Shifter Country Bears: The Complete Collection

by Roxie Noir

  “There’s nothing against motion-triggered recordings in the Neighborhood Handbook,” Julius said.

  A mischievous glint came into his eye, and he looked at Hudson.

  “There are a thousand things we could do to piss him off that are perfectly within regulations.”

  Hudson leaned back in his chair, grinning. He knew that people didn’t understand what Julius saw in him and vice versa, but it was stuff like this. Julius tempered his worst instincts, and he had a way of bringing out Julius’s devious side.

  “Just sign him up for anti-shifter newsletters, wait for everyone in the neighborhood to see them, and then watch him squirm,” he said.

  “Blow dandelions into his front yard,” Julius said.

  “Throw—”

  Julius’s phone, sitting on the table, went off, rattling the cardboard and plastic containers. Julius sighed.

  “Just ignore it,” Hudson said. He swallowed the last of his beer and set it back on the table.

  Julius was already looking at it, frowning.

  “It’s Ash,” he said, and answered it.

  Thirty minutes later, they were walking through the halls of the police station. They both still wore jeans and t-shirts — Julius’s from his law school, Hudson’s plain black.

  Ash had refused to tell Julius what was wrong over the phone, and Hudson wished that the man would be a little less stubborn. Fuck regulations, he thought. There was almost nothing that Julius handled worse than uncertainty. Not that his mate was controlling, exactly. He just had some pretty strong opinions.

  They rounded a corner and knocked on the door to Ash’s office.

  “Come in,” Ash’s voice boomed.

  “What’s—”

  Julius stopped in the doorway, and Hudson had to look around him.

  Quinn was sitting there, looking nervous in an old, ugly chair.

  Hudson’s bear stirred, and he closed his eyes, trying to fight it down. That was something he’d never been particularly good at.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Sit down,” Ash said, waving his hand at two equally ugly chairs, also facing his desk. It was the second time that day that they’d been sitting opposite Quinn.

  Sooner or later, this specific arrangement ought to lead to something good, he thought, taking his seat.

  “All right,” said Ash. “Before we can do anything, you’ve got to tell them what you told me.”

  Julius was sitting stiff-backed in his chair, and Hudson could feel his anticipation mixing with Quinn’s anxiety.

  She took a deep breath.

  “My parents are trying to kill Julius,” she said.

  By eleven that night, they were still in the police station. They’d moved to a conference room, with Ash and someone else drawing on a whiteboard. On it was a pretty bad drawing of the courthouse, even worse drawings of the crowd, and then an approximation of the buildings around it.

  Half the police force was there too. Some standing, some sitting, a few quietly talking on cell phones.

  “I don’t know,” Quinn kept saying. There was a half-empty and stone-cold cup of coffee in front of her. “I told you everything, twice. Please, let me get back to the motel. They’re going to find out where I’ve been.”

  Ash and one of the other officers exchanged looks.

  “Can you call them again?”

  “They already don’t believe that I’m still window shopping,” she said. “I’ll tell them that I went for a drink by myself, but that’ll already piss them off, if they even believe me.”

  The other officer in front opened his mouth, but Ash cut him off.

  “Thank you for your help, Quinn. I don’t want to further endanger your life—” here, he shot a look at the other officer, “—since whoever’s willing to shoot this man is probably willing to shoot you too.”

  The other officer had the decency to look slightly embarrassed.

  “We’ll drive you,” Hudson volunteered.

  Julius’s eyebrows shot up, but he ignored it. With everything that had happened in the last couple of hours, they couldn’t spend time with the girl they both knew should be theirs.

  Quinn looked nervous again for a moment, but then seemed to remember where she was and why she was there.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Ash frowned. “I think that’s against protocol,” he started, but Julius and Hudson both stood.

  “We promise not to kill her, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said.

  “We’re not even finished,” Ash said.

  “We’ve been going over the same thing for an hour now,” Julius said. An edge of irritation was starting to creep into his voice. “SWAT guys watching all the roof access, officers stationed throughout the crowd. Body armor. Quinn’s listening to everything her parents say. Hudson’s absolutely not attending this event.”

  With that last statement, he turned his head and shot a look at his mate.

  Hudson tried to look innocent. Like hell Julius was keeping him away, but there was no point in fighting.

  “What else is there to figure out? We’re going home,” Julius said.

  Then he stood and walked from the room. Hudson gave the collected officers a what are you gonna do? shrug and walked out behind him, Quinn trailing.

  When they got to the steps of the police station, Julius stopped for a moment. Then he gave himself a good, long shake.

  “AAARRRGGHHHHH!” he shouted.

  Quinn’s eyes went wide.

  Then Julius took a deep breath and turned to them.

  “You want shotgun?” he asked Quinn.

  Hudson could tell she was about to decline, so he slid into the backseat of Julius’s Prius before she could.

  As Julius pulled out of the parking lot, there was dead silence. Then Quinn spoke up.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said. Hudson could still smell the anxiety rolling off of her, a potent mixture of fear and uncertainty.

  And... something else.

  “I know that doesn’t mean much,” she said. “Given what I do and all, but I’m moving out. I’m done. I can’t stand them anymore. My brother in Denver is going to let me live with him while I figure stuff out.”

  “You came forward at risk to your own personal safety,” Julius said. His voice sounded just a smidge too proper to Hudson, and he could tell that his mate was fighting with his desire for the girl.

  “Given your parents, I’m just glad you don’t want us dead too,” Hudson said, leaning forward in the back seat. That put his face practically on Quinn’s shoulder, his knees already up against the seat in front of him.

  Once more, he wished that Julius hadn’t insisted on buying a Prius. The car just wasn’t built for people their size.

  There was shock on Quinn’s face, which transitioned quickly to embarrassment. Then she shook her head, looking down.

  “I can’t believe they’d do this,” she said, quietly. “I mean, I can, but... they were pretty regular parents, you know?”

  Tears began to gather in her eyes. Hudson had the urge to comfort her, wrap his arms around her, hold her tight and tell her that no one would ever be shitty to her again.

  Instead he did nothing.

  You can’t have her, he reminded himself.

  “They went on about how awful shifters were a lot, but they also checked my homework and baked cookies and got excited at my college graduation,” she said.

  A single tear made its way down her face, and Hudson bit the inside of his lip, forcing himself not to wipe it away.

  “We don’t choose our parents,” he told her. “God knows I didn’t.”

  He exchanged a look with Julius in the rear view mirror, wondering if he should go on. He didn’t like to talk about his past lives too much — not the one where he’d been a drug-running biker, and especially not the one where he had shitty parents.

  Quinn half smiled.

  “How are your parents fucked up?” she asked, softly. There was a h
int of camaraderie in her voice, and before he knew it, Hudson was telling her the whole story.

  “I was born in Oakland, before shifters came out,” he said. “Most shifters live in the woods, you know, but my parents lived in this one-bedroom apartment in the city because that was all they could afford, between my mom’s prescription drug problem and my dad’s drinking.”

  Quinn’s eyes were wide, drinking in his story.

  Then she frowned.

  “Don’t most shifters have three parents?” she asked.

  Hudson nodded. “That’s how it’s supposed to work,” he said. “Mine weren’t really even mates, though. They had a one night stand when they were both trashed at a dive bar one night, and I got made. And back then, you got married if you got knocked up.”

  “Oh.” Quinn paused. “I’m sorry.”

  Hudson shrugged. He knew it wasn’t a fairy tale.

  “So they were both with the wrong person and pretending that they weren’t shifters. I think the strain of not shifting put a lot of stress on them both.”

  She looked quizzical.

  “It’s not healthy for shifters not to shift,” Julius explained. “It’s kind of like if you were trapped in a little room all day. Makes you crazy.”

  Quinn nodded.

  “My mom was mostly high and my dad was mostly bouncing from job to job, drinking with his human friends, coming home and shouting at us and then falling asleep on the couch.”

  He paused, but something in Quinn’s face spurred him on.

  It doesn’t matter if she knows, he thought. She’s out of your life soon enough.

  “My earliest memory is climbing on the kitchen counter and going through all the cabinets, trying to find cereal,” he said. “My second earliest memory is of my dad, coming home drunk and trying to teach me to fight.”

  By now, his hand was holding onto the seat, next to Quinn’s shoulder, and she glanced at it.

  Hudson started to move it away, but not fast enough.

  Quinn put her hand on his.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes staring into his.

  Her touch nearly tingled, it made him feel so alive.

  He managed a smile.

  “I got a lot of black eyes until I learned to fight back,” he said. “But they never tried to assassinate someone, so I guess we’re even.”

  He winked, and managed to get a smile out of Quinn.

  “At least you turned out okay,” she said encouragingly.

  Hudson laughed, and he could see Julius smile in the front seat as he turned into the motel parking lot.

  “What? Pull around back,” she said. Julius obliged.

  “It took me a while to turn out okay, and that’s still up for debate,” Hudson said.

  Julius pulled into a parking space and turned the car off.

  Quinn raised her eyebrows.

  “What do you mean?”

  Don’t, thought Hudson. Don’t ask her.

  “It’s a long story,” he said. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  Right away, he saw Julius’s hands gripping the steering wheel, a withering glare in the rearview mirror.

  Quinn turned a pleasing pink color.

  “Probably just working on the website,” she said. She sounded both nervous and befuddled. “Why?”

  “Let us take you out,” Hudson said.

  In the front seat, he could practically hear the steam coming out of Julius’s ears, but he didn’t care. She’d be gone soon enough, and besides, Julius might get shot soon. Time to live a little.

  “Oh! Well, yes, sure, but um,” Quinn said, turning even pinker and fumbling her words, “... my parents.”

  Hudson met Julius’s furious eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “We’ll think of something,” he said.

  “I’ll think on it, too,” Quinn volunteered, sounding eager.

  Hudson’s bear was practically drooling.

  “See you tomorrow, then,” Julius said, his voice sounding tight.

  Quinn got out of the car and walked around the motel, and Hudson switched into the front seat.

  Julius glared at him.

  “You might die in two days,” Hudson said. “Does anything else really matter?”

  Julius took a deep breath, one hand resting on the gear shift.

  Then he took Hudson’s hand in his and kissed it.

  “No,” he said. “It doesn’t.”

  8

  Quinn

  Quinn couldn’t sleep. Instead, she laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering why she’d even bothered trying. Finally, after an hour, she got up and went out to the motel’s small, crummy pool.

  There she sat on a half-rusted pool chair, staring at the water. The highway was right behind it, but this time of night, no one was going anywhere.

  Just like home, she thought.

  From the way her parents had talked about it, she’d thought that Granite Valley would have some sort of crazy red light district, and that shifter were up all night, driving around, fucking in the backs of cars, but that was totally wrong. It was just another small town, really.

  How was she going to get out of her parents’ clutches tomorrow? Despite herself, she really did want to go out with Julius and Hudson. It wasn’t like anything was going to happen, and besides, she’d be getting out of Cascadia ASAP as soon as the assassination attempt was over.

  Obviously, no one was going to want the daughter of the would-be assassins to stick around.

  Quinn could still scarcely believe that her parents had arranged it. Sure, she knew that they were hateful in the extreme, about shifters more than anything — but having someone killed? It just seemed beyond the pale.

  I wonder if I know them at all, she thought. What else are they capable of?

  One more time, she went over the plan in her head. A SWAT team, made up of people not just from Granite valley but from Long Prairie and Canyon City as well, would be hiding out and watching the rooftops, ready to take down anyone who even appeared to have a gun.

  Meanwhile, a huge plainclothes police force would be in the crowd before the trial, most on the protestor side. They’d gone over it from every angle, every possible place at the courthouse where someone could shoot Julius from.

  Quinn still had a horrible sinking feeling about it, no matter how many times all the shifters had tried to comfort her. Julius and Ash had chosen this way over pushing the trial back further and trying to catch the shooter without putting Julius at risk, even over Hudson’s protestations.

  Julius wanted the culprits arrested and the whole thing over with.

  Hudson, at that point, had mostly sat in his seat and glowered.

  Quinn rubbed her eyes in her hands, watching the stars reflected off the rippling surface of the pool. As guilty as she felt, she was glad they’d decided to do it this way — the sooner they got it over with, the less time her parents had to figure out that she knew their plan and she’d talked to the authorities.

  She pulled her hood over her head and leaned back, staring at the stars. Also just like home: Orion’s belt, the big dipper, the little dipper, the north star...

  “Quinn!” her mother shouted.

  She jerked awake, realizing that she was slightly damp and freezing. Her eyes came open and she looked around, and for a few moments she was utterly lost, feeling unmoored from reality.

  I’m dreaming, she thought.

  “Quinn!” her mother shouted again. Then there was the sound of a metal gate rattling, and Quinn finally remembered going out to the pool the night before.

  Apparently she’d finally fallen asleep out there.

  “What on earth are you doing out here?” her mother scolded, finally getting the gate to the pool open.

  “I couldn’t sleep inside,” Quinn said, guiltily. Her mom had probably flipped out when she hadn’t answered her motel room door.

  “Anything could have happened out here, Quinn,” her mother said, hands on her hips. Her face was rec
eding into its usual scowl, but there were still worry lines between her eyes that spoke of the panic over her daughter.

  Quinn felt a pang of guilt.

  They arranged for someone to die, she reminded herself.

  “Sorry, mom,” she said. “I just wanted to get some air, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

  “Metal fences are no barrier to these perverts,” her mother hissed.

  Quinn felt a little less guilty.

  “They drag off human women,” she said. “They don’t have feelings the way you and I do. They’ll just have sex with anything.”

  Quinn managed not to make a face at her mother, but she felt revolted again.

  Does she really believe this stuff? She wondered. If she does, is that why she can do all this?

  “I’m fine now,” she said. “Just a little damp. Sorry to worry you.”

  By now, Barbie Taylor’s face was in its natural state — a full scowl.

  “You’re okay this time,” she said.

  Quinn said nothing.

  “Anyway, we need you to work today,” she said. “The website needs a full overhaul. The trial starts again tomorrow, and we’re expecting a lot of supporters to rally to our cause. Your dad and I spent a lot of time last night coming up with a list of changes and new items to sell.”

  Quinn blinked.

  Is this a way out? She wondered.

  “I can do that,” she said cautiously. “But the internet at the motel is pretty slow.”

  “Then go somewhere with faster internet, Quinn,” her mother said. “This is very important.”

  Quinn stood, brushing rust flakes off of her pants and trying to think fast.

  The library will have internet, she thought. Mom can take you there, and then Julius and Hudson can pick you up.

  “Let me shower, and then can you take me into town?” she asked, trying her best not to smile.

  By eleven in the morning, Quinn had been at the library for an hour. The front page of the site looked totally different, and the store looked like there was more stuff in it. Trying to actually buy anything just brought up an error, but she didn’t really care. She just wanted it over with, especially since updating ShifterSexManiacs.com in the Granite Valley public library had been interesting.