Paranormal Division: Awakening

by Ellie J Duck

  “He was betrothed to a super-important tigress from a rival family to his own for the political alliance it would buy his family and he ditched me,” Tara answers. “I was devastated. I’d dated him for nearly a year before he even mentioned the other girl. When he ditched me to attend his wedding, I was pretty torn up. I got rip-roaring drunk, with Brody’s help – he’d joined us by then and we were close. I don’t really remember much of what happened, but I know I woke up naked in bed with him.”

  “You and Brody have hooked up?” I ask, surprised. They’ve always seemed close, but I’m shocked to learn they’ve done the deed.

  Tara glances at me then before leading me a little deeper into the store.

  “Brody wasn’t always the boy you know now,” she tells me. “Like I said, Greg pretty much raised the four of us. When Brody was nine, he was brought to Greg. His entire clan had been slaughtered by hunters, those religious nutjobs that Greg mentioned the other day. He was the only survivor and he was beyond wild back then. He’d been left alone in the woods for weeks, surviving as a bear, shifting far younger than is normal. Regularly, Shifters don’t fully come into their shifting abilities until we turn eighteen. Up until then we transform with the moon and lose our humanity, but in far less noticeable ways.”

  “It would be too dangerous, otherwise,” I nod. “As kids you wouldn’t have the mental reasoning to understand why you shouldn’t shift in front of humans and you could possibly be mistaken for an orphaned wild animal and put in a zoo or something.”

  “You’re good at this,” she praises me suddenly. “At understanding us and the way things work for us. But anyway, they found him in the woods. The only reason he was even brought in alive was because of your Dad. Magnus Cane was on the team who hunted down his clan’s killers – what was left of them after what Brody did to them – and he was the only one who could get close to this wild little cub that refused to shift to human. It took them weeks to talk him into it. You and Brody have actually met before, you know?”

  “Really?” I ask, startled.

  “Yeah, when he was just getting back into the swing of being human most of the time, your Dad brought you into the center where they’d been caring for him so that he’d have someone to talk to closer to his own age and someone to play with. It’s why Brody’s so protective of you. You probably don’t remember it, but he told me once about a little girl he’d met named Anna with vivid green eyes that made him a little bit nervous until she smiled at him and asked him if he wanted to play tea-parties with her. You helped him find his humanity again when he had such a tenuous hold over it.”

  “I didn’t even know,” I murmur, searching my mind for the time she is speaking of and vaguely recalling Dad taking me to his work and asking me to be nice to an older boy.

  “Anyway, when he was back in control of himself, your Dad called Greg. He knew Greg had already been raising me and that Brody didn’t have anyone else left to turn to. I think that if he’d been allowed, he’d have adopted Brody himself, to be honest, but he didn’t want to risk endangering him further through association. Back then Greg was in a different branch of the Council and so he had the time to raise us properly, rather than leaving us alone the way your Dad sometimes had to with you. Brody was a handful in his teens and only a year younger than me. When Calix ditched me, Brody was the one who got me drunk and he had far less morals and a far less controlled libido than he’s got now. Male Shifters in their teens are basically rampaging sex machines. I don’t remember much of it, but for that night he helped me forget Calix.”

  “You didn’t want to repeat the experience?” I ask her as I browse a rack of jackets.

  “Well see, about that,” Tara says, her cheeks turning pink. “Male Shifters are wild with lust in their teens, but female Shifters have to deal with a whole other ball game. When we turn eighteen and the full change can occur, we females also go into estrus. Basically, in the same way your pet might go into heat. From then on, every few months, we go into estrus. Usually it’s not a huge problem if we maintain a healthy sex life. But when it first hits or if it hits without having been properly curbed, we go wild. When it happened to me the first time I was in my bedroom at the base. Greg had taken Tobias with him to pick up Mitch from the facility where he’d been taken so it was only me and Brody home; he could smell it coming on before I realized what was happening. The minute it hit, he was at my bedroom door. He was still seventeen too, so he was as horny as I was and a female in estrus will drive most male Shifters out of their minds with lust.”

  “How long does estrus last?” I ask, marveling over the weirdness of that concept and yet finding myself strangely intrigued.

  “About four days, usually. We didn’t even leave my bedroom to eat. My room was practically destroyed. When he got back, Greg had to replace the tiling in my shower and had to buy me a new bed,” Tara tells me, blushing again. “Neither of us could even move by the time it was over.”

  “But you’re not together,” I point out.

  Tara shakes her head.

  “We’re too different. Too close and yet too far apart. I can never fully know the depths of baggage he has from what happened to him as a kid and we’re too separated by species. Bears and tigers don’t play well together. He’s my best friend, don’t get me wrong, but any kind of romantic relationship between us would be too weird. I’m too highly strung and he’s too down to earth. Where he’s happy to chill out in the woods or just sitting with a jar of honey, I crave excitement and I constantly need to be entertained with something new. I’m afraid that if we ever did pursue a relationship, I’d get bored and wander off, as felines are prone to doing, and I’d hate to hurt him that way.”

  “I wondered when I joined the team if you were a couple because of the way you’re so comfortable with him. More so than you are with Mitch or Tobias,” I nod my head.

  “I love the pair of idiots,” Tara smiles fondly in their direction when we notice them across the store. Tobias has clearly lost his temper with Mitch’s theatrics and has resorted to throwing missiles at him in the form of balled up clothing.

  “But with them there’s more distance. It was just me and Brody for years. Tobias didn’t come on the scene until he was fourteen and Mitch is the baby of the group. With them too, the difference in species is a factor. With Tobias especially. Wolves are much different to the rest of us. Being a tiger means I am more than happy on my own. If I were to live wild, like my beast wants, I’d do so as a solitary animal outside of times when I was copulating or raising cubs. Same goes for Brody and Mitch. Bears are solitary outside the breeding season, and lions can go either way. Pride life would work for Mitch just as well as being a bachelor male in a coalition. The three of us are content being alone even when we’re together because our inner animals live that way. The same can’t be said for Tobias.”

  “Because he’s a wolf?” I ask.

  She nods, “His kind craves the security and the familiarity of a Pack. He craves the camaraderie of belonging to a group and while we make a decent substitute, he’ll always crave the company of his own kind. And that doesn’t even factor in the way dogs and cats don’t mix so well or the way he and Brody have a bit of a rivalry, because, in the wild, bears and wolves compete for prey and territory.”

  “Sounds lonely,” I say quietly, watching him laugh across the store where he, Brody and Mitch have begun an all-out war amongst the clothing aisle, laughing and ducking behind things as though they’re still children instead of grown men.

  “He is lonely,” Tara murmurs back to me. “It’s why he’s so surly and why he’s so torn over the idea of having you on the team.”

  “Me? Why?” I ask, confused.

  Tara gives me a pitying look for a moment.

  “The reason the werewolves first admitted their existence to humans is because in humanity they find the kind of Pack-mentality they crave. When they live together in Packs, they’re happy enough, but most of the time when a werewolf f
inds their true-mate, it’s a human.”

  “True-mate?” I frown.

  “Like a soulmate. It’s very rare for true-mates to ever find each other. The odds of doing so are astronomical. For our species to survive without intermingling and creating hybrid species and without inbreeding, Mother Nature chose almost all of our true-mates from amongst humans.”

  “What does that have to do with Tobias being torn over me joining the team?” I ask her, my heart fluttering strangely.

  “His parents were a true-mate pair, just like yours were. Much like your parents, his were persecuted for their relationship. His father turned his mother into a werewolf and for a time they built a Pack together. Eventually her family found out. And unfortunately, her family happened to belong to a group of hunters that destroy our kind. Think Supernatural, the TV show, only in real life. Those ones aren’t so much religious nutjobs as just crusaders against what they believe to be abominations. When her family learned Tobias’s father was a werewolf and that he’d turned Tobias’s mother, they lost it. The whole Pack was hunted. It’s one of the reasons he hates humans so much. For their intolerance and their reckless hate. His parents survived, but they were both driven mad. His mother went rogue. No one has seen or heard a word about his father since Tobias was fourteen.”

  “Why not?”

  “No one knows. One day after the full moon Tobias went looking for him in his enclosure and his father was gone. He’d chewed his way free and the trail for him went cold. He was three parts mad by then. The death of one’s mate does that to us. He’s torn over having you on the team because whilst he despises humans, he also knows we need more people like you. Not to mention one of the reasons werewolves are so feared by humans is their drive to turn others into werewolves. It falls back to Pack mentality, but even though most of the time he’s surly about you being here, he’s usually sitting there fighting the urge to make you a werewolf, so he won’t be a lone wolf anymore.”

  I blink at her in surprise when she follows that whole heavy spiel by holding up a gaudy sale-item summer dress.

  “Is this my color?” she asks me, and I marvel at the feline mood-swing realm.

  “Not really,” I admit. “Green looks good in your eyes, but pea green doesn’t suit your skin tone. You’d look like a giant frog if you wore that.”

  Tara gapes at me for my honesty.

  “It’s like you took the words out of my mouth,” Brody says when he comes up beside me, slinging an arm over my shoulders in a familiar sort of way.

  “You’re as bad as they are!” Tara announces though she doesn’t look particularly offended. “Why am I so incapable of finding someone to shop with who’ll offer me fashion assistance?”

  “Probably because your taste goes toward trash like that and we know there’s no hope for you,” Mitch interrupts snidely, looking entirely too snobbish for his own good.

  Tara throws her hands in the air in total frustration with all of us when Hilton begins to nod in agreement before she stomps away toward the lingerie section.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  “Do you see any hot guys I can sleep with?” Tara asks me another half hour later as we stroll through the mall. She’s linked her arm through mine and appears to be having way too much fun simply strolling along. I can’t help but roll my eyes at her. Mitch ditched us a few minutes ago when he started chatting up a sales girl, shooting us all a cocky smirk when she suggested they find somewhere more private.

  I’ve been marveling over the fact that everyone stares at us. Me included. I don’t doubt it’s because Tara, Mitch, Brody and Tobias are the hottest things on two legs in the store.

  “Would you hurry up and pick someone to shag?” Brody complains from behind us. “If we miss this movie because you’re being too picky, I’m going to sit on you.”

  “I’m so scared,” Tara rolls her eyes.

  “You should be” he warns. “Because I’ll do it after I shift.”

  “What about him?” I suggest, nodding in the direction of a cute guy I’ve noticed who’s been watching us for a little while now as we wander around. Tara glances in his direction and begins to look away before her eyes widen and jump back to him.

  “Well, I’d begun to doubt your taste,” Tara says, a slow, flirtatious smile curling across her face before she flicks her eyes toward Hilton indicatively and earns herself an eye-roll from me. “But you’ve just redeemed yourself. I’m going over there. Cover me!”

  I can’t help but laugh when she slides her arm free of mine and stalks over with all the sexy hip-swaying and seductiveness one might expect from a high-paid courtesan.

  “Is he human?” I ask when Brody and Tobias come up on either side of me. “Should we be worried she’ll break him by accident?”

  “Nah, he’s a tiger like her. She’s going to be ages,” Brody replies. “Let’s get some food while we wait for Mitch to finish with his piece.”

  “What? You don’t want to ditch me for some hot piece of ass, too?” I tease him, giving his arm a shove.

  “You see anyone that durable around here?” Brody smirks at me and I suspect he heard Tara telling me about their encounter as teenagers. I glance around, wondering if there is anyone likely to be able to handle three hundred and fifty pounds of raw muscle.

  “Not really,” I admit. “But you shouldn’t underestimate us humans, we’re tougher than we look.”

  Brody eyes me strangely for a moment while I find myself recalling the fact that I’m just a human, but I handled a lust-drunk werewolf just fine. I mean, I felt like I’d been run over the next day, but I didn’t break.

  “You’re pimping me out now?” Brody chuckles even as he leads the way toward the food court of the mall.

  “I just don’t want any of you to lose your ability to function the next time Tara goes into heat,” I inform him. “I’m told that means you’ve got to keep on top of things.”

  “I do like to be on top,” Brody smirks at me in an impersonation of something Mitch would say, and I wonder at his tone. Ordinarily, Brody is serious and goofy.

  “I feel I could’ve happily lived the rest of my life without knowing that,” I inform him as I order a burger meal. I can’t help but snort when Brody and Tobias ask for six burger meals each, causing the cashier kid to pale in horror.

  When we get our orders, Brody ambles over to one of the mall tables and plonks himself down, ripping into a burger as though he’s not eaten in days.

  “Should I fear for life and limb right now?” I ask, when Hilton copies him, both digging into the food as though they’re starving. I jump slightly when Hilton hands me my burger before grabbing my wrist and yanking me down into the seat beside him, all without pausing as he eats his way through his third burger.

  “Okay then,” I murmur, noticing the way both boys have begun eyeing the rest of the populous within the mall suspiciously.

  “Too many humans,” I hear Tobias mutter between burgers and I glance around the mall, noticing that having just gone lunch time a larger number of people have converged on the mall. No doubt, from the stores and surrounding area, all of them on their lunch break and coming in search of food.

  When I glance at Brody, I notice that he is eyeing them all as though he’d like to roar at them all to warn them away from his food. Tobias lets out a little growl when a group of noisy teenage boys bump his chair on their way to their own table and I realize with a jolt that the team are not at all used to this kind of thing.

  I recall the time when Greg mentioned to me that I would always need to be just a little bit careful with the team. That it was important to remember that while they might look human, they’re not. A big part of them is a wild animal and it will attack when provoked. Realizing that they’re both beginning to act like nervous animals inside a cage, I try to think of some solution to keep them from losing their self-control in the middle of a busy shopping mall. I’m surprised that they are reacting this way but having just recently learned how they came to be
on the team and what happened to them, I suppose it makes sense that large crowds of noisy humans make them nervous.

  Thinking fast, I recall that after the full moon they all felt the need for physical contact to help them regain their hold over their humanity. Putting down my burger, I slowly reach my hand toward Tobias. I make sure not to make any sudden movements lest that startles him. His eyes fix on my hand as I move it toward him, their coppery shade brightening to orange as the wolf within him riles for release. A little growl rumbles from him, warning me away from his food, but I ignore the warning, directing my hand slowly toward his left shoulder.

  He stills when I touch his chest, placing my hand over his heart. Beneath my hand I can feel it racing inside his chest, hammering against his ribs. The growl coming from him recedes and I watch the way his eyes return to their usual coppery shade as he calms. He doesn’t say anything, but he holds my gaze for a long moment. I don’t move my hand away from him as I reach out with even more care toward Brody, noting the way he goes tense and he looks like he kind of wants to rip my arm off.

  When I brush my hand over the bare skin of his forearm, a shudder runs through the Bruin and a little grunt of sound escapes him. My eyes dart away from Hilton at the sound. It’s one I’m very familiar with. Dad used to make that sound when I was little and would climb into his lap unannounced while he was watching the hockey, demanding to be read a story or sometimes just wanting a cuddle. It’s a sound I recognize as being one of surprise and contentment rolled into one and I smile to hear it coming from the werebear.

  “You want some more food?” I ask them both when they relax beneath my touch, both looking at me with surprise on their faces, my hands still on both of them. Subconsciously my fingers draw calming little patterns against the inside of Brody’s wrist while the other hand slips away from Hilton’s chest and down his front searching for a patch of exposed skin, somehow knowing that skin-on-skin contact will calm him even more.

  When they both nod mutely, I grin and get to my feet, moving away from them and over to one of the food outlets across the mall. I could order more of what they’ve just devoured, but I think people might get suspicious if I do. When I reach a sub-sandwich outlet, I order ten sandwiches for each of them, knowing that keeping their beasts well-fed will help them keep it together. The sandwich maker eyes me in confusion for ordering so many and I return his stare drolly, waiting impatiently for the food to be prepared. When it’s ready I hand over my bank card, knowing from earlier that Greg has been paying me inordinate amounts of money for the job we do.