The Unraveling, Volume One of The Luminated Threads: A Steampunk Fantasy Romance Read Online Free PDF Page B

she’d described: overwhelmingly rabbit, but with a trace of that other scent lurking around the damaged crops, that…something else.
    Maraquin snorted the air from her nostrils, took another whiff, but shook her head when she changed. “I smell it, but have no idea.”
    Zar backed from the hole, looking the most puzzled. “This sounds stupid, but it reminds me of my old granny’s house.”
    “What?” Jac said. “Your gran lived in a rabbit warren?”
    The group broke into laughter, albeit nervous laughter.
    He shrugged. “I weren’t more than a kitten when she died, but I practically lived there. Would rather not of, with her always shovin’ us aside with her broom, cleanin’ each dropped crumb. Had floors you could eat off of.”
    “That beast is long gone out a second or third burrow exit.” Daeryn waved toward Wellspring. “We’ve left our jobs unattended far too long.”
    Jac rolled her eyes. “Terrent will have picked his fox tail bare—”
    “Damn.” Daeryn started to change, then stopped to tell them, “I asked him to fetch Miz Gere if I didn’t return in fifteen minutes.”
    “I suppose I’ll have to explain why we’re off-property.” Jac stomped her foot.
    Zar snorted. “Not that it was your idea to ignore her policies, or our safety procedures, or any common sense—”
    Daeryn didn’t wait to hear the rest. He dropped to all fours and started running.
     

 
     
    Chapter four
    The chug, chug, chug of the steam tractor reached his ears long before Daeryn broke out of the woods. Too late. Terrent had probably scampered for help the minute he’d told Zar where they’d gone. But news of the most recent way the sharp-toothed pests were damaging crops should distract Miz Gere from the nuisance of being woken and the team hunting off-property.
    Daeryn emerged just when the tractor’s engine shut down. The dying sound marked the location up the hill—
    He groaned. More than thirty farmhands swung lanterns over the northern fields. Terrent had brought in a damned search party. With lights. Every pest in the place should have fled by now. Daeryn certainly wanted to. Better than facing Miz Gere. Likely she was the tall figure rising from the seat behind the driver, but he couldn’t make out her face. Or attitude.
    “The team’s back!” a man called. “Over at the turnips.”
    Wellspring’s dayworkers converged on Daeryn, mainly growers, but also the three diurnal guards. He blinked in the lantern light, the flashes of color at the edges of his nocturnal vision blinding him. He halted. The rest of the nocturnal team caught up, their nervous excitement besieging his other ’cambire senses. Beside him, Jac growled, as did Maraquin a second after her alpha.
    Calls rang out. “Is everyone accounted for?”
    “Any injuries?”
    “What’s this creature look like? Who caught it?”
    “They’ve all turned up, Mistress Gere,” shouted the leader of the day guards. “No one’s limping, so I’d say we’re done here.”
    Daeryn put his head down and shoved between several human legs. He wasn’t shifting while surrounded. The others followed, and together the team stalked up the dirt road to meet the tractor and Wellspring’s owner.
    Miz Gere must have dressed quickly since she wore her split trouser-skirt and gumboots, but the high collar of a flannel nightdress peeked above her woolen wrap. Instead of being pinned in a roll, her brown hair fell down her back in a braid. Still, she acted her usual formidable self while scanning their group, taller than most of them even if they’d been in human form. Her gaze lit on the dark-furred wolves, Zar’s wide whiskered face, then came to rest on Daeryn, her brow raised in the same implied question she’d posed to the others: How are you?
    Daeryn nodded.
    “It’s late,” she announced. “Growers, return to your beds. I’ll fill you in during the morning report. Day guards, please remain.”
    A few of the growers persisted with questions