(MxM) Tales Of A Shifter (P1) - The Meeting

Chapter 40 - Horse Killer

Mantilo caught sight of the house in the distance sometime later.

After jogging in the night beside his sons, chasing shadows and in hailing the putrid scent of dead moose flesh for hours he was glad to be within steps of his bed. His legs and arms burned from the multitude of bite he had sustained, now that he had visited the mosses graveyard three times in the last few hours and in the back of his head he still felt the rage burning. A rage that had come over him and refused to die, when he realized that his sons were under attack, that two of them were hurt.

He controlled it, but the drying blood on Nate's face, and the obvious way that his youngest son was favoring his uninjured shoulder ate at Mantilo.

He should have sensed the unique threat sooner. Put the pieces together faster. And even now, when he didn't completely believe what his gut was telling him about the moose killer, he believed that he should have done more to protect his family.

The fringes of exhaustion crept in as his eyes took in the mansions warm lights and the scent of sweet water and pine lacing the winds, cleared out his assaulted throat and nose, of the putrid smells of decay and death. But even more then the bug bites and fatigue of nearly three sleepless days, Mantilo felt the weight of his own worry weighing him down.

He didn't want to think that he was somehow right. That his suspicions were somehow founded. There was only one thing that he knew about that smeared black fluid on its kills. One thing that he prayed he was wrong about, since he hadn't ran into one of the beasts from his memory, in nearly sixty five long years.

Mantilo wanted to shake the thoughts away so he focused on the movement of his feet across the land and the rush of cool air in and out of his lungs. And he focused on his boys they rushed home beneath the moon light that ducked in and out of the clouds over head. He could sense the fatigue on his sons as well as the blue eyes of his youngest son. Every so often he caught Ezekiel watching him, or catching his breath to say something, but then he would subside and fall back into a silent thoughtful march beside his siblings.

Only to find Glen on the porch. A small porcelain cup in her hands as she stared out in to moonlight fields from the top step. And suddenly something more important than the tension bunched under his shoulders, the bed that was calling his name and the beast attacking their local livestock dawned on him.

His Mate looked like she wanted to talk.

Instantly he guessed what was coming next. He just knew, in his gut, that she wanted to talk to him about their current problem. The glaring pink elephant in the room that was shacking in their bed on the second floor of their home. A problem that he was soon going to erase in the morning.

Ezekiel and Glen, both wanting to talk to him. Both wanting to fight with him over a stranger. Mantilo understood that they were the same. In the way that their hearts ruled their minds.

But Glen totally blindsided him with the first thing she said.

"There's been another attack." Glen called out to them as they shuffled closer to the front door and the light.

"What..." Mantilo hissed coming further into the light and seeing the soft glow of apprehension in his Mates green eyes. "What's wrong Glen?"

Glen shook her head. "Well.....it was a distress call so I think something bad may have happened to them."

Before he could open his mouth to ask her anything else, the front door swung open behind her and out came Erin and Drin.

Their young faces also filled with apprehension brightened as they noticed him and their cousins standing outside.