The Mating Season: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (9 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

Kim sat at the kitchen table, looking at her bacon and eggs, her appetite vanished with Rusty’s pronouncement. She had to pick one of the men, Keith Mountainside or Tony Underhill, before the autumn equinox, three months away. It would be extremely difficult to pick one of them with Smiley Rockborne, her estranged ex, skulking about, wanting to kill her and all those she held dear.

She looked at all three men with tears in her eyes. “Please, leave my house. I need to be alone for a while.”

All three men nodded solemnly and shuffled out of the house. Rusty stopped for a second, his piercing black eyes examining Kim. “You know, you were destined to come here. All this bad, there will be good to come of it in the end. Just be patient, child. I hope to see you at work soon.” With that, Rusty left the house.

Kim walked to the living room and collapsed on the futon. She pushed a lock of her raven black hair behind her ear and started to tidy up the area. The duvet still smelled of Tony’s musky cologne. She shook her head and picked up the blanket and marched it to the washer -- the less stuff around to cloud her judgment, the better.

Her mind played over the events of the past couple of weeks. She moved to Predator Springs to escape her psychotic ex, Smiley. She was glad that the band had accepted her membership transfer. First Nations communities didn’t like doing that unless it was a real emergency, and escaping a crazed killer did count as such.

As Kim went through her house, tidying up, she noticed little reminders each man had left, the lone trowel that she had borrowed from Keith, one of Tony’s socks, and the most obvious sign, the garden mounds in the back yard, already beginning to sprout, which she and Keith put in the day after she had moved into the house.

She couldn’t wait for the results of her hard work. She might have to talk to Rusty’s wife, Betty, for tips and recipes on how to preserve the bounty throughout the year. Wait, she was acting as if she were staying, when in reality she should be trying to find another area to live before Smiley came back and killed Tony and Keith.

Her sky blue eyes stared dreamily out the back yard. She reminisced about that warm spring day she and Keith planted the garden; the stories they shared, the jokes they shared, and the smell of the earth as they carefully worked in the seeds. Kim remembered the way he held her while she broke down after she told him about Smiley. His smell, from the exertion, heightened his pheromone levels, and it erased all rational thought from Kim’s brain except for one thing.

Keith was a very sensitive lover. Her body started to tingle at the memory of their one time together. She longed for his strong, sensitive hands to touch her body again. Keith’s powerful body next to hers felt absolutely right, and his soft, earnest face compelled her to feel again after she locked away all her emotions. She shook her head. No. She shouldn’t think such things. She needed to get out of here. Luckily, a good deal of her things were still in boxes. All the recent drama had put unpacking on the back of her priority list. At least it saved her some work.

Then, there was Tony, cocky, strong, and relentless. His lean body felt like it was always coiled and ready to pounce and his sharp, handsome features gave his face a predatory cast. Once he found out that Smiley had been after her, he had stepped up his attention to the next level. He insisted on staying over, hoping to catch Smiley as he came for her.

They wound up fucking as well. It was the only way she could put it. Tony was an insatiable animal,
now that’s a bit of choice phrasing right there,
she thought to herself. She rubbed her shoulder where he bit her. She needed to put some more ointment on it to help heal it.

Rusty had told her that they were shifters, and the people in the band were isolated from the rest of the Cree community due to their ability to shift into animal form. The people at Predator Springs were able to change into mountain lions, also called cougars. Out of both men, Tony was the more cougarish type. Keith felt like a soft, cuddly housecat. She giggled to herself at the thought of having a giant feline lounging around the house, soaking up the heat from the wood stove. Seriously, though, she did feel quite safe knowing that the local people had that ability.

She hadn’t seen one yet, or had she? The night Smiley attempted to abduct her; there was a mountain lion that had chased him off. Could that have been, Keith? She shook her head. It couldn’t have been. But all this was so out of this world, that she would probably believe the Pope was a bear in the woods by now. She had little reason to not believe Rusty’s claims.

When her grandfather stayed here during that winter so long ago, he had witnessed the shifters hunting. He tried to help as much as he could, but the most he could do was dress the animals they had brought in, and distribute their meat to the rest of the village. He told her about the man-beasts of the isolated village, but she had just passed it off as some fantastical tale from an elder that had been spun to spark the imagination of a young child. As she got older, her belief in fairy tales and old legends waned. The more abuse she suffered, the less belief she had in either the foreign faith she had been force fed as a child, or the old legends of her people. Yet she found herself living in the middle of one.

Her attention kept getting drawn towards the two garden mounds in her back yard. Maybe she shouldn’t leave. The community was wonderful. The people she met while working at the general store seemed genuinely warm and welcoming to her foreign presence. She might be Cree like them, well half, her father was white, but their village had been so isolated over the centuries that she might as well have been from another planet. The advent of the internet had propelled this remote band into the modern era. It was a nice escape from reality, even though now, the ever present threat of Smiley was hanging around.

The thing was, if she stayed, she had to pick either Tony or Keith to mate with, for life. Picking one meant both would be able to keep shifting into their human form. If she refused, both would be locked in their cougar form, forever.

This whole thing was confusing. She didn’t see the harm in getting to know either man, to be honest. She did promise to give them a chance, so she sat down and tried to come up with a proper dating schedule, to minimize conflict. Kim didn’t know what kind of dating life one could have in such a small town, but there had to be something. She grabbed her calendar and noticed there were three months until the autumn equinox. Barring work, and Smiley, she could feasibly fit in enough dates with each of them to pick one.

She filled in the calendar with a specific color for each man and then found a push pin and stuck the calendar to her wall. Voila, all ready to go. Now to finish cleaning up the house. Her first date with Keith would be tomorrow.

*

Keith was sitting on his couch playing Xbox when a polite knock at his door startled him out of his game. He set the controller down and rose from the couch. He wondered who would be coming to see him. Tony was working, and
Kim didn’t want anything to do with him as far as he knew.
He opened the door and, to his shock, a smiling Kim stood on the other side.

“Oh wow, hey,” he stammered. “Didn’t expect to see you. Umm, come in?”

“Thanks,” Kim replied, smiling shyly as she stepped in the door. “Umm, sorry about how I’ve been acting. I just had no idea how to deal with all of this.” Her eyes swam with tears as she blurted out the heartfelt apology. “Like...”

Keith put a finger to her lips. “Shh. It’s okay, I get it.” Her full lips felt like soft velvet under his finger, and he struggled to resist the temptation to take her right there in the entryway.

Kim felt a jolt as Keith touched her lips with his soft finger. She tried to push down the rising tide of desire that welled up within her. She coughed nervously as she gently removed his finger from her lips. “I mean it. I need to make things right between us, get to know you a bit better, and I’ll be honest, the same with Tony as well. I have to pick between you two, so I gotta get to know both of you,” she said, glumly.

Keith nodded his head sadly. He understood why she had to date both. She was exposed to both of their mating pheromones before she made a choice. It was unheard of that two males courted a female at the same time. “Usually the elder pairs a boy and a girl at a young age, and they get to know each other throughout their lives. Once puberty hits and the pheromones kick in, they choose each other due to the fact they’ve known each other for so long,” Keith explained. “The choice is already made by the time the mating ceremony takes place when the couple hits eighteen and that is that.”

Keith showed Kim to his couch. He brushed the Doritos crumbs off the cushions and moved the Xbox controller. They sat and Kim smiled at the game he was playing. “Dragon Age? I love that kind of game,” she said. “Anyway, you said that the kids are matched at an early age. What happened to your match?” She asked with genuine concern in her eyes.

Keith’s soft face became etched with hurt. “She died during her first shifting attempt,” he replied curtly. The pain was almost too much for him, even after twenty years. “Well, not exactly died. She got stuck, couldn’t shift back, and had to be run off into the woods.” He looked at his hands as he revealed one of the most painful moments of his life. “Don’t know what happened to her after that. Getting stuck happens more to females than males, that’s why we don’t have many women around.”

Kim’s eyes went wide. “Is it that dangerous?”

“Nah, not really. Well, the first time’s always the most dangerous. The ability to keep your mind differentiated from the mind of your animal self is a very tricky process. A youth’s first shift is always done in a drum ceremony to keep them focused. There’s a difference in the female brain that makes it difficult. That’s how Rusty explained it to me, anyway.”

Kim nodded mutely, silently glad she didn’t have the ability to shift. She wondered if she were to have kids with either of them, if they would get the gene, or not. She didn’t even want to think that far ahead yet, she wanted to just take it one day at a time, get to know both men, and try to make a choice. Maybe not choosing them would be a boon? They could go out into the wilderness and find the girls they were promised to so long ago? Would those girls remember them? Would they be fully wild? So many questions ran through Kim’s head, questions she didn’t feel comfortable asking just yet.

“Anyway, as you can see, there’s really not much to do around here. I prefer sitting at home watching movies and playing video games, when I’m not out fixing other people’s tech snafus,” Keith said.

“Oh, you’re the resident tech support guy?” Kim giggled.

“Yep. I’m the one that they call to fix all their tech snags. After I graduated high school, I figured it was best that I went and did something with myself since...” he trailed off. “Anyway, yeah, I’m the one who fixes it. I fix hardware issues, software issues, you name it. I even have a little side business, freelancing as a network admin for a few businesses in Vancouver. I have a better satellite modem than the rest of the village, other than the cop station, so I can be reliable just in case something catastrophic happens.”

She made a mental note to see what had happened to Tony’s match, then quickly put it at the back of her mind. “So, um, what kind of movies do you have?” she asked, quickly changing the subject.

“Oh, I’ve got Netflix. Sometimes when the satellite goes wonky it takes a while to buffer, but I use that time to go get a sandwich or something.” He grinned at her. “Want to watch something? I’ve rigged it so we can get the American one. Canadian Netflix sucks for selection.”

Kim perked up, “Sure! Pick whatever. I’m not into chick flicks, if you’re wondering.”

“A girl after my own heart.” Keith was smiling from ear to ear as he picked up the Xbox controller and flicked the menu to Netflix. He picked an action movie from the new release menu and hit play. The movie rolled and he stretched his arms over the back of the couch.

Kim sat back feeling the warmth of Keith’s body next to hers. She lost focus of the movie early on as her mind drifted. She felt as if she were being drawn into a trance again, as she sat next to Keith on the faded green couch.

She felt his hand rest on her shoulder. She managed to fight into some form of lucidity as the sexual feelings woke inside. Why was she letting her good girl conditioning get in the way? She had to date both men, didn’t she? That included getting a feel for the sexual chemistry they had together, so why not? She leaned into his side, allowing his arm to caress her shoulder. She breathed his musky scent in deeply and placed a hand on Keith’s thigh.

He startled a little bit at the feeling of the intimate touch. Was she really wanting to? He decided to play it cool and let her take the lead. His heart beat hard in his chest as he felt her delicate hand rub the inside of his thigh and her head leaned against his broad shoulder.

Kim relaxed against Keith while gently touching him. She felt a warm glow begin between her thighs and spread up into her belly. She relished this feeling as she gingerly took control of the situation. Her hand started to move up the inside of Keith’s jeaned thighs and teasingly brushed his crotch as she moved it down again. She wanted to give him a good idea as to what she wanted, without seeming too forward.