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

by Aimee Easterling

  “You’ll get used to the nudity,” I told Keith, even though I clearly wasn’t. My wolf was fully alert now and begging to come out to play, but I didn’t want to make Keith shift immediately after taking in the notion of werewolves being real. It was tough tearing my eyes away from Wolfie, though, especially since he seemed to be giving off an even more enticing aroma than previously. Okay, yes, the alpha’s nakedness was a factor in my intense gaze too.

  “My clothes are down there,” Wolfie answered Keith, pointing over the other side of the mountain, where we could just make out a colony of mobile homes through the trees. “I thought we might go down and meet the pack.” The alpha looked at me challengingly, and I shrugged, turning the question over to my nephew with a tilt of my head.

  “Are there girls in your pack?” Keith asked, and I rolled my eyes again. Just what I needed—a teenage werewolf more interested in the concept of seeing naked female bodies than in his own shift.

  “HUMANS IN THE HOUSE!” came the call from the kitchen as we entered the first trailer. “Put on some clothes.”

  The werewolf compound consisted of six mobile homes lined up in a rectangle with a huge greenhouse atrium filling the center. As we’d walked up from the outside, I saw doors scattered along each wall’s length, giving the inhabitants easy access to the outdoors. Inside, walls had been ripped out to join the trailers into one structure, and large windows had been inserted into the atrium-side walls, turning the compound into an intriguing example of modern redneck architecture.

  The contents of the first trailer were even more interesting than the architecture, though. Four young werewolves were scattered around what seemed to be a communal living room, and I was surprised that no one stopped what they were doing when Wolfie entered the room. I was used to an alpha’s presence having an instant dampening effect on his male underlings, who would have immediately stood to attention in my old pack. Women in Haven were expected to avert their eyes and to make themselves scarce. But no one here seemed particularly interested in Wolfie. Until, that is, the alpha called out an answer to the still-unseen speaker, “There are no humans here, Tia.”

  That silenced the crowd and trained every eye on me and Keith. Before anyone else could speak, a middle-aged woman walked out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel and looking us over. “You’re right,” she said, and a wide smile of welcome sprang out onto her face. “You must be Keith and Terra. Chase has told me a lot about you.”

  The woman appeared to be the pack mother of the clan, and I guessed from her words that she was Chase’s parent. I liked Tia right away, but hated the way my heart sank at her words. Despite myself, I wished that Wolfie had been the one telling this mother figure a lot about me, clear proof that I’d spent too much time lately talking to my wolf.

  So I was glad when Keith drew my attention back to the task at hand. “Everyone here is a werewolf?” the teenager asked. In his shoes, I would have been daunted by the prospect, but my nephew just appeared intrigued.

  “Well, we’re all werewolf kin,” a young woman a few years older than Keith answered him. “Some of us are halfies like me, or are technically humans. But, yeah, most of us can shift.”

  As the girl continued talking, their alpha slipped away down the hall, and I gave my wolf a little slap to remind her to pay less attention to the naked man and more attention to the nephew we were supposed to be protecting. Not that Keith seemed to need any help. I was overwhelmed to be in the middle of a pack again after so long, but the kid was eagerly lapping up the attention as each werewolf introduced himself. Keith was clearly in his element, glad-handing the lot of them like he was a politician on the campaign trail—my nephew’s alpha blood coming out at last. But even though I was glad he was happy, I was feeling more overwhelmed by the minute. Loud voices and strong wolf odors were making the walls appear to close in around me, and as I strained to make out Keith’s words to ensure he was okay, I realized that even sound seemed to be receding into the distance.

  My panic attack was so engrossing that I didn’t notice at first when Wolfie ended up back by my side, this time clad in jeans and a button-down flannel shirt. I could feel his wolf, though, and my own darker side rose up to meet it, which had the fortunate side effect of squashing my panic. My inner wolf saw no reason to be concerned about these obviously friendly pack mates, and she saw every reason to be interested in the scents wafting off the alpha beside us. So I let her have her head...or rather our head...for a few seconds as I caught my breath.

  “Do you want us to help him shift?” that alpha asked by way of greeting, cutting right to the chase. His brown eyes were piercing as he trained them on my face and ignored everyone else in the room. I, on the other hand, couldn’t resist casting one more glance around the common area, noticing that no one had batted an eyelash when Wolfie walked back in. This really did appear to be a very different kind of pack than the one I’d grown up in.

  Wolfie’s words were also unusual for an alpha, since most pack leaders would have just taken over and decided when a young male was ready to shift. It was traditional for a group of older males to help a younger male through his initial change, and given how hard it had been to pin down my own wolf lately, I figured Wolfie’s suggestion was probably a safer move than having me walk Keith through his first change of form alone. On the other hand, I was the one who would have to deal with the aftermath over the next few days and weeks, so I was leery of initiating Keith’s shift until I had my own wolf under better control. I muddled my way through the explanation, expecting Wolfie to laugh at my inability to shift, but instead, he just seemed puzzled.

  “I saw you as a wolf,” the alpha said, confused. Of course he wouldn’t understand how much I struggled with keeping my wolf down and letting her rise at will since he’d met me once in human form in the city and once in wolf form in the woods—perfectly appropriate werewolf behavior.

  “And she was beautiful. I remember,” I answered wryly, recalling Wolfie’s words to me on the mountaintop.

  “You are beautiful,” Wolfie corrected me again, just as he had when we first spoke in human form. “There is no you and she,” he elaborated. “There’s just us, the wolf.”

  “Maybe for a bloodling,” I countered. “But it’s not that easy. Female werewolves change uncontrollably, you know that. When I left Haven, I had to take control of my shifts to protect all of the humans around me. Unfortunately, I seem to have done too good of a job of taking control.”

  He tilted his head to the side, considering, and then understanding slowly dawned in the alpha’s eyes. “You’re the opposite of a bloodling,” Wolfie suggested. “You’ve let the human take over. You don’t even realize the wolf is no more animal than the rest of you is.” He paused, then added playfully, “It’s not like you’re going to eat small children.”

  I flushed, thinking of Wolfie walking through the city on a tiny leash that wouldn’t have held him back if he’d taken a notion to bite the hand off that kindergartner...and of my own wolf’s reaction to an earlier child. “But your wolf is different,” I countered. Never mind that bloodling wolves were supposed to be less able to handle life around humans, not more able.

  “How so?” the alpha asked, cocking his head to the side again in honest question.

  Which is precisely when I realized that I’d been having this entire conversation with the wolf, not the man. To my chagrin, I couldn’t quite figure out whether that underlined my point, or belied it.

  BEFORE I COULD ANSWER, my attention was drawn back to Keith, and to the trio of males who were stripping in the middle of the living room. There was only one reason Keith’s newfound friends would be getting naked in tandem, and despite my confusion about other issues, I was 100% sure I didn’t want my nephew to change for the first time right now.

  “They’re not going to shift?” I asked frantically. “I don’t think Keith’s ready to experience his wolf yet....” Whether or not Keith was ready, I sure wasn’t, but it ap
peared that my nephew’s first shift was only seconds away.

  Taking deep calming breaths, I struggled to pull up my own wolf in preparation. Ever since Wolfie had met us on the mountaintop, my wolf had been hovering in the background, but now she appeared to be sound asleep and refused to answer my call. This was precisely why we needed to wait on Keith’s first shift, but I obviously didn’t have any say in the matter. I could see the gleam in my nephew’s eye as he reached up to unbutton his shirt, putting a hand on one werewolf’s shoulder as he kicked off a shoe. We were fast approaching liftoff, no matter how not ready I was.

  “Stop,” Wolfie said, barely raising his voice. But despite its quietness, the single word cut through the crowd and froze everyone in their tracks. I realized I’d been holding my breath, and let it out in a sudden gust of air. “Ten steps away,” the alpha continued in a more normal tone of voice, and the young werewolf males rolled their eyes, but backed up.

  “He’s ready, Wolfie,” one complained, but Wolfie just watched silently before turning back to me.

  “They’ll give him an example today,” the alpha told me, his words loud enough to carry across the room. “Then we’ll work on you and let Keith shift another day.”

  I felt like an over-protective mother when the guys shifted in tandem and my nephew’s only response was a crowing “Wicked cool!” But I didn’t have much time to obsess over the issue, because Wolfie was already changing gears.

  “So, about that date...” he began. Then, before I could argue, Wolfie continued. “Keith will be just fine here for a few hours.” And despite my mother-hen instincts, I knew the alpha was right.

  Chapter 11

  I had assumed a date would mean dinner and perhaps a movie, but I should have realized that nothing was conventional around Wolfie. Instead, he herded me out into the atrium, where bushy fig trees and ceiling-high tomato vines were thriving despite the autumnal chill.

  “Hey, boss,” called a tanned beauty about my age from the other side of a garden bed, and I was embarrassed to feel my wolf wake up and growl nearly audibly. I thought I had smothered the sound, but Wolfie’s cheek quirked up into a lop-sided smile.

  “Galena,” he called back. “This is Terra from across the mountain.” The woman waved a welcome, and then another female werewolf popped up in front of us, surprising a gasp out of me. Just as beautiful as Galena, but with a buzz haircut that showed off her slender neck, this second werewolf swooped in to give Wolfie a deep kiss on the mouth, and this time I wasn’t able to stifle my wolf’s complaint.

  “I’d be jealous if I had the slightest notion you swung that way, Quetzalli,” Galena called across the garden beds, and it took me a minute to realize she was talking to the swooping kisser.

  “I’m Galena’s partner,” the second woman explained to me with a smirk, breaking the kiss but continuing to tease me by trailing a finger over Wolfie’s chest. The alpha leaned into the woman’s touch, and to my chagrin my wolf growled more loudly, prompting Wolfie and Quetzalli both to laugh at my reaction.

  Again, it was Galena who pointed out that I was being played. Walking around the garden bed to join us at last, she slapped the alpha lightly on the chest, right where her partner’s fingers had been just moments before. “Play nice, Wolfie,” she admonished, her voice light and with no hint of the jealousy my wolf was feeling. She didn’t bother to chastise her partner, merely taking the other woman’s hand and dimpling as she offered up her own mouth to be kissed.

  “Just seeing if Terra likes me,” the alpha rumbled in reply, but he lowered his head in submission to the tiny werewolf. Despite my wolf’s reaction to Quetzalli’s game, I couldn’t help smiling to see such a massive alpha letting the minuscule woman boss him around, and my mood mellowed further at the real show of affection between Quetzalli and Galena.

  “You can walk her through our suite if she wants to see what it’s like,” Galena continued, letting her partner go with a smile and heading back around the raised bed so she could heft a bundle of weeds into a wheelbarrow. Just glancing around, I could tell the greenhouse was a serious effort of space-saving food production, and this duo seemed to be the wolves in charge. So far, I liked what I saw...especially once it became clear that these bronzed beauties weren’t really interested in the alpha.

  “Do you?” Wolfie asked, raising that sexy eyebrow at me, and it took a second for me to realize he was asking if I wanted to see their suite.

  “If you’re sure they won’t mind?” I answered, and Wolfie led the way across cobblestones and through sliding glass doors into the couple’s quarters.

  It was hard to tell that the suite was half of a single-wide trailer since the space had been completely gutted and rebuilt, one room turned into a bedroom and the other into a private studio, sitting room, and seed-starting zone. Wolfie waved a hand at a row of sticks poking out of pots by the windows. “If the green thumbs were here, they would tell you those are grape cuttings.” He went on to explain that the seedlings were kale, tatsoi, and tokyo bekana, ready to go into outside beds, and I was surprised that an alpha cared enough to learn the specifics of his wolves’ trades. We walked back through the atrium and into the suite opposite, which was full of another surprise—banks of computer equipment.

  “What’s all this?” I asked, startled. Werewolves tended to stick to the past—I knew a lot of adult werewolves who never learned to drive, preferring horses and buggies. Similarly, cell phones, computers, and other modern gadgets were generally ignored, but Wolfie’s pack seemed to be high-tech, even by non-werewolf standards.

  “This,” Wolfie said, gesturing at the rows of monitors, “is how we pay the bills. We provide computer security for big companies. Chase and I do a lot of the heavy lifting, but even the yahoos you saw changing in front of Keith put in a few hours a week on the simple stuff.”

  I was starting to relax, since this date looked like more of a pack tour than a social outing, but Wolfie liked to keep me on my toes. “And this,” he added, “is where I give you the kiss your wolf keeps asking for.” He tilted my head up to meet his lips, and if I’d been a werecat instead of a werewolf, I would have purred.

  “ARE YOU READY FOR YOUR next lesson?” the alpha whispered in my ear as he pulled back out of our kiss. I had no clue what kind of lesson Wolfie was talking about, but I was wobbly enough from the lip lock that I just nodded and allowed him to pull me out the door on the opposite side of the computer lab and into the outdoors.

  “It’s your choice whether you’d feel more comfortable working on your shift outside or inside,” the alpha said, bursting my blissful bubble. “My room is over here,” he added, pointing away from the common area to a door on the far corner of the compound. “Or we can head back up onto the mountain if you want even more privacy.”

  I tensed up immediately. This wasn’t the kind of lesson I was interested in at the moment, and my wolf agreed. The two of us had finally come to the conclusion that Wolfie was a good guy, and we were interested in seeing more of his bare skin, not in working on changing forms. I hadn’t allowed myself to have sex with anything that didn’t plug into the wall since leaving Haven, and now that Wolfie had woken up my sexual side with a kiss, I was having trouble putting it back to sleep.

  To my annoyance, Wolfie laughed at me. “You should see the look on your face,” he explained. “At least you’re talking to your wolf now. What does she want?” My face turned bright red and Wolfie laughed even harder.

  “Isn’t this supposed to be a date?” I countered to cover my embarrassment. “Yes, I agree, I need to figure out how to get my shift back under control so I can help Keith, but that’s work, and dates are supposed to be fun.”

  Wolfie shook his head at me sadly. “That’s where you’re wrong, Terra. Shifting is fun. It’s a roller coaster and sexy as hell. How could you forget that?”

  “Maybe shifts are like that for a bloodling,” I said, then regretted the words immediately when Wolfie’s head bowed down, his boyish enthusi
asm gone.

  “Is that how you think of me?” he asked. “Am I just a wolf to you?”

  This was a tough question, and one I didn’t particularly care to answer. Having met Wolfie in wolf form, it felt natural to think of his wolf first and the man second. And the wolf did seem to be looking out of the man’s eyes a lot of the time, even when Wolfie was in human form. In fact, it was Wolfie’s strong canine presence that made me feel a little better about reclaiming my own wolf. On the other hand, I definitely didn’t have a fur fetish, and I thought Wolfie was unbelievably hot, so, no, I didn’t just see his wolf.

  Oops, had I said that last bit out loud? This seemed to be the day for me to practice my blushing and for the sexy alpha to laugh at me, but it was better than seeing his head bowed down in pain.

  “We’ll get to that,” Wolfie promised, tweaking my nose, which just annoyed me even more. “But it sounds like I now owe you a real, human date.”

  “FIRST DATES ARE SUPPOSED to be awkward, right?” Wolfie asked after we were seated in a booth at the only restaurant in town—a Mexican joint with flashy sombreros lining the walls.

  “Why? Do you feel awkward?” I asked. Wolfie never looked like he felt awkward, although he certainly seemed to prompt that emotion in the people around him. Just a few minutes earlier, the alpha had stared into the eyes of the man who held the door open for me until the guy let go of the handle and nearly crushed me with the closing door. I gathered the glare was due to Wolfie feeling possessive, because after the guy fled, my date had just smiled contentedly. The werewolf across from me hadn’t felt awkward about that faux pas though, and he certainly didn’t seem to be feeling awkward now either, so I was stumped by his question.