Shifters on Fire: A BBW Shifter Romance Boxed Set (59 page)

“What happened to her?”

His face closed down. Jaw turning tight and eyes hard. She nudged him with her elbow. “Hey, no fair. I shared the most humiliating experience of my entire life. You owe me.”

He sighed and ran a hand over his short hair. Charlie admired the way his muscles flexed and relaxed as he did so.

“My mom met my father and fell for him pretty quick. Dad kept away at first. Mom wasn’t a shifter. She also wasn’t Canadian but she was staying there for a couple of years with her aunt. This was the twenties, and Mom loved being a young woman in a new land, getting to experience things women of her class and age rarely did. They’d been traveling, Mom and her aunt, and visited western Canada. My mom met Dad in a bar one night. She told me once how she hadn’t seen a man like him before. He was tall, broad, and tan, with thick hair and these perfect, white teeth. He screamed health and vitality to her, at a time when many people looked kind of bad. As far as Dad was concerned, Mom only needed to look his way and his heart melted. She had these huge, violet eyes, and they showed each single emotion she felt. Dad fell for her right off the bat, but he knew doing anything about it would be a bad idea. But Mom pushed. And so, in the end, he gave in and they ended up in bed together.

“Dad asked Mom to be his mate and she agreed. They conceived me shortly after, but Mom still hadn’t let Dad turn her.”

“Wait. What? Turn her?” She didn’t understand.

“When we mate with a human, in order for it to be truly successful, the human needs to be turned. Into one of us.”

The blood drained out of her upper body, leaving her light-headed and suddenly oh-so-cold. Brenin went on talking, seemingly unaware of her shock.

“I don’t get why Mom wouldn’t turn. We live a long life compared to humans. We’re strong. Fast. We don’t suffer disease. What’s not to like? But Mom always insisted she’d been born human under the eyes of God and would die the same way.” He sighed and scrubbed at his jaw.

“It meant I only had a 50 percent chance of being able to shift into my bear. It also meant Dad watched Mom age and die. Right before his eyes, she withered away, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Now, he’s all alone in the world, and it’s a fucking sad thing to see.”

She understood him then. His fear of this thing between them made perfect sense. If things progressed between them and she faced her own crunch time, would she turn? Maybe. Or maybe she’d let him down. Decide to remain human. In this moment, she couldn’t say. Being strong and disease-free sounded amazing. But being bonded to one person for a long, long time scared her to death. Her own parents’ crappy marriage made her all too aware of how ending up with the wrong person caused a lifetime of pain and regret. But the
idea
of her and Bren appealed. She didn’t particularly have much in her life. Her mum loved her but recently had become terribly involved in the local women’s group, meaning she had little time for Charlie. Her dad moved away years ago. Her brother didn’t live nearby anymore, and they saw him a couple of times a year. She had a few work friends, but they were more acquaintances than anything else. And her job was okay. Interesting enough, but not amazingly so. Her life came in various shades of beige. Not bad, but not good either. What would life with Bren be like?

Chapter Eight

Bren spent the next two days getting more and more wound up. Despite using a condom, having sex with Charlie pushed him closer to her. Made his bear crazy about the damn woman. His plan to drive her out of their home became delayed by more blasted snow.

He decided, if she couldn’t leave, then he’d do the next best thing and ignore her. Avoid her as much as possible. So he’d hit the gym twice a day, needing the workout to stop him from marching into her room and taking her all over again. The intense exercise took hours and provided a handy excuse to avoid Charlie and the rest of the clan.

He’d also spent time with Justin in one of the big barns by the house, watching with fascination as Justin created a ring out of iron for Charlotte, to protect her from the fae.

He’d overheard her tell Aiyana she still experienced the voices. The two women had been cooking up a storm in the kitchen with Eric.

Charlotte explained how the good ones were urging her to give things a go with him, but the bad ones, the dark fae, whispered at her to leave.

Eric and Aiyana had moved around one another seamlessly, every now and again touching an arm or a shoulder. Their love shining out from each gesture and each look. He noticed Charlotte taking stock of their bond and saw her own eyes soften at one point when they kissed. Unsure how he felt about any of it, he’d taken the coward’s option and crept down the hall away from the bustling kitchen.

The evening meals consisted of strained conversation, many darted glances among his clan, and Charlie doing her best to act cheery and upbeat. Already half lost in her, Bren sensed her true emotions. Confusion. Anxiety. A fair bit of anger, which he assumed she held for him. Not that he blamed her. What sort of coward ran away from their problems?
He did
, came the unhappy answer.

He made his way to the living room, where he sat and scowled at the TV, dreading another uncomfortable meal where he suffered the torment of being in the same room with Charlie and not holding her. Not touching her.

“Guess what?” Kyle came into the room.

“What?” he grunted.

“Snow’s stopped.”

He hoisted himself up and strolled over to the window. Light gray skies greeted him, but not one drop of snow fell.

“Went out to see to the horses a bit ago, and it feels warm out there compared to yesterday. Maybe if it melts all day, you can get her out of here by tonight. If you still want to, of course.”

“It’s not a case of wanting,” he ground out. “You know as much. It’s about what is best for both of us. Me and her.”

“You’ll be like a bear with a sore head with her gone. Maybe more so than when you met and she tried to bash your bear brains in with a rock,” Kyle quipped.

“Ha-bloody-ha.”

He decided to hit the gym for one more workout and see if, by the time he was done, they’d be able to get the truck out.

Thirty minutes into a punishing set, Aiyana came through the door, a deep divot between her brows telegraphing her worry.

“You seen Charlie?” she asked

“No. I thought she was with you guys. Why?”

“Can’t find her anywhere.”

Brenin stopped lifting and set the weights back down. He calmed his mind, shut down the constant stream of thought from his human side, and let his bear take over. He scented the air, listened, and opened himself to the deep sixth sense bears shared with those they bonded with. Nothing. Absolutely nada.

A nasty sliver of unease wormed its way through his body.

“Come on.” He jumped up from the bench and out of the gym, Aiyana hot on his heels. By the time he reached the long corridor, he’d broken into a jog.

He headed for the porch and grabbed a jacket. Pausing for a moment, hand on the door handle, he tossed his head toward the stairs. “Take another check upstairs. I’m going out to see if she’s in the barn with the horses or hanging out with Justin.”

Ten minutes later, Bren came back to the house empty-handed. He opened the door and stomped the snow off his boots against the step. Aiyana rushed out of the kitchen.

“She’s nowhere, Bren. I’ve looked all over and so has Kyle.”

The usual smug, piss-taking expression Kyle had worn since Bren became leader had been replaced by a worried frown.

“Fuck!” He hit the wall, and something huge washed over him. A tidal wave of grief.

He’d imagined that by keeping away after his tactical error of getting horizontal with Charlie, he’d avoid any attachment. More fool him.

He still didn’t plan on letting her stay, but he needed to know she’d be back home, safe. Needed to picture her out there in the world somewhere, living her life.

This is your fault. You pushed her away and now we will always live with the knowledge we failed our mate.
His bear pulled no punches in the stark message it gave him.

“She’s not our damned mate,” he snarled aloud.

Kyle raised his eyebrows, and for a moment, his usual snarky self returned. “Jeez, he’s arguing with his own bear. Not long now before he ends up losing his mind altogether.” He rolled his eyes at Aiyana, but she smacked his arm and turned to Bren.

“Do you sense her?”

“Now, no. But normally, yes.” Despite locking himself in his room or the gym for the last two days, he’d been aware of her presence in the house. An emotional splinter digging under his psychic skin. He hadn’t sensed her for a couple of hours, he realized with a sickening jolt.

“She’s been gone awhile.”

“I hope to hell she didn’t try to hike out of here,” Aiyana said.

He rushed to the porch and checked the coats and boots. “Doesn’t look like she took anything. She knows her jacket is useless in this weather, and I don’t see her running off without a proper coat.”

“Come on.” Kyle clapped him on the back. “Let’s shift. Go out there and see if we can track her down.”

He nodded. Yeah. Time to let his bear out and hope to God the damn thing didn’t take over and refuse to let him be in charge again.

“I’m coming, too.” Aiyana started to shuck off her clothes.

“No, stay here in case she comes back. I’ll grab Eric and Justin to come with.”

“Bren, don’t be obtuse. You know I’m the best tracker in our clan.”

She spoke the truth. How a turned bear ended up with the best nose of any of them was a mystery, but she did. He grunted his assent and tore his own clothes off.

“We’ll stop by the barn and let the others know what we’re doing.” Kyle kicked off his underwear and ran out the door, giving a holler as his feet hit the snow. He dropped onto all fours and a bear appeared in his place.

Not as big as Brenin but way grizzlier in appearance, Kyle made a frightful sight.

Bren kicked his own remaining clothing off and joined Kyle out in the snow. The frigid air hit his naked body, stealing his breath. A moment later, though, he stood as his bear and his thick fur protected him from the elements.

Once Aiyana joined them, the three trooped into the barn. Kyle flashed back to human form and told the guys what they were doing. Justin elected to join them, and Eric said he’d man the home front in case Charlotte showed up back at the house.

Out in the snowy fields, Aiyana and the others put their noses down and scented the ground, every so often stopping and snorting the air too. Bren concentrated more on the mental link between him and the female. He waited to see if at any point the familiar, pain in his butt, splinter in his side feelings made themselves known.

His bear paced back and forth, hating the slow progress but knowing they needed to be thorough. After about an hour of walking over by the eastern edge of their land, Bren finally sensed something.

Charlie!
Faint as a whisper, less a splinter and more a mournful echo, but it tasted of her.

He growled low to the others to catch their attention and indicated with his snout the direction to head.

They began to run, and once they reached the boundary of the fence, Bren simply crashed right through it. They’d fix it later.

Five minutes later, they reached a spot in the woods where the trees backed up against a high wall. Bren sensed Charlie here, in this spot, but no sign of her remained.

He raised himself up on his back legs and crashed his huge paws into the ground in frustration, letting out a massive roar. Where had his girl gone?

Chapter Nine

Charlotte didn’t know how she’d ended up here. She’d been with the bear shifters, she remembered as much, and tried to cling on to the memory. Every now and then, a moment of clarity would hit her, sun shining through the cloud of her confusion. It never lasted. Most of the time she found herself confused and scared. Her head hurt all the time, and a deep, aching fatigue wouldn’t let her go. She’d been called outside the door of Bren’s home, into the snow and cold, but by whom? And why did she go? As she tried to focus on the moment, it skittered away out of her grasp.

The memories of her mum, her colleagues, and the bear shifters she’d met began to flicker, tentative flames about to go out.

She stared out of the window across the snow-covered lawn and blinked.  What had she been thinking about? She tried to remember, but it had gone, dancing away out of reach, like insects buzzing on a summer breeze. She sighed and looked around the sumptuous room. Somehow, she knew the house like the back of her hand. She ought to, the women she lived with told her. They said she’d lived here for years.

What had she been thinking about, damn it? Whenever she tried to focus on all the things nagging at the corner of her mind, they slipped away. They taunted her thoughts, important things lurking at the edge of her consciousness, only to dance out of reach as soon as she reached for them.

Her home was so beautiful. She and the others who lived here were lucky indeed. The three young women she shared the immense dwelling with walked into the massive dining room, interrupting her thoughts.

One brunette, one blonde, and one redhead. They all looked like goddesses. Such curves and thick waves of hair. All of them possessed smiles to break any man’s heart. Where were the men? Again, she tried to focus on this particular conundrum, but it eluded her. A faint memory of a big, handsome man teased her, but she couldn’t quite picture him. Every time she tried, his face went out of focus. Something about him made her long for some other life, some other time.

“Stop worrying,” the redhead said. She blew some sort of scented dust from the palm of her hand at Charlotte and smiled. The memory of the handsome man vanished.

Charlotte sighed and focused her attention on the table groaning with mouthwatering food. Sweets of all kinds decorated its gleaming surface. Turkish delight sat frosted in delicate silver bowls. Marshmallow trees stood sentry at either end of the table. Chocolates of so many varieties jostled for space on long, silver platters.

The drinks matched the food in their decadence. Fresh lemonade, iced teas, champagne, and rich red wines tempted her. Perhaps a drink? She needed something to calm her restless mind. Somehow, she didn’t belong here. Despite these women telling her she did. Despite having no solid memories of anywhere else, Charlie didn’t belong here. The thought poked at her, niggling away like a bad tooth. The more she focused on it, the more unreal everything seemed.

The table rippled as she stared at it. One moment, the feast to end all feasts displayed itself before her. The next, rotten apples, hard, crusty bread, and some sort of foul-smelling ale replaced the sumptuous delights.

“Oh, darling. Stop your musings.” Cassandra, the blonde, clapped her lovely hands together, shaking the moment from Charlie and bringing the room back into focus. “Let us eat, my dear. And drink. Have some more champagne. It is your favorite, after all.”

She accepted the glass thrust her way and took a delicate sip.

“More, my dear. Drink it all down. It’s a wonderful aperitif.”

Some faint but insistent instinct told Charlie not to drink the champagne. She’d been chugging the stuff back for what seemed a lifetime, and it served to make her fogginess worse. Along with the dust these women kept blowing over her. Instead, she pretended to swallow more. And why pretend to these dear females? Her…sisters? No, not sisters, they weren’t related. Close friends? Oh, here she went again with her flighty memories. Who were they again?

The ground shook beneath her, snapping her out of her head, and Cassandra let out a dismayed cry of surprise. A huge roar filled the room. Oh, the sound. So melancholy and filled with regret. It made tears sting her eyes.

“Make it stop,” shrieked Clarissa, the redhead. Or was it Claire? She forgot yet again.

The roar only intensified, and the ground shook once more. Suddenly, the room splintered right down the middle. One half remained a sumptuous banquet hall, but the other half transformed into a tired old room full of decay and mold.

The women next to her lost their beauty, their hair turning dull, pretty faces becoming hard, angry, and bitter. They were all hard lines and sharp angles with beady little eyes full of mischief. Not the good sort of mischief either but the bad kind. Evil, even.

Escape. Get away
. An inner voice made itself known above the fog and confusion. She needed to run, but where?

“Charlotte!” a voice called out her name. Deep, gruff, and male. She recognized it.

“Brenin,” she shouted, unaware of how she knew his name. “I’m trapped.”

“You’re not, honey. Not in reality. Their magic traps you.” A woman’s familiar voice reached her.

Aiyana
. She knew these people. Really knew them, unlike the three women moving toward her with determination in their steely stares. The bear shifters! She almost cried out with joy.

“This isn’t real.” She stomped her foot and then picked up a glass pitcher and threw it at the women with a yell.

The very air around her shattered, and the women gave piercing screams as the illusion disappeared.

Cold. Freezing cold. She stood in the middle of the woods, snow all around her.

What the hell? Disoriented and dizzy, she tried to stay upright. Like a freight train, her memories rushed at her headlong, filling her mind with all she knew before dark magic took it away. Her head pounded and her heart fluttered high in her throat. Nausea overwhelmed her as she tried to process it all.

“Charlie. Thank God.” Brenin ran to her and enveloped her in his big arms. His big,
naked
arms.

“Erm, you’re naked.” She laughed, but it sounded more like a sob. Great, now she seemed to be turning hysterical.

“I’m going to change into my bear and get you home before you freeze. Are you okay, honey?”

She nodded. Not sure if she really was but wanting the hell out of there.

“Good girl. Get on my back when I change into bear form, and we’ll head back.”

A bear shifter. Yes, she remembered it all now. And those women must have been the fairies the shifters had warned her of.

“You ready?” Bren looked at her.

“I’ll fall off.” She didn’t fancy riding a grizzly bear. Not even Bren’s bear.

“Nah, you won’t. Cling on tight to my ruff and don’t let go. But we have to move, baby. The dark fairies had you in their power, and the longer we linger, the more danger there is.”

Justin spat something out of his mouth. She avoided looking at his nudity as he handed it over. “This will help protect you,” he said.

A ring. She turned the dark iron ring over and tried to slide it onto her middle finger, but it wouldn’t go over the knuckle.

“Ring finger. I made it to fit your ring finger. I based it on the ring you wear on your right hand. You’d left it on the counter in Bren’s bathroom, so I borrowed it.” He gave a sheepish grin. “Sorry about the whole carrying it in my mouth thing, too, but I didn’t have much choice in bear form.”

She wore her grandma’s ring on her right hand, so she put the iron ring on her left-hand ring finger and studiously avoided Bren’s heated gaze.

“Get ready to climb up and hold on.” Bren gave a nod to the others, and they all changed quick as a flash into their bears.

Bren lay down to make it easy for her to climb on his back. When he stood, she made sure her fingers fisted tightly in his thick coat of fur.

They ran through the snowy landscape, and it proved magical in the best way.
Oh, good, good, good
. The happy, angelic voices reached her.
You’re free, free, free. He came for you. You broke the spell. You are both strong. This is your mate. This is meant to be. You and he will be a great mated pair and will bring much happiness to our little area of land. Please stay. We worked great magic to help you two meet. Some things are meant to be. Stay with him. With the clan.

They all joined in then.
Yes, please stay. Stay, Stay. Stay.

The request followed her all the way home. Bren let her dismount outside the house, and then the shifters changed into their human form. She followed the three naked folk in through the porch, wondering if she’d get used to it if she hung around for a while.

Whoa!
Did she mean to stay? She considered staying for a while, at least. Get to know Bren a bit better. People needed to know where she’d been, though. Her mum would be sick with worry by now. And her employers needed to be made aware of what had happened to her. The police might be looking for her by now. People didn’t simply disappear without anyone caring.

So…she’d need to go home for a while. But then? Did she happily return to her dull old life and leave all this behind? Or should she give things a go here? Give her and Bren a chance?

The guys were pulling on various items of clothing, and once dressed, Bren held out his hand to her.

“Come with me.” He took her upstairs to his bedroom and closed the door behind them. “I know you haven’t been made welcome by me. And I get asking you to stay now is a huge request. But when I thought you were lost…” He paused and cleared his throat. “It killed me. I swear, Charlie, I’ve never felt anything like it before.”

“As soon as I heard your voice in that strange place, I came back to myself, back to reality.” She might be scared of the connection they had, but she couldn’t deny it. A troubling thought occurred to her, and she twisted the ring on her finger. “I still heard some of the voices on the way back here. The ones belonging to those Aiyana called the good fairies, but I’m wearing the ring. Does it mean they’ll always be able to reach me? The bad ones, too?”

He shook his head. “The ring is a ward against the dark fae. The good ones won’t do anything but talk to you. And I’m sure if you want them to stop, you can ask and they will.”

She swallowed down a nervous lump in her throat. “They want me to stay,” she said. “They think you and I are a match made in heaven.”

“I think they might be right,” Bren said with a small smile.

“But you fear I won’t want to change, right?”

“Yes. I’m scared you won’t want to become a shifter, but I’ve made a decision.” He huffed out a long breath. “I want to see more of you. Want to get to know you. But I won’t mate with you unless you do decide you want to shift. We can be careful. If we do make love again, we’ll use condoms, we won’t let things go too far. Once you decide one way or another, then we can take things further.”

She carried right on twisting the ring on her hand, not able to meet those warm eyes. “I think…I think if I decided to be with you, then I’d want to change. I’d want the whole experience, Bren. All of it. But I have a life away from here.”

“It’s not a life I can be part of,” he said, and his mouth turned down at the corners

“No. I understand. But Aiyana talked to me the other day, when you were avoiding me.” She poked him in the arm and he gave a sheepish smile, reaching out and holding her neck to pull her in for a soft brush of lips.

It took her a moment to pull herself together after only a brief touch from him. “She says you need a manager. You all suck at paperwork. You and Kyle do the physical stuff. She and Eric the meet and greet with the tourists. And Justin does all the odd jobs. Despite this late snow, the tourist season starts in a little over a month. How about I go home, pack up some things, sort my job out. And basically get my life in order so the whole world doesn’t think I disappeared, and then I come back. It gives us a month to think things through without all these weird, supernatural hormones messing with our minds. If we still want one another, I come back in a month.”

“And be my mate?” His voice held equal amounts fear and desire, and she bit back a smile the way his emotions so closely mirrored her own.

“No. Not right off the bat. I live here, in the spare room. We date, or whatever you guys do.”

He met her gaze then, his heated with fire. “We tend to mostly fuck, to be honest. Sometimes for days or weeks on end, and then we mate.”

“Okay.” She suppressed a shiver of desire. “I come back here and we…do what you said. We also get to know one another, because those things matter to me as a human. I help you guys out here so I feel useful. And if it works… If I fall for you…” She smiled at his sharp inhalation. “Then we make this official, bear style.”

She laid down the law. No way could she simply say she’d mate with Bren straightaway, no matter how much she wanted him. She needed some time. If, in a month, she still wanted to be with him, then she’d return to this house and spend some time getting to know him properly. Her father’s crappy treatment of her mother after a whirlwind romance and a quickie wedding meant she needed to be certain before committing herself to anything deep. And it would be deep. Everything she’d learned through chatting with Aiyana had explained just how permanent and strong a mating bond was. As far as she was concerned, this kind of commitment demanded respect and needed the parties entering into it to be damn sure.