Ranger Drew (Shifter Nation: Werebears Of Acadia Book 4)

by Meg Ripley

  Her body lay in a ruined mess between them, a scarlet pool rapidly growing around her broken form. Charlie kept looking from her head—nearly completely separated from her body—and her chest, which was mostly dripping from Natalie’s hand. He felt numb, but Natalie’s shoulders were beginning to shake. He stepped over Ali’s body and unshifted his hand, reaching for her to pull her into his arms.

  When he locked his arms around her, he finally realized she was laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked uncertainly. All he could feel was an impossible mixture of panic and relief.

  “Nothing,” Natalie admitted, and he felt tears soak through the fabric of his shirt. “I just…love you so much.” He had a feeling she wanted to say more, but it was lost in her uncontrollable giggling.

  Charlie smiled and gingerly kissed the top of her blood-soaked head. I love you, too.

  ****

  In the days that followed, the human residents of Sierra Leandra all returned from mysterious vacations or snapped out of a light trance, and they couldn’t seem to agree on what had caused all the damage in town. A lot of it was quickly repaired with the help of the remaining lions, and no one had to explain away any of the painful absences caused by the rash of violence the Golden Claws had wrought—because none of the humans noticed a thing.

  “They’ve been dosing the humans with some kind of drug so they would stay docile and out of the way, or at least open to suggestion,” a recovered Evan said in their newly cleaned up living room days after the lions conducted a private investigation. “Once the leader was gone, all the henchmen moved out real quick. It actually seems like they don’t have it down to an exact science, drugging people. I woke up like five minutes after Ali and the big guy left.” He shivered, and Ariel slipped an arm around his neck and kissed his cheek. They had been so close to death, and had escaped based on mostly luck. They both seemed to need more contact after the ordeal; Charlie supposed they all did.

  “So, we’re safe?” Ariel asked again. It was a question their community was asking a lot—when they dropped by to check on Natalie, when Charlie visited his missing pride mate’s families, at funeral and wakes; it was the one question that no one tired of hearing an affirmative answer to every few moments.

  “We’re safe,” Natalie said. “And even better, we’re growing stronger. Susan Doyle can predict things a few hours into the future, Charlie and I can communicate with our minds, and Ariel, you can lift almost five hundred pounds now.”

  Ariel blushed, her flaming red hair accentuating the scarlet of her cheeks. “Yeah. But I don’t know how useful it’ll be for everyone. Not like your healing,” she muttered. “It’s useful being able to share healing powers.”

  “You’re far more useful than you give yourself credit for,” Natalie assured her best friend, smiling warmly at her from her recliner. “Besides, you don’t even know what I have planned.”

  Evan sat up straighter at her words. “Plans?”

  Natalie looked at Charlie for confirmation and nodded. “We’re going to help other prides reach their potential while we reach for ours,” she said, and the joy was bursting through every word. She held her palm against her stomach as she spoke, and Charlie felt his heart swell and lighten as she told their friends what she’d told him. “This new era those scumbags were afraid of…let’s go for it. Let’s find out what our potential is. Lions are such a small group nationwide; wouldn’t it be wonderful to strengthen and rally around this cause?” Her golden-brown skin was bright and flushed, and her words were impossibly buoyant. “I don’t think it’s just us; I think we can all do it, and I think we owe it to other prides to let them know.” She looked from Evan to Ariel, encouraged by the growing smiles on their faces. Charlie was already there, high on the spirt of togetherness with her. She pressed her hand more firmly against her stomach; they knew now that the baby really was the link between them, the reason for their power.

  “So, what do you say?” Natalie asked. “I want to make history. I want to make the best available for everyone. Are you ready?”

  “Ready!” Evan cheered, carried away by passion.

  “Ready!” Ariel echoed, bouncing in her seat.

  Natalie turned to her mate, pure happiness radiating from her determined features. She slipped her hand against his cheek, her brown eyes consumed with love. Ready?

  Charlie grabbed her hand and sent a gentle pulse of dizzying energy into her palm as he pressed his jaw firmly against it and answered her, with a single word packed with unwavering devotion: Ready!

  PART TWO

  A Shift In Power

  “Okay, what’s our final count?”

  Thomas looked up from the stack of papers fanned out on the glass table before him and removed his glasses, bleakly rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Seven buildings irreparably damaged. Two will have to be shut down for expedited repairs. Three we can keep operational during cleanup, but two we’re going to need to pull down and rebuild. Frank’s Tires and the pie shop just aren’t capable of standing for repairs.”

  Evan groaned and shook his head, his dark-skinned features finally showing his agitation after two hours of brainstorming. “Frank’s wall can’t be fixed right now without being remodeled?”

  “It’s load-bearing,” Thomas answered. “It’s gonna have to come down entirely. I mean, it’s going to come down one way or another. I’d just rather it be by choice, and not on Frank’s head one afternoon.”

  Evan leaned back in his wicker chair and nodded, his eyes still hidden behind his mirrored shades. Thomas knew the lion had been having trouble keeping his eyes from looking too wild—after fighting off the rogue lioness who tried to pick off their pride, his emotions had been unpredictable, even something approaching volatile. Evan was normally calm, collected, stoic: it was part of the reason why he was in the upper levels of their pride as far as status in the pack. The last few weeks, he and his wife Ariel had been a little jumpier and seemed to need far more space, choosing to only leave their home during mandatory meetings and joint clean-up efforts. He was finally settling back into his own skin, but his pupils kept slipping into the distinctive cat’s eye shape and vivid hue that marked lion shifters. Thomas didn’t mind, but the humans were still dropping by their respective homes unannounced, eager to find out when they could continue with their business, and scaring one of them would be bad for all of them.

  The sun was gone, and thanks to the ordeal in the previous weeks, many of Sierra Leandra’s brighter lights were off; this left the sky astoundingly clear and dark, holding more stars than Thomas even thought they could see without leaving the city. His backyard was a sprawling square of lush greenery that sloped downward and connected with a field in the distance, eventually turning into farmland miles beyond that. Susanna’s rose bushes were in full bloom, bursting below the window sill to their right and glimmering condensation under the light of the stars. Despite being surrounded by such undeniable beauty, Thomas couldn’t shake his grim mood.

  “It’s going to take weeks to get the pie shop back up and running, even though her shop is small,” Thomas continued wearily. “I called some of my relatives in London, and they’ll lend us a hand.”

  “The London Council approved our request?” Evan asked, sitting up straighter in her chair. Lion shifters were close-knit regardless of distance, simply because they took shifter solidarity seriously, but international affairs were often muddied by cultural differences. The English Council was notoriously isolationist, only sending aid in the event of clear emergencies—usually meaning all-out war.

  “They didn’t,” Thomas admitted. “I really do have relatives that can help us in London, five or six at this point. Half are shifters, and the other half are just good sports. They’ll add to our numbers, maybe keep all of work down to under a month.”

  “Good thinking,” Evan said, and his tone showed how impressed he was. Thomas smiled; coming from Evan, this was a round of applause.

  “I’m hap
py to be useful,” he said as he put his glasses back on. “You kept Susanna and I calm while that…monster was in our neighborhood. I wish I hadn’t been so hysterical.” Thomas dropped his eyes as shame washed over him. He’d nearly passed out from breathing so hard.

  “The front line isn’t where you’re used to being,” Evan reminded him. “You’re a diplomat and a medic. That’s always been your role, and you’re better than anyone else.”

  He stood up, and Thomas was thankful Evan was wearing his sunglasses; he was sure he was blushing furiously. “Thank you,” he said awkwardly. “That means a lot to me.”

  Evan shot him a brief smile and nodded. “Ariel is making steak. I should get going. I’ll see you at the meeting tomorrow?”

  “Absolutely,” Thomas confirmed. Evan touched the heel of his hand to Thomas’ jaw in a quick gesture of affection and left before the other man could react; he wasn’t quite sure how he should react to what was—for Evan—an extreme level of affection toward he and Susanna. It hadn’t just been that day, or just Evan; Ariel kept sending cupcakes over to them, decorated with cute candy hearts or short, fat squares of chocolate. Julio had offered to mow their lawn each week, and even Natalie, their matriarch, kept inviting them over for dinner. He supposed they were all in need of more company than usual, but he also thought they were treating the two of them more fragile simply because they thought they needed to be sheltered.

  Thomas wanted to be upset about this suspicion, but the truth was that Susanna was having a hard time dealing with being attacked on their own turf. In the five years since they’d committed themselves to each other, she’d seen active duty in their marine unit, while he had never even held a gun past training. She was home now—for good, once her psychologist officially diagnosed her with clinical depression and PTSD. Though the United States deemed her unfit for service, the pride never made her feel useless or broken; however, these last few weeks especially they made her feel like a live grenade: tiptoeing around her, couching their speech in euphemisms and gentle language, and just generally behaving as though she were a downed wire.

  “We don’t want to rush you,” Natalie explained one evening after Susanna angrily asked how long they were going to keep this up. “Please understand, none of us are trying to make you feel weak. We know how strong you are, but we all need space right now, and we appreciate that you might need more than us.”

  After that, she’d become so frustrated that she wasn’t able to articulate her feelings, so she was choosing to sit out non-mandatory meetings for a while. Seeing the damage done to the humans’ property especially upset her, since Susanna was the only member of the pack who had been turned into a lion, and not born as one, meaning she actually had human family in town. Thomas heard her moving through the house after Evan exited through the front, and he turned his eyes toward the sliding glass door while Susanna walked out onto the patio, holding what looked to be a very stiff drink. Her short black hair was cut just above her shoulders, and it was still wavy and damp from the shower. The porch light made her light brown skin look more pale than usual. Her emerald eyes darkened briefly as they caught sight of the estimates and reports on the table, but she smiled when she met Thomas’ gaze.

  “Evening, Sargent,” Thomas quipped, propping his long legs up on the table, so that his feet conveniently covered most of the plans. “You were right, by the way. It’s cooled down quite a bit.”

  “Mm.” Susanna sat in the wicker chair that Evan had occupied only moments before, tucking her slim, muscled legs underneath her as she started to sip her whiskey. “So, the reports were bad?”

  Thomas balked. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about that! How do you know if the reports were bad?”

  Susanna laughed, a jagged, melodious sound that still made his spine tingle pleasantly whenever he heard it. “Your accent got much stronger, so I already know it’s bad. I guess you’re more upset than you realized.”

  Thomas swore under his breath. “Damn my posh upbringing. You’d think twenty years in Southern California would tame it a bit more, but alas.” He smiled and pulled his legs off the table, gathering the papers into a neat stack in one swift movement. “You know, it’s not fair that I have a tell for my anger and you don’t.”

  “I don’t think it’s fair that I have a tell in general, and you don’t,” Susanna shot back, a playful smile spreading on her lips. Her tight green T-shirt was flecked with moisture, mostly likely from making her drink. “I can’t ever remember to avoid rubbing my eyebrows when I’m nervous. At least you might be able to force an American accent eventually.”

  “Perhaps something southern,” Thomas said thoughtfully. “Women like southern gentlemen, don’t they?”

  “Those don’t exist anymore, dear,” Susanna said, laughing. “Southern Belles are a little different, too. I love your accent.”

  “Because it’s sexy?” Thomas asked, arching one eyebrow and winking while his mate tried to stifle a giggle.

  “Because it’s you,” she said after she finally got her laughter under control. She leaned back in the high-backed chair, taking another hearty swig of her drink before setting it down on one of the black coasters. Thomas watched her fiddle with the glass absentmindedly for a minute as she became lost in her train of thought. Then she raised her oval-shaped face again said, softly: “Was I right about the steak?”

  Thomas tensed, surprised by the topic even though they’d spoken about it before. “Yes. I can’t believe I’d forgotten about that. I’m so sorry, Susanna; I got so worried about the amount of work to be done, none of which has any plausible explanation to a bunch of humans who can’t remember anything.”

  Susanna reached across the table and took one of his larger hands in hers, shaking her head gently and smiling as he spoke. “It’s ok, mi querido. Someone needs to look out for my family, and you and Evan are the only ones level-headed enough to actually plan what needs to be done.”

  “But we need to bring this up, too,” Thomas insisted, his voice thick with remorse. How could I have been so selfish? Susanna’s having visions, and I’m worrying about a few angry humans. “I mean, they’re coming faster, and they also seem to be coming true every time. Even small stuff, like Ariel making steak.”

  Susanna sat back in her chair again, her body suddenly alive with energy. “But we got somewhere with this. We know that the visions are consistently realistic so far. And Evan didn’t say anything? I mean, I know that Natalie knows about them, and that she wants everyone with burgeoning powers to work on them, but does she need anything specific from me? I wonder how I can train this. Do you think—” she stopped, apparently realizing she was starting to trip over her words. “Oh, man. I have to calm down.”

  Thomas stood and walked over to her side of the table, dropping to one knee and placing his hands on either side of her waist. Susanna took a deep breath to steady herself, then looked down at her mate, who was trying to compose his angular features into a comforting expression.

  “It’s okay to be excited,” he said slowly, “but now we have to tell Natalie about the things you saw regarding the fire.”

  Susanna sighed and slumped forward in her chair. This was the tough part. Though many members of their pride had been gaining mysterious new powers over the last month, a lot of them took comfort in knowing their abilities would be put to good use. Natalie and Charlie could communicate telepathically anytime they wanted, enabling them to make decisions faster and more fluidly than ever before; Ariel could now manipulate a thousand of pounds of any mineral or metal with just the wave of her hand, meaning she could help with building efforts until she got too tired; and Leslie could move faster than anyone their pride had ever seen. Natalie, as their matriarch, was interested in and supportive of Susanna’s flashes of perception, but so far, they hadn’t been of any actual use. She’d predicted a window breaking from a stray golf ball, a car accident in front of Leslie’s house, and a tree falling across the mouth of the cul-de-sac nearby. />
  “This is excellent!” Charlie, Natalie’s husband, had been positively overjoyed. “If something else happens, we can have all sorts of warning.”

  “It’s only a few hours,” Susanna had warned him. “And I can’t seem to control when I get them, or even their subject matter. Plus, they’re very brief, and sometimes they come in flashes, instead of a steady moving image.”

  “But everyone is getting crazy powers right now!” Charlie exclaimed. “We’ll figure it out in time. Who knows, maybe you’ll even be able to predict the lotto. Could you imagine?”

  “Charlie!” Natalie scolded, holding her pregnant belly with one hand and shoving her husband playfully with the other. “We can’t use something as important as clairvoyance to play the lottery.” She’d turned to smile warmly at Susanna, indicating her acceptance and support. “He’s right, though; we’ll figure it out. For now, just keep monitoring your flashes and focus on getting better.”

  “I’m—” Susanna fell silent as the leader of their pride was pulled away by someone else, and Thomas knew she had been about to say, I’m not sick. His heart hurt for her then.

  Now, he had to convince her to face the woman who had implied her fragility so many times, and insist on being heard. “Do you want to do it tomorrow?” Thomas asked, and Susanna rolled her eyes.

  “You know I don’t want to,” she answered. “But it’s our only option. This is the one vision I’ve had more than once, and since every one of them came true, this one will, too.” She swallowed hard and shivered, undoubtedly reliving the image now. She downed the rest of her drink and stood up, looking Thomas in his eye with sudden urgency. Susanna pulled him into a standing position and ran her hands down the long lines of his body, smiling as she dropped both of her hands to his hips. “Help me take my mind off this?”