Zanthe (Primal Impulse Shifters Book 2)

by Romi Hart

  “You know that you don’t mean that, Crina. We’ve been here before. And now we’ve got a whole two days that we’ll miss out on if you keep this up.” He undid his pants then let them fall to the floor in a puddle around his bit feet that he’d somehow taken his shoes and socks off of. “We can start off with me showing you how to give me a blowjob. We’ve yet to do that, remember? And that’ll get you into what comes next.”

  “If you put your dick into my mouth right now, I will do my best to bite it off.” I thought he should know where I stood at this point.

  Gasping, he put his hands over his cock to shield it from me. “Don’t even joke about doing that, Crina!”

  “It’s not a joke. And I said that I want you to leave.” Reaching down, I yanked the blanket up to cover my naked body. “Get your clothes on and go. And don’t bother to come back either. I’ve heard enough out of you to know that you are crazy! No man in his right mind wants to have a baby with someone he’s just met. And the idea that we will be together forever is just as insane. You need help and lots of it.” I probably did too, now that I’d dealt with him.

  My first boyfriend and he has to be a lunatic.

  Life wasn’t fair. Why I had to meet the hottest man I’d ever seen in real life and him fall for me when he was crazy didn’t seem fair to me at all.

  If it wouldn’t have seemed so weak of me, I would’ve given in to the urge to cry over what I felt was a loss. But I had to stay strong in front of Zanthe or he would grab onto my weakness and use it against me.

  Holding up his hands, he asked, “Can we start over?”

  “I wish we could.” But I knew we couldn’t. “You want something I can’t and won’t give. It’s not even right for you to ask that of me, Zanthe. And the fact that you aren’t even a little apologetic about it, tells me that something is so wrong with you.”

  “Maybe I’m not like other men,” he admitted. “Maybe I’ve got old-fashioned values. When I felt my heart skip a beat, I knew you’d found a place in it. I knew that I would have you in my life forever. And I just want to get to living that life to the fullest. That means babies, Crina. Little versions of you and me all mixed together to form little, perfect humans fills my mind.”

  “And that should not be what’s filling your mind.” It made me sad that he was so crazy. “Please just put your clothes back on and go, Zanthe. You are so good looking and muscular and every woman’s dream that it’s making it so hard to follow through with this. But I have to be true to myself. If I don’t look out for my best interests, who will? And don’t say it’s you because you are looking out for what you want and nothing else. You’re selfish, Zanthe. Pure and simple. You. Are. Selfish.”

  Finally, he looked a little upset. “I didn’t mean to be selfish. I thought you would want a man who not only wanted you but wanted what the two of us could make together. It’s all about procreating you know. Sex is what that’s for. It’s not for fun or something to do to alleviate boredom. It’s not even meant to make two people feel closer. Sex is meant to make more of our species.”

  So it’s the scientist in him that’s driven him mad.

  At least I had my answer. “You need to take some time for yourself and stop doing research on how animals live their lives. Sex is meant for procreation. I agree with that. But what you’re not thinking about is how humans use sex. We do use it to make people closer to each other. We do use it to have fun and to experience desire, ecstasy, and even to show love. Sex is different in the human world than it is in the animal one that you’ve spent maybe too much time researching and living in.” I felt sorry for him for what had happened to him. But I didn’t feel sorry enough for him to change my mind. “Go. Please don’t make me ask you to leave again.”

  “I don’t know how I can leave you.” His eyes pleaded with me. “I’m serious Crina. I’ve grown attached to you. And I think you’ve grown attached to me too.”

  “Yes, I have. And it’s not that this doesn’t hurt me. Please don’t think that it doesn’t.” I wished like crazy that he hadn’t pushed what he wanted so hard. “What you should think about is how you can avoid this the next time you find a woman who interests you.”

  “You are the only woman who interests me, Crina. I won’t find another. I only want you. And I’m sorry that you can’t understand how I feel. And I’m sorry that I can’t change how I feel.”

  Even with all I’d said, he still wasn’t going to take the baby thing off the table. It would’ve been so easy for him to have just said that he would go get the condoms and not say another word about me having his baby. But he had to persist. And that told me just how crazy he really was.

  I was sorry too. “Well, it seems that you and I are on very different pages. I wish you all the best, Zanthe.”

  “I wish you would stop this, Crina. I wish you would accept the fact that we’re to be something that you just don’t understand yet.” Reaching out to me, he must’ve thought that if we touched he would end up making me see things his way.

  That wasn’t going to happen though. “Bye, Zanthe. It’s time for you to go.”

  “You know where I’ll be if you change your mind,” he let me know.

  I had to let him know something as well, “I won’t be changing my mind.”

  I won’t be having anyone’s baby for a very, very long time.

  15

  Zanthe

  The further I got away from Crina, the more the pull of her scent that lingered on my clothing hurt me. “Why do females in this day and age have more brains than they used to have?”

  It made no sense to me. The females in my past had been more than willing to give in to my desires without any hesitation whatsoever. So what was wrong with Crina that she not only hadn’t given in but had said that she would never give in?

  Didn’t she know what her place in the world was? Didn’t she know that having a man’s baby was the highest honor a man could bestow upon her?

  Walking into our cave, I saw Freedrick working on some sort of a trap. “You’re back much earlier than you said you’d be, brother. I thought you had two days of mating to do with your lovely little female.” The smirk he wore told me he thought himself to be clever. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. She wasn’t into the idea of having your offspring.”

  Sitting on the cold, hard rock floor, I huffed. “What is wrong with her, Freedrick?”

  “Not a damn thing.” He tossed some wire and rope to me. “Braid that for me. I’m making something and since you won’t be busy impregnating some female, I could use your help in trapping the villainous presence that is wreaking havoc on our world, Zanthe. That’s a thing you seemed to have forgotten about with your infatuation.”

  “As if my desire for Crina could get in the way of my desire to find the culprit.” Making the braid with ease, I tossed it back to him. “What are you making anyway?”

  “Something.” He took the braid then put it into a cardboard box. “So, tell me how you’re going to fix things with the female.”

  It wasn’t as if he was even interested, but I had to think out loud anyway. “Well, she won’t listen to reason, so I’m not sure what to do. It’s so annoying that I can’t simply toss her over my shoulder, bring her back here, and do to her what I want.”

  “Yes, that must be annoying,” he agreed. But the way his eyes rolled bespoke of something else. Sarcasm, perhaps? “The audacity of the female for wanting control over her own body. Who does she think she is?”

  “You forgot to punctuate your sarcasm with laughter, Freedrick.” If he wasn’t going to be serious, I saw no reason to talk to him.

  “I’m trying to be here for you, Zanthe,” he said with a reverent tone. “But you are making it hard. It’s a great thing that women have found their rights and their freedoms. Would you have them kept in the dark ages while men are allowed to grow as human beings?”

  I had to admit that things were easier for men in those days. “Why can’t she be as enlightened as I am a
bout life and love and what goes along with all that?”

  “She’s twenty – not three hundred. She was born into a period of time where not all women think their primary goals are to find men, marry them, and have their children,” he let me know. “Have you asked her what her goals are in life? I mean, she works, so she might have grander ideas than wife and mother.”

  “She wants to be a biologist. And she can still be one of those while being a wife and mother,” I brought up. “It’s not like any of those things will take up all of her time. She’ll have time for each thing.”

  “You know, not all women are ready to become mothers at twenty.” He reached into the box and took out a small hatchet. “Why is it so damn important that you knock her up?”

  As if he didn’t know. “Freedrick, what has happened to you? You know that as bear-shifters we have it built into us to find a mate, mate with her, and produce offspring. It’s precisely why we catch certain female’s scents in the first place.”

  “It was,” he said as he put on a pair of reading glasses that he’d never had before.

  “What are you doing, Freedrick?” Our eyes were perfect.

  Pulling the glasses down to the lower part of his nose, he looked at me over the rims. “I’m trying out my wise look. I think the glasses help. Don’t you? I found them a few days ago lying on the ground. Some poor soul lost them I suppose. Their loss is my gain though.”

  “You could turn them in to the lost and found at the park’s headquarters. I saw a box labeled that when I was there earlier today.” The way we lived off of foraged things was beginning to bother me. “We should start making legitimate money, brother. We could buy things we could use with the money we make. And I think we both could get well-paying jobs as scientists if we wanted to.”

  “So now you want to buy a home in hopes that Crina will change her mind and move in with you and have your offspring?” He rolled his eyes once again. “My bets are that you totally burned your bridge with that girl, Zanthe. I know you. You’re stubborn, strong-willed, and to top it all off, you’re kind of a selfish ass.”

  Crina had told me much the same thing. “I don’t understand. I used to be the hottest shifter alive. All the females wanted me to mate with them.”

  “I beg to differ.” He stood, rising to his full height as he flexed his muscles. “I was the hottest shifter alive and all the females wanted to mate with me.”

  He was so off base. “Then why did I have more females than you did, if that was the case?”

  “Your standards were far lower than mine. If you will recall, I had princesses and countesses. You tended to gravitate toward sheepherders’ daughters. Oh, and of course, the morticians’ daughters tickled your fancy as well.”

  Although I’d had a few of each kind of female, I didn’t only have those types of women. “I too had a countess if you will recall.”

  “Oh, that’s right. The wife of the count who’d been beheaded shortly before you scented his wife,” he recalled. “After that mating, we were run out of town by the villagers who called us monsters and threatened us with torches and garden rakes.”

  Pulling my shirt up to my nose, I took a long sniff of what remained of Crina. “Even the countess couldn’t hold a candle to Crina.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” At least he agreed with me on that. “And yet, you don’t deserve her even a little bit.”

  “Harsh.” I knew I deserved Crina. “She was meant for me, brother. That means that I do deserve her.”

  “You could deserve her. You just don’t right now. You’re still living in the dark ages. Nowadays women want to be heard. They want to be a part of the decision-making process,” he spoke as if he knew it all. “And when it comes to their bodies, they want the final word. And rightly so I might add.”

  “If that’s so, then what are men in charge of?” I had to know because at the present I felt as if I was in charge of nothing.

  Shrugging, he looked at the device he’d made then ripped it apart. “That won’t catch so much as a squirrel. Back to the drawing board.” As he tossed the remnants of his project into the box next to him, he gave me his answer, “Men are in charge of lots of things. We’re in charge of gaining the knowledge of how to help our women best. That doesn’t mean doing everything for them either. It does mean learning what they want help with and what they want to do on their own. It means learning what they expect out of a man. Not all of them want the same thing. That’s another new aspect of females in this time. They don’t all want the same things out of life or out of their mate.”

  “Why not?” I didn’t see why things had gotten so complex. “There’s not that much to life.”

  “But there is,” he corrected me. “One woman may want to become the leader of a country. With such a goal, she must create a life that will uphold that goal. That could mean picking a mate who shared political interests. It could mean picking a mate who had no political interests and merely sat back quietly as she took the reins of leadership on her own.”

  “I think Crina wants to be a biologist and become successful. But I have no idea what she wants beyond that.” Wracking my brain, I came up with an idea. “I could get a job and pay for her schooling so she could become a biologist.”

  “She has a job,” he pointed out. “So, what makes you think that she hasn’t already begun paying her own way through school? You keep thinking that she needs a man – that she needs you. Women nowadays don’t want to need anyone. They want to depend on themselves.”

  “Ah, but you said not all women want the same things. Yet, here you are saying that they all want to not need anyone.” It began to occur to me that my brother didn’t have any of the answers he thought he had.

  “Maybe not all of them,” he concurred. “But many of them. And I’m not saying that Crina might not want some help, financially speaking. I am saying that you can’t simply tell her that you want to bestow your bundle of joy on her and her to accept that with a smile. I am saying that being with a female now doesn’t necessarily mean that she has to have our babies.”

  Just me and her?

  I didn’t know how to be with a woman when getting her pregnant wasn’t the main goal. I didn’t know what we would do to pass our time. I didn’t know what we would find in common that would keep us together.

  “A relationship with no babies?” I had to think about that. “Having a woman around purely for the idea of just having her around?” It made no sense. “And what would sex become if I did that? Would it become boring? Would it become commonplace? Would we eventually stop having it? And then what we would be to each other if that happened?”

  “Humans have these words they say to each other when they get married,” he told me. “They say things like, for better or for worse. Something about, in sickness and in health is said too. And to me, those things could mean that sex might not always be in their pictures. And they will accept that and not leave their spouses if it does stop happening.”

  He still hadn’t answered my question. “And if there was no more sex, then what would they do? What would they be to each other?”

  Raising one brow, he pondered my question before he answered, “Friends. I think it would make them the very best of friends. And even more than that too. I think it would make them family. Just as close to each other as blood family members are. They make this pact to stay together through hard times and good times. They promise to stay together through anything, be it if one of them gets really sick and can’t do anything for themselves.”

  In a way, it sounded horrible to be attached to someone that thoroughly. But in another way, it sounded amazing.

  Freedrick and I had each other. But even as such, we’d gone our separate ways at times throughout the years. Having a spouse sounded like neither party walked away for long periods of time.

  “No sex and still a man and woman hang out together.” I really couldn’t see it happening for me. “If that were the case, I would think I would
go mad.” Crina thought me to be that way already.

  Am I really crazy?

  “Sleep in the same bed, brother.” Freedrick got up, picking up the box then taking it with him as he retreated into the depths of the cave. “They can live lives without sex. Not that they have to, some just find themselves having to do without it. You should think about that. Crina is human. She’ll get old on you if you want to keep her with you for a long time.”

  “Unless I change her.” I’d never done that to any female before. Something told me that if Crina ever did decide to give me another chance, I would want to keep her with me forever. Hell, I already did want that.

  But I’d tried to make her do something she didn’t want to do. At least she didn’t want to do it yet. But then again, she might not ever want to have my babies.

  What I thought about that was the real question in my mind.

  Can I accept an eternity with a woman who doesn’t want to feel my baby inside her womb?

  That was the greatest gift I could give anyone and Crina didn’t want it.

  Was she worth my time? Was she worth my attraction? Was she worth my love?

  She was right about one thing. We did not know each other well at all. While I was a simple creature, she was complex.

  All I needed were food, a place to sleep, and sex when my senses told me that I needed it. I wasn’t human all the way. I was half animal. And as such, I might’ve not been the best thing for Crina.

  Maybe she wasn’t meant for me after all. Maybe she was meant for a mortal man and not a bear-shifter.

  If that was the case, then why had I scented her?

  Stripping off my clothing, I changed into my bear form then went to cleanse my fur of her scent. I would never get passed my need for her until I rid my body, both man and animal, of her smell.

  The need had to go. She didn’t need me, so I didn’t want to need her any longer.

  No matter how females had changed over the years, one thing had stayed the same. Me.