by DJ Jennings
“Hi.” He reached out to shake her hand. “Jack Karsten.”
“Missy Greene. Nice to meet you, Jack. First day?” The grey threw him off. When he looked at her, he realized she was young. Teenager young. Must be one of the eighteen year olds.
“How could you tell?”
She laughed, the sound like pealing bells. “You get to know the look after a few weeks.”
With a grin, Jack looked away and shoved a piece of bacon in his mouth. He groaned with pleasure.
“Plus, new shifters always come in starving, especially if they’re brought in by the USA,” a friendly man across the table added, “And you’re scratched up, so...”
Jack said nothing, but smiled, then shoveled in a mouthful of eggs.
“I’m Harry,” the guy said. “Harry Millerson. You look like you’re a bear, like me.” Harry was dark and swarthy, with deep brown eyes and a thick brow. He had hands bigger than Jack’s, and where Jack was tall and muscled, Harry was round and cuddly.
Jack just nodded, then swallowed. “Yep.”
“Then you’ll be assigned with the bigger animal groups. Bears, lions, elephants...”
“Elephant shifter?”
“There’s one here. Yeah.” Harry shrugged and stabbed a piece of cantaloupe. “If an animal exists, a shifter does in that form, too.”
“Snake shifters?”
“Not this month, no,” said a woman with a strong Midwestern accent. “but we’ve had them.”
Jack turned to his left to find a big pile of wavy blonde hair and bright green eyes watching him intently. “You’ll get the hang of it. But quit talking, Jack. Eat up. You need your calories so we can burn ’em off later in training.”
Her familiarity confused him. “Have we met?”
“Not officially, though I did watch you drool for a few hours when they brought you in.”
“Charming,” Jack said, clearing his throat. “If you’re trying to flirt, that’s the worst pick-up line ever.”
Missy tittered. Harry turned beet red.
“Danielle,” the blonde said, offering him her hand. “Danielle Johnson.”
“Oh, shit,” Jack muttered, shaking her hand. “You’re one of the people who run this place.”
“Yep.”
“Open mouth, insert foot,” he muttered.
“No. Open mouth, insert eggs.” She laughed. “Nice to meet you.”
“You already met me.” He mimed drooling.
She laughed again. “Let’s start over.”
Travis appeared, sat down next to Danielle, and slid a steaming cup of beige coffee her way. He gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek.
Jack’s skin tingled. Okay, then. Territory was territory, and he knew the exact message Travis was sending.
Keep Out: No Trespassing.
Jack was too hungry to really care.
“Hey.” Someone tapped Jack on the shoulder. He looked up to find a dark-haired man with olive-toned skin and the look of a men’s magazine model. “You mind scooting over?”
It wasn’t a question.
Given that there was plenty of room on the other side of Jack, the request didn’t make sense, but who was Jack to argue? He moved three feet, and the guy sat down next to Danielle, reaching over for a slow, sweet kiss on the lips.
Travis didn’t react.
Maybe that No Trespassing sign wasn’t so enforced, after all.
“Jack, this is Josh. Josh, meet one of our new bears, Jack.”
Choking slightly, Jack assimilated that little tidbit. He needed to get used to being called a bear, apparently.
“Dr. Bear,” Josh cracked, nodding at Jack. “Heard you’re an orthopedic surgeon.”
“Trying to be.” Jack hurried to finish his plate, shoveling food in as fast as he could, chewing be damned.
“Josh and Travis were lawyers.”
“Before you found out you were shifters?”
“No,” Josh said slowly. “Before we were hired to run Camp Shifter.”
“So all three of you...” He meant to ask if they all ran the place, but his words failed him. Curiosity caught his tongue.
“We’re together. You got a problem with that?” Danielle challenged.
“No, ma’am.”
“Threesomes are common in the shifter world, Jack. Being a bear, I suspect you’ll learn that quickly,” Josh said. The guy was about as friendly as a raccoon with rabies trapped in a traveling RV with a crazy woman.
Travis tried to soften the tension. “What he means, Jack, is that the shifter world has different standards than the human world. Some shifters mate for life, pairing up one on one. Some form larger partnerships.”
“Like two on one?”
“Or more.”
More? Jack didn’t say the word aloud, but...
“Bears don’t mate for life anyhow,” Josh said dismissively. “So have your fun.”
Mara.
“They can, though,” Danielle argued. “Some do.”
Josh just shrugged.
Jack held up his hands, palms out. “I respect love in all its forms.”
Danielle beamed. “Great. This isn’t exactly a good place to come with a chip on your shoulder or an overly judgey opinion about other folks.”
“I’m not in a position to judge anyone. I woke up naked in a cabin. I assume I ran around in my birthday suit somewhere.”
“A few somewheres,” Travis said quietly. “But so has everyone here. You’re among your people now.”
My people.
The only person he wanted to be around was Mara.
“Two days? I’ve been gone two days?” he asked again.
Sympathy filled Danielle’s face. “Is there someone back home you need to contact? I know the police already let your mom and older brother know. We’re not supposed to do more than that, but for emergencies...”
“No.” Disappointment made his stomach twist. “No. She wouldn’t want me... just, no.”
Daniel touched his shoulder gently. “Give it the month here. Take the time to be trained and learn. You’ll find you have a whole new perspective on life by the time you go back home.”
Home.
“Right.”
“I know it’s hard, man,” Travis said, taking a bite from a piece of bacon on Danielle’s plate. “We’ve been doing this for five years. We know what we’re doing. You’re about to go through one of the best training camps in the world.”
“I thought Camp Shifter was the only training camp.”
“There are too many shifters to have just one camp.”
That truth had never occurred to Jack.
“There are more? Where?”
Danielle put a finger to her lips. “Shhhh. First things first. Let’s get you to your first training class. Where’s your schedule?”
Jack pulled the paper out of his back pocket and slid it to her.
“You go get a plate of pastries and some coffee,” she said, nodding toward the food. “You’ll regret not carb-loading.”
He laughed. She was right. As full as he was, he still wanted more.
Like being with Mara. He just couldn’t get enough.
Too bad women weren’t like apple fritters, he thought, as he loaded up his plate and went back to the table.
Danielle, Travis and Josh were standing when he returned.
“We need to go greet more newbies and get ready for the morning call.”
“Call?”
“Follow your schedule, Jack. Stick to it and the rest will make sense.”
And with that, the trio left.
“Don’t worry,” Missy assured him as he took a delicious bite from his apple pastry. “They know what they’re doing.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Nineteen days. Fox shifter.” She sighed, then drained her coffee. “I really miss my kids.”
“You have kids? Back home?”
“Yeah. My mom’s watching them for me.”
“What about t
heir father?” Jack should have known better than to ask, but...
Missy pulled out a packet of pictures and showed him a set of adorable toddlers, a boy and a girl. “Fraternal twins.” One twin was dark and twice the size of the other little ginger. “Their father’s here, too.”
“He is?”
Harry waved. “Father.”
“You two are together?”
Harry laughed. “Three weeks before I turned twenty-five, I shifted. Driving the minivan. Damn near crashed it.”
Missy gave him a compassionate look. “But you didn’t. It’s okay, Harry.”
“It’s not.” He was haunted by what-ifs. “But it will be.”
“I’m only twenty-one,” Missy explained. “The twins weren’t exactly planned, but they’re, well, they’re our life.”
The two shared a smile that made Jack pine for Mara.
“You’ll be home with them soon.”
Missy leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “Danielle lets us video chat with them every day. If you’re fairly well controlled, you can get extra privileges.”
“You make it sound like a prison.”
“This isn’t exactly voluntary,” Harry whispered.
The hair on Jack’s neck began to tingle. “You mean...”
“No, no, man. I don’t mean anything bad by it. Danielle, Travis and Josh are great. And the training is top notch. I don’t know how I’d go back home and survive without knowing what I know now. It’s just... we have to be here. It’s our new reality. We’re shifters. Until we’re trained, we’re a danger. We can leave after the first week, but we stay because we need to manage this. That takes some getting used to.”
“Right.”
“Harry’s parents disowned us,” Missy said sadly.
“What?”
A bell rang in the distance. “Read your itinerary. The training is there because we need it.”
And with that, they got up and walked out of the lodge, hand in hand.
Jack looked at the schedule in front of him:
8am: Morning Call
9am: Meditation and Your Inner Shifter
11am: Get a Grip: Masturbation for Shifter Males/Flicking the Bean for Females
“What the fuck?” he whispered to himself. Take a class on something he’d been doing since he was a pimply-faced pre-teen? Right. That was one class he’d try to miss.
Noon: Lunch
1pm: Shifters and Society: Overcoming Prejudice
2pm: Naked in Public 101
“I don’t recall that class back in med school,” he muttered.
3pm: Fated Mates and Other True Myths
4pm: Insurance and Shifters
“Boring,” he mumbled.
5pm: Sex and Shifters
“These people have one-track minds,” he said under his breath, finishing his coffee.
6pm: Dinner
7pm: Bonfire Happy Hour
9pm: DarkNight
“What the hell is DarkNight?” he wondered, stuffing the itinerary in his pocket and gathering his empty dishes to take to the bus-pans for the dishwashing staff.
As he left the lodge and walked into the bright sunshine, hundreds of people milled about a bonfire.
Jack knew one thing for sure: whatever questions he had about this strange place, he had a feeling time would answer.
Time away from Mara.
Chapter 17