I took my time following Jase and Scout down to the lake. Even though her smell was less defined than Jase’s, it was Scout’s scent I was able to track. When I caught up with them, Jase was sprawled on his back in the grass. Scout sat near his head, her back propped against a giant log people obviously used as a bench during lakeside bonfires. This far away from the crowds, their scents were easier to evaluate. Jase was definitely a coyote and even more Dominant than I originally guessed. If I didn’t know that the Hagan Pack Leader was a guy around thirty, I would have assumed it was Jase. However, he didn’t hold my attention for long.
With every lungful of air, I drew in more of Scout’s scent. On the first breath, I confirmed my suspicions. On the second, I caught something so familiar it made my chest hurt. On the third, I was hit with a memory so strong I almost fell to my knees.
“Oak?”
“Close,” Christopher said, peeling the blindfold off Nicole’s eyes. “Maple.”
“No, that’s an oak leaf.” Her face was all scrunched up in concentration. Dad always told her not to make those kinds of faces or it would end up frozen like that. To prove the truth of his threat, he used me as an example.
“No, it’s a maple leaf.”
“No…” She looked around until she found me. “Tell him he’s wrong.”
I reached down and plucked her off the chair. For a four year old she was tiny, and for a thirteen year old I was huge. It made throwing her around like a rag doll all too easy. “No can do, ‘Cole girl. That is a maple leaf.”
“Then I just messed up the leaves, not the smells. I’m a good Shifter, right?”
“The best,” I said, and meant it. There was no one better than Nicole.
“Even better than Christopher?”
“A submissive coyote pup is a better Shifter than he is.” We were, after all, brothers. Insults were expected. “Just take a whiff,” I said. “Does he smell like a Dominant to you?”
Nicole closed her eyes, drew air noisily into her nose, and pulled her shoulders up, which was what constituted as taking a deep breath to her. “I don’t know. He smells pretty strong to me.”
“That’s just because he forgot to put on deodorant today.”
“What about me?” she asked. “How do I smell?”
I stuck my nose into the crook of her neck. She giggled as I took a few quick breaths right against her skin. “You smell like ice cream, lollipops, and a little girl who is going to grow up to be the strongest, most amazing female Shifter in the history of all time.”
For the record, Scout did not smell like lollipops.
Even though I had been standing there for a few minutes, I hadn’t really been listening to Jase and Scout’s conversation. My hearing is just as enhanced as my sense of smell, but I’ve spent a lot less time developing it and rarely rely on it. Words lie all the time, but smells never do. It wasn’t until I heard an unmistakably feminine voice say, “The guy with a staring problem,” that I started registering what they were saying.
Jase looked my way, took one deep breath, and started heading towards me with purpose.
I should have been thinking about how he had to be more dominant than I thought in order to scent me from so far away. Or how stupid he was for approaching me knowing I was far more dominant. Instead, my brain was stuck on the way Scout referred to me as “the guy with a staring problem”. It annoyed me. She had stared back, so if I had a problem, then she did too.
“You’re trespassing.” Jase’s voice brought me back to the more pressing issue of the moment.
I peeled myself slowly off the tree and rose up to my full height. Even if we were mere humans, the six inches of height I had on him should have made him pause. When you threw in the fact that I was a wolf to his coyote, and without a doubt the most dominant Shifter he had ever encountered, he really should have been baring his neck to me in submission. Instead, he had the nerve to meet my eyes and say, “This is Hagan Pack Territory. You have all of five minutes to haul your ass back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”
My father always stressed the importance of being respectful and well-mannered in all situations in life, and most especially in Shifter affairs. He said a touch of politeness not only proved we were more than the animals residing in each of us, but it could prevent unnecessary bloodshed. Unfortunately, of all the lessons my father tried to impart on me during our all too brief time together, this was the one I struggled with the most. Especially when faced with a pompous coyote who didn’t know his place. So, instead of introducing myself and asking for a chance to speak with his Pack Leader, I laughed.
“That’s not the way this is going to work, pup.”
His face blazed red with anger. “I know the rules. This is our territory. You either fight me now or leave.”
Didn’t the idiot know better than to Challenge a Dominant wolf? “I’m not leaving.”
“Then we fight.” He tried to sound tough, but I caught the tremor in his voice. I was about to advise him to rethink that statement when she appeared as if out of nowhere.
“Like Hades you will.” I thought the effect of her hair would be less pronounced up close, but the opposite was true. The way the sun hit it made it look like her head was draped in light instead of hair. Likewise, her eyes were even paler than I originally thought. They had virtually no color to them at all, and at the moment, they were narrowed on her brother. “Did you wake up on the stupid side of the bed this morning?”
I was relieved to discover that at least one of them had some sense. Jase, on the other hand, was still Challenging me with his eyes. “Go away, Scout. This is none of your business.”
But he was wrong. This was her business. Up close, there was no denying the faint hint of Shifter in her scent. My pulse quickened.
“I’m not leaving until you do,” she told him.
“I think you should go, Scout.” Her scent was too appealing. If she didn’t go, I might do something stupid.
Then, she looked at me, and it was too late.
“No, thank you,” she said in a condescending tone. It should have annoyed or angered me instead of filling me with some sort of strange male satisfaction, but the smell of her was doing crazy things to my head. I couldn’t stop myself from stepping squarely into her personal space and leaning in. Her body trembled as I inhaled twice, pulling her undiluted scent into my nose.