Page 4 of How I Met My Mate

I pull my Canon from my purse and start snapping pictures, and as I do, I feel a sharp twinge of guilt. I’m not exactly here under false pretenses, I tell myself. If I don’t spot anything off, I’ll just end up writing a feature article about a rural shifter town, which is the kind of thing few humans have been exposed to.

Or rather, the kind of thing that humans choose not to see. Humans are still scared of shifters. The two species were at war for centuries, ever since humans first discovered that some groups of people among them could also turn into wolves. Shifters are much stronger and faster than humans and they have miraculous healing powers, but they also make up about five percent of the total population, so there’s always that tension.

And if I do spot something off, I’m obligated to report on it, right? That’s what journalists do.

Still, that adorable young girl, the lady who beamed at me when I bought her peach jam, the people who are smiling at me as I walk by…I feel like I’m plotting to betray them and I’m not even sure how.

Nonsense, I tell myself sternly. If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about.

A man and a woman walk over to a wooded area that borders the market, strip their clothes, and dash into the woods. I decide not to take a picture of that; to respect their privacy, even though shifters are pretty casual about nudity from what I’ve heard. It’s common for them to strip in public so they don’t ruin their clothes while they’re shifting, go for an invigorating run, and then return for their clothes later. My best friend Lane, who just joined with Jesse in a mating ceremony, told me that.

As I’m snapping pictures, I hear some kind of commotion coming from somewhere on Main Street.

I jostle to see, but I’m surrounded by a crowd, and a man who’s backing away from a booth accidentally knocks my camera down. “Sorry!” he cries.

Cole bends down to pick it up for me at the same time as several other people. There’s a minute of jostling before Cole manages to retrieve it, and he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully brushes dirt off it. He examines it critically, and then blows a little bit of dirt off it before handing it back to me.

“Check the camera. Is it still working?” he asks. “If not, the pack will replace it.”

I check it quickly. “It’s fine,” I assure him.

It’s odd, but I could swear that the pack was working together to make me drop my camera. And did Cole brush the dirt of the camera to be nice, or to stall for another minute?

“What just happened?” I ask Cole. “I heard something from…” I wave in the general direction of Main Street.

Cole gives me a polite, quizzical look. “Did you? I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, and shifters have pretty amazing hearing.” He turns away and walks off, leading me between a couple of booths.

I turn back to look in the direction where I thought I heard something, but there’s nothing there. Just businesses and people strolling calmly down the street. Cole stops to look back at me. “There’s a lot of noise from the market. People get pretty rowdy here,” he adds.

I nod, frowning. I’m not convinced, but other than an enormous wolf running into a wooded area at the far end of Main Street, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. And that’s only unusual to me because I’m human. Here, it happens all the time.

“I guess it was nothing,” I say slowly.

“Well, let’s go get you that coffee then,” he says, putting his arm around my shoulders and steering me towards the coffee truck.

The smell of him, woodsy and with a pleasant musk, drifts through the air. The feeling of his muscular arm around my shoulders floods me with a hot, tingling awareness of my own body.

Every muscle in my body goes tight. His hand is warm and heavy where it rests on my arm, and I can feel the solid strength of him at my side. My pulse skips. It’s ridiculous — I’ve dated plenty of men before. None of them ever made my knees turn to jello before.

His hand is big and warm. The feeling of his fingers pressing lightly against me short circuits my brain.

It’s almost enough to distract me from the fact that something is very clearly off here.

Almost.

Chapter Three

Cole

Alexis is sitting on a bench and sipping the latte that I just insisted on buying her, as I frantically dial my mother.

I’m standing far enough away that Alexis can’t hear me.

“Hello, trouble,” my mother says. “How is the farmer’s market today? Pick me up some Sleep Like A Cub tea from the Shadowpine booth if you get a chance, will you?” The Shadowpine pack have a lot of mages, famous for their herbal concoctions.

“Sure, sure,” I mutter distractedly.

“What’s wrong? I can hear it in your voice.”