Running Wild

stranger’s confidences.
“Okay.” Jonah’s tone turned terse. “If you’d pass on this message, I’d appreciate it.”
“I can do that. Ri will decide himself.”
“Of course.”
“Bye.” Seamus hung up, hoping that was the end of it. He paused then, wondering if he’d been hasty. After all, Ri didn’t exactly have any number of people knocking at his door eager to be friends. While they were intensely involved in each other right now, it was important to have a social network.
Not that they’d met the shifters in the most friendly of ways, barging in on them like that to announce themselves in Seamus’s apartment and freaking Ri the fuck out. It didn’t make Seamus inclined to be their best friend.
But Jonah had seemed all right. Seamus shrugged to himself. He’d talk to Ri, Ri would decide, and they’d move on from there. However, Ri had been gone less than twenty-four hours, so he wouldn’t be walking in the door real soon, and Seamus had work to do.
    Ri ran hard, with a feeling of freedom. In his past there had been moments when the wildness seemed to almost unhinge him, when he wondered if this time he’d stay horse forever and forget his human side. Today he was calm in the knowledge that nothing would be lost, that he was horse, in his territory, and he would return to Seamus and home when he’d finished searching for any strange or dangerous signs.
    He recalled the other times, when wolves had shown up, intent on attacking. The suddenness of the scent, the accompanying fear. Even that first occasion, when they’d gone after Zach, Ri had been scared. Zach hadn’t been scared but trusting, because Zach had befriended the wolf who betrayed him. Ri had felt all wrong about it, yet hadn’t acted on that feeling until it was too late.
    He wouldn’t ignore his feelings a second time. The fact remained that Pete and Trey made him nervous. Jonah less so. Sure, lynxes were predators, but they didn’t have much of a relationship with horses, at least from Ri’s perspective. And they didn’t have pack. Jonah, like himself, was a singleton.
    With something of a jolt, Ri realized what he felt about Jonah went beyond simple trepidation. There was curiosity there. To know someone else who shapeshifted, when he hadn’t had shifter company for over a decade, well, it was appealing.
    He slowed to a canter, having nearly reached the outer bounds of what he considered his territory. It wasn’t that he owned it, or anything of the sort, but it was the area around the farm that he monitored.
    He trotted along his invisible line, taking in the scents of vegetation and animals. The occasional human, no shifters. He was tempted to shortcut this, get back to Seamus, and he was pleased that he wasn’t so far-gone in his horse’s head that he was losing track of time.
    But he also wanted to be diligent, so he made himself pace the entire perimeter, despite the time it took him away from Seamus.
It was only as the sun was setting that a new scent brought him up short, its presence abrupt and unwelcome. And sickeningly familiar. Adrenaline spiked at the smell of werewolf, and a specific werewolf at that.
Pete’s scent.
Ri stood stock-still, blowing air, furious, his tentative peace destroyed. What the fuck was that wolf doing here?
Chapter Thirteen
    He stamped his foot, ready to attack, but the scent was old—by some hours—and no one was in sight. So he followed it for a while as the trail dipped in and out of his territory. Ri began to fear it would move towards home, and toyed with the idea of heading straight for Seamus, but then the trail took a sharp right, towards the highway, and he followed it to the site where Pete had shifted.
Ri suspected he had driven off not far from here.
    That was it. The end of his run and reconnaissance. Ri needed to go home, find Seamus, discuss what this meant.
He arrived well past dark and shifted in the barn area. His grandfather had always made a latch there that he or Zach could maneuver open. While it had been years since he’d shifted so close to the house—versus the woods at the back of the property—the latch still worked.
When he awoke from the shift, bewildered by the smells of paint and new building materials, it took him a moment to realize he was in the barn, a barn being maintained by Seamus. Ri pushed himself to standing and shook out his human body. He smiled for a moment, thinking of how he was spending so much time as human, and how right it