ROMANCE: SHIFTER: Shifter to the Max Collection (Dragon, Bear, Wolf and Panther Shifter Romances) (Paranormal Fantasy Romance Collection)

by C. J. Ayers

  "Take a seat, Bentley," Professor Donovan invited her in a manner that clearly wasn't an invitation. She turned in the doorway, her mouth set grimly, and crossed once more into the room to deposit herself on the edge of the only other available chair.

  "It's Kira," she said in annoyance.

  "I've spoken to a few of your other professors about you." The sandwich was unwrapped, but Professor Donovan's were laced, and he was leaning on his desk as if he had already completely forgotten about it. "Several of them haven't even seen you in class. They barely knew who I was talking about."

  Kira felt her pale face flush furiously, but she kept a steady grip on the edge of her chair. "You're not my advisor. I don't need to explain myself to you."

  "I just find it curious," Donovan continued as he finally sat back and tucked into his sandwich. "From what I'd heard semesters previous, you were a stellar student."

  "You heard about me?" It was strange to think that the instructors spoke amongst themselves, especially on the topic of students, but she supposed it was to be expected. Half of them lived out of their offices, if Professor Donovan was any indication, and there was probably little to gossip about amongst themselves. "Look, I… please don't think I don't appreciate what you're trying to do," she said finally. "I get it, and I'm grateful. There aren't a lot of professors at this school who would take notice or really care about how their students are doing. But your concern is completely misplaced. I'm off to a bad start, like you said, but that's all."

  Professor Donovan appeared to be considering the contents of his sandwich, and Kira thought he was probably only half-listening to her excuse. She gripped her chair again, before retreating suddenly from doing so; she could feel her nails digging indents into the underside of the metal foldout seat.

  "I have to go," she said suddenly as she rose from the chair. Professor Donovan surprised her by rising with her. Her eyes darted quickly to the door, even though she knew she wasn't trapped, not really—it was only animal instinct, she thought, rearing up to cloud her judgement of the situation. She shouldered her bag and took a tentative step toward the exit, and her heart sped up when the older man mirrored her.

  "You don't have to, you know," Professor Donovan said quietly. "You can stay and talk to me for a while. Look, I'll even share half my sandwich." He indicated his extorted lunch, breaking the momentary spell the unexpected sincerity of his words had worked on her. Kira gazed up at him, sure that all of her dormant fear and barely-checked hysteria was brimming in her eyes, before shaking her head.

  "Thanks. I'll keep that in mind."

  She could smell him beneath the cable knit sweater he wore. It was the heady spearmint of generic male body wash, and something else, lingering just beneath it…

  She didn't want to know, she told herself. Of course Professor Donovan would smell sexy, when everything else about him radiated the same. She took another step to broadcast her intended path to the door, and he moved aside, hands retired amicably into the front pockets of his trousers.

  "Don't be late," he advised her as she made her successful escape from his office.

  She was late. She was over fifteen minutes tardy to his lecture the next day. The moment she tried to sneak in through the door to his classroom, she knew she had made a mistake. She should have skipped class entirely and just suffered the consequences, but the last forty-eight hours had been absolute hell for her—and despite what Professor Donovan probably thought, Kira loved English. She had even been thinking about pursuing her degree in it until two weeks ago.

  Until the bite.

  Now it was appearing less and less likely that she would be able to complete school. She couldn't keep most of her food down; the headaches were almost constant; and now she was experiencing spasms and split-second changes that threatened to bring her entire world grinding to a complete halt. She was late today because her friend Marissa had commented that she thought Kira's contacts were "edgy".

  "What contacts?" had been her confused reply. When Marissa gave an incredulous laugh and told her to not be such a freak, Kira had nodded and smiled broadly as if the gig was up. Then, as soon as her friend was out of sight, she had run like a hound out of hell to the nearest bathroom.

  Her irises were bright gold, the pupils contracted to inhuman slits. Kira pulled her lids down and pawed at them and splashed lukewarm water into her eyes until they were bloodshot; she stared at her own unchanging reflection, crying soundlessly, until she remembered her sunglasses. She fumbled them out of her backpack and slipped them on. She looked utterly ridiculous wearing them indoors, but she had often observed that it was something hungover college students did to disguise their symptoms.

  Now, she made her way quietly to her seat at the back of Professor Donovan's classroom, feeling every eye on her. She knew what she must look like: a partier, a careless student. She was watching her pristine reputation on campus spiral down the drain, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. There was nothing she could do to stop any of it.

  Professor Donovan had paused in his speech, but he resumed it now. Kira sat, bracing herself for the moment he would call her out, but the moment never came. Eventually, she began to relax back into her chair.

  "Your thoughts, Bentley?"

  She should have known better.

  After a moment, Kira stirred slowly and raised herself up. "I'm sorry, Professor Donovan, but I missed what was said."

  Several of the students closest to her shifted and snickered. They thought she was being purposefully defiant, even funny. Kira stared straight ahead resolutely. Her face beneath the sunglasses felt hot, and there was a hideous lump forming in her throat. She was thankful for the way her sunglasses screened her against the other occupants of the room, because she felt like crying. She was running on empty.

  The only other person in the room who didn't look amused was Professor Donovan, but he didn't look angry, either. He looked like he was trying to puzzle something out. Kira would have thought he almost looked sympathetic, if the very idea of it wasn't so absurd. Clearly the glasses were impairing her vision more than she thought. He was expecting her to crash and burn and they both knew it.

  "I asked you if you thought 'Jane Eyre' was a romantic story?"

  "No," she said frankly. She sighed mentally with relief at the subject.

  "You seem very sure. May I ask why?" Professor Donovan leaned back against the front of his desk and crossed his arms.

  "Because there was a complete power imbalance going on between them the whole time. He was the master, and she was his employee. Not to mention he lied to her about the relevant details of his past, and tried to hook up with her without revealing his darkest secret of all, which was…"

  "Hey! Spoiler alert!" one of the male students exclaimed indignantly. Kira blinked. It hadn't occurred to her that she could possibly ruin the ending of a nineteenth century classic, but the fact that students like the jock who interrupted her were invested was a testament to Professor Donovan's skills as a teacher.

  Kira shrugged, and bit her lips as she lapsed into silence. Professor Donovan was definitely studying her now, and she wondered if his response had been the one he was fishing for or expecting.

  "I see you've read this book before," he said finally. "Is that why you thought you could arrive late today?"

  Damn.

  CHAPTER 3

  He could get used to having Kira Bentley in his office.

  The girl was currently folded into the chair in the far corner making up the quiz she had missed at the beginning of class; her hood was drawn up. Donovan tried not to look up too often to watch her, but supposed his observation could be excused as him looking for signs of cheating. Not that she needed to: he had been made painfully aware that she knew the material already today in class.

  "You misused a semicolon," the girl said grumpily as her pencil scratched along.

  "No I didn't."

  Aside from the black cloud that hung over her everywhere sh
e went—not to mention the very distinct and very female pheromonal signals he could detect hovering around her at all times—it was a lot less lonely in the office with another body around to occupy space. The roast beef sandwich he had made her bring for him wasn't bad, either. It pleased him more than he could say that it appeared to be homemade today.

  "I wish you would have just given me a zero on this," she mentioned. "I heard you graded other people down who didn't do the reading."

  "But you did do the reading, Bentley," Donovan pointed out.

  "Not this year I didn't. And it's Kira."

  He didn't have a ready response to that, so he sat back in his chair and glanced across the room at the calendar posted over her head. The days of the month were crossed off systematically, dates circled and arrows crisscrossing weekly columns like an indecipherable series of football plays. He should have tried to work the dates out in an electronic document, or at least on his chalkboard, where he could erase his work when he arrived at an answer, but he didn't think she would guess what he was trying to figure out.

  "Last names keep things professional," he said finally.

  "That's easy for you to say," Kira said without glancing up from her test. "No one knows your first name. Everyone just calls you 'the Don'."

  "Do they?" Donovan leaned even further back in his chair and crossed arms. "I hadn't heard that. Well, I suppose it's better than 'the Van'."

  "Do your jokes just get more and more unfunny once you become a teacher?" Bentley asked without missing a beat. "I used to think it came with age, but you're not that much older than me."

  "I'm a lot older than you," he said quickly. He could perceive a dangerous line of thinking when he saw it… especially because he had been starting to think the very same thing himself. "And also, you're an incredibly rude young woman, Miss Bentley."

  "I'm also finished." The girl untangled her long limbs and rose, crossing to his desk with the clipboard and pen extended. He had been awaiting this moment, and rather than accept her completed quiz sitting down, he stood abruptly and snatched it from her with a flick of his wrist. It clattered to his desk unceremoniously in the next instant.

  She was close, now—closer than she had ever allowed herself to be in his presence. She was still wearing her sunglasses, and Donovan raised his hands to either side of her face. Her pale hands flew to stop him, but froze before alighting on his wrists. His touch was gentle as he smoothed her hair back with the pads of his fingers, and extracted the dark frames in one fell swoop.

  Startled brown-gold eyes stared back at him. She wouldn't know what he was seeing until it registered in his face, and for a moment he could tell she was terrified. Her fear abated when she saw him studying her in mute disappointment. He knew what symptom had made her late for his class, and he had held out a hope that he could confront her about it now. It would have been the perfect gateway to a real conversation about the girl's lycanthropy.

  Her frightened eyes held his for a long moment, and Donovan realized that he had been gazing down at her for several seconds more than was strictly necessary. He recalled the fleeting softness of her hair, and wished that he could stroke it back calmingly from her temple again, but he recovered himself before he could act on the inappropriate impulse.

  "Just checking to make sure," he said, angling himself away from her and turning her glasses over in his hands. "You never know. Sometimes students write test answers on the undersides of things. I had one particularly creative gentleman try it with a water bottle once."

  "So not only do you think I'm an awful student," Kira growled, but he heard a distinct quaver in her voice. "You think I'm a cheater as well."

  She snatched her sunglasses back from him, and Donovan felt the brief, angry stroke of her fingers against the backs of his. He wanted to grab her by the hand, to yank her against him and make her listen; it was the brute in him, he knew, the wolf that wanted to demand her attention and force her understanding. Sawyer Donovan was as mild-mannered as young teachers came, but he was starting to feel some frustration at his own inability to breech the subject of their likeness to one another. He needed to tell her, needed to help her—but as his eyes traveled back to the calendar on the wall, he felt that sick feeling of dread return once more. Too much of what he had already determined pointed toward a fatal alignment in their schedules. Kira Bentley had been turned recently, there was no denying that. And Donovan…

  Donovan had allowed himself to black out two full moons ago. It couldn't be coincidence, no matter how much he tried to massage the math.

  There were smaller damages between them he could work to control now. "I don't think you're—" he started to assure her, but he had come back to the conversation too late. Kira's backpack disappeared out the door, and she departed in a scissoring of lean legs and angrily-swishing blond tresses.

  Donovan stared a moment more at the empty doorway, before retiring back behind his desk with an exhausted sigh. He had almost had her. He could have come clean about what he was without using one of her symptoms as a jumping-off point, but to come clean about what he had done…

  He rotated the clipboard idly between his fingers, before picking it up to pore over her answers. She had gotten them all right, of course.

  And he had indeed misused a semicolon.

  CHAPTER 4

  It had been Marissa's idea to go to the Fun Fair.

  Marissa's idea, Kira reminded herself, as she fought her way through the crowd of students on the makeshift midway. And where was Marissa now? Sixty feet up in the Ferris wheel and locking lips with a boy she barely knew from their dorm.

  The Campus Fun Fair was an event hosted annually every spring. This was Kira's first, and likely to be her last. There was nothing much to attract her interest as she wove between the stalls. The whole affair had been set up in the main parking lot and adjoining track field: there were bumper cars, roller coasters, a Ferris wheel, a Tunnel of Love…

  There were also food trucks and food vendors almost everywhere she turned, and the smell was starting to make Kira nauseous. She could feel herself salivating every time she passed by a hot dog vendor, but she wouldn't stop long enough to let herself look. It was likely she wouldn't be able to keep any of it down, anyway.

  Her clothes were starting to hang more loosely off her as a result. Tonight was warm, and she had used it as an excuse to don a flannel shirt and a pair of tight cutoffs. She noticed she was getting a lot of looks as she passed down the open alleyway between stalls, enough to make her regret her wardrobe choice. The last thing she wanted was for people to be looking at her in case something unexpected happened. She already had to pull out her phone every five minutes to check her face in the reverse camera display.

  This was bad. She wasn't having any fun, and she shouldn't be out this late. She was just turning back to head to her car when a commotion drew her attention over to the dunk tank.

  There was Professor Donovan, dressed casually for once in fitted jeans and a white V-neck. Kira stopped, momentarily startled by the disparity. He was surrounded by a small cluster of students; all of them were grinning and laughing. She felt a momentary tremor of envy run through her, and was startled by how affected she was by the sight. Under different circumstances, she was sure she would have been a part of that same group, adding another easy smile to the happy legion, sharing their jokes and conversation.

  Seeing her English teacher smile so broadly as the result of what someone else had said to him filled was enough on its own to fill her with instant remorse. She wanted to be liked by Professor Donovan, even if she wouldn't admit it out loud to anybody, even herself. So when the man's eyes eventually fell upon her in the crowd, and he shouted her name…

  "Bentley!"

  … Kira didn't immediately turn from the scene to walk the other way. After a moment's disbelieving pause, she decided to approach them cautiously. Several of the male students' eyes lit up at the sight of her in jean shorts; she had always been a popular st
udent, so the girls looked happy to see her as well. The person whose reaction to her she was most interested in was currently turning himself away and walking around back behind the dunk tank.

  "Dude, Kira's going to love this," one of the boys from her dorm said knowingly.

  "Love what?" she asked curiously, eyes moving to track Professor Donovan as he ascended the stairs of the tank.

  "The Don is the next teacher up to be dunked for charity," one of the female students giggled. "He's promised us all a free throw."

  Kira watched as he adjusted himself on the tank's springboard and reached down to roll up the cuffs of his pants. When did he ever get out of his office to have calves that well-muscled?

  "Do I get a free throw?" Kira asked. Everyone in the group readily agreed that she did. She stood near the back of the queue as she watched the other students in line before her go through various goofy and dramatized warmups before their ultimate pitches. Five students threw, and five missed handily. When Kira finally stepped up to the chalk line, Donovan was grinning at her fairly confidently, his arms crossed across his chest. She plucked one of the softballs off the top of the bucket of ammunition and gave it a measured toss.

  "Late to the party as always, Bentley?" Professor Donovan called to her. He had taken to the part of heckler like a—hopefully English—teacher to water.

  "Is this a party?" she asked, keeping her tone of voice carefully neutral. "I thought it was about to be a massacre."

  The male students exploded into hoots and hollers around her. Sports and competition of any kind brought out the beast in her, almost more so than the full moon did nowadays.