“If I’d done any of that at my school, I’d have been escorted away in handcuffs.” She lifted a hand to rub at her forehead, but stopped before she clonked herself in the head with an ax. “Please take these things away.”
“With pleasure.” Buck took possession of the weapons. “I’ll shove these back up Ragvald’s ass. You find somewhere quiet to sit and take five. I’ll bring you a coffee. You damn well deserve it.”
Honey let out a long sigh. “So much for trying to win Ignatius’s trust. God, I’m such a hypocrite. I’m the one who doesn’t belong here. Not him. And if he finds out—”
“He’s not going to find out,” Buck said firmly. “Look, everything’s going to be fine. I’ve got a plan.”
From the look Honey gave him, this did not fill her with reassurance. “Buck, your last plan involved unexpectedly grabbing my ankle.”
“Don’t worry.” He slung the axes across his shoulder. “This one is better.”
CHAPTER17
Buck’s plan, Honey was somewhat bemused to discover, mainly involved shouting.
“Are you all slug shifters?” He led the way, somehow managing to set a brisk pace while simultaneously bellowing at the top of his lungs. “We’re on a hike, not taking a basket of goodies to grandma! Rufus, stay with the group. Flora, that’s poison ivy. Archie, put your pants back on. Move your tails!”
“Is he mad at us?” Honey overheard Claire whisper to Beth.
“No,” Beth whispered back. “You’d know if he was mad.”
“Beth!” Buck roared without looking round. “If you’re able to talk, you’re not walking fast enough!”
“Yes, sir!” Beth seemed obscurely delighted at being singled out. She snapped to attention, redoubling her pace. “Sorry, sir!”
“You’retalking,” Flora said to Buck, a little reproachfully.
“No,” Buck replied calmly. “I am providing verbal motivation. There’s a difference. Now keep up.”
“I don’t see why I can’t hike as a bear,” Archie grumbled, hopping on one foot as he pulled his shoe on again. “I thought this was meant to be shifter camp.”
“It is,” Buck said, never breaking stride. “And the defining feature of being a shifter is that you havetwoforms. Right now, we’re concentrating on improving the performance of your human one. Or did you only want to be fit and strong when furry?”
Archie blinked, like he’d never considered this before. “Oh. But won’t I get muscles anyway, just because I’m a shifter?”
“Won’t do you any good if you don’t learn how to use them.” Buck swung off the broad, easy trail they’d been following, onto a smaller track heading uphill. “A well-trained human can beat a lazy shifter any day of the week. I should know. When I started hiring shifters on my hotshot crew, every one of the motherlovers rolled in thinking they could just cruise by on their powers. Never took long to disabuse them of the notion. Even the biggest and toughest soon learned I could leave them behind crying in the dust.”
Flora frowned. “Butyou’rea shifter.”
Buck didn’t pause. “Wrong.”
Ignatius, who’d been slouching behind everyone else like a teen desperately trying to pretend they weren’t with a parent, stopped dead in his tracks. “What?”
Oh no. In that moment, Honey could have cheerfully throttled Buck. The last thing they needed was to putthatidea into the boy’s head.
“He means he wasn’t one back then,” she said firmly. “Buck wasn’t born a shifter. He was bitten by a hellhound.”
“A hellhound?” Ignatius said, in much the same way someone might saya cockroach?Despite the distaste in his tone, there was a kind of rising hope dawning in his face, as though someone had just slid a key under the door of his prison cell. “That’s not a proper shifter. When I tell my uncle—”
“Buck is too a proper shifter!” Estelle said indignantly. “And he’s not any old hellhound. He’s athunderhound.”
Buck stopped.
Beth heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Estelle, stop trying to make thunderhound a thing.”
“Itisa reasonably accurate description,” Finley said diplomatically. “If a little… uh, unpoetic.”
Archie snickered. “Sounds like farts.”
