Dina looked between Ian and Iris, and nodded.
"It's my ex. He's back on the island. And…he brought his pack."
"He's a shifter, right?" Iris cut across her briskly. Dina squinted at her with confusion.
"Yes, but how did you…?"
"I'll explain later. What can I do to help?" Iris ran a hand through her hair, feeling that adrenalin pulse through her once again. But this time it felt more focused, less hectic.
"Please, I don’t want anyone else going out there," Dina looked out across the wind and rain-soaked beach in the distance."It's too dangerous. Especially not you, with…you know. Abby."
"Is there anything I can do while I'm still here?" Iris asked, scanning the room. It was almost empty, it was just the three of them, and the receptionist, who looked as if a bomb had just hit her. Iris didn't blame her, this was supposed to be a sweet wedding weekend, not some kind of epic young-adult shifter battle.
"We need someone to stand lookout over the hotel," Ian suggested. "And with your…abilities, I imagine you're our best bet. "
"Right. I'll stay here, try and help out where I can."
"I'll keep you company," Ian agreed, and offered her an arm. "If you wouldn't mind."
"Not in the least," Iris nodded, taking his arm and allowing him to lead her back through to the dining room. They took up a spot just next to the windows, and Iris tried to keep focused, all her senses prickling. They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, until Ian turned to her and took a deep breath.
"Look, you know I have to ask." He began, and Iris looked up at him.
"Ask what? How I know?"
"Well, yeah," he nodded sheepishly. "I mean, I can tell you're not a shifter, but-"
"Yeah, I'm not," she agreed. "But my father was."
"So…you're…?"
"I'm a half-cut. Sometimes it's genetic and you get the whole shifter thing if your parent has it, but sometimes you just get…stuff." She explained with a shrug.
"Is that how you can sense other shifters?" He leaned forward with interest. "Sorry, I don't mean to pry, I've just never met someone like you before."
"Yeah," she looked him up and down. "That's how I know you're one."
He inhaled sharply, and she could tell she'd taken him off-guard.
"And that doesn't bother you?" He asked softly.
"I'd be kind of a hypocrite if it did," she pointed out. "I don't care. I generally get a good sense of whether or not shifters are intending to do me or anyone else any harm. That's why I was running when you bumped into me, I got the feeling that there were shifters on the island who weren't there was the best reasons, and it freaked the shit out of me."
"But with me…?"
"Yeah, I don't get that feeling," she smiled reassuringly. "Unless you want to prove me wrong?"
He laughed for the first time, the sound felt so dissonant to their situation, but it felt good to hear it.
"Yeah, no, you're fine," he shook his head, still smiling. "But you think these other shifters…?"
"They certainly don’t have the best intentions, no," she nodded. "But I think we already figured that out, considering pretty much everyone else went out to try and deal with them."
"You think they're in danger?" He asked, a tinge of fear to his voice.
"Not mortal danger, no," she shook her head. "I think your pack is stronger than theirs. By the way, how many of you are there? As soon as I sat down this morning, I got a big hit of it, but I couldn't be sure that the other lot weren't messing up my senses."
"All of us."
Iris raised her eyebrows in surprise.
"Does Dina know?"
"No, no, after everything that went down with Freddy, her ex, the one who's here, we figured she might be put off our type for life." He glanced over his shoulder, as if worried she was waiting there behind him, listening to everything he was saying.
"She knows about my father," Iris shrugged. "She doesn't know about my…stuff, but she knows about him."
"Did she ever meet him?" He asked, leaning forward.
"No," she shook her head, and felt an uncharacteristic prick of tears behind her eyes. "He died before we moved to town."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," he frowned, and reached over to touch her shoulder comfortingly. He was a touchy guy, more than she was used to, but she wasn't complaining.
"No, no, it's fine," she shook her head. "I just wish I'd known about how he was before he passed."
"He never told you?"
"I think he was hoping it would never manifest itself in us. Living in denial, kind of thing, you know." She brushed off the question.
"When did you find out?" Ian asked, glancing back out over the hills in front of the hotel.
"My mother told us, me and my sister, when we started to notice stuff. We got feelings about people, and we couldn't figure out what it was, but my mother knew straightaway," Iris looked down at her fingers, fiddling with the jewellery she'd brought along to go with her bridesmaids dress. "He had warned her that it might come out like it did, so she was always keeping an eye out for it."
"You said you had a daughter," Ian began tentatively. "Does she…?"
"Not yet, at least, thank God," Iris shook her head. "I hope she never has what me and Ellie have. I mean, it's not as bad as…you know, it's not as disruptive as being a shifter, but sometimes it feels like I don’t have control over the things I feel or the way my body reacts to stuff. I'll just be out at the store picking up some stuff for dinner when boom, I'm totally on edge and my entire body feels like it's fucking vibrating."
"That's awful," Ian furrowed his brow at her. "I'm sorry."
"Sympathy from a shifter?" Iris snorted. "I think I'm the last person who deserves comforting from you."
"At least I get a pack and a recognised legal status," he countered. "You just have to…I don't know, you just have to live with it."
"I guess we both think the other person has it worse," Iris shrugged ruefully. "Isn't that always the way?"
"Yeah," Ian shook his head, brushing a strand of hair from his eyes. "It's just interesting to see another perspective on it, you know, A perspective that isn't "oh shit, that human-bear hybrid thing is probably going to eat my children."
"Bear?"
"Yeah," he grinned sheepishly. "We're all bears, all five of us."
"That's a new one on me," Iris mumbled, but she was lying, her father, according to her mother, had also been a bear, an enormous, magnificent brown bear. She wondered if that's why the scent of these groomsmen had been so potent to her, she recognised some of herself in them.
"Yeah, it's pretty rare," he shrugged. "I think we're dealing with wolves, though, out there, I mean."
He gestured across the hills, and suddenly squinted off into the horizon.
"Wait a second, is that…?"
Iris jumped to her feet, and peered out the window, he was right. There was something approaching them at a high speed, something thundering towards them across the hills. Iris leapt to her feet and hurried to open the door, even though she couldn't make out what it was yet, she could be certain that it was friendly. The prickles weren't starting at the back of her neck, but that sense of recognition was.
Thundering towards them across the hills was a bear-a bear carrying someone on its back. Iris stared in disbelief, even after everything she'd heard today, she still didn't feel ready for a sight like that. It just felt so…new, and disorientating. Even though she knew that logic dictated that this was all completely natural, she felt her chest tense. This was what her father had been. She'd never seen him in his shifted form, but it can't have been far removed from this, strong, enormous, slightly terrifying. Iris couldn't take her eyes from it, so much so that she didn't notice the wolves in hot pursuit.
She felt a pair of arms around her waist, pulling her back, and slamming the door in front of her. She fell back against Ian's chest, immediately struggling to get free.
"But-"
"T
he wolves, the wolves'll get here first," Ian replied urgently, hastily unbuttoning his jacket. "I'll go out there, just promise me you won't-"
Before he had a chance to finish his sentence, the bear and it's cargo arrived outside the door, completely wolf-free. Ian hurried to open it for them, and pulled the woman who had been astride the bear in through the door. She had barely opened her mouth before a crash came from the room next door, glancing at Ian and the woman, Iris hurried through to see what help she could offer.
A man was standing in the hall, bleeding heavily from a wound on his neck, everyone was crowding around him, each of them trying to get a better look, until Ian came striding out behind Iris.
"Win!" He exclaimed, and hurried over to him. They conferred for a few minutes, and Iris found herself boggling at the fact he was still standing, those wounds looked as if they could have taken down, well, a bear. But right in front of her eyes, she watched as he began to heal, the wounds knitting together, fixing themselves up. Wait, could shifters do that? She had always supposed that she had a pretty good insider knowledge of what shifters could and couldn't do, but now she had been confronted by them, she found that her knowledge was shot full of holes. Ian finished his conversation with the injured man, and strode back over to Iris.
"You okay to help me keep watch?" He asked. "It seems like we came off a bit worse for wear in the first encounter with them, but if we stay in the hotel we should be safe."
"Of course," I nodded, looking round fearfully. "Is everyone okay? Are they all back?"
"Yeah," Ian nodded. "Thank God. Though if I had my way…"
He trailed off, and a look of strained panic passed over his face.
"You would never have let them go?" She finished for him.
"Precisely. Sometimes I feel responsible for them, you know? Like they're my kids or something." He immediately shook his head, contradicting himself. "Sorry, I didn't mean-"
"I get it," she cut him off. "Where are we keeping watch? And when do you think the wolves'll be back?"
"I suggest up in one of the rooms, they've got decent views over the island. And, no idea when or even if they'll be back. We might have scared them badly enough that they'll stay away, but I get the feeling that isn't the case," he shook his head. "My vote would be to hide out here until we can get off the island, but that's if those fuckers let us all get out of here unscathed."
"Yeah, I get the feeling that they're not going to be done that easy," she agreed grimly. "Your room or mine?"
He stared at her for a moment, as if convinced she was asking a very different kind of question, before it clicked in his head what she was actually referring to. She stared him out, enjoying the look of mild confusion on his face, and hey, it was nice to know that had she been suggesting the other thing he would exactly have shot her down in flames.
"Um, mine," he shook his head, as if dismissing all those kinds of thoughts from his head. "It can see right down over the hills, and someone said they were hiding out in the caves so we can see them if they pop out from the same place."
"And if they don't?" Iris asked, gesturing for him to lead on. Ian paused, and looked over his shoulder at her for a moment before continuing.
"We have to pray to God that someone else sees them before they get here."
And that’s how Iris came to be sitting in that hotel room, staring across at the man sitting opposite her. This wasn't exactly an ideal situation, well, she didn't have to be reminded of that. The most exciting thing that had happened to her in the last two years was seeing her daughter's soccer team win a county-wide trophy, and even then, that had had nothing to with her. This wasn't exactly the kind of excitement she was looking for, but still, she felt useful, outside of her daughter, for the first time in a while. And that was a really good feeling. It had been so long since she'd felt like anything other than just a mother, not just to herself, but to everyone else. She had this nagging feeling that that was part of the reason Dina had invited her along to this wedding, it was a way to guarantee some time away from home, a way to force Iris to get out of her comfort zone and do something for herself. Dina was always perceptive like that, even if her methods weren't always the most subtle.
"Ian," she began, breaking the silence between them for the first time since they had arrived up at the room. "Do you think…well, do you think everything's going to turn out okay?"
She knew it was a childish question, but she needed to hear from someone else that this was not as bad a situation as her senses were telling her it was. He turned to her, and plastered a reassuring but obviously fake smile on his face.
"Iris, I know this is really scary, but trust me, I've dealt with worse," he looked back out the window, and she furrowed her brow at him.
"What worse have you dealt with?"
"Before…before I was with this pack. There was another group of bear shifters I was associated with, and they weren't quite as clean-cut as these guys. We got into some shit. It's not worth talking about now."
"Well, if I'm stuck in a room with you for the foreseeable future, I think it's only fair that you tell me what you're capable of," she snapped, her words a little harsher than she had intended. She was just on edge, and knowing he had hidden something from her only exacerbated her emotions.
"It was just a dumb thing. A couple of years back, there was another pack, and they were moving in on our territory. So we dealt with them." He refused to make eye contact with her, pointedly avoiding her gaze.
"You fought them?" She prompted him.
"Yeah. No-one was badly hurt but it was…scary, seeing what shifters can do to each other. Seeing Win like that downstairs, it just reminded me…" he shook his head, as if trying to dismiss the thoughts from his brain.
"Is that why you didn't go out there to fight in the first place?" Iris nodded out over the hills. It had been odd-seeing pretty much everyone else run out into the storm as soon as they heard there was something wrong, while Ian stayed behind. It wasn't that she thought he was a coward-just that it was strange he didn't go out to fight with his pack.
"Yeah," he mumbled. "It never really, it scared me, seeing that much power, seeing the power I had when I didn't keep it in check."
"But that doesn't happen every time you shift, right?" She cocked her head at him curiously.
"I don't know," he admitted. " I haven't shifted since then."
"What? You said it was…?"
"Three years ago." He nodded, and Iris' mouth fell open.
"Isn't it bad for you? Not to shift for that long, I mean?"
"I don't think so, but sometimes it feels as if it's going to burst out of me when I least expect it," he shook his head. "It's….I just keep remembering how much I lost control, and the thought of that happening again really doesn't sit right with me."
"So what will you do if you have to fight them?" Iris demanded bluntly. If she was stuck with, she wanted to know at least that he could defend himself, let alone her.
"I'll try hand-to-hand, I guess? I don't even know if I can shift any more. It's been such a long time since I last…." His words trailed off, as if he was trying to dredge up distant memories. "I can barely remember what it feels like, you know?"
"Do the rest of them know you don't shift?" Iris pushed further. This was all so odd to her.
"I don't think they've ever noticed," he replied, "I mean, we go out shifting together once in a while, but I usually just let them split up off ahead of me and meet them back where we started. They just think I'm the most punctual bear in the world."
Jackson (BBW Secret Baby Bear Shifter Romance) (Secret Baby Bears Book 3) Page 57
