Mate Marked: Shifters of Silver Peak (6 page)

“Who the hell are you, and what are you doing spying on me?” the man demanded, his voice furious. “And what did you do to my sheep?”

“I’m Sheriff Chelsea Wintergreen of the Silver Peak pack, and I didn’t do anything to your sheep,” Chelsea said indignantly. He looked suspiciously at the star on her shirt as she set the lamb down.

“Then where did you get that lamb? And why does it have blood on it?” The gun was pointed right at her head, and he fixed her with a steady glare. “Did you bite it?”

“Did I bite a lamb and then bring it back to you?” Had he really just asked her that? “I’m not even going to dignify such a stupid question with an answer. And I don’t talk to people who are pointing guns at my head.”

“And I don’t cotton to people who trespass on my land and kill my sheep.” He stood there for a long moment, glaring at her, then a man’s voice called out from the woods behind him.

“Hey, Mitch, what’s going on? Is everything all right?”

“Fine! I’ll deal with it!” he yelled, and Chelsea found herself wondering what he’d have done if there hadn’t been witnesses nearby.

“Tell you what,” she said coldly. “I’m going to get in my car and leave now. If you plan on shooting me, you’re going to have to come up with a really good explanation as to why you shot a law enforcement officer in the back.”

She turned and walked to her car, tingling with anticipation the whole way.

“Don’t come back!” She heard the rancher’s shouted words as she slammed her door shut.

Right. Like she was likely to drop by for tea and crumpets tomorrow. Or to bite some more lambs.

She was fuming as she drove off, but only made it a couple of miles before a police car with flashing lights pulled up behind her. She pulled over quickly and climbed out as several officers scrambled out of their car, guns leveled

“Hands where I can see them!” one of them yelled.

Now she was really, really starting to get pissed off.

“I am the Sheriff of Silver Peak! How about if
you
put your hands where
I
can see them?” she yelled back angrily. Would they actually shoot her? This was insane.

One of them men stepped forward. Shorter, heavyset, built like a barrel. He had an army-style brush cut.

“I’m Chief Tomlinson,” he said. He looked her up and down. “Are you actually trying to tell me that you’re the sheriff? Driving that car?” He glanced over at her pink car with an expression of deep skepticism.

“We drive our personal vehicles,” she said indignantly. “I am the sheriff. I called you from city hall earlier to arrange a two o’clock meeting with you.”

“Oh. Yep.” He was still staring at the car as his men slowly lowered their SIG Sauer 229s and returned them to their holsters.

She scowled at him. There was no need for him to be insulting. “We don’t have a rich rancher to buy us a new fleet of cars—or to use us as his own personal police force.”

He flushed at the implication. “We’re not in his pocket, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“Five minutes after I leave his property, three of you pull me over with your guns drawn? Is that normally how you approach a fellow law enforcement officer?”

Chief Tomlinson looked a little discomfited at that. “He said you came onto his land and threatened him, and you injured one of his sheep,” he said defensively. “He also didn’t mention that you were the sheriff.” He stared at the star on her shirt as if he still didn’t quite believe it. She was really getting steamed.

“The Dudleys found a lamb on their property. The boys said they had found ten dead sheep with their throats torn out, and this lamb was hiding in the bushes nearby, right next to the Rodgers property. I was returning the lamb to Mr. Rodgers as a favor to Joyce, because she was busy.”

Now his expression turned to concern. “I’ll go check it out right now,” he said. “Sorry about the misunderstanding. Did they tell you anything else?”

“No, they did not.” Joyce climbed in her car, turned around, and drove off.

* * * * *

The next night…

“You’re jumpier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs,” Rafe said to Roman as they leaned back on the bar at the honky-tonk.

Rafe and his Southern-isms. His accent was pure Alabama, although Roman had no idea where exactly he was from or why he’d chosen not to stay with his home pack. Or any other pack in his state. And that was exactly the way Roman liked it.

Roman shrugged. He didn’t think he was jumpy. He just wasn’t feeling it tonight. Every time a woman brushed up against him, giggling and simpering, he kept seeing Chelsea, fiery and furious at him. He remembered her challenging him and his pack’s lifestyle as he gave her a ride back to town, and he found that it was making him feel unsettled and strange.

And now he was way too sober. Damn fast shifter metabolism.

“Beer me, sweetheart” he said to the bartender. She winked at him and set down an enormous mug, and he slapped a ten dollar bill down on the bar. The Hootenanny loved having shifters as customers, because shifters had to drink an enormous amount to get drunk, and they ran up huge tabs. He and his hard-drinking gang probably spent a third of their salary at whatever tavern they were camping out near.

“There is some fine, fine womanflesh in here tonight,” Avery observed, looking around the room. “Who are you going for?”

Roman shook his head. “Nobody. Taking the night off.”

“Are you kidding me?” Avery sounded mortally wounded, as if Roman had just personally insulted him.

“Hey, tomorrow’s a work day.”

“Like that ever stopped you.”

Roman shrugged. “I’m just not feeling it. What can I say?”

“Me neither.” Zeke, who’d been nursing just the one beer all night, set his mug down on the bar. “I’m heading out early.”

“Hold on a second,” Avery said with mock concern. “I need to take your pulse. Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my packmates?”

“Going to meet your new lady friend?” Roman asked Zeke, ignoring Avery.

A blonde in tight jeans sidled over and draped herself over Avery, who threw his arm around her waist and led her away.

“Yep.” Zeke nodded. He wasn’t bragging about whoever he was banging, which was unlike him.

“Be careful when you’re screwing around with humans,” Roman warned him. Human men tended to get jealous. And hanging out with humans was just tiptoeing through a minefield in general.

“She’s not human,” Zeke said, and turned and walked away.

Roman was puzzled. Shifter? Had Zeke started getting serious with one of the shifter girls from town? They pretty much knew all the single girls who liked to party by now. Most of them were at the bar that evening.

Was Zeke getting serious enough that he’d actually want to settle down and stay? Well, if that was the case, Roman would miss him. But not too much. He never missed anything too much; he didn’t let himself. He just concentrated on the here and now. How could he keep his pack fed, happy and safe? And how could he keep them from ripping one another’s throats out? That was enough to keep him busy.

He should have felt at least a little down thinking about the possibility of Zeke leaving, but he felt an odd lightness in his mood at the moment. He couldn’t put his finger on why, exactly.

“Hey, your lady friend is here.” Benjamin had walked up to them, his expression serious. He wasn’t flirting, but then he usually didn’t. Benjamin came to keep an eye on everyone and make sure they didn’t get into too much trouble.

“I don’t have a lady friend,” Roman growled, with more anger in his voice than he’d expected. Benjamin raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t look too shocked. They were all a temperamental bunch of bastards.

“I meant the lady sheriff.” Benjamin inclined his head to the other end of the bar, and Roman saw her and felt his gut tighten as he saw that a human ranch-hand was flirting with her.

The shifter named Erika was leaning on the bar next to her, with a glum look on her face.

“Who’s that?” Leland’s voice made him start. “Who’s that girl with the sheriff?”

“Her name’s Erika.”

“I’ve never seen her in here before,” Leland said.

“She doesn’t come here a lot. She’s not really the party girl type.” Roman shrugged. “I think she wants an actual life mate.”

“A life mate. Huh.” Leland looked at her with interest.

Roman found himself watching the sheriff closely, in case she made another laughable attempt to arrest him. Also, why was she still talking to that loser ranch hand? Roman had never met the guy before, but for some reason he could tell that he hated him.

Should he go warn her to stay away from humans?

Oh, who was he kidding, she was a shifter. She already knew that.

He saw her throw back her head and laugh, and then turn away and resume conversation with Joyce and Erika, and he felt himself relax a little bit.

Oh, come on, Roman, do you actually have a crush on the lady sheriff? He mocked himself, and took an enormous swig of his beer.

He’d been wondering why she hadn’t made another attempt to arrest him yet. Well, here was her chance.

And yet, she ignored him all night.

He moved closer, casually, and concentrated on filtering out all the other conversation in the bar so he could eavesdrop on her as she chatted with Joyce.

“I swear I don’t know what’s gotten into my family,” Joyce was saying to Chelsea. “Must be something in the water. They are all acting completely bonkers.”

“Like how?”

“My grandmother is obsessed with bathing in the mineral springs on our land, and she’s constantly sneaking out in the middle of the night for a dip. Makes me freaking crazy. She could drown! My brothers are sneaking around too, and I know they’re hiding something. I found them out in the cellar hiding some scraps of cloth and they wouldn’t tell me where it came from or why they were hiding it.”

“They’re probably just bored,” Chelsea said. “If you ever need help baby-sitting, let me know.”

Great. So she was a nice person, sexy as hell, he felt great every time he came near her, and of course, she had to be the local sheriff.

He went back to the other end of the bar, trying hard to ignore her. “Beer me some more,” he said, shoving a twenty at the bartender.

He hung out for another hour, waiting for her to make her move, and she completely ignored him. He thought about flirting with some of the women at the bar, just to see if that got a rise out of Chelsea, but he just wasn’t feeling up to it tonight.

Various men came over to talk to her, and she was always polite, but not particularly encouraging. Erika was ignoring all the men, and Joyce was trying to look as if she wasn’t checking out his pack-mate Paul, who tipped Joyce very generously, Roman noticed.

Roman finally got up and left, walking right past where Joyce was serving more beer to Erika and Chelsea, and Chelsea didn’t even bother to look up as he walked past. He deliberately brushed against her as he slid by, and he felt that pleasant rush of heat wash over him, the same one that he’d felt whenever she was near.

She didn’t react at all. It was like he wasn’t even there. Now he was starting to feel annoyance prickling at him as he walked out the front steps into the cool, dark night. He wasn’t used to women ignoring him.

Hell. He really needed to have a roll in the hay with her to get it out of his system, he thought, as he let the door bang shut behind him.

That is, if she ever came near him again. Apparently she’d lost interest in arresting him. He was surprisingly disappointed at the thought.

Chelsea stood in the woods, carefully watching the passed-out pack members who lay sprawled on the ground, and listening for any sound at all.

They were completely still, their spilled coffee cups lying next to them.

Her stomach was twisting itself into knots, and her heart was pounding, but her plan seemed to have worked.

She’d really done her homework this time.

She’d asked around town and found out the name of a female shifter who had moved to town a year ago and forgotten to mention an outstanding arrest warrant. This female shifter was a frequent party guest at Roman’s camp. Chelsea had tracked her down at the Hootenanny the night before and offered her a choice: drug the coffee of Roman’s pack with a concoction provided by the mayor, or be arrested immediately.

She’d gone with drugging the coffee.

The pack members were knocked out, snoring loudly. Were they all there? She did a quick head-count and nodded. She was pretty sure they were all there.

Satisfied that nobody was awake to give her any grief, she turned and trudged back towards the road, where she had a pickup truck parked…with an ATV hitched to it.

Her lips curled in a smile as she walked. That had been a good suggestion from that big, surly shifter, bringing an ATV. This time she’d brought Erika with her, and now she was sure all the shifters were knocked out, she grabbed her cell phone and punched in Erika’s number. She was confident that she and Erika, together, could haul Roman’s unconscious body off the ground and onto the ATV. She’d handcuff that bastard with copper, secure his wrists with zip ties, and also use rope. She wasn’t taking any chances this time.

“Thanks, Marcus,” she said out loud with a grin just as Erika answered the phone.

“What are you thanking me for?” Marcus called from the brush.

Chelsea let out a small shriek and jumped. Damn her lack of a sense of smell! Damn it to hell! Any other shifter would have been able to scent that bastard before he snuck up on her. But not her.

“Abort the mission!” she yelled into the phone, and hung up quickly.

“Why weren’t you eating breakfast with everyone else?” she demanded as Marcus quickly moved forward and grabbed her by the arm.

“I work with them all day long. Why would I want to eat with them?” he growled as he hustled her towards the camp.

“Some people actually like eating with their friends.”

“I don’t have friends. And I’m not some people.”

He stared at the sprawled-out bodies of the pack members and his fingers tightened painfully on her arm.

“What did you do to them?” he demanded angrily.

“Ouch! It’s a quick-acting drug—they’ll wake up in an hour!”

His grip loosened a little. He dragged her over to a couple of chairs, shoved her into one and sat down next to her.

“Then we’ll sit here and wait.”

It was a very tense, unpleasant hour. Marcus apparently wasn’t much of a conversationalist. While he sat there glowering, Chelsea kept busy by cleaning up. She picked up all the spilled coffee cups and washed them out using the old-fashioned pump that was connected to a well. Then she started picking up beer cans and beer bottles that were lying scattered on the ground.

As she finished, the pack members were starting to sit up, groaning and rubbing their heads.

“What the hell did you do to us?” Roman demanded, staggering to his feet.

“Fast-acting sedative in your coffee. But don’t worry, there was just one bad batch. Can I brew you some fresh?” she asked, smiling sweetly.

“No thanks, I’ll brew my own,” he growled at her. “Psychopath.”

“Criminal.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“I’ll have some coffee,” Benjamin said to her. “Thanks for cleaning up, by the way. I try to keep up, but it’s hard to keep ahead of them.” He shot a glance at his packmates.

“Oh, my pleasure. I don’t suppose you have an oven? I could make muffins. I love to bake. Since I assume I’m going to be stuck here for the next 24 hours…”

“Muffins!” one of the pack members said happily. Paul, she was pretty sure his name was. Joyce had totally been checking him out the night before, and doing a terrible job of hiding it. “We never get muffins here. It’s all wild game and powdered eggs.”

“Screw you. Wanna be chef?” one of the pack members growled at him. Edward, she recalled from the bar.

“Is that what you’re calling yourself?” another pack member scoffed. Edward let out a growl and his face went all furry.

“Boys!” Chelsea clapped her hands to get their attention, and hopefully ward off a fight. “Muffins! Do we have an oven, and ingredients?”

“We’ve got an outdoor pizza oven,” Benjamin said, pointing at it. It was made of brick and actually very well constructed. Everything in the camp area looked sturdy and well made; they were certainly good at what they did.

* * * * *

The pack all went to take a swim in the nearby creek, which was icy-cold, to help them wake up faster. Marcus stayed behind to guard Chelsea.

Roman was the last one back. When he arrived, to his surprise, Chelsea was standing there giving directions to the whole pack, and they were scurrying around doing her bidding.

“No, put that garbage lid on tighter—if it’s not sealed you’re going to keep getting rats. Good job on the muffins—they’ll be done in another five minutes.” Apparently she’d figured out how to make the pizza oven work for her.

He sat down to watch her, with grudging admiration. For some reason her presence had his entire pack scurrying around cleaning the place up spick and span—and looking happy while they did it. They also cleaned up for him, but they bitched and whined under their breath.

Finally, he strode over. She was working with Edward, the pack’s cook, ladling out scrambled eggs to his happy pack. And there was some green stuff on the side. What was that? Asparagus. Why was Edward standing so close to her, with that stupid grin on his face? Roman stifled a growl. After all, he was the one who’d set the condition that Chelsea would now be stuck here for the next twenty-four hours.

“Thanks, Chelsea!” Benjamin said. Even though they were all going to be late for work thanks to her. That should have made them all royally hacked off at her, especially Benjamin, but Benjamin looked happier than Roman had seen him in ages. They all did, actually.

“You’re welcome. Eat your damn vegetables.” Even when she swore she sounded as sweet as sugar. “You can’t live off meat and carbs alone,” she said chidingly.

He wanted her to pay attention to him, to come over and give him a hard time, but apparently, she was more interested in baking. He must be losing his touch. She made sure that every pack member got a muffin, in between scrubbing dishes in the outdoor sink they’d rigged up.

He poured himself some of the coffee brewed by Edward, who was standing by their outdoor kitchen area serving up breakfast to the pack.

“You planning on moving in here?” he asked Chelsea. “A pirate’s life for you?”

“No, I’m planning to arrest your sorry ass, and then I can relax in my office and have a nice, quiet life writing the occasional ticket for littering.” She said it with a charming smile as she walked over to an empty chair and sat down. He had no doubt she meant to try, at least.

He sat down next to her.

“Good for you,” he said approvingly. “We’ve all gotta have an impossible dream to chase.”

She crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him, which made him laugh.

“It’s really hard to take you seriously when you do that,” he informed her, shoveling delicious scrambled eggs into his mouth. He did miss fresh-cooked food, he realized
. If only we had a real cook
… He glanced over at Chelsea and then shook his head. Nope, it wouldn’t do to think like that.

The whole pack headed off to work late, having phoned in their apologies to Mr. Purcell. He wasn’t too upset, since they always arrived early, finished late and did excellent work.

Roman left Marcus to guard Chelsea.

The pack went straight out to the honky-tonk after work, and Roman went back to relieve Marcus of his watch. He wasn’t in the mood for the bar tonight. Also, some of his men had been checking her out appreciatively and had volunteered to stay behind and guard her, and he really wanted to kill them now. It would be safer for everyone if he stayed behind.

“So,” she said, sitting by the crackling fire. She looked around the campsite. “This is your life.”

“Yep. Feel free to mock.”

“No, it’s not bad. It’s beautiful out here. You’ve got the best view in the world.” She gestured at the majestic outline of the mountains, with their silver-capped peaks set against a darkening sky. “You’ve got all this room to shift and run. It’s close to town. The only thing I would personally miss is a nice baking oven.”

“Oh, we could build you that, easy,” Roman said without thinking, which earned him an odd look from Chelsea.

“Anyway,” he said, struggling to regroup, “other than the fact that you can’t arrest me, how are you liking Silver Peak so far?”

“Other than that, I’m loving it. The pack members are really nice, although that’s probably partly because they feel guilty about tricking me into taking the job. They keep bringing me ‘welcome to the pack’ gifts and stuff. Which is exceptionally generous given how much the town is struggling financially.”

“It’s not just guilt,” Roman said. “They are a pretty nice bunch, as far as I can tell.”

“What was your pack like?” Chelsea asked.

Ugly memories welled up and sweat beaded on his forehead.
The funerals on a grey, rainy day… The angry pack members arguing about who was going to have to take him in… The accusing eyes that followed him everywhere he went…
He felt a dark flash of anger shoot through him. “What part of ‘no talking about the past’ do you not understand?” he snapped.

There was dead silence for a moment, and he felt the temperature around them drop to sub-zero.

Chelsea stood abruptly. “Quite right. Totally forgot that having a normal conversation with you is off-limits. I’m going to go hang out in the party tent.” That was where they all hung out on nights when the weather was bad.

She got up and walked away.

It took about five minutes of Roman feeling like a horrible asshole and desperately craving Chelsea’s cheerful warmth before he got up and hurried over to the tent. He was about to do something he’d never done before—apologize.

She was inside with her back to him, sweeping the clean floor. He cleared his throat, but she ignored him and kept sweeping.

“The guys already did that earlier,” he said. “To impress you, I think. They like you.”

“I like them too,” she said, her tone wooden and unwelcoming.

But not me. Not anymore.

“Listen,” he said. “There’s a reason we don’t talk about our pasts. For anyone to want to join a pack like mine, they have to have come from a situation that was pretty bad.”

“I figured.” Was her tone softening a little?

“My father drank himself to death when I was twelve,” he blurted out suddenly, then braced himself for a smothering bout of self-pity. It never came.

“That must have sucked,” she said, continuing to sweep the clean floor.

He shrugged. “Not exactly a Norman Rockwell childhood, no.”

“Well, Norman Rockwell didn’t paint shifters, that I know of anyway.” Her tone was lighter now.

“I’m really sorry I snapped at you. My past was an ugly, dark place, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

His father hadn’t just drunk himself to death after the death of Roman’s mother, he’d taken others with him, and the pack had taken it out on Roman. For years and years, until he was fifteen and ran away from the pack. He’d spent years hiding from the law, traveling from one gypsy pack to another, until he turned eighteen and started to form his own pack. Long years of hunger and loneliness and anger. But he wasn’t going to burden her with that.

“Come outside with me again?”

“Why?” She glanced up at him.

“When you’re not drugging me, tazing me or handcuffing me, I actually kinda enjoy your company.”

She leaned her broom against the wall. “Maybe,” she conceded. “On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You find me the ingredients for some s’mores.”

“Some…what?”

“You know—s’mores? It’s a classic camping thing. Well, more for humans, but we lived near some humans who taught us how to make them. You’ve never heard of them?”

He shook his head.

“They’re awesome. You put marshmallows on a stick and set them on fire, then you make a sandwich out of chocolate and graham crackers— Stop looking at me like that! They’re the best thing since sliced bread!”

The way her eyes lit up when she was talking about s’mores…he wanted her to look at him like that.

“Well, if I can’t find any of those ingredients, will you come sit outside with me anyway?”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I dunno. I just set my terms and you failed to meet them.”