Wild Wolf (Shifters Unbound, #6)(74)

Moonlight beamed brightly through the window, bathing Misty and Graham in white. “Goddess go with them,” Graham whispered. He touched Misty’s face then her abdomen again, and left the room.

In the hall, he called Reid but got his voice mail. Graham growled a message at him and flipped his phone closed. He entered Misty’s room again, placed his phone on top of her dresser, then moved to her window and slid through it with Shifter stealth.


The pain inside him lessened as he left the house, the compulsion spell happy that Graham was moving in the right direction.

Graham took Dougal’s bike from the end of the driveway and pushed it into the street. The DX Security man stationed here nodded at him, seeing nothing wrong in Graham leaving when he pleased.

Graham pushed the motorcycle quietly around the corner before he mounted and started it, its throbbing loud in the stillness.

Come to me!

“All right, all right, I’m coming,” Graham said out loud. “Shut the f*ck up already.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE





Misty woke when early sunshine slid its first rays into her window. Graham was gone, though the bed bore the indentation of his large body, and the covers were a mess.

She smiled, remembering the warmth of him around her, the wild passion of their lovemaking in the garden and later in bed. As her fog of afterglow receded, though, she realized she couldn’t hear his voice rumbling through the house, or sense his presence as she often could. She also saw, sitting on her low dresser, the black outline of Graham’s small cell phone.

Misty sat straight up. “Oh, God, no.”

She threw off the covers and scrambled out of the bed, and at the same time heard loud voices down the hall. Voices accompanied by frenzied yips.

Misty quickly pulled on shorts and top, finger-combing her hair as she ran out of the room and to the front door. Xav was blocking it, he red-eyed and dark-chinned from staying up all night.

“Misty!” Dougal tried to lunge past Xav, who barricaded the doorway with his body. “You’re all right.”

“Yes, why wouldn’t I—”

Misty broke off as two tiny wolf bodies hurled themselves at her, Matt and Kyle climbing up her to nestle in her arms and lick her face, their tails moving furiously.

“They came and found me,” Dougal said. “I was in bed at home—they kept trying to say you were in danger. They wouldn’t let me go back to sleep until I followed them. They had me worried.” He bent to the cubs. “See? She’s fine.”

Kyle lifted his muzzle and howled. Matt nuzzled into Misty’s neck, shivering.

“I’m all right, little guys,” she said. “But Graham’s gone.”

Dougal’s eyes widened, and he glared at Xav, his Collar sparking once. “Gone where?”

“No idea,” Xav said. “Never said a word to me. I saw him take the bike.” He gestured out the door where Dougal’s motorcycle had been replaced by the small pickup Dougal must have driven to get here. “I assumed he’d gone home. He left of his own accord, looking fine to me.”

“And you didn’t think you should tell me?” Misty joined Dougal in glaring at him.

“You were asleep,” Xav said impatiently. “Until Dougal came charging over, I didn’t figure he’d done anything but gone back to Shiftertown.”

Misty’s heart pounded and her head ached. She knew Graham was in trouble, though she didn’t know how she knew it. But the hollow in her heart, where the warmth had been, told her she needed to find Graham and find him now. The cubs had sensed the same thing, had herded Dougal over here to ask Misty what to do.

Dougal was watching her, worry behind the hard-faced, bad-boy look he tried to maintain. He was waiting for Misty to take care of him, of the cubs, of the situation. The cubs themselves clung to her. Even Xav waited, though warily, for Misty to decide what she would do.

McNeil needs you. You can save him, but it has to be your choice.

The words of the odd man, Ben, whom Paul had brought to see her, echoed in her head.

I can save him how?

Misty had no idea. She was a florist—she knew flowers and plants and how to sell them. Other than that, her specialty was feeding boys and absentminded fathers, and not being offended when they never acknowledged what she did. She’d known they’d appreciated it, in their own way, but had been too caught up in their own worlds to say so.

Misty wasn’t a warrior, or a being of magical power, or even a Shifter. She didn’t know anything about Fae—hadn’t even heard of them until one had tried to take her and Graham.

“Oh, yeah,” Dougal said, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans. “I forgot. Reid told me to give you this.”

He handed her the little book of flower spells Misty had let Reid borrow. Misty shifted the cubs’ weight to take it, clutching the familiar leather cover between her fingers.

Her heart beating faster, she stepped into her living room, still carrying the cubs. Dougal leaned on the wall in the hall, watching her with Xav.

Misty opened the book. Inside, she found the sticky note on which Ben had written his name and telephone number the day he’d come to the shop. She was sure she’d left that sticky note in her office, but here it was, inside the book on the vellum that separated the picture from the title page.