Shifting Shadows (Sparks Collide Trilogy) (3 page)

“Hey, we have lives, great lives. Have
you seen the houses we live in, seen the girls we could get? Hell, we’re
freaking werewolves. We get to do things no else gets to do. We’re practically
gods in this town and the humans don’t even know half of the reasons why.” He
didn’t understand what I meant but I don’t know why I expected him to. He loved
what he did everyday. His job fulfilled him and he was on top of the world. I
was being pushed into my preordained destiny of a life and I couldn’t hate it
anymore if I tried.

“I guess you’re right,” I lied. I
wondered when lying had become so easy for me. It was practically second
nature, or maybe third. I wondered what my wolf nature would count in that
equation.

 
He smirked, “Of course I’m right. Oh look,
Trent
’s sleeping. You ready to go in?”

“Yeah” We pushed
Trent
until he huffed and stood up on all
fours. We walked to the house that we shared. While we could’ve had our own
homes, it seemed excessive as young, single guys. Trent and I didn’t want to
move back into our childhood homes when we graduated college, so we shared a
newly built one. Then when
Logan
graduated a year later, he moved in
too. It gave us our pretend privacy even though we lived in the same
neighborhood as our parents.

I stared at my childhood home as we
passed by it and thought of my father, alone inside of it. “We’ll be back there
for the Barbeque tomorrow”
Logan
said as he nodded to my point of
interest.

I wasn’t looking forward to more family
bonding time. “Great.” I said, clearly overjoyed. I turned away from the house
and didn’t look back.

Everyone got to my father’s house
around
5
p.m.
on Sunday
for the neighborhood full-moon Barbecue. My father held weekly meetings with
his council every Saturday morning. This included me and my chosen council but
he included all of the pack once a month to eat and catch up on more social
matters. For obvious reasons we did so on the night of the full-moon. The
convenient forest of our backyards allowed us to roam free in our other forms.

According to legend, werewolves were
created by biting humans and spreading some sort of disease but that was bull.
We were our own species. We were born this way. We have families and no amount
of biting would turn a non-werewolf into one.

Not that we would bite humans. Human is
part of what we are just as much, if not more than the wolf side. We stay away
from humans because we have no reason to interact with them. When we’re wolves
we want to be surrounded by nature. Humans today are as far away from that as
possible.

The only reason that legend of wolves
biting humans existed is from those times when lone-wolves had gone insane from
too much isolation. At that point all that would happen is the victims would
die not suddenly morph into one of us. We weren’t even the only type of shape
shifters alive. Shape shifters of other animals were just extremely rare.
Werewolves, for whatever reason, tended to survive and populate easier. My
Uncle Eric always said it was because of our pack mentality. We stuck together
and we made it through to the 21
^st
century.

That’s why nights like tonight were
important. It was good for the pack, to keep us centered in a civilized world where
distractions like car payments got in the way of our true needs, connectedness
and shifting.

The
Montgomery
’s were the first to arrive. This
included Max, Mena, their younger brothers Todd and Charles, and their parents
Chrome and Marie. The whole family possessed extreme intelligence and were
invaluable to the pack.

 
Max and Mena were 21 and would be in my
council once I became the leader just as their parents were in my father’s
council now. It wasn’t necessarily a rule but Max and Mena earned their spots
in their own right. They were deemed the “genius twins” which wasn’t very
clever but it was oh, so accurate. They both had a shit-ton of degrees, taking
college courses since middle school. They’d always done so from Brisdale and
still managed to become well known in most academic circles.

Max focused more on scientific research
and was big into technology while Mena was amazing with numbers and a tactical
genius, outsmarting champion chess players by the time she was six. Together they
were pretty much unstoppable.

I greeted them and all but Max and Mena
headed out to the back for my father, the pool, and the grill.

Will came in with his parents, fighting
as usual and I stiffened. Will came back from
Texas
last month, after being at grad school
for the past two and a half years. He now had a Masters in construction
management and had landed a job with Porter’s construction firm. Yes, it was
the pack’s go to builder but beyond that it was also a well respected firm in
most of
Central
Florida
. If
Will hadn’t gotten the job at such a great company he might still be there with
his friends in the
Southern
Texas
pack.

Maybe it would be better if he’d stayed
there.

Unfortunately Will and I had our share
of problems. My former best friend was now a casual acquaintance.

“James” Will’s father, William
Pendleton Sr. said as he nodded to me, saying my name like a curse word.

“Jay, honey how are you?” his mother,
Jackie gave me an air kiss on the cheek, making sure not to mess up her
blood-red lipstick. I tried not to cringe while keeping my guard up.

“Fine, Jackie. How are you?”

“As good as anyone with my husband can
be.” She laughed loudly “Oh but that’s to be expected. So what has our strong,
future Alpha been up to?” She said the entire thing with twisted fake cheer on
her face, not giving her aforementioned husband or better yet her embarrassed
son a second glance. I sighed.

“I was just chatting with Max and Mena
here.” I said pointedly.

She turned to my friends as if noticing
them for the first time. She looked down her nose at them as usual. “Of course,
well aren’t you two looking…sweet.” This was her typical insult to people who
were smarter, younger, or better looking than her. I always found it amusing
that to her, sweet really was an insult. Maybe it was because it was something
no one would ever think to call her.

“Thanks” Mena said brightly because she
knew how to play the game. Being a female werewolf wasn’t easy.

Max just shrugged, he didn’t have to
respond.

Will was growing more agitated by the
moment. To anyone else he looked calm but I knew him like I knew the back of my
hand and I noticed the tick in his jaw. As the silence grew he finally snapped.
That is to say, Will spoke up, which he hardly ever does. “Mom, Dad, why don’t
you guys head out back, now.”

“Great, I’m ready for a drink but then
again anyone would be after five minutes with your mother.” William Sr. said to
his son.

“Well isn’t that predictable?” Jackie
said to us. “But I’m glad we can agree on
something
, a drink is quite
necessary. Ta-
ta
, children” Will’s parents gave each
other smug, disgusted looks and walked away.

When his parents shut the door from the
back patio, we all took a collective sigh of relief. One of the worst things
about werewolf culture was its noticeable lack of divorce rate. It wasn’t
romantic and it wasn’t because they took their vows seriously. It was simply
unthinkable for werewolves to divorce. There’s a large process involved in
choosing a mate and to divorce would mean admitting to a major mistake. This
meant people like Will had to grow up listening to his parents fighting on
constant repeat.

Will looked to me but didn’t meet my
eyes as he asked “Wii?” Max, Mena, and I nodded in agreement and headed to the
den.

We decimated Max and Mena, and seeing
as they were technology geniuses, it wasn’t freaking easy. Eventually Logan and
his brother Brandon found us in the den, smelling of the ocean and surf board
wax.

Logan
looked to the screen and back at us.
“Things never change man. Shouldn’t you be greeting your subjects, my lord?” he
bowed pitifully, his blond hair falling forward, and I chucked a pillow at him.

“Sit down and shut up. You can be on
Max and Mena’s team.”
Logan
frowned as his little brother laughed
and headed over to Will and myself. Brandon, Will and I fell into sync as we
always had. That is, until Annabella and Trent showed up.

Trent
threw himself into a recliner as usual
and Annabella sat in the large gap between Will and me on the couch.

“Hey guys” She settled in, in her
delicate way, messing with her necklace just for something to do with all her
energy before she looked up and said “Will, Demi told me to tell you she’s
waiting for you downstairs.”

The room went silent but the message
was clear, Game Over.

Demi, the female Alpha, had been like a
sister to me my whole life. Now it was like I didn’t even know her. Growing up,
Will, Demi, and I were the sole children born to each of our families. Without
siblings, we played with each other. Things were never quite sibling-like
between them but Will never acted on it. Then when Will comes back home from
Texas
he finally gets the nerve to ask her
out. They’d been inseparable ever since. That would’ve been fine, great even if
Will hadn’t made it some weird choosing thing. Now he barely spoke to me but
had plenty of time for Demi.

Will placed his wiimote down on the
table, “See you guys at dinner.”

“Dude, whipped much?” this came from
Mena and it was true but any of us guys could’ve told her not to waste her
breath. Will didn’t even respond and left the room. “I was just kidding” Mena
said sadly.

“We know”
Logan
answered “He’s just loved her forever
and he never thought it was ok…” he drifted off and everyone looked to me.

“What?” I shouted. “I didn’t want her like
that. She’s like my freaking sister; a bitchy, high maintenance one.”

Annabella placed her hand over my arm
and it calmed me slightly, as an Omega’s touch could do.

Alphas and Betas were always in a pack
but it was rare to have an Omega. Omegas were the quiet strength of the pack,
the glue that held everything together. We were lucky we got Annabella when we
did 9 years ago and she was lucky to have found us too. Life hadn’t gone so
well for her before she showed up here but she never brought it up, so neither
did we.

“We all know you don’t see her like
that but for the longest time, Will didn’t” She said and I scoffed.

“Well he’s stupid then. He could’ve
just listened to me.”

Max shook his head “I don’t think he
would’ve believed you even if he had. He was always so set on how things should
be. You know, Alpha with Alpha.”

“Well it looks like he got over it.” I
said.

Annabella grabbed the wiimote from
where Will had set it down. “It’s just the honeymoon stage for them. Things
will be back to normal in no time.”

“True”
Logan
agreed but no one believed them.

At dinner time, we sat out by the pool
and enjoyed some food. While some legends got it so wrong it was comical, one
of the things they got right was the werewolf’s undying love for raw meat. Or
in this case, we grilled our food to medium rare. It was crowded as always but
there was still plenty enough to go around.

My father stood behind the grill,
chatting with the large group surrounding him. They were hanging on his every
word. I went towards him, intent on some grub and not much else. His eyes shot
to mine and the crowd became quiet. Freaking nosy neighbors. “How can I help
you, son?” he asked mildly.

“Steak would be great.” He put a large
piece on my plate and turned away coldly. What did he think I was going to say?
“I’m ready to reform and be your puppet. Let’s hug?” I eyed the trees and
wondered how far I’d get without my friends following behind. Not far enough, I
decided and dug into my meal.

“Still alive, I see.” I turned to see a
tall man with smiling gray eyes and graying hair to match.

“Nice to see you too, Uncle Eric” and I
meant it. “Also, you might have something to do with me being alive still.” He
acknowledged that with a nod. We were referring to the many fights I got into
and how he had to put me back together most times.

The last fight I’d gotten into was only
a few nights ago. It was a friendly fight with a pack member named Darrell. We
were playing as wolves do but he got a little too excited when he thought he
would beat the Alpha because I’d been going easy on him. I’d been totally
distracted with the thoughts in my head, not taking it seriously. I sensed the
change in him almost too late and I had to fight him for real. It didn’t take
long to bring him down but in the meantime I had a gnarly scratch that went
from my neck down my entire back. It was gone now.