Mischief in a Fur Coat Read online

  “Sure thing,” the bartender said, and busied himself with filling Hope’s order.

  Hope stared up at the black screen where images from the outside world had been playing moments before. She couldn’t believe that Drew didn’t tell them that Chicago’s Mayor had been assassinated. What else had he been keeping from them? What else, exactly, was going on out there beyond the boundaries of this secluded forest? And how far had the scanners reached? Was her family in Alaska safe? Drew hadn’t wanted them to contact anyone on the outside for fear of sending signals that would give away their location. But the dark rage growing in Hope’s very core grew stronger the longer she sat there. Who did Drew think he was, deciding what they should and shouldn’t know, or who they should and shouldn’t call?

  The bartender came back at that moment, and set down a hot dog and basket of fries in front of Hope. She hadn’t even ordered fries, but she started mindlessly shoving them in her mouth as the bartender began whining about how poorly hunting season was going, since everyone was scared to go into the woods right now.

  “People are so paranoid. They think there’s a shifter around every corner,” the old man said as he used a dishrag to wipe up a spill on the glossy bar top.

  “What about you?” Hope asked. “What do you think?”

  The bartender laughed. “Hell if I know,” he said. “They can’t be any scarier than any of the other wildlife I’ve encountered out here over the years.”

  Before Hope could reply, the bell above the door jangled loudly as someone new entered the bar. Hope saw the bartender’s eyes light up with recognition, and then felt her own blood run cold as the bartender spoke.

  “Hey, Drew, didn’t expect to see you here again today,” the bartender said.

  Hope turned slowly around in her barstool to find Drew standing there looking slightly shocked. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she knew there was going to be a huge fallout from her getting caught in town, his expression might have almost been funny. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Drew shocked by anything before.

  “I have to go,” Hope said, reaching into her back pocket to pull out another cash card. But before she could manage to fumble one out, Drew had crossed the room in two long strides and grabbed Hope’s wrist firmly with his hand.

  “No. I’ll pay her tab,” he said, his fingers digging into her skin. Hope winced and resisted the urge to yelp.

  The bartender looked back and forth between Hope and Drew in confusion.

  “You two know each other?” he asked.

  “No,” Drew said sharply. “I just don’t like to let a pretty woman pay for her own drinks in my presence.”

  The bartender grinned and seemed to take this explanation at face value. He gave Drew a wink and then looked back at Hope.

  “He’s a good man, this one. You should give him a chance.”

  Hope shrugged. She would have loved to disagree with the bartender’s assessment of Drew, but since she supposedly didn’t know Drew she really couldn’t say much.

  “I have a few things to discuss with this guy right here. Why don’t you wait outside, sweetheart,” Drew said in a sickeningly sweet voice.

  Hope didn’t wait to be told twice. She hightailed it out of the bar, happy to have an excuse to leave that awkward situation behind. But when she got outside, she sure as hell didn’t wait around for Drew. She took off running into the forest. She could have run faster in bear form, but she didn’t want to shift and ruin all her clothes. She was pretty partial to this hoodie, and she hadn’t been able to bring much with her during the escape from Chicago. But she was still pretty fast in human form, and she had a head start on Drew. She could probably beat him back to the cabins. And he couldn’t blow up at her as much with other people around. Hope’s arms pumped by her side as her legs flew over the forest floor. She was making good time, and she glanced over her shoulders a few times just to be sure Drew wasn’t on her trail. After a few minutes of running with no sign of him, she began to breathe a little easier. He wasn’t going to catch her.

  She settled into a quick but rhythmic pace, rehearsing all the things she was going to yell in Drew’s face when he did get back to the cabins and confront her. She wanted to know why he hadn’t told them about the Mayor, and what else he had been holding back. He’d promised he was giving them all the important news, but his definition of important was clearly different than hers. Who did he think he was, acting like some sort of parental figure who had complete authority over them? Grant was their alpha. If anyone had a right to be an authoritative asshole it was Grant. But, no, Grant was actually a levelheaded, kind leader. Drew was the one who needed to get his head on straight.

  Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, Hope lost her footing. She felt herself flying momentarily through the air before landing with a thud on the brush-filled forest floor. What just happened? She hadn’t even felt herself tripping. Moments later, she rolled over and understanding washed over her as she found herself staring straight into the rage-filled eyes of Drew Brooks. She had no idea how he had caught up with her, but he had, and he had tripped her up to stop her from running.

  Hope shuddered as she forced herself to meet his gaze. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen such a deep, primal fury in anyone’s eyes before. Drew might be a full human, but right now he looked like an angry bear.

  This wasn’t going to be good.

  Chapter Three

  Drew could literally feel the smoke coming out of his ears. He’d been in a pretty good mood up until about ten minutes ago, when he walked into the bar to ask about a hovercar he was planning to borrow from the bartender. But his happiness had quickly turned to shock and then anger when he saw Hope sitting at the bar, acting like it was no big deal that she had potentially just ruined their hiding spot so she could sit there and drink a beer.

  “What were you thinking?” he roared, glaring down at Hope, who was lying dazed on the ground where he had just knocked her over. He hated to knock over a woman like that, even one as stubborn as Hope. But it had been the only way to stop her. She was one of the fastest runners he’d ever seen.

  Hope met his gaze, a bit timidly at first, but her hesitation quickly turned to defiance. “What were you thinking?” she retorted. “Chicago’s Mayor is dead? New York City is burning? You told us you were giving us all the news, but you were lying. If you want people to respect you and your silly rules about not going into town, then you should at least be truthful in your news reporting.”

  Drew let out an exasperated sigh. “I’m so sorry,” he said in a sarcastic tone. “I didn’t realize I was supposed to give a complete play by play of every little detail. I’ll try to do better. In the meantime, thanks to your little stunt, we might all have to move away from the cabin we spent so much time expanding.”

  Hope’s eyes flashed angrily at him as she hopped to her feet. She wasn’t a petite woman by any stretch of the imagination, but Drew was still much bigger than her. And yet, although he stood a good head and shoulders above her, he knew that she could shift into a bear at a moment’s notice. He would never be able to win a physical fight against her, which was both annoying and awe-inspiring all at the same time.

  “You don’t own me, Drew,” Hope said, her voice dripping with venom. “You can’t order me around like some child. And that guy at the bar has no idea who I am. I told him I was staying with a friend, and he left it at that. You’re being overly paranoid for no reason.”

  “You might think he left it at that,” Drew said, resisting the urge to reach over and shake Hope’s shoulders. “But folks around here are nosy. They have nothing better to do than to try to pry into everyone’s business. I guarantee you he’s going to be asking around about you, and he’s going to get awfully suspicious of me once he realizes that no one else out in these woods has any visitors right now.”

  “Whatever,” Hope said. “I’m not scared of a nosy old bartender, anyway. What’s the worst that could happen? He discovers you have some frie
nds hanging out with you? So what? There are only a few people around here for him to even tell. Let them gossip. It’s no skin off my back.”

  Hope turned around and stormed off in the direction of the cabin. This time, Drew let her go. He could feel the anger and frustration within him reaching the point of uncontrollable, and he didn’t want to lose his cool. He followed behind her, slowly, quickly losing sight of her as she stomped on ahead. He kicked at a tree trunk in frustration, and let out a long string of curses for good measure, even though no one was around to hear him.

  Truth be told, he had been keeping a lot from the clan. It wasn’t that he was trying to be an asshole on purpose. It’s just that he didn’t want them to be angry and riled up all the time. Nine shifters living under one small roof tended to be a bit of a circus, anyway. Add in tension over what was going on in the outside world, and things were bound to get a little bit messy. Besides, there was nothing any of them could do to help at the moment. Why make them upset about problems they had no control over?

  Drew knew he was going to have to change, though. Now that Hope had figured out his little game of secrecy, she was going to tell the others. And they were all going to demand an explanation. As he entered the clearing where the cabin stood, Drew braced himself to face a group of bears who wanted to know what the hell was actually going on in the news.

  But, to his surprise, no one seemed all that interested in his arrival. Calum and Jack, who were the only ones still hammering away at the cabin addition at the moment, glanced up at him and nodded in greeting.

  “What’d you say to piss off my sister?” Calum asked, his eyes crinkling up in laughter. “I haven’t seen her that angry in years. Well done. Teach me your secrets.”

  Calum and Jack both laughed, apparently amused by Hope’s temper, and Drew realized that Hope hadn’t actually said anything to anyone yet. He shrugged at Calum and Jack, and then went into the one room original cabin. Several more of the clan members were in there, apparently taking a late lunch break. They were all talking and laughing—all of them except for Hope. She was standing next to the counter stirring protein powder into a glass of milk, although it looked like the protein powder had long since dissolved. She was still stirring, though, furiously twirling her spoon in circles and glaring down at the glass of milk as though it had killed her firstborn child.

  She looked up and saw Drew, let out a huff, then grabbed her glass and stormed out the cabin’s front door. No one else seemed to notice, but Drew couldn’t keep his eyes off of her.

  Strangely, even though he was frustrated with her right now, he felt a twinge of desire fill him as he watched her go. She was beautiful when she was angry. Ever since the clan had arrived at the cabin, Drew had considered Hope to be the most beautiful shifter out of the bunch. But when she was angry her beauty shot up to a whole new level. Something about the way her blue eyes burned when she was upset made his stomach tighten up with longing.

  Drew shook his head to try to clear away the thought. Was he going crazy? He’d been spending too much time cooped up in the cabin with everyone. He didn’t want a girlfriend, especially not one with an attitude like Hope’s. He liked his solitary existence out here in the middle of nowhere, and he’d been secretly hoping that this whole shifter war would die down soon so that the clan could get back to their lives and he could get back to his. He almost didn’t even suggest building the addition onto the cabin, since it seemed like a waste. Once life got back to normal, he would never use all of that space. But he’d wanted to give the clan some sort of physical labor to keep them busy and happy, and the cabin addition had worked wonderfully for that purpose. Of course, now that it was almost done, he was going to have to figure out a new project for everyone to do.

  Drew stepped back outside, ignoring the chatter going on inside, and breathed in the fresh air. He loved it out here. The only reason he’d opened up the space to a bunch of shifters in the first place was that, well, he owed shifters his life. He’d been orphaned at a young age, and had bounced around between foster homes and orphanages. He’d reached the point where he was too old to be easily adoptable, and had been warned by his friends at the orphanage that he’d probably never find a forever home. He wasn’t a cute, chubby baby anymore, and no one wanted kids who were already kids. They wanted babies. Luckily for Drew, though, one of the volunteers at the orphanage had fallen in love with him. She had convinced her husband, who happened to be a shifter, to adopt Drew and bring him home.

  As a child, shifting had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to Drew. He was surrounded by shifters, and his sister, Sophia, was a shifter. Drew chuckled. She always won fights when they were kids, because she’d shift and be bigger than him. It was totally unfair, but it’d taught Drew a lot about life and its absence of “fairness.” It was only as Drew entered high school that he began to realize that, as a full human, he was actually the normal one in society, not the odd one out. At first, he’d been angry with his parents for not explaining this to him. But then, he became angry with society for treating shifters like monsters, when they were really just good people for the most part. Finally fed up with all the labels and roles the world seemed to thrust on everyone, Drew had escaped to the woods.

  This place was his sanctuary. He was a hermit, and he liked it that way. He spent his time tinkering with all of his toys. He had numerous guns, several swords, and a hodgepodge collection of gas powered items—anything from weedwackers to four wheelers. Until the addition on the cabin was started, his shed had actually been bigger than his house. He also knew where to find gas powered vehicles, a true rarity these days. Gas-powered vehicles were strictly prohibited in all states. Of course, little details like laws had never stopped Drew.

  As technology had progressed at lightning speed, Drew had become obsessed with living off the grid. He hated how everything was tied to your fingerprint these days. Or, worse, to the DNA in the iris of your eyes. Everything was computerized, even transportation. Almost everyone owned a self-driving hovercar, and multiple personal computers and tablets capable of doing everything from making coffee to giving you advice on which outfit to wear. The whole world had become one damn robot.

  Drew had taken immense pleasure in not being part of that robot. Everything out here was old school. His family and a few close shifter friends knew how to find him, but that was it. He’d been enjoying complete solitude out here, until the new shifter-detecting eye scanners.

  The Mayor of Chicago had always been power-hungry, and had seen the war on shifters as a way to solidify his power. At the Mayor’s urging, eye scanners had been developed that would detect whether a person’s eyes contained animal DNA, meaning they were a shifter. Then the Mayor had stirred up panic in the general public, and gleefully watched Chicago burn. He probably hadn’t expected the chaos to get quite as out of control as it did, however. One of the riots had ended with his assassination. But the shifter witch hunt the Mayor had started hadn’t ended with his death. It had swelled and grown and was quickly spreading to the furthest reaches of every American city. The rest of the world was watching uncertainly as the United States struggled to regain control over its citizens, who cast fearful eyes on their neighbors, always suspecting that a shifter was hiding in the shadows waiting to eat them up.

  Or kill them, or dismember them, or whatever the hell everyone thought shifters did. Drew couldn’t believe that so many people could be so irrational. Clearly, everyone had been getting along just fine with shifters for neighbors for centuries now. But just knowing that shifters existed was enough for people to turn into the most fearful version of themselves. This was part of why Drew hated to spend time around his old clan. He hated seeing the way they felt they had to hide themselves from the world around them. His clan and family were the most loving, giving people he had ever met. Watching them be judged so harshly for no reason was painful, and made Drew pretty much hate humanity.

  So he avoided humanity altogether.

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nbsp; But he held close ties to the shifter community, and when the group of shifters currently here had needed a hiding place, he hadn’t hesitated for a second. Of course, he hadn’t expected for one of the shifters to be as frustrating, feisty, and beautiful as Hope. He should have known, really. There was always at least one mischief-maker in the bunch. Usually, though, that mischief-maker was him.

  Drew didn’t want to admit it, but he might have just met his match.

  Chapter Four

  Hope had been sitting out here by this waterfall for hours. She would have loved to go for a swim, but it was too cold right now to swim in human form. And she didn’t feel like putting energy into shifting at the moment. What she’d really like to put energy into was punching Drew in the face, but, of course, that was unlikely to end well.

  She had originally planned to storm into the cabin and tell everyone in the clan that Drew had been keeping half the news from them. But, by the time she arrived home, she wasn’t sure she wanted to say anything.

  What if Drew was right? What if Hope had just blown everyone’s cover? A sick, uneasy feeling filled her stomach at the thought. She didn’t know how things worked around here, and Drew did. She had to admit that much. What if the bartender started prying, and found out that a whole group of shifters was hiding in the woods. Would he tell someone? And where would the clan run to now? They had nowhere else to hide.

  For the first time in her life, Hope wished that she had not been born a shifter. She wished she was just a normal human who could go about her life without worrying that some paranoid idiot was going to stick an eye scanner in her face. But wishing didn’t change anything.

  She was who she was, and the world apparently hated her for it.

  A rustling in the leaves behind her made the hair on the back of Hope’s neck stand on end. She sat up straighter and quickly whipped her head around, ready to shift and fight at a moment’s notice. There could be wild animals or crazy humans out here. The world felt like such a dangerous place right now. But as the thick brush parted, Hope breathed a sigh of relief, and then rolled her eyes.