Primal Bonds

The run helped a little, but Glory was still restless by the time she made it back to her car. Shifting back to human, she stretched, dressed, started her car, and drove back to town.

It was only eleven, and Glory wasn’t ready to go home yet. She turned along streets until she found a bar she occasionally visited on the outskirts of town. The bar wasn’t a Shifter hangout, but when a woman was six feet tall with a well-packed body and blond hair, the clientele seemed happy to accept her. Now that the shooters had been driven off it was a relatively safe place where she could sit and brood.

She believed in its safety until she walked out to her car again two hours later, which she’d parked at the edge of the lot. A human male stepped out of the dark, shot her twice in the torso, and disappeared again.

Glory’s Collar sparked as she instinctively tried to attack, but all feeling left her limbs, and she slid down the side of her car in a mass of pain. She quietly collapsed on the pavement, the gravel cutting into her face.

As she lay there bleeding, dying, she felt great regret that she’d never see Dylan again. She’d never be able to apologize for her stupid pride, which had made her throw away what little he was able to give her. That giving had cost him dearly, and Glory had thrown it back in his face.

A wolf scent came to her, sharp and pungent. She recognized the scent, which surprised her. Before she could form either hope or fear, the Lupine, in wolf form, walked up to her and sniffed her face.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“You’ve never been inside a grocery store, love?” Sean asked Andrea. “What, never ever? You’re missing a grand experience.”

Andrea gazed at the vinyl-tiled aisles stretching away from them with some trepidation. Not only did the aisles go on forever, they were filled with shelves upon shelves of boxes, cans, bags, and jars that all looked alike. “How is anyone supposed to find anything?”

Sean leaned on the handles of a wire cart, a luscious man out to do his morning shopping. “You soon figure out where they put the things you like.”

“I thought you handed a list to someone, and they found the food for you.”

“That was the old days. The village grocer would get in what he knew you liked and make up an order for you, in his friendly little shop on the high street.”

“Even for Shifters?”

Sean shrugged. “Back in Ireland, no one, supposedly, believed in Shifters, but we were the best customers. We always paid our bills, and we were grateful for the sacks of flour and salt and the coffee our village man would get in. We hunted a bit more then, but the day we discovered we could get rabbit in a tin, well, it changed our lives.”

Andrea studied his straight face. “You are so full of shit.”

Sean let himself smile, but his eyes held worry. He was trying to distract Andrea from her thoughts about Glory, who’d not come home last night. Glory often went out and stayed out until the next morning, but Andrea didn’t like that Glory hadn’t even called. With Callum out there still plotting, Andrea worried.

Another problem with Glory not returning was that they’d run out of groceries, and Andrea had been stumped about what to do. Back in Colorado, the stores in town hadn’t wanted Shifters in them but had grudgingly let a few Shifters shop for the entire Shiftertown. One person in Andrea’s pack had been assigned to collect food orders from the families each week, then he made the run into town and brought back said food and supplies.

Andrea hadn’t realized things how differently things were done in this Shiftertown. Glory always asked Andrea what she wanted from the store, never suggesting Andrea do the shopping, so she’d assumed that Glory was a designated shopper.

Andrea had written up what she needed this week, but the list was still on the refrigerator, and food was running low. When she’d told Sean, puzzled, he’d laughed at her, put her on the back of his motorcycle, and driven her to the grocery store closest to Shiftertown.

Andrea gazed at boxes stacked inside a long row of refrigerators with clear glass doors. “I don’t even know what most of this stuff is.”

“Ready-to-eat frozen meals. I’ve tried them. They pretty much taste like the package they come in.”

“Why would anyone want to eat it then?”

“They’re for the perpetually busy. Humans work nonstop, and then throw away all the money they make on cardboard food because they’re so busy working they don’t have time to cook real food. Ironic, that is.”

“Do they have coffee here?”

“Love, they have everything here.”

Sean led the way down the bewildering array of colorful offerings to a row of coffee in cans plus bins of coffee beans at the end of the aisle.

Andrea watched Sean fill a small bag with fragrant coffee beans, his intense gaze fixed on the task. “I never thought I’d need a mate to help me navigate the mysteries of a grocery store,” she said.

“Mates are good for something, then.”

Mates were good for far more than that, but Andrea wasn’t about to flatter Sean’s vanity with that remark. He’d been extremely proud of himself ever since they’d done the mating ceremony yesterday, and the fact that she was sore all over today was testimony to his joy. Sean had a few scratches and bite marks on his flesh as well, silent signals of Andrea’s mating frenzy. She wondered what would happen when they really let themselves go. Wonderful thought.

“You don’t think Glory went off with someone?” Andrea asked. “Eric, maybe?”