Shifter's Heart: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (The Hills Book 1)

by Sarah J. Stone

  “Yeah. Thanks.” He stepped to the side and looked around Tina’s shoulders at the now wig-covered Harper. “So, Evelyn. Or Harper. Or whatever name you’re going by these days – you want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

  The disguised First Daughter stared straight ahead in horror. Grey’s stern and unhappy face stared straight at her as she studied the ashes and remains of the fire. She glanced over at him but still said nothing.

  “Harper,” he repeated, “I know it’s you. Everyone is going insane looking for you. I’m supposed to be searching for you right now. So, can you at least tell me how you ended up in Tina’s house?”

  “She got trapped by the earthquake and broke her leg,” Black Feather said from the other side of the room. The three turned to look back at him, but he was still reclining on Tina’s bed. “Tina took her in to take care of her. The doc came and healed Harper up. Now she needs to get home.”

  The room went quiet again. Hearing her situation spoken so plainly had an odd effect on Tina; suddenly, it didn’t sound so bad. Hadn’t she just helped her friend? She’d been there when Harper needed a night out and then came to the rescue when she was injured. She even brought in a doctor. Surely, any adult would agree she’d done the responsible thing – at least in the end.

  “I screwed up,” Harper said quietly. “I wanted to have fun, and instead of just being honest, I went behind my father’s back while he was distracted by a big banquet. Then I put all of the shifters here in the compound in a very dangerous position by attending a party I shouldn’t have even gone to. I didn’t even know that earthquakes happened around here; I’d never felt one before. So, when it hit, I panicked and didn’t run like everyone else, and a rock broke my leg. Tina should have gone for help, but I insisted she hide me. I convinced her if I went home my father would kill me – literally kill me.”

  Harper put her face in her hands as Tina rethought her previous stance on their situation. Suddenly, it all seemed very extreme and reckless. She hadn’t acted responsibly at all, just done what her friend had told her to do and nothing more. She suddenly had a stomachache.

  “Hey, let me go get us some food.” She stood to go, but Grey stopped her.

  “Here, my treat.” He peeled off a 20 bachmann for her, and she froze at the sight of it.

  “Geez, moneybags! Look at you throwing your wealth around. This will feed me for a week.” She happily went out the door and left Harper with the two other shifters without a thought. She knew Grey would make sure everyone behaved.

  She ran up to the food shack and ordered a big platter of fried mouse and root vegetables. Larissa’s mom raised an eyebrow at her when she saw the 10 bachmann note but didn’t ask any questions. She handed Tina a massive handful of change and only then did Tina realize she had no way to carry a bundle of coins and a big plate of food.

  “Um…do you have a bag or anything?”

  “I do but it will cost you.” Larissa’s mom stood stoically, waiting for Tina’s decision. She looked around and, seeing no alternative, nodded in agreement.

  “Fine. How much?”

  “Two bachmanns for a small bag and five for a big one. Of course,” she leaned forward and smiled a bit, “I could come along with you and help you to carry everything. Only eight bachmanns.” Her eyebrows jumped up and down as she said it, and her smile got a little wider. Tina rolled her eyes.

  “Here.” She handed over eight bachmanns. “Give me both bags and promise me you won’t say anything about all this money or the extra food. I’ll come back and give you the same tomorrow as long as you don’t tell my mom a word of this.”

  Larissa’s mom barely heard her as she scooped the change back across the counter and into her apron pocket. She gave Tina both bags, and the wolf quickly walked home, realizing she had just made and given away more money than she’d ever had in her whole life. Oh well.

  At the fire pit, Tina found Harper flanked by Black Feather on one side and Grey on the other. Both looked angry and ready to throw a punch at the other, but Harper just looked miserable. All three turned as she walked in and held up their food.

  “Fried mouse and roots today,” she announced. They boys were thrilled, but Harper looked resigned. Tina gave an apologetic smile to her friend. “Sorry,” she said, “no fancy stuff gets into the compound. You might like this, though.”

  The group gathered on Tina’s bed to eat off of the same plate. Harper lit up when she saw the fried root vegetables on the paper plate. “Hey! Those are potatoes. And yams, I love yams!” The shifters looked up at her. Potatoes? Yams? The two boys looked to Tina for an explanation, but she could only shrug. She was as clueless as they were.

  Harper worked on the vegetables while her friends feasted on fried mouse. Grey watched Black Feather who watched Harper who looked at the floor. Tina shook her head; what the heck had happened?

  “So,” she said to the group, “any new developments with the big plan?”

  “Grey had an idea,” Harper said quietly. Tina looked over at her old friend, but he was busy chewing. She waited, but he stayed quiet.

  “So?” Tina looked around the group, but everyone avoided her eyes. “What? What’s your idea?”

  He brushed his hands off and wiped them on the paper of the bag. “I escort her to the palace and tell the guards I was able to take her home only because I agreed to keep the kidnappers’ identities and location a secret. She’ll be safe and free from future harm, only if the president agrees to let it go.”

  Tina took a moment to let this sink in. “So,” she said, “we’d never see Harper again. Her father will never let her out of his sight.”

  Grey nodded slowly. Tina looked at Harper who was finishing the last chunk of white root. Without looking at anyone, she said, “It would keep everyone safe. There would be no reason for anyone to come to the compound, no searches, nothing. I would just go home, and that would be the end of it.”

  “What if it’s not?” Tina turned to see Black Feather scowling at Grey. “His plan sucks. Like you said, Tina, we don’t know what anyone is going to do. We have no insurance that Bachmann will believe any of this.” Grey met Black Feather’s scowl with his own as Black Feather added, “He just wants to be the hero.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Grey spat back at him.

  “No, you are!”

  The two boys reached across the space on the bed and grabbed at one another’s shoulders. Harper jumped up to get away, but Tina went right between them and let out a huge, deep growl. It was enough of a warning that the boys separated, but they were far from done with one another.

  Once she had everyone’s attention, she spoke in her human voice. “Alright, now that we’re done with the pissing contest,” she said, “I want Grey to go ahead with his plan.”

  Both Harper and Black Feather protested loudly, but Tina just held up a hand to stop them. “Grey,” she continued, “I think it will be to everyone’s benefit if you really play up how you, a shifter and all-around good guy, found her and brought her home. It was humans who did this, not us. Just keep saying that.” She looked at Harper and smiled a small, sad smile. “Maybe we’ll get to see her again if we’re not the enemy.”

  Harper shuffled forward and put her hands on Tina’s arms. “Are you sure?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not. I can’t be sure of anything right now except the fact that you cannot stay here. The sooner we get you back, the better.” Tina kept a brave, steady gaze on her friend, but inside she felt herself screaming. She knew she’d never see Harper again, but she couldn’t say it out loud. She had to get this girl home before anything else happened.

  Harper nodded and pulled Tina in for a hug. The two held one another for a long time, squeezing each other close. The two young men watched and marveled at the ability young women had to open up to one another so completely. Neither had ever had a friend like Tina and Harper had in one another.

  CHAPTER 12

  A HOMECOMING

  Har
per said goodbye to Black Feather as he fumed at Grey. The two of them would leave through the hole in the fence in the back and walk through the grove to the Open Zone. From there, they would walk in the open and allow themselves to be seen. Grey and Harper agreed on the details; they had to keep her whereabouts over the past few days a secret, or she would be taken again. The two of them would quickly deflect any questions in the name of her safety. She would comment on how the only help she’d received had come from a shifter after a horrible group of humans had taken her from her car.

  “So,” Grey asked her as they walked away, “what will you say if someone asks about your night out? What’s your reason going to be?”

  “Well,” she sighed, “I guess I’ll just go with, I’m a rebellious teenager who couldn’t stand another night under her father’s supervision.”

  “Sure, but it’s clear you were headed to the compound. What if someone asks if you were on your way to a shifter friend’s house or some kind of event?”

  “I’ll just say I lost control of the car and ended up on the wrong road,” she shrugged. “No one knows I can drive perfectly well.”

  The two fell silent as they walked through the scrubby, twisted trees of the grove. Harper looked to the sky several times but saw nothing. She furrowed her eyebrows but didn’t comment. Grey kept moving forward, sure that an LEO would meet them around the next corner or pull up on a motorcycle, but the landscape was silent. They reached the Open Zone unseen and wondered at the silence around them.

  “Something’s wrong,” Harper commented. “This place should be crawling with LEOs.”

  “I know. Let’s walk out on the road and see if we draw anyone out.”

  The two wandered out onto the street and saw nothing but open, flat land around them. There were no cars or motorcycles in sight. The two continued, but both were extremely tense. The day was pleasant and cool as the sun lowered, meaning they would get to the palace just before nightfall – the perfect time to be outside, but neither could enjoy it. The silence pounded in their ears, and they wondered at their strange surroundings; how was there no security in the Open Zone?

  “I wonder if they’re raiding some poor settlement in the city,” Harper wondered aloud. “Maybe some innocent people are being shot in the head right now. Thanks to me.” Tears made her voice pitch higher, and Grey quickly walked over to comfort her.

  “You can’t think like that,” he told her. “Sure, you made a mistake, but you didn’t kill anyone. You didn’t even write that stupid note. If you take on the responsibility for everybody’s actions, you’ll lose your mind.”

  “That’s just it,” she said, still blinking tears from her eyes, “my family is responsible for everything that happens. We made the city, we made the laws, we created the law enforcement. It’s all us. I can’t ever say that something isn’t my fault. It’s all just an extension of me and my family. There’s no escape.”

  Grey looked over at her face and remained silent. The pain he encountered there stabbed him right through the heart.

  He thought back to the president who also had a face full of pain. He knew both people were carrying with them the weight of responsibility and regret, but he could already see the joy that would cover Bachmann’s face as his lost daughter ran into see him, arms wide to hold him. Her return would set his existence back to a normal pattern; he would go on ruling and doling out the occasional kindness, all the while believing that life was going on as it should.

  Harper wouldn’t do that; Grey could see this as well. No, something was very different for her now. She would never look out her window to the same world after this. Now she would read newspapers without the tunnel vision glasses that other humans seemed to wear. She would know that no shifter ever really attacked a human, that only humans went around killing one another. Shifters were never really asked their opinions, given fair trials, protected, or respected. When her father retired, he would hand the leadership of the state to her. What kind of leader would she be?

  “Harper,” he said to her, “let’s walk a bit faster. If no one’s here, we should get to where they can find us.”

  She nodded, and the two of them walked with fast, urgent steps. As they neared the presidential mountain, the force of it seemed to increase and grow with its size.

  The mountain where Harper’s family had their presidential palace had – Grey had learned – once been filled with wildlife, covered in green trees and sources of fresh water. According to the stories, that had been before anyone knew what a shifter was, possibly before they existed. Grey always found himself fascinated with the idea of a time before him, before his type of body had come onto the earth, evolving from the forces around it.

  A lot of humans said that shifters were an insult to God, whatever that meant. Shifters tended to stay away from any kind of church – too dangerous.

  They reached the base of the mountain pathway that Harper had taken in her stolen car and looked up.

  “It’s pretty steep,” Harper said as her eyes searched the road. Grey looked up the hill with her. Where was everyone?

  “Yeah, and not too safe. We’ll have to work our way around and then take the main road up. That will give us more chance of being seen, I imagine.”

  The walked up along the steep path, then took the right turn that would swing them around to the other face of the mountain.

  “Hey,” Harper said, smiling a little, “I have a question for you.”

  “Ask away.”

  “Would it be at all possible for you to, I don’t know, fly me up to the top of the mountain? Like, if you shift while we hold hands, will I change at all or shrink or anything?”

  “We could try,” Grey responded, still walking and looking ahead. “I doubt it will work, but it would be nice if it were possible to shrink you down and put you on my back.”

  “I can’t imagine,” Harper said, smiling. “You’re not too big as a bird, are you?”

  “No,” Grey said, kicking a piece of petrified wood, “American kestrels aren’t too big. I probably sit on your shoulder.”

  The two continued chatting and walking, all the while keeping their eyes on the road. Each of them was sure that a gang of motorcycle LEOs would round the corner at any moment, but there was still no sign of anyone. They wondered what could have happened. Maybe some random sighting had led them all away to some random spot in the city? Perhaps the president was in hiding, and the whole palace was empty.

  Grey looked over at Harper and saw the sunlight hitting her hair the same way it did when they were children. He smiled at her, and she narrowed her eyes.

  “What? What’s funny?”

  “Nothing is. This is a very serious situation.”

  “Shut up.”

  He tossed a little chunk of petrified wood at her. “I will not. You shut up.”

  She quickly grabbed the hard chunk and zinged it back at him. Her aim was perfect, and he grabbed his arm in pain. He could tell already that he would have a small but deep bruise.

  “Geez!”

  “You deserved it. I mean, really? Throwing things at a president’s daughter?” She winked as she said it, then stuck her tongue out.

  “Yeah,” Grey retorted as he laughed, “so fancy.”

  Harper laughed to herself as she took in the empty mountain. “Do you remember,” she mused, “playing together in the park when we were little? How I would pretend you had died, and then I would be the minister at your funeral?”

  “You were a very good minister. I always enjoyed hearing all the nice words about myself.”

  She looked at him with her big, sad eyes. “I meant them. You were the only kid I ever got to play with and only because we annoyed my father enough that he sent us away.”

  “I was so shocked when I saw that garden,” Grey remembered. “That first day? Remember?”

  “Yeah,” she nodded. “Well, don’t be too impressed. Most of it is fake.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, sur
e,” she said, shrugging. “I mean, they’re good fakes, and they’re pretty, but real plants take a lot of water and a ton of care. Besides, most people alive today have never had to take care of a living thing. There was no one we could hire to help out.”

  “Wow,” Grey breathed. “I really thought the president was the only person left with a garden. He really fooled me.”

  “Dad’s good at fooling everyone,” Harper agreed as she grimaced. A big sigh of frustration came out of her. “This is insane. There should be law enforcement on this road. Even if I wasn’t missing, people should be here. Where are they?”

  “I can only imagine there’s a massive effort to find you. I’m sure everyone got roped into that. You need a drink?”

  She nodded, and the two of them moved over to a boulder to sit and rest. Grey took his canteen from his back and unscrewed the top of the nozzle. Each took a swig and held it in their mouths as both had been taught to do since the day they were small. All humans and shifters had spent years hearing about the preciousness of water, no matter how dark or brackish it was.

  “Thanks,” she said, nodding her confirmation that she was hydrated and feeling better. Grey swished the water around his mouth, feeling it against the inside of his cheeks and around his teeth. He never liked to drink directly, but rather allow the water to slip down his throat almost by accident. It was a trick he had learned to do as a means of making a tiny sip feel like a big gulp of liquid.

  The two friends were reluctant to continue on their way and stayed where they were, taking in the road. Harper stared off into the distance at all the tiny, twisted trees and up to where she knew the palace stood, but couldn’t quite see it. Grey leaned to the side to look as well and bumped her shoulder.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay.” She smiled at him but then went back to her search. “I was just seeing if I could see my home.”

  Grey leaned a bit closer, placed his hand behind her back, and propped his chin on her shoulder. “It’s really hidden.”