Page 10 of Bone Collector’s Mate

Chapter Eight

Rook

Sleep escaped me. Between the fear of Benji going missing and the fact that my true mate was somewhere in the vicinity, I’d have had to be a better shifter than I’d ever been to fall peacefully asleep.

I had managed to get his glasses mostly back in shape and placed the order for another pair. I wished I could order two, but money was limited, so we had to do the best we could until I was bringing in income. With the repaired and the new, he’d be all right. Fingers crossed. If not, we’d do whatever we needed to. It was a priority.

I went into Benji’s room and sat on the side of the bed. “Wake up, Son. We have a busy day.”

“No, Papa.” He rolled over and flopped against me, his cheek marked with creases from the pillowcase. The kid squashed up his pillows every night. “I’m still tired.”

“Okay, but Mrs. Orly has invited you to visit while I take care of some business. I’ll call back and tell her you don’t want any sausage patties and animal-shaped pancakes. I’m sure she’ll understand.” I pulled my phone out, but before I could even pretend to call, the little dickens was awake and scrambling out of bed, unzipping his footie jams.

“I love sausage patties and animal pancakes. Come on, Papa. They might be getting cold.”

When we arrived at the motel about twenty minutes later, it was all I could do to contain Benji in his seat until I had the engine turned off. Then he was out and running up the path to Orly’s place. I followed, to thank her and try to get her to let me pay for the Benji watching, but she waved those ideas away.

“What you need to do is sit down and eat some of these pancakes. I made way too many. That is, if you want to thank me.”

Put that way, what choice did I have? Orly had laid out a feast for the two of us. Coffee and milk, animal-shaped pancakes for Benji and more ordinary round ones for me, and of course the sausages. For some reason, my son had never liked links, only patties. I would have said I was far too anxious to get going to eat, but I couldn’t hurt Orly’s feelings. Also, it was delicious.

Orly had plans for her and Benji for the morning, and I left them to it. Some kind of craft, and then they were going shopping. Any concerns I might have had about him feeling left behind were swiftly quashed.

With him occupied, I hopped back in the car and turned toward home. My mate was out there somewhere waiting for me, and I was going to find him. Parked in front of the cottage, I climbed out and considered how I wanted to go about this.

Only two options, really. Two legs or four. Benji’s description of where the nice stranger found him and how they returned to the cottage was not exactly clear, but he was only three. The fact he’d been able to describe our place well enough that the man was able to get him home was pretty darn good. But it did sound like he wasn’t too far away, so driving around didn’t feel like my best option. And my wolf pointed out that we could cover a lot of ground faster than I could walk if I let him step in and do the hunting.

Wolves were very good hunters. But our mate did not scent shifter, so when we turned up, how would he react? If he was human, he might be scared. Or possibly shoot us. Out in the country, people didn’t take kindly to wild animals invading their space sometimes. Whisper Grove and the surrounding area did have a big population of shifters and, I believed, other kinds of paranormal folks, but that didn’t mean every human knew it.

But wolfing it was. I undressed and left my clothes folded on the porch then stepped into the yard and let the shift take over me. It felt good to be able to do this in my own yard. In the city, we had to drive miles to shift. And of course, after I stopped shifting with my ex, I rarely went at all.

Once I stood on my paws, the scent of my mate grew stronger. My wolf howled in triumph and trotted off toward the tree line between mine and the next property. I wasn’t sure how far I had to go, but I knew it was the right direction.

And then, the scent bloomed, filling my head, and my wolf forced control back to me. Fur gone. Standing on two legs. Naked.