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“Okay, guys. And girl. You’ve been training for this your entire lives. Today is the day that changes everything.”
“Heehaw,” the leading member of his team said.
Asher sighed and scratched between her eyes. “Or just do exactly what I trained you to do because you’re an ass.”
The donkey bobbed her head up and down as if she agreed with him, but Asher knew she was trying to readjust her mane.
He took a deep breath and surveyed his little herd. He’d started with horses, but then his wolf ate one of them, and he decided to switch to a cheaper animal. The only condition his alpha had for letting him flee the pack was that he had to pick a few animals to care for. A werewolf alone did not do well.
He knew that better than anyone.
He turned his attention inward to the wild beast and grabbed the paper clip on the bit of braided leather around his neck, an old reminder of his humanity.
Unlike his alpha had hoped, the beast had never taken to the animals Asher tried to raise. Even now, his wolf was looking at the four donkeys in front of him with a low level of hunger.
Never mind.
He turned his attention away, gripping until the paper clip dented his skin. The only reason he hadn’t eaten the entire herd was that the beast felt a small measure of respect for the hearty, stubborn creatures.
The West Virginia Scott Stables were famous for fabulous rodeo workers and racers in the quarter horse world. They were thoroughbreds and gorgeous. His new Scott Stables consisted of two piebald burros of indifferent line, a jack and a jenny, plus one neutered jack with black and brown markings, and one black mini donkey that was the only creature in the world his wolf liked, because the miniature ass wanted to kill as much as his wolf did.
The mini one was technically a mistake. He’d thought it was a baby donkey when he’d bought it, only to panic when it didn’t get any bigger. He looked it up and realized there are two versions of donkeys. Well, there were a lot more than two, but mostly you couldn’t tell the difference.
As if it knew Asher was thinking about it, the mini started banging and ramming the horse trailer until Asher growled. It subsided with a murderous look in its eye that promised future retribution. From long experience, Asher knew they’d reached detente for another fifteen minutes.
“How do you get yours to do that?” a voice asked, and Asher spun, hauling on the reins so his wolf didn’t attack what turned out to be a young girl.
He was not good at guessing children’s ages. He was not good at children, but she couldn’t have been out of elementary school. She had brown hair in a low ponytail and was wearing a long beige dress that reached the cuffs of battered leather boots. It was made of rough-spun wool. In the high summer heart, he could smell the sheep it came from. She looked like something out of a previous century.
Did this crazy day also involve cosplaying as pioneers or something?
“Well?” she demanded.
He glanced into improbably blue eyes and shook his head. “Um, what?”
“How do you get him to come out without shifting?”
His heart froze. His lungs froze. His brain froze. Even the wolf froze.
“How do you… I mean, what are you talking about?” he finally said after a full minute had gone by.
“Your wolf! He can come out without you changing!”
Asher’s heart restarted at double speed. She’d heard his wolf. She knew about wolves. There was a pack in Leadville. Dear god, how stupid could he get?
He’d tracked the covens and packs in his area to avoid both. There was a gaggle of witches in Silver Spring, but they hadn’t tried to protect their land with wards, so he wasn’t sure how much territory they could claim, but he hadn’t smelled any wolves nearby, probably because of said witches. And like an utterly idiotic amateur wolf, he hadn’t thought to check the next big town over. Of course, there were wolves in Colorado. This was their natural habitat.
“I mean you no harm,” Asher said quietly as he scanned for the rest of her pack.
The girl just cocked her head.
“I’m not here to challenge. I can go,“ he insisted.
Her head nearly hit her opposite shoulder, the look of confusion deepening on her face.
“Brigit!” a rough voice shouted, and the girl whipped around.
A young man headed toward them dressed in dark trousers with a rough shirt of the same material as her dress, plus a pair of leather suspenders. He had yellow blonde hair and the same eyes.
His wolf settled within him, the start of the hunt.
Asher dove into the horse trailer, which sent the donkeys heehawing and reeling. One stepped on him, and he felt a rib pop. He bit down on a groan and curled up in the back. He was terrified of a fight, but not because he would lose. He was terrified he would win. He was a dire wolf, bigger than other wolves, with teeth that dripped venom. He would definitely win, and then he’d have an entire pack on his back.
“You can’t wander off!” the boy shouted.
Asher peered between the donkey’s legs. The new wolf was just this side of the invisible line between boy and man. Asher’s wolf would slaughter him.
“But he—” the girl began.
“He who?”
“Where’d he go?”
“Bridge, we’re not in our territory,” the boy said. “You have to keep to the family. Always keep to the family.”
We’re not in our territory. Well, that was the best news Asher had heard all day. They’d also come into town for the day. It meant he had a prayer of getting out of this without killing someone. He hadn’t even considered the idea that other packs would also want to race donkeys. He swallowed; did that mean witches were running around with donkeys, too? It didn’t seem like an activity for supernaturals.
Things were just different out west.
Donkeys were unexpectedly lucrative in this part of the world. If he showed up around West Virginia with a crowd of donkeys, he’d be laughed out of the state. A few yuppie farmers kept them as livestock guardians when they were too chicken to buy a big, scary dog, even though a disobedient donkey had to be a thousand times worse than a dog who would die to defend its owner. Beyond them, Asher had only seen them in 4H competitions—the Boy Scouts of the farming world—to teach teenagers the meaning of humility.
But here in Colorado, fitness-obsessed trail runners and the state’s mining history collided in the weirdest sports craze he’d ever encountered: racing with donkeys. The donkeys in question had to have symbolic mining supplies strapped on their backs, and the runners had to run alongside them for absurd distances, far, far above sea level.
There was definitely a different kind of rich out here. Most people in West Virginia either had nothing, so they couldn’t be bothered to come up with bizarre hobbies, or were so ultra-rich, they bought up vast tracks of land in the Appalachians, where they could do whatever weird hobbies they wanted away from prying eyes.
Out here, there were a lot more people with a lot more disposable income and time on their hands, but they couldn’t all construct 5000 square-foot McMansions in the trees, so they did… This. When he’d bought the donkeys, he’d goggled at what some of them would pay for the loan of an animal to run in a giant circle.
He sniffed to make sure the wolves were gone and clicked his tongue. The first two donkeys jolted down the ramp. Predictably, the mini balked. He let the wolf into his eyes for a second, and it caught up with its friends quickly.
Well, you’re good for something, he muttered to his wolf.
He herded them toward the temporary corrals set up behind the starting banner strung across Main Street and took a deep breath as he caught his first sight of downtown.
Leadville had a population of 2,600, a few more than his new hometown of Silver Spring, and he thought that would be okay. He hadn’t factored in the spectators. It looked like a genuine big city race. Every inch of Main Street was crawling with people. As he started toward the crowd, his nerves jangled, his wolf reared, and his donkeys panicked. It was only the threat of extreme violence from his wolf’s growl that allowed them to continue down the street.
This was the stupidest idea. Why did he think this was a good idea?
He had to do something with his time, and something for money. His alpha had promised to send pack funds from the money printing machine that was the family horse ranch, but Asher was doing absolutely nothing to earn it. He’d hoped that with a good enough showing here, he could spin up another breeding business of his own. After all, he had a secret weapon. His donkeys never shied.
Yes, his wolf was good for something.
He was shaking by the time he reached the end of the street where several pens were set up. Runners and donkeys were crowded together. He considered it a win that he had not shifted or killed anyone, himself included.
“Name?” a girl with a clipboard shouted at him.
He blinked. “Um, Asher Scott?”
She glanced down the list. “No Asher.”
The wolf snarled.
Don’t even think about it.
“Um, Scott. Scott Stables.”
“Oh, right. Your pen is three, over there.”
Asher got everybody into the pen and took a deep breath. One of his racers had been confident they would find each other when Asher had tried to set up a specific meeting spot after the guy had recovered from the shock of learning he did not have a portable electronic device of any kind to bring with him to the race. He had a tiny laptop with no memory he bought to set up this business, but who the hell would he speak to? He had been a mindless wolf in the years cell phones took over rural West Virginia, and even now could not understand why on earth anyone would need to walk around tethered to their contact list.
This is what happened when you kept in touch with your contact list. You got people. They were loud, crazy, and smelled weird. His donkeys reeled around behind the makeshift barriers, looking nervous. He couldn’t tell if they were picking up his unease or were experiencing their own overwhelm at the crowds hee hawing around them. The air was filled with the scent of animal hair, sweat, and sunscreen. Asher tried to breathe through his mouth.
The people renting his donkeys came by over the next half hour as the race drew closer and the day grew hotter. He handed them the reins and escorted them to the starting line full of the incongruous sight of humans in high-tech running gear next to donkeys tricked out with wooden saddles and ancient gold panning equipment.
He saw more people in that rough dyed fabric, all with light hair and blue eyes. He steered well clear of them and kept his eyes down, which infuriated the wolf, but he was not going to provoke a challenge.
There was a moment where the crowd quieted and the hair on the back of his neck lifted, a presentiment of danger, before a gun went off, and Asher slammed his palm down into the edge of the paper clip, anchoring himself in the bite of pain rather than shift and tear the world apart.
As the donkeys rumbled forward and the race began, he leaned against one of the empty pens, gasping for air.
He thought he was better. He knew he wasn’t anywhere near healthy, but he thought he was getting better. He could go a day at a time without the overwhelming desire to shift. He had to admit that maybe he wasn’t getting better; maybe he was just asking less of himself, alone in the woods and the silence.
He had been here less than an hour in a crowd of happy people, and his wolf was a breath away from losing it.
Immediately, he shut off thoughts of the future. There was no profit in thinking about the years. There was no point in thinking beyond today. He’d be as crazy as his wolf if he contemplated a life lived this close to the edge with a wolf who was never going to find sanity again.
He choked on air and reeled away from the crowds. Absolutely no point. In this singular moment, he was okay, and that was all he had to deal with.
“Hey, Asher!”
Who the hell knew his name? He bore down and turned, expecting to see Main Street empty and the runners on their way.
Instead, chaos greeted him. Burros were milling in every direction with runners dangling after them. To his embarrassment and chagrin, all four of his donkeys were still standing at the starting line with very frustrated runners.
“Asher!”
Of course, the man he’d rented them to knew who he was.
He jogged for them. What happened? They’d always run for him. Unlike so many horror stories, they always went exactly where he told them to.
He closed his eyes, finding the fatal flaw in his brilliant business plan. He was a werewolf. More than that, he could summon his wolf without shifting. The beast was always happy to growl at the world, as the little girl pointed out.
How had he learned that little trick? His alpha forced him into wolf form and forbade him to shift back until he’d forgotten how to shift and lived as a wolf for a decade and absolutely lost his mind. The only reason he was here was that the new alpha, his former best friend, pinned him back in human form until he figured out how the hell to stay there. After all of that, he had a wolf who could shift without shifting and menace four stubborn, terrible asses that was going to ruin everything.
He started toward the line, his wolf in his eyes. For once, he perfectly agreed with the beast and had half a mind to let it eat the smallest one.
They took off like a shot, trailing screaming runners like kites behind them.
A cascade of bell-like laughter erupted from the crowd, floating over the normal cheers like a fine musical instrument, and his eyes snapped to the source.
She was tall with gorgeous curves in a practical pair of jeans and hiking boots, but a sparkly top that belonged in a club. She had dangling earrings to match the top. She stood out because her dark hair was only a centimeter long, framing vivid features and gray eyes. And she was coming right toward him.
For once, his wolf didn’t want to kill anything and had nothing to say.
She smiled, flashing brilliant white teeth, and dug in a little bag slung across her body. It was made of the same fabric as the top.
“I can help with the starting problem,” she said in a mellifluous voice.
She held out a square business card. He took it with numbed fingers and glanced at the words.
Penelope Young, animal psychologist.
His eyes started back to hers. “Is this a thing?”
She winked. “I considered having special ones printed that said Donkey Whisperer, but thought that was a little over the top for a single race. And if you’re asking whether there’s a course at a university for animal psychology, sure. It’s called biology, but I’m so much more than that.”
She tapped the card again, and he read under her name: Intuitive Understanding, Behavioral Modification, and Communication. And then under that in tiny letters: A division of Coven Holdings, LTD.
Coven.
He swallowed. Witches had covens. Witches also had animal magic. It was one of the twelve talents, wasn’t it? He grew up around a witch, so he knew more about it than most shifters.
He also knew the vast majority of witches avoided shifters like the plague. Most witches would take his presence as an extreme threat.
Why didn’t he think this through? Why didn’t he think anything through? His donkeys ran for him because he was a werewolf, not because he was magic with donkeys. He left the territory he knew was safe because it was safe and bumped into a pack of werewolves and witches.
A younger woman came up alongside the “animal psychologist.” She had strawberry blonde hair tucked under the biggest sun hat he’d ever seen. She was a head shorter than them with green eyes and pale freckles covering almost every inch of her skin.
“Penelope, do you want to see the race?” she asked.
The woman turned to her and said, “Yeah. I think I’ve handed one of these suckers out to anyone within ten square feet of a donkey.”
The girl laughed, and Penelope met his eyes again. “If you ever need anything. Do let me know. I’d love to help.”
He’d love to let her.
The two women wandered off together, and he frowned. Normally, covens consisted of witches from the same family. He knew not every family member looked the same, but he’d eat that huge hat if those two women were related by blood. So who were they? Were they a coven? Regular humans used the word, right?
His eyes drifted back to the card. It seemed to pulse in his hand. Could she help him? If she were truly an animal witch, could she help his wolf?
