License to Shift (12 page)

He flinched, and his hands tightened into fists. “Julie—” he began, but she cut him off. The last thing she wanted to do was cause him pain.

“Look, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. But I'd really like to know. I can—”

“Next time I turn into a bear, and I'm not coming back.”

Her words stopped in her throat, and then she tilted her head, trying to sort through his words. His tone was so matter of fact that he sounded like he was saying he was moving to Los Angeles and going California native. Except he was talking about being a grizzly. “Start again, please. For the nonshifter in the room.”

“For some of us—those with too much animal DNA—we lose ourselves in the animal. It's called going feral.”

“So can't you just…you know…not?” She asked the question already knowing it couldn't be that simple. “Just don't go animal.”

He snorted and pushed out of the chair. “I'll stop the minute you stop breathing. Or having a period. Or I don't know, waking up and brushing your hair every morning. This is a natural cycle. Some of us just have too much beast. I'm one of them. Drew the unlucky DNA straw. I've been holding it off since I was sixteen. And now I've run out of time.”

The way he said that number made her pause. Like it was significant. It took her about two seconds to realize what he meant. “You're talking about that night—our night—when we were teens.”

He dropped his hands on his hips as he looked out the window. “That's the real reason I ran, Julie. I knew then that I was losing control and I wasn't coming back to human.”

She stood up, needing to meet him more eye to eye. “But you did.”

“Six weeks later.”

She grimaced. Bet that was weird. Living as a bear for a month and a half, and then boom, human again. “What brought you back?”

His lips curved, and he turned to look at her. “A girl with a citrus scent making love to her boyfriend.” He shrugged. “You have a citrus scent, Julie. It reminded me of you, and I wanted you. So I changed back. I stood there naked next to their tent, barely able to speak, and hungry as hell.”

He was lost in memories, his expression stark as the evening shadows cut into his cheekbones. She stepped closer to him, touching his chest as a way to reach out because he seemed to need it. His breath hitched under her fingers, and his empty hand came up to cover hers. But he didn't look at her.

“Citrus girl called the cops. They came and called my father. By that time, I'd eaten a box of granola bars and had started to think again. You have no idea what it's like to claw your way back into the higher cortex.” He closed his eyes. “It's really hard, Julie. And getting harder every time.”

And there was her answer. Hadn't she wondered if he was bipolar? The grizzly was the nonverbal guy who answered the door that first time. The one who grunted at her and slammed back coffee like it was the elixir of life. And then there was this man. Quiet, but still articulate. The man who ran a business and installed electronic surveillance equipment around the cabin. And according to him, that man was slipping away.

“There has to be a way to stop it,” she said.

“You sound like Carl.”

“Maybe you should list—”

He pressed his finger to her lips. It was warm against her skin, and she felt the callus as he brushed gently across her mouth. “Don't make yourself crazy. Carl and I have been looking since the day I came back at sixteen. And there were others long before us. All we've found is vague hints, magical spells.” He looked significantly at her. “Fairy tales.”

Her father's research.

He nodded, probably reading her understanding off her face. “Did you never wonder why your father started researching shifter tales?”

She snorted. “Who knows what captures my father's attention?”

“I do.
I
did.”

She arched her brows, waiting for him to elaborate. Eventually he spoke.

“Your father's family is from here. Generations back.”

“Yeah. Great-great-granddad was a traveling salesman or something. Fell in love with a girl here and took her away.”

“But they came back now and then. Eventually someone bought this cabin as a summer place.”

“The older one burned down. Dad called it a rattrap.”

His lips quirked into a brief smile. “Some day I'll tell you exactly what happened to that place.” Then before she could ask, he raised his hand. “Wasn't me. Well before my time.”

She smiled, pleased to share this short moment of humor even if he wasn't telling her the full truth. “So what did you do?”

“It was the next summer. The one after our night.”

“The one I decided to stay with my mother in Chicago and to intern at a law office.” It had been the first step in her path to becoming a legal secretary.

“Yeah. I talked to your dad. I really wanted to know about you, about whether or not you were coming back.” He sighed as if her decision still depressed him. “When I found out his ancestors were from here, I started asking about his family stories.”

Her eyes widened. “You got him started on the local fairy tales!”

“His grandmother had told him about a witch who bound a wolf to her. It gave her the ability to shift into animal form so she could defeat her enemies. And the wolf became a man who fought at her side.”

She brought his hand away from her mouth, clasping it between her two. “You think the wolf was a feral and she brought him back.”

“Yes. Maybe.”

Well, that sounded hopeful. “What happened at the end? Did he stay human? Did she—”

“It's a fairy tale, Julie. Told from the human perspective.”

Clearly she was meant to understand what that meant. She hadn't a clue.

“The good guys were the humans. They killed the witch in her wolf form and then burned the man at the stake as a warlock.”

“Oh. That sucks.”

He flashed her a brief smile. “His interest grew over the years, but it wasn't until this summer that he found more information on that story. Ingredients to a binding spell.” He gestured behind him to the kitchen. “We even tried to re-create it.”

So that's what that thing in the refrigerator was. She'd found a bottle labeled “Experiment 7” stored behind the beer. It was now on the counter in preparation for the trash. “And? What happened?”

He looked back out the window. From her angle, she could see his head turn slightly as he steadily scanned the environment. “And nothing. I couldn't tell him what I was looking for. I asked for bonding rituals, love spells and the like. I even paid him for the work and drank the potions.”

“Seriously?” His silence told her that he had indeed slammed back experiments one through six. “What did you find?”

“A killer case of indigestion and really bad BO.” His gaze returned to hers. “And your dad had a heart attack.”

Her eyes widened. “He didn't drink them, did he?”

“Only me. And we made sure nothing was poisonous.” He gestured to the bottle on the counter. “I'm not supposed to try that one until the next full moon.”

Because that made logical sense—not. Meanwhile he turned to look at her dad's office. “There were more recipes that we hadn't tried yet. I've already looked on his desktop. There isn't anything there, so it must have been on his tablet or in his journals.”

The missing tablet and journals. This is why he'd been alarmed by the “wrong” scent in the office. This is why he thought someone had stolen the information. Because it might contain the key to him staying human.

“We need to tear this place apart,” she said. “We've got to find—”

He shook his head. “I already did that while you were away. They're not here.”

Which led credence to the idea that an evil someone had stolen her father's research. “That's why they attacked,” she said softly, the pieces falling into place. Not to mention a killer case of the heebie-jeebies. “I'm the only one who can read his notes.”

“What?”

“Have you seen my dad's handwriting? It's appalling, and that's when he's not writing in shorthand.”

He touched her arm. “Are you saying that whatever was stolen—can't be read?”

“Anything on the tablet is probably understandable. Anything in his journals would look like scribbles.” She flashed him a rueful smile. “What did you think I was doing those summers when you excluded me from the fun stuff? I was transcribing my father's notes into English.”

“For the record, I wasn't excluding you from fun stuff. I was keeping you away from shifter stuff.”

“What?”

“Look, I remember cutting you out. Parties you got uninvited to. Times things broke up just as you arrived.”

She stiffened her spine, remembering the pain of that. She'd been a teen in a small town where she didn't go to school. She was a visitor for the summer without even her sister for company because Ellen had wanted science summer school way more than time with their father. That left Julie in Gladwin feeling like she was being snubbed at every turn. She lost track of all the times conversations just stopped when she showed up. And that was nothing compared to the “get together and hang out” times when she wasn't invited or worse, it somehow got canceled only to happen somewhere else. She'd hated it and she'd hated them for being so snobbish. It never occurred to her that it was because of this…this magic business.

But even so, the memory still stung.

“So that was you?”

He snorted. “Hell no. That was Carl or Tonya. Even back then, they were the leaders of our group. But, yeah, I helped enforce it. Julie, you aren't a shifter. No one could have guessed that you would be here now.”

It made sense. It did, but logic didn't hold sway over her feelings. “Do you know how outcast I felt?”

“Do you know how outcast we feel? You've got the whole wide world at your feet. Julie, you can go anywhere, be anything.”

“So can—”

“We can't,” he interrupted. “It's a…a salmon thing even though we're grizzlies. Just like a salmon returns home to spawn, we have to come back to Gladwin throughout our lives. But even if that weren't true, all shifters need a wild place to run. We can't live in big cities. It makes us insane.” He touched her chin pulling her around to face him. “Imagine being a teenager and knowing that you can't leave small-town Michigan. That all those big possibilities aren't there for you. You can't be a pilot—what if you shift on a plane? You can't live where big business opportunities exist. You certainly can't go into the military and risk exposing your secret that way. All those little things that you take for granted are triply hard for us because we have to keep our wild nature under control. We have to balance the animal with the human, and that doesn't always work.”

“All of life is a balancing act.”

“Yeah, we figure that out with maturity. We're talking teenagers here.” His fingers caressed her hair. “Yes, we were mean to you. I admit it. But that's because we were so damned jealous of you, we couldn't stand it.” He took a breath. “Even me, and believe me, I wanted you from the first moment I saw the book you'd painted on your big toe with polish.”

She blinked. She'd forgotten about that. Hell, without friends to hang around with, she'd had plenty of time to decorate her nails.

“You had big eyes and a sharp mind. You wanted to learn everything about the world then, including us—”

“I just wanted some friends.”

“And you were going to figure us out. You were going to hear about the magic. And so we excluded you.” He took a breath. “I made sure you weren't around us as a group, but I still knew all about you. I still watched where you went and what you did.”

She bit her lip, thinking about the times he'd just shown up when she was sitting by a stream reading. Or when she was out for a walk by herself. He'd show up and be nice. More than nice, he'd been sexy and funny, and she'd thought maybe she was finally starting to fit in. But then the next night, she'd hear about another party she hadn't been invited to. Another hangout at the stream that he'd never mentioned.

“You ran so hot and cold. I hated you even as…”

“Even as I wanted you with every breath in my body.”

She couldn't believe it. He had yearned for her? He had wanted her? “I felt like you kept toying with me. Being wonderful just to throw me away.” Lord, even now she couldn't keep the hurt from her voice.

He leaned in and their foreheads touched. Their breath mingled while his other hand slipped to caress the length of her jaw. “Push/pull,” he breathed. “Animal/man. Want/can't have.” He cupped her face and lifted her lips to his. But he didn't touch them. He didn't take the kiss she so desperately wanted. “That's my life, Julie. And I'm losing the battle.”

“No,” she whispered. “No, there has to be an answer.”

He shook his head. “I've tried.”

She could hear the defeat in his voice. The soul-deep weariness of the struggle. It was the sound of a man giving up. Of one who was going to settle for what little he'd received and try to be content. But Julie wasn't wired that way. Maybe because she hadn't fought this fight her whole life. But she'd just learned that the world was a thousand times bigger than she'd believed a day ago. God only knew what she'd discover tomorrow. And she'd be damned if she let him give up like this. Not when she'd just entered the fight.

“No,” she said softly. And when he pulled back, she took hold of his shoulders and drew him forward. “No,” she repeated, and then she took his mouth with hers. Forget waiting for him to kiss her. Forget letting this shifter insanity decide how she was going to feel. She'd let the magic exclude her as a teen because she hadn't known better. Well, now she knew. Now she was on board and making changes.