First Bite - Shifter Romance Box Set: Anthology of First in Serials and Series

by Vaughn, V.

  “I need to go,” I said. I was acutely aware of the fact that I had a huge coffee spill on the front of my sweater and that I looked as if I had just rolled out of bed, which of course I had. “Bea is right over there.” I pointed around to the other side of the reception desk.

  “I know,” he said with a slight twist to his mouth. “I thought I was ready to see everyone again, but I guess I freaked out at the last minute. That’s why I was so relieved to see you.” He offered me a tired half smile. “I haven’t spoken to Markus in ten years. Bea will call me every few months or so to tell me what’s going on. I’m still in shock. I pretty much thought that Markus would live forever.”

  The two brothers had never been close, and I knew that had always been another sore point for Lukas. When their parents died, Markus brought Lukas to Bea and then pretty much dismissed him as Markus got involved in the human and shifter politics. He gained quite a sympathetic following for the fact that he was so young but had taken on the guardianship of his younger brother, and he played that angle up at every opportunity.

  “You should go over there and comfort your aunt,” I said a bit more harshly than I would have liked. “I need to go.” And I did. I could barely stand still, and I felt as if my stomach was going to upend everything left inside it at any moment. I couldn’t stand here talking like we were two normal people who just saw each other yesterday. It wasn’t right. There was so much wrong with the picture that it made my head spin. “Your family needs you.”

  Lukas shook his head, and I saw the glint of a familiar emotion in his eyes. Anger. Well, perhaps he hadn’t changed so much after all. “They don’t need me. I’m here to find out what I can do to help Bea and pay my final respects. Then I’m out of here.”

  Of course, he was. I steeled the swirl of emotions that I felt inside of me. He’d come and go again, and he made it sound so easy. Clearly, it had been equally easy the last time.

  “Sorry again for your loss, Lukas,” I said. Then I brushed past him and made my way to the door. I felt his eyes burning into my back, but I didn’t care. I guess I had one good thing come out of the whole awful charade: I was over Lukas Kasper for good.

  Chapter 3

  It turned out that Dad had a lot more success than I did at the police department. What I had heard at the hospital was true. After getting caught in a bear trap, Markus Kasper had suffered some kind of head trauma that was what eventually led to his death, combined with the blood loss from his leg wound. The sheriff said it was possible that Markus hit his head after getting snagged in the trap, but my dad didn’t believe it. No one knew anything else, but the proximity to the Loper border was suspicious enough that my dad said he didn’t think it was an accident.

  There was a reward being offered for any information from anyone who might have seen Markus that night, but so far no one had come forward. With the Summit now less than a week away, everyone was on pins and needles, wondering what was going to happen next. It was widely assumed that Sheriff Monroe was going to take over official duties as the alpha of the Grizzly Clan, given that he was Markus’s right-hand man and had been with the Grizzlies since the beginning.

  But with Lukas in town, everyone seemed to be waiting with bated breath to see what he was going to do. My dad found out that Sheriff Monroe couldn’t officially take over until Lukas rescinded his claim. The alpha title was supposed to pass to the next male in line within the Kasper family. That was Lukas, and I don’t think anyone was as surprised to hear that as I was.

  Over the few days since I had seen him at the hospital, I had caught glimpses of him around town. His height made him stand out, which meant that I had to duck into more than one store off Main Street to avoid him. I didn’t want to see him, and I certainly didn’t want to speak to him again.

  On the day of Markus’s funeral, I watched the procession of cars out the window of my office at the newspaper on Main Street. My dad had gone to pay his respects to the family and the clan, or so he said. I knew that he was going to try to scuttle up some new insight on what was happening with the Grizzly Clan succession. I told him that I needed to finish up a story on the latest city council meeting, so I couldn’t go. I could see that he was going to tell me that I could do it later but then seemed to change his mind.

  He had heard that Lukas was back in town, just like everyone else. In fact, it seemed as if that was the only thing that people wanted to talk about these days. While I waited in line at the grocery store, I heard two women gossiping about how good looking Lukas had gotten. On one hand, it was amusing to me. Those women wouldn’t have given Lukas the time of day ten years ago, no matter how good he looked. Funny how times changed. On the other hand, though, I found that I wanted to scratch their eyes out, and it had nothing to do with my desire to protect the man who used to be my best friend. That might have been at the heart of it once, but in reality, I knew the terrible truth no matter what I told myself. Lukas Kasper was far from being out of my system.

  Which brought me back to the funeral and my lame excuse for ditching it. I didn’t want to see Lukas again, and I was still embarrassed about my intrusion on the family at the hospital to begin with. It further reminded me that I didn’t think I was cut from the same cloth as my old man. So, in all actuality, instead of writing my story, I was surfing the classified ads for jobs in neighboring counties. There had to be something else I could do with my journalism degree. My dad would be pissed, but it would probably make our relationship better if we stopped working together.

  When I heard the bell of the front door jingle, I looked up from my laptop in surprise. Everyone in town was at the funeral. I got up from my desk and peeked around the corner of the doorjamb. I sucked in a gasp of surprise. Lukas stood there in what appeared to be an expensive navy-blue suit. He looked every inch the professional businessman that he swore he’d never become. I had heard that after getting his business degree, he had gone on to some sort of swanky analyst position with a financial services company. He had moved up the ranks quickly. I hated that I still kept tabs on him, but there it was.

  His face was stoic as I saw him spy me in the doorway.

  “What are you doing here?” The words tumbled out of my mouth.

  “Hello to you too,” Lukas replied sarcastically. “Everyone in the entire town has turned out to pay their respects to my beloved big brother, and yet I couldn’t help but notice someone was missing.”

  “You are supposed to be at that funeral,” I said, working hard to keep my tone even. “That is your brother and your family. I know you were never much for appearances, Lukas, but surely you can understand that this one is required for people to even think you’re human.” I cringed at the faux pas of my words even as I watched his mouth twist in a hard smile.

  He splayed his hands out on either side of him. “Well, you got me there, because I’m only half human, right?”

  It was an argument he and I had had many times when we were teenagers. At that time, Lukas hadn’t gone through the change yet. I knew that despite whatever he said, he was hoping that he wouldn’t follow in the family bloodline of being a shifter. We’d always debate what it meant to be part of both worlds, and despite my early trepidations about shifters when I was little, I had come to have a much better appreciation for them. Now, after eighteen years of living beside them, I barely even thought about it at all.

  But I knew that wasn’t the case for everyone in the community, and it definitely wasn’t the case for many of the shifters. After years of oppression and living in secrecy, the new rules that governed them now sometimes chafed. But we all had to live by some rules, or at least that had always been my stance. Lukas, on the other hand, wholeheartedly disagreed. He was an enigma then, a boy in a state of transition into adulthood that would take two forms, who lived on the outside while desperately seeming to want to be accepted by both. I wondered how many, if any, of those issues had been resolved inside of him over the last ten years.

  “You need to be t
here for Bea if nothing else,” I said slowly. “That’s what Markus would have wanted, and you do owe him something for everything he did for you.”

  “Left me with a damn mess on my hands is what he did,” Lukas said. His gruff voice sounded almost like a growl, and it caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand up. Other parts of my body were equally affected, though in a much more pleasurable way. Damn the man. I had every reason to hate him. He slammed a paper down on the counter between us and caused me to jump. Then he jammed his finger toward the headline. “‘Prodigal Son Returns’? Really, Maren? What the hell is this shit?”

  “I didn’t write that,” I said evenly. Actually I had, but I let dad have the byline once again. “Are you really going to pick a fight with me over this right now?”

  “I’ve only been back for three days, and everyone is either kissing my ass or looking at me like I’m going to bite them. All’s anyone wants to know is if I’m going to back off my claim to be the Grizzly alpha, but really it’s more a question of when I’m planning to do it. If you keep publishing stuff like this, it’s going to turn into a feeding frenzy. So if you’re really worried about making sure that people are focused on the right things like my brother’s funeral, you could start by letting this thing lie, at least until his body is in the ground.”

  I stood up straighter. “I hate to break it to you, Lukas, but your brother was a visible and vocal member of the political community. His death is big news, and it is part of my job to report about what it means and how it impacts everyone. People want to know what’s happening, and so far you have refused to comment on it. So you’re the one who is making this a bigger issue than it is. Just rescind your claim already so you can get the hell out of here. We all know that’s what you really want to do, so just do it already.”

  “How do you know that’s what I want?” Lukas asked. His tone had gone icy. “Why is it that everyone is assuming that I’m just going to waltz into town and give the nod to good ol’ Buddy Monroe?”

  I blinked. Then my mouth fell open. “Are you saying that you plan on taking Markus’s place?”

  Lukas sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know yet. I just don’t like the seemingly forgone conclusion that I wouldn’t.”

  There was a long pause that seemed to stretch out for days between us. He stared at me, and it felt as if he was looking into my soul. I couldn’t believe it. We were right back where we had started. Lukas didn’t know what to do, and he had come to me for all the answers, as if I had them. The idea almost made me laugh.

  “If you think that’s what you want, then you have to get your butt back to that funeral,” I said finally.

  “I can’t stand them all looking at me the way they are,” Lukas said. “They think they know who I am, and they don’t know me at all. They never did.”

  “No one did,” I agreed. Silently, I thought that included me as well.

  Lukas moved across the room, and it was as if all time stood still as I found myself looking up into his eyes again. “That’s not true. You always knew me, sometimes better than I knew myself, truthfully.”

  I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to kiss him and hit him at the same time. In the end, the latter urge won out. I pushed against his chest hard. Because Lukas had more than a hundred pounds on me that appeared to be entirely made up of muscle, he barely moved. I pushed at his chest again, demanding that he leave my space.

  “You don’t get to come in here and do this, Lukas,” I said. Unable to move him any farther, I backed away in retreat. “You are the one who left, and you left without saying anything! Nothing! Just one day you were here, and things were fine, and the next day…” I couldn’t even finish my sentence. How do you ask someone who was supposed to be your closest friend how they could sleep with you and then leave without even saying good-bye?

  “Maren, I know we have a lot to talk about,” he said. “I know that I hurt you.”

  I crossed my arms and shook my head. “That’s ancient history.”

  “You seem pretty mad at me if it’s that ancient,” he said. There was a small upturn in the corner of his mouth that made me want to lick it. God, I hated when he’d look at me like that: like he could wrap me around his pinky finger and make me dance to his tune. Ten years ago, I had done it willingly. Screw that.

  “I just don’t think that my boyfriend would approve of you being here and getting all up in my space like we’re still friends,” I said.

  “Boyfriend?” I saw the look of astonishment on his face, and that made me want to smack him again. Why did that tidbit of information seem like such a surprise to him?

  “Are you really going to stand here and question me about my love life when you have a funeral to go to?”

  “I want you to go with me,” he said.

  “No way.” I shook my head again. “I’m on deadline.”

  “I saw your dad at the church,” Lukas said.

  “I promised to have this story done before he got back,” I lied. “You’re a big boy, Lukas. You don’t need me to hold your hand.” I saw the flash of anger in his eyes. That was good. Lukas never liked to be reminded that he needed anyone. Even though he had been my best friend, I knew that there were things he always kept from me. It was that part of him that I had always wanted to conquer—the part of him I thought would mean that he’d finally cave and tell me that he loved me the way that I loved him. And even though I knew from the rumors around school that Lukas had had more than a few conquests in the bedroom, I had saved myself for him. It had been what I thought was the most precious gift—something that told him exactly how I felt about him.

  He took it, and then he broke my heart. Some best friend.

  “I guess I’ll see you around, then,” he said stiffly. He spun on his heel and strode out the door. I couldn’t help but hear the sound of the glass in the door rattling at the abruptness of his exit. That was always Lukas’s style—the grand exit.

  I felt numb as I made my way back into my office and sat in the chair. I couldn’t help but glance out my window. I saw Lukas hunched over against the arctic wind outside as he made his way down the street toward the church. It was only three blocks away, and with his long legs he’d be there in no time. I glanced at the clock on my computer. He would still make it on time. The service started in ten minutes. I breathed a sigh of relief and then gave myself a stern talking to.

  I didn’t care what Lukas did. Stay or go, it didn’t factor into my life at all. I groaned and put my elbows on the desk. I let my head fall into my hands as I realized that I was probably going to have to back up my claims of a boyfriend if Lukas stayed in town. Luckily, more than a few people had noted the recent spate of activity between me and Deputy Miller. It really wasn’t enough to constitute calling him my boyfriend, but given the numerous calls and emails I had gotten from him since our last date a week ago, I had a feeling he wouldn’t be that offended by the label. He’d probably even take it as a sure sign that he was going to get laid.

  I leaned back in my chair and looked up at the ceiling. Twenty-eight years old, and I had no idea what I was doing with my life. But I had to be strong. My heart was too fragile when it came to Lukas Kasper. He couldn’t be part of it, no matter how hard he tried to weasel his way back into my life.

  I saw the most recent edition of the paper on the corner of my desk. Ironically, Lukas’s face stared back at me. I pulled the paper toward me. Although the byline was my dad’s, I had done the research for the story. The photo of Lukas was from our high school yearbook. He wasn’t smiling, and there was a hint of an edge about him that was definitely what drew women to him like moths to a flame.

  Things changed between us after his first experience phasing. Markus pulled him out of school for a month, saying that he needed to learn how to control his emotions. That was all Lukas would tell me about what he did during that time. As always, there was a high degree of secrecy around a boy’s maturation process in the clan a
nd how that was handled. I always thought it was ironic how the shifter community promoted awareness and transparency to combat fear of them but were so close mouthed when it came to the actual details of how things worked inside the clan.

  When Lukas returned to school later, I wasn’t the only one to take notice of his new physique. Lukas had turned from a slightly gangly, awkward teenage boy into a full-blooded, well-toned man. Whereas we had walked the halls in relative anonymity before, after that, Lukas was frequently stopped by someone, usually a girl. He was suddenly the most popular guy in school, but I knew that it wasn’t really Lukas they were interested in. It was the idea of what Lukas represented. He could have been captain of the varsity football team, complete with a cheerleader on either arm, and a pack of adoring teenagers hanging on his every word. Instead, he chose the path of a high school delinquent.

  That didn’t stop me from being his friend, but it did make it difficult for us to hang out once my father caught wind of the petty theft and vandalism charges. I had my theories on why Lukas decided to act out like that, but they had never been validated.

  I shoved the paper away from me and forced Lukas out of my mind. I had wasted enough time thinking about him. I put my fingers back on the keyboard and started to type.

  Chapter 4

  I surveyed myself in the mirror and sighed. The fitted black dress and kitten heels had been a splurge purchase right after I graduated from college. When I came back to Greyelf, I stuck them in the back of my closet and figured I’d never wear them again. There weren’t that many places to go that required a cocktail dress in Greyelf.

  After my run-in with Lukas, I sent Deputy Miller a text and told him that I was available Friday night after all. Shortly after the funeral’s end, I got a text back from him, telling me that he’d pick me up at six-thirty and that he was planning to take me to Rolling Rock restaurant. Rolling Rock was the only fine dining option in Greyelf. It was thirty miles away, on a golf course that was popular among politicians who wanted to get away from it all. There was a swanky resort there with grand villas that mixed just the right amount of the “roughing it” feel with luxurious elegance. Dad took me there when I graduated from high school. I remember thinking at the time that I was so excited to have my whole future spread out ahead of me, and daydreaming about how I’d come back to Greyelf every other weekend just to hang out with Lukas. The joke was on me.