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

by Selena Scott

  Some people called their kids on Sunday nights. Some on holidays or birthdays. Robert called Diana on full moons and she knew it was because his thoughts were full of Toni as well. As ill-matched as Toni and Robert had always seemed to Diana, he’d never remarried.

  Sure enough, she was just sitting down on her back porch, a glass of wine in her hand and her eyes on the full moon when her cell phone rang next to her.

  As it always happened these days, her heart skipped annoyingly, her subconscious slyly suggesting that it might be Orion calling. But of course it wasn’t. She was staring at the full moon, wasn’t she? That meant that right that very second, he was somewhere in the forest in his wolf form. Something she’d never seen before from him, his shift. And something she could barely admit to herself that she wanted to see.

  She picked up her phone and restrained a sigh. Family was family. “Hi, Robert.”

  “Diana.”

  A long pause. Two people clearing their throats.

  “You all right?” It was the same question he always asked her.

  “Yup. You?”

  “Just enjoying the evening. Sitting on my back porch with a beer.”

  Diana softened a bit. Things might be awkward with Robert, and they might not be the two most compatible people on earth, but she had to admit that she was similar to the man who’d raised her up from age seven. “I’m doing the exact same thing. But with a glass of wine.”

  “Huh. Any news from work?”

  The conversation stuttered on for just a few more minutes before Diana put them both out of their misery and begged off. She’d bring dinner around his house sometime next week and they’d have this same conversation with one another but in person. What was it about him that made it so hard to connect to him?

  Diana sighed and leaned her head back, taking a sip of wine and eyeing the moon. Loneliness struck her acutely, as it always did at the full moon. How silly was it that she and Robert were doing the exact same thing at the exact same time, sitting on their porches with a drink and mourning her mother, yet they insisted on doing it separately. She should call him back, invite him over. She knew without a doubt that he’d say yes.

  Something stopped her hand. “Not tonight,” she whispered to herself. And didn’t ask herself why.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I’ve been telling you for months, my dude,” Wren said the next day as she took an enormous spoonful of the ice cream in his bowl. “You’re coming on too strong for a woman like Diana.”

  Orion sat in the kitchen of his house with the two closest friends he’d made since he’d joined the human world. Wren, who was technically also his landlord, and Ida, who was technically also his little brother’s girlfriend. The two women had been best friends since they were babies, but Orion had recently started counting himself among their group. He just sort of fit with them.

  The one year anniversary of when he’d first met Diana was fast approaching and Orion decided that it was time to kick this courtship into gear. He decided to stop casually inquiring after his friends’ expertise and call a real meeting. He’d started by explaining the cigarette trick he’d used two days ago and her insistence that he not quit the center.

  “I haven’t been coming on strong at all!” Orion insisted. “I haven’t even told her how I feel!” He scowled down at his ice cream, half eaten by his friends. “Ida talked me out of that.”

  “And thank god you listened to me,” Ida said. “Or else you’d really be sunk.”

  “Wait, what’s this?” Wren asked, looking back and forth between Ida and Orion. “I missed that part.”

  “About two months ago he asked me how to tell Diana that he loved her and wanted to be her husband.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Wren responded, face-palming and making her ice blue hair tumble over her forehead. She was attempting to grow out her spiky locks and hating every minute of it. “Orion, you’re a maniac.”

  He frowned and leaned back in his seat. “There’s some things about human culture that I’ll never understand. Like how all of you never say how you actually feel.”

  “We say how we feel!” Ida insisted.

  Orion raised an eyebrow at her. “How long did it take you to come clean to my brother about how you felt?”

  Her pretty face drew into a scowl, her red hair tumbling to one side. “Okay, okay, so maybe people who grew up in human culture play more games than people who grew up in the wilderness.”

  “That may be true,” Wren cut in. “But Ida was right to talk you out of saying that to Diana. She would have had you committed.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “That’s what I want. To be committed to Diana.”

  “No, that’s not what that phrase means. It means she’d send you to a mental hospital to have your brain examined,” Wren explained. “Because only crazy people tell someone they’re in love and want to be married before they’ve ever even kissed the person.”

  And here they were again. These humans making things so much more complicated than they had to be. “I don’t have to kiss her to know how I feel.”

  Wren rolled her eyes. “Yes, my friend, you do.”

  Orion rolled his eyes back at her but apparently he didn’t do it right because both women burst out laughing at him.

  “What is it with you Wolf boys and kissing?” Ida inquired. “Phoenix was very kiss-negative when I first met him and now it’s pretty much his favorite thing to do.” Her cheeks colored. “Well. It’s one of his favorite things to do.”

  Wren leered at her best friend. “Do tell, little mama. I’ve been trying to pry these deets from your greedy little mind for months.”

  “Nope. Nuh uh.” Ida mimed locking her lips with a key. “My sex life is not on the table tonight. We’re talking about Orion’s sex life. Or the distinct lack thereof.”

  Wren burst out laughing. “God, I love when Ida burns people.” She pointed to her own spiky/floppy blue hair and the row of tattoos that lined her arms from one hand all the way to the other. “Me? People expect it from. But her? They never even see it coming.”

  “Are you talking about how much of a sniper Ida is with the insults?” Quill Chabon asked as he strolled into the kitchen, his hands in his pockets. He was a mentor at the center just like Ida was, his mentee being Dawn. And he often popped by the house where the three Wolf siblings lived.

  “Dawn!” Orion bellowed, his head tipped toward the stairs, making all three of the other people in the kitchen jump.

  “Jeez Louise,” Wren muttered using her fingers to test her hearing. “Warn a girl next time.”

  “What?” Orion asked. “Quill’s here to see Dawn.”

  And I didn’t want him to go looking for her in her room. Orion didn’t not like Quill, but the few times he’d stumbled upon them in her room together, something in Orion’s gut had tightened. Dawn was a competent person, no question. But she was also the most naive in their family. Especially when it came to men. When Orion and Phoenix had integrated themselves into the human world last year, they weren’t complete novices. They’d wandered down to neighboring towns a few times a year -in their human forms of course- and sown a few oats here and there.

  But Dawn? She’d never even spoken to a man who wasn’t one of her brothers before the wildfire that had forced them to integrate into the human world. It’s not that Orion wanted to keep her in a bubble free of all testosterone. Not even close. He’d love for Dawn to meet someone and light up the way that Phoenix had for Ida. It was just that there was something about Quill in particular… He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. But yeah. He didn’t want Quill in his sister’s room.

  Dawn bounded down the stairs. “What?”

  She skidded to a halt in the kitchen.

  “Oh. Hi. I didn’t know we had a meeting today,” she said to Quill, her head cocked to one side.

  “We didn’t. I just wanted to stop by and drop some stuff off with you.” He held up a canvas tote bag.

  “Let’s ta
ke this outside,” Dawn said, her eyes passing over the ice cream party that was happening at the kitchen table. “We wouldn’t want to interrupt girls’ night.”

  Quill laughed and followed Dawn out onto the front porch.

  Orion frowned after them but was quickly drawn back into his conversation with the girls.

  “Operation Mentor is a no go,” Wren informed him. “It’s dead and gone. Mourn it. Move on. Get over it.”

  Orion blinked at her. “But the plan to make Diana my mentor is pretty much the only plan that we’ve had. You want to scrap it?”

  Ida was the one who fiercely nodded. “Just because it worked for me and Phoenix doesn’t mean it’ll work for you and Diana. I agree with Wren. I actually think you need to go the opposite route.”

  “Opposite of getting her to be my mentor? I already told her I’d quit the center. She hated that idea.”

  “Exactly,” Wren said, pointing her spoon at him.

  Orion blinked back and forth between the two women. Once again, he was lost.

  “Don’t get her to be my mentor,” Orion said slowly. “And don’t quit the center.”

  “Exactly,” Ida said, and this time she was the one pointing the spoon.

  “Maybe it’s time for you to pick a mentor, any mentor,” Wren clarified. “And be a good little boy.”

  Orion frowned. He distinctly did not appreciate that characterization.

  “Seriously, Ry,” Ida cut in. “I think at this point, Diana thinks she understands all of your moves. The only way to surprise her at this point is to follow the rules she laid out. Be a good mentee, follow the rules of the center, quit trying to get her attention all the time, and see if that gets her attention.”

  “I guess it would show her that I respect her wishes.” Orion could see the logic of the plan. He just didn’t want to do it. Who wanted some mid-twenties human trying to teach him how to do his taxes when he could have Diana there beside him, guiding him through his new life as a human.

  “Yes!” Ida chirped, tossing her hands to the sky. “Finally, he gets it.”

  “And,” Wren added with a wry little grin. “It might show her that her wishes are stupid.”

  “What?” Orion asked with a laugh.

  “Look, big guy,” Wren said, leaning back in her chair. “Right now you’re coming on too strong. Not only with your actions, but come on. You’re built like a brick shithouse. Your eyes, your eyebrows, your wingspan, your smile, that voice, that ass, have you seen your thighs?, your hands, your big ass feet—”

  “I fear you’re losing your way in the weeds, Wren Dear,” Ida cut in.

  “Right.” Wren shook the dazed expression from her eyes. “My bad. I’m trying to say that you’re hot, Orion. And you’ve obviously been gunning for her. And she’s obviously gun shy. So maybe if you give her a little room to breathe, show her just how nicely you can play, then she’ll realize that she wants to play with your bazooka.”

  “Good point,” Ida said, pointing at Wren. A thoughtful expression came over her face. “Besides, Diana runs the center. It was romantic when Phoenix quit the center to be with me. But when a shifter unexpectedly quits, it kicks up a tornado of paperwork for Diana. Plus, if too many shifters defect from the program, she could really be in danger of losing a lot of grant money, which would be a nightmare for her. The center is her baby. I think if you show that you care about it, that you care about her job, you might soften her up. You say you want to make her life easier, well, she’s been telling you how to do that pretty much this whole time. I say you take her at her word.”

  Orion chewed his lip and dragged a hand over the stubble on his chin. It needed a shave every day, Wren had told him when she’d first started trimming his hair, but he only got around to it every few days. “But what if she thinks I’m not interested anymore?”

  “Then all the better!” Wren crowed. “You’ve seen Diana. She’s pretty much a goddess incarnate. Don’t you think she’s got men expressing interest all the time?”

  He scowled. “I hadn’t really thought of that.”

  Of course he knew how gorgeous Diana was. But he hadn’t thought of that beauty in the universal sense. He’d just seen her, been instantly and completely drawn to her, and felt immediately as if they’d belonged with one another. He honestly hadn’t considered that another man might feel that way as well. He instantly discarded that thought. Another man might be attracted to her, might hit on her, but Diana had a place in his heart that he really didn’t think another man could possibly feel.

  “You think it would set me apart from other men if I stopped showing her that I wanted her.” The thought made him uneasy. They were asking him to play a very human game, when all he really knew how to do was to show exactly how he felt.

  “I just think that it would get her attention more than anything else you’ve been doing.” Ida sighed. “Look, Wren’s right. Diana has definitely already decided whether or not she’s attracted to you—”

  “Spoiler alert. She is.” Wren polished off the rest of her ice cream.

  “But she’s resisting for a whole set of reasons that are just her own and maybe she sees you really trying and she opens up a little bit, you know?”

  “Okay.” Orion agreed after a long moment of parsing out the information. It did sort of make sense. “Okay. Tomorrow I’ll go into the center and I’ll… be good.”

  “A good little wolf,” Wren agreed, a little grin on her face.

  He scowled at her.

  “A nice, tame, little wolfy-kin smoochie-poo,” she added, screaming with laughter when Orion jumped up from the table and chased after her.

  ***

  It was the haircut that bothered Quill more than anything. He’d dealt with the new clothes. The touch of makeup at her eyes and mouth. The earrings and silver rings on her fingers. He could even live with the faint trace of perfume she’d started to wear. But this haircut? Oof. Sometimes he thought that whatever all-seeing being existed up there in the sky got a real kick out of screwing with his life.

  Dawn had always been kind of a question mark for Quill. Even when he’d first met her and he’d realized that the shy, under-the-lashes thing that she did wasn’t actually her playing coy. It was her straight up not trusting him. It had taken months and months for him to gain her trust.

  Unfortunately for Quill, this trust thing was apparently a two-way street. Because he found himself trusting Dawn right back. And he didn’t trust anybody. It was unsettling.

  Which made his whole life a hell of a lot more complicated. And that was B.H.

  Before Haircut.

  After Haircut, his life was pretty much screwed. Before Haircut, he’d often been able to ignore how cute she was. She had a benignly pretty face, eyes he avoided locking with at all costs, and a very attractive voice. But she’d also had a sheet of black hair that fell over that benignly pretty face at the slightest provocation and blocked her from his view, from the world’s view. She’d hidden everything behind that hair. And then Wren had gone and chopped it all off.

  Now Dawn had stylish bangs and a swing of hair around her chin and there was no avoiding her face. Or her eyes. It was freaking annoying.

  Because in order to do what he was going to have to do in a few months, he could have no distractions.

  This haircut was a distraction.

  It had been three weeks and he still wasn’t used to it.

  He kicked the porch swing they sat on into motion and refused to look at her.

  “So,” Dawn said after a moment. “What’d you bring me?”

  Six months ago, she wouldn’t even answer a question directly asked of her. Now she was comfortable poking her nose into a canvas bag he’d brought, snooping around like a kid on Christmas Eve. What a difference teaching someone to read could make.

  He opened the bag to show her and cursed himself for not preparing himself for that look on her face. That eyes-wide, zap of light and excitement and joy that she always got when she was sta
ring down a stack of unread books.

  “Oh my gosh!” she breathed, diving her hands in and pawing through the lot. “So many!”

  Quill knew that he was a good mentor. He worked hard to crack open the shifters who Diana assigned him with. But he also knew that he’d had very little to do with Dawn’s apparent transformation. Sure, he’d taught her how to read. And sure, he brought her stacks of books every now and then. But it was what was inside those books that brought that shine out of her smile.

  Her enjoyment of the written word was shockingly palpable. She immersed herself in whatever she was reading, fully and completely. She was the kind of reader who wouldn’t even hear you call her name when she was reading. She required a touch on the hand or arm to get her attention. Which, unfortunately for Quill’s resolve, meant that he’d had to touch her a lot more often recently.

  Books opened up a part of Dawn that Quill couldn’t unsee. She laughed, she gasped, she cried when her favorite characters died. She was just so… sensitive. But in a good way. Dawn, so closed off from the world, from strangers, from human culture, laid herself out on the railroad tracks for a good book. Opened her heart and handed the book a scalpel, said carve me up.

  Quill reluctantly admired it. There was nothing that touched him so much as a good book touched Dawn.

  There was pretty much nothing that touched Quill at all. Not since he was a kid. Not since before his family was discovered to be a family of shifters. Not since they’d been split up and sent to different internment camps. And especially not since he’d found out that, like many of the shifters who’d been quarantined into the camps, his family had not survived. Just like that, his parents and his brother had been blinked out like a light. He was all he had left. All he had in this world.

  The idea of opening his heart up to anything -a book, a piece of art, a person- just sort of lost its appeal after that. His life had already turned him raw, he didn’t need to serve himself up as a piece of meat.

  “Ooh!” Apparently she’d found one she wanted to dig into right this very moment. She stood up for a second, dug around in her pocket, and came up with something that shocked Quill way more than they had a right to.