Suzanne's Sexy Shifters [Shy River Pack 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (14 page)

“I suppose it really doesn’t. It just means that I can’t claim you until a born wolf claims me, which essentially means you and I will never share a link.” He pulled her onto his lap as he sat down on the sofa. She could feel his resignation, his acceptance of such a cruel fate as somehow just another thing to be endured. “It’s okay, sweetheart, I know that you care deeply for me.” He didn’t say it out loud—prying eyes and ears were everywhere—but she knew that he included Gideon in that statement as well. “It’s more than I ever hoped for, and it makes me very happy.”

“You deserve more,” Suzanne said fiercely, her thoughts echoed by Gideon as well.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I have everything I need.”

 

* * * *

 

Gideon was listening so intently into Suzanne and Brigden’s conversation that he narrowly missed running headfirst into a tree. Nothing angered him more than the injustice of being unable to openly claim the man he loved. Why would nature decree them mates if they weren’t meant to be together?

No, it was the pack’s attitude that was wrong. Not nature.

Surely there were other wolves out there with similar problems. It wasn’t unheard of for werewolves to join different packs. Perhaps if they could find a pack sympathetic to their type of relationship, Gideon could claim both of his mates and the three of them could live openly.

“That sounds nice,”
Suzanne said inside his mind, but her tone was sad. It was obvious that she realized the unlikeliness of such an outcome. Not only would he and Brigden need to leave all of their family and friends behind as well as most of their possessions, but they’d also need to find a pack that wasn’t hiding in plain sight like many wolf packs without the purple genetic quirk had been able to do. Gideon didn’t even know where to start.
“I suppose it would be difficult to sell a house or two that technically belong to a pack of werewolves,”
Suzanne said with a soft laugh, clearly trying to lighten the mood.
“We’ll find a way, Gideon. Now concentrate on your task before you actually run headfirst into a tree. I have a feeling the mate link would ensure that we share that feeling as well.”

“You’re probably right,”
he said, feeling a little less pessimistic about their future together.

“Probably?”
she asked with a smile in her telepathic voice. He could almost see her raised eyebrow as she challenged his perception of her.
“Stay safe. Come home quickly.”

It was an order worthy of any alpha he’d ever known. Gideon smiled as he picked up the pace and ran faster, eager to get this assignment done and head back to his mates.

 

* * * *

 

Brigden held Suzanne close and tried very hard to accept that life wasn’t fair. It was human nature—and a trait werewolves shared—to want more, but that didn’t mean they got it or even deserved it.

Suzanne snuggled closer, and he wrapped his arms around her gladly. He’d told her he had everything he needed and was determined to live up to that claim. It didn’t make it any easier to hide such a huge part of himself from the people around him, but it was still much more than he’d ever hoped for since discovering that Gideon was his mate.

“Brig, how many shifter species live in these mountains?”

“I doubt anyone knows that for sure,” he said, happy to think about something else for a while. “Shifters who can pass as human tend to follow human laws and register their children’s births. It makes it far easier in the long run to get things like social security numbers and driver’s licenses and jobs if necessary. Of course with our longer lifespans the paperwork is inevitably a little bit dodgy.” He laughed softly. “We’re pretty isolated here—a necessity for this pack as well as ours—but there are several wolf packs that live and work in small towns around the base of the mountain. These days we even have a hospital not far from here that is almost fully staffed by shifters.”

“Seriously?” she asked, sounding completely shocked. She glanced around the cabin that had a very rustic feel to it. Only the two bathrooms showed any sign of modern convenience.

“This pack has stayed isolated longer than most, but about a century ago some shifters realized the necessity of at least understanding humans and the ways they lived. Thankfully it meant when things like satellite surveillance, computer viruses, and the lack of privacy over cell phone lines became possible, we were already working on ways around it, ways to keep shifters who couldn’t blend easily into human society a chance to survive the modern era.”

“Has anyone ever considered going public?”

“Of course,” he said, “but human history is full of violence. Would you be willing to risk the lives of everyone you know on the hope that humans would react favorably to learning they weren’t the dominant species on the planet?”

“I guess not,” she said quietly. “I suppose being longer lived means shifters see more of human history than humans themselves.”

“Quite right,” Brigden said as some of the memories of shifters he’d met over the years flowed into his mind. “I once had a three-day-long conversation with an alligator-shifter. They can live over half a millennium, and some of the things he’d seen will never appear in human history books.”

“The victors write the history books,” she agreed with a nod. “It’s human nature to try and justify our actions no matter how horrific.”

“Shifters, too,” he said in agreement.

“Wait. Alligator-shifters? They’re on this mountain, too? I thought the shifters were all ‘native’ to the area.”

“No,” Brigden said with a soft laugh. “This particular shifter was able to pass as human and was just traveling through. Wild alligators tend to be loners. Their shifter counterparts are no exception, but occasionally they feel the need to exchange information. He was actually very helpful and gave me some really valuable insights into the technology being developed in Japan at the time.” He smiled at the look of wonder on her face. He’d been quite young at the time and had probably worn the same expression the entire three days. “Most of the shifters in this area are native to the mountain, but we do have a few extras. The parrots—mainly cockatoos near Shy River pack—and diamond pythons come to mind.”

She paled a little at the mention of giant snakes, but it was the cockatoos that caught her attention.

“The National Park Service has been trying to relocate nonnative species for decades. The fact that they’re sentient beings probably helped them stay out of the traps.”

“I’m not sure what the statistics are, but wolves tend to work as protectors for the smaller shifters. Shy River pack made most of its money hiring out to other species. My friends Donovan and Sogarn have been on a protection assignment for one cockatoo for over forty years.”

“Seriously? What is the cockatoo? Royalty or something?”

He could tell by her smile that she was joking. He laughed, too, as he nodded and confirmed her guess as correct. “Technically Gop-tru-alcarn is a prince, but with the complicated hierarchy of parrot-shifters I can’t tell you for certain how he came to be isolated from his flock and living with a human as a pampered pet.”

She was about to ask another question, but the smile suddenly fell from her face, and she reached for his cell phone.

“Gideon wants me to call Jay Holks. They just found his brother.”

 

* * * *

 

Gideon and Shaw stayed downwind as they crept closer to the man they’d been looking for. Thank heavens for his connection with Suzanne, otherwise they wouldn’t have had a way to contact Jay Holks. They were going to need his help if they wanted to convince his brother to give up whatever it was he thought he was doing.

The noise of a ringing phone reached their ears at the same time the man they watched reached into his pocket.

“Suzanne, we could have a problem. Either we’re looking at Jay or his brother has his phone. Just ask the man who answers if he’s had any luck finding his brother yet.”
He could feel her curiosity and nearly laughed out loud when he realized she was rifling through his recent memories to catch up on the situation. They’d have a chat about personal boundaries later.

He “heard” Suzanne’s side of the conversation through their link and Jay’s side through his better-than-human hearing. Jay denied having found his brother, but it was the fact that he lied about his location that had both Gideon and Shaw on edge.

“I think we’re onto something with Brigden’s theory,”
he said telepathically as he watched the man who may or may not have been Jay Holks wandering around the back of Suzanne’s cabin. He seemed to be looking for something very specific. After several minutes of searching the area he scuffed his feet through what appeared to be something in the dirt—most likely paw prints—and then followed the trail into the forest behind Suzanne’s home.

“Is he covering his brother’s tracks?”
Suzanne asked.

“I don’t know,”
Gideon said as he lifted his nose and followed the bear-shifter’s scent. He could only smell one shifter, so it seemed likely that the tracks had been made some time ago.

“Either the tracks are really old—we would have noticed the scent this morning otherwise—”
Suzanne said speculatively,
“or they belong to Jay and were made in the past few hours.”

“But why would he hide paw prints when many of the shifters on this mountain could track his scent?”

“Maybe he’s just hiding them from humans,”
she suggested uncertainly.

“I don’t know what he’s up to, but it seems suspicious,” Shaw said in a whisper as he morphed back into his human form. “I’d rather not confront a grizzly bear-shifter alone, but if I send up a signal, he’ll hear it and know we’re onto him.”

Gideon morphed back into human form to agree with the beta’s assessment. He didn’t add the thought that if they weren’t so behind in technology they would have been able to silently contact and track each other on a search like this. Considering how close some humans lived to the Dry Creek wolf pack, it was nearly a miracle that they hadn’t yet been discovered.

“We’ll follow him as long as we can stay downwind. If necessary I’ll just ask him what he’s up to.”

The beta gave him a crooked grin but nodded in agreement. “It sounds far preferable to the alternative.”

They both morphed back into their wolf forms and followed the grizzly bear-shifter as he wandered through the forest in man form.

 

* * * *

 

“Brigden Hawkes,” a very tiny voice said as a human no more than ten inches tall ran into the room. “I thought I heard your voice. Long time no see.”

Brigden smiled as he lowered a hand to the ground and helped the turtle-shifter onto the cushion beside them on the sofa. He was always amazed at how fast turtle-shifters moved in human form. It was almost like they saved their energy for superhuman speed by moving slowly in turtle form. He was pretty sure a turtle-shifter in human form could outrun a squirrel-shifter in squirrel form though he’d never actually seen such a thing.

“Eejar,” Brigden said as the tiny humanoid practically danced on the spot with nervous energy. “What are you doing on this side of the mountain? Your family thinks you’re dead. Witnesses saw you carried off by a bald eagle.”

“Yeah, the stupid bird carried me for miles before dropping me. You’d think if it was going to snatch me up for lunch it would at least have the decency to eat me instead of dropping me from a great height. Dinged my shell pretty good, but unlike wild turtles,” he said with a wink at Suzanne, “we shifters can repair a broken shell. Hurt like hell though.”

“So why haven’t you headed home?”

“What, you mean apart from the fact I have no idea where I am?”

“Of course, sorry,” Brigden said with a shrug. With most of the smaller shifters living practically their entire lives in animal form they really didn’t have any need for the type of information or technology that he sometimes took for granted.

“So who’s the bitch?”

He felt Suzanne bristle at what was essentially an insult in human terms but accurate in wolf terminology, and moved to correct his old friend quickly. “My
mate
, Suzanne, prefers the term ‘she-wolf.’”

“Oh, apologies. No offense was intended.”

Suzanne nodded. She didn’t say anything, but he could sense confusion rather than anger in her emotions.

“Suzanne this is Eejar. He’s a turtle-shifter who used to live in the pond behind my home.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said in a tone that suggested she wasn’t really sure if it was nice or not. Considering how many new shifters she’d met today, it was no wonder she was feeling a little off-balance.

“So what’s the story?” Eejar asked in a superfast voice that would have made a chipmunk proud. “Did you join a new pack? Or was there a meeting or something? I’ve seen a whole lot of shifters pass by my pond this morning. Is there something afoot? Are the humans causing trouble again?”

“No,” Brigden said with a quick shake of his head, and then because the meeting wasn’t classified, quickly filled Eejar in on what was currently happening.

“Grizzly bear-shifters?” Eejar exclaimed in alarm. “Those guys don’t give a shit if they’re eating sentient beings or not. Not like wolf-shifters and the other predator-shifters on this mountain. They have respect for life. But not grizzlies. They have
no
regard for others. The last thing we need is grizzly bear-shifters on this part of the mountain.” He paced back and forth several times, going very close to falling off the edge of the sofa before he added, “Hey…there was a family of grizzly bear-shifters slaughtered by humans not far from here. Aagan told me all about it. Something about twin brothers whose mate and three cubs were slaughtered right in front of them. One of them died trying to save them. The other ran to safety, abandoning them all to their fate.”

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