Wolf Rock Shifters Books 1-5: Five BBW Paranormal Romance Standalone Novels (26 page)

T
here was no need
, Zoe thought, to find indoor lodging for the night. She could, of course, and she could even pay for it. But everything that rendered her more visible to the townspeople seemed like a bad idea, including checking into a hotel. The woods would do as a resting place for the night, and when it grew dark she’d find a place to conceal her money as well.

For now, though, she was hungry and so she entered the restaurant which stood next to the place where Colson had dropped her off. It was a non-descript sort of family eatery with laminated menus which contained colourful photographs of the mounds of gravy-coated food one might expect to be served.

It was the perfect sort of place to blend in.

A smiling waitress approached after Zoe had seated herself. “What can I get for you?” she asked.

“What do you recommend?”

“Hmm. Let’s see. You look like a meat and potatoes kind of gal,” said the young woman, eyeing Zoe, who took the words as a slight and found herself resisting the urge to growl.

“I meant that as a compliment,” added the waitress, sensing hostility. Though she was human, she’d learned to interpret the body language of shifters and she knew better than to provoke them. “You look like a straight shooter is all I was getting at.”

“I see,” said Zoe. “Well, aside from the fact that I have no gun to shoot with, I suppose you’re right. I’ll have the steak then. Rare. Bloody, even. And a beer.”

“Be right back,” smiled the woman, who seemed keen now to distance herself from the grumpy redhead.

“Shit, I’ve got to be a little less hostile,” thought Zoe. She knew that leaving an impression—any sort of impression—was a bad idea.

When the waitress returned with her food, Zoe smiled at her and said, “Say, what can you tell me about this fair thing in town? Is it worth checking out?”

“Oh my God, yes,” said the young woman, who now exhibited an excited friendliness and seemed to have forgotten any earlier unpleasantness, much to Zoe’s relief. “It’s more a circus than a fair, but really it’s neither one. There are tents with people doing acrobatics and animals doing all sorts of tricks. It’s sort of magical. It’s in the middle of the woods and so pretty. You should totally go.”

“I will. Thanks.”

Zoe wondered if the magic disappeared when you knew that the ‘animals’ in question were shifters who knew perfectly well what they were doing; hardly trained monkeys. Still, she was curious, and given her plan to wander into the woods after dinner, she didn’t see the harm in having a look around. It would give her an excuse to roam in shifted form and to avoid much communication with strangers.

When she’d finished her dinner, Zoe put enough cash down to pay the bill and leave a generous but unremarkable tip on the table, and left the restaurant. Outside, the sun was beginning to set early, as it did in the mountains where the line of the horizon sat atop the snowy peaks, and a beautiful pink glow filled the sky. She allowed herself a moment to take it in before walking towards the woods, hoping to see some sort of hint as to where to find the lunar fair.

She shifted as she walked, into her favourite dark cat form. The temptation was to fly over the woods as an eagle or a hawk, but transporting her weighty satchel while doing so would be too difficult. The first priority was to find a hiding place for its contents. The dress which she’d been wearing had dropped loosely to the ground, and she lifted it gently in her teeth and managed to cram it into the satchel with her paws. Often it occurred to Zoe that a primate of some sort would be the best choice for these moments, but she’d learned to be adept with her large panther feet.

She slid her head under the satchel’s strap and proceeded into the forest, looking for a tree that would be easy to climb, distinguishable in some way yet well-hidden.

It wasn’t long before she heard sounds: voices, music and the odd ringing of a bell somewhere in the distance ahead. Zoe made her way in the direction of what was no doubt the fair, and as she did so she came upon her tree.

It was a tall one, with a tangle of roots at its base which seemed to call out to Zoe to use them to propel herself upwards. Its trunk was thick and twisted, and the tree looked as if it must have been at least a hundred years old. With only a slight running start, Zoe sprang up its bark, not stopping until she’d reached the highest branches that would still support her weight.

As she stood balanced on a high limb, she studied the tree’s trunk before her. One solitary knot was promising; it appeared to be a deep hole, large enough to cram a small bag into. She had only to make sure that the opening didn’t go down too far, and that the tree wasn’t unhealthy or hollow.

She stuck a curious paw inside, and found that the bottom of the small natural compartment was only a few inches beneath the opening.

“Perfect,” she thought and with her teeth, she pulled the envelope which contained the money out of her canvas bag. She’d wrapped the bills in a plastic bag, and tied it tightly to help avoid allowing moisture to get at the paper. She gingerly placed it into the hole, which seemed designed purely for this purpose.

Carefully she made her way back down towards the ground, still carrying her satchel which contained her dress. All the while, she looked around to make sure no one had seen her or knew the location of her new hiding place. In the end she was confident that she remained alone and she wandered towards the fair, curious to enter a world of creatures like herself.

In the distance someone was bellowing a traditional cry of “Step right up!” This was followed with the less traditional, “Test your strength against the fierce grizzly! But you must do it in human form! No cheating!”

As Zoe advanced she saw lights flickering in the distance, and realized that the ground was dotted with small plain paper bags, each containing a tea light, which gave them a beautiful glow. A trail of the handmade lanterns led her eye towards multi-coloured tents in the distance, which she could see through the trees.

Each had a sign out front, announcing the spectacle concealed within. Titles like “Saffron, the Snake Charmer,” who was no doubt charming a snake who spent most of the day lounging around in human form, “Drake, the Disco-Dancing Bear,” and “Madame Kyla, the Fortune Teller.”

It was the last of these that caught Zoe’s eye and she stalked forwards on her dark paws, intending to have a look. It seemed to her that the art of fortune-telling had little to do with shifters, and she was curious to know why there would be a psychic at such a fair.

A joyful noise filled the air as children in masks dashed in and out of tents, laughing and playing with one another. Zoe remembered what it had been like to be that age, before her first time shifting. To these children the world must seem filled with excitement and potential for the future. All around them were clues as to what life might eventually be like, and each of them who knew him or herself to be a shifter would be eagerly anticipating that first thrilling change, thinking it would enhance their lives. Little would they know how much it could complicate matters, thought Zoe.

A little girl ran in front of the panther and stopped, staring the black cat in the face. The girl wore a mask of a cat; a lion or a bobcat. Zoe looked at her long, delicate blond hair and her large eyes, not at all concealed by the paper mask, and saw a face of pure innocence.

“Are you a girl?” asked the child.

The panther nodded twice.

The little girl put out a hand and tentatively touched Zoe’s face, and for a moment the shifter felt a rush of joy. She wanted suddenly to protect this child from anything that would come in her future life that would be painful, be it heartbreak or loss, or an unkind person. A loss of trust. All of the trials that people had to confront in their lives.

“You look sad,” said the little girl. “Don’t be.” She leaned forward and gave Zoe a kiss on the muzzle, then ran off into a tent.

Zoe, softened by the child’s gesture, made her way into Madame Kyla’s tent, which was covered in wide red and white vertical stripes. Inside was a small table draped in an elaborate silk cloth on which sat what looked like a crystal ball. A young woman sat on the other side of the table, robed in colourful silk and wearing a multitude of bangles around her wrists.

She reminded Zoe of herself; her shape was pleasantly round and soft and she was pretty and feminine. Something about her made the panther feel at ease.

“Come een, come een,” said the woman. “Have a seat. Velcome to Madame Kyla’s.”

Her accent sounded like an attempt at something eastern European, but failed fairly miserably. Zoe dropped her satchel to the ground and extracted the dress.

“There’s a curtain you can use to change,” said Kyla, gesturing towards the wall beside her, and Zoe slipped in behind it, if only to avoid horrifying anyone who might enter the tent not expecting a nude woman’s ass to be the first thing they saw.

After dropping her dress to the ground, she shifted and clothed herself.

“There you are,” said Madame Kyla when she emerged. “Now sit, let’s talk.”

Zoe sat, silently observing the young woman on the opposite side of the table.

“You are new here,” said the fortune teller, rolling her Rs slightly.

“And you are putting on a fake accent,” said Zoe. “See? I’m a psychic too.”

Kyla sat back and laughed.

“Well, I can’t pull anything over on you,” she said, sounding decidedly more American. “I’m not good at accents anyhow. It’s all meant to be part of the illusion.”

“So is your fortune-telling an illusion too?” asked Zoe.

Kyla stood, walked to the opening of the tent and sealed it after looking around at the crowd outside.

She sat back down and looked Zoe in the eye.

“No. It’s not. It’s more of a curse,” she said, leaning back in her chair.

Her client became more interested and leaned forward, studying Kyla.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

“I thought you were here to be told about your own life.”

“I am. But I want to know about you. About this skill of yours.”

“That’s because you have your own skills, and you’re fearful of them. You haven’t quite figured them out, or how to use them to your advantage, though you do manipulate others with them.”

Zoe sat up, her spine straightening and stiffening. She opened her mouth to protest, but she knew that Kyla was exactly right.

“You’re running from something, hiding here in Wolf Rock,” continued Kyla. “Hoping to start a new life, but you don’t know where to begin. You don’t know who or what you are and it torments you.”

Her client sat silently before her.

“These feelings, they aren’t that uncommon, you know,” Kyla added. “Especially for shifters. I could probably say this same basic thing to ninety percent of the people who walked in here and I’d be right.”

“Except that you’re
more
right with me.”

“I suppose I am. I can feel what you’ve been through.”

“Can you feel what will happen to me?” asked Zoe. “I want to know, I suppose, if I’ll ever be happy.”

Kyla locked eyes with the other woman and attempted to see a concrete future. The visions which had started months ago as vague, dream-like sequences of jumbled images had become orderly and controlled, and she was often able to predict the future with such accuracy that it frightened her.

“I can tell what might happen, yes,” she said. “Everything in our lives…almost everything…is within our control, Zoe. Yes, I can see that you’re surprised that I know your name.”

“I’m not. Not really.”

“So, Zoe, about your future: I can sit here and tell you that you will be alone for some time, but you have the power to alter that.”

“I suppose more than a fear of being single, I want to know, will I be found by the man I ran from?”

Kyla closed her eyes and put her palms flat on the table. Zoe could see her eyes gyrate around behind their lids as the fortune teller allowed herself to enter deep into a vision.

Kyla saw a man entering Wolf Rock. He was angry, but unarmed. He was a shifter, but a weak one, and frightened of the town’s residents. He wondered if Zoe was under the protection of the locals. But he was determined to find her and to get back what she…

“What did you steal?” asked Kyla.

“Steal? What? Nothing.”

“Zoe, as sure as I am that you’re sitting in front of me now, I know that you stole something from a man.”

“I took some money. Just enough to survive.”

“He wants it back.”

“Well, he can’t have it. He ruined my fucking life and my mind, and he’s not getting the money.”

“Fine. I can’t say that I blame you. Whatever happens, you need friends. You need to find a way to make this place your home. The shifters here will protect you.”

Zoe crossed her arms.

“I don’t need protection,” she said.

“I think you do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have run away. You wouldn’t have looked to that man, Colson for help, and you wouldn’t be here.”

“I…” Zoe knew that there was no point in protesting. She was no psychic but she could tell that this woman was strong-willed, as she was, and wouldn’t back down.

“What do I do?” she asked.

“Wolf Rock is developing. You’ve probably heard that. My mate, Maddox—he’s like you. He’s a shape changer. He works for the local school, as do I. I’d like to talk to him and see if there’s a place for you, a position. He’s generally in charge of hiring new instructors.”

“I don’t know anything about teaching.”

“It’s not a traditional school, Zoe. You wouldn’t be taking on a class of rowdy students. Imagine a group of young girls and boys, all fearful of what’s ahead. All of them shifters, but not knowing yet what other powers they might possess. Imagine if you’d had someone to guide you at that age.”

“You’re saying I would guide kids through their changes? But I’m a mess myself,” Zoe said, surprising herself with her own honesty.

“You’re not a mess. Your life has never been sorted. But you’re not a mess,” said Kyla. “And you need to learn to rely on others, if only a little bit. You try too hard to be solitary and independent and you don’t realize that it’s not in your blood. You can lean on people. There are good ones out there, you know.”