Shifter Origins (Series-Starter Shifter Variety Packs Book 1)

by Aimee Easterling

  What I was planning to do would be tricky, partly because I had such iron control over my wolf nowadays that I couldn’t seem to let her out when I wanted to. But also because I needed to be able to pull my wolf brain out far enough to yank Keith back to full humanity when I stopped my own shift...without letting my wolf escape all the way. Since a younger werewolf like my nephew would mirror any shift of an adult in close physical proximity, I figured my wolf and I could easily shut his wolf down, but only if my own darker half cooperated. It had been so long since I’d let her out that I was afraid my wolf wouldn’t go back to sleep willingly.

  It was worth the risk, though, because it looked like Keith was going to change all the way if he didn’t get a little help. I couldn’t imagine how terrifying it would be to perform your first shift without understanding what you were, and the kid’s father might get torn apart in the process. I wasn’t sure if I owed Brooke anything after the way she had abandoned me to our father’s tender mercies, but Dale and Keith didn’t deserve to pay for her desertion.

  My nephew’s breathing had slowed, but I could feel his wolf just out of sight, waiting to return to the surface. Meanwhile, I calmed my own mind enough to let my wolf up out of her cell, and she rose gently, not in the snarling rush I’d expected. I felt the tickling of hairs pushing out of my body, but there was little pain as my senses became more acute. I could smell Dale in the kitchen, pouring a cup of afternoon coffee, could almost catch a confusing hint of wolf scent outside the house. But I’d have to think about that later. Right now, I needed to turn off this shift.

  Down! I ordered my wolf, and as I’d expected, she growled at me, pain running up my arms as my fingers curled into claws. But, surprisingly, my wolf didn’t put up a fight. Instead, in rare human words, my wolf gave me an ultimatum—I’ll go to sleep now, but in five minutes, we’re all wolf.

  Shit. This wasn’t good at all, but I had no choice except to agree. I could feel my wolf and Keith’s both descending deep into our subconscious, and my nephew looked up at me with suddenly clear eyes. “Wow, I feel a lot better!” he exclaimed. “That really helped. Thanks, Aunt Terra!”

  I didn’t have time to answer, though. My wolf was inching her way back up that dark staircase in my mind, and I needed to be far away from father and son’s sight before my change hit. I tore through the living room and kitchen like my pants were on fire, and was out the door before Dale could even ask what was wrong. I was shifting by the time I hit the tree line, my clothes ripping off my back as my wolf form howled in triumph. Then she ran.

  Chapter 6

  It had been so long since I’d turned wolf that I’d forgotten how it felt to subsume myself into her moods and desires. The wolf was still me, but the animal side of our nature was in charge of our actions, and everything we saw was filtered through her world view. Both of us were exuberant at the chance to run through the woods—it felt like taking off my bra at the end of a long work day, like reaching the high point of a perfect novel. Unchained hunt, my wolf added. No matter how we parsed the feelings, they were relief and excitement rolled into one.

  My wolf was more restrained than I remembered, though. She still took in every squirrel and bird moving through the forest, but age allowed her to choose whether to give chase. We stalked a rabbit for half an hour, then let it go at the last minute. Cheeseburger, she told me, and I was almost sure the wolf was bartering with our human side. She seemed to recognize that spilling blood during her first run in six years would make another shift highly unlikely in the near future, but the wolf wanted to make it plain that she craved red meat. It felt strange to be making a deal with my animal side since I was used to her just taking what she wanted, but maybe the last decade had matured us both to the point where we could act as a team again.

  We paused beside a small stream to lap up the cool water, but stopped when our nose picked up the scent of another wolf where one didn’t belong. Keith had never shifted all the way, so we shouldn’t be smelling my nephew’s wolf, but this was obviously a werewolf, and a male. Alpha male, my wolf corrected. We snarled in unison, our mothering instincts aroused by an unrelated male werewolf near Keith during his first shift.

  The trouble was that alpha male werewolves had a nearly insurmountable urge to kill unrelated males as the youngsters reached the age of their first change. The behavior was a relic of our more primal days, when a young male in an alpha’s territory might be angling for his position, spurring the pack leader to squelch the challenge before it could be issued. The problem didn’t often come up, though, because everyone was related either by blood or by marriage in most packs, and some modern males had also learned to ignore the urge even around strangers. But not everyone could overpower his wolf...or wanted to. Keith wouldn’t be safe with an unknown alpha male lurking around.

  The wolf and I turned to follow the male’s scent, and I wasn’t sure which of us was in charge as we put our nose to the ground and traced his path upstream through the trees. It smelled like the alpha had been there only hours previously, and the sinuous path suggested he’d lollygagged about, wandering through the woods as if they were his own. Another rumble came deep in our throats as we smelled where the male had marked his territory on the side of a lightning-scarred oak tree at the crest of the ridge.

  Another few feet, and the wolf himself came into view. He was lounging on the leaf litter, where a gap in the canopy caused a ray of sun to warm his hide. The huge wolf was clearly well aware of our approach, but he simply yawned and laid his chin back down on his paws as we came closer, closing his eyes as if he was planning on finishing out his nap. And I wasn’t surprised by his behavior, either, because I recognized the canine’s coloration. The alpha male was Wolfie.

  MY WOLF URGED US FORWARD to sniff under the alpha’s tail, but I pushed her down and fought to initiate the shift back into human form. As a canine, Wolfie was nearly double my size, and I suspected his human form was equally imposing, but I trusted my tongue more than I did my feet to get me out of this mess. I’d simply explain to the mutt that he was trespassing on private property, would threaten him with a restraining order if necessary, and would then head back down the hill to check on Keith. I had no idea why Wolfie was nosing around my nephew, but I wouldn’t feel safe until the kid was once again under my watchful eye.

  Unfortunately, my wolf didn’t want to be locked away. It wasn’t just the lost joy of the hunt that made her irritable, it was Wolfie’s presence—my annoying wolf wanted to protect me. She also wanted to play with the alpha male for some crazy reason. Bending her forelegs down onto the ground, she lowered her head, raised her tail, and yipped.

  Wolfie opened his eyes and tilted his head at us quizzically, then rose to his feet. He didn’t seem to know what to make of my wolf any more than I did, but I couldn’t spend much time paying attention to the alpha. I was focusing all of my energy on trying to still my human mind enough to initiate the shift back to two feet.

  My reverse shifts always felt entirely different than the change from human to wolf. Instead of pain, as fur melted away and paws became hands, I usually experienced supreme relief, a bit like stepping into a warm shower after a long day on the trail. Today, though, I didn’t feel any relief...because there was no shift. My wolf was thoroughly in charge. In fact, I could feel her gently guiding my human brain down toward that cage I’d built deep in the dark recesses of our mind to house her. Seeing the trap closing around me, wolf-like, I clawed to escape.

  Despite our internal battle, our external form was still dancing around Wolfie, and it soon became clear that the larger wolf was less than pleased by our presence. He turned as if to go, then sighed and walked back toward us. Gently but firmly, the male wolf took our nose in his jaws, just like my father had done years ago, but without the part where his teeth pierced my skin. Even though the younger alpha was gentle, his act of dominance chastened my wolf long enough for me to escape her clutches, and at the same instant when my human brain became dominan
t, Wolfie shifted, pulling me with him back into human form.

  The relief of the change elicited a breathless gasp from me, more euphoric than usual because I’d thought my wolf had won our battle and terror had begun to kick in. My legs were wobbly from the shift and I would have fallen to the ground in surprise if Wolfie’s huge arms weren’t wrapped around me, his mouth still on top of my nose. “Whoa,” he breathed as he steadied me, and I became aware of the fact that we were both naked, the alpha’s bare skin pressing against my own.

  Kiss him, demanded my wolf just as I clanged the iron-barred doors behind her and locked the canine away in her prison. Ignoring the unsolicited advice, I took a step back and struggled to pull my eyes away from Wolfie’s very masculine form.

  “IT SEEMED LIKE YOU were having a little trouble with your wolf,” the man said gruffly, as if prepared for me to lash out at him for his act of dominance. It took me a minute to focus on his words, though, because my brain was still processing the scenery.

  It shouldn’t have bothered me that the man in front of me was naked since frequent shifts made werewolf packs a bit of a clothing-optional society. But it had been years since I’d spent much time around werewolves, and the human mores around me had sunken in. I averted my gaze in embarrassment, only afterwards realizing that my body language would be read by a werewolf as a display of submission. That thought prompted me to ignore his conversation starter and to go off on a tangent of my own. I turned flashing eyes back onto Wolfie and verbally ripped into him.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here,” I growled, “But this is out-territory, and there’s a young male down there who’s nearing his first shift. I want you gone, and don’t come back.” Righteous anger carried me through the demand, but one glance at Wolfie’s reaction made me want to flee.

  “The kid is ours,” Wolfie growled back, the apology now absent from his stance as his alpha nature rose to the surface. The man’s glare matched mine, and I could feel his wolf rising back up through his skin, struggling to take control. Luckily, my darker half was too firmly locked away to follow.

  Just like during our last meeting, my body told me it was either fight or flight, and this time I chose to fight. “Stop that!” I demanded and was proud of myself for not letting a waver enter my voice. Wolfie was terrifying in his anger, but I didn’t want him to know that. “I don’t want to talk to your wolf right now,” I said, stabbing a finger toward the alpha’s bare chest. “And that kid is my nephew. I’ve already told you once, and I’ll tell you one more time—stay...away...from...him.” I drew out the last words, speaking as I would to a belligerent hiker who needed a show of force to prevent him from pitching his tent in a restricted area. Of course, belligerent hikers usually wore clothes...and they didn’t have the tendency to tear you apart with tooth and claw when annoyed.

  “Keith is part of my pack,” Wolfie said slowly and clearly, his wolf still very much in evidence behind his eyes. “If he’s your nephew, where have you been for the last decade since his mother died?”

  “If he’s part of your pack,” I retorted, “why doesn’t my nephew know that he’s a werewolf?”

  For the first time, I seemed to be gaining ground. Wolfie looked away, for all the world as if he were ashamed of his actions. “I’m working on it,” he muttered, and when he gazed back down at me, the alpha seemed a little more human. “We really should wait until Chase is here to have this discussion,” he continued quietly.

  “Why?” I hurled back. “So you can act like a stuck-up alpha and have your friend translate for you? Are you too good to talk to a woman?”

  This type of behavior was par for the course in most werewolf packs, where alphas required a husband or father to bring a complaint on behalf of a woman. Just thinking about that made me raging mad, so it took a moment for me to understand Wolfie’s response. Instead of answering immediately, the alpha had sunken down onto the ground to sit cross-legged, ignoring the sticks that I was sure were poking into his bare bum. And he added to the non-confrontational attitude by directing his words down into the ground. “No, I want Chase to talk to you because I’m a bloodling,” he said. “I always muck these things up.”

  A bit of a growl had come back into Wolfie’s voice with the last word, but I finally realized that he was frustrated with himself, not with me. So I stayed silent as I mentally rearranged the past into different boxes in my head. If Wolfie were a bloodling, that would explain why he’d stayed in wolf form in the city. Most bloodlings were put down at birth, just like my little brother had been, and even the ones lucky enough to survive had trouble with their human forms. Bloodlings didn’t shift to become human for the first time until they were Keith’s age, and some of them took years after that to learn to speak. Wolfie probably did feel more comfortable with his milk brother acting as his spokesman.

  On the one hand, Wolfie’s past made me more sympathetic to his prior actions. But on the other hand, the fact that the alpha was a bloodling made me want to keep Wolfie even further away from Keith. Bloodlings were very much in touch with their wolf nature, and knowing Wolfie was a bloodling made me yet more worried that he’d tear into a pre-shift male. The knowledge didn’t make me feel any more comfortable being alone in the woods with the alpha either.

  While I was silently trying to figure out how to deal with this disaster, Wolfie had kept talking. “What I would have asked Chase to explain to you is that our pack lives on the far side of this mountain.” Just speaking about his blood brother seemed to bring out the humanity in Wolfie’s face and voice, so I let him continue unimpeded. “This whole county has been officially our territory for the last five years. I could tell you that you’re the one trespassing. Not that anyone minds when a beautiful wolf like you comes across the mountain.” As he finished, I realized that Wolfie was looking straight up between my bare breasts to get a glimpse of my face, which was turning beet red.

  “I’m not a wolf,” I stuttered, picking the least useful part of Wolfie’s speech to fixate on, and I could see his more primal nature gleaming back through his eyes.

  “Sure you are,” Wolfie answered. “Even when we’re in human form, we’re all still wolves.” Then he looked back down at the ground and moved on to a safer topic. “I would have asked Chase to tell you that we’ve been keeping an eye on your nephew, and that we’d be more than willing to help with his first shift.”

  Just imagining what kind of “help” Wolfie would give Keith made me gasp involuntarily. Then I immediately regretted my lapse because I could have sworn the huge alpha in front of me knew exactly what was going through my head. His shoulders slumped as if I’d slapped him, and the alpha lowered his voice another notch so I had to strain to make out his words. “Chase would have said that better,” he muttered. Then, looking at my bare feet, he raised his voice a tiny bit and added, “Chase would be glad to come help with Keith’s change. He’s friends with Dr. Baker.”

  I sighed, thinking of the mess I’d left behind me at the mansion on the hill. I’d have to find a way to explain my weird behavior and wiggle my way back into Dale’s good graces...plus sneak into my car to find some clothes before someone caught me running around the yard naked. Since Wolfie was currently acting oddly submissive, it seemed like a good time to take my leave and deal with this more pressing issue rather than to keep puzzling over the pack across the mountain. “I appreciate your offer,” I told the top of the alpha’s head as I turned to go. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  I was picking my way across the ground on bare feet, trying to dodge rough spots, when Wolfie’s parting shot hit me like a rock to the back of the head. “One more thing,” he added, the wolf winning out in his voice. “I would have had Chase ask you to go out on a date with me.”

  Ignoring the damage to my feet, I took to my heels and fled.

  Chapter 7

  When I returned to the house, it became clear how Dale had slept in the same bed as a werewolf for five years without figuring out his
wife’s secret. My brother-in-law was clueless.

  “Just in time for dinner!” he greeted me as I walked in the door wearing a different set of clothes than the ones I’d left in. The house smelled of browned beef and grated cheese, and I could tell my wolf was a little more awake than usual from the intensity of the odors and from the unwelcome ache in my bones, stronger than I’d felt in years. Ignoring the pain, I smiled warily at Dale, expecting the third degree, but all he wanted to know was how long I’d be staying.

  “Well, I’m kinda between jobs at the moment,” I began, trying to figure out how to invite myself for an extended visit. I needn’t have worried.

  “Brooke always assumed we’d have people living from the basement to the attic,” Dale confided as he pulled warm tortillas out of the oven. “That’s why we built such a big house. You’d be doing me a favor if you stayed for a few weeks and helped me get Keith sorted out. He looked a bit better after you left, but I know one session isn’t enough to fix everything.”

  The man was almost pleading with me to come into his home and convert his son, and I felt a twinge of guilt that my purpose here wasn’t more charitable. It was either Keith or me, though, and the kid made me feel better about my traitorous plan as soon as he showed up for dinner. Dale had to beard his son in his lair and argue the teenager into sitting down with us, and even then, the youngster refused to eat the soft tacos his father had assembled. Instead, my nephew brought a box of cheerios and a jug of milk to the table and downed bowl after bowl of the floating cereal, ignoring his father’s attempts to draw him into conversation. Even as a bystander, the one-sided exchange was painful, and I was relieved when Dale gave up and turned to me instead.