The server topped off Christian’s coffee, told them to watch for snakes when they mentioned hiking, and called Dave darlin’ like she could sweet-talk him into eating bacon. Things were easy and warm with the quiet echo of a night that had been just theirs. No patrols, not even other pack members around. Justthem.And Dave looked so damn happy with his terrible toast and syrupy fruit that Christian almost forgot why they were here. But not quite.
* * *
They took the car off-road toward the caves, going as far as the scrubland would allow. At times, it seemed they were following what might once have been a track, long since claimed by the desert. When they could go no further, they left the car and went the rest of the way on foot, hiking up a steep incline with sun hot on their backs and red dust stirring beneath their feet.
Now they stood at the cliff’s edge, high above the plain. The view stretched for miles—flat, dry earth broken only by black volcanic rock and stubborn brush.
Christian stared out, arms crossed, wondering why the hell anyone would want to live out here. Because, if what Jesse remembered was right, his pack had done precisely that.
It made sense if the whole pack had been Argents like Jesse, he supposed. They’d want to keep their existence secret, which would mean keeping far away from anyone who might see them when they’d shifted—no one could have failed to notice their coats shining silver in moonlight. Christian wondered briefly why they hadn’t just lived among non-shifters and kept the wolf part of them hidden, but then he felt the wrongness of it. No amount of modern comforts could make up for denying half of his nature.
Dave was standing far too close to the edge of the cliff for Christian’s peace of mind, his face turned up to the sun as he breathed deeply. Like he was communing with the universe or something, listening to something Christian couldn’t hear.
Something twisted deep in Christian’s gut. He loved this man, down to his bones, but that wasn’t the same as understanding. And in moments like this, with the wind in Dave’s hair and something unknowable in his eyes, Christian wasn’t sure he’d ever really catch up.
Christian’s wolf didn’t like it, either. It wanted to pull him away from that dangerous edge, to curl around him and protect him. But Christian knew how much Dave would hate feeling confined.Safe, not confined, his wolf insisted, not understanding those two things weren’t always distinguishable.
“Hey,” he said, his voice sounding small and unimportant against the vast expanse before them. “We should look for clues.”
Dave came back to himself from wherever he’d been and turned to Christian, his eyes contented and peaceful. “I can see why someone would choose to live out here,” he said. “It must be the best place in the world to raise kids.”
Christian stared at him. Trust Dave to think the exact opposite of him. “Without power and running water? Really?”
“Solar, rainwater, composting toilet,” Dave said. “It’s not difficult.”
Christian shook his head, bemused. He didn’t get it, but he didn’t have to. Dave looked so damn content saying it that something in Christian gave way without a fight.
He sometimes wondered what had made Dave so... Dave. Not often, because he just was. But every now and then, he’d think about it. Maybe it was being raised by that old woman, a non-shifter, that made him gentler than most wolves Christian hadknown. Or maybe it was the string of failed relationships Dave never really talked about.
Not only romantic ones—he seemed to hitch his wagon to someone he liked, then end up getting jettisoned. That was how he’d come to Colorado, looking for work with a couple of friends. They’d gotten jobs at a dude ranch, but Dave hadn’t been hired, probably because he knew nothing about horses back then. And those two assholes had taken the jobs anyway and, from what Christian could tell, acted like Dave didn’t even exist after that.
Christian knew he wasn’t always better than all the others had been. He didn’t have the right words, didn’t always understand what went on in Dave’s head. He just loved him, and hoped that was enough.
Damn it, the stillness was getting to him, giving him too much space and time for thinking. Never a good idea.
“Let’s look around,” he said abruptly, needing to move, todosomething. And both he and his wolf breathed a sigh of relief when Dave stepped back from the edge.
They followed the cliff’s curve, eyes peeled for anything that might suggest someone once had lived here.
About four miles in, Dave slowed and stopped. Cocking his head to one side, he stared very hard at a group of scrub trees a little way down the cliff.
“What is it?” Christian asked.
“I’m not sure,” Dave said, peering over the edge. “But there’s something. Can you see a way down?”
Christian scouted ahead until he saw it—the faintest of paths that he’d never have seen if he hadn’t been searching for it. It wound down the face of the cliff toward the spot Dave had noticed.
Cautiously, he climbed down its snaking route, careful to ignore the dizzying drop that waited for him if he were to miss his footing. As the path grew even steeper and his progress dislodgedloose stones that rolled and bounced down the path, he wished he’d shifted. At least that way he’d have four paws with which to cling to the rock beneath him.
The bushes that Dave had been looking at marked where the path reached its final destination, emerging onto a large, flat plateau. He didn’t remember seeing anything like this from above, and when he looked up, he found it was almost completely hidden by a rocky overhang.
His gaze returned to the cliff face in front of him, where the entrance to a cave yawned darkly. It looked just about big enough for a person to fit through, as long as they weren’t claustrophobic.
“Hey!” he yelled up to Dave, but the answering call came from behind him. Dave had followed him and had just reached the area of flat red sandstone, looking a little breathless from the steep, precarious descent.
“What have we got?” As Dave asked, his eyes quartered what lay in front of them, and he answered himself almost immediately. “That’s not all natural,” he said, his long, tanned fingers feeling the ridges that tools had left in the stone around the entrance. “Like someone dug in and expanded what was already there.”
“Not recently, either,” Christian said. Then he took a deep breath. There was no way around it—he’d have to go inside. None of the small dark spaces he’d had to endure through his life had collapsed on him yet. None of the windowless rooms they used to lock him in, out of sight and out of mind—too much trouble to deal with, too angry to fix. Would be just his luck for this one to be the outlier, though.
