“We should find out.” Calian leaned back so his gaze could sweep the patrons remaining in the bar. “If we can sense them, they’ll know we’re here too. We don’t want trouble.”
“The thought of shifters never occurred to me,” Matto said. “Calian is right. We should reconnoiter sooner rather than later.”
“Let’s go.” Kansas shoved away his empty bottle.
Jubilant, but trying to keep this hidden, Calian drank the last of his beer and stood. He and his brothers left the bar.
“I checked the map of the area during the flight from Winnipeg. If we head out toward the airport and keep going, we’ll get to the Wapusk National Park. If we go the other way, we’ll hit Hudson Bay and the beach area,” Matto said. “Not much of a beach. It’s rocky.”
The main road, broad and straight, ran from one end of town to the other with smaller roads breaking off. Their boots crunched over ice as they sauntered toward their accommodation at the Tundra Inn.
“I have her scent.” Matto’s voice sounded strange, almost confused. “I think it’s her.”
Calian sucked in a deep breath and worked his way through the layer of scents. The road. Vehicles. The slightly gamey aroma he’d got at the bar. Gas and oil. Food from the café to their right. And lastly, a light floral note along with another muskier one.
“She smells good,” Dakota’s tone emerged close to grudging.
Calian agreed and more astonishing, his wolf stirred within him—a flutter of another presence.
Kansas shook himself. “She’s irritating my wolf.”
“You too?” Matto asked. “It’s like my wolf has woken from a long sleep.”
Interesting. Calian didn’t comment, but that described his wolf’s ultra-awareness. To his knowledge, a wolf only reacted this way if he sensed a mate. None of them had responded in the bar, but she hadn’t been there for long. The gamey fragrance of other shifters had overlaid her lighter one, suppressing it from their wolves.
“She left with the bearded man. Do you think they’re together?” Dakota asked.
Kansas growled, the sound so wolflike they all gaped at him. “What?” he demanded irritably. “She has upset my wolf when I was fitting in with the human side and becoming comfortable.”
Calian bit his tongue. Luckily, their parents lived in Arizona and didn’t realize the damage their sons had done to their wolves by suppressing them long-term.
“Okay,” Calian said. “This is the plan. Let’s follow the trail and discover where she’s living. There aren’t many people about this evening. I think we can risk shifting near the vehicle. The last one to shift can toss the clothes into the rental.”
“I haven’t shifted for almost a year,” Kansas confessed. “It’s gonna hurt like a bitch.”
“I’ll transform last,” Calian volunteered since he tried to run in wolf form most weeks. His mind and body worked better if he embraced his wolf side, turning him into a formidable force. At least that’s what he told himself. He grinned in an acknowledgment of his arrogance. A weakness and a strength.
In silence, they glided through the darkness, instinct making them stick to the shadows rather than the areas illuminated by streetlamps.
The floral perfume trail took them past the Tundra Inn and down a side street. The scent led to a boxy gray house.
“They must have limited paint colors up here,” Kansas muttered, still sounding snappish.
True. The town didn’t have much of a personality, giving off a real frontier vibe.
“We’ve discovered where she lives. What now?” Matto asked.
“We do a perimeter check,” Calian said.
“The guy went inside with her,” Kansas telegraphed his disapproval.
An answering growl formed in Calian’s throat, echoing his brother’s displeasure as he stared at the gray door. This woman hadproblemwritten all over her. He and his wolf sensed this with every particle of their being.
As they slunk into the shadows cast by the building and checked the scents and sounds, a feminine scream rang out.
Calian froze, the hair at the back of his neck bristling.
“Noisy during sex?” Matto asked.
