Free Feint of Heart by Aimee Easterling Page B

molten brown irises. And the flavor of persimmons rose up to coat the inside of my mouth until I had to swallow the spittle that appeared out of nowhere to digest the feast.
    "Fuck! This is stupid!"
    It took longer than it should have for me to realize the screech came from my usually calm and collected pack mate. Fen had turned human and planted her feet, but none of the rest of us noticed her absence until we'd loped another fifty feet up the trail.
    We'll never catch him if we don't keep running. With that thought, I turned away from the girl and back into Alexis's rich presence, gathering myself to bound onward. Fen could take care of herself. If she was sick and tired of our hunt, then she could straggle back to camp and we'd meet her there later when we came home victorious.
    "Boss." Now it was Wade's human form that seemed planted to the earth. He'd materialized out of nowhere, making my nose bump painfully against his bare leg and forcibly halting my forward progress. "Didn't you hear Fen?" the seventeen-year-old asked, crouching down to grab my furred cheeks in both hands. "Shift, dude. She wants to talk."
    My head felt foggy as my gaze met his, and I could sense Alexis drifting closer. Her shoulder bumped mine, and I had a sudden urge to bowl my pack mate over and run off into the night with this beautiful female, consequences be damned.
    Then the underlying bitterness of the pack princess's scent reemerged, and I used the astringency to yank myself up onto two legs. I knew I owed it to Fen to listen to what she had to say. Still, my tone was much more curt than usual when I turned back around to face the teenager.
    "What?" I barked.
    The girl narrowed her eyes at me, an expression I'd seen her use on Wade dozens of times. It drove Fen crazy that her friend was always bigger, stronger, and faster than her, his three additional years giving the other teenager a boundless advantage. But she usually eyed me with an almost embarrassing level of hero worship rather than with this annoyed astuteness that made me want to shift back into lupine form and hide behind Wade's legs.
    "You really have no clue, do you?" the kid asked now. She stepped forward until her nose was mere inches away from my sternum. Then, poking a finger into my bare chest, she knocked me back half a step. "You can't see that this stool pigeon is leading us in the entirely wrong direction?"
    "Come on, Fen." Wade's calm voice said what my frozen lips were unable to communicate. "Sure, she's part of Chief Wilder's pack. But the Winter Hunt is just a game, and she's part of our team. Right, Alexis?"
    I held my breath, hoping I'd hear the pack princess's voice. Would her words be as honeyed as her gaze? Would her human form be as earth-shatteringly enticing as her lupine one?
    I angled my body toward our crew's fourth member in anticipation of the sight. But Alexis merely trotted forward on lupine paws and sank into a sit at my feet. Her burnt sienna eyes met mine and her ears turned backwards in a puppyish plea to run further, run faster. Hurry, hurry , her body language seemed to say.
    "Do we really have to discuss this now?" I ground out, my words aimed at Fen even though I couldn't quite make myself turn away from the pack princess in order to meet the former's eyes. "The other teams are gaining on the prize while we're piddling around. This win is important to the pack , Fen."
    I could feel the girl's agitation eddying in the air currents all around me. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the motion as she lurched backwards as if struck. So despite the attraction of the pack princess at my feet, I turned back toward my young pack mate. Sorry ....
    The word hadn't made it all the way to my lips, though, when Alexis whined. The thinnest thread of sound, like a wounded pup lost down a deep, dark hole. Forgetting Fen, I knelt beside the female shifter, stroking my palm across her silky fur. "Shh," I calmed her. "It's going to be alright."
    To my delight,