Sabin

Copyright © Bailey Bradford 2013. All Rights Reserved, Total-E-Ntwined Limited, T/A Totally Bound Publishing. Normally, pity parties weren’t Sabin’s thing. Even when he’d been held captive for almost two years, unable to shift back from his snow leopard form, starved, neglected, abused. He’d been down during that time, certainly, but he hadn’t lain around wondering, ‘Why me?’ But tonight, he was definitely running the risk of that moronic type of brooding. Now he was free, able to shift as he pleased—which wasn’t often, thank you very much, because shifting was quite a bit more painful than it used to be. All Sabin could figure was that so many months being drugged and unable to shift had done something to him. It shouldn’t have. He’d run as a leopard for most of his childhood years and never changed forms, but that had been his choice. Which meant his current shifting pains might be psychological, and that was more trouble than he wanted to think about. Especially when he was feeling like he had a target between his eyeballs, and all because of some weird stranger’s text. For almost a week now, it had haunted him. One left. Will need help with this one, I think. Tell Sabin to be careful. It won’t kill him. Remus, we’ll meet, one day. The message hadn’t even been sent to him directly. It’d been sent to Justice, who was the mate of Paul. Paul in turn was Preston’s twin brother, and Preston was mated to Sabin’s brother, Nischal. The man who’d sent it, Cliff, was just out-and-out weird. Powerful, too, and he’d been so nice to Sabin when they’d met at the rest area a while back. “It’s a big loop of crazy,” Sabin muttered to himself as he took in the hundreds of stars lighting up the night sky. Their brightness made what dark there was around them seem endlessly black. Sabin put his hands to the window glass. It was cool against his palms. The moon shone high—a ‘goddess’ hangnail,’ his mother had called it when so little was on display. The silvery-white beams of light caressed the tops of the tree branches in the forest and cast pale streams on parts of the ground. Outside, there were shifters patrolling the grounds, protecting him and everyone else inside the cabins. There was still one psycho shifter on the loose. One twisted wolf who’d delighted in making humans his slaves and hurting them. And for some unfathomable reason, Sabin was supposed to have a place in catching that guy? Or was the ‘need help’ part about someone else? If that was the case, why was he supposed to be careful? What, exactly, wasn’t going to kill him? Being careful? Or whatever he needed to be careful of? The questions were endless, and had been ever since Sabin had been told about the text. Six days of him wondering, worrying, stressing— Damn, but he was tired of letting it get to him. What was he in danger of here, on his family’s property? As it turned out, ‘Grandma’ Marybeth was his mother’s cousin. She liked the Grandma part, but Sabin was having some trouble getting used to it. Every time he called her Marybeth or Miss Marybeth, he got thumped on the nose. The tip even had a slight pink tint to it from an earlier thump. Sabin left the window for the comfort of his hidden pack of powdered sugar donuts. He was lucky Nischal hadn’t sniffed them out. Ever since Sabin had gotten a little wound up at a rest area after eating his first junk food, Nischal had been a fun-killer by restricting Sabin’s access to most of his favorite unhealthy snacks. That just sucked. At least he had a couple of hidden stashes, thanks to Oscar. The snow leopard shifter was his cousin, somewhere down the line, and he’d become an ally when it came to circumventing Nischal’s bossiness. Of course, Oscar could be bossy too… The instant the sugary treat hit his tongue, Sabin began to feel better. If not better, then at least distracted. He thought that if everyone in the world would take a break to eat powdered donuts, maybe there wouldn’t be so much