Page 17 of Squirrel Hunt

By nightfall, Dahy was exhausted. He’d collected as many acorns as he could. They should last him a week. If he could remember where he’d stored them. He’d found so many good places, he feared he’d managed to hide them from himself—it happened all too often.

He’d found a hazel tree as well. Most of the nuts were gone already, but he’d managed to find a few underneath the frost-covered leaves on the ground.

After having fixed some food that wasn’t nuts, he slid into the bath with a book. It was about wolf shifters which he found hilarious. Everyone in the pack could talk to each other through mental links while in shifted form. Outlandish, but fun. But then he reached some sexy times, and all he could see was Konrad, so he closed the book with a slap and put it away. He would not be lusting for a wolf. A wolf!

He might be a little reckless at times, but there were limits to his stupidity. Konrad might be hot, and simply thinking about him might set Dahy on fire, but he liked living too much to entertain the idea in his mind.

Maybe.

With a groan, he stood in the bath. Sleep. He’d get some sleep, and then this insanity would go away. He dried himself with brisk motions, ignored his aching cock, and climbed the stairs to the bed. He flung himself into the pillow nest and wrapped the duvet around himself.

It took some time, but when he finally fell asleep, it was to images of acorn stashes, only the acorns turned into walnuts. He loved walnuts. All the trees around the cabin turned into walnut trees, and Dahy was sure he’d found his slice of paradise.

A hair-raising growl woke him a couple of hours later. Something moved in the dark by the stairs, and Dahy dove for the perfume bottle. His heart was blocking his throat, and he almost dropped the bottle before he managed to get the first spray out.

Holding his breath, he hoped it was all a dream, but when a snarl filled the room, he knew it wasn’t. They’d found him. Whoever they were. He sprayed again. Sprayed in the direction of the sound, sprayed on himself, and then he shifted.

Right before his hands turned into paws, he hurled the bottle at the floor, shattering the glass and spilling the liquid.

He couldn’t breathe.

He had to get out of there.

The monster snarled and launched itself at him. Or Dahy assumed it was what he was doing. The room was too dark for him to be able to see the intruder properly. He skidded to the side as soon as he heard a sound, and when the intruder coughed, he careened toward the stairs.

Squirrels were fast, and he was down the stairs before the monster had managed to turn around in the tiny bedroom and put his feet on the first step. Dahy dove for the kitchen, jumped up on the counter, and shifted long enough to get the window open. He then shifted back into squirrel, dove in under the table, and jumped up on one of the chairs right as the burglar or whatever entered the kitchen.

He held his breath, hoping his sense of smell had been so messed up by the perfume that he wouldn’t be able to tell Dahy was still in the room. The man growled—wolf, no doubt—and jumped up on the counter. Dahy couldn’t see his feet anymore, and his pulse was so loud in his ears, he wasn’t sure what he was hearing. When there was a thud outside the window, he jumped down from the seat and peeked at the counter from underneath the table. The wolf was nowhere to be seen.

Dahy hurried across the kitchen, out into the living room, and toward the front door. Changing back to human again, he grew dizzy from the strain he was putting on his body, but pushed down the door handle and got the door open. He shifted back to squirrel, climbed the nearest tree, and kept going. He was stinking of perfume and once the wolf had cleared his nose, he’d be able to track him without problem. He needed to be as far away as possible before then. And he needed to find a stream that hadn’t frozen over and get rid of as much of the scent as he possibly could.

His motions were sluggish, his heart beating fast. He had to get away, had to clean up, had to disappear, but he feared he’d have to find a hollow to hide in and rest for a bit before he could do any of those things.

Chapter 9

Konrad woke with a start. His phone was ringing. One day, he’d throw it at the wall, watch it splinter into a million pieces, and not get a new one.

“Yes.”

“There’s a squirrel squatting in my cabin!”

It took a couple of seconds for Konrad to decipher the words since it was mostly one long growl, then he removed the phone from his ear and checked the name on the screen. Farris.

“What?” He flung off the cover and put his feet on the floor.

“I came home—”

“What are you doing home?” Konrad looked around for his clothes, but his brain didn’t want to cooperate.

“I followed the guy. I lost him here in Doson and thought since I was here, I might as well crash in my own bed before heading back to Ordbury tomorrow. But it was occupied.”

Dahy. Konrad rubbed his chest. Fuck, had Farris done anything to hurt Dahy? “Where is he?”

Farris snarled. “I don’t know. I lost him in the park.”

“Which park?” There were no parks near Farris’ cabin. He lived in the woods.

“The only one. The one by the bakery.”