“Most of us are in the store. We figured we ought to stay together. Declan’s, uh, out there somewhere. I think he was going to keep an eye on things from the air, and he wanted to be able to shift if there was fighting.”
Great, just what they needed. Another wildcard. “Arden, why don’t you go in with?—”
“I said I’m staying with you.”
Baz took a breath and jerked his head in a nod. If this was something to do with Arden’s human presence in the town, keeping her with him was probably for the best. If it was something else—well, he’d cross that bridge when and if he came to it. “Lexie, could you stay with the truck? I’d like a getaway vehicle available if we need it.”
He slid out, leaving the keys in, and Lexie took his place. Arden climbed down from the passenger side. Through the half-open door to the store, Baz glimpsed Fern and Maida peeking out.
“Stay there,” he told them.
“Any instructions for me?” Lexie asked, leaning out the truck’s window.
“Be ready to come pull us out if we need it. You’re our extraction team.”
“Roger that,” Lexie said and pulled her head in.
As he stepped away, Baz realized it might be the first time he’d given her an order and she had simply obeyed it without question or argument. Part of it was the tense nature of the situation. But there was something different in the air ever since he and Declan had clashed. A newfound sense of authority had settled over him. He wondered if the wild shifters could sense it, too.
“Sure you don’t want to stay inside?” he murmured as Arden fell into step beside him.
“Quit asking me that. Trust me to know my own mind, Baz. I’m exactly where I want to be.” Her voice was low but determined. She nudged the back of his hand with her own, and he gripped her hand firmly for a moment before letting it go.
They walked side by side down the street. As they approached, some of the waiting shifters who had been sitting down stood up. They weren’t threatening, at least not overtly, but it was hard not to feel at least a little intimidated when he and Arden were outnumbered thirty to one.
Baz found himself glad, for a variety of reasons, that he had already claimed Arden as his mate. For town shifters, let alone humans, it didn’t matter all that much. But these were people still very much ruled by the old shifter ways. They cared a lot. And he would have much better standing to protect her if they could both see and smell that she was his mate and co-alpha, despite being human.
“Brush your hair off your neck,” he murmured to Arden.
“What?” At least the request got the nervousness off her face; now she simply looked baffled.
“Let them see the bite mark.”
“What?”
“It might help us. I’ll explain later.”
Arden shrugged a little and brushed back the wispy, blonde-tipped strands of hair lying against her neck. The bite was already nearly healed, much faster than a human normally would have.
There was a lot of speculation among shifters on what it really meant for a human to be mated to one of them. Growing up in a clan with a number of human-shifter cross marriages, Baz had heard quite a lot about it, especially from his nurse-midwife aunt Charmian. Shifters’ human mates seemed to stay healthier and live longer, and sometimes they appeared to pick up a few extrasensory abilities from their shifter mates as well, especially being able to tell when their mate was in danger and being able to find them easily.
But Arden was still very much not a shifter. Whether the others would sense her as an alpha or a human or something else entirely—Baz wasn’t sure.
As he and Arden approached, the gathered shifters parted to make way for a single individual to step through. At first all Baz could see was a large, shadowy shape, which resolved into the single biggest man he’d ever seen. The guy was absolutelyhuge, tall and broad, with a shaggy gray-streaked beard over a bare chest.
He thumped his chest with his fist in what looked like a ceremonial salute and said, “I am Thunder, alpha of Silver Mountain Clan.”
Baz echoed the gesture, feeling a bit foolish. “I am Baz—that is, Sebastian Hayes. I am alpha of—of Windrock Clan.”
Thunder nodded solemnly. “My son has been observing you.” He jerked his head to the side, and Baz saw River standing behind him and slightly to the right, face completely expressionless. “He says that you do not seem to mean us any harm.”
Beside River, another man about Thunder’s age loomed, nearly as large, wearing what appeared to be a permanent scowl.Great, Baz thought,maybe every clan has got their version of Declan; but he kept the thought to himself.
“River is right,” he said. “We have come here with no intentions except peaceful ones. And we owe a debt of thanks to River for finding our injured clan-sister and bringing her safely back to us.”
For the first time, expression flickered across River’s stony features. “She is well, then?” he asked.
“She is very well indeed, thanks to you,” Baz told him, smiling.
