Tayme (Were Zoo Book Eight) Read online

  “Much better,” he said, crunching on the sweet bacon that gave a nice salty component to the ice cream and cone.

  “What is?” Seneca asked from the hamburger stall next to his.

  He filled another mini-cone and walked it over to where his friend was getting burgers ready for the dinner rush. He wiped his hands and took the cone, eating it in two bites. “That’s really great. I like the cone.”

  “Me, too.”

  Tayme rubbed the space over his heart as his bear grumbled again.

  Seneca eyed him curiously. “Something going on with you?”

  “I don’t know. I feel strange and I can’t explain it. I’m kind of pissed, but I think it’s because my you-know-what is agitated, and I can’t figure out why.”

  “Maybe you need a trip to one of the paddocks for a break?” When they were speaking topside around humans, this was code for if a shifter could use some time in their shift.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Put up your out-to-lunch sign and go for a walk,” Seneca suggested.

  “Yeah, maybe that’s a good idea. Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  Tayme closed the stall and hung a sign saying he’d be back in an hour. He meandered in no particular direction, trying to get to the bottom of the agitation, eventually finding himself at the barn where the wolves once had a petting zoo. He remembered Marcus telling them there was no way baby prey animals like goats and lambs were going to let wolf shifters anywhere near them, but the wolves had wanted to try anyway. It had ended with a lot of scared animals breaking out of the wooden fenced petting area and running wild around the park. They’d donated the baby animals to a children’s hospital, and the barn sat empty for years.

  But now, Auden was utilizing the lions and wolves to help him make a home for himself and his mate topside. Already the enclosure Tayme had heard about – a room built around the large tree next to the barn – was taking shape. He walked into the barn which was going to be an apartment for the new couple as well as a clinic to take care of natural birds. Eventually there would be a bird sanctuary in the zoo, and he thought that was pretty damn cool.

  “Hey,” Alfie, one of the wolves said. He set down a load of lumber and brushed his hands off.

  Tayme turned to look at the male, but then his bear growled so loudly that the sound spilled from his throat and his gums ached at the threat of his fangs descending.

  A female, with long red hair flowing behind her, ran down the steps from the apartment inside the barn. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, her gaze clashing with his as everything within him rioted. He scented the air and found the beauty smelled unique and tantalizing, like the woods in summer.

  He opened his mouth to ask her name. And maybe also ask her to marry him and bear about a hundred of his babies, but all that came out was another growl.

  He heard some males nearby asking what was going on, but he didn’t bother answering. His bear demanded he get the redheaded beauty away from the unmated males, somewhere safe and private where he could find out all about her, including the all-important question of what she sounded like when she fell apart in his arms.

  He stalked to her, ducked his upper body, and lifted her over his shoulder. Her breath gusted out on a chuckle, and she grasped his belt and held on as he strode from the apartment and hung a left, heading into the trees that bordered the barn. It wasn’t a deep forest so he couldn’t go far, but the area was private enough that they wouldn’t be surrounded by anyone. And here, he could think straight.

  Lowering her gently to her feet, he settled her against a thick tree trunk and braced his hands on either side of her.

  She looked up at him, her green eyes bright with curiosity and a small smile curving the corner of her lush mouth. “Hi.”

  His claws were making his fingertips ache. He didn’t want to shift, but he couldn’t seem to control the smaller reactions. “Hi,” he finally growled out.

  She cupped his face and immediately a very grizzly-sounding purr stuttered from his chest.

  “I’m Rory,” she whispered, rising onto her toes and brushing her lips over his.

  “I’m Tayme.” He leaned against her, pushing her back into the tree and dropping a hand to the curve of her waist. He squeezed, trying to control his base reactions but unable to do anything but think about how good she smelled and how right she felt. She brushed her tongue over his lips and his bear growled happily. Tilting his head, he deepened the kiss, stroking his tongue against hers. Everything about Rory was a feast for his senses. She tasted amazing, decadent like dark chocolate. Her scent was like a dream come true, woodsy and sweet at the same time, with a hint of sunshine that made him long for a run in his shift with her. And her skin was so soft it made his hands ache even more than his claws did.

  His phone rang and he snarled as he broke from the kiss, irritated and breathless. Without looking to see who was calling, he barked out an annoyed, “What?”

  “It’s Auden. I need to speak to Rory.”

  For a heartbeat, he couldn’t even recall who Auden was. His thoughts were fully consumed with Rory.

  Blinking rapidly a few times, he pushed his beast away so he could focus. Auden was...a wolf. Right, right.

  “Oh. Shit, sorry. Here.” He handed his phone to Rory. “It’s for you.”

  “Hey. What time is it?” Rory asked once she’d put the phone to her ear.

  Tayme could easily hear the conversation on the other end of the line thanks to his shifter genes. “Almost three.”

  “Oops.” She giggled and gave Tayme a sultry look. “Something amazing happened.”

  “Alfie said you two stole off into the woods together. I take it you’re soulmates?”

  “Yes!”

  “Congratulations. Do you want me to tell Jess?”

  “I can tell her. I have her bags in the truck anyway, so we can say I came here to give them to her and Tayme found me. That way we won’t ruin the surprise of the apartment.”

  “I’ll bring her up to the employee cafeteria in thirty minutes,” Auden said.

  “Make it an hour,” Tayme suggested none-too-gently.

  Rory made an adorable giggly sound, very girly and sweet. “See you in an hour.” She ended the call and gave him his phone. “Any thoughts on how to spend sixty minutes?”

  “About a million of them,” he promised. “But none that take less than an hour.”

  Her eyes, a striking shade of emerald with golden flecks, darkened, reminding him of the color of pine needles. “If you want to know the way to my heart, it’s talking sexy like that.”

  “I definitely want to know that,” he said. He lifted his head and looked around, opening his senses to see if anyone human was near. It was noisy because of the workers in the barn, but the sound was muffled by the trees that surrounded them. The park had cordoned off the barn and surrounding areas so humans couldn’t get close during construction, and the wooded area was protected from humans by fencing at the back and side as well as where the caution ropes and signs had been hung. He didn’t scent or hear humans, but he didn’t want to have a conversation with Rory about anything sensitive like their shifter natures if he wasn’t one hundred percent certain they were alone.

  He took her hand and said, “We can go to the commercial kitchen. Humans aren’t allowed inside. It’s near the employee cafeteria.”

  “Sounds perfect,” she said.

  He was about a foot taller than her, so although his bear wanted him to run at full speed to the kitchen, he kept his strides from being too long so she could keep up. It was utterly tempting to throw her over his shoulder and take her down to his home and lock the doors for about a week, but he kept his beast on a tight mental leash so he wasn’t growling at every human male they passed.

  “You came to visit your friend?” he asked.

  She hummed. “Yeah. Auden asked for some help to make a special place for her, so I rented a truck and loaded it up with plants she
likes.”

  “Plants?”

  “She likes to be outside. Nature is important to her.”

  He knew that Jess was an owl. While he’d never met any bird shifters, he could guess that they preferred to be surrounded by plant life, the way that his grizzly loved to be underground.

  “I also brought her things from her parents’ place. She couldn’t go home again.”

  He entered a code into the commercial kitchen and unlocked the door, holding it open for her.

  When the door shut, he was grateful that it was empty. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He led her to one of the small tables along the wall and sat opposite her. The windows were one-way, so they could see out, but no one could see in.

  She clasped his hands on the cool surface of the table. “I’m a red fox. I was adopted by the king and queen of the owl nest when I was young.”

  “What happened to your family?” Immediately his bear wanted to hold her close to comfort her.

  Her face shadowed, and Tayme could smell her sorrow. His bear went nuts, wanting to slaughter whoever had hurt her family.

  Barely keeping hold of his sanity, he scooped her up and set her on his lap, curling his arms around her protectively. She pressed her face into his neck and looped her arms around him. For a moment, they just sat in silence, her sweet smell in his nose and her body pressed close to his.

  She exhaled slowly, and then said, “I was really young. Foxes shift when we’re toddlers, so I was with my family and our skulk.”

  “What’s a skulk?”

  “That’s what a group of red foxes is called.” She lifted her head from his shoulder. “What’s a group of bears called?”

  “Sleuth.”

  She hummed, tilting her head. “I would have thought it was a den.”

  “That’s where we live. Well, not technically of course. My sleuth lives under the park in a private area. I have a home that I think of as a den.”

  “Cool.” She kissed him and ran her fingers lightly over his beard, which made a shiver of delight travel down his spine. If he were a cat, he would have full-on purred. “Anyway, I don’t remember a lot about my people, just my parents. I don’t know why we were in the owls’ territory, but King Ahar said that my people attacked in a bid to take over and force the owls out and they defended themselves. There was just blood and screams, and my dad told me to shift and hide, so I did. I saw my parents die, my mom leading an owl away from where I’d tucked myself under an exposed tree root, and my dad trying to save her. I just closed my eyes and tried to be quiet, tried not to be found.”

  Tayme’s heart went out to her. He stroked her soft hair, his grizzly murmuring in sympathy. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

  She brushed at the tears on her cheeks. “I haven’t cried about that in a long time. It seems like a hundred years ago. Anyway, when the battle was over, I stayed hidden, and eventually fell asleep. King Ahar found me in the morning when he was searching for survivors among the dead. He and his wife Rinna didn’t have children of their own, so they adopted me.

  “They told me my whole childhood that I should be grateful they saved me, but there was this part of me that always felt like what I witnessed didn’t quite mesh with what Ahar recounted.”

  “You don’t think your people were actually attacking?”

  She shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. I was so young. Rinna said that my recollection was just my mind trying to make my people better than they were, that red foxes were known to be violent and territorial and being raised in the owl nest was something to be grateful for. I hated what they said about my family, but I couldn’t say for sure they were wrong because I just don’t remember. If I brought up my family, the king and queen would punish me. Lock me in my room or prevent me from seeing Jess, who’d become my instant best friend. I got to the place where I just internalized all my thoughts about my family and went along with the owls. It was easier.”

  “You never met any other red foxes?”

  “A few years ago, I did an online search at the library for my real last name, but it came up empty. I was hoping to find someone I might be related to, even though Ahar said there were no survivors after the battle.”

  “I could help you search,” he said. “We have access to federal databases because some of the wolves are really great hackers. We might be able to find someone from your family or someone who might know you from before.”

  “That would be really great. Even if I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to my parents, it would be nice to have some closure if I could talk to someone who knew what had happened. But anyway, back to the situation at hand.”

  He cupped her face. “Our situation?”

  “Definitely.” She twisted his wrist to look at his watch. “We’ve got like a half hour right now. The time went fast. Do you know what happened when Jess and Auden went to the owl nest the other night?”

  He shook his head. “Our groups don’t really hang out a lot outside of working at the park. What happened?”

  She explained that Jess’s parents had arranged an ambush with the king to separate her and Auden, and force her to mate Miles, a skeevy male from another nest. “Owl females don’t get to pick their own mates, and owls don’t believe in soulmates, so when Jess said Auden was her soulmate, her parents – and mine – went nuts. I was able to help Jess, Auden, and the others from the park who had come to support them get away.”

  “I can’t believe they’d try to separate soulmates.”

  “It sucks. I’m pretty sure, also, that my parents aren’t going to like you and me together, either, even though I’m not an owl.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Does it matter?”

  “That they don’t like Auden and Jess together?”

  “No, that they don’t believe in soulmates. Because I’m one hundred percent positive you and I are.”

  She smiled so sweetly that his bear wanted to do cartwheels. “You could ask me. You know, just to make sure that my fox and I agree.”

  He moved his hand up the back of her head, his fingers sliding through her silky hair. “We’re soulmates, Rory. Be mine.”

  “That wasn’t a question,” she said, her voice tinged with humor.

  “Please.”

  “Also not a question.”

  He grunted out a snarl. “For fucks sake, Rory!”

  “Fox sake.”

  Barking out a laugh, he claimed her lips, loving how she melted in his arms. Nipping her bottom lip, he murmured, “Will you be mine, for fox sake, Rory?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Chapter Five

  By the time they were supposed to meet Auden and Jess, Rory had learned that the park was home to five varieties of shifters. She’d never heard of so many different kinds of shifters living together.

  “The alphas decided to turn the safari tours from group-oriented activities to an individual tour, sending out free VIP tour coupons to eligible males and females. A human goes with two wolves on the tour and they stop at each paddock where the shifters are. The tour guide takes the human right up to the fence so the shifters can scent him or her to see if they’re soulmates.”

  “Were they successful?”

  He gave her a one-shouldered shrug. “Meh. Three soulmates have come from the tours. Two of them were humans who got coupons in the mail. The third was a panther who booked her own tour online because she’d been told by a family member about the park being a cover for shifters.”

  She frowned. “Other shifters know about it?”

  “Apparently a nearby wolf pack had someone who came here as part of an exchange program.”

  “That sounds like something a real zoo would do.”

  He snorted. “I guess so. Wolves particularly like to hop around to different packs to try to find their soulmate. The deal is that any who come here aren’t supposed to broadcast the zoo’s inner workings to others outside of their own people, but that wolf pack was frien
dly to the panthers and shared the knowledge.”

  “It sounds like the tours work, but not like the alphas thought they would.”

  “Pretty much. I think they expected a lot of soulmates to come from them, but it’s just not happening. We don’t know if it’s because people aren’t using the coupons or that most of the soulmates aren’t actually in the area.”

  She hummed, thinking about what her future might have been like if she’d stayed in the nest. Her bestie had been independent from the get-go, going to college, wanting to make her own choices. Rory was independent, but she’d also been content to be in the nest and go with the flow. She hadn’t been under the same pressure to tow the line like Jess had.

  Until now, it seemed. Rory knew she needed to call her adoptive parents to tell them what happened, but she honestly didn’t want to. She kind of liked the bubble she was in at the moment, where she could pretend they’d support her finding her soulmate one hundred percent.

  Because the reality was most likely going to be that they wouldn’t approve and would demand she return home.

  “We should go,” he said. He set her on her feet and then stood up, towering over her. He was tall and broad, and his sexy short-trimmed beard and sparkling hazel eyes made everything inside her tingle and her fox bark happily.

  “I need to call my parents at some point.”

  “Of course. Just...don’t tell me that I can’t be with you.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I mean, if they want you to go visit them, don’t ask me to stay here.”

  She looked up at him. “I promise. I just got you, I’m not planning to go anywhere without you.”

  “Good.” He let out a gruff sound from his bear as he cupped her face and kissed her.

  They left the quiet of the commercial kitchen and walked to the employee cafeteria. Tayme entered a code and they walked into the empty building. The large space was filled with tables and chairs, and along one wall were refrigerators, steel countertops, and covered dishes under heat lamps. Like the kitchen, the space was for employees only, and the shifters obviously took security seriously, judging by the codes required to enter the buildings.