Mated: A Paranormal Romance Shifter Anthology

by Kerry Adrienne, Sionna Fox, Shari Mikels

  Bren cleared his throat behind Sam. “We should get her out of her bloody clothes. She’s going to be freaked out enough when she wakes up, seeing that won’t help.”

  “Right. Get a T-shirt.” Waking up in his bed would be enough of an additional shock. Her waking up naked would only make matters worse.

  They carefully undressed her and wrangled her limp body into one of Sam’s shirts. She made pained noises as they lifted her arms into the sleeves, but didn’t wake. They settled her against the pillows and she let out a tiny sigh before she slipped back into deep sleep. Sam stayed with her, not quite believing that he had done it and that she would be okay.

  At around midnight, when her pulse was strong and steady, and her breathing subtly deepened as her lung and ribs continued to heal, Sam gave into exhaustion and curled up beside her.

  * * *

  Callie woke slowly from a dream of running through the woods, running for the sheer joy of it, feeling low branches whip by her face as she left the trail behind. She hated every second of awareness as she came back into her body. Everything hurt. She’d been hungover before but this was...something else. And that was before she realized she wasn’t alone. There was an arm draped over her waist.

  She scrambled to sit up and get out of the bed but every move sent waves of pain through her whole body and she tumbled over the edge and onto the floor. She landed hard on her ass and smacked her hand against the trash can next to the bed. Her sharp inhale of pain made her ribs ache like they would crack with one deep breath. She opened her eyes and wished she hadn’t. Squinting through her splitting headache, she figured out where she was. Sam’s room. She’d slept in Sam’s bed.

  “Oh, fuck,” she whispered as she patted herself down. She had a T-shirt on. Not hers. Underwear was there. Shorts weren’t. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  Sam stirred and sat up, looking slightly alarmed at finding her on the floor. How drunk were they last night? “Callie?”

  He ruffled his hair and she would have sworn she smelled his shampoo with every shake of his fingers through the short brown strands. Shampoo and sweat, the kind that came with fear. She thought she heard his heartbeat pick up, but that was impossible, that was the racing of her own heart. Wasn’t it? “I fell.” She grimaced. “Why am I—We didn’t, did we?”

  He looked at her grimly. Oh, Jesus, fuck, they did. He sat up and moved to the foot of the bed. He pointed to the pillows and said, “You should sit.”

  Gingerly, she crawled back onto his bed and tucked herself up against the pillows with her knees under her chin. Feet pounded up the stairs and the door slammed open. It sounded like a gunshot to her hungover ears. Bren burst in and didn’t look at all surprised to see her there. Perfect, they’d all been witnesses.

  “I heard something hit the floor. Cal, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I feel like I got hit by a truck, but I’m fine. No more rum for me. Ever.”

  Instead of leaving, Bren came farther into the room and pulled Sam’s desk chair over to the bed. He looked at Sam, who looked back at him, both of them with an air of resigned determination.

  Sam cleared his throat. “The thing is, you kinda did.”

  “I kinda did what?”

  “There was an accident. You were hit by a truck.”

  “Oh, ha-ha.” She cast her eyes between the two of them but the punch line didn’t come. They both looked like they were about to tell her she had some sort of terminal illness. “Very funny, guys, fuck with the hungover girl.”

  “Callie, you were in a hit-and-run on your birthday. I saw it happen.”

  “This isn’t funny, Sam. If I got hit by a truck, why am I here and not in the hospital?”

  They did that thing again, looking back and forth like how would they break the bad news to her. She was fine. She was hungover and they were messing with her. This was some elaborate and poorly thought-out prank to convince her never to drink so much again.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” Bren asked.

  “The fire pit, passing a bottle around. Did I end up at the picnic table? I think I remember that.”

  Sam sighed. “I pulled you away from the fire after you almost upended the bottle and yourself into it.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Fuck. I should have realized you were blacked out. I should never have let you walk off.”

  “What the fuck is going on, you guys? This isn’t funny.” A restless wave rolled through her and she wanted to run, in spite of how much it hurt to move. It did feel like most of the bones in her body were bruised, if not broken. Her legs twitched as the muscles in her stomach and back went rigid. “What. The. Hell. Is. Going. On?”

  “It’s probably the adrenaline leaving your system.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Sam. You have to tell her.”

  “Tell me what?” she asked through a clenched jaw. She felt like she was going to explode if she couldn’t run like in the dream. She needed to sprint through the woods and feel the wind on her skin and smell the trees and the earth.

  Sam pried her hands away from her knees, where she’d left behind crescent moons, digging her nails into her skin. “Callie, look at me.” She met his eyes, blue-green and deadly serious. It calmed her slightly. “You were in an accident. A pickup truck came speeding down Main Street, with no headlights on, when you were in the crosswalk, and it hit you. The driver must have been drunk. They didn’t stop. You almost died.” His voice broke like he believed what he was saying. Had someone slipped mushrooms into their beers and Sam hallucinated that she was dying? “I—You—” Sam’s voice cracked again.

  Bren made a frustrated growl. “He bit you, Cal. You were dying, your lung was punctured and you would have drowned in your own blood before we could get you to the hospital. He bit you, and now you’re a wolf.”

  That was the punch line? She almost died so Sam turned her into a werewolf? If it hadn’t hurt so much, she would have cracked up, but she managed a few snorts out of her aching chest. Both Bren and Sam were still watching her like they’d told her she had cancer. “Come on, guys. I promise I won’t drink like that again. You will never have to share a mattress with me while making sure I don’t choke on my puke, okay?” She nudged Sam with her foot. “What happened to my shorts, by the way?”

  Bren held up a piece of ragged cloth. “You mean these?” He tossed them in her lap. Her shorts, shredded and bloody. From hitting the pavement? She automatically pulled the covers back and looked at her hip and thigh, dark purple and sore, covered with flecks of dried blood and healing scabs like she’d taken a good tumble. But still nothing like what would have had to happen to destroy her shorts like that.

  “No.” Her head bobbed back and forth and she felt the urge to run again.

  Sam scooted closer and wrapped his arms around her, stilling her twitching muscles. “I’m sorry. There was no other way. I couldn’t lose you.”

  She planted her palms on his chest and shoved. He let go. “No. You’re fucking with me. It can’t—It’s not real. You’re not—You can’t be. That’s not possible.”

  “It’s real, Cal.” Bren stood up and pulled off his T-shirt and dropped his shorts.

  “What the fuck, Bren?”

  With a stretch of his back and shoulders and an uncanny twist of the light coming through the windows, a large gray wolf wearing Bren’s boxer shorts sat on the floor in front of her. Its tail stuck awkwardly out of the leg hole. The pale fur under its chin mimicked the way Bren’s scruffy beard grew in. It glared at her with Bren’s eyes, as if to say, See? I told you so.

  “What the actual fuck? This is a dream. I’m dreaming. This isn’t real. Holy hell, I will never drink again.” Callie ducked her eyes behind her knees, like she could possibly block out the image of wolf-Bren sitting in front of her.

  In another instant, Bren was there, whol
e and human and in his boxers, sitting on Sam’s floor. “You’re not dreaming. You might want to keep the promise about not drinking, but it’s real, Cal.”

  She shook her head and looked dumbly at Bren. “No. I’ve known you since I was five. I know your whole family. Your mom is my boss.” She turned to Sam. “This can’t—It’s not real. It’s not.”

  “It’s real, Callie. I’m sorry but it is. That feeling like you want to run, like you want to sprint through the woods for miles because it feels good? That’s the wolf. The adrenaline leaching out of your system doesn’t help, but it’s her and she wants out. It was the only way. We heal faster than humans do. I couldn’t let you die, run over in the middle of the road by some drunk asshole. I couldn’t let you die that way.” She’d never seen Sam cry before but there were tears welling in his eyes. Somehow, his tears made it real—not Bren’s magic trick, Sam’s tears.

  “I’ve known you my whole life. How could I not know this?”

  The door crashed open for a second time that morning. Sam’s father loomed on the threshold of his room. “Someone want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

  * * *

  Shit. Angus MacTire was intimidating on a good day and this was not going to be a good day. He was clearly furious, vibrating with it through every line of his body. Sam knew he had fucked up, had crashed through several of the laws they held most sacred by saving Callie. How was he supposed to explain that he just couldn’t lose her?

  “Dad—”

  “Outside, Sam. Now.” He turned on his boot heel and stalked out of the room. Callie looked like she was going to curl up in a ball and cry, Bren looked guilty.

  “You called him.”

  “It’s been two days. Shit, she was supposed to be at work this morning. I had to.”

  “You could have given me a few more hours.”

  “You think it would have made a difference?”

  Sam sighed and got to his feet. He went downstairs and found his father surveying the backyard with an air of disgust and disappointment. Sam stood beside him and waited for the ax to fall.

  “You want to tell me what the hell you were thinking?”

  “Did Bren tell you what happened?”

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  Sam stared at the ashes in the fire pit and searched for the right words. “She was drunk. I didn’t realize how drunk or I would never have let her leave. I’d been keeping an eye on her all night.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Why? Why do you feel the need to watch her so closely?”

  Because she belongs to me. “Because she’s my best friend.”

  His father snorted and Sam continued. “She was in the middle of the street and this black truck with no lights on came out of nowhere, over the speed limit, and slammed right into her, didn’t even try to swerve, like they didn’t see her at all.” Maybe in time it would get easier to recount the moments when he thought he would lose her forever, but it was too fresh, the scene too vivid in his memory. “She would have died. Her lung was punctured, she was going into shock, I could hear her drowning in her own blood. She would have died waiting for an ambulance or an airlift.”

  “Maybe it was her time to die, son.” He said it gently, but the words still cut, made Sam ball his fists and want to punch something.

  “No. She’s not supposed to die like a stray cat in the street.”

  “So you changed her.”

  “I saved her life.”

  “And disobeyed one of the fundamental tenets of our culture. You didn’t give her a choice. You changed her when she had no idea we existed, should never have known we existed. She has to live with that now, because of you and your actions.”

  He’d fix it. Callie would be fine. She’d learn, he would teach her. “But she’s alive. That’s got to be better than ignorant and dead.”

  His father shook his head and strode back to the porch. “Come on.”

  Upstairs, Bren had put on some clothes and Callie was still curled around his pillow with a thousand-yard stare. His dad sat in the chair by the bed and spoke to her like he would a frightened animal, which he supposed Callie was.

  “Callie.”

  “Mr. MacTire.”

  “Do you understand what happened Sunday night?”

  Her eyebrows wrinkled together. Sam wanted nothing more than to soothe her, but he wouldn’t be allowed to go to her until his father made his point. “Not really? I mean, I saw it. Bren showed me, I guess. But I can’t—Wait, Sunday? What day is it? How long have I been out?”

  “You idiots shifted in front of her? In front of a frightened, wounded girl? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Bren cringed along with Sam. “She thought we were messing with her, sir. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Go downstairs, Brennan. We’ll discuss appropriate behavior with the recently traumatized and changed later.” Bren slunk out of the room and his father turned back to Callie. “I apologize, Callie. They should have brought you straight to me instead of waiting. It’s Wednesday.” He gave a quick, hard glance at Sam. He had broken that rule, too. But he knew she would have been more hysterical if she woke up in his parents’ house with his father looming over her waiting to explain that she wasn’t entirely human anymore.

  “It’s not Bren’s fault. I didn’t believe them. It was, um, pretty convincing to actually see it.”

  “That may be so. However, it remains that it was inappropriate and potentially dangerous.” His father stood up. “You have a lot to learn.” He turned to Sam. “She’s your responsibility. You did this, you will own all of the consequences. Get her settled, then I want to know more about the truck.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sam slumped back onto the mattress as soon as the door closed behind his father but Callie perked up, her relief at being out from under his scrutiny palpable. “What was he talking about? Consequences? And what did he mean he wanted to know about the truck, you said it was a drunk driver.”

  “Oh, good. You’re awake,” he said sarcastically, and rolled onto his back. “I—I fucked up. We’re not supposed to change people like that, unplanned, when they don’t know what they’re getting into. It was an emergency and you were unconscious, it’s not like I had a choice.” He scrubbed his hands over his eyes. “But it’s not an easy thing to go through. I assume it was a drunk driver, but my father will investigate anyway, to be sure.”

  “You want to know what’s messed up?”

  “What?”

  “I think I’m more mad that I never knew than I am that you—” she paused, struggling for the words “—changed me. You lied to me. Our whole lives.”

  “I had to. It’s the first thing we’re taught as kids, we keep our secrets.”

  “From your best friend?”

  “From everyone who’s not one of us, yes. There aren’t many of us left; it’s safer when people don’t know we’re their friends and neighbors.”

  “And I have to keep those secrets now?”

  “Yes.”

  “From everyone.”

  “Yes.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I’m sorry. If I thought there had been any other way—”

  “I know. I heard you outside with your dad. So, do I have superpowers, now? Will I howl at the moon uncontrollably? Live forever?”

  Sam chuckled. That sounded more like Callie. “Superpowers, kind of. You’ll be able to hear and smell more.”

  “Check and check. I thought it was the hangover making everything extremely loud and smelly.”

  “No, that’s you.” He elbowed her ribs gently.

  “Ha-ha. Jerk.”

  “You’ll only howl at the full moon because it’s fun, not because you have to. You’ll basically live a normal human life, with
extras.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “It’s not. And there are a bunch of us around to help you. Come on. Let’s get you back to your place and get you showered and fed.” He wanted to clean away the scent of fear and blood from her skin and his, didn’t want to ever smell it on her again. “You’ll feel better, I swear.”

  “I’m already feeling way better than I did when I woke up.”

  “Highly accelerated healing. Comes in handy. Your ribs probably still feel pretty tender, and your head’s going to hurt for a while. You hit the pavement pretty hard.” He wasn’t ready to detail her injuries and relive the nightmare again.

  “Right.”

  He helped her into a pair of his shorts, since hers had been shredded to almost nothing, and walked her home. He’d lost her flip-flops, but she didn’t seem to mind being barefoot. The wolf was already settling in. Callie would be fine.

  The chorus in his heart, howling that she truly belonged to him, now more than ever, that was not fine.

  Chapter Three

  Taking a shower had never felt so good. Callie scrubbed away the smells of stale alcohol, terror and blood as her body knit itself back together under the stream of warm water. She still had the urge to run, but putting a name on it, even a name as incomprehensible and impossible as wolf, calmed her. Sam would take care of her. He would show her how to survive this.

  His father had made it abundantly clear that she was Sam’s responsibility and she felt a twinge of guilt. Sure, he cared enough not to let her die in the street, but it wasn’t like he wanted to be stuck babysitting her for—well, she didn’t have any idea how long he would be stuck with her.

  The hot water started to run out, forcing her out of the shower. She slipped into the clean shorts and tank top she’d left on the sink and wrapped her hair in a towel. Sam was waiting for her when she emerged from the bathroom.