Shifting the Night Away (79 page)

"Nope. Never married. No kids." Tara skipped another rock across the water.
 

It was dark enough now that she couldn't see Lane's face clearly but she sensed a disappointed tone in his next question, "Don't you want those things?"

Lane detected a sense of pride in her voice when she announced that she had no children. As though it had been an intentional decision, not merely a case of circumstance. He wasn't sure what to make of that possibility.
 

Modern humans were problematic. Women held jobs and bought their own homes now. They didn't need men like they used to. Having a family wasn't part of their plan anymore. He knew that if he turned Tara, the new wolf within her would bring many of those longings with it but he hadn't considered how a modern woman would be affected by a new wolf. Especially meeting it so late in life.
 

What if Tara didn't want the wolf? Lane thought of Geordin and the family he watched age and die and the heart break he still carried with him after 200 years. He could turn her anyway but the woman he was getting know wasn't likely to mate with him if he did. Tara was what he'd been looking for, a true alpha female. She would never be subordinate to him, she would make a fine matriarch for the pack but it had to be a role that she chose, not one that was forced upon her.

Tara turned from her rock skipping to look at the shadowy outline of Lane's tall figure framed in the moonlight, "I'd love to have a family someday." Her voice carried a lilt of sadness in it. "I'm not sure it's going to happen. No sense sitting around waiting for a knight in shining armor to show up at my door." She turned and threw another pebble. It landed with a "plop" on the water's surface and immediately sunk to the bottom.

"Why don't you think it'll happen?"

Tara sighed. She had been enjoying their fling. She was hoping they'd hook up a few more times before their hikes took them in separate directions and that they could just have fun in the meantime. She didn't want to get into the self loathing of why True Love eludes big girls or any of that stuff that kills romantic, moonlit nights by mountain lakes when she could be standing with the arms of a handsome man wrapped around her in the chilly air. She sighed, "Because it hasn't. Because. Just because."
 

"Well that doesn't mean it won't." Lane moved close behind her and wrapped her in his arms. Exactly the way he would if this was the beginning of a romance. She decided to surrender to that fantasy and deal with reality later.

They left the small resort two days later, hiking along the edge of the lake instead of taking the ferry this time.
 

Tara noticed that Lane fell into step with her perfectly even though she was sure he could easily outpace her. Instead, he hiked beside her, or just behind her on the narrow sections. She noticed he carried very little with him, but he seemed so at ease out here in the mountains he didn't seem unprepared.
 

She wanted to know more about him, where he had grown up, where he lived now, what he did for a living, and especially about his past. He laughed easily with her and answered most of her questions but even though his answers seemed forthcoming and honest, she couldn't help but notice they rarely offered any real information.

He said he "worked in the forest" and that he "lived south of here." He'd grown up "around these parts" and his family had moved north when he was young. She wasn't sure how to broach the subject of the wife he'd mentioned he'd once had. She got the feeling that that was off limits and she was enjoying their time together far too much to wreck it by prying too deeply.
 

Besides, it's not like she expected their affair to last beyond the end of the hike. Even though he wasn't giving up the specifics, it seemed certain that Lane made his home somewhere on the east side of Mt. Whitney, while Tara's sparsely furnished one bedroom apartment waited for her back in the valley to
 
the west. There was an entire mountain range between their homes. It was unlikely that this handsome mountain man was going to make the effort to overcome an obstacle like that to keep seeing her. Hell, for all she knew, he had a girlfriend, or several of them.

Tara watched his sinewy figure move along the trail just a few feet ahead of her. His body was big, but it fit out here in the mountains against the rocky peaks and stark alpine meadows. The high elevations had always made her feel so small in the expansive open places, but Lane seemed in perfect scale to them. Like he was made from this environment. Nothing tripped him up or caught him off guard. He
belonged
out here.
 

Something deep inside Tara cried that she belonged with him. Making love under the stars or under the rocky outcropping when they stopped to rest. Feeling him against her made her feel so alive, it was getting harder each day to remind herself that this was only a fling. Just a little trail magic that would make a great story for the girls back at the office and wonderful memories to keep her warm in her lonely bed. Lane made her feel beautiful, the way he looked at her, the way he held her in his arms, the way he walked beside her as though he'd been waiting for her for a long time; but Tara knew that the spell would be broken once they made it back to the real world.
Don't get too involved
, Tara warned herself,
It's just temporary
.
It's just for fun.

Lane felt their connection deepening. With each day that they spent together, he became more convinced that he was fated to be with Tara. He found it so easy to fall into her slow but steady pace. He was constantly impressed at her independence, her ability to make decisions without deferring to him first. Her fearlessness, even out here in a place where few humans felt truly secure. Everything about her sang to him, filled him with new hope for the future of the pack, and with new hope for himself as well.
 

He hadn't planned on mating again after losing Allisha. He hadn't planned on becoming the alpha of a new pack either though. He didn't know Diego would rejoin him, he didn't know they would end up adopting so many strays. He had only reluctantly taken on the roll and he had only agreed to find a new mate to keep peace between him and the only family he had left.
 

Lane thought of his brother.

Diego and Zaia had been putting off mating for 2 seasons already, because of him. It wasn't fair to them. They deserved to be together and start their family. Lane knew they wanted to stay with him. Diego didn't have an interest in the politics of running the pack and he didn't want to leave Lane to start his own.
 

Lane gnawed on his thoughts like the wolf within him would gnaw on the bones of a week old kill. The analogy brought a smile to his face, how odd-- the ways he was like the wolf he shared his soul with, and the ways he was also human. Sometimes Lane wondered how the original shifters had dealt with the dichotomy. Sometimes he wondered how they did now.

He curled his strong body around Tara as she slept and smiled against her smooth skin. He knew this was right, this woman was meant for him and he made plans to share his secrets with her in the morning. It was time.

Lane woke her up with soft kisses along her spine and then caresses along her thighs. She smiled and moaned and turned toward him as his touch became purposeful and filled with need.
 

She had never had a lover who made her feel so
needed
before. Lane always seemed hungry for her flesh, whether their lovemaking was tender and slow or hurried and urgent, she never felt like he was merely scratching an itch or performing an obligation. He seemed to breath her in as though he were some feral animal reacting on instinct, as though her scent drove him beyond rational thought, her scent and only her scent.
 

He made her feel adored. The way his eyes feasted over her curves, the way his hands held her as though she were a precious artifact.

Still, there had been no mention of the future. No request for contact information. No suggestion of getting together later, not even meeting up for another hike.
Best not to get attached,
she reminded herself.
 

They sat close to each other and watched the sun rise while Tara boiled water for coffee and made breakfast. She noticed that he seemed unusually distracted. He kept starting to say things and drifting off before he'd finished his sentences. As though he were nervous about something.
 

It wasn't until they were taking down the tent and packing Tara's gear back into her pack that he finally seemed to have pulled his thoughts together and began speaking. At first it sounded like any other conversation they'd had over the past week, then Tara realized he was answering all the questions she'd been asking. Real answers. She focused on the his voice as she continued her packing, worried that if she stopped he'd realize what he was saying and change the subject.

"...wasn't until the 1970's that I came back. So much had changed. I was living in Sacramento. A lot of us had moved into the cities after the hunting began, so it wasn't hard to find others. That's where I met Allisha..."

"Allisha,"
Tara held on to the name and rolled it around her mind. The way he said the name made it sound sacred. That must have been his wife. The sound of Lane's voice faded into the background for a moment while she considered her reaction to hearing Lane say another woman's name in that tone. Mournful but respectful. Tara pushed the surge of jealousy down and tried to refocus on what he was saying.

"...when Diego found me...found me wandering the streets like a starved dog. That's when we moved back to the mountains. Of course, we could have any territory we wanted by that time, as much as we wanted. There weren't any rivals. There weren't any wolves at all. We kept moving south until we found a good position that kept us close enough to a town to satisfy any human needs. I still have the house in Lone Pine but mostly we've been in the mountains ever since..."

Tara furrowed her brow. She knew she had gotten distracted, but she felt like she was more lost than she ought to be. She shouldered her pack and they began moving down the trail again. Only a few more days before they would reach the southern end and go their separate ways. Unless there was a reason he was suddenly pouring his heart out to her now. Tara allowed herself a moment of hope and tried to focus on Lane's words.

"Thing is; we need a new alpha. I mean, a new alpha pair. Otherwise the whole pack will fall apart. Things are tense between me and Diego already. He's the only family I have left, we'd like to be able to stay together but we're only so human, you know?" The words that had been pouring out of him for the last 40 minutes suddenly stopped and he turned his head to look at her walking beside him. His silence begged a response and Tara didn't have one. She'd been silently daydreaming to the sound of his voice, letting herself think that maybe he was heading toward the possibility of a future with her. Now he stopped walking as he looked at her, his expression a question mark that required an answer from her.

"...only so human..."
was the last thing he'd said. The words echoed in her skull with nothing to connect them to. She didn't think she'd missed that much of the conversation, she felt like she had followed along fairly well; he had lived in Sacramento, got married, she'd been killed, his brother found him living in the streets, they moved to the mountains and now his pack needed a new alpha pair so that his brother could breed his intended mate or the whole family was going to fall apart because they were
only so human
. See? She'd been paying attention the whole time, she knew exactly what he'd been saying.