LA Shifters: Shifter Romance

by Sky Winters

  The growling bears bit and snapped at the wolves as they lunged and bit right back at them. Vicky holed herself away in her bedroom, opening the door to peek at what was happening before closing it again before any of the enemies noticed where she had gone to.

  While the werewolves were all strong and swift, the bears were stronger and Amos fought back ferociously. She is not just some she-bear, he thought. She is MY she-bear.

  “Stay away from Vicky!” he roared, thrashing his long claws against Stuart. The wolf fell away, bloodied and limping. He did not stand a chance against Amos. None of the wolves did. No one could stand a chance against an angry papa bear protecting his lady and cub.

  Jean-Claude stood on the gullet of one of the other wolves, pressing his paw down but not enough to completely choke the wolf. “If you ever come around here again, we will kill you.”

  The werewolves began to whimper. They did not want to get involved in a fight versus four angry werebears. They hadn’t known that Amos would bring his friends. They were not so loyal to Stuart that they were willing to get killed for his cause. They quickly high-tailed it out of there, as soon as they could.

  Stuart, on the other hand, spat out blood, eyeing Amos a bit. It appeared as though, if he did not leave soon, he was going to die.

  “You think that she bear loves you, don’t you?” he asked. “You think she cares about you at all? All she wants is her art and her school work. I have seen her there. I know where her passions lie.”

  Vicky saw that as her cue. She came out of the bathroom, unarmed and unable to protect herself, aside from the fact that she had a massive werebear right there to keep her safe.

  “Oh, come on,” she said to him, scoffing and shaking her head. She folded her arms in front of her chest. “You talked to me, what, three times? You don’t know what I’m passionate about. And I assure you, the answer is standing right there.”

  Amos smiled. Well, if bears can smile, that’s what he did. It was more menacing-looking than happy, but she knew what he meant by it.

  With that, he whipped his large paw towards the wolf again until Stuart finally got the message and scampered away.

  Vicky smiled up at Amos and he smiled back down at her, his mouth slowly taking on more of an actual smile as he shifted back into his tall, beefy human form. As soon as he was back to Normal Amos, she jumped into his arms and hugged him close.

  “He was wrong, you know.”

  “Of course he was, darlin’.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  They gazed into each other’s eyes and then kissed.

  Vicky’s place was a wreck. The pictures on the walls were all crooked if they hadn’t been knocked off and there was broken porcelain, smashed glass, and ripped up artwork everywhere. “Well, one thing’s for sure,” she said with a sigh. “I can’t stay here. I guess art class is over, too.”

  Amos looked at her, feeling guilty. “I’m sorry we destroyed your apartment.”

  Ray attempted to straighten one of the pictures, but it crashed down to the floor and shattered instead. He grimaced. “Sorry.”

  She just laughed.

  The three biker bears worked to salvage as much as they could while Vicky and Amos packed everything up into boxes. “If you want, you could keep going to your class, just from a different home.”

  “I’m not going to be able to afford it. Once the landlord finds out about this…”

  He shook his head. “They won’t. We’ll fix it.”

  “But what if I want to live with you on the bayou now, instead?”

  The three bears looked at her and then looked at each other.

  “We should go,” Buzz said.

  “Yeah,” Jean-Claude added. “We shouldn’t disturb you.”

  Amos suddenly looked over at them. “Boys,” he said. “Bring these boxes to La Grande Grotte.”

  When Jean-Claude spoke French, it sounded creole which was cool. But when Amos spoke French, it sounded as though he was well-cultured and had trained in it for many years. Vicky had ended up catching herself an aristocratic bear.

  “You got it,” Ray replied. They took the packed boxes and carried them out of Vicky’s apartment.

  She eyed him curiously. “La Grande Grotte?” she asked him.

  “Yes,” Amos said. “It means—”

  “I know what it means,” she said, laughing. “The Large Cave. But what is that?”

  He waggled his dark eyebrows at her. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  “Right,” Vicky said. Now that the others were gone, it was just the two of them, alone in her semi-demolished apartment. “I’m going to take a shower. You coming?”

  Amos grinned and started taking off his clothes at once. He practically chased her into the shower.

  As she bent over to turn the water on, he pressed up against her and she let out a gasp as his grande cock entered her. Vicky held onto the wall as the warm water splashed against them and he thrust himself in and out of her. The water made her extra slick against him.

  He grabbed the soap and lathered her up, making love to her from behind, and kissing her back and shoulders and face. “I love you,” he said.

  When he pulled out, she turned to face him and he held her in his arms, inserting himself again. She bounced against him there. “Oh oh oh!!” she yelled. If they kept this up, they were going to do more damage to the apartment.

  The warm water made it harder for him to hold off, and he came inside her within a few blissful moments. They finished cleaning each other and then stepped out of the shower, wrapping her pink and green towels around themselves.

  With all of her stuff packed up in boxes that had been taken off to who knew where, Vicky did not have a reason to stay in her building. “I guess I need to end my lease, and my art classes,” she said sadly.

  Amos shook his head. “Yeah, end your lease but don’t give up on your classes. I’ll pay for them if need be.”

  “Can you pay for the rest of rent I’ll have to pay?” she asked, laughing slightly bitterly. “My class is at least mostly paid for with a scholarship.”

  “I can do that, too,” he said, leaning towards her and kissing her chin. “C’mon now. Let me take you to your new home.”

  They got back on his motorcycle and he drove them back in the direction of the bayou. They did not go to the same bayou however. When he’d finally parked the bike in a new bayou, Amos smiled at her. “Welcome to your new home. This is Bayou Segnette.”

  Vicky looked around, smiling. “It’s about as hot as I suppose one might expect,” she said. He led her by the hand up to a large cabin. It appeared to be much more spacious than the other one. “Does this one have a shower?” she asked, squinting up at him as the sunlight blinked through the trees at them.

  Amos chuckled. “Just go inside and see.”

  They walked in together, hand-in-hand.

  The cabin was definitely bigger. This one had an actual living room, a larger kitchen, a bedroom and – best of all! – a bathroom with a shower and tub!

  “Now, it’s not exactly meant for a large family, but I figure it’s a start?” Amos said.

  Vicky leapt into his arms, kissing him. “I love it!” she cried. “I love you!”

  EPILOGUE

  After everything that had happened to Vicky, she was not going to continue working at Zydeco. She hadn’t disliked the place, but it was not the safest place for her to be. Not only that, but the heat exhaustion and second-hand smoke were liable to kill both her and the baby if she stayed.

  Instead, safe with her biker bear, she focused on her artwork and taking better care of herself. It turned out that Amos was a bouncer at one of the local dance clubs; he made enough money to support them until she became a successful famous artist.

  Her pregnancy did not last as long as a normal pregnancy. That was because, as Amos explained to her, “Werebears do not live by human rules.”

  Four months a
fter they moved in together at La Grande Grotte, Vicky gave birth at home to a healthy baby boy. They named him Sylas. “Sylas Steele” just sounded like an awesome name to Vicky, and Amos was not going to argue with that.

  The time spent away from Zydeco did wonders for her work. Vicky still went to classes every so often, but she was devoted to her baby and did not want to leave him at home. It didn’t seem to matter if she was still taking the class or not. She continued to improve and explore new techniques that she incorporated into her pieces.

  One morning, Vicky sat outside on the cabin’s back deck right over the bayou. The baby was in a rocking cradle right beside her, staring up at her canvas as she attempted an oil painting. As she watched the familiar sunrise over the water, she did her best to let the colors of the water and the trees and the sky inspire her.

  “Who is this?” she asked little Sylas, cooing down at the little boy as he looked up at her, smiling and eager to know what the hell was going on. She’d felt like that pretty recently. She had a lot in common with their baby already.

  And he had a lot in common with his daddy.

  “This is Daddy,” Vicky said excitedly, pointing her thumb towards her portrait of Bear Amos. He was done up in blues and yellows, but it was him all right. “This is your daddy.”

  “Oh, that needs to go up on the wall,” Amos’s voice said behind her.

  She turned and smiled at him. He came up to her and they kissed. Vicky brought her hands up to his face and accidentally got blue paint all over him.

  Well, maybe it was an accident.

  Maybe she was simply imprinting on him.

  The End.

  YA Paranormal Romance

  The Grey

  Chapter One

  The house sat in the middle of a wooded area, surrounded by trees and a gravelled pavement that served as both road and driveway. Savannah got out of the car and stared at the quaint little house that was going to be her home for the next six months.

  “This is what I always imagined Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s house to look like,” Savannah said, turning back to her parents.

  “Do you like it?” her father had taken to speaking very precisely for her benefit. She never needed to wear her hearing aid around her parents because she could read their lips perfectly.

  “It’s all right,” Savannah said reluctantly. In fact, she did like it. There was a sense of cosiness that clung to the house and the town that she had never experienced before. Still, she didn’t want her parents to know that, because she didn’t want them thinking she was happy about the move.

  She stayed outside and walked toward the trees that stood beside the house like sentinels. They had a strong, oaky smell, but there was an undercurrent of something else in the air. The back of the house faced a series of small hills that led up to larger ones. They were paved with grass and rock and Savannah could sense the difference in the air up there.

  A half hour later she went back into the house to join her parents. They had bought the house with the furniture included. The sofa was upholstered with a thick fabric that held a heavy pattern of flowers. Instead of blinds in the windows, there were curtains in a variety of mismatched floral patterns. There were floorboards and carpets instead of tiles, and a staircase, with block stairs, and an old-fashioned railing.

  “You could be right,” Savannah’s mother said, when she walked into the kitchen. “Maybe Red Riding Hood’s grandmother did live here.”

  Savannah smiled, grabbed her duffel bag, and walked upstairs in search of her room. It was nestled in the corner overlooking the mountains and the hooded trees. There was one large window that brought in all the light and bathed the sparse contents of her room in an ivory glow. She set down her duffel bag and examined her small four-poster bed.

  She couldn’t hear her father walk in, but she sensed his presence the moment he appeared at her door, and she turned around.

  “Remember when you were six and all you wanted was a four poster bed?”

  Savannah rolled her eyes at him. “Is this you coming through for me?”

  “It most definitely is.” Her father nodded.

  “Thanks, Dad,” Savannah signed to him sarcastically. “Twelve years late, but I’ll take it anyway.”

  He winked at her and moved on down the hall. Savannah closed the door and walked to her window. The light was already fading, and she knew it would be dark within the hour. She stuck her head out the window and closed her eyes so she could concentrate.

  The wind caressed her face, sending a comforting coolness across her body. The air smelled of smoky oak and fresh dirt. Savannah froze in place as some other unfamiliar scent washed across her. It was subtle at first, but then grew stronger. She had never caught that scent before; it was oddly pleasant and difficult to place. Savannah opened her eyes and looked around, but there was nothing to see save the different greens and browns of nature.

  Savannah had never thought she was unlucky. She had never experienced sound the way that normal people did, and couldn’t understand why it was so important as a result. She was finally able to hear sound with the help of powerful hearing aids, but she hadn’t been as thrilled as her doctors and parents had been. She liked her silent world, and the advantages it gave her.

  Ever since she was a little girl, her other senses had been heightened. She could smell more sharply, she could see more clearly, and she could feel more acutely, but it was more than just that. She had an intuition about things…about people. At least, that was what her parents called it–intuition. But for Savannah it was something more.

  She was almost nine years old when she realized people in the world had their own specific aura. There were many similarities between auras, but for the most part, everyone was unique in their own way, everyone was different. She could sense their moods and their character. It was stronger with some people in comparison to others, but it was always there.

  Sometimes she saw flashes of things in the back of her eyelids, sometimes she smelled an extra layer of scent hiding in the whole, and sometimes it was as simple as seeing what was right in front of her. It was a hard thing to try to explain, and it was hard to understand another person’s aura. Over time, Savannah began to assign colours to fit the emotions she felt coming off of people. It was then she realized that colour seemed to be as infinite as emotion.

  Her father had always referred to her as a military brat and her mother liked to call her little gypsy, but Savannah had always thought of herself as tumbleweed. She had no control over where she went when the wind blew, and she had no choice but to go where it pushed her. In her case, her parents were the wind, and she went wherever they did.

  Savannah had lived in four different countries, eleven different cities, and she had changed schools nine times. The downside was that she never had the opportunity to make friends. The upside was that she had met thousands of different people, each with their own unique auras. Very few things surprised Savannah and very few things stumped her. She had an instinct about the world, about people, and about places, and she was very rarely wrong.

  Which was why she couldn’t understand why the smell hidden just beneath the wind at her window seemed so unfamiliar. She stared up at the line of trees sitting on one of the shallower hills. They were thicker in that area and exposed very little. The secret scent was coming from that direction, but it still gave her no hints as to what it was.

  There was one thing she was certain of--the scent wasn't human.

  Chapter Two

  “Are you ready for your first day of school?” her father signed from the front seat.

  Savannah sighed. “This is my ninth first day at school,” she signed back at him. “At this point, assume I’m always ready.”

  “Aw come on,” her mother said, turning to face her from the passenger's seat. “You could sound a little more excited.”

  “Yay,” Savannah replied sarcastically.

  “Oh, all right,” her mother said. “I
suppose you’ve earned the right to be a little…disinterested. Here are your hearing aids.”

  Savannah shook her head. “I don’t want to wear them.”

  “Come on, darling,” her mother insisted. “Things will go a lot easier if you just wear them.”

  Savannah sighed in frustration, but she took them anyway. She knew her mother was right; it was just that she hated the first day of starting out at a new school. She always felt like a monkey in a zoo, even more so, considering that she sensed things that were normally a mystery to most people.

  “Can’t I just be home-schooled?”

  “Come on now,” her father said evenly. “It’s going to be great. Stay positive.”

  “I hate how chirpy the two of you are whenever we move someplace new,” Savannah said. “Just because you’re both so positive all the time, doesn't mean I’ll forget how much this all sucks.”

  “Honey, I know this hasn’t been easy for you,” her mother said gently. “And I know you’ve had to suffer for our lifestyle but--”

  “You can’t change it,” Savannah finished for her. “I know, I know. See you after school.” She got out of the car and headed toward the main entrance.

  Grey Mountain High School was probably the smallest high school she had seen in six years. It had that small town charm to it, but that also meant its student population was just as small, which meant that everybody’s eyes would be on the new girl who had transferred in the middle of the school year.

  Almost instantly, Savannah felt everyone’s eyes on her. She was thankful she had chosen to wear her dark jeans and grey hoodie. Hopefully she'd be able to blend into the earth tones of the town that way, and nobody would see her. The thought was so ridiculous that she smiled to herself before she realized she was actually smiling at a boy who was standing a few feet away from her.

  He was tall, at least six feet. He was leaning casually against one of the trees that led up to the building, and surrounded by a group of boys who seemed to be talking to him, but he wasn’t paying them the slightest bit of attention. His eyes were fixed on Savannah as though he'd recognized her. His black hair was on the long side, setting a fierce contrast to the pale grey of his eyes.