Happy Howlidays: Shifters in Love Romance Collection (Shifter in Love Book 1)

by V. Vaughn

  And in his dreams, he kissed her.

  Instead of obeying his father and his Alpha, he kissed her.

  Instead of flying off to Afghanistan, he kissed her.

  In his dreams, Bran kissed Krista and the world never spun out of control around him, because he knew with absolute certainty that she was the woman he was supposed to be with.

  So when he saw her standing there, he kissed her.

  And he ruined everything.

  Her scent hung in the air around him like a ghost. She smelled like fresh blackberries picked on a late summer morning. She smelled like feeling the sun on your back as you ran down the hill, across the weather-beaten dock, and jumped carefree into the old lake. She smelled like reading a book by the window on a rainy day with a hot mug of cider nearby.

  It wasn’t that she reminded him of all the best parts of his childhood, no, it was that she was the only thing that had made growing up bearable.

  He’d kissed her though, and scared her away.

  His skin still tingled from where she’d scratched him. His cock ached from the touch of her fingertips. And his lips were painted with the taste of her. He’d never eat or drink again, so he could keep that taste as long as possible.

  “What the hell was that?” Zu asked from near his elbow.

  “Man, she is fast,” Adrian whistled.

  “She touched your butt,” Sasha added helpfully.

  His friends had followed him across the street. Probably they’d planned on greeting Krista with delight and telling her how much they’d heard about her. But he’d ruined that.

  “I shouldn’t of kissed her. After all this time, it was the wrong move. But I couldn’t help myself. My wolf just went crazy. Hell, I think I would have—” before he could finish his sentence, he caught Sasha’s eye and changed his mind. “I would have kissed her even more,” he said.

  “Nice save,” Zu said.

  “Go after her,” Adrian said.

  “She told me to go away,” Bran shrugged. “I have to respect what she says.”

  “No, she didn’t,” Zu said. There was a fiery glare in her eyes. “She said she wouldn’t let you hurt her again.”

  Bran flinched as if struck. There’d been such pain in Krista’s voice. It was like he’d had this glimpse into what her years away from him had been like and they hadn’t been pleasant.

  Adrian took Bran’s head in his hand and pressed his forehead to Bran’s. “My brother, hear my voice. Do you love this woman?”

  Inside them, their wolves were also pressing their heads together. A calm reassurance flowed from Adrian into him.

  “I do. I love her.”

  Adrian smiled. “And do you plan on hurting her? Now or in the future?”

  Bran bared his teeth at the thought of anyone hurting Krista. It was a visceral reaction and he nearly shifted right there. His blood surged with adrenaline. “Never. And no one else will ever get the chance. Even if she doesn’t want me, I will spend the rest of my days making sure she is safe.”

  “Then go find her. As long as you never hurt her, you’ll be respecting her wishes.”

  Bran opened his eyes and his friend was grinning at him.

  “I’ve never seen this side of you,” Adrian said.

  Zu agreed. “It’s a good look on you.”

  Bran nodded. He’d find her. And this time, he’d explain. He’d talk. He’d make things right between them. And if Krista didn’t want to see him ever again, he’d go along with that. He loved her too much to see her in pain.

  The carolers had given him space while he’d been kissing Krista, but now the revelers pushed close again. There were so many people. A crushing, trampling amount. They sang and hugged and danced and laughed. Other shifters met their fated mates for the first time. His wolf heard their howls. He wanted to grab those damned lucky shifters and to tell them not to screw it up like he did. When you love someone you can’t let anyone tell you you’re wrong. Not your dad. Not your Alpha. No one.

  Krista couldn’t have chosen a better place to hide in all the universe. Where did you hide a needle if you wanted no one to find it? Not in a haystack, but in a pile of needles. And here Krista was, hiding in a sea of her kin.

  Her scent clung to him, to his lips and fingers and skin. He tried to follow her perfume through the crowd but it was no good. She was too present. She was all over him.

  “Make a barrier around me,” Bran said to Adrian and Zu. “I can’t find her like this.”

  To their credit, they didn’t argue. The pack had very specific rules about shifting in front of strangers—don’t ever do it. It was one of their first laws. But this was an emergency and true love gave you license to do all sorts of stupid things.

  Which is how Bran found himself curling up into ball, covered by his friends’ jackets and by Sasha’s homemade sign. He was blocked from view of the marchers, but just barely. He took a deep breath and let the change roll over him. His bones liquified and shifted. His skin hummed while it stretched to make space for his new form. The man fell away and the wolf returned. It took only a moment, but the change was miraculous.

  Sasha lifted away her sign and looked at him with bright adoring eyes. “Woof!” she yelled. “He’s a woof!” The girl exploded into giggles and tried to tackle him right there, but Bran sidestepped out of her grasp this time. He’d never shifted in front of her before, but she had the look of a person who could give some seriously good behind-the-ear scratches, so he made a silent promise to play with her some other time.

  “We’ll take care of your clothes,” Adrian said, scooping up the ripped t-shirt and the pants and Bran’s wallet from the ground.

  “Go get the girl,” Zu said.

  The girl. Yes.

  As a wolf, Bran’s thoughts worked differently. His needs were simpler. His desires were clear and unmuddled by guilt or anxiety. There was a purity to the wolf that Bran loved and feared in equal measures. The freedom he felt as a wolf was remarkable, and the way his senses could read an entire story from a single sniff was incredibly useful, but there was a part of him that never wanted to turn back to his man form.

  It was the part that knew the pain of war and the pain of heartbreak. It wanted to keep Bran safe, and safe meant staying as a wolf. He didn’t shift as often as he should, Bran knew. His life was out of balance. He ran with the pack on moon nights and holidays, but other than that he stayed as a man for fear that he would never return if he slipped his leash.

  But Krista’s scent was still strong in the air and Bran needed to find her. He needed to have a chance to explain to her what was going on.

  Through the crowd he ran—a wolf as large as a man. Some people screamed. Some recognized for what he was and cheered him on. Many leapt out of his way. He didn’t pay attention to any of them. All of his senses were focused on Krista.

  Her trail weaved through the crowd towards the mountain before turning sharply back towards downtown. With his nose to the ground, Bran followed the path she’d painted for him with her sweat and spoor as easily as if she’d drawn a chalk line on the ground. Her trail twisted its way out of the march and down a side street, through a bakery and out the back door.

  She was clever. Bran was impressed. If he’d been chasing her as a man, he would have lost her several times over, but he was a wolf and tracking was what he did.

  The humans in the bakery didn’t appreciate an enormous wolf charging through the store, and if Krista’s trail went anywhere too interesting—like the Lodge—he might actually be in trouble. But no, he found her on her own doorstep, fumbling for her keys in the pocket of her jacket.

  5

  Krista’s thoughts weren’t complicated as she ran away from Bran. Kissing him felt too good and so therefore it must be bad. Kissing him made her toes curl and her bones melt and her pussy flood with eager excitement—but it all had to be some secret shifter trick.

  She’d be better off without him. She could find some hot, sweet human boy somewhere and f
orget all about gorgeous, rock hard Bran. At least that’s what she told herself as she ran away as fast as she could through the march.

  The revelers were packed in tightly, but they made space for her. They parted for her and formed up again behind her and maybe she imagined it, but they seemed to pack in tighter in her wake, as if they knew there must be man trouble chasing her down.

  Krista tried to remember every scrap of advice her cousin Anna had ever told her about shifters. She ran past trash cans and stepped in puddles to hide her scent. She squeezed past people and hoped her scent would transfer to the stranger so as to through Bran’s pursuit off. She even dodged through Mina’s bakery on the off chance that the smell of sweet apple fritters would confuse things.

  She arrived at her door out of breath but Bran hadn’t found her.

  Was part of her disappointed? Of course. There was a part of her that dearly wanted another of those kisses, especially with the growly bit that made every muscle in her body go limber and pliant.

  Part of her had wanted to be caught.

  She was home though. And safe. She could grab her bug-out bag and catch a cab to the Amtrak station and be hundreds of miles away before she knew it.

  It was a good plan. So why did it make her so sad?

  As she was fishing around for her keys, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She was being watched. Slowly she turned and saw, right behind her, an enormous brown wolf. It looked too big, almost like a special effect.

  “Bran? Is that you?” she asked. “It had better be you, because if a giant wolf just happened to chase me down in the middle of Bearfield to eat me, I’m going to be really embarrassed.”

  The huge canine stepped closer and Krista saw its eyes. They were the same soulful gray as Bran’s. This was Bran, then, in his wolf form. The wolf padded up the stairs slowly, drawing near her. Its gaze never left hers and she felt transfixed. He stepped up onto the landing, approached her, and then jammed his big doggy snout right into her crotch.

  “Bran!” Krista shouted. “What the hell?” She pushed at his muzzle, trying to get away, but he was insistent. This was the man she’d loved all those years, and he was sniffing her pussy in broad daylight. He’d know everything about her now. She could lie and say no and run away, but her scent would tell him the truth.

  Words could lie. Scents never did.

  Bran poked his nose harder into her leggings-covered vulva, sniffing hungrily and rubbing his nose against her. A deep growl rumbled out of the wolf, sending shivers up through her. Shifters never had sex in wolf form—she knew that much—but she was still uncomfortable.

  Krista pulled her keyring out of her pockets and whacked Bran on the head with it. The wolf jumped back, startled, and in an instant shifted back to Bran.

  “What the hell was that?” Krista said, or at least started to say. She got the first word out and then lost the power of speech entirely when she realized Bran Carver was one hundred percent naked and on all four just inches away from her. Her indignation at having her pussy so rudely and thoroughly sniffed evaporated in an instant, replaced with a quiet, heart-pounding fascination with the man who rose to his feet in front of her.

  “Krista,” he said and his voice was just as she remembered it. Maybe a little deeper, maybe a bit more sure of himself, but the timbre was unmistakable. It was the voice that haunted her dreams. Just one word and her knees were shaking. This was Bran. This was her Bran. It wasn’t a trick. He wasn’t some stranger. He hadn’t changed beyond recognition in the intervening years. It was just Bran.

  “Bran,” she said. Her eyes couldn’t help but take him in. Or at least try to. There was quite a lot of him to take in, and not just in terms of muscles and gray eyes and the tribal ink that marked his arm with some super secret werewolf code. No, there was also the matter of the half-hard cock that was slowly rising between them and rapidly turning into a fully hard cock. It was already like God-of-all-Penises big and still growing. How much bigger and thicker and longer could it get? Should she not be staring quite so much? If he got any harder, his cock would push her back and pin her to the door.

  “I . . . I wanted a chance to talk,” he said. A half-smile played on his lips.

  Krista looked down at his erection and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Clearly. This is normal evidence of wanting to . . . talk,” she laughed. “Yep. Just two people, standing on a door step. One of them wolf-ass naked. Both of them desperate to,” she drew out the pause, “talk.”

  A car drove down her little street and honked the horn approximately ten thousand times. The women inside were hooting encouragement at Krista and appreciation at Bran’s tight, perky ass.

  “Can we go inside?” he asked. Was he blushing? Did the hot and powerful wolf shifter man get embarrassed at showing his bare ass?

  Krista tapped a finger on her lips. “I don’t know, Brandon. I’m enjoying the view out here and so are my neighbors. And maybe this is the punishment you deserve for abandoning me.” She’d meant to say the words lightly, with humor on her tongue, but she could taste the acid behind them. Bran flinched and nodded, as if acknowledging the fairness of her attack.

  “I deserve that,” he said. “I deserve everything you want to hit me with. And I would love to discuss this with you, but inside. Please?”

  It was the please that did it. And the look in his gray eyes like a man desperate for absolution. And also, maybe, the fact that his cock was indeed hard enough and big enough now that it was rubbing against her belly and trapping her against her door.

  “You can come in,” Krista said. “But no kissing. Just talking.” She poked Bran’s chest with a finger. “Can you promise me that.”

  “I promise,” he said. “No kissing. Just talking. For as long as you say so.”

  Krista wasn’t sure about the legality of that last clause, but she opened the door and invited him in, anyway.

  6

  “Thank you,” Bran said as Krista handed him a towel. She didn’t have any spare men’s clothing around, which he took as a good sign. And her apartment didn’t have the scent of other men clinging to it. As best he could tell, she was single. He almost smiled.

  He draped the towel over his lap, which formed a sort of uncomfortable tent with his erection. He was deliriously hard. Harder than he ever had been before. The loss of blood to his head was noticeable. Or maybe it was just a surreal sort of day—it was hard to tell. Any other day and his cock would have returned to a manageable size by now, but he was sitting in Krista’s house on Krista’s couch and breathing Krista’s air and every bit of him was burning for her.

  He’d scented her as a wolf and learned again what he’d always known—she was his mate. They were fated for each other, destined to bring each other true happiness. Only how could he convince her to give him a try?

  Krista was perched as far as possible away from him, on a chair on the opposite side of the room. It was a cozy apartment, with books stacked everywhere and piles of important looking papers piled everywhere there weren’t books.

  “Spill it,” Krista said. There was a sharpness in her tone that cut him to the bone. She was wounded down deep, and he’d done that to her. “Tell me your story or get walking.” She blinked. “You can take the towel with you.”

  Bran sighed and leaned back. Every motion stirred up whorls of her scent. Every second he spent in her house brought him closer to losing control. It was like he was steeping in an aphrodisiac, because he was.

  “That night, five years ago,” he began. “I wanted to come see you. It was just after your birthday and I had a gift picked out for you. It was a necklace with an opal stone in the shape of the moon.”

  “I love opals,” Krista said quietly. Her fingers flew to her neck, as if grasping the necklace he’d never given her.

  “I know,” Bran said. “It wasn’t cheap and you know how my father was with the family money. There was nothing in the world I could want that was worth spending money on to him. The man had milli
ons, but we lived like paupers.”

  “Millions? Anna always implied your family had money, but so much?”

  Bran nodded. “More now. And now I have access to the funds.”

  “How do you feel about feeding the homeless?” Krista blurted out.

  “What?” Bran said.

  “Never mind.” Krista waved her hands like she was pushing bad ideas away. “Continue.”

  “I never even tried asking my father for the money for your necklace. I knew what his answer would be. So I went around him. I asked my mother.” He smiled sadly at the memory. “She always liked you, did you know that? She didn’t share my father’s intolerance for non-shifters. No, she had a beautifully open mind and so I told her. I told her how I was in love with you. How I’d been in love with you from the first day we met.”

  Krista’s breath caught in her throat, but Bran continued.

  “She wasn’t the least bit surprised. My mother had figured it all out years earlier. I guess mothers do that. She gave me her credit card and her blessing.” Bran sighed and shifted on the couch. Krista was watching him with her large beautiful eyes and sitting very still now. “I bought the necklace a month before your birthday. But then, my father found the charge on his statement. You would not believe how he raged.”

  Bran remembered it like it was yesterday. He only had to close his eyes to see his father, red-faced with rage and with spittle flecking his lips, roaring his displeasure at him. He’d been worried at the time that his father would kill him. These days, he’d beg for him to try.

  “He was not happy. He locked me up for days in silver chains without food or water, and then gave me a choice. Either I could leave the town and the pack and go into exile as a lone wolf, or I could join the Marines, just like he did at my age, and find some discipline.”

  Krista went pale. “I had no idea, Bran. None. Anna never told me.”

  “I don’t think anyone knew. My dad said he’d tell you. My mom did, too. But they didn’t. They just shipped me off to the military and from there, to Afghanistan.” He flexed his hands. “If I’m being generous, I expect that my father realized later he’d overreacted and that he should have found some other way to communicate with me. But the man was never a talker. He had too much wolf in him. He wanted to growl and snap and for everyone to do just what they were told, no questions asked. And telling people what he’d done, where they’d sent me, it would have undermined his authority as Alpha. And he couldn’t have that.”