by Alexis Davie
She turned around, startled to see two men behind her and her heart sank when she recognized them. Brady and Clay were in the parking lot. They had to have come down here just to see her—they had made no secret of the fact that they had heard her telling Sam she would be here, and they had to know what time the gym closed. They had known she would be alone here.
Lila took a deep breath as Brady and Clay began to walk toward her. They had positioned themselves so they were between Lila and her car. Lila felt real fear go through her as she saw the leer on Brady’s face. She wished she still had the keys to the gym. She could have locked herself inside and waited for the owner to arrive; even if it meant waiting half of the night, it would have been a much better option than this.
She told herself she was blowing this all out of proportion. They were probably just headed home and had happened to see her coming out of the gym. She started moving forwards and forced a smile onto her face.
“Evening,” she said.
“Look, Lila, we didn’t like how we left things back there,” Clay started.
Lila was still a little nervous, but if they had come to apologize, then it wouldn’t be half as bad as she had been imagining. She would just accept the apology and go home.
“Yeah,” Brady agreed. “This has gone far enough. We’re giving you one last chance to choose which one of us is taking you home tonight.”
So much for an apology, Lila thought.
“I’m taking myself home,” Lila said, pleased to hear that her fear wasn’t evident in her voice. “So, if you’ll excuse me…”
She started to move forward again, but Brady blocked her path.
“Not so fast,” he said. “You’re going home with one of us tonight. You had your chance to choose which of us that was. Now I guess we’ll have to decide for ourselves.”
Lila looked longingly at her car—at safety, where her cell phone was tucked away in the glove compartment. Why didn’t I take it in with me? she thought to herself.
“I’ve liked her for longer,” Clay said. “And we both know deep down she prefers me.”
“No way,” Brady said. “She’s always had a thing for me. I’ve seen the way she looks at me when she thinks I’m not looking.”
“I don’t think so,” Clay said.
“Yeah? Well, I do, and I’m bigger and stronger than you,” Brady said.
He reached out and shoved Clay in the chest. Clay, caught unawares, stumbled backwards, but he kept his footing and launched himself forward, his fist swinging.
“Who the fuck are you shoving?” he spat as his fist caught Brady in the jaw.
Brady swung his own fist and within seconds, the two men were punching the hell out of each other, cursing and shouting. Lila saw her chance to slip past them and get to her car while they were distracted.
She had only taken two steps when she heard a loud snapping sound—a noise that could only be a bone breaking. She looked at the two men and her jaw dropped open. The snapping sound was louder now, the snaps coming one after the other, and Lila was sure she could see Brady’s face changing. It seemed to be getting longer somehow, like he was growing a snout, and fur was sprouting up over his exposed skin. His clothes began to rip away. Clay’s body began to make the same snapping sound, and within less than ten seconds, both men had gone, and in their place stood two huge, brown bears.
Lila was frozen to the spot, her eyes glued to the bears. I’ve lost the plot, she thought to herself. I’ve fucking snapped. They have me so afraid, my mind has broken.
The two bears launched at each other, a meeting of claws and teeth. Tufts of fur filled the air, snarls and growls punctuating the fight. Lila could only stand there, stunned and watching. She tried to tell herself again that she had gone crazy, but she didn’t feel crazy. She knew what she was seeing, and as impossible as it was, she knew what she was looking at.
Bear shifters. Just like in the novels she had read as a teenager. Only in the novels, the shifters were always the good guys. They were always hot and smoldering, the heroes. They didn’t try to force women into bed with them. They rescued clueless heroines and fell in love with them.
But Lila was no clueless heroine, and the moment of clarity at what she was seeing permeated the fog that had taken over her brain, leaving her rooted to the spot. Now she was free, and she turned and ran as one of the bears pinned the other to the ground, its teeth ripping into the other bear’s throat.
Lila didn’t know which bear had the upper hand in the fight, but she knew if she hung around long enough to find out, she was going to end up raped, dead, or most likely both.
4
Lila could hear snarling behind her and it was getting closer. She risked glancing back over her shoulder. The bear was almost upon her, drool running from its mouth. She upped her pace, running faster than she had thought was possible for her, but she was still quite a distance from her car and she knew she had no real chance of outrunning the bear.
She could hear it gaining on her, and she felt the heat of its breath on the back of her neck. She heard it roar, and the next thing she knew, its paws were on her shoulders and she was falling to the ground. She landed on her hands and knees, trying to push herself back up, but the bear swiped out with one large paw, knocking her onto her side. She shuffled backwards, frantically trying to put some distance between herself and the bear.
The bear moved slowly toward her, a predator enjoying the moment where it got to tease its prey. She could see the steam on the air where the bear panted, and she could see a thick string of drool hanging from its lips as it looked at her.
She felt panic rearing up inside of herself as she tried desperately to come up with a plan, with some way out of this mess, but she couldn’t think of anything, and the helplessness only made her panic worse.
The bear seemed to tire of playing with her. It stepped closer and pushed her onto her back with its huge paw. She whimpered slightly as it pressed its paw down on her chest, pinning her to the ground.
“Enough!” a voice boomed across the parking lot. The single word was a command, and it held such authority that even Lila stopped struggling for a second.
The bear turned and fled, and Lila saw the other one chasing after it. Its fur was sticky with blood and it had a slight limp in its back left leg. A hand appeared above Lila and she shrank back for a second, but then she reminded herself that whoever owned that hand had saved her and she slipped her hand into it and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.
She looked up into the stranger’s face as he pulled her to her feet. She was surprised to see that he wasn’t a stranger. It was Jasper. She looked at him for a moment longer, aware of how hot he was, and very much aware of her hand still in his.
“You… you saved me,” she said. “How did you do that?”
“What can I say? I’ve always had a way with animals,” Jasper smiled.
He finally released her hand and she missed his touch instantly. She shook her head, ignoring how cold her hand felt now that Jasper’s hand wasn’t wrapped around it.
“Those were no normal bears,” she said. “They were men who turned into bears. Shifters.”
“Yeah, right,” Jasper laughed.
“I’m serious,” Lila insisted.
“I believe you,” Jasper said. “And later on, we can go for a ride on my unicorn if you want.”
Lila sighed, but really, she found she couldn’t be too mad at Jasper. As if she would have believed this story if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. She decided to let it go, just happy she was safe.
“Well, thanks for chasing them away anyway,” Lila said, conscious of Jasper’s eyes on her face. She felt herself blush. She turned to go back to her car, but then a thought struck her. “How did you know?”
“Know what?” Jasper asked.
“That I was here,” she said.
“Are you asking if I’m following you?” Jasper asked with a raised eyebrow.
“No, of course n
ot,” Lila said, blushing again. “I meant how did you know I was being attacked?”
“I didn’t,” Jasper said. “I was just in the right place at the right time.”
He held up a bunch of keys,
“I own the gym. I’m just here to lock it up,” he added.
“Oh,” Lila said, surprised to learn that Jasper owned the gym. She had never seen him around in there. She had always assumed the manager, Karl, was the owner. “Well, I’m glad you were here. I think you probably saved my life. Thank you.”
“Anytime,” Jasper grinned.
Lila smiled back shyly at him. His grin was so sexy that Lila could feel her center pulsing at the sight of it. Embarrassingly, Lila’s stomach chose that exact moment to rumble. Jasper laughed.
“Well, I’m glad to see your ordeal hasn’t spoiled your appetite,” he said.
“I guess it hasn’t,” Lila laughed, cringing inside. “Thanks again.”
She started to turn away.
“Lila?” Jasper said. She turned back to him. “Would you like to maybe grab a burger or something once I’ve locked up?”
“I’d love to,” Lila smiled. She cringed inside again at how eager she had sounded and she laughed softly. “How can I say no to the guy who just saved my life?”
Jasper grinned at her.
“I guess you can’t,” he said. “Why don’t you wait in your car and I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Lila nodded and headed for her car. She got in and sat tapping her fingers against the steering wheel. Maybe I am the clueless heroine after all, she thought. I sure as hell needed saving there. But the books got one thing wrong. The shifters aren’t the heroes. They’re the monsters. It’s the guys like Jasper who stand up to them that are the heroes.
5
Jasper couldn’t quite believe his luck when he looked across the table and saw Lila sitting opposite him. She was beautiful, there was no doubting that. Her short, bob haircut shouldn’t have worked on her, but it did. It gave her an almost elfin look, making her look vulnerable and innocent. The lilac color she dyed it shouldn’t work either, but it did—it brought out the bright blue of her eyes.
It was like looking at a contradiction Jasper thought. How her hair shouldn’t work but it did, how her face was innocent, young-looking and fresh, yet her body was toned and steely. Jasper loved the fact that Lila wasn’t like the usual girls he dated; she wasn’t skinny, she was strong and fit, and Jasper thought her body was the hottest body he had ever seen.
He reminded himself this wasn’t a date. He was just grabbing a bite to eat with Lila while he tried to work out exactly how much she knew about shifters. She had sounded shocked earlier when she’d said the bears had been men, but she didn’t sound as shocked as he would have expected someone who had no idea bear shifters even existed to sound.
It didn’t matter what he told himself, though—he had had a crush on Lila pretty much since she moved to the town. He had never acted on it, never gave her so much as the slightest hint he was interested in her, because it didn’t matter how much he wanted her, how much he couldn’t stop thinking about her—they couldn’t be together.
As the alpha bear of his pack, Jasper knew that technically, he could break the rules as much as he wanted to and no one could do anything about it, but he didn’t want to be that kind of alpha. He wanted to be the kind of leader who led by example. That meant any notion of him and Lila was off the table. One of his most enforced rules was that the pack didn’t fool around with girls in the town. It was too dangerous, too easy for people to find out their secret.
But then again, Lila had already seen their secret. Jasper knew that didn’t change anything, though. His job tonight was to put Lila at her ease and then try to gently persuade her that she was somehow mistaken, that what she had seen had not been real. He thought the best idea was to try and convince her that she had seen two men and that they’d run away when they saw the bears coming. He knew in his heart it was lame, but it was all he could think of.
He just had to hope that Lila would accept the story. In his experience, and he had almost four hundred years of it, most humans would accept a story with huge holes in it rather than be forced to see that shifters existed.
“Are you okay?” Lila asked, pulling Jasper out of his thoughts.
He nodded and smiled.
“Yes, sorry, I was a million miles away there,” he said. “Did you say something?”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Lila laughed. “I was just asking you how long you’ve owned the gym.”
“I bought it about three or four years ago,” Jasper said. “Karl was already managing the place, and I asked him to stay on, as I really don’t know the first thing about gyms.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Lila smiled, her eyes moving slowly over Jasper’s chest and shoulders.
“Okay, I know how to throw weights around,” Jasper conceded. “But I haven’t got the first idea about running a gym. The safety permits and all of that stuff you know from managing your bar.”
“Yeah, it is an awful lot of paperwork,” Lila nodded.
“I’m betting it is,” Jasper agreed.
Their waitress arrived at their booth and set down their cheeseburgers. They thanked her and she walked away. Lila picked up her burger and Jasper couldn’t help but watch her as she brought it to her mouth. For a moment, he imagined how her lips would feel wrapped around him instead of the hamburger bun. He shook the thought away.
“So, what made you come here, Lila?” Jasper asked. “Do you have family in the area or something?”
Lila shook her head.
“No. I just wanted a change of pace. I was working as an investment banker and I got tired of it. The high stakes, the stress, how money was placed on a pedestal above everything else. I always dreamed of running my own bar, and one day, I was online, just looking at options, not seriously thinking of doing anything about the dream. And I saw the bar for sale. It kind of, I don’t know, spoke to me, you know? I know that sounds lame, but it did. And I just knew if I didn’t do it then, I never would, and that I would always regret it. I put an offer in on the bar, quit my job, and moved here.”
“Wow,” Jasper said, raising an eyebrow. “I never would have picked you as a corporate type.”
“I can’t believe I ever was,” Lila said. “When I look back now, it’s like I was a different person back then. Or at least like I was pretending to be a different person.”
“You don’t sound like you regret leaving that life behind,” Jasper said.
“Oh, I don’t. I love the small-town life. Although to be honest, sometimes I do miss the city. Like, you know those moments where you realize you’ve run out of something, or you’re just craving a certain thing, and it’s after 10 pm so no stores here are open,” Lila smiled.
“That can be a pain in the ass,” Jasper grinned. “And you must miss the nightlife.”
“Surprisingly not,” Lila said. “Most nights I was working until past 11, so it’s not like I went out much anyway. And I know I work late in the bar some nights, but it’s so much more relaxed. And it’s different, I think, putting in hours like that to live my own dream instead of doing it to make some rich guy even richer.”
“I get that,” Jasper said. “It’s why I chose to buy the restaurant and then the other businesses. Life is too short to work forty plus hours a week to line someone else’s pockets.”
“Exactly,” Lila said. “And eventually, I am planning on expanding and buying a few more bars. Maybe I can retire by the time I’m forty.”
“That’s the dream,” Jasper laughed. “To be one of the youngest pensioners in the world.”
“Works for me,” Lila grinned.
They ate their burgers, talking and laughing. Jasper felt a little bad that he couldn’t tell Lila the truth about him. He told her he had been born in the town, which was true, but of course he had to skip over the part about having to relocate every couple of decades so no one would
question why he didn’t age, and how he came back with a new identity each time. He let go of the guilt, telling himself it didn’t matter. Not really. It wasn’t like anything was going to happen between them anyway.
The idea that nothing could happen between them bothered Jasper, though. As he talked to Lila, he began to see how funny and how smart she was, and he could feel himself wanting to know more about her. Each thing she told him about herself only made him want to hear more.
As they chatted, Jasper wondered how he could bring the conversation back around to what had happened in the gym’s parking lot and try to convince Lila the bears and the guys were two separate things. The more he got to know her, though, the more he realized it would be pointless. All it would do would be to piss her off.
While it worried Jasper to know that Lila now knew their secret, he also knew there wasn’t really anything he could do about it. It wasn’t like he could kill her or anything. And she was far too sensible, her head screwed on too tightly, for him to convince her she had imagined the whole thing. In fact, he was starting to think that even trying to do that would be an insult to her intelligence.
He wondered how he could ask her to keep this thing quiet, though. He couldn’t risk the bears being talked about; he knew some of the older residents suspected something, and he also knew that most of the townsfolk thought there was something weird about the place. The talk of bears would just add fuel to the fire. But how could he ask her to keep it quiet without admitting he, too, was a bear? How could he expect her not to talk about what happened to her, ask that of her, without it sounding like he was trying to protect the creeps who had attacked her? He couldn’t even work out at that point how to ask her who the men were, so that he could put a stop to this thing once and for all.
Eventually, he settled on bringing up the topic and just playing it by ear, seeing where she was at with it all. He waited until there was a slight lull in the conversation and then he brought it up before he could back out.