Forbidden Shifters Complete Series (Books 1-6): A Wolf Shifter Paranormal Romance

by Selena Scott

  “If that’s what you want,” he said eventually. “Then that’s what we’ll do. I don’t want to go back to before, when I didn’t know you. I don’t want to lose you. So, we’ll be friends who get naked together.”

  “That’s great!” she squeaked. Her voice sounded like the cartoon squirrel version of herself. She glanced at the clock. Damn. It was too late to send him home. Her traitorous stomach swooped. He was going to have to sleep over. She knew that the intimacy of that act ran counter to every point she’d just tried to make, but she couldn’t in good conscience kick Phoenix out of her house at two A.M. “You can sleep over if you want!”

  Her voice was seriously so high and squeaky that she almost winced after each word.

  “Ida,” he said quietly. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m great!”

  She didn’t feel great though. She felt all stirred up and buzzing from the best orgasm of her life. She felt warm and loopy from the intimacy of making Phoenix come in her mouth. Being naked with him. About to sleep the night next to him. She felt raw from talking about her brother. And she felt so, so regretful that things had to be the way they had to be. She knew that she was right. She couldn’t afford to get close to Phoenix just to lose him. Her life had already been torn apart once when she was a teenager and she’d barely survived it. Losing Phoenix, and in such a permanent way, wasn’t something she ever wanted to face. She had to protect herself.

  But protecting herself didn’t mean she had to deprive herself of every good thing he had to offer. Right? Which was why she was currently giving him a guest toothbrush and a glass of water on the nightstand and not able to stop herself from cuddling into his hot, smooth skin.

  The intimacy of it all threatened to overwhelm her. He’s leaving, you fool! He’s more wolf than human!

  His arms were around her, one hand firmly planted on her ass, and he hadn’t said almost anything since her speech from before. She wondered if he could feel the panic radiating off of her.

  All she wanted was to surrender to his heat. To all the good things that he was. She couldn’t afford it. She had to make space between them somehow.

  “Phoenix?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know how we’re gonna be friends who get naked together until you go back to the wilderness?”

  A pause. “Yeah.”

  “Well, I, um, won’t get mad if you want to do that with other women too. Like I said, we’re not committing to one another, so there’s no reason for us to be exclusive.”

  A much, much longer pause. “Go to sleep, Ida.”

  She closed her eyes and tried to calm her racing heart. She hadn’t planned on Phoenix’s place in her life. But this was how it had to be. She was convinced that this was how it had to be.

  ***

  The Director hung up the phone and stared, unseeing, into the hated Florida jungle that he’d been so unceremoniously sequestered to. The words of his agent echoed in his head.

  The Wolf siblings could sense other shifters. They could identify them.

  A swooping triumph filled his gut, but he pushed it down. He couldn’t afford to prematurely celebrate. Just because two of his best agents happened to have eyes on three of the most valuable shifters he knew of didn’t mean that everything from here on out was going to be easy. The agents still had a long way to go. They still had to gain the full trust of the Wolf siblings. They had to convince them that their lives would be better spent serving their country. They had to remove any and all obstacles.

  Yes, this was all far from over.

  For a long time, The Director sat and simply contemplated the options. It was no question that he wanted all three of them. He thought of Phoenix’s feral savagery, his strength. He thought of Orion’s sheer size, his hunting ability. He thought of Dawn’s speed, her ability to hide in plain sight. Yes, he wanted the set of them.

  But the brute force necessary to take them all at once, he simply didn’t have the resources.

  “Wolves are pack animals,” he reminded himself in a low, almost deranged voice. There was a very good chance, that if he got one of them, the others would follow.

  He messaged his Agent.

  Concentrate on Phoenix. He’s still the weakest link. Hobbled by pain, but he’ll heal. And we’ve already seen that where he goes his brother and sister will go too. Get close to him. Remove all obstacles. Make him ours.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “What’s up your butt?” Orion asked the next day as the two brothers made sandwiches at the counter.

  “What?” Phoenix asked, his brow furrowed angrily.

  “It’s a human saying. One that I like very much. It means why are you so angry right now?”

  “I’m not angry,” Phoenix said, smashing the top piece of bread onto his sandwich so hard that it left finger indents. He frowned. “I’m just— being a human is a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.”

  “Trouble with Ida?” Orion asked through a huge bite of peanut butter sandwich. “When I didn’t hear you come home last night I figured everything had gone according to plan.”

  Phoenix frowned. Last night had been the most effervescent, transcendent night he’d ever had. It had also been one of the most deflating.

  He shoved his sandwich from one side to the other on the plate, picked it up and put it back down. “Humans don’t follow their own rules.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that Diana laid out all these rules for how to get Ida to be mine. House, job, stability, how to treat her, little things to do for her. And now Ida just wants to be friends. Friends who get naked together. I don’t get it.”

  Orion pushed himself up to sit on the counter and finished the rest of his sandwich in one gigantic bite, his eyes settled on Phoenix’s sandwich for a moment. “She wants to be friends who get naked together?” His brow furrowed. “And how is that different from you being her boyfriend?”

  Phoenix had asked himself that same question last night while he was brushing his teeth in her bathroom. He’d listened to her blisteringly sad tale about her brother. He’d understood, unfortunately, what she was talking about when she said that it might just be too hard to get close and then have to go their separate ways. But then she’d confused him with all this line-drawing she’d done. They could have this but not that. He was stuck trying to figure out the difference between the this and the that. It had all seemed fairly arbitrary to him.

  Until they’d started to fall asleep and she’d said that horrible thing. That thing that, even now, made Phoenix want to punch his sandwich.

  “She said it’s okay for me to have other naked friends too.”

  “Oh.”

  Orion’s tone said it all.

  “Yeah. Apparently the difference between boyfriend and naked friend is that you can have lots of naked friends.”

  “And that sounds bad to you?”

  Phoenix slanted his brother a look that would have had another man’s teeth chattering. It simply made Orion laugh.

  “Well, why the hell does she want that?” Orion inquired. “I’ve heard that human women are predisposed to monogamy.”

  “So is Ida,” Phoenix said, utterly certain in his assessment of her. “She’s trying to protect herself, I think. From when we leave.”

  “Oh.” Again, Orion’s tone said it all. There was a dead sort of note in his voice. One that implied that he too had been thinking about how much harder it was going to be to leave the human world than any of them had anticipated. “Right.”

  They fell into a silence, sad but companionable, and Phoenix finally got around to eating his sandwich. They were just loading the dishwasher when Orion spoke up again.

  “If you are allowed to have other naked friends, is she?”

  The thought froze Phoenix in place. A bad kind of electricity zapped through him.

  The idea of being naked with anyone other than Ida didn’t sound good to Phoenix, but it hadn’t affec
ted him like this. Simply because he hadn’t taken it seriously. He wasn’t actually going to go out there and be naked with anyone else, no matter if she told him it was okay or not.

  But this, the idea of her hooking up -as she’d called it- with someone else, and not knowing when or if she was actually going to, made Phoenix feel panicky and sick.

  “Shit. I didn’t think. I didn’t really agree to it. But I didn’t disagree with it either. What if she… I gotta find her.”

  “Phoenix!” Orion called after him, but it was too late. Phoenix was already storming out of kitchen, shoving his feet into his sneakers and wrenching the front door open.

  “Oh!” Ida jumped nearly a foot into the air from where she stood on the front porch, her fist raised as if she were about to knock.

  “Ida.” Ignoring the shock of seeing her unexpectedly, he did exactly what his body told him to do. He stepped forward, into the autumn sunlight, slid two arms around her and kissed her into oblivion. At least, he was in oblivion.

  A moment later, there was a throat clearing behind him and Phoenix broke the kiss to look over his shoulder at his brother.

  Orion made big eyes at him, like, remember what you were storming out of the house for just ten seconds ago?

  Right. He looked down at Ida to talk to her, but was again sidetracked. This time it was by the dozy, seduced look in her eye. Her weight was pressing back onto his arms, like he’d turned her into jelly and she could no longer stand. He looked down and saw that her fingers were fisted in his T shirt.

  He suddenly knew the answer to his own question. Ida wasn’t hooking up with other people. And she most likely wasn’t going to either. He might not have known her for a long time, but he knew her well enough to know that she was utterly dazzled by him. Just like he was by her. And she’d already told him, she hadn’t liked kissing Watt. So, did he think that she was out there, kissing randoms? No. He didn’t.

  “That was— Wow. I was just going to knock and then bam! Best kiss of my life. Holy smokes.” She shook her head, her eyes blurry, and Phoenix laughed. He wasn’t positive she was even aware she was speaking aloud.

  “You’re here,” he reminded her. “On my doorstep.”

  “Right.” She shook her head again. “I came to find you.”

  “I was just coming to find you. That’s why I was racing out the door.”

  “Really?” her eyes softened, and something inside Phoenix softened correspondingly. She was such a goner for him. He realized that this was something he might know better than she did. He resolved, right then and there, to let her figure it out for herself. It wasn’t his job to push her into anything. It was his job to be there when she pushed herself.

  “Yeah. I just wanted to see you.”

  “But you wouldn’t know where to find me.”

  “I know, I was thinking that the first thing I’m going to do when I get a job is to get a cell phone so that I can be in touch with you.”

  “Good idea.”

  “I also want a driver’s license.”

  “Also a good idea.” She looked impressed.

  “What was it that you were coming to find me for?” he asked, brushing the hair back from her face, straightening her glasses, leaning down for just one more soft kiss.

  “Oh!” She did a quick little jump in the air, her hands closing on his shoulders as she danced around. “I have the best news ever!”

  “What’s that?”

  “I got you a doctor’s appointment!”

  His internal light, which had been glowing quite brightly while he watched her dance and shimmy around on his front porch, dimmed considerably. He wasn’t sure there was a single thing on this earth that he hated more than doctor’s appointments. “Oh.”

  “No. Not any old regular doctor. I got you an appointment with a shifter doctor. He’s, like, totally famous. He was the one who was responsible for shifter liberation day! He’s a total rockstar!”

  Phoenix frowned. She obviously admired this man, whoever he was, and that made Phoenix even less excited about going to the doctor.

  “Seriously, Phoenix, he’s holding some clinic hours at the center. He travels around the country with his wife and they perform all sorts of health services for shifters. He does amazing work. And he’s here in Portland today. I talked to him this morning and he agreed to see you in an hour so we have to get a move on!”

  “I hate doctors.”

  “He’s a shifter doctor.”

  Phoenix just stared at her. “And that’s supposed to change things because…”

  “Because he understands what it’s like to be a shifter! Come on, please come see him!” She folded her hands under her chin and gave him big, round eyes that made him want to give her whatever she wanted. Though, he supposed, that was most likely the point of eyes like those.

  “Oh, all right.” He reached out for her hand. “Will you stay with me during the appointment?”

  She lit up like he’d asked her to marry him. “Of course!”

  Yup, this girl had it bad for him.

  He closed the door to his house behind him, ready to go, and she blinked at him in confusion.

  “Don’t you need your crutches?”

  He looked down at his free-swinging hands, his body standing tall. “Oh.” It was only then that the pain of his injury returned. And return with an almighty force it did. He winced against the twisting ache, the tugging burn of unhealed skin. “Right.”

  He limped back into the house and grabbed his crutches, nodding goodbye to Orion. He’d been in such a hurry to get to Ida before that he’d forgotten his crutches. Forgotten his pain. Forgotten everything but her.

  ***

  Okay, Phoenix had to admit that this might have been a good idea to see this Jackson guy. Or, Dr. Durant as Ida kept insisting on referring to him. He was glad Ida was there with him through the appointment, though he didn’t particularly care for the light blush in her cheeks whenever she spoke directly to the doctor.

  That was his blush.

  “So, why can’t I shift anymore?” Phoenix asked after Jackson had examined him from head to toe, including his injuries. He’d gotten answers to this question from all the other doctors he’d seen and he wanted to know if Jackson’s would be the same.

  Jackson leaned back in his swivel chair, his white coat straining over his shoulders and his surly expression pointed out the window in deep thought. “You know,” he said after a long pause, his dark eyes flicking back to Phoenix’s. “I’m not entirely sure.”

  Phoenix was surprised by this answer, and somehow reassured by it. All the other doctors he’d spoken to had been so sure, so resolute, so unwilling to show uncertainty of any kind.

  “To be honest,” Jackson continued, “shifter medicine is still a big old question mark. It’s only been a legal area of study for the last five years. It requires both a medical degree and a veterinary degree. And a lot of guesswork in between.”

  “The only medical professionals that Phoenix has seen so far have all been MDs,” Ida said, reaching for Phoenix’s hand.

  “Well, that makes sense. There are far more doctors out there than there are shifter doctors.”

  “And you mean that both ways,” Phoenix said. “Shifter doctor. You’re a doctor for shifters. But you’re also a shifter yourself.”

  “That’s right,” Jackson nodded. “I’m a—”

  “Wolf. Like me.”

  Jackson nodded again, his head cocked to one side. “You can scent it?”

  Phoenix nodded.

  Jackson’s eyebrows raised. “That’s really interesting.” Then he turned back to Phoenix’s file in front of him, a thoughtful expression on his face.

  Phoenix was surprised. He thought of the other people he’d told about being able to sense other shifters. To a T they’d all been shocked. They’d also seemed to recalculate something in their heads. Whether it was about him or what they could get from him, he had no idea. All he knew was that he liked Jackson’s
answer the best out of anyone.

  “My best guess for why you can’t shift yet is that you’re not ready.” Jackson looked up from the file. “And I guess I mean that in the traditional sense, that your body needs to heal a bit more before it can rip itself apart to shift. But it also might be a mental thing. A forest fire is a traumatic thing to survive. And you said yourself that you’d accepted death before you passed out.”

  Ida’s hands squeezed around Phoenix’s. She didn’t like hearing that. For that matter, neither did Phoenix. But there wasn’t any changing the story. That’s the way it had been.

  “Right.”

  “So, maybe some part of your brain needs some time to accept that you didn’t die. Your siblings said that when they found you, you were in your human form?”

  Phoenix nodded.

  “Well, I’m not a psychologist, but maybe some part of you feels like your wolf did die. Maybe you need some time to understand that you’re still whole. That your wolf is still alive in you.”

  “How do I do that?” Phoenix asked gruffly. That answer was both better and worse than the clinical analyses that his other doctors had given him. It made more sense to Phoenix, but it also made him even more confused on what to do next.

  Jackson leaned back in his chair, his eyes flicking to Ida, then to their clasped hands. “I think you live your life. Get back on your feet. Spend time with a pretty girl.” He smiled at Ida. Phoenix felt the heat of her blush and rolled his eyes. “Physically, at least, I don’t think you’re very far from being able to shift. But I, more than almost anyone else you’ll meet, know that there is a mental and emotional component to shifting that can’t be controlled or ordered around. It can’t be mastered. It has to be accepted and lived with.”