by Kayla Wolf
He nodded, his eyes suddenly guarded. She waited, trying her best to be patient… but there were emotions she couldn’t read flickering behind his eyes, and an odd tension in his jaw. His fists were clenched so hard around his mug of tea it was a wonder it wasn’t shattering, and his eyes looked like the sea during a storm.
“I’ve wanted so badly to tell you, but I’m scared of losing you. I’ve never—Jasmine, I’ve never felt like this about anyone else.”
”Neither have I,” she said tiredly, her heart pounding in her chest. Was he going to tell her? Or was he going to keep hedging? “But if you care about me, you have to tell me the truth.”
”You’re right,” he said simply, taking a deep breath. “It’s hard to know where to start.”
”At the beginning?” she suggested. He looked up at her with the hint of a smile dancing around his eyes.
”It’s not that simple. The start was—a long time ago. Longer than you know. I’m—Jasmine, I’m… all of us, here, the people who live on this peninsula. Everyone you’ve met. We’re not… we’re not like you.”
”What do you mean?”
”We’re—”
There was a sudden knock at the door. It was so loud—and the moment was so tense—that both Bryce and Jasmine nearly jumped out of their seats. Jasmine couldn’t tell if she was feeling the urge to laugh or the urge to cry—they’d been so close! Who on earth was knocking on their door at this time of night? It was after sunset, and they had no plans to have dinner with anyone but each other… who would possibly be visiting them? It wasn’t like any of Bryce’s friends to come by without calling ahead. The knock came again, more insistent this time, loud and demanding. Bryce was looking at her, a torn expression on his face.
The knocking came again, louder and harder, and this time it didn’t stop—whoever was at the door was pounding their fists on it with considerable fury. Jasmine felt a thrill of worry run through her all of a sudden. Could something be seriously wrong on the peninsula? Was Bryce needed for some kind of emergency? He was clearly thinking the same thing—she could see the worry in his eyes, contrasting with his reluctance to leave the important conversation they were having.
Jasmine gritted her teeth, then got to her feet, throwing her hands in the air exasperatedly. “This better be important, whatever it is.”
With an exhausted chuckle, Bryce got up and headed for the door. Jasmine sat back down at the table, not particularly interested in whoever was at the door. She’d only be annoyed with them, whoever it was. Instead, she pulled her phone out of her pocket… and blanched as she looked at the screen. A dozen missed calls from Elena… and twice that many texts from different unfamiliar numbers, all with the same characteristic all-caps presentation that Grant favored. She felt a cold fear clutch at her heart as she opened a few of them. Phrases jumped out at her like darts—threats of physical violence, promises to make her regret leaving, and—most chilling of all—the most recent text, sent about an hour ago. All it said was, “SEE YOU SOON.”
Her heart pounding, hardly daring to believe any of this was happening, Jasmine dialed her voicemail and lifted her phone to her ear. Elena’s voice was in her ear immediately—she sounded more animated than Jasmine had ever heard her.
”Jazzy, pick up your stupid phone. For God’s sake. There’s some real-life shit on your phone. Sophisticated. Completely illegal, hard to use—Grant’s hired someone good—doesn’t matter, none of it matters, Jazzy listen—he knows where you are. He can track you down. You need to destroy your phone, call the cops, get as far away from there as you can—”
But she’d already dropped the phone. Because clear as a bell, from the now-open front door, she could hear a voice she’d hoped she’d never hear again. And there, outlined in the doorway, she could see him. Grant. The boss she thought she’d left behind. He’d found her. He’d come for her. She moved to Bryce’s side as though in a dream, her eyes fixed on Grant’s face—it was dark with anger, but there was a triumphant twist to the smirk on his face that made her sick to her stomach.
”There you are,” he said, his voice setting her teeth on edge like it had a hundred times a week back in Denver. “You seriously thought you’d get away from me that easily? I’m smarter than you, Jasmine. Never forget that.”
”Jasmine, do you know this—man?” Bryce’s voice was low and deadly, calm as the surface of a lake… but Jasmine could feel the tension in his body, feel how ready he was to strike Grant. It made her feel better, having Bryce there by her side. Grant might have been big—but Bryce was bigger. And she knew for a fact that while Grant might talk a big game, he had no idea how to fight. And from what Bryce had told her about his wild youth, he was pretty experienced in that department.
“He was my boss,” Jasmine said, sure that Bryce knew that already but wanting to get the point across to Grant. “Back in Denver. I have no idea what the hell he thinks he’s doing here.”
”You signed a contract,” Grant snarled, clearly aggravated by being talked about in the third person. “So when you broke that contract, I was well within my rights as an employer to hire a private investigator to track you down. Thought you’d get away from me that easily? You’re mine, bitch.”
Bryce growled at that. “Do you always speak to women like that? I’m not surprised you’re having staffing difficulties. Leave our home.”
”Our home, is it?” Grant stared at Jasmine, rage building in his face—she could see the veins on his neck sticking out as his temper rose. “You live with this ugly bastard? What kind of a mid-life crisis are you having, anyway, moving out here to the middle of nowhere with some hick—”
”That’s enough,” Bryce said, moving to close the door—but Grant slammed it open with his fist, the momentum carrying him into the house. Jasmine took a few steps back, but Bryce didn’t budge an inch. The men glared at each other, inches away, Grant full of seething fury, Bryce as still and controlled as a cat about to pounce on a mouse.
“You think you’re scary, don’t you, big man?” Grant spat into Bryce’s face, his mouth twisting upwards in a demented smile. “You’ve always been good in fights because you’re big, right? You have no idea who you’re dealing with. If you were smart, you’d hand her over and go back to your pathetic little seaside life.”
”This is your last warning,” Bryce said, not flinching. “Leave this house. Leave this entire peninsula and never return. It’s not too late to turn around. Don’t do anything stupid.”
”You’re the one who’s doing something stupid,” Grant snarled. “You don’t even know what you’re looking at.”
”Oh, I know,” Bryce said levelly. “I think you’re the one who doesn’t. Or do you think you’re the only one?” Jasmine blinked, watching this exchange curiously. Were they still talking about their respective fighting prowess? There was an odd undertone to this conversation that she didn’t quite understand.
”You’re nothing like me,” Grant spat. “Now, get out of my way before I bring your whole house crashing down.”
It happened in an instant. Bryce’s eyes flashed—and then suddenly his hands were on Grant’s shoulders, shoving him bodily out of the house and into the front yard. Grant shouted in rage as he lost his balance, stumbling backwards into the yard and out of Jasmine’s line of sight. Bryce was following him, his hands clenched in loose fists in front of him, dropping into a fighting stance… but there was something horribly wrong with Grant. He was still yelling, but somehow, his voice was warping and shifting, dropping lower and lower in register… impossibly low. Lower than any human being’s voice could ever be. And as Jasmine reached the doorstep, she recoiled in horror at what she saw. Grant was looming over Bryce, suddenly a full foot taller than he had been a second ago—and still growing.
And as she watched, shock and disbelief raging in her mind, the bizarre transformation that was taking place continued. His shoulders were swelling and growing as he seemed to grow taller and broader… but that wasn’t al
l that was happening. Thick, dark brown fur was sprouting all over him, for all the world like one of those old werewolf movies… but what was staring down at Bryce when the transformation was complete was no wolf. It was a grizzly bear—enormous, at least ten feet tall, with two great paws full of razor-sharp claws and a murderous look in its eye that was hauntingly familiar. It roared down at Bryce now, and Jasmine stared at him. Was he frozen in shock? She certainly felt like her feet were rooted to the floor.
But no. Bryce was staring up at the bear as though this kind of thing happened all the time. There was a curious smile on his face, and as she stared at him, he turned to meet her eyes for just a moment. What was that expression? He looked… resigned to something. At peace, almost. Bryce turned back to the bear… and his body exploded, all of his limbs warping and shifting, the most horrific sight she’d ever borne witness to.
Jasmine screamed at the top of her lungs. A part of her was afraid that she was never going to be able to stop.
Chapter 13 – Bryce
The minute he opened the door, Bryce knew what this man was. It gave him pause for a long moment. Could Jasmine have known she was working for a shifter? Almost certainly not, he concluded in the frozen seconds it took him to work through what was going on—an angry man, pounding on the door, shouting Jasmine’s name. Who else could it be but the boss who’d been bothering her ever since she quit her job? He’d seen how often her phone vibrated, the tight frown on her face when she checked who it was. There’d been nothing he could do to protect her from phone calls.
But now, with the man on their doorstep… well, there was certainly something he could do about that.
But he was a shifter, that was clear—Bryce knew that in his bones with the ancient, unerring instinct that shifters possessed, the recognition that was as much a survival instinct as flinching away from something hot. This man certainly wasn’t a dragon, though—nor was he a wolf, if his eyes were anything to go by. Bryce had never met a wolf shifter who didn’t have those bright, piercing silver eyes… and this man’s were a deep, dull brown. Could he be a bear? He certainly looked like one, tall and broad as he was… but so did Bryce, he supposed. The appearance of your human form wasn’t necessarily an indicator of what kind of shifter you were, with the exception of eye color—and of course, the different species of shifters all had different relationships to their bodies. For dragons, the human form was traditionally a secondary body, a kind of disguise that was learned in puberty. It was a recent development to spend as much time as they did in their human forms, down here on the peninsula. But for wolves, that could vary. They were born in their human bodies, and the wolf shape came later, usually during puberty. The relationship to that form varied depending on the pack—some wolves spent the majority of their time in their wild shape, some considered it a useful tool to shift into only when necessary.
Of course, there were other kinds of shifters, but he knew much less about those. He knew there were coyotes, out east in the desert—he’d even met a couple in his travels, a quiet pair who kept mostly to themselves. But their eyes had been hard, clear yellow, nothing like this man’s. Nor was he likely to be a panther. So that left…
Bryce’s jaw tightened when he made the connection. A bear. Of course. Jasmine couldn’t have known—it was unlikely that anyone else did, either. Bear shifters worked a little differently to most of the species he was familiar with. Being a bear wasn’t passed on through the family in the same way that being a dragon or wolf was—they were distributed randomly through the population, as likely to be born to human parents as bear ones. And that meant that their discoveries of their true nature tended to be… dramatic. Bryce had gotten drunk with a dark-eyed, leather-clad woman in a bar once, and she’d told him a little about it. The first shift was always brought on by a traumatic experience—she’d been a teenager, cornered on her walk home from school by some older guys from school. Pinned against a wall in an alley with a knife to her throat, her first shift had taken her—and three teenaged boys were no match for a ten-foot grizzly bear, knife or no. And once the first shift had come, it was that much easier for the bear to rear its head whenever emotion ran high or a threat was detected. She’d had to leave her home, her family, terrified of a sudden burst of anger turning her into a weapon that could harm the people she loved.
Bears had an unfortunate reputation for being violent, for not being in control of their wild shape. The handful of bears Bryce had met hadn’t matched that description at all—if anything, they’d been calmer and more in control of themselves than the average shifter, perhaps as a direct result of the power and intensity of their wild form. Looking into Grant’s furious face now, Bryce couldn’t help but marvel at the control he must be exhibiting to remain in his human shape like this. From what Jasmine had told him about the man, he was an incredibly volatile and angry person. He must have found a way of channeling the rage, of expressing it aloud instead of letting it boil in his blood and bring about the shift.
But it was clear he was losing that control now. Bryce knew there was only one way this scene was going to end—there would be no gently talking Grant down and convincing him to leave Jasmine in peace. One way or another, this was going to end in a fight… and from the way Grant was talking, he fully intended to take advantage of his bear in that fight. There was no avoiding it. The conversation he’d been wanting to have with Jasmine about what he was, what it meant… it was too late for it now.
She was standing a few paces from the door, her eyes wide with worry as she listened to the conversation between the two men. He looked at her for a moment, thinking about the time they’d spent together, about what he’d learned about the bright, brave, funny, gorgeous woman standing there, watching him, trusting him to keep her safe from the monster on the porch. He took a deep breath, suddenly full of calm resolve. She trusted him to keep her safe. He could trust her to see what he really was… and make her own decisions about whether that meant she could stay with him.
She only knew him as a human. But his human form couldn’t protect her from a bear. For that, he was going to need his dragon.
Grant was about to snap—Bryce could almost sense the guy’s anger building, feel the magic in the air the way you could feel humidity building in the atmosphere before a thunderstorm. So before he could shift form in the house, probably destroying it in the process, Bryce struck. Without warning, he lunged at Grant, shoving him out into the front yard, just wanting to get him as far away from the cottage as possible. The man screamed in rage, and he felt it happen—saw the transformation magic take hold of his body, which began to grow, his already-broad shoulders stretching and spreading. His clothes shifted with him, Bryce noticed, surprised again by that level of control. This man was a formidable opponent.
Jasmine was in the doorway, her eyes fixed on Grant with absolute horror painted across her face. Well, that answered that question… it was clear she’d had no idea what her boss truly was. That was going to make this hard. He took one more look at her, feeling curiously at peace even as the bear roared and snarled before him. One way or another, at least she’d know the truth about what he was.
He looked back up at the snarling ten-foot bear before him… and let the magic take him.
Bryce had always loved his dragon form. Some guys were more comfortable in their human shapes, and he didn’t mind his, exactly—some things you just needed opposable thumbs for. But his dragon… that was coming home. Shifting felt like taking off a tight-fitting shirt, or a pair of uncomfortable shoes. But the joy was a little tarnished this time by the piercing scream he heard from the house. Jasmine. He forced himself not to turn to look at her.
He knew what he looked like. The scales had rippled out across his body, a dark blue that camouflaged him against the ocean—and against the night sky. Four stout, powerful legs, tipped with razor sharp claws. A long, elegant head, topped with a pair of sharp horns. A whiplike tail at the other end of his spine, covered in stabilizin
g fins that helped him in the air as well as underwater. And on his shoulders, folded close to protect his body, a pair of broad, leathery wings. He was an elegant creature… but would Jasmine think him terrifying? Were her screams just surprise… or were they horror at the monster on her doorstop who’d once claimed to be her husband?
The bear’s roaring had stopped, and when he snapped his head back to look at Grant, he could tell the man was completely floored by this revelation. He’d never met a dragon, that was clear—if he had, he might have been a little more cautious about picking a fight. Bryce snarled, opening his jaw wide to display his sharp, gleaming teeth, and unfurled his great wings, rearing up a little to impress Grant with his great size. If the guy was smart, he’d turn tail and run—but it was clear the bear hadn’t come all this way to just turn and leave. He slashed at Bryce with one great paw, roaring in anger and fear, clearly beginning to lose control of himself. It was an easy blow to dodge.
Bryce, for all his experience in fights, didn’t particularly enjoy them. His preference was to de-escalate… but in this situation, there wasn’t much to be done. He had to prove to Grant that he didn’t have a hope in this fight, ideally without doing him too much damage. But when the bear charged him again, he knew inflicting an injury might be unavoidable. He stepped back, absorbing the force of the bear’s charge, then turned to slash a wound into the flesh of the bear’s shoulder, his razor-sharp claws slicing through the fur as though it was barely there. The bear roared in pain and fear, stumbling away, and Bryce pressed the advantage, shooting forward with impressive speed to knock the bear off balance again and again. In the background, he was aware that Jasmine had stopped screaming, but he didn’t dare glance back to the house to check if she was still watching.
Grant tried a few more times to strike at him, but it was clear that he’d realized he was outgunned here. Bryce blocked the blows easily, hissing and snapping at the bear in response, delivering a few more blows with the blunt side of his claws. And before long, as quickly as the fight had started, it was over. The bear stumbled away from him, dropping to all fours and shambling towards an unfamiliar car that was parked a few hundred yards up the road. Bryce followed, his serpentine body held low to the ground, wanting to make sure the bear made it to his car so he’d get the hell out of there without causing any more trouble.