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SIX
The national forest is a little over five million acres in size—about the size of New Jersey—and traveling from our hidden village to the main entrance of the park took us until late afternoon. It didn’t help that we had to drive cautiously through the woods. Even when we eventually hit an actual road, we took it slow because of the wildlife that was likely to dart out in front of us—and maybe because in a way the wilderness we’d grown up in no longer felt like ours, no longer felt completely safe.
Ever since our encounter with Bio-Chrome we couldn’t completely relax and enjoy our surroundings. We were waiting for them to leap out at us at every turn.
And I couldn’t stop worrying about Rafe. I wanted to know what had really prompted his reassignment and if he was okay with it. I was so tense by the time Lucas brought the vehicle to a stop that I thought I might snap in two.
Inside the entrance to the park was a small village with a few cabins where the sherpas stayed when we weren’t serving as guides. I shared one with Kayla and Brittany. After we dropped our packs in our cabin, we climbed back into Lucas’s jeep to head to town. We were all restless, so we decided to spend some time at our favorite hangout—the Sly Fox.
The rustic building was a cliché: a bikers’ bar and gaming hall, a favorite haunt of hikers, campers, and locals. The only people over age thirty were the owner, Mitch—who carded everyone multiple times—and a couple of the waitresses, who’d been around since the dawn of time and called everyone “Sugar.”
I slid into a horseshoe-shaped booth in the back corner. Connor nudged up against me. As Kayla settled in on the other side of me, with Lucas beside her, Brittany said, “I’m gonna go shoot some pool.”
“Aren’t you hungry?” Connor asked.
“Not really. I’ll catch you later.”
She caught a guy’s attention at the bar, and he followed her into the pool room. He was tall, with lanky black hair and a couple of days’ beard growth.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Connor said. “I’ve never seen him before.”
“Considering everything that’s going on, shouldn’t we be wary of strangers?”
“I don’t think we want to get paranoid,” Lucas said.
“It’s not being paranoid when you’re actually in danger,” I pointed out. “There are a lot of people in here I don’t recognize.”
“It’s summer. Tourist season.”
Connor ran his hand along my shoulder. “Lucas is right. We can’t suspect everyone.”
But suspecting no one seemed equally dangerous to me.
After we gave our order to the waitress—burgers rare and fries all the way around—I relaxed against Connor. We’d spent several months apart while he’d been away at college. Maybe that was partly responsible for the strangeness I was feeling with him. Maybe we just needed to get back in sync. He put his arm around me and started toying with my hair. He always liked messing with my hair. He nuzzled my neck.
“Connor,” I whispered.
“What?”
“We’re in public.”
“So? It’s dark over here.” He tipped his head to the side. Kayla and Lucas were talking low and snuggling, acting as though they were totally alone. “I’ve missed you, Lindsey. It just seems like we haven’t really had any time together. We’re taking another group out tomorrow. Have to be all responsible.” He wrapped his hand around my neck and stroked the underside of my chin with his thumb, causing shivers of delight to race through me.
“It’s really hard with you being away at college,” I admitted.
“One more year, and you’ll be there. Right?”
“I hope so. I’m losing my enthusiasm for school. I seem to be losing my enthusiasm for everything lately.”
“Including me?”
I released a self-conscious laugh. “No.” Then I thought about how strained things seemed to be between us lately and a thought occurred to me. “Are you interested in someone else? I mean, did you meet someone while you were away at school?”
“No. But things are different between us. I’m not sure what it is.” He lifted my hair and nuzzled my neck again. “And it bothers me that I can’t read your thoughts.”
I felt the heat of his lips against my neck and went with it, drifting into a languid place where everything felt good. “You mean when you’re in wolf form?”
“No. Like now, when I’m in human form. Lucas can read Kayla’s mind anytime, regardless of his form.”
“What?” I jerked back. “Is that true, Lucas?”
He moved away from Kayla’s lips as though I’d just woken him up. “Is what true?”
“You can read Kayla’s mind even when you’re not…” I glanced around. A guy at the bar jerked his gaze from us to his mug. Had he been watching us? Who was he? He gave me the creeps. He was big, with a shaved head and barbed wire tattoos around his biceps. He looked like someone who might have just stepped out of prison. Definitely not a lab tech…but who knows? I shifted my attention back to Lucas. “You know.”
I didn’t want to say a wolf aloud. Not everyone here was one of us, so we always had to be careful about what we said when we were here.
Lucas shrugged and leaned forward, across the table. Quietly, he said, “We can both read each other’s thoughts anytime.”
“Eww! You’d never be able to have a private thought.”
“We can sense when the other wants privacy. We turn it off,” Kayla said.
I looked at Connor worriedly. “Is that the way it’s supposed to be? My parents never told me that.”
“Mine didn’t mention it either. Maybe it’s like sex. They’re not comfortable talking about it.”
“Actually,” Lucas began, “I think every bond is different. The first time I saw Kayla it was like I was standing too close to a bug zapper.”
“Oh, that’s romantic,” I said, while Connor chuckled gleefully at the gross image.
“It was like an electric charge,” Lucas explained. “It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was…a little unsettling.”
“No matter the species, it seems guys are all alike,” Kayla said, smiling. “Shy about the L-word.”