by Selena Scott
She tried to rise but he held her firmly in place. His voice was lower than she’d ever heard it. “Inka, are you in danger? Please, for the love of God, tell me if you are.”
“I’m not in danger here. Right now,” she answered carefully. “But don’t open another gate unless you tell me first, okay?”
“Gate?” he asked her. “Inka, how much do you know about the windows that you’re not telling me?”
“A lot? But I’ll tell you all of it, Matty, I swear. Everything. You deserve to know everything.”
***
She found him in his lab not five hours later. He leaned over a notebook of notes but he wasn’t writing anything. In fact, he wasn’t doing anything at all, besides resting his forehead in one palm. He looked so distraught that Inka was bounding across the room instantly.
He looked up and she froze.
“You wear glasses?” There was so much delight in her voice that for a moment, both of them forgot what had happened that afternoon.
“Sometimes,” he half-smiled at her. “When I’ve been working all day and my eyes get tired.”
She tossed her coat on the floor and instantly straddled him, yanking the thick black frames off his face. She held them up to the light and then jammed them on her own face. “Oh man, your prescription is terrible!”
“Yes,” he said dryly, though she did look very cute in the huge frames. “Glasses wearers just love it when people snatch their glasses and then tell them how bad their eyes are.”
She grinned and passed the glasses back. Matt set them aside and latched his arms around her waist. “I can’t wait anymore, Inka. I’ve been losing my mind today.”
“Okay. First of all, my boss gave me the rest of the week off after I fainted. So I think we should go to Green Mills and you can meet my family.”
His brain stuttered. “I—okay?”
“I’ll drive.” She slid off his lap and leaned down for a kiss. “AND I’ll explain everything on the way.
***
“The first time I ever actually saw a gate was a little over two years ago,” she told him as she merged with traffic on the GW. He sat in the passenger seat, a mug of coffee between his knees and his seat pushed all the way back to accommodate his long legs. “But I’d been feeling them for my whole life.”
“Feeling them how?” He’d never been able to sense his Galician window with anything other than his eyes.
“For me, and for my siblings, it’s this strange pull. It’s a weird, dozy feeling that kind of reels you in. It’s horrible. And scary. And everywhere that any of us ever felt it, we instantly avoided that place. I’d never gotten close enough to one to really look at it.”
“But two years ago?”
She let out a deep breath. “Two years ago, I watched Milla, my brother Ansel, and his girlfriend Ruby disappear into one. Through one.”
“But they’re impenetrable!”
She shook her head. “Not for people like my family.”
“What’s special about your family?”
She glanced at him as she switched lanes and hit the gas. “Wellllll, um, we’re shifters? Bear shifters?”
Nothing on his face had changed. She wasn’t even sure he’d heard her. She was about to repeat it when he finally spoke. “The last recorded shifter disappeared in the 1920s.”
“That’s true.”
“Her name was Vera Schriver. She was a deer shifter. She lived in Ontario.”
Inka lifted her eyebrows. “You know a lot about shifters.”
“I mean, it was of great interest for me for a while. You know? People who can biologically transform their bodies into that of an animal? Living all over the world? And then bam! Over the course of a decade every single one of them are gone? I mean, it’s one of the world’s greatest mysteries. Every young scientist must have scrabbled through the evidence at one point or another. Dreamed of solving the mystery.”
“Okay.” She glanced at him again. Should she continue with her story? He was taking this awfully well—
“Bear shifter you said?” One of his legs started jouncing and he swore when he spilled his coffee. He picked up the cup and took a huge slug of it. “What kind of bear? Kodiak? Grizzly? Polar? Panda? Ha ha! Just kidding. I know pandas are marsupials. Not bears.”
“Closest to grizzly, I suppose. But our fur is golden. Like our hair.”
“Rightrightright. A golden bear. Wow. Okay. Imagine that.”
She opened her mouth but again he was talking.
“And no one knows? Just secret shifters, huh? Just ho-ly shit. A bear shifter. Golden bear shifter.”
Twenty minutes later, Inka took the coffee out of his hand. She set it in the cup holder in her door. He was still talking.
“So, you just go out into the woods and BAM! First you’re a woman and then you’re a bear. Have you been shifting in New York City? No, of course not. Where would you do it? Central Park? Ha! No way. OHHHH. That’s why you go home every weekend. Of course. You probably need to shift. Is it a biological need? Something you have to do very often?”
“Matt!”
The man had barely stopped rambling this entire time and she’d decided she’d given him enough time.
“What?” He jumped an inch off his seat like she’d shot a gun in the air.
“Are you alright?”
“Ah, yeah. Yes. I’m totally fine.”
“Because I know this is a lot to absorb, but you’re kind of acting a little nutballs.”
“Yeah.” He sagged, leaning his elbows on his knees and watching the dark landscape rush past their car. “I feel a little nutballs.”
He turned to her, those slices of blue visible even in the dark. “You’re being for real? You’re really a bear shifter?”
She nodded solemnly. “For real for real. Cross my heart.”
“So what would happen if we had a kid? Would they be a shifter? Or just have the gene maybe? Or maybe they’d be like a little bear.”
She was the one who jumped now. That was really where his mind was taking him? “I’m not sure,” she answered honestly. “Both of my parents were shifters. And both bear. So I don’t know how it shakes out if you’re not the same in that way. But Matt, I have a lot more to tell you.”
“Right.” He sat back and dragged a hand over his face. “Right. You were explaining how the windows relate to shifters. You said you can get through them?”
“Yes.” She merged onto the two-lane highway that would bring them the rest of the way home and felt a shiver run down her back as she thought of the gates. “And you could, too, if you were with me. The gate changes when a shifter is around. Gets golden. They lure us in. Something about the energy of it calls to a shifter. The gates are very dangerous for us. Because that other dimension that you talked about? When you clear away the curtain of Earth’s molecules and then there it is? It’s called Herta.”
She glanced at him. He was listening raptly now. “Herta,” he repeated. “Wait a second. Just one second.” He lifted his butt off the seat and pulled out a slim blue notebook and a pen. He hurriedly flipped to a clean page. He scribbled down notes. “H-E-R-T-A? Is that right? Inka?”
She knew she was staring at him. And she knew that she probably had a wondrous, dumb-founded, earth-shattered look on her face. But how was she supposed to look when she’d just taken that final tip over the edge and fallen in love? He just sat there, big as hell and crammed into the front seat, his knees folded up to the height of his chest. Too much stubble to be five o’clock shadow but not enough to be a beard. And his messy hair and slicey blue eyes. And then he pulls out a notebook to take notes? She’d never stood a chance at not loving Matt Woods.
“Are you alright?” He was blinking at her in concern.
“Oh,” she shook her head to clear it. “Yeah. Yes. I’m totally fine. Sorry. Where was I?”
“Herta.”
“Right.” She channeled Milla and organized her thoughts very carefully. Right now was informat
ion dissemination time. The love stuff could come later. She cleared her throat. “Herta is a mirror world. It’s the same in a lot of ways. Geographically, evolutionarily, but the era is different. They don’t have electricity or anything there. And they don’t naturally have shifters. But they want them.”
“Why?”
She sighed. “Because shifters are slaves on Herta. Something about the way that world is, it changes our natures. Makes us subservient. Milla said it’s like you’re supremely confused and the only thing that makes sense is to listen to a master.”
“It happened to her?”
“Not completely. She didn’t get completely broken, but she thinks she was pretty close. A few years ago Ruby’s brother, Griff, was lured through a gate on our mountain. He was gone for a long time before we figured out what had happened to him. Ansel, Milla, and Ruby went in after him.”
“And they were able to bring him back?”
She nodded. “They rescued Griff and came back with John Alec not far behind.”
Matt’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry. John Alec, Milla’s husband?”
“Of course.”
“The John Alec who I met in the hallway of my building? You’re telling me that he’s from a different world?”
“Yes, he’s from Herta.” She glanced at him to make sure he was following all of it. “His real name is John Alec the Warrior.”
“Holy shit.”
“I really like that. The idea that your last name could be the thing that you’re best at. I wonder what mine would be. Inka the Lingerie Salesman. Doesn’t exactly have the same ring.” She tried again. “Inka the Sex-Haver.”
Despite himself, Matt laughed. “Inka the Smiler.”
She grinned. “That’s the one.”
He tipped his head back. “I guess that explains why you were so freaked out that the frequency tool had opened a window? You were worried about getting lured through?”
Her smile fell away. “Yes and no.”
He waited for her to gather her thoughts.
“I’m not particularly scared of seeing a gate. I don’t like the way they make me feel, but I can avoid them pretty easily. Plus, I’m very strong. They don’t lure me in quite the same way they lure my family. When Ansel and Ruby and Milla were in Herta for all those weeks, Kain and I would switch off watching over the gate. And I could always hack it for longer than he could. It sort of drove him crazy after a while. But not me.”
“So why did you react like that today?”
Another deep breath. “Because I’m being hunted.”
She wasn’t looking at him but she felt every nerve in his body come alive. He seemed to grow another six inches. She could scent the hot fury that instantly coursed through his body. “By what?”
“A man.”
He wasn’t breathing. He was vibrating.
“Breathe, Matt.”
He coughed out a breath and dragged a hand over his face. “Explain more, Inka.”
“When I was a little girl, right after I’d made my very first shift—I was sort of a late bloomer in that regard—I was in the woods and I felt my first gate. It was cold and clammy and made me want to lie down and go to sleep. But I felt this presence. I knew that someone was watching me. I ran away. It wasn’t very long before we left Maine, where I was born. My parents were gone and we came to the Catskills to live with our aunt. All four of us. And I never felt that presence again. Not for a very long time.
“It wasn’t until they came back from Herta that I felt it again. But this time it was in my woods. Not up in Maine. It was there, right outside my home. And I knew instantly that it was the exact same presence. The same man. I escaped. But a few weeks later it happened again. And again.”
Her hands were tight on the steering wheel but she softened when Matt slipped a big palm over her knee.
“That was when I decided to spend more time in Manhattan,” she continued. “I knew that the presence was connected to the gates and that there were basically no gates in Manhattan. Well, except for the ones you created in your guest bedroom.” She grinned at him. “I’d still go home to shift every weekend, but I was always with my siblings. And I spent way less time alone. It was better that way. But I didn’t tell anyone. I was scared to talk about it. But even more so, I was scared of what my siblings would do. I saw the way they’d thrown themselves into another world for Griff, and they’d barely even known him at the time. I couldn’t risk them hurting themselves for me.”
“That’s what you have nightmares about,” Matt realized and she slipped her hand into his. “You dream about the hunter. And what it could do to your siblings.”
She didn’t have to nod or even confirm it out loud. They both knew it was true.
A minute of silence passed before she spoke again. “I finally told them, last weekend. They could scent my fear and—”
“Shifters can smell fear?”
She smirked. “Shifters can smell everything. Emotions have certain scents based on the chemicals that get released in your body. I can tell if someone is angry or happy, sleepy, anxious, aroused.”
“Aroused?” The tips of his ears went pink.
“Yup. Plus I can hear someone’s heartbeat, feel their body temperature go up, that sort of thing.”
“Christ,” he muttered and leaned his forehead against the car window.
“What?” she asked, worried that he was reaching his limit with this totally intense conversation.
“Nothing,” he waved his hand at her. “I’m just dealing with the mortification of realizing how many hours we spent on that couch with me wanting you so bad I could barely see straight.” He lifted his head and looked at her. “And you probably knew the entire time.”
She grinned at him. “I kind of knew. But I also just thought you really, really liked watching movies.”
He stared at her, and like sometimes happened with Inka, he couldn’t tell at all if she was joking or not. “Anyways. Yes. Jesus. ANYWAYS. What happened when you told your siblings?”
“Well, pretty much exactly what I’d thought would happen. Ansel wanted to go beat up all the bad guys, Milla wanted to burn all of Herta to the ground, Ruby made tea, Griff stormed outside, Kain wanted to make sure I was alright and then he wanted to go beat up all the bad guys. But it was John Alec who calmed everyone down.”
“What did he do?”
“Well, for starters, he knew exactly what the presence was. We’re almost home by the way.” She pulled off onto a smaller road and both of them watched the dark trees lean into the road like skeletons. “Apparently, there’s these hunters on Herta. They hunt down shifters who aren’t lured as easily as the others.”
“He was hunting you specifically?”
Inka knew that he was purposefully keeping himself loose, but the scent of his fury was so potent she almost had to roll down the window.
“John Alec has a theory about it.” She turned down an even smaller road. “He thinks that the hunter first spotted me through a gate in Maine. And wanted to catch the little golden bear who couldn’t be lured as easily as the others. Sort of a trophy. But we left Maine after that and he lost me. Alec thinks that when Milla went through to Herta she brought down a lot of attention on herself. I mean, the way they sprang Griff was pretty eventful. Word traveled fast about the golden she-bear who fought the Emperor and freed the Griffin.” She glanced at his face. “Long story. Anyways. John Alec thinks that the Hunter probably figured out which gate Milla escaped through after she fled the main city. And little by little, he’s been combing New York. Until he found me.” She pulled into a driveway in front of a small, well-lit cabin. Cars crowded the driveway. “Okay, not a great place to end the story but we’re here.”
“Right.” Matt eyed the little house. “Just—are you safe? Tell me that much. If there’s anything I need to be doing or shouldn’t be doing to keep you safe. I have to know.”
“I’m safe as long as I’m with my siblings. And I’m safe in Manhat
tan. He hasn’t tracked me there. And I don’t think he’d come for me if you were around. You are rather large, you know.”
His ears pinked. “So I’ve been told.”
“Come on, big guy.”
She dragged him out of the car and into the house. Straight into the lion’s den. Well. Straight into the bear cave.
CHAPTER EIGHT
As a lanky, clumsy teenager, Matt’s height had been a source of constant embarrassment for him. He was always knocking into things and clothes never fit. He had to special order his shoes, for God’s sake. But right this moment? He’d never been more grateful to be six and a half feet tall.
Because there was a hell of a lot of testosterone in this room.
He thanked God he was the tallest. Because all the others were shifters. Except for the one who was a warrior. Right.
He liked the Ketos. He really did. Even if it was a lot to take in all at once. All the blondness. The athleticism. The outrageous good looks.
Matt got a kick out of seeing the way they all were with Inka. Loving, indulgent, and well prepared with tons of food.
Twenty minutes after he’d come into the house, he sat on the couch with a plate of lasagna on one knee, a beer in his hand and Inka curled like a cat beside him. Griff, who was younger than Matt would have thought, sat on his other side. Kain stretched on the floor, Ruby and Ansel shared a chair, and John Alec and Milla stood across the room, side by side, studying Matt.
Milla had been kind enough to Matt, although he was pretty sure she only vaguely remembered him. He’d been pleasantly surprised to find that though she was Inka’s twin, he experienced none of the attraction that he used to feel for her. She was just as gorgeous as Inka was. And she held herself proudly, almost regally. But she was sleek and perfect, untouchable. Matt found that he was attracted to messy. To silly. You know. To cat sweatshirts.
“So,” Ansel said from across the room, one hand on Ruby’s thigh. “You seem awfully calm for a man who just learned that his woman is a bear shifter.”