Technical Threat (Westin Force #4) - Julie Trettel Page 0,84

of them were single focused on their hunt.

That poor bunny, I thought seconds before it shifted, and I watched a naked woman run through the woods just ahead of the hunters.

I was so surprised I almost fell out of the tree I was perched in. Never once had it dawned on me that the cute little creature was a shifter. I didn’t even realize there was such a thing as a bunny shifter. Of course, I knew the old stories and that at one point in history every animal had a pair of shifters. With as well as the rabbits had proliferated, it had never dawned on me that their shifters would still be around.

The bunny woman ran faster in her human skin, but as she neared the edge of the mountain it appeared she had been cornered. Aside from jumping off the cliff, there was nowhere for her to go now.

I watched as she shifted back to her animal form and the small bunny jumped into a hole in the rocks and disappeared.

One of the wolves reached her first, but it was too late. He scratched and dug at the rocks, but I was certain she had just bested them.

Tarron’s fox got there next and his being the smallest of the team, he tried to squeeze into the hole, but was just a little too big for it. As the others arrived, they protested in various movements and noises. It was fascinating to watch them. They were all so different, yet they moved and acted like one pack.

The largest gorilla shifted and spoke to them.

“She’s gone. I doubt we’ll see her again for a few weeks. I just wish I knew why she kept coming back. What does she want beside driving us crazy? Let’s get back and call it a night. Archie’s watching the parameter. Get some sleep. You have one day and then we’re back on the road. Make the most of it.”

He then shifted back and led the group back.

My fox yipped as Tarron passed under us. His fox looked up and I saw his eyes widened in recognition. He gracefully jumped up to the branch I was sitting on and approached us. He broke that personal space bubble and rubbed his scent against me. It was soft and tickled a little much like his beard in human form.

Something inside me clicked like the final link in the chain bonding us was finally in place. I had accepted my mate, but I had never even given my fox the chance to truly accept his until now.

We spent the rest of the night frolicking in the woods before heading back inside to collapse into bed for a different sort of frolicking in our skin. My heart was full as if I were finally free and open to the possibility of love.

Tarron

Chapter 25

I thought when I bonded with Susan that we were complete, somehow, I had been wrong. I don’t know why we waited to introduce our foxes, but somehow that had made a world of difference. I felt whole now, stronger somehow and closer to my mate than ever.

We’d gotten back from a short mission where the only real excitement had been the cat Silas had rescued, and insisted on bringing back home. Who knew the big guy had such a soft spot? He was now a proud, crazy, cat owner.

On the drive back from the airfield he’d made us stop off at a pet store where he bought everything he could think of that the damn cat might need. I was convinced that he had lost his mind, and we were getting close to needing to do an intervention. He was the last single guy on the team, and I feared that was weighing on him more than he let on.

Then, when we got back to the Lodge, all hell broke loose. The second we stepped out of the vehicles we were greeted by the all too familiar scent of Keeley, the cute bunny shifting Raglan spy that had been haunting our facility off and on since her initial escape.

No one knew why Keeley kept hanging around, but whatever it was, we were all convinced it couldn’t be good.

I don’t know why Susan’s scent hadn’t distracted me during the hunt, but as soon as the trail ran cold and I was certain she wasn’t coming back out anytime soon, I’d honed in on my mate. I still didn’t know why Susan had been out there alone