Chapter 3

As if the universe was intent upon repaying my bad karma, there were human-form werewolves everywhere when I finally wriggled free of the mansion and began working my way downtown. Two sniffed in my general direction as I hesitated at the top of the stairs descending toward a subway station. And now two more patrolled the crest of the river bridge when I opted to travel across the city on foot.

No wonder it had taken twice as long as expected to reach my destination.

I was there now, though—or nearly there. Narrowing my eyes, I assessed the pair of two-leggers leaning up against the bridge railing fifty feet distant. It was unusual to see any member of the Atwood pack other than my four house mates, but these males’ ozone-laden scent promised they were Ransom’s underlings. Which begged the question—what were they doing so close to Gunner’s place of exile when their pack leader had not-so-subtly discouraged visits to this southern outpost of his territory back in the spring?

I hesitated despite myself, the question of who the males were and what they were doing here nibbling at my concentration. It wouldn’t do to let Gunner be blindsided....

Fox, not wolf, I reminded myself. The important matter here wasn’t these shifters’ identity. It was reaching my destination without catching their eye.

Luckily, the street was crowded and I found it easy to slide in behind a group of laughing ladies, pressing forward until I was just barely inside their personal space. The quartet was too animated to notice the intrusion as they recounted some past adventure involving beaches and dancing and far too many margaritas...all while striding toward the foot of the bridge I very much needed to find a way across.

“...and then Doug took off his shirt! Bared everything! Potbelly and all!” one woman crowed, and I threw my head back and laughed right alongside them...the gesture doubling as a show of solidarity and an easy way to hide my face from sight.

Unfortunately, the ladies didn’t cross the bridge I wanted to go over, and there was no way I could veer away from the group without being noticed at this point. So I flowed down the block along with the chattering humans. Slipped through the doorway of a high-end boutique when the women whooshed inside in a close-knit cluster. Then, glancing back over one shoulder and noting the werewolves’ lack of attention, I yanked the door back open and sprinted toward the river behind the nearby row of shops.

“Hey!” The shout was redolent with alpha compulsion, but it didn’t faze me. Not when the command was aimed at werewolves and even more at those who belonged to a pack.

Instead, I was a fox. So the order rolled over me like water off a duck’s back.

“Stop!” the wolf continued. But his word didn’t even slow my footsteps. Instead, I leapt onto the horizontal limb of a sycamore, raced across smooth bark until I was directly above deep water, then I dove directly in.

***

I remembered one millisecond before breaching the surface that I couldn’t soak my current outfit. Not when I’d donned my best clothes for Kira’s custody hearing and lacked the time to drop by a laundromat and bake the pant suit dry on my way back.

Good thing I’d spent the last few weeks learning to better manage my magic.

Yanking at my star ball with a facility I hadn’t possessed three months earlier, I was encased in a skin of water-repellant magic by the time I slid beneath the river’s murky surface. And while a more experienced kitsune might have been able to sequester an air pocket for ease of breathing, I was content to simply block out encroaching liquid as I allowed the river to carry me slowly downstream.

I did produce a cone-shaped protrusion around each ear, though. And I was gratified to find that the spur-of-the-moment hearing aids were quite efficient at picking up sound emanating from the nearby shoreline.

“The boss didn’t send us here to track down strays,” one voice growled. “If the bastard wants to swim the river, he’ll be a Claremont problem on the other side.”

Smiling as the river flowed around me, I couldn’t help but agree. Another benefit of being a fox around werewolves—the latter were so rigid in their pack structure that it was remarkably easy to wriggle my way beneath the rules.

For example, meeting my mentor outside Atwood territory and without Gunner’s permission meant Ransom wouldn’t be able to argue his brother had broken his promise. The convoluted reasoning was immensely satisfying...but the second shifter’s words wiped all amusement off my lips.

“That wasn’t a ‘he’, you idiot. It was a female.” This voice sounded vaguely familiar, as if the second watcher might have been one of the shifters who’d turned the tide at the showdown in the theater three months earlier. And his scent? Had there been more to it than the mantle of Atwood ozone rising through the stench of city garbage?

I racked my brain but came up with nothing else by way of memory. I could only hope that meant my own flavor had been similarly muted by distance, and just as generically werewolf-like as I’d been led to believe.

With an effort, I turned my body around to push back upstream against the current. Wolves might not be curious, but foxes were. And I had a feeling the duo might let drop identifying information if I hovered here long enough.

“If it’s a female,” the first male started....

But now my lungs were burning, the opposite shore seeming an impossible distance away from where I hovered. If I popped back up in the river so close to where I’d gone under, this pair of werewolves might risk the gray area of the boundary and come in after me.

So, reluctantly, I relinquished my spot in the river. Changed my ear cones into flippers. And pushed toward my original destination with all my strength.

Whoever these shifters answered to, they weren’t my problem. Not when I was, and always would be, a lone fox rather than a wolf.