by Selena Scott
She was absorbing it all. It was a lot of information here. But the part that kept coming back to her was that Maxim was here and healthy and grown up. And that meant that Linc could be all those things someday, too. She felt a weight lift off her soul. This shifter thing, whatever the hell it was, wasn’t a death sentence. It didn’t mean that something was wrong with her boy. And now she had help figuring it out.
Her knees were like jelly and for a minute, all she could do was gulp air.
“Okay,” she said again.
“Okay,” Maxim repeated. “You go find your bathing suit and I’ll tell my family we’re coming.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and paced away from her. Ivy wobbled into the house.
Well. A bathing suit. Meeting this dude’s family. Bear shifters. Maxim.
Her whole damn life had her stomach flipping.
CHAPTER FIVE
Well, they didn't look like bears.
Actually, they looked like really nice people. It was about an hour into the swimming 'party' and Ivy was pretty sure she had them all straight.
Maxim was the oldest brother. Then came Emin, who was stupid gorgeous, all compact and dark and golden. He was the famous artist who lived up in the hills. Okay. And married to the Aphrodite in the green two-piece named Glory. She was easily the most gorgeous woman that Ivy had ever seen. Like, ever. Flame-red hair down her back and huge green eyes. And also she was apparently a tiger shifter. Cool cool cool.
Then there was Anton, also insanely attractive. Especially if you were into the sullen, broody thing. Almost as big as Maxim, he had darker hair with a shock of white and shoulders for days. For years. The man had cannons and his back was cut like... okay. Calm down.
Ivy took another grateful sip of the margarita that their family friend, AJ, had handed her. AJ was a little blonde with blunt hair that fell over one eye. She wore an oversized cover up and a big smile for Ivy. And an even bigger smile for Linc.
In fact, everyone had been so kind to Linc.
Especially Maxim's parents, Katya and Ilya, who were sharing a lawn chair in the shade. Ivy sat next to them, watching the waterhole, which was stunning in the early summer sun. Deep and still, there was a tiny little waterfall on one side. The sun beat down on the water, but most of the edges were shaded by the pines.
It really was delightful. Ivy felt like she could spend a week right there in that chair. But that might just be the margarita talking. What did she care? Maxim had driven them here. She could afford to kick up her heels a little.
Apparently there was one more brother and his wife - she hadn't caught their names - who were set to come by in a little bit. And until then, everyone was just relaxing.
Ivy let her eyes drift closed for a second, surprisingly relaxed for all that had happened today. A shadow turned her closed eyelids from red to black and drops of water scattered over her. She smiled at her son without even having to open her eyes.
"Hey, baby," she muttered, reaching out to circle an arm around him. Instead, she ended up circling her arm around two thick, hairy calves.
"Hey, sweetheart," Maxim said, grinning down at her, water beading and racing over his perfect chest. His red swim trunks clung to his wet skin and Ivy hoped her sunglasses hid the path of her eyes. But judging from Maxim's grin, he could tell exactly where she was looking.
Ivy sat up. "Sorry, I thought you were Linc."
"You never have to apologize for touching me, mermaid." Maxim traced a hand over her tail of turquoise hair and sat down next to her on the chaise lounge. Ivy stiffened a little. Today had been a whole lot to process and she was very far from sure where she stood on letting Maxim into their lives.
"Will you let him shift with us?" Maxim asked, watching Linc kick a ball back and forth with AJ.
"Is it up to me?" Ivy asked, eyebrows raised in surprise. "It's not like he has any control over when and where he does it."
Maxim studied her for a second. "We can teach him that. It is one of the first things a shifter must learn. But we won't do it without your permission."
Ivy set the drink down, planted her bare feet on the soft pine floor of the forest. "Yeah. I guess if he wants to, then sure. It's up to him." She considered for another minute. "But he probably won't want to since it hurts so badly."
Maxim nodded, a sadness in his eyes. "We can show him so it doesn't hurt.”
He sniffed the air, the way he had on her front porch only hours ago. "Ah, my youngest brother is almost here." Another sniff. "With his wife."
Ivy shook her head. Man had a killer sense of smell. She supposed it came with the whole bear shifter thing. She made a mental note to test Linc's. She’d also noticed that the wound on his shoulder had almost healed. It was pink and a little scabby, but still it had healed insanely fast. Maybe another bear thing?
A few minutes later, Ivy watched a bear amble out of the shady woods, a woman sitting astride his back like a warrior going into battle. She had short, stylish hair, almost as dark as Ivy's natural color, and a carved, model-like face. And holy shit. Ivy knew her.
That was Pandora Katsaros. The investigative reporter that Ivy had originally come to Spokane to find. The one she'd moved to Spokane to make a regular habit of badgering until she'd gotten all the information she'd needed to raise her bear shifter son in safety. The same one who'd routinely denied her anything resembling useful information.
Ivy stood, her fists clenching and opening by her sides. She tugged on her jean shorts to go with the loose t-shirt she wore over her bathing suit and yanked her hair out of her way.
She shouldered in front of Maxim and marched over as Katsaros hopped off the bear, ostensibly her husband, and gave him room to shift.
She turned toward her family, a big smile on her face. The smile immediately slid right off as her eyes landed on Ivy.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Dora demanded as she strode over to Ivy.
Ivy strode right back, and they met in the middle of all the Malashoviks.
"You know each other?" Maxim asked, stepping toward the women.
"Know her? I've been dodging her for six months!" Dora threw her hands up in the air. "Only to stumble across her at a family reunion? What the hell, Maxim! You brought a shifter groupie home to meet your mother?"
Ivy took a step forward and slapped Dora's aggressively pointing finger right out of the air. "SHIFTER GROUPIE?"
Dora took an involuntary step backwards. Great set of lungs on that one.
Ivy took another step forward. "I didn't know Maxim was a shifter until this morning. Actually, I didn't even know shifters were really a thing until this morning. But apparently YOU did." Ivy threw her arms out gesturing to all the Malashoviks. "Thanks for withholding all this information and damn near giving me an ulcer these last six months."
"What is going on here?" the youngest brother, who Ivy hadn't met yet, asked as he tugged some swim trunks on. "Dora?" He turned to his wife.
Dora's eyes never left Ivy's face and anyone could tell that her brain was working a mile a minute. Trying to piece the information together. "She contacted me right after my article came out this winter."
Dora had published a huge investigative piece on an illegal organization called Navuka. The article had gone into great detail on the animal testing and torture that had gone on at each of the sites sprinkled around Spokane.
"A lot of people were reaching out," Dora said, almost defensively. "A ton of wackos. But she had my personal cell number, somehow. And all these questions reading between the lines of the article. She had suspicions that there was such a thing as an animal-human hybrid and she was certain I knew more than I'd included in the article."
"And I was obviously right!" Ivy interjected but Dora kept going.
"And when I didn't talk to her, the next day she ambushed me at a coffee shop. She's been emailing me and calling me like crazy ever since. Personal letters even."
Ivy winced. Well, when you put all the info together like that...
"Okay, that sounds bad. But you thought I was just trying to find out information about shifters so I could bang one?"
"I don't know!" Dora threw her arms out. "The info you wanted was so specific. Why the hell else would you be asking all those questions?"
The answer to that took the opportunity to press through the crowd of grown-up legs and lean up against his mother's hip.
"You okay, Mama?" he asked, obviously not liking that she was yelling.
Dora's eyes landed on Linc and then bounced right back up to Ivy.
"Your son..." Dora said, regret instantly filling her eyes.
"Is a shifter," Maxim finished, wanting so bad to reach out to Linc and Ivy, but knowing that Ivy wasn't quite there yet.
Ivy refused to let her eyes fill. "Yeah. He's a shifter. Or whatever. But I didn't even know that was a THING until today. I just thought that he had a condition. Or, I don't know, had undergone some sort of testing as a baby that I hadn't known about. Or he'd eaten some kind of poison. Or a curse or-" Her voice broke and real chagrin ate its way onto Dora's face.
"Last year, when he first shifted, I thought I'd lost my ever-loving mind. Literally. I went to a shrink. But it didn't take me long to realize that this was our new life now. I was so scared that someone would find out. Would take him away or make him internet famous or - God! I don't know. Anything could have happened. Meanwhile he's going through these horribly painful transformations every few days. And being so brave." She dusted a hand over his head. "But it hurt so bad."
"God," Dora knuckled her eyes. "I'm going to hell."
"No, you're not," Ivy said, annoyed and not sure why. It was easier to be angry with Dora than understanding. "You obviously have a lot to protect here."
"Yeah," Dora looked down at Linc. "So do you."
"Danil," the youngest brother introduced himself, coming forward to shake Ivy's hand. "You're a shifter?" he asked Linc.
"I dunno," Linc said, looking back and forth from the man to his mother. "Sometimes I'm a bear."
Danil looked up at Ivy. "And you figured out that Dora was writing about shifters even though she tried so hard to hide it? She had to hide the shifter stuff in order to get that article published. To expose Navuka at all."
"I was grasping at straws, for sure," Ivy replied, not able to resist picking up Linc, setting him on her hip the way she did when he was younger. He didn't seem to mind, and started playing absently with the gold chain at her neck. "Looking for clues wherever I could find them. Then I read about the animal testing that Navuka was doing. There were clues that some of the testing had been done on humans as well. I guess I thought that it rang a bell. And then when I actually talked to you," she nodded at Dora, "you seemed like you were holding back from me. And I figured that if I prodded you enough, eventually you'd give something up that would help me figure out what the hell was going on with Linc."
"Language, Mama," Linc corrected, placing one stern finger over Ivy's lips.
The adults tried hard not to crack a smile. She kissed him. "Thanks, ace."
Setting him down when he wiggled a little, she watched as he wandered back toward the ball he'd been playing with.
"So you brought your cub shifter to the doorstep of Navuka?" It was pretty much the first words that Ivy had heard Anton speak and they sent chills down her back.
"What do you mean, 'the doorstep'?" Ivy asked. "They're gone, right? Your article exposed them and they're gone?"
The group looked somber. Ivy watched as Emin's wife, Glory, went over, laid a hand on Anton's shoulder as if to calm him down.
"It is bright, sunny day," Ilya, the father, said suddenly. "We have beers to drink and sandwiches to eat. And pretty women to flirt with. Tomorrow we talk of Navuka. Today we relax and swim." He waded through the group, started to shoo his children away from the tense knot. "Go. Boy cub needs someone to play with.”
The group scattered a little and Ivy was conscious of Dora edging up to her.
"I woulda helped more if I'd known about your kid, you know."
Ivy shrugged. "Well, maybe I woulda told you about my kid if I'd known you made a habit of protecting bear shifters."
The two women eyed one another warily. Ivy lifted a shoulder and dropped it. "Maybe I understand where you're coming from."
Dora nodded. "Yeah. I might have done the same thing in your situation."
"So, sorry I stalked you?" Ivy said, cocking her head to one side.
Dora cracked a quickfire smile. "Alright. Sorry I stonewalled you."
They weren't quite ready to kiss and make up, but Ivy no longer felt the bubbling animosity she'd originally felt upon realizing that Dora had been freezing her out for months.
"Let's go swimming, just the girls," Glory said as she walked over to them. "And then, we'll get out and have more margaritas and lay in the sun. It'll make us all feel a lot better." She tugged on their hands.
Ivy liked Glory. There was something very childlike about her. Something new and filled with wonder. It was really disarming. She also liked the way Glory opened up the people around her. Like popping the top off the champagne. Everybody seemed to come alive around her. Especially her husband.
”Come on, AJ!” Glory called, tugging Dora and Ivy straight into the water. The women yelped at the temperature, but soon were soothed back and floating.
Emin chuckled as he watched his gorgeous wife dive under water to yank at one of Dora’s feet. Dora hollered and laughed and indulged Glory in a dunk contest. It was a fool who tried to deny Glory. He'd yet to meet anyone who could. Her beauty still took his breath away. And the way she filled that suit. Jesus. Illegal.
"And now they splash around all wet and make nice and we're the ones who sit and watch and suffer," Danil said, pulling up a slice of towel and reclining with a beer to watch his wife slip and slide in the water.
The four brothers stretched out on a long swath of piney grass, Maxim cracking open a juice box for Linc who had hopped over to join them.
"You three chumps suffer,” Anton said, reclining lazily. More like a cat than a bear. “Because you are pussy-whipped. Meanwhile, I sleep like ba..."
Anton trailed off as his brain completely shorted out. Across the swimming hole, AJ stepped into a patch of sunlight and stripped off her baggy swim cover. She wore a white bikini, pale against her already pale skin.
But that’s not what had Anton’s heart stuttering in his chest. No.
It.
Was.
That.
Body.
Holy hell. She always wore such baggy clothes. He had no idea. He had absolutely no idea THAT was underneath. A perfect hourglass. Breasts high and round and soft and pressing at that bikini like it was their job. A trim little waist and slim hips. But when she turned around to toss the cover up on the grass, Anton’s heart kicked back into life.
She had an ass that deserved a declaration of independence from all other asses. This was truly in a league of its own. He’d never in his life seen an ass like that. Round and firm and juicy as fuck.
He immediately leaned forward before the hard-on in his swimsuit got obscene.
“Damn, AJ!” Maxim called across the water. “Where you been hiding that body?”
“Uh,” she cocked her head to one side and called back. “Under my clothes?”
AJ frowned briefly at Anton’s retreating back. He disappeared into the shade of the woods in a matter of seconds. She looked back down at the bathing suit. It was barely holding her in. Dang. She’d thought it was sexy. But apparently it wasn’t even hot enough for him to bother looking.
She tried not to take it personally. She knew she wasn’t ugly or unattractive. So it wasn’t that. He just wasn’t interested. Even less so since all that mess in Canada over the winter. He acted like she’d given herself a concussion. Treated her like she was a child when he did acknowledge her. But most of the time he just ignored her.
Well. Whatever. She had a new bathing suit and good friends and a swi
mming hole and margaritas. Screw him.
The rest of the day passed in a sunny, lazy daze. Ivy got the strange pleasure of watching her son play with grown men. Something she’d never experienced. And she got to watch them tackle and tickle. Anton was gone for a while. But he returned before they started barbecuing for dinner. A scowl on his face and no words for almost anyone.
After they ate dinner, they all lay down on a few big blankets that Katya had brought. Ilya pointed out stars to Linc who pretended he could see the ones he was supposed to be looking at. Conversation spun out, in that web that only a family can create. A friendly jumping between past and future. From laughing to sadness. The brothers joked and ribbed one another. Maxim and Anton leaned on one another’s backs to look up at the sky. There was real connection here. Strong and unbreakable.
Ivy wondered if it was because they were bears, or Belarusians, or Malashoviks.
When the stars were really out, Linc crawled across the blanket to her and tucked his sticky little cheek into her neck. She let the weight of him push her backward so that they both lay together. She felt a tickle at her scalp and looked back to see Maxim reaching across the blanket to tease at her hair, letting it slip through his fingers over and over.
Conversation ebbed as they all watched for shooting stars.
”Mama,” Linc’s little voice broke the gentle silence.
“Hmmm?” Ivy responded, tracing a hand down his back.
“What's pussy-whipped?"
The four brothers simultaneously choked on their beers.
"What?" Ivy asked, certain she'd heard her baby boy wrong.
"Pussy-whipped," Linc repeated, as crystal clear as a four-year-old could possibly get.
"Uh. Where did you hear that?"
"Anton said that his brothers were pussy-whipped.”
“Anton!” Katya scolded from across the blanket.
Even as a grown man, Anton winced at that tone. There were just some things a guy never grew out of.
Ilya hooted.
“I do not know what you laugh about, old man,” Katya said, swatting him. “These boys learned it somewhere, no?”
