Running With The Pack: Big Easy Shifters: Book Four by Knox, Abby (best book club books TXT) 📗

like Bobby to sweep her off her feet without notice. To put all of their baggage aside and just grab her up and take her to bed.

Maybe it would ruin their friendship. But it probably wouldn’t.

As Pen instinctively scanned the crowd, she noticed something was wrong. Wrong in the air, in the scents that were present. Her wolf senses took over, and she set aside her melancholy feelings for the moment. GiGi and Vann were missing, but their scents were still on board. Word around the boat was those two were holed up below deck, making up for lost time with each other as Vann had recently returned from a television shoot overseas.

But then, also missing were Chastity and Gavin, the other remaining members of the bridal party. Chastity was Rosemary’s cousin from Baton Rouge who had gotten so shit-faced drunk at the bachelorette party, she ended up dancing on top of Bobby’s bar. Gavin had paired up with her at the end of that night, and that’s as much as Pen knew or cared to know about it. But Chastity and Gavin were not just missing from the human tunnel and shirking their bridal party responsibilities.

Their scent is not even on this boat, she thought.

Pen sniffed the air again. Something else canine was in the air, though—actually, complete canine, not shape-shifter canine.

Has someone brought their service dog to this wedding?

But no, that wasn’t it. It was a disturbed, determined energy.

After Rosemary and Ash had disembarked the riverboat and hopped into the classic car to speed off to the hotel, Pen turned to Bobby. “Take a whiff. Gavin’s not here on the boat. He left.”

Bobby looked around and sniffed. “You’re right. Think he sneaked away with that chick from Baton Rouge?”

Pen shook her head. “I don’t know, but I think we’d better find out.”

Bobby took Pen’s hand, and sparks seared into her.

His stare warmed her soul. Bobby’s eyes came to life again, now that he didn’t have to talk about himself.

And then, looking down at the dock, they watched as a stray Labrador retriever was running toward them. Its eyes locked onto the two of them, and then it stopped short of the gangway. The Lab began barking right at Bobby and Pen.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Bobby muttered.

Pen turned to her friend. ”I think he wants us to follow him.”

* * *

Her paws were light on the earth, her eyes trained on the stray Lab, as they all ran full tilt, like they’d never run before.

Pen’s coppery fur stood on end, knowing she was headed straight into trouble. On that June night, the air in New Orleans was virtually pea soup, but the matter at hand had the wolf friends speeding along as if the wind was at their back. As if they were together on a hunt in the woods, carefree and fierce.

The wolves were anything but carefree at the moment—she was sure she and Bobby were not going to like what they would find at the end of this scent trail—but part of her was happy to be running beside her dearest friend again.

The wild, boisterous hunts in the woods, lakes, and swamps had taken a backseat these last few months. A lot of wedding drama had taken over their lives. The normally life-giving hunts had become a temporary inconvenience every full moon, only to be squeezed in between dress fittings and endless wedding-related parties. There was another inconvenience: with all the pairings-off between wolf shifters and feline shifters—that would be Rosemary’s people—the monthly hunts included more and more participants. Outsiders were working their way into the pack. Pen was trying to keep an open mind, but it was hard.

She loved Rosemary, so she had to keep an open mind. Last January, she had become a client at Pen’s design studio, and the two of them hit it off immediately. They liked each other so much they even worked through their differences in their packs. Rosemary was a shape-shifting panther, and Pen was a shape-shifting wolf. But Pen figured if her pack mate, Ash, could overcome the fact that his true love was a shifter of an entirely different species, so could Pen.

She had even grown to accept Rosemary’s cousin GiGi, grudgingly, after she’d morphed into a panther and accidentally injured Pen’s pack member Vann.

Pen had told herself to just deal. Because why bother living if you could not be free to love who you loved or could not throw a party at every turn for no reason?

But the wedding was over now. There would be no more chatter about flowers or dresses or place settings. Pen was simply running beside her best friend Bobby and not talking.

It was primal and perfect.

She had discarded her gigantic silver bridesmaid’s dress in a lonely, crumbling cemetery on the edge of downtown. She and Bobby had hidden there to quickly shift from their human to wolf forms. Funnily enough, Pen noticed before they sprinted away that her dress was entangled with Bobby’s custom-tailored suit on the ground among the tombs. The two garments reminded Pen of photos from archeological digs showing skeletons clinging to each other in the midst of whatever natural disaster had destroyed their village. Well, if that’s not the most depressing harbinger of Pen and Bobby’s relationship, she didn’t know what was.

But for now, Pen put the thought of bedding down with Bobby out of her head. Chas and Gavin were missing and likely in trouble.

When this was over, and all her friends were safe, Pen decided she would not waste any more time wondering when Bobby would come around.

She was done watching everyone else fall in love. She was going to fix this thing between them, once and for all.

Chapter Six

Bobby

He should be holding Pen right now. Kissing her. Caressing her. Ridding her of that dress to explore each other’s bodies, not to run to someone’s rescue. They should be alone somewhere. Anywhere. Instead, they ran toward danger together.

He had blown