Suzanne's Sexy Shifters [Shy River Pack 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)
Page 10
But no matter how much anger the past provoked, thankfully level heads prevailed today. It probably helped that most of the people here representing their group of shifters were security minded and very aware of the potential outcome of shifters being discovered by humans. Even if humans didn’t freak out and start killing randomly—and for all their claims of peaceful intent they still owned an awful lot of guns—no one in this room wanted to contemplate how much their lives would change if humans learned they weren’t the only sentient beings on the planet and not even the dominant species.
A raccoon ran into the group of people, startling the smaller—and even a few of the larger—shifters in the process. He morphed into a foot-tall humanoid and quickly gave his report to the only other raccoon-shifter in the room.
“He’s been spotted not far from the house in the photo.”
“When?”
“Not more than fifteen minutes ago.”
“We should confront him immediately,” Eadan Barclay demanded aggressively, “before he has a chance to abduct another child.”
Gideon held his tongue, unwilling to disagree with the beta of Shy River pack in public, but he really wanted to tell his old man to shut the fuck up. The last thing they needed right now was a mob mentality. Fortunately, the alpha of Dry Creek shook his head and turned his attention to the others in the room.
“Do we know how many humans currently live in that house?”
“Only one,” a deer-shifter said in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. “She works for the parks department, too. Maybe they’re working together.”
“I can assure you that’s not the case,” Gideon said, knowing that he would need to explain. “Suzanne was unaware of shifters until yesterday when she found the missing cub. She risked her own life to try and save him and ended up a shifter herself thanks to her injuries.”
A few of the more aggressive species turned suspicious eyes her way. The more timid shrank back from where Suzanne stood next to Brigden.
“How do you know her getting hurt wasn’t a ruse to get a spy into our midst? She’s probably reporting everything we say straight back to the grizzly.”
“I know that she’s not,” Gideon said angrily as Brigden moved closer to protect her if necessary. Hell, Gideon hoped it wasn’t necessary. Two wolves—he wasn’t even certain he could rely on his dad’s support—against a room full of other shifters were not good odds. Surprisingly, Hensen and several of the black bear-shifters related to the young cub Suzanne had rescued moved to calm the situation down. With the fight a little more even, cooler heads once again prevailed.
“Explain what makes you so certain,” a chipmunk-shifter ordered aggressively.
“I am certain,” Gideon said, turning to Brigden with an apologetic smile, “because I share a true-mates link with her. I can feel her emotions, sense her thoughts, and see into her memories. Suzanne had nothing to do with the child’s abduction.”
Brigden swallowed hard but seemed to make an effort to concentrate on more pressing matters at the moment. Thankfully, Suzanne cuddled Brigden close, very aware of how difficult it had been for Gideon to say that when she still didn’t share a link like that with Brigden.
“And now she has direct access to yours memories, too. How very convenient,” Canlon said in a sarcastic voice.
Gideon considered leaning over and punching his packmate square in the nose, but that wouldn’t change the asshole’s attitude to humans anytime soon.
“Suzanne is as innocent a victim in all this as the young cub. You have my word that she is not a danger to us.”
Several other shifters went to speak, but the Dry Creek alpha stepped into the fray, thankfully coming down very clearly on Gideon’s side.
“Enough! A well-respected, well-known werewolf is vouching for Suzanne. That should be enough for all of you!” He eyed the most aggressive shifters individually as he dared them to disagree. All backed down, just as the alpha knew they would. Starting an argument with an alpha on that alpha’s land was tantamount to suicide. Most shifters tried to avoid killing sentient beings, but there was a limit to how much a natural predator was going to let others push him around.
“I want four security teams in that area in the next twenty minutes. If you find the shifter, don’t engage him. It takes more than a handful of wolves to take down a grizzly.” He rubbed over the scar above his left eye. “I suspect it will take even more to subdue a grizzly-shifter.”
He nodded to his beta, Shaw Tryden, who immediately started barking orders to the werewolves and several other predator-type shifters in the room. In mere moments, the room was practically empty.
“Gideon, you’re with me,” the beta of Dry Creek said with a dip of his head. Gideon nodded in acknowledgment.
“Go back to the cabin and stay with Brigden,” Gideon said urgently as he dropped a glancing kiss on her lips. “I’ll be back soon.”
He didn’t need to suggest that Suzanne explain the nature of their link to Brigden. He could already hear her anxiety as she tried to find the words.
“I love you both, baby girl. Tell Brigden for me,” he said telepathically as he ran from the room.
Chapter Eight
“It didn’t work, did it?”
Suzanne shook her head sadly. She didn’t need to ask what topic Brigden was talking about. It was pretty clear that he’d noticed the lack of reaction from the people around them. She and Gideon had even worried that there might be some sort of angry backlash that Brigden had claimed their mate first.
But none of that had come to pass. Instead, despite what should have been a claiming bite, there was no link between Suzanne and Brigden that other shifters could sense.
He gave her a crooked smile and laughed softly. “It’s kind of appropriate actually. I’ve failed at everything else that should come naturally to a werewolf. Why wouldn’t I fail at this, too?”
Tears filled Suzanne’s eyes as she tried to find something to say. She could feel Gideon’s sadness and knew that he was monitoring their conversation also.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Brigden said as they entered the cabin they shared with the other wolves from Shy Creek pack. “Tell me about your link to Gideon. Is it as amazing as legend suggests?”
“I don’t really know what the legends say,” Suzanne said slowly as she checked Gideon’s memories as well as her own. “He hasn’t claimed me, so I’m not sure if it’s an actual true-mate link or something else entirely. Gideon was as surprised as I was when it first happened.”
“It’s not the usual outcome when a human is turned into a werewolf. As far as I knew, the telepathy was just a true-mates thing, but I suppose it makes sense. If a werewolf changes their mate, then the first bite likely creates the link. If you hadn’t been true-mates, it probably wouldn’t have happened like that.”
“That’s the most likely explanation,” Gideon said in her mind. She knew he was running in wolf form and the sensation of motion while standing still was a little confusing.
“What else do you know about true-mates links?” she asked them both.
“Not much,” Brigden said, reaching over to touch her face. “I can sense your emotions, and I know how sad it makes you that you can’t share the same link with me as you do with Gideon.” He smiled softly. “But I got the impression you can sense my emotions, too.”
“I can,” she said, turning her head slightly so she could press a kiss to his palm.
“Then you’ll know that I’m happy for you and Gideon.” She went to say something else, but he cut off her words, tilting his head as if he’d suddenly thought of something else. He shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe whatever conclusion he’d just come to. “A friend of mine—Donovan, a wolf I hope you’ll get to meet one day—once told me that a made wolf couldn’t claim a born wolf first. As a supposedly born wolf, the bite I gave you should have created the link between us and an almost irresistible need for you to claim me as well.” He shook his head, h
is eyes narrowing as he seemed to follow his thoughts through to a not entirely unpleasant conclusion. “What if I wasn’t born a wolf?”
“You think maybe you were human at one stage? Do you have any human memories?”
“Not really,” he said, frowning slightly, “but when we got to your house earlier, I had a déjà vu feeling.”
“You think you might be the baby stolen by a grizzly bear?” she asked, feeling a little shell-shocked.
“What if it wasn’t a bear? What if the grizzly was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and it was a werewolf desperate for a child who stole the baby from its crib?”
“Would your mother do something like that?”
“It might explain her behavior before and after Brigden was born,” Gideon said in a sympathetic voice. “From memory she’d had a difficult pregnancy. No one expected her to carry her baby to term, and her family was really worried when she disappeared into the woods. Several weeks later she came home with Brigden, claiming to have given birth in one of the pack’s dens.”
“I never knew my mother,” Brigden said quietly. “She died when I was really young and my grandparents raised me.” He pulled Suzanne into his embrace, but his hands were shaking as he ran them through her hair.
“She was one of the victims of the human violence that followed the child’s disappearance,” Gideon said sadly. “No one was able to explain why she’d gone to the defense of a couple of non-shifter grizzly cubs. Perhaps she felt the need to make amends for the trouble she’d caused.”
Brigden swallowed and shook his head, unaware of the information Gideon was providing her. “I’m willing to concede at this point that it’s just coincidence, but the abduction happened around the same time I was born, it explains my size and humanlike traits and why the claiming bite didn’t work.”
“Okay, so let’s assume for a moment that it’s all true. How does it change things?”
“I suppose it really doesn’t. It just means that I can’t claim you until a born wolf claims me, which essentially means you and I will never share a link.” He pulled her onto his lap as he sat down on the sofa. She could feel his resignation, his acceptance of such a cruel fate as somehow just another thing to be endured. “It’s okay, sweetheart, I know that you care deeply for me.” He didn’t say it out loud—prying eyes and ears were everywhere—but she knew that he included Gideon in that statement as well. “It’s more than I ever hoped for, and it makes me very happy.”
“You deserve more,” Suzanne said fiercely, her thoughts echoed by Gideon as well.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. I have everything I need.”
* * * *
Gideon was listening so intently into Suzanne and Brigden’s conversation that he narrowly missed running headfirst into a tree. Nothing angered him more than the injustice of being unable to openly claim the man he loved. Why would nature decree them mates if they weren’t meant to be together?
No, it was the pack’s attitude that was wrong. Not nature.
Surely there were other wolves out there with similar problems. It wasn’t unheard of for werewolves to join different packs. Perhaps if they could find a pack sympathetic to their type of relationship, Gideon could claim both of his mates and the three of them could live openly.
“That sounds nice,” Suzanne said inside his mind, but her tone was sad. It was obvious that she realized the unlikeliness of such an outcome. Not only would he and Brigden need to leave all of their family and friends behind as well as most of their possessions, but they’d also need to find a pack that wasn’t hiding in plain sight like many wolf packs without the purple genetic quirk had been able to do. Gideon didn’t even know where to start. “I suppose it would be difficult to sell a house or two that technically belong to a pack of werewolves,” Suzanne said with a soft laugh, clearly trying to lighten the mood. “We’ll find a way, Gideon. Now concentrate on your task before you actually run headfirst into a tree. I have a feeling the mate link would ensure that we share that feeling as well.”
“You’re probably right,” he said, feeling a little less pessimistic about their future together.
“Probably?” she asked with a smile in her telepathic voice. He could almost see her raised eyebrow as she challenged his perception of her. “Stay safe. Come home quickly.”
It was an order worthy of any alpha he’d ever known. Gideon smiled as he picked up the pace and ran faster, eager to get this assignment done and head back to his mates.
* * * *
Brigden held Suzanne close and tried very hard to accept that life wasn’t fair. It was human nature—and a trait werewolves shared—to want more, but that didn’t mean they got it or even deserved it.
Suzanne snuggled closer, and he wrapped his arms around her gladly. He’d told her he had everything he needed and was determined to live up to that claim. It didn’t make it any easier to hide such a huge part of himself from the people around him, but it was still much more than he’d ever hoped for since discovering that Gideon was his mate.
“Brig, how many shifter species live in these mountains?”
“I doubt anyone knows that for sure,” he said, happy to think about something else for a while. “Shifters who can pass as human tend to follow human laws and register their children’s births. It makes it far easier in the long run to get things like social security numbers and driver’s licenses and jobs if necessary. Of course with our longer lifespans the paperwork is inevitably a little bit dodgy.” He laughed softly. “We’re pretty isolated here—a necessity for this pack as well as ours—but there are several wolf packs that live and work in small towns around the base of the mountain. These days we even have a hospital not far from here that is almost fully staffed by shifters.”
“Seriously?” she asked, sounding completely shocked. She glanced around the cabin that had a very rustic feel to it. Only the two bathrooms showed any sign of modern convenience.
“This pack has stayed isolated longer than most, but about a century ago some shifters realized the necessity of at least understanding humans and the ways they lived. Thankfully it meant when things like satellite surveillance, computer viruses, and the lack of privacy over cell phone lines became possible, we were already working on ways around it, ways to keep shifters who couldn’t blend easily into human society a chance to survive the modern era.”
“Has anyone ever considered going public?”
“Of course,” he said, “but human history is full of violence. Would you be willing to risk the lives of everyone you know on the hope that humans would react favorably to learning they weren’t the dominant species on the planet?”
“I guess not,” she said quietly. “I suppose being longer lived means shifters see more of human history than humans themselves.”
“Quite right,” Brigden said as some of the memories of shifters he’d met over the years flowed into his mind. “I once had a three-day-long conversation with an alligator-shifter. They can live over half a millennium, and some of the things he’d seen will never appear in human history books.”
“The victors write the history books,” she agreed with a nod. “It’s human nature to try and justify our actions no matter how horrific.”
“Shifters, too,” he said in agreement.
“Wait. Alligator-shifters? They’re on this mountain, too? I thought the shifters were all ‘native’ to the area.”
“No,” Brigden said with a soft laugh. “This particular shifter was able to pass as human and was just traveling through. Wild alligators tend to be loners. Their shifter counterparts are no exception, but occasionally they feel the need to exchange information. He was actually very helpful and gave me some really valuable insights into the technology being developed in Japan at the time.” He smiled at the look of wonder on her face. He’d been quite young at the time and had probably worn the same expression the entire three days. “Most of the shifters in this area are native to the mountain, but we do have a few extras. The
parrots—mainly cockatoos near Shy River pack—and diamond pythons come to mind.”
She paled a little at the mention of giant snakes, but it was the cockatoos that caught her attention.
“The National Park Service has been trying to relocate nonnative species for decades. The fact that they’re sentient beings probably helped them stay out of the traps.”
“I’m not sure what the statistics are, but wolves tend to work as protectors for the smaller shifters. Shy River pack made most of its money hiring out to other species. My friends Donovan and Sogarn have been on a protection assignment for one cockatoo for over forty years.”
“Seriously? What is the cockatoo? Royalty or something?”
He could tell by her smile that she was joking. He laughed, too, as he nodded and confirmed her guess as correct. “Technically Gop-tru-alcarn is a prince, but with the complicated hierarchy of parrot-shifters I can’t tell you for certain how he came to be isolated from his flock and living with a human as a pampered pet.”
She was about to ask another question, but the smile suddenly fell from her face, and she reached for his cell phone.
“Gideon wants me to call Jay Holks. They just found his brother.”
* * * *
Gideon and Shaw stayed downwind as they crept closer to the man they’d been looking for. Thank heavens for his connection with Suzanne, otherwise they wouldn’t have had a way to contact Jay Holks. They were going to need his help if they wanted to convince his brother to give up whatever it was he thought he was doing.
The noise of a ringing phone reached their ears at the same time the man they watched reached into his pocket.