Hell yeah, but you got used to it. And if you didn’t, you lied so you wouldn’t look like a *.
Straightening from his crouch, Caleb replied. “I take it you didn’t find anything.” A few strides brought Caleb to a different fallen trunk to sit on because while nudity might be acceptable among shifters, getting into someone’s naked space, unless you were banging them, was considered rude.
“A faint scent trace. But it was old and didn’t lead anywhere.”
“Are we sure that thing is hiding in the swamp?”
“Where else would it be?” Wes asked. “It’s not as if it can rent a room in town.”
“So I guess we keep looking.”
“Not tonight we aren’t. You have a job to get to tomorrow morning.”
Caleb rolled his eyes. “I guess I wouldn’t want to piss off the boss the first day.”
“You got that straight.”
For a moment, they sat in silence and let the sounds of the bayou roll over them. The soft plop of water as something surfaced for a bite. The hum of insects out for a night of drinking blood and procreating before the dawn saw them dying. The chorus of frogs, their symphony interrupted every now and then as one of their number went from entertainment to dinner.
“Fucking hell, I gotta ask. Why did you leave?”
Wes’s question startled Caleb, and he shot the other man a look. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t. I was just surprised is all. Especially given how hot and heavy you were with Renny.”
“Something happened, and I kind of had no choice.”
“I know what you did that summer.” Wes smirked.
Caleb froze. “What are you talking about?” The words emerged from a dry mouth. Caleb had been alone when it happened. And he still wasn’t sure what had happened. A blank spot resided in his mind. One minute he was walking home from Renny’s, and then, in what felt like a blink, he regained awareness as his jaws were ripping apart a man.
“Considering you left not even twelve hours after you were dumped in the marsh with that dead guy—”
“Stop. What do you mean dumped with a dead guy? What the hell did you see?”
The hard look Wes shot him held a glint of red, the beast he held within but seemed to share his life with in harmony.
“I mean that a couple of guys dragged your scaly sleeping ass out of a big truck and dropped you in the water and then dumped a body in front of you. Some guy wearing army scrubs with a syringe stuck you and ran away. He and the others took off in the truck before you woke up.”
Woke up hungry, dazed, and angry. He’d smelled something in front of him and snapped. Chewed. I killed and ate a human.
He’d later retched most of it up on shore when he staggered from the marsh, naked and dirty. But the military truck, with its blazing lights and barking soldiers, seemed to know what he was, and what he was guilty of.
Of course they did because… “I was framed.” Caleb couldn’t help a note of incredulity. “Those fucking assholes framed me. They made me think I’d lost control. They told me I killed a man.” The cry he let loose held frustrated fury. All those years he’d blamed himself. Feared himself. Done despicable things because they said he had to. “It was all a fucking lie. And I believed it.” Instead of trusting himself.
“I would have told you what I saw back then, but before I could get to you, you were gone. You and a few other boys. You’re the only one that came back.”
Because shifters were the expendable soldiers, the ones sent into the most dangerous of situations because they were the most likely to survive. “Lucky me.”
“Oh, stop it with the pity-me, I’m-so-screwed routine. At least you came back. Can those other guys say the same?”
“No.” He’d lost too many friends to count. “But it’s hard to forget.”
“You don’t have to forget. But you can choose to live in the now and create new memories, good ones to remember.”
“This is getting way too Kumbaya for me,” Caleb growled.
“Don’t worry, I was going to mock your dick size in a second.”
“And there is so much to mock. I tell you, it’s hard carrying that kind of weight around, but the ladies love it.”
Wes burst out laughing. “Asshole.”
“And I’m a fucking brain-addled tool obviously because, crazily enough, I missed this.”
“Missed hunting possibly murderous dinos in the swamp?”
A snicker left Caleb. “Actually, I’m liking this new game.” So long as he won in the end. “But more, I missed home. The swamp. A place I can let my croc out that has nothing to do with the war or taking out the enemy.”
“They really did a number on you.”
“And then some.”
But he was healing and, even better, falling in love all over again, which came with a new set of anxieties.
Was his family safe while he was gone?
His chat with Wes over, Caleb took a direct route back to his house, anxious to check on them. What if the creature they hunted had circled back and gone after Luke again?
What if…