by Debra Dunbar
He grunted. “I’m fine. I’ll be better once I’ve got you at my den, though.”
Sirens sounded off in the distance. Humans were nearby, talking in hushed voices. I breathed deeply, trying to focus. “I need to get him. Shot me. The one who shot me. I need to get him.”
Karl growled, and a bolt of fear shot through me at the sound. “I will get him.”
I snarled back. “I’m not weak. Joking about the frilly dress stuff. Just give me an hour or two and I can trail his scent and track him down.
The bear shifter’s eyes glowed gold. “You are not going anywhere in an hour or two. I’ll track him down, but I’m not going to do shit until I’m sure you’re okay.”
I closed my eyes, not wanting to argue. The siren noise stopped. The police must be here. “Can you get me some clothes? There’s some in my trunk.” I didn’t exactly want to make a police statement or walk around naked.
He hesitated. “You’re not going to run off, are you?”
Umm, like I could run anywhere right now. Besides I was naked, and another shift would put me down for a twelve-hour nap with my injuries. “No. Promise.”
He pulled away, helping me rise to my feet before walking across the street and popping the trunk of my car. There was blood everywhere—all over the gravel, the porch, the steps, covering Karl, soaking my clothing, coating the bullets that lay on the sidewalk. These weren’t rifle bullets like the one we’d taken from the grizzly shifter, or the ones used to shoot Leon and Brent. These were from a pistol, a 9mm by the look of them.
A pistol. Shooting a shifter in the woods with a hunting rifle and claiming self-defense was a plausible excuse. Shooting me in outside a restaurant with a pistol, and with a human witness, didn’t allow for anything except attempted murder. This attack wasn’t to stir up fear of shifters, or to put my head on a wall. This attack was meant to kill me, to ensure I didn’t continue investigating. Was this guy so stupid that he didn’t realize he’d need to kill a whole lot more than just me to keep the wolves from his door?
A wound decorated my side, and I was sure there was an equally horrific one on my back. They’d scar. They’d take weeks, if not months, to fully heal. If Karl hadn’t dug the bullets from me, I would have died, the magic in them hindering my ability to heal. Even with them out, my healing was slower than it should have been.
I winced, turning to face Karl as he trotted back across the road, clothes in hand.
“Someone shot her,” a woman told the police. “She was just standing by the door, looking at the menu and talking on the phone when someone shot her. My husband and I were walking across the parking lot and saw the man. We dove behind one of the cars, thinking he was one of those crazy mass-murder guys, then he shot her a second time.”
I tried to wave off two paramedics who were intent on getting me on a stretcher. “I’m a shifter,” I told them. “My boyfriend dug the bullets out of me. I’ll be fine.”
“Doesn’t look fine,” one of them grumbled. “At least let us bandage you up before you bleed all over your clean clothes.”
I complied, since Karl was refusing to give me my clothing until they looked me over. It gave me time to hear the rest of the woman’s story. I was completely the victim, an innocent woman shot by some crazy man in the parking lot. The fact that I’d turned into a wolf didn’t seem to bother her at all. According to her story, I’d shifted, and was trying to attack the shooter and save the humans. The shooter fled, and I collapsed from my wounds, saved by my gorgeous boyfriend who’d arrived like the hero from a romance novel. Only romance novel heroes didn’t sprout claws and dig bullets from their girlfriend’s furry body. Or maybe they did.
Thank goodness for selective memory. I hadn’t injured anyone. I’d been shot in front of witnesses, apparently a human minding my own business. Then as a werewolf, I’d acted to protect the terrified humans.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about being sort of a victim, but this was a story we could spin to our advantage, and we could use it to counteract those horrible videos, maybe get people to start believing that we weren’t monsters to be killed. And the best part of her story was that I heard her description of my assailant.
Six foot tall. Roughly one-eighty. Tan. Bald. Clean shaven. Broad nose and square face with a barbed-wire tattoo down his neck. Yes, she could describe him to a sketch artist. And you’d better believe we’d have a copy of that sketch before the sun was down.
By the time the paramedics were done with me I felt like I’d been swaddled in gauze and surgical tape. I gave my statement to the police, reiterating that we were being targeted by people who were trying to eradicate shifters. A hate crime. Attempted murder. And if I hadn’t scared the guy off, he might have turned his gun on the witnesses just to cover it up.
Slowly everyone began to leave. The restaurant gave me a bag of fish sandwiches. I refused a ride from the ambulance and made my slow and painful way over to my car.
Karl took my keys.
“Um, what do you think you’re doing?” At least I could talk in complete sentences now, and wasn’t gasping for air with every step.
“Driving you to Brent’s. I called him from your phone when you were talking to the police. He wants you at the Alpha house.”
I totally understood why. We were a pack. He was my Alpha. There would be three dozen wolves there to sniff me over and fuss over me, reassuring themselves that I was okay. I’d go. And I’d probably accept Brent’s offer to spend the night there, just to recover more of my strength. But that didn’t mean I was going to let Karl drive.
“Do you even know how to drive? You don’t have a vehicle. I got the impression you’d never had a vehicle.”
“I drive,” he huffed out. “How else was I supposed to steal all those cars and trucks when I was a kid?”
Huh? Karl helped me into the passenger seat of my car, and I let him because I got the feeling he was trying to tell me something big—something he didn’t tell just anybody.
“Yeah, I stole cars. That’s the least horrible thing I did when I was a kid. From when I was old enough to reach the pedals, probably six, until about ten. ’Cause when you’re that age and the cops manage to catch you, they just take you home to your parents. Especially if you look at them with big eyes and tell them you’re running away from home because Mom wouldn’t let you have any ice cream.”
I caught my breath, not sure how to respond. So instead of saying anything, I watched him close the car door, walk around, and get into the driver’s side. He didn’t speak again until he’d started the car and backed it out of the parking lot.
“When I was really little, I was the bait,” he said softly. “Cute little kid in his mother’s arms. People would stop to help her, then Dad would come out of nowhere and knock them out. Not that Mom needed Dad to help her. Lots of times she just dropped me on the ground and took the mark out herself. We’d steal all their stuff. Sometimes Dad got carried away and the human didn’t live. We had to stop that ruse when I was about eight because people don’t feel safe stopping for a woman with an older child.”
I reached out a hand and placed it on top of his. He turned his palm-upward, and entwined his fingers around mine. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
My heart ached, imagining Karl as a little cub with such horrible parents.
“Wasn’t like I was unwilling, Brina,” he said gruffly. “I had no problem jacking those cars. I stole. And when I was old enough, I didn’t think twice about hurting someone to take their things. Humans were there for us to use. I have a hard time being around them even now, because I just don’t see them as anything but prey.”
“You were just a child,” I countered. “You didn’t know any better.”
He shot me a wry glance. “Maybe at five. But when you get to be ten, that ‘I didn’t know no better’ isn’t an excuse. I did it ’cause I wanted to, ’cause it’s what I’d done my whole life and I didn’t see anything wrong in it.”
“You’re not lik
e that now,” I said softly.
“I am. That’s the problem, Brina. I am like that now. And you’ve got your neighbors and human friends, and all those damned werewolves in your pack. I respect Brent. I respect Ahia and that angel she’s shacked up with. I respect you. Hell, think I might actually love you. But the rest of them…”
“Karl, give it a chance. You spent the whole day with my pack at the barbeque last year. You had fun. And you didn’t kill anyone.”
A slow grin curled up his mouth. “I wanted to just get a burger and go, but I saw you and wanted to see if I could get you to bed. No, I was determined to get you to bed, even if I had to hang out with those damned wolves for a week.”
Little did he know he could have gotten me to bed within the first five minutes of arriving at the party.
“See? Just think of all the great sex we’re going to have and you’ll be able to tolerate neighbors and random humans at the Walmart, and my pack family. And it’s not like you’ll need to do that all the time. I’ve promised to go out into the wild with you and stay at one of your dens, isolated from shifter and human. If I can manage to only check my cell phone once a day while I’m with you, then you can refrain from killing anyone and actually use silverware while making small talk with others for an hour or so each day. See? Compromise?”
He laughed, squeezing my hand. We rode in silence for a bit, and I noticed that he actually was a good driver, not at all what I’d expected. But then again, Karl had never been what I’d expected.
“Member how I told you my mom is a grizzly shifter?” he asked out of the blue.
“Yeah?” I waited, holding my breath.
He sighed. “Well, I don’t really like others to know about it, but my dad is a demon.”
That needed a moment to process. A demon? His father was a demon? It wasn’t unheard of for demons to impregnate human women, either via rape or an uninhibited one-night stand, but a shifter woman? She would know exactly what she was sleeping with, and although rape was still a possibility, she could have been willing. No, she had to have been willing, unless that “Dad” Karl had referenced was someone else.
Karl turned to watch my face intently. “Mom was in love with him. Still is. They’re like the Bonnie and Clyde of the supernatural world. When I was a cub we were all over North America stealing cars, robbing banks, pulling off scams. We stayed in places that rented by the week, or lived in stolen cars, or broke into houses of people that were on vacation and stayed there. Sometimes we broke into houses and tied people up in the basement and stayed there, but we always had to leave in a day or two before anyone found out. No school. Hell, I don’t even think I have a birth certificate. The only reason they had me was because they thought a baby, a kid, would be useful in scamming people. I ran away at eighteen and haven’t seen them since.”
I caught my breath imagining what kind of childhood that must have been. “Did they track you down? Are you hiding out in the Alaska wilderness from them?”
His laugh was bitter. “Hardly. They never bothered to look for me. Weren’t like they were mad or nothing, they were just too busy doing their thing to care. Once I was past the cute kid stage I wasn’t of much use to them, beyond another mouth to feed. Yeah, I could help steal shit and whack any human who resisted over the head, but they could do that on their own. One night we were robbing a convenience store, and the clerk shot Dad. He beat the guy to death with his own shotgun, then stuffed him in the ice-cream freezer. Then he turned around and beat the shit out of me for not killing the clerk before he got a shot off. I left that night. Got no idea where they are. Honestly, they’ve probably killed each other by now. They used to get pretty violent when they fought and they fought a lot.”
I think my heartache hurt worse than my bullet wounds. “You were eighteen and on your own with no one to help you? No money, no car, nothing?”
He nodded. “And I didn’t really know how to be a bear. I grew up in cities, surrounded by tall buildings and thousands of humans, exhaust fumes in my nose. I rarely shifted form as a kid, didn’t know how to hunt, to find shelter. Until I ran away, I hadn’t had a meal that wasn’t premade at a convenience store or out of a can. I made a lot of mistakes with the other shifter bears at first down in Montana and Idaho. Got in a lot of fights that I’m surprised I walked away from. I managed though, and got myself territory up here with some nice dens. Managed to not kill anyone yet. Managed to have civilized relations with a few other grizzly shifters and the local wolf pack Alpha.” He grinned, a sudden bit of sunlight in the gloom of his revelation. “And you wolves do put on a mighty fine barbeque.”
The grin wasn’t enough. I leaned over to bury my face in his chest, hugging him tight, tears stinging behind my eyelids. “God, Karl. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. That was no way for a shifter, let alone a bear cub, to live.”
His arm wrapped around my shoulders, nearly crushing me and I felt him kiss the top of my head. “I’m not good at this, Brina. Don’t have any experience on how mates are supposed to be. And I’m not a smart man. Mom only taught me enough math to run a con. I never went to school or college. I like fishing, chopping wood, and my books. I like to move around every few weeks. I sleep outdoors more often than I sleep inside. And I’m in my bear form at least half the time.”
But he was smart. He’d taught himself to read. Had a den stacked high with books, and no doubt had the same quantity of reading material in each of his other dens. He was wise, had good judgement, was thoughtful. I didn’t need a guy who could do advanced calculus in his head, I needed someone with a good heart, and in spite of his childhood, in spite of what he said, I got the feeling that Karl definitely had a good heart. How a demon and an immoral bear shifter had raised this strong, sweet, rock of a man, I’ll never know.
I smiled, inhaling the wild scent of his skin. “Well, I’m not having sex with you as a bear, so you may need to be human more often if you want to get laid. Otherwise I’m fine with the rest. If you need some alone time, just tell me when to expect you back, then go scoop salmon out of a stream for a few weeks. I’ll be there when you come back.”
The tightness left his body. “Think you might want to come scoop salmon out of a stream for a few weeks with me now and then?”
I had a flexible job, as long as I could log on now and then, and I was sure Brent would understand. It was going to be a challenge meshing my personality to Karl’s roaming-bear lifestyle, but I’d make it work.
“Absolutely. Although I’ll be on the bank catching the salmon you toss my way. We’d starve if it were up to me to catch fish. Now take me hunting, and it’s another story.”
15
By the time we got to the Alpha house, there were already a dozen cars in the driveway. I was assaulted by concerned werewolves before I’d even crossed the threshold, escorted to a sofa and fussed over. Everyone wanted to see my wounds. More people arrived, some of them carrying casseroles.
Through it all Karl hovered, his hand occasionally on my hair. I could feel his tension; practically hear the growl he was keeping locked tight in his throat. I knew he wanted nothing more than to carry me off to his den where he could stand guard over me. Even though he knew these wolves were my family, the bear in him was seeing all of them as a threat.
I pulled his hand over and squeezed it. “You need a break?”
“Yeah,” he rumbled. “But I don’t feel like I can leave you.”
“I’m safe here. I know everyone rushing around, stuffing chicken tomato gratin under my nose is driving you crazy, but there are two dozen wolves here who would die for me. Brent is here. My Alpha. A wolf is always safe with their Alpha.”
Karl might have not had the typical shifter childhood, and grizzlies didn’t structure their society like we do, but my words seemed to sink in. I felt some of the tension ebb away. He looked over at Brent, felt the strength and determination emanating from the werewolf, and knew viscerally that I was right. Karl might be a monster of a bear, but
these wolves would protect me equally well.
“Go,” I told him. “Turn furry and run through the woods. Shred some trees. Eat raw fish. Flip a few boulders. Get it out of your system, then come back.”
He hesitated. “Don’t want to leave you.”
Okay, clearly another tactic was necessary. “I need you calm. You’re ready to jump out of your skin and that’s making me feel like I need to be at the ready, like I’m about to be attacked at any minute. Go do something to calm yourself down. Whatever it takes. I’ll heal faster, I’ll be more relaxed if you are.”
He considered my words. “Okay. Need to borrow your car, though.”
I’d hardly imagined Karl going for a quiet drive in the country to settle down, but if that’s what it took, so be it. He was clearly a careful driver. “Sure. No problem.”
He bent down and kissed the top of my head. “I’m gonna go do something, then I’ll be back.”
I watched him stride off, feeling a tad bit uneasy about what Karl’s “something” was that he was about to do. Hopefully it didn’t involve anything that would get him arrested.
I woke up to a much quieter house. Once everyone had come through with their food offerings to check on me and reassure themselves that I wasn’t dying, Brent had kicked everyone out to let me sleep. I was still on the sofa, because werewolf anxiety meant letting me sleep in peace in a bedroom was out of the question. I needed to be nearby, so they could see me as well as smell and hear me. Hovering over my bedside would have not only been creepy, but would have given the impression that I was at death’s door. So instead I was napping on the couch with throw pillows and a blue crochet afghan while the few remaining pack members ate, drank coffee, and spoke in hushed voices that I could clearly hear.
“There better be a plate of chicken and dumplings over here, stat,” I announced, easing myself upright. My wounds protested, but I felt that if I needed to, I could defend myself. Or at least quickly move to hide behind the couch.
