by K. R. Grace
I hugged her tightly against me, not wanting to let her go. When her stomach growled loudly, I laughed. “I think I need to feed you…now.”
“Yeah, maybe. But I’m in the mood for something sweet and fruity,” she buried her face in my chest like she was embarrassed. My heart melted a little more.
“There is this great place that serves Italian ice. Does that sound good?”
She pulled herself away from me and slid her hand through mine. “Lead the way, kind sir.”
“Anything for you, my lady.” I bowed as gallantly as I could. The giggles that bubbled from her as we made our way to the restaurant was totally worth the spectacle I probably made in front of hundreds of people.
Anything to make my girl happy.
I led her over to Rita’s. Her eyes lit up as soon as we stepped inside the place. That little pink tongue of hers stuck out as she practically drooled over the Italian ice on display. It took her ten minutes to decide what she wanted. The girl behind the counter was clearly irritated, but the second she seemed to try to rush Star, I shot a warning glare. The girl would back down and make herself busy elsewhere. Finally, after tasting every flavor they had, Star ordered a cherry chocolate misto while I got sugar-free mango peach Italian ice.
“Do you want to eat it in here or walk around?” I asked her.
Her shoulders lifted and she was about to give her autopilot response of, “I don’t care.” However, at the last second, she changed her mind and said, “Let’s walk.”
As we walked in circles around the square, Star was silent, but not for lack of conversation. Rather, she was too busy inhaling her dessert to come up for air, let alone talk. Once we were finished, I grabbed her cup and tossed it in the trash receptacle along with mine.
“Come on, let’s check out some of these places,” I motioned to the first little shop we came to. Inside, Star went straight to work modeling wacky hats and sunglasses for me, and I let her dress me up in scarves and hair clips.
When she pulled out her phone to take a selfie, I grumbled my discomfort. “I’m not taking a picture wearing a bright pink scarf and a red flower in my hair.”
She studied me for a second, gnawing on the inside of her cheek. Then she nodded. “You’re right. Those colors definitely don’t go together.”
She left the clip in my hair but replaced the pink scarf with a tan and blue zigzag patterned scarf she kept calling chevron patterned, but it didn’t look like any chevrons I’d ever seen.
“Star,” I sighed.
“Humor me wolf boy,” she rose up onto her toes and kissed me on the cheek before holding her cell phone out to snap the picture. Our heads naturally gravitated toward each other, and she gave a sassy grin, showing off the pink heart-shaped sunglasses and the large, floppy purple hat I was currently crushing. Just as she pressed the button, I made a petrified face. She looked at the picture and exploded with laughter.
“Come on, Drake. You can do better than that.”
“Alright, alright. Redo,” I conceded.
This time, when she went to take the picture, I grabbed her face and kissed her hard and fast. Her eyes sprung open the second I released her and tore off my girly getup.
“That’s…hmm. Not sure I can post that,” she muttered as she studied the picture.
“No one sees those pictures. Got that?” I warned. God, if the gang caught wind of them? I’d never hear the end of it.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. It’s for my own guilty pleasure,” she winked before returning the items to their proper places. Then, grabbing my hand, she dragged me out of the store.
As we browsed through the other shops, taking hundreds (at least it felt like hundreds) of pictures. We talked about her days on the track team, argued over which indie band was better (I said The Script, she said Mumford & Sons, which I countered with the fact that they’d become too mainstream to be considered indie), and talked about our favorite writers.
Star surprised me with her obsession with books. The girl loved her Russian and Irish writers. She was also a huge Samuel Beckett fan, which I didn’t expect. I pegged her for a Maya Angelo or Emily Dickenson groupie. When she claimed to be a huge lover of all things Poe, I had to draw the line.
“Poe is overrated,” I rolled my eyes.
“What!? No way! Poe is one of the best writers America ever produced.” She protested as she browsed a shelf of handmade greeting cards.
“Which is why American literature will never be as good as British literature. Poe had a standard MO with all his pieces. Sure, he changed it up a little bit here and there, but it was always the same. He was a pop fiction writer and usually too doped up to speak coherent sentences most of the time.”
“You’re right about British literature being better but wrong about Poe being a pop fiction writer. He delved into the corruption of mankind and was a master of depicting the deep pain and longing for death that comes with losing someone you love. His work is morbidly beautiful.” Star sighed as she leaned against my arm. I slid my arms around her waist, drawing her back up against my front. The second we made contact, my body relaxed.
“Poe and beautiful should never be used in the same sentence,” I chuckled. “Trust me.”
“You act like you knew him.”
And this was where I found a clever way to avoid the subject. Unfortunately, with her so close to me, my brain short circuited. So, I dumbly responded with, “I’d rather not say.”
“Oh, come on! You can’t do that to me!” She broke our connection to look at a set of Russian nesting doll measuring cups.
“Do what?” I feigned ignorance, albeit not very good. I wasn’t going to win an Oscar with this train-wreck performance.
“You can’t tell me you knew someone who was a literary legend and not give me the details. It’s like saying you were the only one who saw the worst car wreck in American history but refuse to give your testimony to the police.” She wrapped her arm around my waist and nestled closer to me as we walked around a display of scarves made from recycled plastic bottles.
“Maybe I had to be silent for a reason. Maybe I caused the accident and didn’t want to incriminate myself because my girlfriend would kill me.” I stopped to mindlessly stare at a display of redneck wine glasses, also known as plastic solo cups super glued to a thick wine glass stem. Did people really buy that shit?
“Okay, newsflash, Poe’s been dead for a pretty long time now. I think you’re in the clear on this one.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at her persistence. She reminded me of an excited little kid.
“Trust me on this, baby. The less you know the better.”
She was only silent for a few seconds before she switched the conversation.
“Have you ever been outside the country?”
Now I really felt like I was walking through a landmine. Even though her mind was pretty much an open book today, I still hadn’t been able to pick up on how she felt about the whole legend thing. I didn’t want to overwhelm her too much right out of the gate. But, if I ever had a chance in the fight for her heart, I had to tell as much of the truth as I was allowed whenever possible.
“Yes, I have.”
“Really? What for? Where did you go?”
I looked around at all the people walking by and knew we were in the wrong place for this discussion. Instead of answering, I grabbed her hand and led her out of the store. “We’d better go somewhere else for this conversation.”
Her frustrated huff definitely wasn’t subtle. I had to bite my cheek to keep from laughing. Once we were back to my Jeep, I helped her into her side before climbing in on mine. I drove us down the interstate for a while with no particular destination in mind. Finally, when I felt we’d put enough distance between us and Downtown, I started talking.
“After Helena died, I went on a quest to find death. It was more of the guilt talking rather than the heartbreak. If I’d really been grieving over her, death would’ve come easy.” I sighed
, knowing my words were going to illicit more questions from her. Part of me wished I’d written a handbook for all this stuff in the event Helena’s descendants came back. It would’ve made life so much easier now.
“If there was a war, I was in it. I put myself in harm’s way and walked away unscathed every time. I watched my friends, good men, die for a cause they never fully understood. I was labeled as a weapon of mass destruction long before the first atom bomb was dropped. All I had to do was forge my records and no one asked questions. I demanded to be placed in the toughest, most strenuous divisions and was given metals and honors I didn’t deserve.”
Here was the part that would probably freak her out. “I’ve had live grenades go off in my hands, survived being shot multiple times in the chest, and my submarine sank in the icy northern Atlantic Ocean surrounded by icebergs. War took me to a lot of different places, but I can’t say I ever had fun.”
I waited for a response. Star’s brain was completely static, like she was in shock or something. Finally, she asked softly, “How many wars have you been in?”
“Every battle the U.S. has ever been involved in, until Afghanistan.”
“Why’s that?”
“The age of capturing war on video made the risk of being discovered more dangerous. I got away with forging my records in Desert Storm because of the years separating it from Vietnam. The turnaround between Desert Storm and Afghanistan was too close. I could’ve easily been exposed if I crossed paths with the wrong people, like lifers who’d promoted to high-up positions since Desert Storm. Besides, I was sick of all the fighting. It’s hard to make friends with guys, only to have them blown to pieces right in front of my face.”
I want to hold his hand, but I don’t know how he’ll take it.
Her thought made me smile. Only Star would be worried about me after I’d dumped a load on her the size of Europe. I linked our fingers and rested our joined hands on my thigh.
“Were you on crutches because of some war injury?” She surprised me by asking.
“No,” I said slowly. I really didn’t want to go into full detail with her on this, but it was obvious she wasn’t going to let up until I gave her something. “Just because I can’t die doesn’t mean I can’t develop a physical deformity or have a medical problem.”
“So, do you have MS or something?”
I gripped my free hand on my steering wheel and tried not to let myself feel the uneasiness trying to settle in. “Wolf shifters can only survive on meat that is freshly killed, which means I need to eat my food as soon as I kill it. Store-bought meat makes us anemic. The longer I’m that way, the weaker my muscles become until I’m nothing but a skeletal form of my former self. I turn into something resembling a puppy destined to one day become a mastiff.” I smirked, letting her know I’d heard that particular thought run through her head a while back. The blush that flushed on her cheeks made me full-on smile.
“After I decided to leave the military life, I gave up hunting because a weak version of me wouldn’t be tempted to fight again if the call arose. It also helped me stay clear of pack drama. My position as Supreme Alpha, even without an actual pack to lead, makes me a threat to other Alphas. So, my debilitated state killed two birds with one stone.”
“What made you drop the charade?”
“It wasn’t a charade, Star. Once a Wolf shifter gets to that stage, he’s permanently crippled. The morning of the first day I met you, I woke up with full use of my legs.”
“Did I have something to do with your healing?” She began drawing circles on my arm, causing a harsh shiver to surge through me.
“My theory is that when you came into town, my body healed itself because I’m destined to protect you. I couldn’t do that without my muscles fully functioning.”
“Why do you need to protect me?”
“Because there are people out there who want to put an end to the shifters. They believe the solution is to kill us. They’ve been waiting a long time for this day to come.”
Star shivered against me. I lifted our joined hands and kissed hers. “Don’t worry, I’m all better now.”
“Was that why you were gone so much?”
“Partly. Some of it was that I had to develop my game plan on how to deal with whatever comes our way. The other, more urgent reason for being gone was my desperate need for a hunting spree and the only place I could hunt without getting into trouble is deep in the heart of the mountains.”
“So, what do you eat?”
“Mostly deer and mountain lion and the occasional bear. I have to make sure before I attack that it’s not a shifter.”
“How can you tell?”
“We all put off a particular smell that alerts others of who we are. Regular animals don’t put off any kind of special smell. If it smells like plain animal, it’s safe to kill.”
“Weird,” Star muttered.
So, Drake is a guy who can turn into a wolf. He’s over three centuries old. Yikes! Talk about robbing the cradle. He’s fought in a bunch of wars. Wow! He made himself crippled…and then I show up and “It’s a miracle!” There are people on this earth who can live forever. How is that even possible? Can they bottle that somehow? I’m the key to all this craziness, which I’ll think about that later. Holy crap! There are people who want to kill me. Definitely doesn’t give me warm, fuzzy feelings to think on that too much. I’m sleeping with a baseball bat by my bed from now on. Yeah, normal everyday teen drama…my butt!
I couldn’t hold back a chuckle. As if a baseball bat would do any damage to a shifter who wanted her dead.
Star turned and slugged me hard…for a mortal girl. “Stay out of my head, wolf boy.”
I tilted my head back and outright laughed at her sweet insult. “I can’t, babe. Your mind is far too entertaining.” No reason to tell her again that I couldn’t keep out of her head if I tried. “A baseball bat won’t help you in this case. But, I have you under constant protection. You’re safe.”
“You can’t do that, Drake. You’ll be no help to me if you’re sleep-deprived.”
“I have some friends who take shifts.”
Star frowned as she turned to study me. I fought hard to keep my eyes trained on the road. Her green orbs were too mesmerizing. “I thought you said you were a loner.”
“Being a lone Wolf just means I don’t affiliate with a Wolf pack. It doesn’t mean I lack friends or a pack I can turn to if need be.”
“Do you really trust these friends? Things didn’t look so secure to me when I was at your house yesterday.”
I sighed as I turned off the exit that would take us to my house. “I trust everyone on my security detail. I have a pack promise you will be safe.”
“I didn’t feel too safe.”
“They were grieving, Star. They couldn’t hurt you unless they had my permission, which will never happen.”
“Are all your friends wolves? Wolf shifters, I mean.” Star wiggled in her seat, and her skirt moved high up on her thighs. It took everything in me to keep my eyes on the road.
“Not exactly.”
She swatted my arm. “Don’t get evasive on me now. Spill!”
I chuckled. “You’re adorable.”
“Puppies, kittens, and babies are adorable.” She rolled her eyes.
Instead of giving her a comeback, I answered her question. “Most are Wolves. But, my closest friends are a coyote, a skunk, a raccoon, and a squirrel.”
“You can’t be serious! What do they do besides spray you, give you rabies, eat your pet cat, or horde nuts?” Star giggled.
“A skunk shifter’s spray can melt the flesh off your bones. A Raccoon’s bite puts you into a vegetative state from head to toe. Coyotes are master manipulators and can disorient an enemy long enough to make death feel beautiful. A squirrel shifter is really rare. Her fighting abilities can’t be matched by anyone. Once a Squirrel is angry, she will fight until the death. She’s fast as lightning, and her bite is deadly.”
“
Remind me to never piss your friends off,” Star muttered under her breath.
“As long as you aren’t permanently evil and refrain from trying to wage war against the shifters, you’re safe. If you had my mark of the Supreme Alpha on you, you’d be safe for life.”
“How does that happen?”
Just thinking about the ceremony made me burn in places I had no business burning at the moment. I cleared my throat, begging my vocal cords not to give out on me. “It’s something that happens when the Supreme Alpha consummates with his mate.”
“Oh.”
Star’s mind flashed to a dimly lit room. Heavy panting bounced off the walls as two sweaty figures came into focus. It took me a second to realize the couple clinging to each other was Star and I. Her nails dug into my bare back as she cried out. It took my addled brain another few seconds to realize she was having a fantasy of us together.
Oh, shit!
The Jeep swerved off the road, jerking me back to reality. I quickly regained control of the wheel, but my body had definitely gone haywire. I struggled to regulate my quick, shallow breaths, but my mind kept flashing to her fantasy.
I glanced at Star in my peripheral to see her face beet red. She knew I’d seen her thoughts. The tension in the Jeep grew in mammoth proportions as I continued to drive, desperately trying to get my body to stand down.
“So, um, how were shifters created?” Star squeaked out a diversion.
“The Creator,” I sighed, gladly taking her offer. “We sort of started out as a form of angels on earth. He gave us the ability to turn into animals so humans wouldn’t be able to detect who we were. When the serpent broke rank and turned evil, causing Adam and Even to be thrown out of Eden, all the shifters were punished. We became morphing humans instead of morphing angels, and we were given a type of immortality.”
“What does that mean?”
“If we follow the rules and protect what we were created to protect, we can decide when it’s our time to go. We have to report to Destiny, or someone with the authority to speak to her, who in turn delivers the request to the Creator. If He thinks we’ve served our purpose, we can go to Heaven. If He still has plans for us on earth, He denies the request.”
