ROMANCE: SHIFTER: Shifter to the Max Collection (Dragon, Bear, Wolf and Panther Shifter Romances) (Paranormal Fantasy Romance Collection)

by C. J. Ayers

  It was big, with big, hunched shoulders. Oh Jesus, Joseph and Mary, it was a grizzly, for sure. What did they say? Try to outrun a grizzly by running downhill? Hadn’t she read somewhere that they could run 50 miles an hour? Wouldn’t they just run faster downhill?

  “Nice bear,” Elie babbled. It hadn’t moved yet, and she was putting some respectable distance between them. “Nice bear… happy bear… calm bear… bear that doesn’t like to eat humans…”

  There was a sharp whuff sound and the bear’s silhouetted head twitched. It was so like one of Jasper’s snorts that Elie giggled a little, or perhaps that was merely hysteria.

  Following the whuff was a much less familiar sound, as the bear opened its maw and bellowed a short warning.

  “N-Nice bear.” Elie’s voice had diminished to a flickering squeak. They said don’t run from a bear. You can’t outrun a bear. But there was a house just down the road, the first in a line of cheery-lit homes that lined the street between here and the Barner’s. The bear hadn’t even gotten off its haunches, yet.

  She could make it.

  Elie broke into a sprint. She’d never been much of a runner, a girl her size and shape had too much bounce and jiggle to run. Still, something primal and all-encompassing came rushing to the surface when the need to not die arose, and it pushed strength, surely more than she possessed naturally, into her legs, into her heart, into her lungs that were hissing air in and out. The house ran up the meet her in what seemed like no time.

  “Help!” she threw herself at the door frantically. “Bear! There’s a bear! Please!”

  The house’s occupants opened their doors, baffled but helpful, an older couple whose evening TV time had been interrupted. The man cradled a shotgun as he peered out beyond the safe halo of his front porch. He was dressed like a country grandpa, his flannel shirt tucked into jeans that nearly reached his breastbone. His blustering wife in her frilly nightdress (she’d obviously expected an early evening) pulled Elie inside.

  The bear hadn’t tried to give chase, but her geriatric saviors offered to drive Elie the rest of the way home. She accepted happily.

  Chapter Four

  Sunlight poured into Elie’s eyes. She pulled the quilt up, grumbling.

  This wasn’t her bed back in her Denver apartment. Where was she? She groped around for whoever she’d followed home.

  Wait.

  Elie sat up; she was in her old room in her parent’s house, although it didn’t look the way it had when she lived here. She’d sort of wondered, over the years, what her parents’ life might have looked like if she hadn’t existed, if her younger brother Jim had been their only one. Jim had followed his father into the Air Force; he was somewhere in South Asia, now.

  This room that had been hers was sunny and open. The thick curtains she’d liked were replaced with lacy white ones, which were pretty and feminine but did little to block out the sun from the eyes of late-sleepers. The wood bed frame was the same, and the desk and bookshelves. But everything was pleasant white and blue, now.

  Elie got out of bed and stretched for the ceiling. Her ripped Avenged Sevenfold concert t-shirt looked out of place.

  Scratching her scalp (the air was so dry up here!) and ruffling her already-dismal brown hair, Elie shuffled towards the window. There was the yard. There was the series of flower beds, just like always. And the birch trees—

  Elie opened the window. Frowning, she reached out and plucked an envelope from the branches that reached towards her sill. It had her name on it.

  Her frown turned into a smile as she read the note.

  Heard you were back in town, didn’t know your phone number. Hang out in the usual place?

  Still smiling, Elie set the note on the desk and headed for the shower.

  Hidden Lake is possibly the most liberally and generally applied moniker of lakes the world over, but to Elie, Hemford’s Hidden Lake was the only one worth mentioning. It was a tiny lake, really, nestled in a bowl up here in the Rockies, fed by watershed and emptying into a river at the east end. But it glittered like magic in the afternoon sun as she approached through the trees. It had always been magical, secretive, intimate.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t private today. Someone was already loitering around at the shore. She huffed; not much to do about it. It was a public lake, after all.

  The stranger saw her through the trees and smiled shyly. He waved.

  Elie frowned. “Jake?”

  “Hey! I was starting to worry you hadn’t found my note.” He walked up the shore to meet her; Elie stared.

  Jake Framer was probably the oldest friend she had. In the world of Elie Barner’s love and leaving, this didn’t amount to what it should, but he’d never seemed to hold her wanderlust against her. That was probably why she had always wandered on back down to this lakeshore to meet him, skip some rocks, drink their parents’ alcohol, and dream about the future. Though small and skinny, Jake hadn’t once bent to whims of others, where Elie had a tendency to try anything and everything and decide whether it was a good idea later. He was the rock to her ocean waves.

  Of course, back then, Elie wouldn’t have used a rock as a metaphor; he’d been thin as a waif at their graduation. The man who stood across from her now, smiling through a day’s growth of dark stubble and blinking in the sun, hardly resembled the kid he’d once been. Jake’s shoulders and chest had swelled, although his slim waist hadn’t budged. Veins stood out along his arms, and if the bulging muscles in his jeans were any indication, he hadn’t skipped leg day in five or six years.

  Elie was trying to wrap her head around the transformation when he opened his arms and wrapped her in a great, crushing hug, effortlessly picking her up off the ground as though she weighed nothing. She wanted to laugh, but it came out as a gasp. Wow, he was as strong as he looked.

  “It’s good to see you, Elie” His smile was… exactly as it had always been. Elie smiled back and threw her arms around his neck.

  “What have they been feeding you, growth hormones? I leave for a few years, and you turn into the Incredible Hulk!”

  His muscles (and there were many of them) tensed under her, and Elie slipped away from him cautiously. Jake’s smile had withered a little, but it came back in a flash and he shrugged.

  “Working the logging routes, it does a body good.”

  “Maybe I should go work with you,” she elbowed him in the waist and shivered; he was solid as a tree. “My core could use some tightening.”

  To her surprise and delight, he grabbed her soft waist with both hands speculatively. He squeezed, like he was playing an accordion, and Elie wriggled madly; she’d never tolerated tickling from another man, but Jake had been allowed this privilege since grade school.

  “Still ticklish? I thought people grew out of that,” he teased as they headed back down to the lakefront. There was a wood table by the water, so old that Lewis and Clark might have also used it as a picnic spot, and upon it stood a little Coleman cooler.

  “Never too early for a beer,” Elie agreed. Jake pulled out two bottles and handed one over; Elie looked at the label in surprise. “A connoisseur, are we? Where’d you find something that isn’t called ‘Coors’ or ‘Budweiser’ all the way up here?”

  “I wander into the city now and then,” he admitted, popping the twist-top and taking a sip. “I have to move up my monthly bath and change into my Sunday underwear, but it’s worth the trouble.” He had to finish his sentence through chuckles, because Elie had stuck her tongue out at him at the mention of once-monthly personal hygiene.

  They sat on the table-top, feet propped on the bench, just like always. Perfect. It was a little cold out, but it wouldn’t be right any other way.

  “How long have you been working at the mill?”

  “Some five—six years,” he corrected himself.

  Elie looked out over the lake. “You didn’t start right after graduation?”

  Jake shook his head; his dark reddish hair was a little shaggy, and
still damp with recent washing. “I actually tried city life for a couple years. Didn’t work out. Moved back here and they took me on at the mill right away.”

  Elie hummed, nodding. “How’s your mom? I bet she didn’t much care for you moving back.”

  “Oh… Mom passed away a few years ago.”

  Elie turned to Jake, shocked. “How?” Jake’s spitfire mother had been runner since her teens, and she loved to hike and exercise. It seemed impossible, wrong even, that she should be anything less than happy and healthy and still growing tomatoes in pots on her back porch. The thought of her gone…

  Jake took another swallow of his craft brew; the look on his face suggested he’d suddenly lost the taste for it. “Bear attack,” he murmured.

  “I saw a bear! Just down the street from my parents last night!” Elie couldn’t believe it. Gwen Framer? Killed? It was too awful.

  Jake nodded. “They pass through. Fish and Game… figure it’s just a stray male that wanders through town looking through people’s trash. They tried to hunt… A hunt went out for it, but they lost the trail.”

  “Jesus,” Elie exhaled, raising her eyebrows. She took another drink. “I’m so sorry to hear about your mom, Jake. I… I wish I’d been here for you.”

  Jake didn’t answer at first; when he did, his reply was strange. “It’s better that you weren’t here with me, Elie.”

  It was such a strange thing to say, even for a lonely soul like Jake, but Elie was so shocked at the thought—the unwelcome scene unfolding in her mind—that Jake’s bizarre comment flew over her dark hair right off into the forest, unnoticed. Having spent a thousand afternoons, both gorgeous and gloomy, on the Framer’s back porch, it was too easy to see it happen. Gwen stepping out for a hike through the woods behind her house, as she often did. In Elie’s mind, she was wearing her powder-blue windbreaker and a baseball cap. And out of the woods… a shape, hunch-shouldered and growling…

  For some reason, Elie’s mind kept filling in the image of bright red blood on the powder blue windbreaker. She closed her eyes and held her beer bottle against her head; it felt hotter out than it had a moment ago.

  Jake reached out and slung his arm over her shoulder; it was much heavier than it used to be, thick, sinewy and corded. Suddenly, it really was hotter out than it had been, and Elie felt the heat flush up her neck as she let herself be pulled against Jake’s side.

  “It was years ago,” he said softly. “It gets easier as time goes on.”

  He propped his chin on her head; Elie let him. It was comfortable and easy and snug, as if, like matching socks or puzzle pieces, they had been made together and meant to fit perfectly.

  Her eyes fell on the powerful legs in his jeans, and her memory began to unfold another scene, just before she left for France, just after graduation. The last afternoon on the Framer’s back porch, in the middle of a June rain. A skinny kid named Jake had taken a hell of a chance and tried to make her stay.

  He’d kissed her. At the time, Elie had been cruelly amused, childishly. Things had looked so different when she was eighteen, and Jake Framer from Hemford was far below what she had her sights set on.

  The warm ease that had been soothing through her turned cold abruptly. Elie pulled away. The guilt was so sharp she felt like she must be bleeding inside.

  Jake didn’t cling. He let her move away without protest. Like her mother, he’d learned long ago not to try and hold her when it was time for her to leave.

  “So,” he took another drink. “I heard you met Bryan Mosley last night.”

  “Yeah. So?” Was it always guilt that made even the most innocent questions seem like attacks? Elie didn’t know. Neither did she know any other way to respond except… defense.

  “He’s a sorry son of a bitch,” Jake said suddenly.

  Elie stood up, her hackles raised. “Why?” Because he won’t work at the mill like everyone else? Or because he came so close to what you want?

  There was no answer. If there had been one coming, Elie would have gotten it, because she waited for what felt like an hour, staring furiously as her rage peppered out, while Jake just sat there like a blank page and sipped his beer.

  “Well, why?” she repeated. Her voice had jumped a few pitches, and she sounded less defensive and more silly. That, more than anything, made her angrier.

  Through all this, Jake Framer just sat there, untouchable, the sun shooting through holes in the tree boughs overhead to glint red specks from his auburn hair. His great arms and shoulders were relaxed, as if he hadn’t a care in the world; Elie could see them flex easily though the fabric of his t-shirt.

  Without another word, Elie turned and stormed away. It was a little bit of relief, actually, not to have to fight. She should know by now how to handle discomfort without leaning on argument tactics, but Elie didn’t really. At least Jake didn’t slide down that slippery slope.

  Halfway home, she realized she was still clutching the craft beer bottle in one hand. She considered chucking it at a tree; instead, Elie sipped it thoughtfully, balefully, as she walked.

  In Denver, you’d get an interview with the city police it you walked around with an open beer down public streets. That was another great thing—the chances of being picked up over open containers in Hemford was blessedly low.

  Chapter Five

  “I hate being wrong,” Elie muttered.

  Five days had passed since she’d drove past the city limit sign, and beautiful spring-turning-summer days, at that. Elie had spent the last two rooting passively through the usual tracks to procure some sort of summer work. A babysitter. A gardener. A part-time sales clerk. She didn’t need the money, per se, but she hated sitting around. There was the impatience in her, again, stirring her to frantic motion.

  Even in a tiny town like Hemford, there was work to be had somewhere, Elie reasoned. The mill would take her for something (with her father as a foreman, of course they would), but relying on that connection left an unpleasant taste in her mouth. Elie was beginning to think, however, that she wasn’t going to have a choice. She’d been stumbling over more rumors and gossip than job offers.

  “I’d be careful about that Mosley boy, if I were you.” This advice came from Mrs. Fredricks, an elderly manager at the local Jo-Ann fabrics. Of course Mrs. Fredricks knew Elie, remembered her from years back, and wished she had an opening at the store, but she just hired another girl, so sorry. However, even in the absence of a job opportunity, advice was always free-flowing.

  “He don’t work, I swear it, I don’t know where his money comes from,” Mrs. Fredericks sighed, shaking her head; she looked like a sewing-and-crafting version of Mrs. Claus. She looked up at Elie meaningfully. “He goes down to town and I think you can imagine what sort of trouble he gets into down there, especially after he got that poor Langland girl pregnant. Oh, but you didn’t hear that from me. Poor girl—she lives down in a mobile home on third, now…”

  Elie peered over the steering wheel. If it was, in fact, a mobile home, it hadn’t been mobile in a long while. The lattice siding around the wheels was broken down, and Elie could clearly see tires that looked a century old beneath. The whole place looked a little sideways.

  The trailer door was open, as if the place were abandoned, but Elie had seen someone passing back and forth in the cool shadows within. A toddler played out front, in shorts and a tiny Ironman t-shirt. The clothes looked like the only things within twenty yards that had been purchased new in the last year.

  Elie put the Outback into reverse. There was nothing more she wanted to see here. True, she had no proof except the gobbling chatter of a few ladies around town, but she knew. There were men, and then there were Bryan Mosleys. Elie had seen enough of both to know.

  Before the car could move, an adult came down the steps of the trailer, a baby on her hip. She stopped beside the toddler, looking down at him in something like fondness. Really, she just looked dazed. Her faded sundress rippled listlessly in the breeze.

  E
lie recognized Brittany Langland right away, mostly because in almost ten years, she’d tried to look exactly as she had in high school. Brit was even thinner now than she had been then, and her pretty face was worn by the rough years, like sandpaper. Thick, dark circles hung under her eyelids and her skin had taken on a pallor.

  Thank God for birth control, Elie thought sadly.

  At that moment, Brittany seemed to notice Elie’s car, but she was too far away to do anything but stare; she seemed too exhausted to even try. She reached up and tucked a lock of blonde hair (light brown roots quite visible at her scalp) behind her ear.

  Her arm was skeletal, but that wasn’t what Elie noticed. It was the dots. The splotches of blackened scars against the once-tan skin.

  “Is that how it is,” Elie whispered out loud. She took her foot off the brake and fled without a backward glance.

  Elie’d never done meth, but she knew it when the signs were so obvious. Just like she knew the Bryan Mosleys of the world.

  Chapter Six

  You were right about that bastard. I thought I’d make it up to you, tonight around ten. I’ll get the beer, this time.

  Elie looked at herself in the mirror again.

  Too much make-up? Not enough make-up? She turned her head, trying to catch different light at different angles. After scrapping the project and starting over twice, she elected to just go with light accentuation. She doubted Jake was into contouring. And it didn’t feel right, meeting up for a lakeside, midnight rendezvous with a quart of foundation and a bottle of mascara on. It felt unnatural and feigned.

  That wasn’t what Elie wanted. No, no. What she wanted was to apologize for yelling at Jake, maybe even apologize for... the other thing. She paled a little thinking about that conversation, but if she was going to run from it forever, she might as well go pull up a trailer right next to Brittany Langland’s. Running blindly always led to sharp cliffs—or at least, it always had in Elie’s experience.