Lost Howl (2 page)

Lianna and Dorine smiled at her.

Amira winked.

Sarah sighed and opened a notebook, scribbling frantically. When she paused and looked up, she smiled weakly. “Can you tell me what happened in detail?”

“After pancakes. Everything can wait until after pancakes.” She smiled brightly.

“We really need to get you into the Guild hall so you can be properly interviewed.”

Lianna and Dorine winced.

Amira gave the newcomer a feral grin. “No. And you can ask your questions after pancakes.”

Dorine handed Amira the platter of bacon. “She takes her birthday breakfast very seriously.”

The birthday girl piled her plate high with all her favourites and drowned everything in syrup. Sighing happily, she dug in.

Sarah looked like she wanted to continue to rush things, but she didn’t say a word. She took the food as it passed and fixed her own plate. It seemed she had a sense of self-preservation after all.

Amira enjoyed the meal with her family. Even having a visitor was rather nice.

Her mother asked her, “So, what do you want for your birthday?”

She paused and gave it some thought. “I don’t want anything. I am good. I have family, friends and a job I enjoy.”

Dorine drank her orange juice and winked. “Then you shall have a gift of my choosing.”

Sarah cleared her throat. “What do you do for a living, if I may ask?”

Amira looked at her with a crooked smile. “I am a mountain guide for hikers. It gets me out in the open and I can use my senses to keep them safe. They become my temporary pack.”

Lianna smiled. “She has done that since she was a teenager.”

Sarah nodded and made another note in her book.

Amira sighed. “Why are you making notes?”

“I am trying to prepare an overview of your life for the Shifter Council. The spell used to make your family disappear was exceptionally advanced and there was no trace of who actually applied the magic that erased your parents’ lives.”

“What?”

“They were in the magical equivalent of the witness protection program.” Sarah nodded. “We are trying to piece together the records but the details are sketchy.”

Amira finished her birthday breakfast and waited until everyone else finished their food. She did tend to wolf her favourites down, but then, she was a wolf.

Once everyone had their fill, she got up and loaded the dishes in the dishwasher, bringing out a tray loaded with a carafe of coffee and all the accoutrements.

When everyone was sitting with a hot cup of coffee, Amira settled down across from Sarah. “Now, I don’t know much, but what do you want to know?”

Three hours later and many flipped pages later, Sarah was sitting in astonishment and she blinked. “I need to report to the council. I will return for you in six hours if you like.”

“Why? I am perfectly content in my life right now.”

Sarah blinked. “Wouldn’t you feel better with your own kind?”

Amira felt her fangs creeping out. “I am with my own kind. I am with family.”

“You have other family. They would like to meet you.”

Dorine stood up. “Enough. Amira, come with me for a minute.”

Amira snarled but she followed her mom out onto the balcony.

“Amira, you are going with her and learning about others like you. You have a solid family and we aren’t going anywhere. Find out what the other side has to offer.”

“But—”

“No buts. It is off-season, you don’t have any contracts and you are free to do what you like. Find out what that is. You have only started to sample your options, sweetie.” Dorine reached out and scratched Amira behind her ear.

“Fine, but I will find out what the shifter world has to offer and come right home.”

“Fine, but if you meet someone nice, bring them home for dinner. You have a certain look in your eyes lately, and I think some time with other shifters would be just the thing to set you straight, so to speak.”

Amira wrinkled her nose. Her mother was trying to be subtle, but she had to confess to herself that lately she had been doing more than just eyeing some of the single men on her tours. Having sex against a tree was not the most comfortable venue, but it kept the others on the tour from hearing all the grunting and snarling. Sex with humans was superficially satisfying, but she had a deeper craving. If her mom had picked up on it, it must have been pretty obvious.

“Fine. I will go with her and find out where I come from. If I happen to meet someone I think you would enjoy meeting, I will bring him home. Promise.” Amira stuck out her hand.

Dorine gripped her hand and pulled her in for a hug.

Once they separated, Amira stomped back to Sarah. “I am at your disposal. Take me where you like. Introduce me to my people. I would be delighted to go with you.”

Sarah beamed and put her notebook away. “Excellent. Please gather clothing for a few days, and when you are ready, we will leave.”

Amira nodded and hiked into her room, chucked some underwear, a few sets of jeans and some t-shirts into a bag. Two minutes later, she left her bathroom and returned to the kitchen.

“Ready when you are.”

Lianna got up and hugged her, Dorine hugged her again, and then, she was following Sarah out the door and into the mist-covered day.

Sarah tucked her files under her arm and began to slowly rotate her wrist. “Is it always this foggy here?”

Amira chuckled. “Of course. It is why we picked it. I can shift here, twenty feet from someone, and they can’t even see me.”

The fog began to glow and they took a step forward. Amira was about to find out who she actually was and she wasn’t sure why it felt like the suckiest birthday present ever.

Meeting another wolf was the strangest experience she had ever had. The urge to attack him and rip out his throat was overwhelming.

His pack was watching as they met each other.

Pack Master Loffwin looked her over, and she felt her hackles rise. The skin on the back of her neck rippled and the hair she shaved short to keep it from being noticeable when this sort of thing happened, tried to lift.

“Stop eyeballing me.”

He blinked. “Where is your sense of protocol?”

She flexed her fingers next to her hips and lifted her lip in a snarl. “Somewhere with my sense of humour. Protocol is taught and for my first wolf, you are a crappy teacher.”

He sat back and leaned forward, growling.

She growled back, and the strange tingle in her eyes washed over her as the partial change took her.

He grew, his shoulders thickened and his claws came out.

She matched him, shift for shift, her bra stretched to the breaking point as she grew to over eight feet tall with marauding claws tipping her hands.

The assessing look suddenly replaced his feral yellow glare. He slowly shrank back into his human form.

Unsure of what had just happened, Amira returned to her normal form. “What was that?”

A woman came forward with a nervous smile. “The pack master was testing you to see what your pack ranking is. You are an alpha, if you were in doubt.”

“Excellent. What were my options?”

The woman smiled. “Alpha, beta, gamma and omega.”

“What are you?”

“I am the alpha’s mate, Sari. You have a choice before you. You can either join the pack and choose a mate, or live outside the pack and report to the Shifter Council in case of emergency.”

Sari smiled encouragingly. “We would really enjoy it if you would join us.”

“I don’t think so. I enjoy my home and my family. I am not a group-event sort of gal. Not a
team player
as it were.”

The pack master frowned. “You must join a pack.”

Amira cocked her head. “Why?”

“For support. For family. To find a mate of equal social standing.”

“I don’t care about getting those from strangers. I will find my own way in this world; now, if you will excuse me, I have an appointment with the Pride Master.”

Sari cocked her head. “Why are you meeting with him?”

“Because he knew my father. I want to know what I can learn about why my parents were running and who helped them to hide.”

She turned and walked away from the alpha and his mate. The gathered wolf shifters began to growl at the disrespect, but she turned and snarled at them, shifting quickly to and from her half-form.

Apparently, it was scary enough, because they lost their growls and left her alone.

Amira turned on her heel and headed for the exit.

She left the wolf offices with a heavy sigh. It was rather freeing but a little dark to turn her back on her mother’s people. From the little that the general council had told her, her parents had had a forbidden love and were unable to get to the Crossroads in time to formalize it before Amira was on the way.

The problem resided in Amira’s mother. She had actually been married at the time. An arranged marriage to a wolf had ended the day she had gotten her car towed by a lion to his family’s repair shop.

Amira came along nine months and five states later when they were on the run. Now, she was looking forward to meeting her grandparents on her father’s side.

* * * *

Lorr Westerson paced in his aunt’s study. “I have to go.”

“Then go. No one here is stopping you.” She glanced up from her bookkeeping and flapped her hand. “It is about time that you sought something or someone of your own.”

“Are you sure? The last three times I have tried to go, you have stopped me for something stupid.”

She smiled. “The time wasn’t right before this. Now the time is right. Get yourself to the Crossroads and butt heads with the other males for the attention of the ladies.”

“How do you know that this is the right time?”

“A little bird told me, now get your ass to the Crossroads.” She flapped her hand at him.

Sighing, Lorr left the family quarry and headed for his transporter’s office. With a chance at a female of his own, he was willing to do just about anything, including shipping himself into a dimensional bubble where he could find the right woman for him.

There was a touch of embarrassment that went with being unable to find a female the normal way, but this outlet had been created for a reason. Finding a life partner was the most important part of the herd social structure. He had tried time and again to find his female but no one he met felt right. They were always too clingy.

He wanted a woman who was independent enough to live her own life and come home to him at the end of the day. It wasn’t too much to ask.

* * * *

Amira sat with her grandparents and her aunt, smiling at the pictures of her father in the album they had brought along for the occasion.

Nadine, her grandmother, smiled at the pictures. “I am sorry that we don’t have any of your mother. She and your father lit up the room when they were together.”

Amira looked at the images of her dad in school, on teams and surrounded by smiling faces at all times. He was well loved by those around him and his confidence showed in his expression and his bearing.

“He was in chemistry club?”

Nadine nodded. “He was exceptionally smart, attractive and very popular. It was a shock when he ran off with a married woman and even worse when we learned her husband and his family were pursuing them.”

Amira looked to her grandfather, Thomas, and his slow nod. He had explained that it was his family that had paid for the trail of Laurence and Jennifer to be eradicated. It had been persistence that had caused the issue when the wolves finally caught up with them.

Nadine asked, “Are you happy being a wolf? I am sure we could find a mage to switch you to a lion if you liked.”

“I am fine being what I am. I have made peace with it. I am just trying to piece together a past that no one has a record of.”

Thomas nodded. “You will find them. You will find pieces of your past when you least expect it. Your parents drove cross country on a magical journey and you were along the entire time.”

She smiled sadly. “I only clearly remember the last few minutes of our time together. It is a thought that hurts a little when I have it.”

“They loved you and wanted you to have a normal life, but her pack would not call off the hunters. They had to run and keep running.”

Amira sat back and rubbed her temples. “Why did love have to curse them like this?”

Thomas touched her hand. “They weren’t cursed. They just didn’t find the right time to meet. Destiny was not on their side, but it could be on yours. Your grandmother and I would like to send you to the Crossroads.”

Sarah had given her the briefing on the Crossroads and why the shifters would go. They had a chance to meet someone outside their species when they could not find a mate through normal channels. Matings begun at the Crossroads were made by the inner beast as well as the outer human. It made for a more well-rounded selection process and a happier match.

“Now?”

“You are in heat, so there is no reason to wait. I am guessing you have tried to slake your lust on humans but it hasn’t quite worked.” Nadine smiled.

Amira blinked at the frankness and looked around to see that none of the people with her was the least bit embarrassed. “Um, you would be right. What is missing?”

“In a word, magic. Your inner beast is calling out to their souls but nothing answers. Your body is satisfied but your beast is looking for a match of its own.”

“Shifters have magic?”

Her aunt, Aileen, chuckled. “How else do you go from a woman to a wolf half your size?”

Amira cocked her head. “I don’t shrink. I get bigger. Isn’t that normal?”

Her grandmother looked concerned. “You do?”

“Yes. I am close to two hundred pounds when I shift. Is that a problem?”

Thomas asked, “Do the wolves know about it?”

Amira shook her head. “There was no reason to tell them.”

Nadine sighed in relief. “Good. They would demand to keep you. That particular mutation is highly sought after in their circles. It is best that you go and quickly find a mate that suits you, not them.”