Shifter Nation- East Coast Bears Collection

by Meg Ripley

  Grace’s eyes widened and she sat up. “She does?”

  I held up the vial. “This is an antidote. If Britt is right, it should bring back your memory quickly.”

  She reached for the vial, but I pulled it back.

  “I should warn you, though. She also said it would probably make you sick to your stomach. We should get a trash can or something for you to throw up in.”

  Grace pointed to a can a few feet away. “I don’t care. If it works, I’ll throw up all night.”

  I unscrewed the top and handed it to her. “Drink it slowly.”

  She didn’t listen, pouring the vial down her throat and swallowing the contents in one gulp. She sat there staring at me and we both seemed to be holding our breath. Moments later, her eyes went wide and she covered her mouth with her hand. I shoved the trash can right under her chin just in time.

  I did my best to help hold her hair back and soothe her. When she seemed to be finished, I got her a glass of water and sat as she drank it, then wanted more.

  I didn’t want to keep asking if she remembered anything, but it was like torture to wait. After a few minutes of us staring at each other, I showed her the other things I’d brought her. She ate some of the crackers gratefully and said it helped her stomach feel better. A little while later, she took a bite of the peanut butter pie.

  “This is so good,” she mumbled with a full mouth. “You have to have some.”

  “Oh no, it’s all for you.”

  “Wait a minute.” She pointed the fork at me and narrowed her eyes. “We’ve had this before.”

  I tried not to get too excited, but my heart jumped.

  “At Mason’s,” she continued. “We’ve had this before!”

  I grinned and tried to contain myself. I wanted to jump for joy, though.

  “Is that right?” she asked.

  “Almost. Close enough, though.”

  “No, no. Tell me what it was, so I know. I don’t want to remember things wrong.”

  “Well, we did have this before, on our first date. But you were with Mason. The place was called Antonio’s.”

  Her face reddened. “You’re Mason.”

  I nodded.

  She slapped her hand over her face. “I’m sorry. I should know that. I knew something wasn’t right about Roman, but I couldn’t remember what.”

  “Those are codes names.”

  “That I came up with because we’re like Romeo and Juliet and our families don’t want us together.” She gasped. “But we’re going to be anyway, and we’re going to end the feud.”

  I didn’t say anything. It was better to sit back and watch her come to life, come back to me, and just let it happen. I watched her excitement as she recalled things and blurted them out.

  “Oh, that jerk, Adam. Do you know he came here and tried to tell me that he and I were dating? I’m so glad you came that first night, because that’s how I knew he was lying. I knew not to trust him, even if he is my clan’s leader. I think the title of Alpha goes to his head.” She narrowed her eyes. “He did this.”

  “What?” My hands balled into fists. “Adam did this to you?”

  “Not directly; I knew them, though. It was three crocs who attacked me. They made me drink something, then they started talking to me. Saying horrible things about you. They tried to brainwash me, and they tried to make me forget you.”

  “Tell me everything you can think of.”

  “You’re a Law Enforcement Ranger.” It wasn’t a question; she knew it was true now. “Can you take this as an official statement so I can press charges?”

  “Yes.” I took out a notepad that I had put in the bag of things I brought. “Write down what happened in as much detail as possible.”

  13

  Mason

  I rushed to the station with Grace’s statement clutched tightly in my hand. Finally, we had something concrete to go on. I had to show it to my chief to get a warrant for the arrest of these assholes. I went into his office and told him what had happened.

  As he read over the statement, he sighed. “This is great, but it’s not enough.”

  “What do you mean? Since when is the victim’s statement not enough?”

  “When the victim has amnesia and is highly susceptible to suggestion. You did this without any witnesses; it’ll never hold up in court. I can’t rightly issue a warrant. And I don’t think you’d want to take the chance of them getting off on a technicality and losing the case forever.”

  No, I certainly didn’t want that; I wanted them to pay. But I couldn’t hide my anger. I pounded my fist on his desk.

  “I know,” he said. “It sucks. But we have to do this right if we’re going to nail them. Find more evidence.”

  I snatched up the statement and went to my desk. I sat there for an hour, drumming my fingers on my chair, trying to think of ways to get something—anything—that would help. Could I try to track the herb somehow? Get a secret confession through Grace? I had to get some sleep, so I made myself go home and took some medicine to knock myself out. When I woke, I had a new idea.

  Owen had talked to the conclave a dozen times. Each time a new incident came up with the crocs, we went to them. They were supposed to be a group of representatives from all clans of all species who would oversee and make rulings on shifter crimes and help keep the peace. They hadn’t been too much help to us, at least from what Owen said.

  I trusted Owen. He was our Alpha and had always been a fabulous leader. But he wasn’t a cop. If the conclave was some sort of law-keeping organization, then maybe I could do more than he could. Maybe he somehow didn’t get across just how bad things had been with the crocs.

  I hated to do it, but I had no choice. If I was going to talk to them, I had to do it behind Owen’s back. As his third in command, it wasn’t my place to make that call. But I didn’t think I had much of a choice. He felt there was enough peace. Each incident had been dealt with at the time, and the latest one with Grace would be dealt with, too. But as a whole, it was all too much to not do something more.

  I made the call and finally got the right person on the line. After I took the time to explain the full situation—all that had happened over the years—I told him that we wanted to find a way to have peace between the clans once and for all.

  He thought for a moment, then responded. “Most of the time, when there is an ongoing feud, it has to do with lack of representation. You said there are no crocs working at the park except for this new Ranger, Grace, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how about your local conclave chapter?”

  Our what? “We don’t have one. I didn’t know we could do that.”

  “It’s not a common thing to have. Most times, clans get along, but if this has been going on for all these years and you truly want to stop it, perhaps you should assemble one, giving the crocs equal representation. If the territory is causing so much of the issue, give the crocs a reservation, a part of the land that is only theirs, that no other shifters can enter without their permission and that no other shifters have a say over. Put the crocs in shared leadership with the bears and panthers and whatever other species you have down there in the Everglades. Have regular meetings and votes on what happens in the area.”

  “So, you’re saying democracy is the way to answer all these croc attacks.”

  “That or war. Which, by the way, we would not condone or support in any way. The conclave does not believe—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. No shifter on shifter killings.”

  “Peace is always better in the end. Look at the humans and their wars. They haven’t achieved much, have they?”

  “No, but the humans in this country also don’t stand by and let violence go on unpunished. Don’t you believe in justice?”

  “Sure. But our definitions of justice are likely very different.”

  I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere with that guy, so I decided to wrap up the call. “Well, thank you for your input. I a
ppreciate your suggestion.” I wondered if he could even pick up on my sarcasm.

  I hung up more pissed off than I’d been before. Give them a section of the park? So, they’d gone around attacked different species, and we were going to answer that by giving them a gift? And then by letting them make decisions and have a say over what happens in the ‘Glades? When they couldn’t manage to uphold the rules we already had in place? The rules we’ve had for decades?

  What an idiot. No wonder Owen didn’t see a reason to run to the conclave. They were useless, as far as I was concerned. As the day went on, though, I started to think differently about his suggestions. Maybe I was just angry over the thing with Grace and that was affecting my feelings about it all. I texted Owen and Ezra and asked for a meet up, just the three of us.

  After work, we went to the small playground near Owen’s house. His kids ran around, playing on the slide and swings with Conner’s niece.

  I told them what I had done. I expected Owen—and maybe Ezra—to be mad about my going over their heads and talking to the conclave myself.

  Instead Owen said, “Well, now you see what I’ve been dealing with.”

  I explained what they’d said and Ezra had a similar response to mine.

  “Reward them for their crime sprees? Yeah, okay, great plan, dude.” He shook his head.

  “That’s what I thought,” I agreed, “but I didn’t know if it was just my anger getting in the way.”

  Owen was quiet for a moment, looking off into the distance toward where the kids were. “Well…”

  We both turned to him.

  “I obviously don’t want to just give them part of the park and a bunch of control when they haven’t handled their current business well at all.” He scratched his chin for a moment. “But there is one thing that makes some sense. The rules we have now? The crocs weren’t here when all that was decided; they don’t have a say in what happens in the ‘Glades. We’ve been all thinking they shouldn’t because of what they’ve done, but maybe they’ve done all this because they don’t have a say. Maybe we could have some sort of meeting with the clans and try to come to a resolution. Some kind of treaty?”

  “You think that would work?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but if finding peace is our goal, I don’t know where else to start. With you and Grace together, maybe you’d be the perfect ones to find a compromise for both sides.”

  “Or it’ll break you up and carry the battle on,” Ezra added.

  “I don’t think that would happen. She’s not happy with her own clan right now, anyhow.”

  “Then maybe it could work,” Owen said. “I’d be willing to try.”

  Grace was released from the hospital once her memory had ‘miraculously’ returned. I’d put in an order to have a full legal workup done to trace any amount of the herb that might still be in her blood. I had given her one of my guns to make sure she was protected. The pepper spray I’d given her before hadn’t even been on her at the time of the attack, but from that point on, I made sure she carried it everywhere she went. She also wrote herself a letter in case something like that happened again.

  She was as pissed as I’d been with the legal system and decided to hire a lawyer and find a doctor to clear her and confirm that her memory was perfectly intact. She was thrilled about a possible meeting between the clans, but dreaded the thought of returning home. I suggested staying at my place, of course, but she declined. She did, however, take me up on my offer to pay for a hotel. She wasn’t ready to be at home.

  Now, we just had to move forward with our plan.

  14

  Grace

  “Grace, I wish you would just come home and stop this nonsense,” my mother spat in her voicemail message.

  They hadn’t liked it when I said I was going to stay at a hotel for a while, but I couldn’t trust them. The way the attack happened, that the crocs who did it seemed to know exactly where I was and that I was alone all seemed too obvious. I hated to think it, but they might have been in on it themselves. Even if they weren’t, I couldn’t have been at home; it was just too stressful. Aside from that, I wanted the freedom to be with Mason.

  I responded to her voicemail with a text. Make sure you and Dad are at the meeting tonight. A lot will be explained there.

  We’ll see you there, she responded.

  Perfect. Even if they hadn’t had any part in my attack, they needed to hear the truth. They needed to know whose side they were taking.

  When the time for the monthly clan meeting came, I drove over there feeling nervous, but determined. I had several things to cover and hadn’t talked to Adam beforehand to make sure I could have time at the meeting. I would have to rush in and just take over.

  I got there as people were still arriving. I took a seat and made it seem like I was just there for the meeting like everyone else, and when the time came to start, Adam walked to the microphone at the front of the room.

  He said his usual greeting. “Hello, my fellow crocs. Welcome and thank you for coming.”

  I jumped up from my seat near the front. He gave me a confused look as I walked up to him.

  I said quietly to him, “I have a few words to say, if that’s okay?”

  He smiled and nodded, then took a step back. Idiot probably thought I was going to thank him or some crap.

  “As you all probably have heard by now, I was recently attacked and my memory was temporarily lost. I’ve now made a full recovery, and as it turns out, I know exactly who attacked me.” I pointed to the three crocs in the crowd and called them out. “These three men followed me home, jumped me as I got out of my car, and dragged me into the woods. They bound and gagged me, and then forced me to drink the liquid that erased my memory. They tried to confuse me and turn me against the bears. They tried to keep me quiet when I found out the truth. Luckily, my boyfriend knows someone who was able to make me an antidote to restore my memory.”

  I let that sink in for a moment. There was a lot of murmuring and when I saw my parents, they looked confused and angry.

  Adam stepped up and covered the mic with his hand. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Adam doesn’t want you all to know about things like this,” I shouted to the crowd. “Right now, he’s trying to stop me from telling you the truth. I’m in love with a bear shifter and ever since Adam found out, he’s been trying to break us up. He told my family, who threatened to kick me out of the house. He said my entire family was being watched and he put me on probation with the understanding that I could be removed from the clan and so could my family. Does this break that probation?”

  I gave Adam a challenging look. He took his hand off the mic. “Grace has been under a lot of stress lately. We all need to understand what she’s been through and how difficult it must be for her. I know that you’re still having some confusion, so maybe things aren’t as you think they are.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “I have zero confusion. The problem all these years hasn’t been the bears, like we’ve been told. We’ve been lied to and led astray, made to think it’s their fault and that they’re evil. But that’s not the case at all.”

  I took the map from my pocket; the one that Mason and I had made that was a duplicate of the one Adam had stolen. “Adam showed me this map and tried to say it was evidence of the bears’ planned attack on us. It looks like that, doesn’t it?”

  People in the crowd agreed and seemed to grow more concerned and agitated.

  I continued, “But the truth is, these areas marked are attacks that have already happened. Attacks that crocs made on different species. Panthers, bears, even sea turtles, who aren’t even shifters! These facts have been covered up and the truth has been altered.”

  “These are all lies,” Adam said, trying to take the map from me. “I know for a fact that the bears are planning an attack.”

  “What proof do you have? I know the bears. Not only do I work with two of them, I’m in love with one of them. They are the kinde
st people I’ve ever met. Unlike a few members of my own clan, who attacked me and tried to brain wash me.”

  “I think you’ve been brain washed by them,” Adam seethed. “We’ve seen what the bears are capable of. How many of these incidents involved the bears killing a croc? Somehow, no other species has killed crocs like they have.”

  “Right, so that’s why I was attacked to make me keep quiet? Because the bears are so innocent?”

  “I don’t know, Grace. I don’t see an arrest being made. If you’re so sure you know who it was, why are they sitting here and not behind bars?”

  “We’re working on it,” I pointed out. I should have known Adam was going to try to defend himself and make the bears the looks bad, but I didn’t have a good answer for that question. It was frustrating that they hadn’t been arrested.

  The crowd started to turn on me. Questions were being shouted at the two of us from both sides.

  “Why are crocs doing so many of these attacks?” someone asked.

  “Where are the maps of all the other species’ attacks? I know those happen, too!”

  “How do we know Grace isn’t the one lying? She’s the one that’s a traitor!”

  I stepped back up to the mic and yelled to be heard over the chaos. “I know you have questions, and that’s understandable. But the bears want peace. They want the attacks to stop. There will be a meeting between the bears and any crocs that want to come.”

  I turned to Adam and spoke so only he could hear. “Owen, the bears’ leader, wants you to come to the meeting to talk. He wants peace and he hopes an agreement can be made to achieve that peace. I’ll make sure everyone knows if you’re not there, if you don’t attempt to make peace with the bears once and for all.”