She’d heard the giant werebear, Gee, call him that name a decade ago. He’d made some joke about a wall and the hardness of the male’s head. But Brick hadn’t laughed back then. Not ever.
He’d fascinated her from the moment he’d arrived in the glade, bruised and battered. Once she’d learned his name, she’d treasured it, taking pleasure from repeating it often. Secretly, of course. Unwrapping the syllable frequently to admire its radiance in the privacy of her tree house, the way a woman wearing pearls against her warm skin enhanced their luminosity and iridescence.
Now, as if he’d heard her silent urging, he complied with her plea, shrugging out of the plaid flannel and flinging it onto a tree stump. Her beak opened as she sucked in breath. Sweat glistened on his torso, glazing rippling pecs and abs, shoulders broad enough to span the Badlands. A huge, incredible specimen of masculinity. Thick biceps flexed as he wielded the ax. Her heart beat faster than a hummingbird’s wings. Heat licked her.
Calling upon every ounce of inner strength she could muster, she willed herself not to shift into human form and topple out of the pine to land like a graceless lump of naked flesh at his feet. She recalled the first time she’d shifted and fallen, as a young cougar kit just learning to climb trees. Half skinwalker, half cat born into a shifter clan of mountain lions, she’d never taken her feline form again, to the chagrin of her dwindling clan. They’d grown fewer in number but far stronger under her Uncle Cal’s leadership, grabbing acres of land in and around the shifter mecca known as Shady Heart. More and more, Cal pressed her to pick a mate from his coterie of lieutenants and other cats vying for her hand, as he pushed to consolidate his power and prepared to seize control of the county—including the area currently occupied by the lupine town of Los Lobos. But Summer remained detached from shifter politics.
And she only had eyes for her lone wolf.
Brick had first come to the mountain glade—in the no-man’s land between wolf and cat territory—ten years earlier; a skinny adolescent, pulpy and wounded, splinted, bandaged, unable to walk, barely able to lift that hard head of his, the crown swathed in gauze, his shell cracked like Humpty Dumpty’s. His face resembled raw meat that had been forced through a sausage grinder. His inner scarring, from what she could glean from a distance—and from Gee’s one-sided conversation—infinitely worse.
The old werebear had half-carried, half-dragged him in human form to the deserted cabin and left him there.
“You’ll heal faster if you shift.”
The sack of gauze greeted Gee’s advice with silence. And remained coiled on the floor in human form. As if he hated being a wolf. Hated being alive.
She’d flapped from tree to tree to investigate, drawing as near as she dared. During those first few weeks, he never came out of the cabin, not even on the occasions when the huge ursine creature visited to bring supplies. She’d hopped into a birch whose branches brushed the ground floor windows of the rustic cottage for a better view, fascinated by the wounded creature. A set of carved log stairs led to a loft she couldn’t see. But Gee bustled about below in the galley kitchen that opened into a small living room, stocking shelves, examining the young male’s dressings, cajoling and arguing with him.
After a few weeks, the giant pushed his charge, still in human form, out to the porch and dumped him there.
“Learn from this, boy. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Get strong. I’m not going to mollycoddle you anymore. You need to snap out of it.”
But the youth had only lain where Gee had tossed him, not even bothering to drag himself to the rocker or porch swing. Had he been damaged so badly he couldn’t shift? Or…maybe he didn’t want to. As a skinwalker, able to assume different animal forms, she usually sensed the presence of another shifter in her environment. But if she hadn’t overheard Gee’s comments, she didn’t know if she’d have identified Brick as a were.
His listlessness and melancholy tore her heartstrings back then. Physical pain blossomed in her breast, raw and ragged, as if she’d been cut by the jagged edge of a tin can. She wanted to see a smile brighten the dark face, still swollen and discolored. But she dared not show herself.
Instead, she’d searched far and wide for the flotsam and jetsam dropped from pockets, from the wearer’s fingers or neck or tossed from moving vehicles. So much abandoned or discarded bounty. She pecked at half-buried gems and unearthed small pieces of shiny debris: rings, toy soldiers, colored glass, parts of plastic toys and gadgets, broken components off cars and electronics, sparkling gum wrappers. Taking them in her beak, wrapping talons around them, she winged back to the cabin. And then showered her tiny gifts of lost-and-found treasure onto the porch from great heights as she soared by.