Shifter (2 page)

The thing is that I can’t even get mad at her. That’s a lie, I can, and I wanted to snatch her scrawny ass through the phone and strangle her, so I kept reminding myself that I love my sister. I do. I love her. Really. But it isn’t as if she is wrong.

“Says the person with three kids who only weighs one hundred and ten pounds,” I interrupted her, undershooting her weight because I knew it would annoy her and distract her from discussing my weight.

“Exaggerate much? I weigh more than that, and you and I both know it. Besides, if you had my kids, you’d weigh nothing as well. All I do is chase them around the house. When I do get time to sit and eat, there is always someone wanting a bite of what I’m eating. I don’t see how any mother of three is overweight.”

“Whatever,” I said with nothing else to come back with. “Look, let me call you back later. I’m getting in the car.”

While we’d talked, I had finished my breakfast and dressed in the most comfortable, not at all form-fitting, pair of gray, cotton yoga pants and black, long-sleeve thermal to wear to the shelter.

“You know you can talk to me while you’re driving,” Carrie said with a hint of annoyance in her voice.

“No, I can’t. I don’t have that Bluetooth thing you have that lets you talk while having your hands free. Even with it, I wouldn’t talk to you while on the road, and you shouldn’t be talking to me…but I digress.” Some arguments aren’t worth having.

“Your life is tame compared to mine.” She said this with a bit of sadness in her voice as if this were a bad thing.

I rejoiced in how stress-free my life is compared to hers. Yeah, a part of me would like to have one or two little poop-machines giggling on my living room floor, but that is the only part of her life I wish I had. The baby-daddy drama would piss me off and drive me to drinking.

“And that is just the way I like it,” I said back with a smile in my voice. “Love you.”

“Love you, too,” she replied, and we hung up.

We never say goodbye. I’m not sure why. We just never do. I think it has to do with the fact that goodbye is such a permanent word. She doesn’t like anything that alludes to death or permanent separation. To her, saying goodbye to someone means that she will never speak to or see that person again, so she can’t bring herself to say the words. I think this has to do with the fact that when she was sixteen, Mom dropped her on my doorstep and said goodbye. We haven’t heard from her since.

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“All right, we have two litters right now. None of which are ready to leave their mother. If you want, you can lay claim to one and take it home in a few weeks,” the receptionist says, effectively pulling me out of my thoughts as she comes around to my side of the counter to lead me to the room they keep the cats.

“I was really hoping to go home with something today,” I tell her with a hint of disappointment in my voice. I hadn’t meant to sound so disappointed. I could come back another day, no problem, but for some reason, I really want a new cat today.

“The only other one we have is a foundling that showed up on our doorstep this morning. He isn’t a baby, but he looks to only be about three or four months old.”

“Can I see him?” My God, the desperation in my voice is annoying even to me. The receptionist gives me a ‘psycho much’ look. In return, I try to give her a sheepish ‘I’m sorry for being weird’ smile.

“Yeah,” she says, a little unsure if she really should allow me around the animals. “They just placed him in a cage. He didn’t have any fleas or any other physical or medical problems when we brought him in, but we always do a once over and give them a bath before putting them in with the other animals.”

I followed the woman through a set of double doors to the right of the information counter. The other set of double doors on the left led to the hospital part of the building. Smith County is where I purchased Sebastian. I prefer adopting from the shelter because I like knowing that I’m adopting an animal that the doctors have examined. I’m not opposed to strays. I just prefer adopting my animals. I like feeling as if I’m saving one from death when I adopt.

Dr. Smith, Sebastian’s doctor and one of the head doctors here at the shelter, promised me when I asked one time that they never put their animals to sleep unless they medically have to do so. I’m not sure I really believe her.

The other reason I like adopting from this particular shelter is the discounts on vaccines and procedures you get if you adopt from them. I’m not a Scrooge, but I’m not made of money either. Half price on spaying or neutering isn’t something I’m going to pass up.

I follow the woman into a large room lined wall-to-wall with cages. The dogs immediately start barking, reminding me of why I dislike them so much. The noise is deafening, causing my head to ache. Great, that is all I need. I can’t afford to spend the rest of the day in bed with a headache.

“Here he is,” she says, stopping in front of one the cages halfway down an aisle.

I’m in love the moment I see him.

Chapter 2

~~~Dimitri~~~

“What now,” I want to scream, but I know neither of the women standing in front of my cage can hear me. No one can hear me. I settle for giving them the most annoyed look my new body is able to conjure. They pay me no attention. God, do they have to stand there and stare at me like that? Their big heads bobbing at me from behind the barred door is creepy. They look like bug-eyed aliens from some B-movie examining their latest abduction. I’ve already had the anal probe, what more could they want?

“You wouldn’t like it if I came to your home and stood in your doorway looking at you, examining you, would you? No, no you wouldn’t. Now go the hell away.” The words come out as an ineffectual growl that causes them to coo over me and causes me to turn away from them in disgust. This day keeps getting worse by the moment. The last thing I feel like doing is dealing with these women. “Just bring the musky smelling, greasy headed boy back to do whatever it is the two of you want to test me for or do to me.”

“He’s cute,” the one not dressed in medical scrubs says and taps the bars with one fingernail as if that is going to get me to turn around and look at her. “Awe, he’s pouting.”

Great. Just freaking great. I know that to them I’m merely a tiny, fuzzy creature, and people love to ogle tiny, fuzzy creatures, but damn it, if they only knew how humiliating it is for a man like me to be treated this way. I could kill that stupid bitch for doing this to me.

“Mave,” I scream out in my head for the thousandth time today, turning back to face the women. My cage is hard and too cold. I can’t get comfortable enough to stay in one spot for any length of time. A small hiss escapes my feline lips at the thought of that witch, and the woman sticking her hand into my cage pulls back slightly. I try to look at her apologetically, feeling guilty for my behavior, but I know she can’t understand me.

Mave continues to ignore me. The stupid witch. Maybe if I call her a bitch enough times she will answer. “Bitch. Bitch. Bitch.” Nah, she’s too used to people calling her that for it to faze her. “I know you can hear me, you crazy hag.”

On the other hand, maybe she can’t. I only have limited control over my powers. Maybe I can’t project my thoughts to her. I sure wasn’t able to project them to the people who found me this morning.

The fact that I risked exposure is a testament to how pissed and desperate I am to get out of this form. I didn’t have a choice. I’m a damned cat for crying aloud. Twenty-four hours ago, I was a man. Okay, technically, I’m not a human man. Being able to shift into any animal I want to means that I’m not completely human. Nevertheless, I’ve never been a cat before. At least not the cute, fluffy kind. Mountain lion, tiger, cougar; I’ve been all three, but I have never degraded myself and shifted into a common house-cat before.

I hadn’t meant to insult her. The witch, not the woman now stroking my fur. I should have known better than to make promises to a witch. In my defense, I had been drunk. Really drunk. She should have known not to believe anything a drunk man says. All women know this. We say and promise many things we don’t mean when we are trying to get some. Very asshole of us, I know. Trust me, I will never do it again, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

The pack had been celebrating the purchase of a large chunk of land in the mountains of Tennessee. Being mythical creatures and all, we did use a little magic with the help of a friendly witch to make the buyout happen, meaning it wasn’t a complete surprise. Because of this, it was not necessarily a cause for celebration, but the pack lives to party, and any excuse to do so is welcome.

The land had originally been my families, therefore the packs, a hundred plus years ago, until a great uncle of mine lost most of it in a bet with a witch. From there, it was purposely lost to the banks by the spiteful old bitch, then auctioned off a small piece at a time. The spells the witch cast over it has kept our family and pack from being able to get it all back at once, until now. If it hadn’t been for Sam, one of the few witches actually friendly to the pack, we wouldn’t have managed it at all. Our magic isn’t anywhere near powerful enough to break the binding words of the bet.

For over a hundred years, we have resigned ourselves to roaming the small bit of land that wasn’t lost because my father and his other brothers had owned it. The only consolation we have had is that we are shapeshifters, not weres. We aren’t confined to one form. This means we can wander around as wolves, coyotes, or any other animal that most humans will willingly stay away from due to basic survival instincts. This opens us up to being able to roam large parks or wooded areas without scaring the humans. Our favorite things to do are shift into deer and roam the Natchez Trace. The parkway is long, spanning three states, which gives us plenty of room to stretch our legs when we need to.

Over the generations, we have bought back a few tiny pieces of our land, opening our roaming area up little by little, but until that night, the largest piece was still missing. To finally have it all was a great thing for the family and the pack. A night of drunken debauchery was our reward to ourselves for getting the land back. Starting the next day, the warding spells would have to go up and the battle with the werewolves that roamed the land would begin. That one night was all we allowed ourselves.

Devan, the next to the oldest of my mother’s four boys since Daniel died, was supposed to be the responsible one that night. Every time any of us go out into the human world like that, we choose one person to be our DFWD, designated fertile woman detector, though the person isn’t limited to scouting women. This person is in charge of making sure none of us go home with a human or another shifter unless he or she is sure that said person is unclaimed and, in the case of women, not fertile.

Unclaimed in the human vernacular means single, not just un-wed. We can tell if a woman or a man has a steady partner. Unclaimed in the supernatural world means un-mated. Most supernatural beings mate for life. In some cases, like shifters, this means they find their soul mate, the one person in the entire world that is their perfect match. In other cases, like weres, this means that the two make a verbal pledge before their pack to be together forever. The big difference is that any two people can make the pledge whether they are in love or not, and if they fall out of love with each other, then oh well, they are stuck with each other. Most weres don’t enter into the pledge lightly. All of this means that the chances of running across a claimed male or female in a bar looking to get laid is slim. On the off chance you run into one, you want to stay far, far away from her or him.

The same goes for humans. I’m not saying that shifters can’t sleep with humans. We can. We do all the time. We just have to be very careful not to impregnate one. Most supernatural species have certain heightened senses that let them know whether the human they’ve encountered is fertile or not. Knowing whether a woman is fertile or not doesn’t matter to most species, such as Vampires, because they can’t breed with humans. Shifters, on the other hand, are human in all the ways that matter. The problem is that these senses are dulled when we are intoxicated or otherwise mentally handicapped. In those moments, we are human. We are unable to shift or use magic.

Human women can carry shifter babies with no problem, even deliver them. Not until the kid hits puberty and begins shifting does the problem come into play. Most humans are unable to accept that the supernatural exists. You would think that with all the supernatural themed entertainment floating around out there that people would be more accepting of shifters, but they aren’t; therefore, we tend to stick with our own kind.

A pack occasionally brings in new blood from the human world, but there are enough different packs throughout the world that the need for such measures is slim.

Unfortunately, that night, Devan was slacking in his duties. He was apparently too caught up in the moment to bother caring about what anyone else was doing. So when she came into the bar looking the way she did, I pounced without a single thought about the consequences. If I had been in control of myself, I would have been able to smell the magic on her, the way I had smelled it last night. No matter how powerful she is, she can never hide her smell, not from us.

She is beautiful, there is no doubt, and even sober I might have pursued her for a little while. She is tall, Amazonian tall, with long, blood-red, curly hair. Her body is lean and curvy, exactly the thing that makes my loins ache. I really hate the women of this generation. They are either skeleton thin or morbidly obese. There seems to be no middle ground anymore. Whoever said that a woman was only beautiful if her bones poked through her skin was insane.