Suzanne's Sexy Shifters [Shy River Pack 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (13 page)

“Do we know anything about them? Either of them? Is there a reason that he chose our mountain?”

It was a valid question, one Brigden had been asking himself over and over. He’d heard only one side of the cell phone conversation—Jay Holks apparently knew enough about technology to have his speaker set to the lowest volume possible—but the phrase “you were right about the location” had been bouncing through Brigden’s mind ever since.

Was it possible that this mountain was where the grizzly bear-shifter’s family had died?

He took a step away from the group, grabbed his tablet, and started searching the Internet for accounts of grizzly bear attacks in the area. Most referred to very old news articles and horrific accounts of mutilated human remains, but one story caught his attention.

He quickly moved to Suzanne’s side and showed her the grainy black and white picture.

“Is that your cabin?” he whispered urgently.

The picture was from a newspaper article over sixty years old, so it was a little hard to be certain. He was grateful that Suzanne took her time to look it over carefully before whispering back, “I think so.”

He quickly searched for related files and found several dealing with the aftermath of a young child apparently abducted by grizzly bears. The hunting frenzy that followed was sickening. Dozens of grizzly bears massacred on suspicion of taking a young human child from its bed. No one had even bothered to ask how a grizzly bear—often too big to walk through a cabin door—could have somehow taken a child from its crib without leaving a heap of damage in its wake.

Even black bears and several other species unrelated to bears had been innocent victims of the violent attacks. The only good news Brigden could find was that it seemed to be the catalyst that eventually had most of this mountain declared a national park with regulated hunting seasons and exclusion zones. It was essentially why many of the shifters on this mountain lived in relative peace.

“What have you found?” Gideon asked quietly, having moved to Brigden’s side almost silently.

He passed over the tablet, not really wanting to say anything out loud until they were certain. He’d only been a baby at the time it had all happened, so he had no memories of the anger and fear that likely reverberated through all of the shifters at the time.

Gideon closed his eyes and breathed out heavily. Brigden sensed his need to pull his mates close but wasn’t certain if it was just a reflection of his own desires or not. He reached for Suzanne as Gideon nodded once and then headed back to the alpha’s side.

* * * *

Gideon quickly explained the information Brigden had found. He’d barely been more than a pup when it had all happened, but he remembered his parents’ and the alpha’s worry that the humans would accidentally learn about shifters when an injured shifter instinctively tried to change forms to heal a serious wound.

Within minutes every shifter in the room had a different opinion on how to handle a rogue grizzly bear-shifter who’d obviously been deeply affected by the loss of his family. They still weren’t certain that these events even related to Jay Holks’s brother, but it seemed like a fairly solid conclusion. All of the grizzly bear-shifters had moved out of the area soon after the killing had started, their animal counterparts left behind to face the violent actions of humans.

But no matter how much anger the past provoked, thankfully level heads prevailed today. It probably helped that most of the people here representing their group of shifters were security minded and very aware of the potential outcome of shifters being discovered by humans. Even if humans didn’t freak out and start killing randomly—and for all their claims of peaceful intent they still owned an awful lot of guns—no one in this room wanted to contemplate how much their lives would change if humans learned they weren’t the only sentient beings on the planet and not even the dominant species.

A raccoon ran into the group of people, startling the smaller—and even a few of the larger—shifters in the process. He morphed into a foot-tall humanoid and quickly gave his report to the only other raccoon-shifter in the room.

“He’s been spotted not far from the house in the photo.”

“When?”

“Not more than fifteen minutes ago.”

“We should confront him immediately,” Eadan Barclay demanded aggressively, “before he has a chance to abduct another child.”

Gideon held his tongue, unwilling to disagree with the beta of Shy River pack in public, but he really wanted to tell his old man to shut the fuck up. The last thing they needed right now was a mob mentality. Fortunately, the alpha of Dry Creek shook his head and turned his attention to the others in the room.

“Do we know how many humans currently live in that house?”

“Only one,” a deer-shifter said in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. “She works for the parks department, too. Maybe they’re working together.”

“I can assure you that’s not the case,” Gideon said, knowing that he would need to explain. “Suzanne was unaware of shifters until yesterday when she found the missing cub. She risked her own life to try and save him and ended up a shifter herself thanks to her injuries.”

A few of the more aggressive species turned suspicious eyes her way. The more timid shrank back from where Suzanne stood next to Brigden.

“How do you know her getting hurt wasn’t a ruse to get a spy into our midst? She’s probably reporting everything we say straight back to the grizzly.”

“I know that she’s not,” Gideon said angrily as Brigden moved closer to protect her if necessary. Hell, Gideon hoped it wasn’t necessary. Two wolves—he wasn’t even certain he could rely on his dad’s support—against a room full of other shifters were not good odds. Surprisingly, Hensen and several of the black bear-shifters related to the young cub Suzanne had rescued moved to calm the situation down. With the fight a little more even, cooler heads once again prevailed.

“Explain what makes you so certain,” a chipmunk-shifter ordered aggressively.

“I am certain,” Gideon said, turning to Brigden with an apologetic smile, “because I share a true-mates link with her. I can feel her emotions, sense her thoughts, and see into her memories. Suzanne had nothing to do with the child’s abduction.”

Brigden swallowed hard but seemed to make an effort to concentrate on more pressing matters at the moment. Thankfully, Suzanne cuddled Brigden close, very aware of how difficult it had been for Gideon to say that when she still didn’t share a link like that with Brigden.

“And now she has direct access to yours memories, too. How very convenient,” Canlon said in a sarcastic voice.

Gideon considered leaning over and punching his packmate square in the nose, but that wouldn’t change the asshole’s attitude to humans anytime soon.

“Suzanne is as innocent a victim in all this as the young cub. You have my word that she is not a danger to us.”

Several other shifters went to speak, but the Dry Creek alpha stepped into the fray, thankfully coming down very clearly on Gideon’s side.

“Enough! A well-respected, well-known werewolf is vouching for Suzanne. That should be enough for all of you!” He eyed the most aggressive shifters individually as he dared them to disagree. All backed down, just as the alpha knew they would. Starting an argument with an alpha on that alpha’s land was tantamount to suicide. Most shifters tried to avoid killing sentient beings, but there was a limit to how much a natural predator was going to let others push him around.

“I want four security teams in that area in the next twenty minutes. If you find the shifter, don’t engage him. It takes more than a handful of wolves to take down a grizzly.” He rubbed over the scar above his left eye. “I suspect it will take even more to subdue a grizzly-shifter.”

He nodded to his beta, Shaw Tryden, who immediately started barking orders to the werewolves and several other predator-type shifters in the room. In mere moments, the room was practically empty.

“Gideon, you’re with me,” the beta of Dry Creek said with a dip of his head. Gideon nodded in acknowledgment.

“Go back to the cabin and stay with Brigden,” Gideon said urgently as he dropped a glancing kiss on her lips. “I’ll be back soon.”

He didn’t need to suggest that Suzanne explain the nature of their link to Brigden. He could already hear her anxiety as she tried to find the words.

“I love you both, baby girl. Tell Brigden for me,”
he said telepathically as he ran from the room.

“It didn’t work, did it?”

Suzanne shook her head sadly. She didn’t need to ask what topic Brigden was talking about. It was pretty clear that he’d noticed the lack of reaction from the people around them. She and Gideon had even worried that there might be some sort of angry backlash that Brigden had claimed their mate first.

But none of that had come to pass. Instead, despite what should have been a claiming bite, there was no link between Suzanne and Brigden that other shifters could sense.

He gave her a crooked smile and laughed softly. “It’s kind of appropriate actually. I’ve failed at everything else that should come naturally to a werewolf. Why wouldn’t I fail at this, too?”

Tears filled Suzanne’s eyes as she tried to find something to say. She could feel Gideon’s sadness and knew that he was monitoring their conversation also.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Brigden said as they entered the cabin they shared with the other wolves from Shy Creek pack. “Tell me about your link to Gideon. Is it as amazing as legend suggests?”

“I don’t really know what the legends say,” Suzanne said slowly as she checked Gideon’s memories as well as her own. “He hasn’t claimed me, so I’m not sure if it’s an actual true-mate link or something else entirely. Gideon was as surprised as I was when it first happened.”

“It’s not the usual outcome when a human is turned into a werewolf. As far as I knew, the telepathy was just a true-mates thing, but I suppose it makes sense. If a werewolf changes their mate, then the first bite likely creates the link. If you hadn’t been true-mates, it probably wouldn’t have happened like that.”

“That’s the most likely explanation,”
Gideon said in her mind. She knew he was running in wolf form and the sensation of motion while standing still was a little confusing.

“What else do you know about true-mates links?” she asked them both.

“Not much,” Brigden said, reaching over to touch her face. “I can sense your emotions, and I know how sad it makes you that you can’t share the same link with me as you do with Gideon.” He smiled softly. “But I got the impression you can sense my emotions, too.”

“I can,” she said, turning her head slightly so she could press a kiss to his palm.

“Then you’ll know that I’m happy for you and Gideon.” She went to say something else, but he cut off her words, tilting his head as if he’d suddenly thought of something else. He shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe whatever conclusion he’d just come to. “A friend of mine—Donovan, a wolf I hope you’ll get to meet one day—once told me that a
made
wolf couldn’t claim a
born
wolf first. As a supposedly born wolf, the bite I gave you should have created the link between us and an almost irresistible need for you to claim me as well.” He shook his head, his eyes narrowing as he seemed to follow his thoughts through to a not entirely unpleasant conclusion. “What if I wasn’t born a wolf?”

“You think maybe you were human at one stage? Do you have any human memories?”

“Not really,” he said, frowning slightly, “but when we got to your house earlier, I had a déjà vu feeling.”

“You think you might be the baby stolen by a grizzly bear?” she asked, feeling a little shell-shocked.

“What if it wasn’t a bear? What if the grizzly was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and it was a werewolf desperate for a child who stole the baby from its crib?”

“Would your mother do something like that?”

“It might explain her behavior before and after Brigden was born,”
Gideon said in a sympathetic voice.
“From memory she’d had a difficult pregnancy. No one expected her to carry her baby to term, and her family was really worried when she disappeared into the woods. Several weeks later she came home with Brigden, claiming to have given birth in one of the pack’s dens.”

“I never knew my mother,” Brigden said quietly. “She died when I was really young and my grandparents raised me.” He pulled Suzanne into his embrace, but his hands were shaking as he ran them through her hair.

“She was one of the victims of the human violence that followed the child’s disappearance,”
Gideon said sadly
. “No one was able to explain why she’d gone to the defense of a couple of non-shifter grizzly cubs. Perhaps she felt the need to make amends for the trouble she’d caused.”

Brigden swallowed and shook his head, unaware of the information Gideon was providing her. “I’m willing to concede at this point that it’s just coincidence, but the abduction happened around the same time I was born, it explains my size and humanlike traits
and
why the claiming bite didn’t work.”

“Okay, so let’s assume for a moment that it’s all true. How does it change things?”