Paranormal Romance Collection: The Alpha Shifter's Desires (New Adult Shapeshifter Threesome Short Stories MFM Menage MMF BBW Billionaire)

by M. J. Parker

  Arthur did not turn around. Andrea pouted more. It did not have any affect.

  Arthur was deep in thought about his friend, Jeff. It seemed odd to Arthur that Jeff would seem so insistent to get Arthur and Andrea to go on a date, and offer to come and everything, then back out at the last second. And, in the event that Jeff was truly sick, he would surely appreciate his friend’s help. Arthur sometimes wondered how Jeff lived on his own. Especially since he lived so far away from everything. Didn’t he miss company?

  Arthur also had other suspicions rattling through his brain. When Jeff had started acting weird a couple of days prior, Arthur had gone and checked the calendar. Sure enough, Jeff was doing this around the full moon again. This didn’t seem to happen every full moon, but enough to make Arthur notice. Two years living with the guy in college surely did cement all of that.

  Arthur had done research many years ago, trying to figure out what Jeff did every—or at least, nearly every—full moon. His research had turned up a lot of interesting things. Like the fact that emergency rooms and veterinary offices were busier during the full moon. Suicide rates seemed to go up during the full moon, but Jeff had never seemed suicidal. There were theories that people couldn’t sleep with the full moon, but sleeplessness did not explain Jeff’s actions. There were also some crack stories about radiation and increased migraines. None of those seemed to add up either.

  A slightly more believable theory was that the full moon multiplied a person’s personality, so they became more of what they are on a regular basis. But how could Jeff become more like Jeff? Quiet, reserved, funny when people listened for it, and ever into football like any normal person.

  Arthur personally believed that it was probably some ritualistic thing that Jeff had just grown up doing, or that he was a werewolf. But probably the first one.

  So, if it was the first one, why fake being sick? Couldn’t he just tell Arthur what was up? Or was he too embarrassed?

  Arthur dialed Jeff’s number again. He should have left a message the last time. He would just leave a message this time. As he dialed the number, he saw Andrea pouting in the passenger’s seat. He wished she wouldn’t do that. She just didn’t understand what was going on with Jeff.

  Not that Arthur understood it either.

  When it went to voicemail as Arthur had expected, Arthur began speaking his message:

  “Hey, Jeff, I know it’s the full moon and all and you always act kind of funny and super busy when that comes around. You could have just told me this was what’s going on, because now I think there’s something wrong with you. Or I’m just going to call you on your bluff, one of the two. You can’t keep doing this every month. It’s been eight years, but it’s weird. So, I’ll be there soon.”

  He hung up.

  Andrea looked at him with an eyebrow raised.

  “He always acts weird around the full moon?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but every time I mention it, he would always just claim that he was busy. He’s really secretive about it.”

  Andrea frowned. It was a different frown than her previous ones. This one implied that she was thinking deeply about something.

  “You don’t think he’s some sort of were creature, do you?” she asked.

  Arthur frowned at the terminology ‘were creature’ instead of just werewolf, but he didn’t say anything about that. Instead, he just said: “Nah, I think Jeff would have told me. It’s probably a pagan ritual.”

  Sunset was within the hour. Jeff finished up his dinner and started washing dishes. He would have enough time to do that. Now that the stress of getting out of going out that night was over, Jeff was no longer concerned about anything really. The night would go the same as any other night of the full moon. Jeff had escaped trouble. He hummed a little victory tune to himself in satisfaction.

  His phone rang. He raised a concerned eyebrow when he saw that Arthur was the caller. Jeff ignored the call. He wasn’t going to answer that and deal with Arthur asking asinine questions as to why Jeff couldn’t make it that night. Jeff would deal with that on Monday after there was no chance of him turning into a bear at any moment. Jeff figured he still had about a half hour to forty-five minutes, but he didn’t want to risk anything.

  Five minutes later, just as Jeff was finishing up drying the last dish, his phone rang again. It was Arthur again. And again, Jeff ignored the call.

  He took the phone to his room and plugged it in by his bed. Then he left his room altogether and went out to the back yard to relax in his hammock some more. The smell of the forest comforted him. It wouldn’t be long now before the urges settled in and he grew hair, claws, and a snout. Jeff almost looked forward to it.

  If there was one thing he appreciated about becoming a werebear, it was the increased senses of smell and hearing. The smell of the pine trees was fine enough when he was a human, but they were amazing when he was a werebear. He figured he could smell thousands of times better in his bear-form. He could hear better, too. Every branch creak, every squirrel jumping from tree to tree, every flap of every bird’s wing, he could hear it all.

  It was a good thing that these senses only improved in the few hours before he became a werebear and dissipated by the time he woke up the next morning. He didn’t think he could stand hearing the squirrels run across the rooftop of his house on a daily basis with extra-sensitive hearing. It was already annoying enough when he had his mere human senses. His trash could get pretty rank too until the trash truck picked it up every week.

  But, he could deal with heightened sounds and smells once a month.

  It was his heightened sense of hearing that enabled him to hear a car pull into his front driveway. It didn’t take any straining of his ears to hear Arthur and Andrea get out of the car.

  Jeff panicked. Why had his friend and Andrea thought to come here? This was not good of epic proportions. What was Jeff going to do? How was he going to get rid of them?

  He supposed he could ignore the two and hope they just left of their own accords. But Jeff knew that Arthur could get very tenacious at times. It might only be a matter of time after Jeff failed to answer the front door that he would go knocking on windows. If Jeff didn’t answer at some point, Arthur might panic and call an ambulance.

  Or he might try to force entry. While the front door was locked tight, Jeff had left the back door unlocked so that he could get back in, whether it be tonight before he turned into a werebear, or tomorrow morning after the fact.

  Jeff sighed, knowing what he needed to do. It would simply just be best to go answer the front door and try to get rid of Jeff before the moon rose.

  He got up out of his hammock and let himself in the back door. He walked across the house and opened the front door as the doorbell rang, probably not for the first time.

  “There you are, Jeff!” Arthur exclaimed. “You had me real worried.”

  “I’m not feeling well, Arthur,” Jeff said, putting on his most miserable face. “I’m going to have to miss tonight, sorry.”

  “Nonsense, we’ll just stay here and watch the game,” Arthur said. “You’ve got cable, right?”

  “Seriously?” Andrea shrieked. “You said we were going to the pub! I agreed to go because I wanted to see the night life and the local haunts, not so I could come to your friend’s house to watch the game. No offense, Jeff, but this is not how I imagined my evening to go.”

  “Same here,” Jeff said, acknowledging the truth of Andrea’s words on more than one level. “Really, Arthur, you two should go out and have a nice night. You can tell me about it later.”

  “But you said you were going to go,” Arthur said. “Don’t back out on your word.”

  “That was then,” Jeff said. “And now I’m not feeling up to it.” He cleared his throat, hoping he sounded at least a little sick. “Don’t let me ruin your evening, you two go.”

  “See?” Andrea said, gesturing at Jeff. “Why don’t we listen to your friend?”

  Jeff wished he knew
what was going through Arthur’s head at that moment. At the moment, he was just acting so irrational that Jeff had no idea what exactly was going on.

  “Come on, Jeff,” Arthur said, sounding almost angry. “You never do anything on the full moon. Tell me what is it that’s so important that you can’t go out tonight. You’re not actually sick.”

  “No, seriously,” Jeff argued. “I’m sick. Andrea can vouch.”

  Andrea nodded vigorously. It was clear to Jeff that she wanted to get on with her evening and not waste time there. Why couldn’t Arthur see that?

  “I mean,” Andrea said. “You do have some more color in your cheeks than you did this morning, but if you’re not feeling up to it, no one’s going to blame you.”

  Jeff looked at Arthur, waiting to see what his friend would respond with.

  Arthur looked hurt and angry. Jeff wished that this wasn’t happening. He wished that he had never told Arthur that he’d accompany him on his date with Andrea in the first place. He wished that Arthur wasn’t so stubborn. He wished that Arthur wasn’t standing at Jeff’s front door with the minutes ticking away to the full moon.

  With a shiver up his spine, he realized that he didn’t have minutes. He had seconds.

  “You have to go,” he choked out. “Now! Just get on with your date and have a lovely evening.”

  Arthur looked more confused now. “Just tell me what’s up, dude.”

  Jeff’s answer was no more than a growl. The clothes that he’d been wearing split as his body doubled and then tripled in size. He grew hair everywhere. His nose lengthened into a snout. His teeth turned into fangs and his nails turned into claws.

  Werebear-Jeff looked between Arthur and Andrea, hardly comprehending who they were. He could smell the fear and excitement coming off of them. That whole flight-or-fight response. Andrea moved to grab ahold of Arthur to drag him away. Jeff could stop them both in one motion.

  His last shred of humanity for the night steered him instead towards the surrounding forest and he lumbered off to go find his favorite creek and maybe another bear.

  “Jeff!” Arthur yelled in a panicked voice. He turned to Andrea, who was still tugging on his arm. “Jeff just turned into a bear.”

  Andrea did not look nearly as concerned as Jeff. “He’s a werebear,” she said with a shrug. “Which explains why he acts weird every full moon.”

  “Why didn’t he just tell me?” Arthur said quietly, looking at the patch of forest Jeff had just disappeared into.

  “Maybe he was embarrassed,” Andrea said. “Or he thought you might not believe him. Whatever the case is, you won’t be able to talk to him until the morning. Let’s go to the pub, shall we?”

  Arthur nodded and let Andrea into the car. He walked around to his own side and got in. He turned on the car mechanically and started driving to his favorite pub. He couldn’t be bothered that he and Andrea might not get a good place to sit with the big game on and all. He was too busy thinking about the fact that Jeff was a werebear.

  Jeff started to eat lunch alone on Monday. Arthur had been avoiding him all day. He’d ignored Jeff’s calls over the weekend, too. Jeff sighed, he’d probably lost Arthur as a friend. This was why he didn’t want to tell Arthur that he was a werebear. People just stopped talking to him once they knew.

  His weekend had been quiet. He’d cleaned up his shreds of clothes that he’d left on the front porch. He tracked down all of the bugs that had managed to get into his house the night he’d left the front door wide open. He went back into work on Saturday to get some more work in on his projects. He’d called Arthur countless times, trying to make amends, but to no avail.

  And now here he was, eating lunch alone. Because he was a werebear.

  He heard footsteps come up to him and he looked up, not entirely recognizing the gait. It was Andrea. She wore a tight-fitting shirt and a skirt that fell to just above her knees. Her brown hair was pinned back, showing off her neck and some of her shoulders.

  “Can I sit down?” she asked, gesturing to the seat next to Jeff.

  Jeff nodded, shocked that Andrea wasn’t running away afraid of him.

  Nothing more was said between them for a few seconds. Andrea was the first to speak up.

  “My mother’s a werecat,” she said. “She resembles a cougar or a mountain lion when she changes. She would have been roaming about Friday night as well.”

  Jeff looked up at Andrea, a little surprised. He’d never heard of anyone else with such a problem. He figured it was just his family.

  “I thought you might be some sort of were creature when Arthur mentioned that you always seem to be busy around the full moon. He didn’t want to listen to me about it though. He was pretty set on finding you and figuring out what was going on, actually. I thought it might just be safer for us to skip seeing you altogether, just in case.”

  “You would have been right,” Jeff said. He looked at his lap. “I could have ripped both of you to shreds.”

  “But you didn’t,” Andrea pointed out. “Which is the important part. I’ve spoken with Arthur about this multiple times over the weekend. It seems that he’s just mad at you because you didn’t tell him that you’re a werebear, not because you’re a werebear.”

  Jeff nodded, trying to understand. “I see.”

  “You should talk to him,” Andrea said.

  Jeff looked at his phone. “I’ve tried.”

  Andrea nodded. “I know.”

  She got to her feet. Jeff followed her motion with his eyes. She smiled and gave a little wave, then walked off. Jeff groaned, now thoroughly confused.

  Familiar footsteps graced his ears. Jeff looked over in the opposite direction that Andrea had left in to see Arthur.

  “Hey, sorry I didn’t answer any of your phone calls,” Arthur said. “I guess I was just mad.”

  He stood there awkwardly, and looked like he was going to continue standing there awkwardly until Jeff said something.

  “Sit down,” Jeff said. Arthur sat.

  “As you now know,” Jeff continued. “I’m a werebear. It happens every other generation or so in my family. It’s done that for as long as anyone can remember. None of us know why it happens, it just does.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about it?” Arthur asked.

  “Because when I was growing up, once people found out that I was a werebear, I suddenly didn’t have any friends anymore. I thought that if I told you, or anyone else for that matter, about the whole thing, you’d stop wanting to hang around me.”

  “Geez, Jeff, you’re dense. I hang out with you all the rest of the time. So I can’t make plans the night of the full moon anymore, no big deal. What is a big deal, is that you didn’t tell me.”

  “Sorry,” Jeff said.

  Arthur looked Jeff right in the eyes for what seemed like a really long time, but it was probably only twenty seconds.

  “It’s cool, dude,” he said after a moment with a grin. “What do you do when you’re a bear?”

  “Uh, eat things and sleep mostly.”

  Arthur laughed. “That’s it?”

  “The memories get all vague sometimes,” Jeff replied with a shrug, not really wanting to admit to having bear sex at the moment. Maybe later. “How was the evening with Andrea?”

  “You missed karaoke,” Arthur said. “Which is what we did after the game. We won, by the way.”

  Jeff nodded. “I know. I checked the web on Saturday.”

  Arthur laughed and punched Jeff on the arm. “Yeah, so after the game, Andrea and I were still wide awake, so when the karaoke stuff got set up, we stuck around to sing. She’s got a good singing voice.”

  “That’s good,” Jeff said. “Is she as good as you were saying in all those other ways?”

  Arthur laughed. “Yes. Singing is only one of her many talents. She’s very open about most of them. But man, we had a wile weekend. You turning into a bear in front of us was only the beginning.”

  Arthur continued to talk more about what
all he and Andrea had done that weekend. Jeff tuned out after a bit, deciding it was probably rude for him to know all of the sweaty details.

  “You know, she didn’t seem all that bothered that you were a bear,” Arthur mused after a moment. “She took it better than I did I think. But after that, I know she and I will go long term. That just cemented the deal.”

  Jeff was genuinely happy for his friend. But his happiness for Arthur and Andrea was nothing compared to his happiness that for now, at least, Arthur and Andrea were accepting of him being a werebear.

  Three to Tango

  Shifter Romance

  Chapter One

  It had seemed as if my life was going to change dramatically the moment that I meet Derek Haven. The only man who had really caught my eye.

  For the past five years of my life I had been single, my boyfriend was killed and I never thought my heart would heal again.

  There was something about Derek that made me want to be with him, just like Jude – he was kind, considerate, and showed compassion, which I felt most men lacked.

  Apart of me felt like Jude was sending him to me.

  But why Derek Haven? The self-made billionaire…

  __

  Saturday nights were the best nights of my life.

  Hanging out with friends, going to bars and drinking. Natalie, my best friend zipped the back of my dress for me.

  “So, who you hooking up with tonight Z?” Natalie asked as she finished zipping me up. I turned and looked at her with a bit of annoyance.

  “You know I just don’t “Hook up,”” I reminded her. She rolled her eyes as if she knew me better than myself.

  “So you say,” She said. Grabbing her bag, and mine, placing mine in my hand.

  “Let’s Just go, before Kenneth gets agitated with us,”

  Natalie chuckled, and we headed out the door.