Starcrossed Shifters

by Chloe Vincent

  He smiled sardonically at that. She was right. He had been on the defense. He usually liked to be on the offense. At least at work. “Don’t I?” He said. “Thought maybe you brought me in here to quietly see me out.”

  Megan took a deep breath and spun halfway around in her chair to stare out her window. The sky was graying again. She had a view of the Golden Gate from her office and it stood out brightly against the fog and clouds.

  “I don’t have a valid reason to,” she said. “Trust me. I thought about it.”

  “You don’t?” He said, taken aback. “Huh.”

  “If you had some nefarious motive for taking this job at a company owned by fox shifters…” She waved a hand. “This would be a strange way to take us down, is what I’m saying. And shifter packs have assimilated pretty well into human society for the most part, but when we fight we still fight. We don’t usually go about it via corporate espionage.”

  He threw back his head and laughed at that. “No, we don’t. Wolves certainly don’t anyway.”

  “So you didn’t know that my co-founders and I were foxes, right?” She said.

  “No. “He shook his head. “Not until, ya’ know…I caught the scent.”

  “But that was you the other night,” she said. “Wasn’t it? Out at Muir?”

  Oh. He’d just about forgotten that. He was slightly embarrassed by it and he wasn’t sure why. “Yes…”

  “Wolves don’t usually hide from foxes either.”

  “I didn’t want to start anything,” he said, shrugging. “Neither did you. You walked away, too.”

  “Yeah.” She didn’t add anything else.

  He wanted to add something. He wanted to add that the entire notion of the feud was stupid to begin with. That it was based on bad blood from a century ago, and on some wolf deciding foxes were bad because they were foxes, and some fox deciding that wolves were bad because they were wolves. The irony was that shifters liked to think they were more evolved than humans, but Gunner thought that was a joke if they were going to be falling into the same patterns of causeless violence that humans fell into all the time.

  He wanted to say all that but he felt himself almost physically blocked from going that far. He still had a certain loyalty to his clan and it precluded telling a fox that really, they were the same. Even though a part of him wanted to. He’d always felt awfully conflicted about that.

  “Look,” Megan said, tapping her nails on her desk. He watched the motion. They were cut short but well manicured and painted a deep red. They matched her lipstick. She wore just a bit of makeup. She did a smokey eye thing that distracted him slightly. It made her eyes look so big and bright. “I’ll be pulling late nights a lot this week working on staff. Our structure is a little complicated because we’re delivering goods and also services. I want you to help me figure out how to streamline that. We may get to the point where we’ll have a training program for masseuses, yoga instructors… That would be a later expansion. What I’m saying is, we’ll be working closely together. Do you have a problem with that?”

  He tried not to look as annoyed as he felt and said, “If I had a problem with that, I wouldn’t have taken the job.”

  “Right,” she said, nodding curtly. “I thought it would be good to clear the air.”

  “Fair enough.”

  She took a deep breath and said, “Alright, then come back to my office at five. We’ll probably take over the conference room. I’ll spot you dinner.”

  “Sounds good.” He stood and he couldn’t help but notice the way she frowned at him. “I know you still have a problem with me,” he said. “But you’d be a fool not to give me a chance. You got a good company happening here. I can help you make it great.” He slipped his hands in his pockets and smiled just a little bit cockily.

  “Oh boy,” Megan said, shaking her head. “Why do all wolves think they’re alphas?”

  He barked a laugh at that. “The weakest wolf is an alpha compared to anything else.”

  She fully rolled her eyes at that. “You should go before I change my mind about the whole thing.”

  “I’m going,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “Don’t worry, boss lady. You won’t regret this.”

  “Famous last words,” she muttered, before he shut the door.

  But he was still smiling as he walked away.

  Chapter Eight: Megan

  She couldn’t stop thinking of Muir Woods. She was wary of Gunner, sure. She probably would be for a long time, at least until he really proved himself. But every time her suspicions surfaced, she remembered that moment in the woods. She had smelled him, and he had smelled her. They’d both known the other was there and according to everything they had been taught, that was a situation that demanded confrontation. If you ran across the enemy as a human, that was one thing. One had to put up appearances to fit into society. But wolf vs. fox? There was always a fight. Yet he hadn’t wanted to fight. She believed him when he said he hadn’t known she was a fox shifter when he’d been hired. Her leash was kind of quiet within their clan. They got more attention in the human world. If you were going to take down some powerful fox shifters, it wouldn’t be them, though they could certainly hold their own.

  She told herself these were all the reasons she was giving Gunner a shot. Despite his cockiness and his mouthiness. It was for those reasons, she told herself, and not because when she looked at him she couldn’t help but notice that he had kind eyes even when he was smirking. Kind and beautiful eyes…

  “What’s wrong with you?” Lane was snapping her fingers in Megan’s face and she jerked, frowning at her. She set a fresh latte on Megan’s desk, which she really didn’t need to do. Bringing her coffee was hardly Lane’s job, but she always seemed to know when Megan needed a boost.

  “Nothing,” Megan said, smoothing her hair. She took a careful sip of latte. “Thank you.”

  Lane plopped down in a chair and kicked Megan’s desk. “You just talk to Teen Wolf?”

  Megan snorted at that. “Yeah.”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  Megan shrugged. “No plan. He works here.”

  “Until…” Lane waved a hand as if waiting for the rest of Megan’s sentence.

  “Until I have good reason to fire him,” Megan said. “Which I do not. Currently.”

  Lane huffed, looking absolutely shocked. “Are you kidding?”

  She hadn’t really counted on having to explain herself. “Look, I know what he is. He knows what we are. But I have no reason to think he’s here to make trouble or ruin us or anything like that. You know how big our clans are? And a lot of us do live in the Bay Area. Something like this was bound to happen eventually.”

  Lane gaped at her and shook her head. “Wow. I am shocked, Meg. I don’t understand you at all. How can you trust a wolf?”

  “Just because he’s a wolf, doesn’t mean-“

  “Oh please.”

  “I didn’t know you were so prejudiced.”

  “They’re wolves!”

  “Yeah,” Meg said, nodding. “But that doesn’t really mean anything, does it? If you think about it? Other than that we were always told they were the enemy.”

  “They’ve killed so many of us, Meg,” Lane said. “You can’t have forgotten that-“

  “Yeah, it’s a feud. There’s no real reason for it other than whatever land battle started it in the first place so that we were always told wolves are bad. We’ve killed lots of them too.”

  “If it were me-“

  “It’s not you,” Meg snapped. “And I’m not actually looking for advice.”

  Lane look chastened at that but she huffed a little bit and got to her feet. “Just be careful, Meg.”

  “I’m plenty careful,” she grumbled. She watched Lane go and sighed, rubbing her forehead. This asshole better be worth it.

  At five, Meg went to the conference room with her laptop and all her materials concerning staffing decisions and the structure she wanted WellDrop worki
ng toward. They were going live with the app in just three weeks with a delivery staff of fifty drivers. They had to do a lot of hires in a short timespan.

  Meg sat down at the table and hooked her laptop up to the projector Bryan had set her up with. That was another thing she had to talk to Gunner about. They didn’t have a full IT department yet outside of their app developers. There was nobody on the admin side for tech. She wrote herself a note.

  Gunner arrived and sat down right next to her and she blinked. Most people sat across from her at the table. But he had files Bryan had given him and his own laptop. He probably just wanted to see what she was doing.

  His tie was loose now at the end of the day, and his sleeves were rolled up. Her gaze strayed to his exposed forearms and the way his shirt fit across his chest.

  Damn.

  Stupid wolves.

  She chewed on the end of her pain and crossed her legs under the table, feeling a little edgy. The scent of him didn’t help either. That wolf scent always hit her like a freight train but then it eased off when she caught the faint whiff of that cologne and now there was just a hint of sweat.

  Her mouth watered and she frowned, swallowing.

  “Where do we start?” Gunner said. His voice always threw her off too. It was so unexpectedly soft. He didn’t look like a guy who would have a soft voice.

  “Fifty delivery drivers,” he said. “Minus services for now…”

  She brought her desktop up on the projector and then gave up since he was sitting right there next to her. She laughed at herself and unhooked her laptop, turning it to show him. She caught his faint smile as he leaned in to look.

  With that, they were off and running.

  Two hours later, Megan felt less stressed out about the company’s tight agenda for their launch than she had in months. Gunner was tapping away at his laptop, an easy smile on his face. If he could deliver as well as he claimed he could, they would be ahead of schedule on starting service delivery.

  “You’re really adaptable,” she said suddenly.

  “That is quite the non-sequitur,” he said lightly.

  “I just mean, if I didn’t know better I’d think you’d been here since the beginning.”

  He looked pleased by that. “I studied all the stuff Bryan showed me. I like to be prepared.”

  “Right,” she said. She’d taken off her jacket and now she was just wearing a thin but “dressy” t-shirt and leggings. She stretched one arm behind her head and sighed, not missing the way his eyes followed the movement and not quite knowing what she thought about it. “Does Thai sound good for dinner?”

  “Yeah,” he said, turning to frown back at his screen. “I don’t know why you’re surprised. Wolves can often be adaptable too.”

  She chuckled at that. “I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.”

  “No, I know.” He shrugged. “I just mean, there are a lot of stereotypes. On both sides.”

  He frowned but the way he did it made her wonder if he was also lecturing himself.

  “That’s definitely true…” She pursed her lips as she grabbed her phone to order them food. “Truth is, I don’t think I’ve actually spoken to more than…three wolves? Ever in my life? Not counting you. I mean I’ve seen them. Well, smelled them. Just passing by on the street.”

  “You think we smell bad, don’t you?” But he looked a little playful when he said it.

  “No, you smell really good,” she blurted out and could not at all control the way she flushed, her breath hitching in her throat as she tapped their order out on an app.

  She could practically feel his intense satisfaction at that.

  “Do I, now?” He said, and leaned in just a little, a sly smile slowly spreading across his face. “That’s interesting. Maybe you like wolves more than I thought.”

  “Don’t start with all that…” She waved a hand around. “With whatever it is you’re doing. I just meant, ya’ know… You wear very nice cologne. And you don’t wear too much of it. It’s subtle.”

  “It’s French.”

  “Oh, of course it is.”

  “Of course it is,” he mimicked, rolling his eyes. “Because you know me so well.”

  “I think sometimes you’re just trying awfully hard to look like that kind of guy,” she said. She bit back a smile.

  “What kind of guy is that, exactly?” He turned half around in his chair.

  “Mr. Hotshot exec guy who’s going to show all these start-up nerds how things are done,” she said. “Designer ties. Designer haircut. Except you also happen to be a shifter. Probably live in a condo.”

  She decided not to mention that she herself lived in a condo.

  “I live in a cabin up by Muir, for your information,” he said, almost sweetly. His bottom lip stuck out in a little pout. She had the feeling that she’d gotten enough of it right that he was mildly put out. “You were on my turf that night in the woods. And by the way, isn’t your family old money? Like, didn’t you invest in this thing with your trust fund?”

  “I worked hard,” she snapped.

  “Not saying you didn’t,” he said. “Just, ya’ know… Glass houses, Miss. CEO.”

  “I’m not trying to look like a type though,” she said. “You’re just so… You put it on a lot, is all I’m saying.”

  He didn’t know whether to be impressed or irritated. She was right and most people either bought his whole “thing” or didn’t comment on it. Not that it was all a front.

  “Fine,” he said. “I wear fancy cologne. I just like to smell as incredibly awesome as I look and act and work and-”

  “Okay, wow,” Megan said. “Forget I said anything.”

  She hated how much she actually liked his confidence, even if some of his persona was complete bullshit. It was bullshit in a way she understood, loath as she was to admit it. And he was aware of it and even played it up to mock himself in a pleasantly self-deprecating way. That was charming.

  He chuckled at her now, a funny, husky little laugh that made her lips twitch. She checked the status on the food delivery app. She figured they could take a break for a bit while they waited for the food.

  “So, you live up by the woods, huh?” Megan said, sitting back in her chair and stretching her arms out again.

  “Yeah, it’s kinda out of the way,” he said. “My ex hated it. She wanted to live in the city? I just feel like I’m here all day… I don’t know if it’s the same for foxes, but being out in the city all day, my wolf gets real…”

  “Tense?” Megan said. “My fox gets totally stressed out. And I’m not good about taking her out when she needs it.”

  “Yeah, exactly,” Gunner said. “It’s a lot easier when you can just go out back and shift and run!

  I can’t imagine living in the city.”

  Megan said, “It is getting to be a little… It’s kinda like if you had to drive twenty minutes every time you wanted to take a shower? I don’t know, I thought I was really assimilated but it does really stress me out sometimes. Kinda been dreaming about living out somewhere quiet like that lately. Your ex didn’t like it?”

  Gunner shrugged. “She was human. She liked trendy neighborhoods. Ended up running off with this guy to Vegas. Left me a note.”

  “No way!” Megan said. She hadn’t been in a relationship in a long time but none had ended so brutally. “That’s awful.”

  “I’m over it,” he said, but she cast him a side-eye.

  “Are you?” She said.

  “I’m over her,” he clarified. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be over the hit to my ego. Plus…”

  “Hmm?” She leaned on her hand, leaning in a little, absorbed in the conversation.

  “I thought she was the one,” he said. “My mate. For life. Then suddenly...nothing. And it would’ve been harder because she was human but she knew about me. And I was ready to try, you know? Then bam.”

  “Oof.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. That sounds awful.”

  “Yeah, well…�
�� He waved a hand as if dismissing the heartbreak. “She didn’t like Star Trek so I guess it was doomed.”

  Megan’s mouth dropped open. “You like Star Trek? Come on…”

  “Well…” He coughed. “The shows, I do yeah. Sure. Since childhood. But not the reboots.”

  “No, yeah,” she said. “I don’t like them either. Spock is too emotional. Boy, I would not have pegged you as a Star Trek fan.”

  “Well, you don’t exactly have Trekkie written across your forehead,” he pointed out. “Trekkies aren’t usually so...so…”

  “So what exactly?” She asked, laughing.

  Sexy? She found herself hoping that’s what he’d meant.

  “I don’t know. Like, put...together.”

  There was no doubt that’s not what he’d intended to say and she found herself to be the one blushing now. This was verging on dangerous territory, but alone in the office at night with no one else to see, she found she didn’t want to think about that.

  “I like Next Generation best,” she said, feeling suddenly as if she were about twelve-years-old.

  “That’s my second favorite!” He said quickly. “I gotta go original. But then TNG.”

  “Oh, I mean TOS is really close to tied for first!”

  They got off on a tangent together then and by the time the food arrived they were laughing about the rules of Vulcan relationships and Megan was crying with laughter, sitting cross-legged on her desk chair, her shoes on the floor. When the front door buzzed, Gunner hopped up to get the food. In the single minute he was gone, Megan found that she felt relaxed and happy and had the kind of contented buzz going with Gunner that she usually got on a very good date.

  And he’s hot, she thought for the millionth time. She groaned to herself and it turned into a chuckle.

  “You look different,” Gunner said, carrying in the bags of food.

  She frowned at him and cleared a space on the table as they set out the cartons of Pad Thai and shrimp cakes. “What’re you talking about?”