Mate Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #3)(25)

“Link, you come from a family of psychopaths. You have no gauge on normal family dynamics. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“And I get what you’re saying, man, I really do, but what’s broken between me and my brothers won’t be fixed with a phone call.”

“Well, what will it take to fix it?”

“The cure. If I can do this for them, they can forgive me for all the shit.”

“And you can forgive yourself.”

Tobias inhaled deeply and sat back in the creaking chair, gaze steady on Link. “Yeah. That too.”

“Well,” Link said, standing, “I don’t know what to tell you. Vera seems like a hard-headed vixen, and if she doesn’t respond to you ordering the Change, then it’s got to be her decision.”

“And if she decides never to go human again?”

Link lifted one shoulder with a sympathetic look in his eyes. “Then get used to the ache.” Link turned and strode for his cabin. “I’m going into town. You’re on shift with Vera.”

“Work?”

“Not this time. I caught some fish, and I’m going to repay a debt.”

He was onto Link. He had been replacing the food his brothers had stolen from the good people of Galena when they’d been alive. “You know,” Tobias said to his back, “you don’t have to make up for every wrong thing your brothers did.”

“I’ll leave this world easier if I do,” he called over his shoulder. Just before Link disappeared around the corner of the house, he skidded to a stop on the loose fallen leaves and lifted his chin. His nostrils flared as his eyes zeroed in on the woods. “Tobias,” he whispered, warning in his voice.

At that moment, the wind shifted and Tobias smelled it, too. Fur and man and a scent that he would never forget in this lifetime or the next.

Clayton.

Tobias pulled his shirt over his head as he jogged toward Link, who was doing the same. Together, they bolted around to the front of the cabin just in time to see Tobias’s father slip silently from the woods.

He wore only a pair of loose, black sweatpants. His hair shone silver in the fading sunlight, matching the silver sheen of the scars on his face. Scars he’d gotten when he was an enforcer many years ago, before Tobias and his brothers took over the family business.

“Clayton,” Tobias ground out.

“Ah, you have figured it out then.” He had the same deep gravelly voice Tobias remembered, same careless tone.

“Why have you called yourself Clayton Reed all these years when your name is David Silver? Or is that just what you told us it was? You weren’t very good with sharing details.”

“The Clayton is a high ranking position, not a name. Someday, a long time from now, I’ll retire as the head of Shifter Enforcement, and one of you will take over as the Clayton. And then your name will no longer matter either.”

His torso was gnarled with muscle and crisscrossed with scars, and if there was any doubt about why Clayton was here, well, his lack of clothes put those questions to rest.

Tobias wanted to hear him say it out loud, though. Wanted to hear the betrayal with his own ears. “What are you doing here?”

Clayton canted his head. His narrowed eyes were the exact same color of Tobias’s, a fact that he hated every time he looked in the mirror. “I’m here for her. I told you if you didn’t bring her back, I’d issue a kill order.”

Link snarled behind him, but Tobias shook his head, then leaned against the side of the log cabin. “She’s not here.”

Dad came to a stop ten yards away. “Of course she is. I can smell her scent on everything. She’s saturated this place.”

Tobias shrugged. “Even so, she’s gone so you’re shit out of luck. What did you think would happen? Did you plan on coming out here and fighting your own son to put down the shifter you created?”

“I didn’t want to put her down, Tobias,” Clayton yelled, eyes darkening. The smell of apex predator wafted from his skin. “You disobeyed my orders and brought an out-of-control shifter within spitting distance of Galena. I wanted her back on Perl to find a solution to the McCall’s broken genetics.”

“She tried and failed, Clayton! Eustice died, and now she has to live with that. She’s not cold like you.”

“She failed once! There are a hundred other McCalls to—”

“Don’t you f*cking say ‘experiment on,’ old man.”

Link smelled like wolf behind him, and the soft sound of snapping bones echoed through the clearing.

Tobias offered Clayton a dead smile. “Link doesn’t appreciate you talking about his family like that.”

“I should’ve known you would befriend a McCall. You were always the weakest out of my sons. Ian and Jenner…now they are Clayton material, but you? Not even close.”

“Thank you,” Tobias said. He didn’t want to be anything like the * standing in front of him.

Movement in the brush caught his eye, and he jerked his attention to Vera, standing much too close to Clayton for comfort and holding a limp rabbit in her jaws. Her gold eyes danced from Clayton to him and back before a spark of recognition took her.

She skittered away as Clayton lunged for her, and Tobias’s inner monster roared to be released. As his neck snapped back and his form began to reshape, he hoped he would be enough to keep Vera and Link safe from the clutches of his father—the most brutal enforcer in the long history of grizzly shifters.