by Selena Scott
“Oh. A bear shifter? Is that what you are?” If he was volunteering that information then he couldn’t be too off-put by her earlier thoughtlessness. He didn’t seem offended.
“Yup. Brown bear.”
Ida waited a moment, thought about staying silent, and then figured that if Quill could take the plunge into vulnerability, then so could she. They’d been friends long enough. “My brother was a black bear shifter.”
Quill’s eyes shot to hers. Whether or not this was new information to him, she had no idea. She didn’t keep tabs on who knew the details of her personal life and she certainly wasn’t trying to hide it. Either way, she could see that the “was” in her sentence instantly registered with Quill.
It wasn’t, unfortunately, a surprise. The lifespan of a shifter was depressingly short. In the camps, they were rarely reported to live past forty. Though, now that people were coming forward since Shifter Liberation Day, it was clear that this short lifespan was more likely a commentary on the state of the internment camps they were forced to live in rather than a shifter’s predisposition. There were plenty of elderly shifters in the world. Just none of them had survived in the camps.
“Was he registered?” Quill asked in a low, gruff voice.
Ida’s eyes dropped. It hurt to talk about Ian. Even now, ten years later. Her hilarious, kind, interesting, fragile brother. Sometimes she still couldn’t believe he was gone. “He lived in secret until he was seventeen. Then he got found out one night at a school dance. The feds came immediately. He… was on his way to one of the camps to get registered when he died.”
She knew that statement left more questions behind than it did answers, but she couldn’t go into all the details. It still hurt too much.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Quill said in a low voice, his eyes dropping. “God. What a waste. Sometimes I can’t believe it all went on for so long.”
“I take it that’s why you’re working here as well? To try to reverse some of the horrible injustices done against shifter-kind?”
He pursed his lips. “Something like that.”
She nodded. “That’s why we have to do right by Phoenix and Dawn. Orion too if we can find him a mentor. They deserve a chance at really living free. Unhindered by everything. Even all the little social stuff that they don’t understand.”
“Right,” Quill agreed, standing up and holding out a hand to help her up from her chair. “Let’s get to work.”
***
Phoenix was rubbing the sleep out of his eyes when he opened the door for Ida the next day. The light was still filtering from blue to yellow, that’s how early it was. She, however, looked like she’d been awake for hours. Her hair was shiny, her dress, cinched at the waist and poofy at the skirt, was almost blindingly bright, and her grin, for some reason, made Phoenix want to frown.
She brought out the grump in him. It was fun.
“Morning!”
“Barely,” he growled.
“I said I was going to come by early. I wanted to introduce you to a great human thing. Something you’re bound to love.”
“What’s that?”
She held up the two cups in her hands. “Amazing coffee that you get to drink in bed on a lazy Saturday morning.”
He looked at the one cup and then the other. “Bed’s not big enough for both of us.”
She went an intriguing shade of pink. “No! I’m not getting in bed with you. You’re getting back in bed with your coffee. I can either come back later so that you can enjoy your drink, or I can stay and we can chat.”
The look on her face was so hopeful and excited that Phoenix didn’t have the heart to tell her that he’d tried coffee at the hospital and it was just one more human thing he didn’t understand. Why would anyone want to subject themselves to hot, bitter, tar water?
“Come in,” he grumbled, crutching into the bathroom and trusting that she’d let herself in. He peed, washed his hands and face, and brushed his teeth. Tooth brushing was actually something he quite enjoyed. It was the one thing he’d put in the plus column about being stuck in human form. He’d do it ten times a day if he could. He loved the flavor of the minty toothpaste, the satisfying scratch of the toothbrush, the slick-clean feeling of his mouth afterward.
He sighed. The coffee would ruin all that.
When he came out of the bathroom, he saw that Ida had arranged herself on his dingy, uncomfortable couch. He ignored the twinge of shame he felt at his accommodations and plunked himself down on the single bed in the corner. There was nothing he could do about any of it, except relax and heal, so he didn’t see much point in apologizing for his situation.
She rose and handed him the paper mug. “I brought cream and sugar, if you want that?”
He held out his cup and she put a little of both in his coffee.
“Now,” she instructed, almost bossily, “You get comfortable in your bed. Under the covers. And drink your coffee nice and slow. Seriously. It’s a hell of a way to start the day.”
He dutifully followed her orders, his left side tight and burning the way it always was in the morning, but he’d be damned if he took the time to stretch right now. Gruffly, he tugged the covers over his legs, leaned against the wall, and braced himself against the sip of coffee he took. His eyes popped open. Oh. It was actually kind of good. The cream and sugar helped and the coffee itself was nothing like the hospital coffee. There was nothing burnt or tarry about it. It was rich and full.
He settled down another inch.
“So,” Ida said, arranging her pretty skirt over her pretty legs. “What’s so great about being a wolf anyhow?”
He laughed at the unexpected absurdity of the question. “What’s so great about it? Everything. The peace. The understanding of the world. Immediate problems with immediate answers. The quiet. The respect for the earth. The simplicity.”
“I guess that does sound kind of nice. But, you know, you can find a lot of those things in the human world. Maybe you need to meditate more.”
“That’s what my physical therapist says.”
“Sounds like a smart person to me.”
Phoenix frowned. He didn’t want to talk about Watt right now. “I wish I could show you. What it’s like to be a wolf.”
She inhaled, a light filling her eyes. “Oh, I wish that too. I’d give anything to know what it was like to be a shifter.”
“A wolf shifter in particular,” he corrected. “There’s nothing like the speed. The agility.”
He watched as her eyes lit up again. “I just got a great idea of what we could do after our coffee.”
Apparently they were spending the day together.
As long as they were, he figured he might broach a subject he’d been thinking on. “You’re a woman, right?”
Now she was the one laughing at the unexpected absurdity of a question. “Um. Yes. I mean, I know I’m not your type, but damn, Phoenix!”
Her lips were tipped up and pink and her white teeth were winking at him, but this time that wasn’t enough to save him from kicking himself over a stupidly asked question.
“No! That’s not what I meant. Obviously you’re a woman. You’ve got breasts.”
She closed her eyes and sucked her lips into her mouth, as if she were trying really hard not to laugh at him. “You’re a master of deduction.”
He didn’t know what that meant, but if it was a mild insult, he figured he deserved it considering he couldn’t stop accidentally saying rude stuff to her. “I just meant that you, like my sister, are a woman. And I was wondering if maybe that means you might have some things in common with her.”
Her laughter died away and a thoughtful look came onto her face. “It’s possible. Womanhood is a strong bond, but we’ve led pretty different existences up until now. There’s a good chance we wouldn’t have anything in common.”
“I know you’re not her mentor. You’re mine.” He paused for a second. He’d liked saying those words out loud. A semi-mystifying amount. W
hy did it sound so good? “But, maybe, if you had some time, you could do some stuff with her.”
“Woman stuff?”
“Sure,” he shrugged. “But mostly I just mean Ida stuff. Like the haircut. She really liked mine and I think she kind of wanted one for herself. It was a good idea that I don’t think her mentor will think of.”
“Ida stuff?”
“You know, stuff that only you could think of.” He pointed at himself. “Coffee in bed. Ida stuff.”
He didn’t have a ton of human experience to work with, but something told him that Ida was unique. At least when it came to mentors, he knew for sure that she was unique. Rose had abandoned Orion after only three meetings. And Dawn’s mentor wouldn’t stop prodding at her to talk to him when even an idiot could see that it was smarter to just let her be. To get the lay of the land.
Ida’s face, filled up with her large glasses perched on her nose, was looking surprisingly sweet. He realized that he rather liked her high cheekbones. They were softer than Rose’s thin face, but that didn’t mean he didn’t like Ida’s better.
“That’s nice of you to say,” she said after a moment. “I’ve been working really hard to think of things that you’ll like.”
“I liked the head massage. And I like coffee. And I guess there’s nothing you could really do about my crappy bed.”
Her eyes clouded, but she didn’t say anything about his tiny, lumpy bed that even now, his feet were hanging off of.
“Is Dawn unhappy?”
Phoenix thought hard about that question. He knew his sister better than almost anyone else alive, but happy or unhappy as Ida was asking it was such a human concept. “She … was the youngest when our parents died. So she’s spent the least amount of time being human. I don’t think she’s used to her human form in the least.”
“How old was she?”
“I was twelve. Orion was fourteen. Which means that Dawn was eight.”
“So young.”
“Yeah.” Phoenix passed his coffee cup from one hand to another. “We all were. I don’t think there’s any age that’s old enough to lose your parents so close together. Mom went first. Dad just a few weeks later.” He wasn’t sure why he was saying this out loud. He didn’t have to. He was sure that she’d had access to his entrance interview at the New Day Center, where he’d given a brief explanation of his history. But for some reason, he wanted Ida to know. He wanted her to understand that he wasn’t just being difficult. That there were reasons for the way he acted. “They were sick with something.”
“Oh, Phoenix. That’s must have been awful.”
He looked up at her and he saw the raw pain in her eyes. As if she were actually feeling it along with him.
“We used to be human a lot when my parents were alive. They loved to laugh and play with us. We even had this old log cabin that my dad had built. We’d stay there in our human form. Mom would roast mushrooms and meat over the fire. They’d talk to us. Tell us stories. Teach us songs. They’d grown up in the human world and when they got pregnant with Orion decided to head out into the wilderness. They decided that raising us like that was better than having us hide who we were.”
“They sound like really good parents,” she whispered.
He looked up to see tears in her eyes, not tumbling down, but glittering behind her glasses. He nodded in agreement with her. “They were. And after they died, it just hurt to be human. We’d still shift into our human forms every couple of weeks. You start to lose your mind if you don’t. Shifters generally need to spend time in both of their forms, even if they favor one over the other as significantly as we did. And on the nights we’d shift, we’d talk and talk. But, yeah, it wasn’t enough for Dawn. It wasn’t enough to teach her what it’s like to be human. Orion and I, we’ve wandered into town every once in a while. We kept some of our dad’s old clothes and we’d go socialize a little. Curiosity mostly. But Dawn? I don’t think Dawn had ever seen another human closer than a hundred yards or so before they dragged me into the hospital after the forest fire.”
“She’s having trouble adapting.”
“We all are. In our own ways. But Orion and I are getting by. Dawn? Not so much. I’m scared she’s just gonna waste away.”
***
Well. Crap.
Phoenix Wolf was still, for sure, not her type. But …
He was just sitting over there in athletic wear she’d bought for him, worried about his sister, opening up about his parents. Dead eyes nowhere in sight. And yeah. That tiny little part of him that he was revealing right now, that was kind of her type. Not even really. But it was, like, in the general vicinity of her type. He was currently ballparking her type.
Which meant that she was currently feeling a tiny little inkling of attraction for him on both a physical and emotional level.
Which was SO not a big deal.
Unless that tiny, minuscule, so-small-it-almost-didn’t-exist, little bothersome modicum of attraction were to grow.
Then it might be a big deal.
Because she’d felt physical attraction for a few of her clients in the past. Let’s face it, shifters were often super hot. But physical attraction was super easy to stuff down the feelings hole. It had never once affected the way she did her job.
Emotional attraction though? Ida was notoriously bad at ignoring emotional attraction. She got goofy and silly and even more clumsy around her crushes. And she had a long string of bad dates to prove it. She either moved way too fast or not fast enough and she almost always ended up blurting out her feelings in a way that embarrassed everyone involved.
And this time it might result in her losing her job.
She took a deep breath. This job was the most important thing in her life. It gave her purpose. It gave her a strong community. It gave her passion and direction. And yeah, it made her feel connected to her brother. Something that she’d been desperately missing since his death.
So what if it was the reason her parents could barely stand to be around her?
She was almost over that wound. And she wasn’t going to lose her job over some immature shit like a crush on a client.
“I won’t let Dawn waste away,” Ida said, knowing that the moment had stretched on too long. She cleared her throat. “What if maybe the four of us spent some time together as a group? I’ll check with Quill. That way you can get to know him as well. And I’ll get a better feel for Dawn. Be able to come up with some activities I think she might like.”
He suddenly looked boyishly happy. Boyish was not something she’d thought that square-jawed, dark-eyed, serious-mouthed face could look. She looked way from him immediately.
“That sounds good.”
“I’ll set it up with Quill.”
“All right,” he said, setting his coffee cup aside and creakily rising from the bed, leaning hard on his crutches. “What was it you had planned for us?”
“You are going to do your stretches. Yeah, yeah, don’t think I don’t know about those. And when you’re done, I’m gonna take you on a ride.”
***
A few hours later, Phoenix had another item to add to the list of things that were, in his opinion, pure Ida. This was the best idea she’d had yet.
She’d driven him back to Wren’s pink house and begged her ass off to trade cars for the day. Phoenix hadn’t understood why Wren’s car was so important to the plan when, in his mind, all cars were equally terrible. Stinky, loud machines.
But now he understood. Wren’s car was a thing of great beauty. Mostly because it didn’t have a roof on it. Well, it did, but Ida had taken care to fold it down flat before they got in. And now she was doing something she’d called ‘tear-assing down the one-oh-one’.
It had taken an hour and a half to even get to the 101 and once they’d gotten there, she’d stopped and bought tacos for them. A food that he’d immediately decided was his absolute favorite.
Now, they were flying south down the highway, driving fast with the top do
wn, the ocean a devastating blue, yawning wide out his side of the car.
“How’s that for speed and agility?” she hollered at him over the wind, and he was only able to grin back at her. It was the most free he’d felt since the last time he’d sprinted in his wolf form. It was perfect.
Well, actually, the ride back north was perfect, because then the ocean was out Ida’s side of the car and he got to have Ida in his line of vision as he watched the white-tipped waves zip past.
It was warm for October, with bright sun, but she’d still had the foresight to bundle them both into sweatshirts. He thought she looked cute, with the hood of her sweatshirt tied securely over her head, a few wisps of her hair flying every which way, her glasses looking even larger against the diminished frame of her face.
Plus, he’d finally found something he liked watching her high heels do. Driving a car was cute in heels that tall, her feet working the pedals while her colorful skirt puffed out from under the sweatshirt.
He liked watching her do stuff. She was interesting in a way that other women weren’t interesting to him. He understood now what Watt had meant when he called her hot. Because she did remind him of heat. Her sunny-red hair, her warm voice, the way her cheeks pinked up. All of it just looked so warm. Even when she was in those heels and a fancy dress, she just looked so snuggly. Like she’d give a really great hug if given the chance.
He liked her. And now that he knew she was going to help his sister, he liked her even more. Even if she was clumsy and a little silly and her glasses were ridiculous. If she didn’t have those ridiculous glasses, she wouldn’t be Glasses.
And Glasses had done the impossible. She’d convinced Phoenix Wolf that there were humans worth knowing.
CHAPTER SIX