Mate Marked: Shifters of Silver Peak (11 page)

“So,” Esther said indignantly, “You’ve been reading our minds all this time? And I even made you a dog bed!”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Erika interrupted, looking annoyed.

“You could have told me Susan’s campaign strategy,” Lorena added, looking wounded. “And who’s going to vote for me. I mean, I brought you coffee cake.”

“I have not been reading anyone’s mind!” Chelsea cried. “I’m not even capable of mind-reading, not that I’d do it if I could. I’m classified as being a member of the psychic family, but I’m not a mind-reader. I’m a type of empath. A reverse empath. I don’t sense other people’s emotions; I broadcast my own. Other people tend to feel some of what I’m feeling. But I take medication to control it.”

“I don’t believe you,” Mr. Castleberry said, his expression wary. “Are you reading my mind right now?” He clapped his hands over his ears and began backing up. “You are, aren’t you? Stop it!”

“Why? What do you have to hide?” Erika called. “I’ve heard rumors that you were misusing chamber funds. Is that true?”

“Lies! All lies! Stop it!” Mr. Castleberry shrieked, backing all the way up to the door. He flung the door open and turned and ran. Outside, he tripped, scrambled to his feet and then got back up and kept running.

“I will leave tonight,” Chelsea said, standing up abruptly.

“But we don’t want you go!” Rosie protested, and there was a chorus of agreement from half the pack. “Even if you don’t want to be sheriff. We like you. You should stay.”

“She’s a mind-reader!” one of the crowd members yelled. “She can’t stay here!”

“She doesn’t read minds, and we all turn into animals and howl at the moon, so we’re not exactly the ones to point fingers at anyone who’s different,” Barbara said.

“We shouldn’t make any hasty decisions.” Mayor Winkelman was trying to be heard above the din. He looked distressed. This was not a man who enjoyed conflict.

Chelsea had brought conflict to the pack.

She pushed back her chair and stood.

Tears burned Chelsea’s eyes. She should have told everyone up front—but she’d been afraid of exactly this reaction. She’d thought that moving to another state and a brand new pack would be a way of leaving the past behind. She’d been wrong.

“There’s no decision to be made. I’ll be gone by tonight,” she said. Before she started crying and blasting everyone with negative vibes, she turned and hurried out the back door, with Pepper indignantly trotting at her heels, wheezing and farting in protest.

A beautiful sunset, a crackling fire, the pack gathered around the fire pit after hard day’s work…usually these were the things that made Roman smile.

Today he just felt sick.

He’d tried texting and calling Chelsea, and she was ignoring him. She must hate him right now.

Holly sat on the opposite side of the fire pit, drinking a beer. She’d tried to sit next to Roman, and he’d gotten up and walked away, which had earned him shouted threats about calling the council.

The pack members were avoiding looking at her or speaking to her. Benjamin was walking around clearing up the campsite, picking up fallen branches and sweeping away leaves with a grim intensity. Cleaning and organizing was how he coped with stress.

They could all sense the bad changes that were headed their way; a visit from the council would doom their pack. Roman could agree to be mated for life to a woman he clearly loathed, or the pack could disband.

And now Marcus was stomping up to the group, with an ugly look on his face. Roman tensed, in case Marcus actually tried to assault Holly. He couldn’t allow that, no matter what his feelings about her were.

But apparently Marcus wasn’t planning a physical assault. He had something far more deadly in mind.

“Bad news for you, princess,” Marcus growled at Holly.

“Watch how you speak to the Alpha’s mate,” Holly said icily. “You will treat me with respect.”

“The Alpha’s mate, sure, I’ll respect her, because it’s going to be Chelsea,” Marcus said.

Her eyes blazed with rage and she sucked in an angry breath. Before she could reply, he continued, “I made some calls today. I did some research on what happens when a shifter challenges a claim of Mate-Marking. It’s very, very rare, but sometimes it happens. We can expect a visit from a forensic odontologist real soon. He’ll be checking the bite mark on your neck.”

She clapped her hand over her Mate Mark.

“A furry sick what?” she squeaked, setting her beer down with her free hand.

“A. forensic. Odontologist. Basically a dentist who does criminal investigations. He’ll take a mold of the bite mark on your neck. Compare it to Roman’s teeth. And then we’ll get to the truth of the matter.”

Roman watched Holly’s face with interest. She looked horrified.

“That’s not even legal. That’s ridiculous. It doesn’t mean anything,” she said, her hand still hiding the mark on her neck.

“Oh, it sure does. It’s acceptable in court, and it’s backed up by science. Now, faking a Mate Mark claim—that is a very serious criminal offense. We all know that Roman didn’t Mate-Mark you. We all know that you like to lie and manipulate.” He glanced over at Zeke. “So you manipulated some poor sucker into Mate-Marking you when Roman was blackout drunk. Thought you could trap Roman that way.”

Holly burst into tears of rage, leaping to her feet.

Roman felt as if a thousand-ton weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He hadn’t Mate-Marked her.

“You can’t let him do this to me!” she screamed at Roman. “I’m your mate! You were meant for me! You’re mine!”

“You’re crazy, and I loathe the sight of you,” Roman snarled. “You hurt the woman I love. The woman I’m going to Mate-Mark, if she’ll have me. Get in your car and get out of here before I do something I’ll regret.”

The rest of the pack let out a huge cheer; Roman could see the looks of relief on their faces.

Holly left, screaming and swearing revenge. She was crying so hard that black rivers of mascara ran down her face and dripped off her chin, splashing on her shirt.

She drove off in a spray of gravel, tires screeching.

Leland slowly walked up to Roman.

“Don’t,” Roman growled, holding up his hand as Leland started to speak. “This is one of the rare occasions when I accept you questioning my leadership. If I had Mate-Marked a woman and abandoned her, then I would not deserve the title of Alpha.”

“I should have known better,” Leland said. “For that, I apologize. Want me to go scrub the porta-potties?”

“Some other time. Right now I’m in more of a mood to celebrate than punish. I’ve got to admit, she had me worried.” Roman shook his head.

Then he glanced over at Marcus, who was headed out of the circle. Probably back to his tent.

“Hey, you can cancel that call to the forensic whatever the hell.”

“Oh, I didn’t really call one,” Marcus shrugged. “Why draw official attention to our pack? But they’re real—I would have called one in before I saw you mated to that she-beast.”

“Aw, Marcus, I didn’t know you cared.”

That earned him a dirty look.

“I don’t,” Marcus growled at him. “But this is the only pack I can handle, and there’s no way I could stay here with that lying hellhound as your mate. Now go apologize to Chelsea before it’s too late.” And he headed back for his trailer in the woods.

* * * * *

“Am I making a mistake?” Chelsea asked Pepper, who lay curled up on the front seat, looking forlorn.

She was sitting in her car, parked in front of her house. What had been her house.

Everything she owned was packed up in her suitcases and plastic bins. It was depressing how little time it had taken to pack up her entire life and stuff it into the back seat of her VW bug. So much for putting down roots.

Pepper let out a groan.

“But what can I do? I should have told them, Pepper. Now I’ve got the whole pack fighting with each other, and I’m an idiot for actually thinking Roman cared about me, and oh for God’s sake be quiet,” she finished up by glaring at her phone, which was chirping with a text message notification. Roman had tried to call and text her a dozen times in the last hour.

It was a text message from Chief Tomlinson. “Meet me in one hour by the old Big Bob Dairy on Route 37,” the text said. “Please come alone. There’s something shady going on, and I need your help.”

Chelsea looked at the text message and tried to consider what to do next. She’d done research on the town of Juniper after she’d agreed to be sheriff, wanting to get to know the entire area. The dairy was closed—it had gone out of business years ago. So he wanted to meet her where there was no chance anyone could see them.

Well, she might as well tell him in person that she was quitting. And whatever he told her, maybe she could figure out who to pass the information along to.

I’ll be there,
she texted him back.

As she texted, a car pulled up behind hers, and Erika climbed out and walked up to the driver’s side of her car.

Chelsea rolled the window down.

“I really don’t think you should leave,” Erika said to her. “The pack is starting to come around. Loretta’s been talking to them about psychics—she’s got an empath on her father’s side of the family. Now that she’s explained it to them, I’d say three quarters of the pack have come around.”

“But a bunch of them still don’t want me here, so my staying here will just cause dissension in the pack,” Chelsea protested. Still, she felt touched that Lorena had taken the time to argue her case. And that Erika had come to talk to her. Nobody had ever tried to get her to stay before.

Erika shrugged. “So? There’s always dissension in the pack. When do you ever get one hundred percent of everybody agreeing with each other?”

Chelsea had to admit that was true. Still. “I wouldn’t have a job. Or anywhere to live.”

“You could stay with my family,” Erika said. “And you could probably do some odd job stuff around the garage for the time being. We really want you to stay. It’s not just me talking—the pack sent me because they know I’m your friend and they figured you’d listen to me.”

Chelsea felt her resolve start to weaken. The Silver Peak pack might be one big, squabbling family, but they wanted her to be part of that family. They’d gotten to know her, and now they knew everything, and they wanted her to stay.

“Of course, there’s El Jerko,” she said. “Him and his”—nausea gurgled in her stomach— “mate. I’d have to see them around town until he decides it’s time for the pack to move on.”

“The hell with him, and his pack,” Erika said. “We’ll just give them the cold shoulder. They’ll be leaving soon enough anyway.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Chelsea said. “I’ll stay if you promise not to give up on Leland. Listen, we have absolutely no reason to think that the pack knew about this,” she pointed out quickly as Erika started to argue. “Leland is a great guy. He’s handsome, he’s sexy and he clearly likes you. Also he can burp the alphabet—I forgot to tell you about that.”

“He can?” Erika cried.

“True story. I heard him when they were holding me prisoner one of the times I tried to arrest He Who Shall Not Be Named. A guy like that doesn’t come along every day.”

“That is very true. I mean, I can burp ’til ten, but that’s as high as I go. Wow.”

“If you guys had cubs, they could probably burp the entire constitution of the United States,” Chelsea pointed out. “How can you deprive the world of such talent?”

“True, true,” Erika mused. “All right, I’ll go talk to him on one condition. Come with me and talk to Roman. Look him in the eye. Ask him if he Mate-Marked that bitch. And if he did, for God’s sake, tell him he’s an assface or punch him or something. Get some closure.”

“Well.” Chelsea hesitated. Over the years, she’d gotten so used to moving on that she’d never even thought about fighting to stay somewhere she felt unwanted. But here she had people asking her to stay. And Erika was right—she shouldn’t let Roman get away with screwing her over. She wanted to look him in the eye and tell him how much his lies had hurt her. If he didn’t care, that was on him.

“I can’t come for at least a couple hours,” she said. “I have to go meet Chief Tomlinson behind the old dairy in Juniper in an hour, and tell him I’m quitting. Watch Pepper until I get back?”

It was pitch black out. The night sky was dark and sullen, the moon hidden behind thick clouds. Chelsea had arrived fifteen minutes early, but the chief had arrived earlier still. His car was parked all the way at the back of the lot, by the woods.

As far as Chelsea could tell at a glance, his car was empty. She idled in her car, looking around the lot. Where was he?

Something felt wrong. A sensation of uneasiness rippled over her, sending icy chills shooting through her veins. She glided to a stop and parked by the road in case she needed to make a quick getaway.

A chilly breeze rushed through the air as she walked towards the police chief’s car. Then she paused.

She tipped her head back and sniffed. Her sense of smell was no better than a human’s, but she could still smell it, so the odor must be very strong—the breeze carried the coppery scent of blood.

“Chief?” she called out into the silence. “Are you all right?”

She stood still, listening hard.

Nothing but crickets chirping in the background.

She rushed around to the other side of the patrol car, and her blood froze at what she saw. Chief Tomlinson lay sprawled on the ground, his throat ripped out. His unseeing eyes were wide open.

Bloody shoe prints tracked away from the scene.

She knelt down next to him and placed her fingers on his neck in an attempt to find a pulse, but it was pointless and she knew it. His body was already cool to the touch. The blood around him was mostly congealed, and the blood on his throat was dry and crusted.

She stood, grabbed her phone from her pocket and tried to dial the Juniper Police Department. There was no cell phone signal.

Her stomach churned as she trotted back towards her car, debating what to do next. She was already on the outskirts of Juniper, so she should probably go there, but she wondered how the humans would react to her going into town to announce that their chief was dead. Would they blame her?

Off in the distance, she heard the sounds of approaching vehicles, then the sound of sirens. The dairy was on top of a hill, and she could see the road from town below. There were three police cars heading up towards the parking lot, lights flashing, sirens blaring. That was the entire Juniper police department headed her way.

Who had called the police? What had the police been told? Whoever had called them was most likely the killer, and this entire meeting had been a setup. Nobody else but the killer would have known so quickly that the police chief was dead, or sent them there at the perfect time, just when she was showing up.

She quickly shed her clothing, shifted and ran from the parking lot just as the police cars pulled up. She knew that leaving the scene would make her look as guilty as hell—and dear God, she had just walked through a pool of blood to get to him, making things look even worse. But she also remembered how the Juniper police had reacted when Mitch Rodgers had sicced them on her. Officer Porter in particular had looked as if he’d have been happier putting a bullet in her head than letting her go.

And now her car was parked in the same lot as the dead chief’s body—with all her stuff packed up as if she were fleeing town.

Panic and anger burned through her. Chief Tomlinson had been a good man, and his death had been brutal. Whoever had done this wouldn’t get away with it as long as she had breath in her body.

She raced through the woods, not knowing where she was heading. Just away. She needed to get away.

There were angry voices coming from the parking lot now, and flashlight beams stabbing into the forest. She heard barking. Oh, good, now police dogs had been thrown into the mix.

She ran faster, legs slashing through the underbrush, her sides heaving. There was a river nearby. If she could get to the river, she could wade in the water and lose the dogs, because they wouldn’t be able to scent her.

The voices were getting farther away, she was outrunning them…

She kept running. She couldn’t hear barking or yelling anymore. She’d given them the slip, at least for the moment.

But where would she go? Back to Silver Peak? That would bring the Council for Shifter Affairs down on the pack. But where else could she go?

Something knocked her flying, and she rolled over several times and scrambled to her feet, to come face to face…with an enormous gray wolf.

It was Roman.

And his muzzle was covered with blood.

* * * * *

Before she could run, he’d shifted back into human form and was crouched there, naked and panting. She shifted too.

Roman reached out his hand to her, to help her to her feet. She took it warily.

“I am not mated to that woman! She admitted that she faked the Mate Mark!” he said breathlessly.

She shook her head in astonishment. “Seriously? Chief Tomlinson’s throat has been ripped out, your face is covered with blood, there’s a posse with dogs running towards us, and that’s what you want to talk about?”

“It’s important,” he said. “Since we might get torn apart in the next few minutes. You need to know that the only woman I’d ever Mate-Mark is you.”

“I… Thank you? How did you know I’d be here?” she asked between deep gulps of breath.

“I went to your house, and when you weren’t there, I went to Erika’s house to find out where you were. She told me you were coming here to meet the police chief. I thought I’d get here early and surprise you.”

Chelsea glanced behind her, into the dark, dense woods, in the direction of the parking lot. She looked back at Roman. “I am definitely very surprised right now,” she said. “Why is your face covered with blood?”

“I was scenting around the chief’s body. I wanted to find out who killed him.”

Was he lying? Chelsea’s gut said no. She just couldn’t believe that Roman was a cold-blooded killer.

“Did you pick anything up?” she asked. “My sense of smell’s not that good.”

“Right,” Roman said. “The empath thing.”

“You know?” she said in surprise.

“Yeah, I read it somewhere a while ago. The genetic anomaly that causes an empath is tied in with the sense of smell.”

“I should have told you,” she said, feeling shame wash over her. “People usually freak out when they find out about it. They think that it means I’m a mind reader. I’m not. I’m someone who broadcasts my emotions to others. I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to deal with it, doing meditation and taking medicine to help control the effects.”

He nodded. “That’s okay. There’s something that I should have told you.”

She stiffened. “The Mate Mark?”

“Will you move past that?” he said indignantly. “I did not Mate-Mark her!”

“Kind of a hard thing to move past,” she said, brushing leaves and dirt off her legs. She still didn’t hear any dogs. They were in the clear for the moment.

“It’s about the warrant. It’s from my mother’s home pack, and they did it because they want me to come back and visit. My cousin is getting Mate-Marked in a few months. They figured that if they filed a complaint, I’d have to go back to the county and deal with it.” He grimaced. “I’ve avoided my mother’s pack ever since she died. Brings up bad memories. My aunt looks exactly like her.”

She stared at him in shock. “It’s a trumped up warrant?”

“No, no, I really did steal my uncle’s pickup truck ten years ago and went on the run. I mailed him the money for it a few years back. They kept trying to get in touch with me, and I kept avoiding them.”

All those people trying to arrest him, and he could have solved the whole mess with a simple phone call to his mother’s pack. “You are really an ass. We’ll deal with that later. Who did you scent on Chief Tomlinson?”

“One of his police officers, a guy named Porter. His scent was all over Tomlinson. I recognized his scent because I’ve encountered him a few times, at the Hootenanny. He’s no fan of shifters, and he’s very close to Mitch Rodgers.”

Off in the distance, she heard the faint sound of barking again. The dogs were back on their trail.

“We need to go,” Roman said quickly. “I’m going to lead us back to shifter territory. If anything happens, I’ll distract them and lead them away from you.”

Before Chelsea could argue, he shifted back into wolf form again, enormous and gray. She quickly shifted too, dropping to all fours. They ran at full speed through the woods until they reached the river. Then they waded through the icy-cold water until they’d finally lost the baying hounds and the pursuing humans. Chelsea’s paws were numb and she was shivering when they climbed out of the water and began running again.

They ran through the woods for what felt like an eternity, and Chelsea’s lungs were burning when they finally stopped. They were next to what looked like a vine-covered hillside. Roman forced his way through the thick vines, and she realized it was the entrance to a cave. She followed Roman inside and they both shifted back into human form.

Chelsea crouched down in the dark, sucking in great gulps of air.

“Oh my God, my muscles are on fire. I really need to do more cardio. Where are we?”

“You’ll see. One sec.”

She heard rustling, and then a light clicked on. Roman was holding a flashlight lantern.

There were several plastic bins stored at the back of the cave. Roman opened one and began pulling out clothing, blankets, boxes of granola bars and cans of soup.

“We’ve got to lay low for now,” he said. “Tomorrow morning we’ll figure out our next move.”

“What is this place?” Chelsea asked as she pulled on a man’s oversized blue T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants.

“This is a pack hideout, in case anyone needs to suddenly lie low,” he told her.

She gave him a suspicious look. “Why would your pack suddenly need to… You know what, never mind.”

They ate cans of cold soup and granola bars, and washed their dinner down with a couple of bottles of beer from the case that he had tucked away in a cover of the cave.

“I’m glad to see you remembered the essentials,” she said, holding up her beer.

“Always.” He raised his beer and clinked it against hers. “What fun’s being on the run from the law without beer?”

“Right,” she said drily. “Because now that we have beer, it’s all a barrel of laughs.”

“I’m in a cave with the woman I love,” he said. “The woman I’m going to mate-mark.” Her breath caught in her throat.

“You lo…you lo…”

“You heard me. And if you want to get to know me a little better before you say it back, that’s fine, but I know how I feel, and there will never be another woman for me now that I’ve met you. You’re beautiful, and sexy, and kind, and funny…and did I mention sexy?”

“You did. You…” She blinked back hot tears, then forced a smile.

“Do you have anything you want to say back to me?” he asked, his voice gone low and husky.

“You already know you’re as sexy as all get-out.”

“True. But I really like hearing you say it.” He grinned at her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

“It’s not just the fact that you’re sex on legs, although it certainly doesn’t hurt,” she said, looking into his caramel-colored eyes. “You’re actually a really good man.”

He snorted. “Let’s keep that a secret, shall we? Don’t want to ruin my reputation.”

Chelsea flashed him a wicked smile. “So now I have something to hold over your head. Anyway, where was I? You make me laugh. You make me feel beautiful and desired and safe. I’ve never felt that way before. You feel like…” She blinked again. “You feel like home. You are my home.”

He cleared his throat and looked away, and she realized that he actually had tears in his eyes.

“Damn cave dust,” he muttered, and pretended to sneeze. He took a long pull of beer.

Then he looked at her again. “The Mate-Marking. I want it to be tonight.”

“Tonight,” she echoed dumbly.

“Now.” His voice had gone low and husky. His eyes gleamed with hunger.

This was it. The man who ran from commitment was now running towards it, full speed.

“That other woman…she’s definitely dropping her claim? And you swear to me that you didn’t Mate-Mark her?”

“I most definitely, positively did not,” he said. He explained to her what Marcus had done, and how Holly had fled when confronted.

“Marcus did that for me?” she said, touched. “That’s amazing. Out of character, isn’t it?”

“Most of the time, Marcus is a flaming dickhead, but every once in a while he’ll do something that surprises me,” Roman said.

“After you Mate-Mark me…then what?” she asked. “Where would we live?”

“We’ll stay here,” Roman said. “We’ll apply to share pack land and we’ll start building houses. The other pack members want to settle down. They’ve been hinting at it for a while, I realize that now, I just wasn’t ready to hear it. We’ll still be a pack that’s a refuge for misfits and outcasts. I hope you can live with that.”

She laughed. “Live with it? I’m a misfit and an outcast myself.”

“Not an outcast anymore.” He cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her face up towards him, and plunged his mouth hungrily onto hers.