Wild Ride: An M/M Shifter Mpreg Romance Bundle

by Preston Walker

  “Well, I’m open to suggestions,” Uriel said with a shrug.

  Forest paced, thinking. “What if we go back through the forest the way we came? Maybe I can find a way out if I go back to where this all started.”

  “I’m game,” Uriel said.

  Forest started walking, and Uriel floated along behind him. They took the path through the woods, retracing every step until they reached the place where the cave-in should have been. They pushed through bushes taller than their heads, and then... they were back at the pool.

  “What?” Forest hissed.

  “You aren’t ready,” Uriel told him. “You’re not ready to come out, so you’re just going to keep coming back here.”

  “No, there’s got to be a way,” Forest said defiantly.

  He turned around and walked back the way he came then veered sharply left when he was halfway between the pools. It didn’t make a difference; he ended up back at the same pool when he’d gone far enough. He cursed and turned on his heel, searching in the opposite direction. No matter where he went, the pool was always there. It was as if the world had become a spherical acre with the pool at the center. He could walk wherever he pleased, but he would always wind up at the pool.

  “Well, hell,” he said with a frown.

  He sat down hard on a rock beside the crystal pool and glared at his reflection. His face looked different somehow; swollen and purple in spots, green and yellow in others. He looked like he’d been hit by a truck.

  “If this is all in my head,” he told Uriel. “Then why do I look like that?”

  “Your brain knows that your body is hurt,” Uriel said. “You might not feel it in here, but you can see it.”

  “Can you see it?”

  “I couldn’t until you could. I’m you, remember?”

  “Yeah, that’s still giving me some trouble. What if... what if it wasn’t just the cave-in? What if everything from the second I woke up with that bag over my head has been nothing but an elaborate dream? Maybe I’m sick or something and fell into a coma weeks ago. That would explain why my own boss is the bad guy, why we had sex so quickly—hell, why I had sex at all—the whole insane ordeal. Yeah. You know what, my neighbor’s pet rat just died. You know what the rat’s name was?”

  “Bianca,” Uriel said.

  “Exactly. It’s a huge coincidence that the wolf I’ve never seen has the exact same name as the rat I never saw.”

  “A lot of people have the same name, though.”

  “Sure, but Bianca? How often did I hear that name before last month?”

  “I think there was a cartoon or something, wasn’t there?”

  “Yeah, and that was it. It’s not exactly a common name. It’s the only thing that makes sense! None of this is real. You aren’t real, this werewolf stuff isn’t real, none of it is! It’s all been one screwy dream.”

  “I dunno,” Uriel said with a shrug. “Feels like a cop-out to me.”

  “What other explanation is there?”

  “Well, you could have actually been targeted by Animus, who actually runs a research facility that actually studies werewolves, which actually exist, and which you actually are.”

  “I don’t buy it,” Forest said. “No, I must have contracted some kind of exotic brain disease from one of the new birds. That’s all this is, a feverish coma.”

  “Well, think what you like.” Uriel shrugged. “Still doesn’t answer the question of how to get out of this place.”

  “If this is a coma in the reality I remember, I’ll be getting all kinds of medicine and stuff. I have pretty good insurance. So I’ll just have to wait it out.”

  “And if it’s not? If your coma is taking place in the research facility?”

  “Then I’ll practice shifting so I can gobble them all up when I get better,” Forest said giddily.

  “You think practicing shifting in here will help you out there?”

  “Sure,” Forest shrugged. “Everything you do starts in the brain. This is like the most extreme kind of visualization. If I visualize the shift happening, it’ll get all the signals into shape. I mean, it can’t hurt, right?”

  “No, it can’t,” Uriel agreed. “Wanna practice fighting, too? It’s not like you can get hurt in here.”

  “Why not,” Forest said with a shrug.

  Forest spent a long time practicing the shift. The day never ended, and the light never changed; his garden lived in perpetual late afternoon, the warm sun casting long shadows across the brilliant colors of the flowers around the pool. When he was bored with shifting, he and his imaginary Uriel fought. He honed his skills, at least in theory, for what seemed like forever. He never got tired unless he got bored, and none of the blows Uriel landed ever hurt. After an eternity, Forest took a break, relaxing on a rock beside the pool.

  “It’s like Neverland,” he murmured. “Impossible beauty and limitless imagination covering up the true nature of the place, which is dark and frightening.”

  “This is what you do with limitless imagination?” Uriel asked. “Build a garden?”

  “What would you do?” Forest asked.

  “I don’t know... take over the world? Fight dragons? Fly?”

  “That sounds like work,” Forest said. “And stress, and anxiety. I’m not ambitious, and it’s not because I’m lazy or unmotivated. It’s because ambition comes with a price that I am not willing to pay.”

  “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever been able to describe that. Would have come in handy when you were a teenager, wouldn’t it?”

  “You know it,” Forest laughed. “But I think they figured it out. My parents are pretty smart about reading between the lines and interpreting emotional outbursts. I think they would have been fine with four or five more kids.”

  “Why didn’t they have them? You would have liked growing up with siblings.”

  “I think so, some days. But they were too aware of the state of the world. I was a mistake, an accidental pregnancy. They’d decided before they found out about me that they wouldn’t have their own kids at all. Now they’re living down south, fostering oodles of kids. Guess they didn’t want me to feel the sting of competition growing up, but now that I’m grown... they want to give back to the world, take care of it. That’s the kind of people they are. Everything they did, every ambition they had, was a small step toward saving the world. I think that was the source of their frustration with me more than anything. I was never driven to save the world. I never thought I had anything to offer the world, and that poking my nose where it didn’t belong would only cause trouble. I didn’t want to burden anybody with my clumsy attempts to help.”

  “But now you’re powerful,” Uriel pointed out. “At least you might be, if the whole werewolf thing turns out to be real. What are you going to do with that power?”

  Forest thought about it for a long time, watching the same cloud float overhead again and again. “Break us out,” he decided finally. “Shut down the research facility. Save the wolves.”

  “All twelve of them?”

  “Why not? The more I free, the more our power multiplies. It is possible. It has to be. This whole facility is wrong and shouldn’t be allowed to continue.”

  Uriel grinned. “That sounds suspiciously ambitious.”

  “Doesn’t it, though? Let’s keep practicing. There’s no telling when I’ll wake up.”

  Chapter Nine

  Uriel was suspended in a body cast inside a bulletproof box made from thick, clear glass. A guard was stationed on all four sides, their eyes fixed on him. He ignored them. They didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered to him in that moment was the person who was suspended in an identical box just behind them. He kept his eyes fixed on Forest’s vitals. They dipped and peaked within a reasonable margin, as far as his untrained eyes could tell. He would live. The length of his life once he’d recovered was in question.

  From what Uriel could tell, Animus was invested in Forest being pregnant. If he was, he would ha
ve at least the length of his pregnancy left to live. If he wasn’t... well, Uriel didn’t want to think about that for too long. He had to come up with an alternative way to save them both. Wishing for puppies wasn’t going to get him out of the box.

  There was nothing he could do about it until the cast came off. He’d broken nearly every bone in his body, and it was going to take at least a week for him to knit himself back together enough to try anything. He closed his eyes and reached out across space with his senses, seeking information. The two other wolves who lived in his corridor were well out of range. Bianca had been in this room, but she had moved hours before he’d arrived. He smelled at least one other female werewolf, and the male who had lived in Forest’s cell before he had. That left seven wolves unaccounted for. He wondered if they’d been studied to death, or if they were simply too far away for him to sense.

  Staying perfectly still was torture. He couldn’t bear to spend a week like this. Fortunately, Jane had been kind enough to supply him with a couple of buttons; one for morphine, and another to make him sleep. He mashed both of them until he felt himself begin to drift then fall into merciful sleep. His dreams were full of boa constrictors; whenever he would escape one, another would wrap around him. In the near distance, he heard voices crying out for him. Forest’s voice. Bianca’s voice. The voices of his tribe. They were everywhere, begging him to save them, and he couldn’t move.

  When he finally awoke, some ten hours later, he was shaking with rage and his hair was matted with frustrated tears. He decided then that he wouldn’t wait a week to start planning, and if he could break out before they cut him out, he would. He spent the next twenty-four hours studying the humans; their footfalls as they came and went, their attitudes at the beginnings and ends of their shifts, how and when supplies moved through the room. He caught the scent of fresh air every time a door opened several yards to his left. That’s the escape route, he told himself. That’s the goal.

  Knowing the goal and achieving the goal were two separate things, however. He needed to speed up his healing process. Long ago, when he was still a child, he had learned to repair his body by entering a deep meditative state. He hadn’t been able to reach that state since he lost his lover in the war, but he had to try again. For Forest. For Bianca. For his tribe. He held them tenderly in his mind, focusing on them as he sank into his meditation. He drifted inward, into the void, until he came to a mirror that displayed his broken body. Ever so slowly, ever so gently, he touched each break and brought it together, focusing on fusing the two pieces. They vibrated and heated under his touch.

  The first exhausted him, the second invigorated him. On he went like that, one after the other. Time was meaningless as he floated in the void, though he was forced to constantly push away the voices of the people who needed him. Forest’s was loudest, as if he were right there with Uriel in his soul. He tried to shut the voice out, but it was persistent, coming closer and closer until it was right in his ear.

  “Let me help you.”

  “What?” Uriel responded, startled.

  “Let me help you.”

  “You aren’t really here,” Uriel said impatiently, touching another break.

  “You aren’t really with me either, but you’re helping me.”

  “What are you talking about?” Uriel asked, looking around. There was no manifestation of Forest except his voice.

  “I’m in a coma, right? You’re in there with me. You’re helping me train. Now let me help you.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. How do you think you can help me?”

  “I’ll lend you my energy. I have plenty.”

  Uriel shrugged, relaxing his resistance. He felt warmth roll over his back and down his arms to his fingertips, felt his lungs fill with fresh air that tasted like sun-soaked grass. He touched the next break, and a blast of energy shot through his arm, healing the image in seconds.

  “Whoa,” Uriel said. “Excellent.”

  “Let’s do another,” Forest’s voice said giddily.

  They went over his entire body, each break, then went over it again.

  “Will this actually work?” Forest’s voice asked.

  “I don’t know—does coma training actually work?”

  “I think so,” Forest said thoughtfully. “But I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

  “How are you here?” Uriel asked him.

  “I don’t think I am,” Forest said. “I think you’re imagining me. Or I’m imagining you. I’m not sure anymore.”

  “Fair enough. Are you alright, though? As far as you know?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Just in a coma is all.”

  “Groovy,” Uriel laughed. “Help me go over these breaks one more time, then I’ll surface and check on the goons.”

  “Will you come back?”

  “Depends on how this translated to the physical realm. It’s been a long time since I did this.”

  “Okay. Here’s hoping it works.”

  They went over the breaks again, slowly this time. Uriel felt the distant echo of a physical bone sliding painfully into place.

  “I think it is,” he said, surprised.

  They went around once more for good measure.

  “I need to go,” Uriel said. “Take care of yourself in there. And make your way out soon, if you can. I have the first inklings of a plan, and I’m going to need your help.”

  “You got it,” Forest’s voice said. “Maybe I’ll try the mirror trick myself.”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Uriel told him. “I’ll see you soon.”

  Uriel allowed himself to float up, up, and away out of the void. He settled back into his body and was instantly ravaged with explosive pain radiating from every broken bone. He cried out and opened his eyes just enough to check which button he was pushing, then mashed down on the morphine. He spent the next eternity drifting in and out of consciousness, only reaching full wakefulness when his pain was most extreme. He’d forgotten the side effects of accelerated healing. He thought the pain might kill him.

  He didn’t know how much time had passed before he could concentrate again. It might have been hours, it might have been days; but eventually the pain faded, and he was able to observe the employees of the facility once more. There were fewer of them now: only two guards for both of them. This fact filled him with dread. If they had cut down on security, did that mean they didn’t expect Forest to wake up?

  Or had it been his fall into uselessness that had prompted the lower security? He glanced at the clock, barely visible on the wall across the hall. Digital numbers told him it was five minutes after three in the morning. The hour when human bodies were weakest and most susceptible to sleep. He watched as one of the guards nodded off where he stood. He checked his form. He’d been encased in the body cast in his human form, and he allowed himself a sly grin at their stupidity. Unless the casts were made from titanium, breaking out of them would be easy...as easy as shifting.

  He ordered his body to hold together, and took a deep breath, pulling on every scrap of rage he contained in his memory. His heart raced. His muscles bulged. His bones... his bones still felt weak, but it was too late to reverse the process. He cascaded into a shift, bursting the casts at the seams, sending him tumbling to the ground. Before the guards could react, he found the weakest part of the box, and charged at it at top speed.

  The box bowed outward and splintered at the door hinge. Uriel backed up to charge again, but the guard closest to Forest smashed his fist on a button, and the box began to fill with a sickly green gas. Uriel held his breath and charged again, crashing into the weakened wall. It creaked under his weight, but did not break. He needed air. A single gasp was all it took. He backed up to charge again, but his limbs were filled with lead. He fought the paralysis with every fiber of his being, but it was useless. Mere moments from freedom, Uriel collapsed on the floor. He heard sirens begin to wail as he stared numbly at the crease where the wall met the floor. Boots thundered past his head.
His transparent cage was surrounded in moments by stern guards with big guns. He wasn’t frightened of them; but what happened next sent a chill down his frozen spine.

  Animus’ quick, precise gait echoed down the hallway toward him. He wanted to shudder, but he was utterly immobilized. How would this mad scientist respond to his insubordination? Uriel knew that however Animus chose to punish him for his transgressions, it wouldn’t be pleasant. The door screeched open, and he was lifted onto a gurney. He watched Forest with motionless eyes until he could no longer see him, then waited, terrified, to see where they were taking him.

  Chapter Ten

  Uriel didn’t move far. A dozen yards or so down the corridor, he was taken into a small steel-walled room with restraints mounted on the wall. An evil-looking array of instruments was mounted on the opposite wall. He was moved off of the gurney and bolted onto the wall with restraints around his ankles and wrists, still paralyzed from the gas. The crowd of guards departed quickly, leaving him alone with the grim-faced Animus.

  “Six months,” Animus began. “Six long months, you were the perfect pet. Docile, obedient, no qualms about attacking on command; and then this little breeder comes along. Forest, is it? Yes. A fitting name, it seems. You’re lost in the woods, Uriel, and it’s up to me to bring you back. Usually I cringe at the thought of torture. You, however, don’t seem to be willing to bend for anything less.”

  Uriel watched helplessly as Animus pulled a branding iron off the wall and flicked the switch on a gas flame. He continued his terrifying monologue as he heated the iron.

  “You see, Uriel, you’re only useful to me as long as you are hopeless. Something about that scrawny Forest of yours seems to have given you hope; unfortunately for you... and, in fact, for him... I simply cannot allow that.”

  The iron began to glow. Uriel prayed for a distraction, an interruption, anything to delay the inevitable.