She was hurt and confused herself. She had discovered this afternoon that Brett was not at all who she thought he was. He wasn’t a kind, easygoing friend. He was a jealous, angry man who thought he had some sort of dibs on her. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he somehow had the ability to change himself into a panda.
Was it witchcraft? Magic?
Aubrey didn’t know, and she didn’t care much at the moment. All she cared about was getting out of here and away from Brett. She put the car in drive and roared away as fast as she could. She glanced into her rearview mirror just in time to see Brett putting both of his hands on his head in frustration as he watched her go. She had no doubt that he would be coming after her, but, for the moment, she had escaped.
Chapter Nine
Brett watched Aubrey leaving, feeling more helpless than he ever had in his life.
“Shit. What a giant clusterfuck,” he said out loud. “Shit, shit, shit.” He kicked angrily at the ground, but the soft sand didn’t offer much resistance. He would have loved to have a punching bag at the moment. He needed something to pummel.
“Why the hell was she out here?” he asked the seagull that was circling over his head. The seagull only squawked in reply, but it didn’t matter. If Brett was honest with himself, he knew why she was out here. She was mad and frustrated after their argument at the bar. And when Aubrey was mad and frustrated, she always went to the ocean to swim it off. He didn’t know how long she had been in those bushes, but he was sure she had at least seen him shift back from panda form to human form.
He had been ready to never talk to her again after seeing her with another guy’s hand on her arm, but now he had no choice. He had to talk to her, and he had to do it soon. For all he knew, she was already on her cell phone doing something rash like calling the cops.
“Shit,” he said again. Then he took off running toward his car, which was still pretty far down the beach. The light was fading quickly, and the area was completely deserted. He thought about shifting into bear form again so he could run faster, but he decided against it. If she was going to call the cops, she had probably already done it. No sense in shifting again and risking another person seeing him, however remote the risk out here might be.
Brett finally made it to his car and took off, speeding toward Aubrey’s house. Her car was parked in the driveway, and the lights in her living room were illuminated, so he knew she was home. He swallowed back his anxiousness and went to the front door.
“Aubrey, it’s me. Please, let me talk to you,” he said as he pounded on the door.
She didn’t answer, but moments later the lights in the living room went dark.
Brett gritted his teeth. This wasn’t looking too great. “Aubrey, please. I know you must have questions. Let me explain.”
“Go away,” Aubrey yelled from inside.
Brett decided to try another tactic. “I’m not leaving until you at least give me a chance to explain,” he said, trying to make his voice sound firm and convincing.
A moment later he heard the deadbolt unlatch, and the door swung wide open. Aubrey stood in front of him, her eyes blazing with anger. He had never seen her look so furious, and the fire in her eyes might have been almost sexy, if it hadn’t been directed at him.
“You are leaving. Right now. If you don’t, I’m going to call the cops. Then you can explain all you want—to them.”
Brett sighed, and backed up with his hands raised. “Fine,” he said, not wanting to leave but not wanting to find out if her threat to involve the police was real. “I’ll leave. I know you’re angry right now, but, please, consider calling me after you’ve had some time to think about this, okay?”
Aubrey didn’t reply. She just kept looking at him with an angry glare on her face. Brett took a deep breath and forced himself to turn and walk away. He hoped that she wasn’t going to tell anyone what she had seen until at least talking to him first, but he had no way of knowing for sure. As much as he hated to admit it, he had screwed up. He had shifted in front of a human, and not just any human—a human who was already very angry at him.
He had to tell the other alphas. They would be furious, but they needed to know. If Aubrey did say something to someone, and he hadn’t warned the others, things would be even worse. Brett pulled out his phone and sent a group text that simply read “EAM, my apartment, ASAP.” EAM stood for “emergency alpha meeting.” The guys would all show up within the hour. Everyone knew that an EAM was never good. It would mean something serious, like the possibility that the enemy scientists had found them. Or that, as was the case here, their shifter status had been exposed to humans.
With a heavy heart, Brett started driving toward his apartment. He had been so excited to have an unexpected day off. His head had been filled with visions of a fun dinner out with Aubrey, followed by a night of passion in her bedroom. But things had gone awry so quickly. He had never expected that he would be spending the evening calling an emergency meeting to tell his fellow alphas that he’d been caught shifting by Aubrey.
When Brett got to his apartment, Lance and Ben were already there. Without a word, Brett walked past them and unlocked his door. As they were walking into the apartment, Ace showed up.
“What’s going on?” Ace asked, worry etched into his forehead.
Brett shut the door behind him. He wouldn’t mince words with this group. He would say exactly what happened, and then let them voice their anger. It wouldn’t be fun, but the sooner he tore the bandage off, the better. “Aubrey caught me shifting. She was already angry with me, and now she won’t even speak to me. I don’t think she has said anything to anyone yet, but when I tried to go talk to her, she threatened to call the cops on me if I didn’t leave.”
Brett watched the faces in his living room change from concerned to enraged.
“What the hell, man?” Lance said. “I thought you guys weren’t even officially dating, and you go shifting in front of her?”
Ace crossed his arms, shaking his head in disgust. “I told you this whole friends with benefits thing was going to go south. Those arrangements never work out in the long term. And now you’ve got an angry woman who knows you’re a shifter. Great. Just great.”
Brett took a deep breath, and did his best to explain. “I went to surprise her at work when we got the day off. I found her at the bar next to work, with another guy all over her. I got upset, because she told me she didn’t want a relationship, and yet here she was getting cozy with some other schmo. So I stormed off, and went running on a secluded stretch of beach a little bit north of here. My bear was angry, and I decided to shift and run free for a little while. I thought the whole area was deserted, but when I got back to the beach where I had left my clothes, Aubrey was there. She saw me, and got scared, and then angry. She started running to her car, and I couldn’t stop her because she had a huge head start on me. She drove off, and I followed her back to her house as soon as I could get to my car. She wouldn’t talk to me, though. I tried to convince her, but that’s when she threatened to call the cops if I didn’t leave. I don’t think she is going to say anything to anyone as long as I leave her alone, but I’m not entirely sure, so I called this meeting.”
Brett looked around at the faces in the room, meeting each alpha’s eyes with his own. He may have screwed up, but he would not cower down in fear. He would not apologize for pursuing a woman he cared about deeply. Things had not turned out the way he wanted them to, and he should have been more wary of shifting out on an open beach. But, so far, no damage had been done. He could see that everyone in the room was angry with him, but Brett would not spend his whole life hiding in the shadows.
Ben was the first to speak, and his voice was nearly a yell. “What the hell were you thinking, man? Shifting in front of a woman who’s angry at you? How can you be so confident that she’s not going to say anything to anyone? As soon as she figures out that she could get you in some deep shit by telling the right people who you are, she’s going to b
e blasting your secret all over town. The scientists are going to figure out where we are, and it’s all downhill from there. We’ll either have to fight them, or find an entirely new place to hide. You’ve put all of us at risk with your foolhardiness.”
“Look, I made a mistake. And I’m sorry for that. But Aubrey isn’t the kind of person who is going to use this information to spite me.”
“You don’t know for sure,” Ace hissed out, getting right in Brett’s face. “We could all be looking at the end of life as we know it thanks to your idiocy. I told you that you can’t trust human women!”
Lance butted into the conversation, his tone upset but much calmer than Ace’s. “Did she have anything to say about why she was with that other guy? I’m concerned that if she’s interested in another man, that she might go running to him and tell him the whole story.”
“I don’t know who the guy was,” Brett said. “She tried to tell me that there was nothing going on between them, but the guy had his arm on her when I walked into the bar. There’s no denying that there was something happening between them.”
Brett frowned as he considered Lance’s words. Lance had a valid concern. If Aubrey was interested in that other guy, this whole situation might serve to drive her straight into that guy’s arms. Just the thought of her with someone else made his chest tighten, but he had to calm down and think rationally. He racked his brain, trying to remember whether Aubrey had ever talked about another guy friend. Suddenly, he remembered her mentioning once or twice some guy in the math department who wouldn’t leave her alone. She’d said the guy kept bugging her for a date and didn’t seem to get the hint that she wasn’t interested. Had that been him in the bar? And, if so, had Aubrey changed her mind and agreed to go out with him? Or had he been pushing for more than friendship against Aubrey’s will?
Brett felt his cheeks heat up as he remembered Aubrey’s words when he found her at Pete’s bar. “I told him I would have a drink with him as long as he knew it was only as friends. But he overstepped his boundaries. I didn’t want him to hold my hand, and I certainly didn’t invite it.”
“Oh, shit,” Brett said, as understanding flooded him. Aubrey had been trying to tell him the same thing she’d been saying about this guy all along—that the guy was overly persistent and didn’t listen when she told him to back off. No wonder she had been so angry with him. He hadn’t even listened to her. He hadn’t given her the benefit of the doubt, or even the simple courtesy of a moment to tell him what was really going on.
Brett had royally screwed up. And not just by accidentally shifting while someone was watching. He had flown into a fit of rage at the woman he loved instead of trusting her. He deserved her anger. And he deserved the anger of the other alphas in the room. He could only hope that it wasn’t too late to fix it. Brett ran his fingers through his hair and started pacing the room.
“I need to apologize to her,” Brett said. “I think I just realized what happened, and I definitely did not react the right way when I saw her at the bar. Oh, god, I hope it’s not too late to fix things with her.”
Ben spoke up next. “Listen, I don’t mean to sound crass, but I don’t really give a damn about your love life right now. I’m concerned about being outed as shifters, and I think we all need to go over as a group and talk to Aubrey.”
“Are you kidding me?” Ace asked. “You actually think it’s a good idea for all of us to just show up at Aubrey’s house? That sounds like a great way to freak the poor girl out. She’ll probably go straight to the police, and who knows how out of control things will get from there.”
“She’s already freaked out and upset,” Ben said. “She’s angry with Brett, so she doesn’t want to talk to him. Fine. But she might be swayed to let us at least say our piece if we all show up as a unified front.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Ace said. “She might be swayed into talking to us, sure. She also might be even more frightened when there are four big guys on her porch instead of one. My guess would be if we all show up, she’ll call the cops without a second thought.”
“Brett?” Lance asked. “What do you think? You know her better than any of us.”
Brett bit his lip. “I think we should talk to her,” he said. “She’s a pretty levelheaded person. I think if she sees all of us showing up together, she’ll see how important this is to us and let us speak.”
Ace rolled his eyes and let out a loud sigh while Ben crossed his arms and gave Ace a triumphant smirk.
“Fine,” Ace said. “I’ll go along with this idiot plan, since we’re probably already doomed, anyway. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The group decided that Lance would drive them over, since he had the largest vehicle. Brett sat in the passenger seat to give driving directions, feeling nervous and excited all at the same time. He knew if they could just get Aubrey to listen to them, that everything would be okay. Aubrey was one of the most open-minded people he’d ever met. He couldn’t imagine her doing anything to expose him or any of the other alphas to harm. Sure, she was angry with him. But even in her anger, she wouldn’t want to turn him over to angry scientists who wanted him dead.
Brett’s biggest worry was that Aubrey wouldn’t be willing to listen to the group at all. If she didn’t let them explain things, she might let her imagination run away with all kinds of fears and misinformation about shifters. If she called the cops, and the pandas’ enemies got wind of where they were, it was game over.
Brett crossed his fingers in hopes that the presence of all four of the shifters at once would be enough to make Aubrey realize how serious the matter was.
If not, it looked like he might have to start running again, leaving behind the rescue swimmer job that he loved.
Chapter Ten
Aubrey sat on her couch, using a spoon to eat vanilla bean ice-cream straight from a half-gallon container. She was streaming a TV sitcom on Netflix, but even though she was staring at the screen, she wasn’t really watching. She couldn’t think about anything other than the fact that she had been sleeping with a man who could turn himself into a panda.
She half-wondered if she was going crazy, and had imagined the whole thing. Maybe she’d been working too much, and hadn’t gotten enough sleep. Maybe all the salty sea air was finally starting to get to her. Surely, she must have somehow conjured up this whole scenario in her head. Human beings couldn’t just change into bears, could they?
No matter how hard Aubrey tried to convince herself that she hadn’t really seen Brett turning into a panda on the beach, she couldn’t stop images from the evening from playing over and over in her mind. The whole evening had been so surreal, from the moment that Brett walked into the bar until the moment that she had threatened to call the cops if he didn’t leave her porch. She would never have dreamed that she would one day be yelling at Brett, threatening to call the police on him. He seemed like such a good man. He was a hero, after all. A rescue swimmer who had saved countless lives. And yet, he was hiding some sort of dark secret. There had always been a certain amount of angst to him, bubbling just below the surface. And tonight, it had bubbled over.
Aubrey didn’t know how to deal with the situation, and so she tried to ignore it by watching pointless television and overdosing on ice-cream. But she couldn’t keep Brett from running constantly back and forth across her mind. Seeing someone morph into an animal wasn’t something you could just get over.
A knock on Aubrey’s front door startled her out of her musings, almost causing her to drop her ice-cream. She cursed under her breath and set the ice-cream carton on her coffee table before reaching for the remote to pause the show playing on her television screen.
“This better not be Brett again,” she muttered under her breath as she made her way to her front door. “The last thing I want to do right now is see his face again.”
When she peeked out the front door, she did see Brett standing there. But, to her surprise, it wasn’t just him. His three buddies from
the Coast Guard were all standing there as well, flanking each other on the porch with serious expressions on their faces. Aubrey sucked in her breath. Why had they all come here? She was tempted to yell at them to go away, and to tell Brett that he couldn’t convince her to open her door just by bringing his buddies over.
But she was also tempted to let them in and ask them what the hell was going on. If they were all here, then Brett must have told them what happened. So they at least knew that he was able to turn into an animal. Did they know how to become pandas, too? Or were they just here to offer moral support to Brett?
“Aubrey?” Brett’s voice called from the other side of the door. “I know you’re upset with me, but please give me a chance to talk to you. It’s important, not just to me but to all of the guys.”
Aubrey’s curiosity got the better of her, and she threw the door open. She would let them in, but she wouldn’t be nice about it. “I’ll give you ten minutes, so you better make it good,” she said, and then held up her cell phone. “And so help me, if anyone makes a move toward me, I’m ready to call 911 with one touch of my phone screen. So unless you want the cops involved, I suggest you all remain on your best behavior.”
A look of immense relief passed over Brett’s face. The other guys nodded in agreement, but their expressions remained neutral. Aubrey stepped aside and let them into her house. She went back to her living room and sat on the couch, then grabbed her ice-cream carton and stuck a huge spoonful into her mouth. She wasn’t going to apologize for sitting here and stuffing her face. She didn’t care what they thought of her eating habits or her manners. Brett had a lot of explaining to do, and she’d dealt with enough bullshit for today. She wasn’t going to waste any energy worrying about social niceties.
Brett wasn’t the one to begin the explanations, however. Lance stepped forward first, his face impossible to read.
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