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Shifters crisscrossed the property, in their human forms or their wolf forms. At least a dozen shifters lived near the main house, and hundreds more lived in the surrounding areas in the tiny houses and cabins that dotted the property.

Their safety and their survival were my responsibility, and they all answered to me.

A burst of color surrounded me as I shifted into my wolf form, and a chorus of encouraging yaps echoed all around me.

Not one of us could shift without a swell of pride rising in the others.

We could always feel the magic of a shift when it happened nearby.

The skill came with the first shift, like a new layer of instincts.

An answering howl slipped from my throat as I lifted my snout high, relishing the crisp air, glad for the turn of the seasons.

The normal patrols would start in the east, so I loped to the west, toward the sinking sun and the park on the far edge of our domain.

It was better nothing had happened with Emma.

My paws ate away the miles until the sun disappeared, thundering beneath me. Hours slipped by, and the full moon rose over the horizon, big and yellow. The light shimmered through the leaves of the trees. What did humans call this one? A Harvest Moon?

The Hunter’s Moon came next, and the annual gathering of the shifter clans would occur beneath it.

It was our pack’s turn to host the party at the historical neutral territory a few hours away, chosen by the surrounding shifter clans, and it was another cause for Olivia’s push for a restocking supply run into Willow Creek.

But that was a thought for a different day.

Sprinting sent my pulse thundering through me, and I gulped the air, consuming every scent. Raccoons, opossums, porcupines, rabbits, and so many more shared the land with us. Deer bounded away as I frightened them from the low places where they preferred to bed down for the night.

As I approached the outer limits of our land, smoke made my nose twitch. A campfire burned somewhere inside the park. It was worth checking out, so I hopped over the fence. Drunk campers could be a problem if they were carelessly burning or up to no good.

After I moved closer, my wolf-vision caught the flicker of flame, so I jogged nearer.

Since my fur was dark, maintaining my wolf form would keep me hidden in the shadows around the campsite.

If I shifted now, my human skin would reflect the light from the fire which might be a way to get shot, depending on who might be out this far.

Finding a naked stranger in the middle of nowhere never went well.

I chuckled. Except in porn. It only ever worked out well in those sorts of movies, and those never imitated any part of reality. Still, the joke made me bare my teeth in a toothy smile.

A tree trunk provided cover as I came to a stop. The hiker had her back to me, and the light from the fire cast her in shadow so I couldn’t make out her features.

The camper wasn’t in the sites at the front of the park, the ones the humans usually chose.

This one must be a loner. Her long hair fell over her shoulders, and her scent seemed familiar somehow—like blueberries and…

something else. For a moment, I attempted to place it, but it was too much like almost every other over-dousing of perfume.

Humans never could stand the honesty of their own scent.

The concoctions only covered the smells for other dull-nosed humans.

Not shifters. Not me.

A burst of cooling wind sent fallen leaves skittering over a deer path made bare from wildlife use, and the hint of something else brought my attention to the forest around the hiker and the bayou beyond.

Something else was out there.

Huffing brought an onslaught of more information into my mind until I identified a mountain lion. Not a big cat shifter. The big cat clan rarely came this far west, preferring to keep to themselves. Most of those had come from the cat shifters in New Port Orleans.

Briefly, out of concern, I considered circling the camp to locate the mountain lion and then dismissed it.

The mountain lion was probably up a tree, watching, and the human hadn’t asked for my help, and if she caught a glimpse of me, there would be wailing, crying, gnashing of teeth, and maybe some mace.

Nobody from Willow Creek or anywhere else would see me as anything other than a big, scary canine.

Nothing about that appealed to me. Not today.

Who was I kidding? Not ever.

Human backpackers were none of my concern, I decided. The fittest survived the wilds. It was a truth made stronger by life in the pack. Alphas remained alphas for as long as they were fit to serve. I didn’t have time to be soft. My pack needed me to be the asshole.

I loped away, angling toward the far corner of our territory, the pile of boundary stones my own shifter father had used in his time as the alpha, five decades earlier.

A moment later, the sound of an attack filtered across the forest.

It was the next sound that turned my blood to ice as my body already whirled to react. My brain scrambled, trying to sort out the impossibility of it. How?

A woman had screamed my name.