the bucket of tiny lip balm containers. She bit her lip and turned away.

  He narrowed his eyes. She was trying to keep from smiling.

  The blame lay at his feet, but he couldn’t bring himself to summon any anger. Once they’d driven to the other end of Ironhorse Falls and Shilo had explained to her curious friend what she was planning, it had been game on. Her friend, who was at least Weatherly’s age, had been delighted, gushing that she hadn’t had time to make any balm since her young was born.

  Next thing he knew, he’d had instruction cards, jars of various oils from jojoba to almond, and bins of empty containers shoved in his hands. And the look on Shilo’s face.

  He knew that look. Her ability had fired up, sending familiar tingles through his body that he’d just assumed had always been from their chemistry. She was going to cook all these ingredients until they were gone—because her friend needed to reconnect with her past peddling natural beauty products before precocious young children had forced her to set it aside.

  It was two a.m. and they were nearly done.

  Shilo stretched her hands above her head and he averted his gaze from her jutting breasts.

  “Go ahead and go to bed. I’ll clean up.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “I’m not leaving you with the cleanup. You pour—your hand’s steadier, and I’ll clean up.”

  He wasn’t quite finished when she was done in the kitchen. She plopped on the couch and stared at the ceiling. Saying something would break the tranquility and he wanted to soak up the end to a pretty damn good day.

  The last jar was filled without a dr
op spilled. He grinned. “Done.”

  There was no reply. Shilo’s eyes were closed and her lips were parted. She was asleep.

  He stacked their goods on the table, packed what was left of the loaned items, and treaded over to Shilo.

  “Shilo?” he said quietly. “Wanna go to your room?”

  She murmured and curled to her side as much as she could. It was clear who in this room had a night job.

  Stooping, he wedged his arms under her and lifted. She curled into him, not completely waking up, but not lashing out from being startled.

  She trusted him.

  Carefully, he took her upstairs and laid her down on her bed. How he’d love to crawl into that bed with her and pretend the last five years hadn’t happened. Pulling a hand-stitched quilt over her, he thought back to the first time he’d placed her here after his return. Their situation hadn’t changed, but he couldn’t help but feel that so much more had.

  “I’d like to go by Uncle Wolf’s today.”

  Shilo nodded as she finished chewing breakfast. Neither she nor Waylon had spoken about the previous night, when he’d carried her to bed and tucked her in. The intimate and thoughtful action was beyond bodyguard duties, but then so was sorting her craft supplies and making lip balm.

  Even her eggs tasted like lavender this morning. She couldn’t decide if that was better or worse than coconut-flavored scrambled eggs.

  “Sure, we can go,” she said.

  He hadn’t asked to do anything while he was here. She was almost relieved to hear he wanted to visit the old cabin he’d grown up in. Waylon never talked about Uncle Wolf much, but she’d learned enough to know that Waylon had semi-enjoyed his time there. The cabin hadn’t been a house of love, but there had been plenty to learn from the old hermit and Waylon had wanted to stay out of the spotlight.

  As she polished off the rest of her breakfast and downed her juice, her mind returned to those early days. She’d catch glimpses of a rugged, wild male who wore tattered jeans and faded T-shirts. The clothes looked dirty, but only because they were old. The closer she got to him, the better he smelled. Soap and fresh air and forest, like he hand scrubbed his garments in pine needles. She hadn’t been far off in her assumptions.