Call of the Wild (12 page)

Well, shit! He looked so hot when he was worried about her. Anything she said now would make her look like a bitch who didn’t care about her mate’s concerns. Still, she had to say something, so she dodged it.

“You came so close to having your eyes scratched out, literally. The way I see it, there are two topics here. One is public, our possible mating. The other we need to discuss in private. I’m not talking about classified plans in this setting,” Marsha said. There, that sounded good.

Aaron’s voice became hard. “First off, there
will
be a mating ceremony—the sooner the better. There’s no
possible
about it because—You. Are. Mine. And we
will
have a discussion about your safety as soon as we’re alone. You can bet your sweet ass on that.”

“Aww, he thinks your ass is sweet,” said Mara, hoping to lighten the mood. Things had gotten heavy fast. “If you both want to, we can have the mating ceremony right now. They’ll hold back dinner and everyone who needs to attend is already here.”

Doug Donahue had been standing at the back of the group. He was quietly listening to their conversation. “I think holding the ceremony now is a good idea, especially if there is a likelihood of additional grandchildren for me. Call me old fashioned, you make a baby, you get married, or mated or whatever. As to the rest, we have a lot of things to discuss. For one thing, we all have jobs waiting for us. We can’t all be gone indefinitely—people will come looking. Let’s have this ceremony and then Aaron and Marsha can talk privately. Tomorrow is soon enough for all of us to sit down and plan.”

Both Aaron and Marsha agreed, and the group followed Frieda, Mara, and Laura down to the Ceremonial Chamber. On the way, Laura explained about the previous owner of the property, and how the Holy Chamber had been hidden away for so long. Normally, their holy places, places of power, were above ground in the deep forests. The community of shifters had believed that this part of the country didn’t have one, even though the area had always had a large shifter population.

Now they knew that a prior changeling had blessed a special place, deep in the natural cavern below Laura’s house. It had been kept safe until a changeling came along to wake it up. When Laura’s changeling powers came to life, Frieda, the last changeling on Earth, felt the change in the world’s energies. She used a locator spell and made her way from Germany to Montana to become Laura’s teacher and mentor.

The Donahue men were surprised when Frieda changed into a unicorn to open the door into the chamber. Until her horn had pierced the doorway, it looked like many other passageways, with the exception of a pit in the center of the room. When her horn swung into the doorway, the room transformed in front of their eyes.

The circular room carved from rock. It had deep stone tiers of benches that reminded Aaron more or less of bleachers. Except that from the size of them, the occupants were much larger. When a large grizzly, a wolf, and a lion entered the doorway and leapt up onto the stone, he understood the sizing. This was a place for shifters to be in their natural forms. Looking around at some of the carvings, he realized there were a number of shifter types not present.

While everyone found their places for the ceremony, David and Benji sidled over to Steven. “So, do you read romance novels for the story or the sex?” asked David.

“Yeah, how long have you been hiding this side of your personality?” said Benji.

Steven stayed silent and let them have their fun. Nothing he could say would help. And why let them in on the fun he and his ex had had trying to reenact some of the scenes in those books. He learned a lot.

Aaron didn’t understand parts of the ceremony and that was okay. When all of the shifters roared or barked or whatever and the people cheered, he knew it was done. He didn’t need any encouragement to kiss his new mate. Ever since they had argued, he had felt an urge to re-stake his claim.

When the kiss was over, Marsha’s knees were weak. Aaron took advantage of her temporary passion-drugged state to pick her up and carry her away. Behind her, she could hear the cheering. Part of her knew they still had a lot to talk about and work through. The other part though…
thump, thump, thump!

After another night of little sleep and passion taken to new heights, Marsha was ready to pin down her mate on the subject of taking out her team. She waited until they were both dressed. They had just finished a delicious breakfast of omelets, toast, hash browns, and sausage. Orange juice during the meal and now they were having coffee.

After a morning shower BJ, a full meal, and some caffeine, she figured her new mate was in the best possible mood.

Leaning back in his chair, Aaron took a sip of his coffee while looking over the table at his mate. He wanted to take her right back to bed, but he could already tell by the expression on her face the time had come to talk about his outburst the previous day. He decided to be preemptive and speak first.

“You heard me tell the story about Kylie and her brother. As hard as that was, I dealt with it. Losing you, even though we’ve only been together for such a short time, it would destroy me. I might not have understood everything that was said last night, but I still made vows. You are my family now; no one hurts my family,” he said vehemently.

Marsha took a moment to think not only about what he was saying, she also paid close attention to his body language and the emotion behind his words. After what seemed like a long time, she responded.

“I will agree to have you on my team for this assignment. It’s too late to train a different team leader. You’ll be there, right with me to watch my back, while I watch yours. After this, I’ll agree to stay here only if you make the same commitment. Either we both fight or we both plan; you’re not the only one who worries,” she said.

Aaron had been avoiding being taken out of the field for years because he didn’t want to be stuck behind a desk. However, if that was the price he had to pay to keep Marsha safe, he had no problem with it. Being mated to her would bring its own excitement. As Marsha had proven, just hanging out in your own backyard had hazards when you were a shifter.

“Okay, I can go along with that. I have a little over two months until I can retire with a full pension from the Army. I’m going to contact my commander and request extended leave until I can be processed out. After our mission in West Virginia, we can head to Maryland. We can have a mini honeymoon while we pack up my condo and put it on the market.”

“Packing. It just screams romantic getaway doesn’t it?”

“I’ll show you around all the places I loved growing up. We can have sex in most of them. Then I’ll be ready to leave it all behind to come here and be with you.”

“Okay. Lots of sex sounds more like what a honeymoon should be. I’m going to insist on no packing on weekends. Those will be reserved for private time.”

“The packing up won’t take more than a day. I’ll have movers come in and take care of it. Knowing your species, and by species I mean female not cougar, I just figured you’d want to go through it all and decide what we’d keep and what would get donated,” he said.

“Please don’t tell me you’re still living like a bachelor with shot glasses from around the world as your interior decoration and tacky furniture.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

Marsha’s jaw dropped, she couldn’t believe it.

Then Aaron started laughing and she leaned over and slapped his leg.

“You should have seen your face!” he shouted as he continued to chuckle.

“It’s early in the morning. You shouldn’t scare a girl like that. Especially if you’re thinking of getting any in the near future,” she added.

He let her get away with her taunt, though they both knew she was joking. Neither of them could be in the same room for too long without having to touch. Aaron had noticed Laura and Alex were the same. Laura would get a dreamy look in her eyes and start calling her mate Sasha. As an older brother, he didn’t like to think of his baby sister growing up and having sex. She had been only a baby something like ten minutes ago!

Luckily, his thoughts of sex and his sister were distracted by his mate getting up and clearing the dishes from the table, then putting them on the cart. Once again, he had taken the cart from Lisa to serve the food himself. Getting up, he helped her. It was going to be a long day, their plans for the defense against The Society were going to be finalized today.

General training had begun over a month ago. The teams were prepared for just about any situation. Since this was going to be such a large operation covering miles of territory, it needed a different approach. More like a battle plan than a mission plan.

As they walked down the hall, Aaron asked questions. He wondered why Marsha would say it was too late to train a replacement when the plans were only just being completed.

“You said your team was already trained. But we just set up the beginning of our plans two days ago. We haven’t even finalized them yet.”

Marsha gave him a look under her lashes. She knew what he was doing. He was trying to find some loophole in her agreement. Some way to keep her out of harm’s way. She was getting an inkling of how stubborn he could be. Well, she could be stubborn too, and defeating The Society was important to her. The Society had murdered her entire family!

After hearing Aaron’s story, she didn’t want to tell him. It would only freak him out to know The Society had her name on a hit list.

“You and everyone else keep calling them ‘The Society’. What does that mean? That can’t be their real name,” he said as they entered the conference room.

Before Marsha could answer, Laura did.

“Their full name is The Society for the Preservation and Purity of the Human Species,” explained Laura. “It’s a secret group of humans who knew about shifters in ancient times. They hated us then and have committed themselves to ‘Eradicating the Earth of the Ungodly,’ which is how they think of us. Since God created man in his own image, all shifters must be evil.”

“What a crock!” Aaron said.

He realized the room had gone quiet. Many of those here had lost family members to The Society over the years. “Well, at least they’re not calling themselves the ASPCA—the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,” Aaron added.

The room went dead quiet, and Aaron thought he’d gone too far. All of a sudden, laughter broke out and many were wiping tears from their eyes, they were laughing so hard. Aaron breathed a quiet sigh of relief that he hadn’t insulted them. This dealing with shifters was going to take some getting used to.

When everyone in the room had calmed down some, Laura brought the meeting to order.

“We have some fresh intelligence. I’ve matched faces to most of the names we’ve been able to pin down. Since we know their plans, we can give each team the relevant faces for their surrounding areas of assignment.”

“Laura, did Alex give us permission to strike first?” asked a bear shifter from down the table.

Aaron had been introduced to him earlier. Marshall Conner was Alpha over this area of the country, where Alex was the National Alpha.

“Marshall, try to remember we’re the good guys. We only fire when fired upon. Because of our gathered intelligence, we have advanced knowledge and an excellent action plan with the help of my brother, Aaron. Now, let’s sit down and iron out the wrinkles that have cropped up in the last thirty-six hours,” Laura said cheekily, giving a wink to the man who had first held her life in his hands.

Since it was Marshall’s blood that had activated the changeling blood inside her, the two of them had become close. He was another brother now—like she needed another over-protective brother!

“Alpha, I’d like to replace one of my team members with Aaron. Now that we’re mated, he wants to cover my back. He can take the place of my ‘husband’ that Jack was going to take,” said Marsha.

“Jack’s going to be disappointed. However, I have faith in your mate. His record speaks for itself,” said Marshall.

“Excuse me, you’ve read my record?” Aaron asked.

As Army Delta Force, nearly all of his missions were classified. He gave his sister a pointed look.

“No, your sister didn’t say anything. I have my sources. There are shifters in various areas of government, and they give me the information I need.”

Aaron was somewhat placated, though he didn’t like feeling that his record had been compromised, never mind who had the knowledge.

“We’ve gotten off track; let’s get back to our agenda. Marsha, you’ve got the Forest Team on the Western perimeter. Marc, you’ve got the Northern perimeter. Alex says the local pack alpha, George, is going to take the Eastern perimeter. Alex and his second are going to take the town and The Society members planning to shut down the freeway,” said Laura.

Laura then turned to Marsha. “What’s the cover story your team is going to use?” she asked.

“Aaron and I are co-owners of a survival training company. We’re going to be taking a group of city slickers into the woods for a two week trek, teaching wood lore and tracking. The website is up with built-in browsing history and various letters of review. We also have a Facebook page and Twitter account. Because of your skills, our Facebook page had at least two years of posting history and over five thousand likes. Our cover is solid. Even if The Society digs into our website, they aren’t going to find anything. All of our permits are up to date. Even if they’ve got someone in the ranger’s office, he won’t be able to prevent our entry into the woods.”