Shifters Forever Worlds Epic Collection

by Elle Thorne

  Another quick bite sent a wave of pleasure to the apex between her legs. She squirmed, wriggling to get closer, wanting him more, wanting him to completely claim her.

  He lifted his head, his gray eyes piercing. “You’re mine. I don’t care what anyone says or who they say you’re promised to.” He licked at her rosy bud. “You.” Another lick. “Are.” And another. “Mine.”

  The golden flame churned in his eyes. His leopard making his presence known.

  “Yes.” The word came from her lips with a hiss. I’ll always be yours. She couldn’t tell him that. Couldn’t. Tears prickled behind her eyes.

  The head of his cock pressed into her core. She gasped at the size of him. Too many years of being unpenetrated made his girth almost as hard to take as it was the first time.

  She gave into him completely, surrendering her soul, heart, and ivy to Dane and his snow leopard. He plunged into her, spreading her wide, making her feel split in two again, like the very first time.

  Dane worked his cock in and out. His rhythm began as a slow drive that escalated to a furious pitch as he sunk himself into her fully, then pulled out, the juicy sound of entrance and egress drowning out her heaving breaths. She wrapped her legs around him holding him tightly. Her muscles clenched him, refusing to let him go, sucking him in deeper.

  Quivers wracked her body as a climax began to build, spreading throughout her like a tidal upsurge. He released her hands just as she pushed her body upward, arching into him, taking him in deep as he slammed into her with a force that knocked her breath out.

  She cried out, then his mouth covered hers, taking in her scream as she climaxed, one series of orgasms following another, leaving her trembling in his arms. When a mountainous climax began to overtake him, his body stiffened, he thrust and was still, pumping into her, releasing hot seed while he held her immobile.

  Glory clung to him, her arms wrapped around his neck as he nuzzled her shoulder, his teeth sharp and scraping her flesh.

  She froze. Was he marking her with a couple-bond? That would ruin her for Perry.

  A part of her prayed he was.

  Chapter Ten

  Glory lay on Dane. Sometime during their nap she ended up on top of him. She breathed him in, relishing the earthy scent of him, the forest that seemed to be engrained in his essence.

  It brought back memories from so very long ago. Playing in the fields, exploring the forest, avoiding the other shifter types. Dane understood the ivies weren’t to be around other shifters, though he told her repeatedly that he didn’t understand why they couldn’t keep company with other shifters.

  “We are not allowed. We’re not the same type,” she’d told him.

  “But why not,” he’d insisted, pressing for an answer, his gray eyes dark and matching that day’s clouds. In the distance, lightning crackled and thunder boomed.

  “I can’t discuss that with you.” Another thunderous crack punctuated her denial.

  She couldn’t. It was part of the Ivy Creed that they not mix with other shifters. It was also not discussed with other shifter types. The ivy shifters kept to themselves and were the least known of all shifter types, even cryptic around other shifters.

  She laying on his stomach, his hard muscles gave her a sense of comfort, his heartbeat next to her ear, his pulse synchronized with hers, it was easy to fall back into the days when they were the best of friends and so much more.

  Thinking of those times was a fool’s folly. She had to let those times go. She was in the present now. He was Dane Snow, the famous Hollywood actor and she was a girl about to become another man’s mate.

  Hot tears trickled down her face, pooling on his skin, trapped between them. This wasn’t the time for regrets. This was the time to move forward with the life her parents wanted for her.

  God, her parents. She thought of the last day she’d seen them.

  A day so very long ago, almost as long as it had been since she’d seen Dane…

  Glory’s parents and her sister Honor were going out of town to look at colleges for Honor. Glory had begged off, saying she felt sick.

  Sick was right.

  She was pregnant.

  And she had no clue where Dane was since he’d left town.

  So she’d decided to stay and nurture the morning sickness rather than be around her parents and have them figure out her situation.

  Thank goodness ivy shifters didn’t have the same problems as other shifters. It wasn’t discernible that they were pregnant from a scent or the baby’s heartbeat.

  Feeling bad she was pregnant with Dane’s baby and he didn’t know, she decided she should tell him. Dane’s uncle, Frank Forester, had been the only one she could contact who could reach Dane. So she’d called him the moment her parents left and made arrangements to see him.

  She plaited her hair into a braid, threw on a pair of jeans, applied a little blush and concealer to hide the baby’s effects on her face and began a hike across the properties.

  She was twenty minutes into the trek, well into the thick of the woods, when the first cramp struck.

  Glory fell to her knees, grabbing her abdomen while sweat dripped down her face. It wasn’t hot enough to be sweating like this.

  She leaned against a tree, holding her stomach, wishing the pains away.

  The infernal cramps lasted forever it seemed. She wiped the perspiration from her forehead with her sleeve. Glory’s watch said she’d been there for more than an hour. She was late to her appointment with Frank. She pushed off the tree’s trunk, feeling lightheaded she looked down at a pool of red that bloomed at the juncture of her legs.

  Glory’s gasp broke the forest’s unchanging sounds, all went silent except the wind that whistled mournfully between the branches.

  That day Glory lost the baby.

  The next day she’d found out her family was attacked.

  The day after that she’d gone into the secret garden and sank into a hibernation state, not coming out for the ivy shifters that wanted to take her back to Massachusetts where her parents’ families were from. She’d shooed them all way, so numb with pain she hadn’t noticed they’d taken the bodies to Massachusetts to bury. She didn’t even process that they’d done that until much later, but that was because she was in hibernation.

  She’d been in hibernation for several winters, shifting into her ivy in the secret garden, across from the spot where she’d put her baby’s memorial stone marker. She’d stayed there, not processing the changes in time, weather, or even herself.

  She’d stayed in hibernation to let her soul heal, to avoid the grief she wanted to yield to after losing the baby and her family.

  Untrimmed and unmaintained, over the years, her ivy had become a monolith, entwined and encircling the garden containing the tiny memorial stone.

  One day, seven and a half years later—she’d counted the seasons—her ivy pushed her for a shift, insisting Glory take her human form. Glory resisted. She’d stayed awake, consciously pushing its attempts aside.

  On the eighth day, it rained so hard, Glory couldn’t see her leaves on her furthest branches, the weight of the rain pulled her ivy down, fatiguing her even more. Glory had collapsed into a slumber, tired from her vigilant guard twenty-four hours per day for a week.

  She’d awoken to a pulse of power raging through her. She clenched her body tightly against the feeling that she was being split into a million slivers. Spikes of pain coursed through her as her arms pushed through the ivy’s branches. Her legs collapsed beneath her, sending her crashing to the muddy dirt on the ground.

  Half human, half ivy, she thrashed in the mud, a vision of flesh with brown and green patches where she resisted her shift. She battled with the ivy in her mind, while her body protested the excruciating shift, unaccustomed to the process after seven long years of stasis.

  Glory arched her back, cursing at the ivy in her mind while the most inhuman sounds escaped from her human lips. Her throat was parched, the muscles in her voice
box ached when she cried out. The effort to make sound was as painful as the sounds that came out.

  Where Glory’s legs should have been, roots ripped out of the ground, flailing in the dirt, causing drops of murky dirt-water to fly.

  I don’t want to do this, stop!

  She railed at her ivy, and pushed the shift away. But her ivy had gathered strength and overpowered Glory’s will.

  I hate you. Leave me be, Glory screamed in her mind.

  Again, to no avail. The ivy had made her decision and had one goal in mind. The ivy pursued it doggedly.

  One agonizing inch after another, her legs took form, muscles pulling together while branches cracked, creaking with the effort to create tendons and bones that had not been operational in years.

  With jerky spasms, her legs took shape, covered in mud. The transformation took an hour. At the end, Glory looked down at the human body she’d long ago abandoned.

  Her clothes, which always shifted with her, had become rags after all those years, not completely preserved. They’d fallen away from her body, tattered filthy fabric, she was nude and laying in the muddy puddle she’d made even deeper from her own thrashing.

  Glory studied her body with an impartial eye, as if it was no longer hers. Indeed, she wasn’t sure it was hers anymore, it no longer looked like the body she’d had when she’d shifted into her ivy all those years ago.

  She’d lost weight. Her curves were gone, she was a caricature of her former self.

  Blood seeped through dozens of scratches and gouges from the rocks she’d struck with her flailing movements.

  A crack of thunder heralded another bout of heavy showers. Glory moved to a seated position and leaned her back against the brick wall her ivy had grown on all these years.

  She looked at the baby’s marker. A large unformed, untouched white boulder, lined with green and gray veins. She’d picked that boulder herself. She’d found it near the spot where she’d lost the baby those years ago. She’d hefted it, a little distance at a time, until she finally got it to the garden, and placed it as a remembrance of where their baby had been created.

  That stone held meaning. The gray lines had been the color of Dane’s eyes the day he’d made love to her. The green was a color close to her own eyes. It was as if that stone represented and had taken their baby’s soul into itself.

  Now it was covered in mud from her thrashing branches as she’d fought off the shift. Raindrop after raindrop washed the stone while she stared at it, immobile. The same rain pelted her body, clearing away the mud and blood, leaving her there, a nude gaunt, haunted being.

  A moan and movement pulled Glory back to the present, leaving the memories of that day and the baby behind, though never completely faded.

  She peeked up at Dane’s face. His eyes were still closed, his breathing regular. The arm he’d flung around her moved to above his head, leaving her no longer a captive in his embrace.

  The hot tears she’d shed began to cool against her flesh.

  What have I done?

  If anyone found out they were together…

  What kind of repercussions would there be? Could Perry file charges against her with the Shifter Supreme Court? Could he take her family’s property as collateral? Would he ask for that? Why would he? What if he wanted revenge for being cuckolded? What if he wanted revenge that didn’t involve the Shifter Supreme Court? The kind of revenge that shifters took when they hired rovers.

  What if he wanted Dane to pay the price?

  With his life.

  Glory’s hand flew to her mouth. She bit her knuckle to keep the outcry at the thought of Dane having to pay for this with his life, if Perry chose to have him killed.

  She couldn’t have Dane dragged into this.

  She’d have to leave.

  And never see Dane again.

  And deny this ever happened, deny it, even to herself.

  She lifted herself off Dane’s body as quietly and with as much stealth as she could, grabbing her clothing as she made her way to the front door. She stopped in the hallway, threw her clothes on, then tiptoeing and holding her breath until she’d turned the knob, then she slipped out and pulled the door closed behind her.

  Once outside, she released the breath and ran toward her own property.

  Hot tears blinded her. She stopped, swiped them away, and then began her brisk pace again.

  She was halfway home, no small feat as their land between her family home and Dane’s family home spanned many acres. She paused.

  I have no plan. What will I do if he comes for me?

  She’d have to tell him she was taken. That it was a mistake.

  Her heart ached at what he’d have to go through, it would be a flashback moment for him, not unlike the one he went through more than a decade ago.

  The lump in her throat signaled that she’d be going through more tears. She cursed at the idea of crying again.

  A crack sounded behind her. She turned toward the noise, her ivy senses on high alert. Could Dane have found her already? She remained motionless, listening for more sounds.

  Another crack.

  There it was. Definitely closer.

  Damn. Damn. Damn.

  She rose to her feet, ready for a showdown with Dane.

  “Look, Abel. Look what we have.” That was not Dane’s voice. It sounded slick, like dirty motor oil would sound if it made noise.

  A man stepped out from behind a thick tree trunk. His voice matched his face. Long hair, pulled back into a greasy ponytail, an eagle’s beak for a nose, and a craggy, pitted face was perched on a thick neck.

  Shifter!

  And not a friendly one.

  Another shifter stepped out from behind a different tree, clearly Abel was related to the first shifter. “I see her. And she’s sweeter looking than her sister was. I wonder if she’ll be as difficult to break.”

  The sound of a wind tunnel flushed through her head.

  Honor. These bastards…

  She didn’t need anyone to confirm it for her. These were the animals that killed her family. Rage followed the wind tunnel. A rage so all-consuming that Glory yielded to her ivy as it pressed for a shift.

  This shift would not be difficult. She’d remained in practice after that first painful shift that brought her out of her healing hibernation. She’d become adept at the art of shifting quickly and almost completely painlessly.

  With a final shove, her ivy took over, pushing Glory to the rear of her mind while the ivy’s branches and leaves replaced Glory’s skin and bones.

  Her ivy had become larger and much more fearsome than it had been when she’d been younger. Her tendrils wrapped Abel’s cohort in a grip, branches like bands of steel wrapping around his body, constricting his very breath from him.

  We’ll see how you like this, shifter.

  She knew non-ivy shifters were long-lived and could heal quickly, but she also knew they couldn’t heal when suffocated to the point they lost all their life-giving oxygen. That would kill their inner beast and render them totally human. And very susceptible to the permanency of death.

  Your life is mine.

  “Kill her, Basil.” Abel gasped the words out, his face already light blue.

  Abel shifted into a huge badger, lethal, but nonetheless futile in her grasp. His teeth were no match for her branches.

  “I’m trying.” Abel’s brother Basil shifted into a badger as well. A smelly, dark, greasy-looking oversized badger. He sunk his teeth into her ivy’s branches, snarling louder.

  Abel stopped moving. Dead.

  Basil was still attached to her. She turned to grab him and he leapt back then shifted into his man form.

  “Morton, Bill, this way, hurry!” His voice was tinged with fear.

  Rightly so.

  She advanced on him while he ran toward a clearing.

  Behind her, Glory’s ivy heard the sound of a branch breaking.

  She turned toward the noise and found three more shifters faci
ng her.

  “Tranq her, now!” Basil screamed.

  One of the three newcomer shifters raised a pistol.

  Ivy had never seen tranquilizers but she’d overheard a shifter discussing it one day when she’d been in the forest in her ivy form and two wolf shifters had walked by. They hadn’t known they were in the presence of an ivy shifter, and they’d continued walking and talking, completely unaware.

  She remembered they’d mentioned that a Tranq would render a shifter unconscious.

  The sound of air being released with a pop from the pistol heralded a sharp pinch as a steel dart penetrated her bark, sinking into a soft spot, embedding itself in the center of her wood.

  In seconds, her vision became fuzzy and she lost her balance, crashing to the forest floor, rendered unconscious.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dane stretched, his eyes flying open. His leopard told him right away something was off.

  Maybe even wrong.

  Sitting up on the couch, several things struck his shifter senses. The first was the scent of Glory.

  Everything Glory.

  He let her scent sit on him for a moment, analyzing.

  Their lust, her climax, those were easy to identify and understand.

  The fear and the tears?

  Not so easy to understand.

  He remembered her falling asleep with him. During that time they’d migrated; she wound up laying on his chest.

  Evidently she’d cried. He touched a spot on his torso that had emitted the strongest scent of her tears. A tiny pool of the moisture had dried, leaving the almost indiscernible ring of its existence on his body.

  The next thing his senses picked up was the quiet in the house. No sign of her heartbeat nor her breathing.

  No Glory at all.

  She’d left.

  Why? Why after what they’d just done? Her scent was still strong. She hadn’t been gone long.