Because I had no choice but to heed her call, just as any shifter had no choice, I placed my omega on the ground in a dense pile of leaves which was near one of the cache of clothes I had stored around the woods. The crunchy, crispy crackling filled the air as her weight shifted onto them, and she twitched, her eyes opening as she stared at me in a daze.

I saw her confusion, felt her fear, but also sensed her acceptance.

The she-wolf—if not the woman herself—knew what I was to her, and she was accepting of my care.

I cast a look around the area, discerning that there were no eyes to watch, no animals who might think she was prey, but mostly, I just saw my land. It was pack land, to be sure, but it was legally the alpha’s, and no one ever argued with that.

The endless sea of trees was all I truly looked upon, and in the air, now that it was getting late, there was a chill. A nip that had my breath gusting in front of me.

I didn’t feel the cold, didn’t wince at it, but I had to wonder if she did.

Normally, I’d just shift and get on with my business—be that hunting or play. But tonight, I reached into the cache, grabbed one of my jackets, and pressed it around her. When she was swaddled, her eyes opened once more, revealing gems that bathed me in their luminescence.

There was feeling there, affection. Already.

I didn’t understand it, but neither did I have the heart to question it.

She was everything I needed, and arguing against that would have been stupid.

Swallowing down the sudden surge of emotion that had overtaken me, I shifted, allowing my wolf to take control again.

My beast held pure dominion over me as I moved closer to her, scenting her once more. I’d had too many questions before, too many things to ask the twins about where this she-wolf who didn’t scent of my pack had come from.

Now?

She was here, she was mine, and I had the time. All the time in the world.

As I ran my muzzle along hers, I scented the twins once more, but beneath that, there was an earthiness that was beyond unusual.

It should have been repellent, but it wasn’t. How could the scent of freshly tilled earth, damp from the morning’s dew, be repugnant? How could the scent of fire being whipped away into the air be disgusting?

She was, as we all were, an elemental being, but I’d never scented it as richly as I did in her. She was petrichor in the flesh.

With a soughing huff, I grabbed my jacket with my teeth, rearranging it better. I understood her needs more now in this form, even if I didn’t have the thumbs to make her more comfortable with ease. She yipped at me after a while, and inwardly, I found myself amused at her telling me that enough was enough.

Tongue lolling from my mouth, I scampered off, aware that if she could yip at me in irritation, she was well enough for me to leave.

Again, I felt the moon’s call, guiding me, urging me forward, and I answered it. Letting the Mother take me where I needed to be.

As she guided me to a clearing where a stag was gnawing at something on a bush, I accepted her offering with thanks, gave my appreciation to the animal for his sacrifice to nourish my mate, and pounced.

Ethan

“He was being weird. You can’t deny that,” I muttered, elbowing Austin, who was peering at the back of the candy stand as though it held all the answers.

Sure, it was the scene of the crime, but there were too many people here to discern one scent over another, and though we were enforcers, renowned throughout the Pacific Northwest for our tracking abilities, even we weren’t miracle workers.

“She’s a new she-wolf. Of course he was acting weird. Someone just committed a heinous crime on his territory,” Austin mumbled as he crouched. His boots squeaked as they scraped against the wet grass, and I sighed.

“You’re destroying the evidence,” I snapped at him when he didn’t move away from where he was trampling.

“There is no evidence. You and I know that.”

“Then why are you staring at that piece of grass as though it holds the answers to the known universe?”

Austin huffed before he turned to glower up at me. “Because I want to give him as much information as we can. You’re right, he was acting weird, and when Eli acts weird, it’s best to have all the facts at hand. You know that as well as I do.”

Because he wasn’t wrong, I just grunted and did as he had—squatted down. My jeans creaked with the motion, making me wish I hadn’t worn the new ones to impress Sally Anne tonight, especially since I hadn’t even had the chance to show her the damn pants before tearing new holes in them on our run through the woods.

Though we could shift with clothes on and return to our skin still dressed, the more powerful we were, the less likely the clothes were to stick around. Eli almost always reappeared butt naked, like he had back at the house. Whereas Austin and I tended to go through clothes like a six-year-old in the middle of a growth spurt, because shifting and reverting was a part of the job. Still, couldn’t be helped, so I shoved my irritation aside and focused on the crime scene.

“She didn’t work at the stand,” I mused out loud. “If she did, someone would have come looking for her. And there are no footsteps in the blood except for ours when we found her and picked her up.”

“She can tell us that herself,” Austin pointed out.

“Yeah, in a few days’ time. We need to act now. Before she wakes up.” Because I was right, he didn’t argue. Instead, I carried on, “Someone hasn’t reported all the blood, so that means they either haven’t left the stand since we took off, or they just can’t see it.” I peered around, and figured the low lighting around here would probably make it hard for a human to discern the mess of the attack. To be honest, that made more sense. After all, the reason we’d taken off at a run was because we’d heard movement in the stands that suggested someone was about to leave a stall. “But her outfit…she’s definitely a carny.”

“Without a doubt. Just not one who was popular enough for them to get concerned about once she went missing,” Austin reasoned, his nostrils flaring as he tried to differentiate between the scents.

It wasn’t as easy as just sniffing and picking up on something. Every scent was layered, filtered almost, condensing down until there was a pure essence that revealed itself above the others.

The only trouble was, blood was one of the worst things because it had a cloying scent that suffocated the sources of other smells in the vicinity. Our beasts reacted to it on a visceral level. I wasn’t sure if they considered it a threat or a warning, but it fucked with our senses, making it harder to figure out what and who the woman was.

“Maybe an attendant and not the main draw?” I stated as I, too, tried to pick apart the scents.

There was the faint essence of apple, maybe even lemon? As I caught onto that tendril, I discerned cinnamon. Maybe pumpkin spice?

Frowning, Austin muttered, “Do you scent pie?”

My lips twitched. I loved our twin brains. “Yeah, I do. Apple, right?”

He dipped his chin. “So what? She was wearing a costume as a waitress? Or she was selling pie somewhere on site?”

“Maybe. Or it was her final meal.” I heaved out a sigh. “Okay, we need to clear the blood away.”