Page 23 of Bound to the Minotaur (Hillcrest Hollow Shifters #2)

Gregory

Jackson halted me just as I came out of the treeline behind Grandma Liz’s cabin.

Shifted into his other shape, he took up far more space on the narrow lane than I did.

His wings spread wide, his lion paws dug into the dirt, and his hawk’s beak lifted high and proud.

A griffin was a sight to behold, but in a tussle, my strength against his agility would level the playing field.

Ducking my head, I aimed my horns his way and pawed the ground with one hoof, letting him know that if he didn’t move aside, I’d charge.

He opened his sharp beak and let out a piercing shriek that made me wince back instinctively, hands clamping over my sensitive ears.

Then he was shifting—a flash of golden light—and his shape melted away, back into that of a man.

His uniform stretched over his muscled frame, the gold star of his calling gleaming on his chest. Blond hair, cut with military precision, hinted at his past.

“Change, Gregory,” he demanded, with none of his normally laid-back manner.

I snorted at him, not in the least intimidated by the command and not planning to obey.

Sure, Jackson had earned my trust, like many of the men who still remained at Hillcrest Hollow.

Jackson had also gained that quiet aura of confidence and command from his stint in the army.

That did not mean I’d let him stand between me and my mate.

“Listen to the sheriff, you bull-headed fool,” Grandma Liz snapped sharply from her porch.

She stood with her hands braced on her hips, her shawl fluttering down from her shoulders to the worn but lovingly maintained hardwood planks.

She flung a bangle-covered wrist into the air, and the many metal loops clattered together.

“He’s got news you should hear. You can’t storm in there; we need to plan this carefully.

” The statement was followed by a sharp grin that hinted at the wolf hiding beneath the surface of the kindly older woman.

Sharp and feral, a little mean when it came to protecting those under her care.

My instincts rebelled, the bull in me, it was stubborn, but it was as loyal as she was.

It recognized her authority, and I found myself backing down.

The pull of need inside my gut was fierce and painful, greater than any I’d ever felt before.

Kess was in grave danger, and the desire to charge to her rescue was as fierce as the pull to listen to what Liz had to say.

The shift was neither easy nor light, not the smooth transition it normally was.

It was a flash of explosive light, a wrenching of muscle and bone.

Then I stood there, in my boots and the coverall I’d pulled on after making love to my pretty Kess that morning.

Ah, Gods, had it only been that morning?

“What?” I growled, crossing my arms over my chest and giving first Jackson, and then Liz, a glare.

Jackson had been joined by the other male, the newcomer, and the new deputy.

A gargoyle, which meant he was as innate a protector as I was, but he was also green as can be, and I did not know him.

When I turned my gaze from the pair of cops to the woman who ran this town, I felt a hint of tension uncurl in my gut.

Something had shifted with Kess, changed. Was it better or worse? I wasn’t sure…

Grandma Liz had a much softer expression in her sharp eyes now.

It bordered on something I’d want to label as pity, but it was probably closer to compassion.

Even shaped as a man rather than a bull on two legs, the impulse to snort in discontent was strong.

It blasted two plumes of white into the air, as warmth collided with cold.

“Listen,” she said as she stepped off her porch barefoot and padded out of her front yard to meet me. “Jackson went in to test their numbers, to see if your mate was all right. She’s unharmed, Greg. Unharmed, you hear me? We’ve got a moment to plan.”

With a sharp gesture of her hand, Jackson came forward and huddled closer to explain, in quick, succinct sentences, what he’d seen.

“The weretiger is there?” I roared. Why was that duplicitous male there?

We’d tangled with him once, when he had come with his masters to steal Rosy’s land and awaken the ancient evil buried there.

They had failed, though the evil had vanished, and we did not know if that was good or bad.

This blasted weretiger was one of the few who had escaped, and now he was meddling with my mate? Unforgivable.

But as Jackson laid out the situation, his carefully sketched plan made sense.

I did not like to be patient when Kess’s need was so urgent, but I was not bulletproof, either.

If I charged in without care, they’d shoot me on sight.

I could heal from a lot, but a dozen bullets would be too much.

Jackson had seen the guards with machine guns.

They’d melted out of sight at his approach, but they’d been there, armed, watchful, waiting.

We were also fighting a force of humans, so we couldn’t go around and shift as easily as we would were we fighting our own kind.

That didn’t mean that none of Romano’s forces were supernaturals.

I’d sniffed out something that smelled suspiciously like a snake shifter, and Jackson had agreed with me.

He’d smelled it in the room with Kess and her father, though he hadn’t been able to identify which man it was.

“What about Chardum?” I asked as we finally started moving again.

He had not been part of Jackson’s plan to surround the cabin and pick off Romano’s men one by one.

The massive, golden dragon had the name “The Destroyer” for a reason.

He’d vanished twenty years ago, but until then he’d been the town’s biggest protector.

Now he was back thanks to his mate, Rosy, and I wasn’t too proud to want such a thing as a dragon for backup.

Jackson gave me a wary, somewhat frustrated look, the kind I knew came from running into obstacles.

It was Lizzie who answered; our mayor was striding along the cracked pavement at my side, still barefoot and with her chin tilted at a fierce angle.

Two shifted wolves slunk behind her like a silent pair of sentinels, guards.

One was the silver form of Ted; the other, smaller, was Lizzie’s granddaughter.

To have them this out in the open, in daylight, on Main Street, was quite something, even for our town.

Our few human residents were in for a bit of a shock if they saw us. But only Halvers, in his faded B maybe he had only ever been a mirage.

“So, Sunworld wants to acquire local property, but the locals are being difficult, huh?” my father drawled to the man who was a stranger; a rogue card in a den of wolves.

The man, Kiran, bared his straight white teeth, amber eyes sparkling with beautiful yellow and gold tones, a trick of the light, or something else, perhaps.

In light of my father’s evil, I was surprisingly all right with the thought that other things hid beneath a facade of human skin.

“That is so,” Kiran agreed with a cultured drawl.

He shifted from foot to foot, not in a nervous manner, but as if he was limbering himself up.

His pose was that of a fighter as he squared off with my father.

“These locals, as you might have noticed, are a stubborn lot.” His extraordinary eyes flicked in my direction, something flickering in their depths that I couldn’t decipher, amusement, perhaps.

My father laughed, the sound low and derisive. Then his eyes went around the room to settle on the various armed men who stood around it. That included the guy who had abducted me from the maze, who had taken some serious damage to his suit—and probably his skin—courtesy of Avis’s claws.

I did not know where the cat had gone. He’d slunk out of sight, silent as a wraith. He was there, though, watching. I was certain I could feel his sharp blue eyes on me, a warm weight of assurance that I was not alone.

“I’m certain the stories are exaggerated,” my father said dismissively, and men shifted uneasily, casting uncertain glances.

So they’d seen things they couldn’t explain, but my father did not believe in myths or fables.

“But this is not our turf. What makes you think we can help you? Why would we care, huh, Kiran?” He gave the man a stare that was all daring, all cold and cutting.

The kind that would make a lesser man shake in his boots, or fancy black leather loafers, as was the case.

“Perhaps,” Kiran agreed mildly, drifting closer to where I knelt on the expensive Persian rug.

“But you are here now, and Sunworld always pays well.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, and my father’s eyes locked onto the gesture.

I saw the assessment behind his eyes, the greed.

I hoped he said yes. It would be a grave mistake, and it would mean staying here longer, and giving Gregory the chance to find me.

My father rose slowly, straightening his suit jacket and tugging the gun holster beneath his coat into alignment.

He shrugged as if nothing Kiran had said mattered, but then he approached, expensive shoes sliding over the rich carpet.

They stood right beside me, those two, their heads bent close together as they hammered out terms.

I held my breath, my ears open wide as I tried to catch their whispers.

Which was probably why I heard the creak of the front porch step, which I otherwise would never have noticed.

Was someone there? Was it one of those gun-wielding guards who must have miraculously disappeared when the sheriff visited earlier? Or was it someone else?

The brush of Avis’s tail against my arm nearly made me jump out of my skin, but then his warm weight settled against my side. My dad hadn’t noticed the sudden appearance of the large gray cat, but the tigerite eyes of his verbal sparring partner flicked down, just once.

Luca raised his voice, having noticed too. “What the hell?” he demanded, his feet slapping against the floor as he rushed toward me, eyes gleaming again with something sharp, something that changed the shape of his pupils, stretching them, narrow and slitted. Unnatural.

And then chaos erupted all around me: voices shouting, the sharp retort of gunfire in the distance, an ungodly howl that could only belong to a wolf. Above it all, a roar like thunder, the thudding of hooves that shook the rafters. Gregory had arrived.