Slade (BBW Bear Shifter Moonshiner Romance) (120 Proof Honey Book 5) (80 page)

When she reached the giant sugar maple overlooking a wide expanse of meadow, she dropped down into the shade, panting. This was her favorite spot, her favorite tree anywhere on her family’s hundreds of acres of mountainside forest. The cold night had turned the leaves on the outside of the tree to a brilliant yellow, while the inside branches still showed some green. The stark contrast between the bright yellow and the cloudless, clear blue sky beyond made her heart skip a beat. The wildlife at first disturbed by her sudden appearance began to rustle once more as she lay there, still as the rocks, her tawny side barely moving, in and out, as her breathing slowed. Then after a time, she felt the change come on her, and the mountain lion became the woman again.

Addy sighed and remained still, her not quite as sharp eyesight passing over the valley below her. Late summer flowers continued to bloom stubbornly among the grass. She would have to pick some for Granny on her way back. She thought of the disappointment her running off had undoubtedly caused her grandmother and blinked back tears.

“I’m sorry, Granny,” she whispered, “but I just can’t face it.”
 

Addy had never had any control over this change that happened to her. From the time she was three, anything that made her at all nervous could trigger it, and it wasn’t until she was away from the perceived danger that she would turn back to herself, and even that wasn’t necessarily by her choice. There had been times, however, when running away had not been enough, and as a mountain lion, she had never had enough control of her own actions to stop herself from lashing out.
 

Addy still shuddered to think about the hikers who had found her in the woods one day when she’d been sixteen. They’d been city boys from the east, by their accents, college boys full of both the arrogance and entitlement that comes from wealth. When the two of them had decided the “hillbilly” girl they’d found was theirs for the taking, Addy had tried to run, only to be knocked to the ground. They had ripped at her clothing, expecting an easy time of what they’d intended to do to her. Not surprisingly, she had changed, becoming a trapped animal of an altogether different nature. She had badly mauled both boys in her attempt to escape.

Later Granny had found the newspaper article about the two hikers who had tangled with a mountain lion. In spite of the Fish and Wildlife Department’s stance that eastern mountain lions no longer lived in these hills, locals had believed the two boys. Both had ended up in the emergency room, one had nearly died. Both had been badly scarred for life.

Addy rolled over onto her back and fought to control her shaking. She’d told Granny what had happened, and her grandmother had forced her to swear never to tell anyone—and she never had. The rest of the family had always preferred to ignore the fact of her father’s nature. Since his death, no one but Granny had even mentioned what he had been—and what Addy had become. Granny had told Addy stories about her father, as he had grown up. For whatever reason, Addy’s mother hadn’t seemed to mind what her husband became on occasion, but then she had been a forest ranger, and had probably been thrilled to marry a man who sometimes became an endangered species. No one had dreamed that Addy would be left alone to deal with what she had inherited from her father.

Addy had almost fallen asleep when the bark of a squirrel announced approaching danger. Addy turned her head to look down the valley and saw a bear coming her way. She sat up, hoping her movement would scare him off. Anyone who lived in these mountains knew that bears were far more interested in their next meal than in tangling with a human being, so she didn’t want to surprise him. He surprised her, though, when he simply continued toward her. There was no doubt he saw her—he was looking right at her—but he wasn’t charging and just looked curious. Addy glanced behind her then reminded herself that climbing a tree wouldn’t do her any good, since the bear, no doubt, could climb a lot better and faster than she could.
 

“Go away!” she shouted, standing and waving her arms.
 

She had always found such a tactic worked before, but not this time. The bear just came closer, still not charging but still intent on her. Then it got close enough that she could see his eyes, and she froze. There was no mistaking that deep golden color, and she could have sworn the bear was smiling at her.
 

In another moment, the bear morphed into something else, and she stood facing Mark Saint.

“Your granny sent me this way,” he said, though she hadn’t asked. “She told me to look for the biggest sugar maple.”

He paused and let his eyes roam over the gigantic, old tree.

“Sure is pretty,” he said.

Addy just stood there, wringing her hands and glancing around, looking for a way out of this encounter, a part of her wanting to flee but another part fascinated by what she had seen.

Mark took a step closer, and though she refused to take a step in retreat, she swallowed hard.

“Your granny also told me to look out for a mountain lion,” he said, his voice dropping to a near whisper. “Turned out that wasn’t necessary, ’cause I saw you Shift as you climbed the hill.”

Her eyes snapped to his, then, and hers were wide with fear.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” he said, as though reading her mind. He kept his tone soft, his stance nonaggressive. “You’re not alone, Addy, though I got the feelin’ you think you are.”

It wasn’t quite a question.

“I didn’t…” She stopped, not having a clue as to what she wanted to say.

“You didn’t know there are others like you, did you?” He sounded surprised.

She crossed her arms over her chest and hugged herself tightly.

“Granny tells me my daddy did, but there’s no one else in the family. Then Daddy died, and...”

“How old were you?”

“Not quite two.”

“How old were you when you started Shifting?”

“Is that what you call it? About three, I guess. One day I, well, I just found this new game. Granny was surprised but happy for me—I think—then she told me I shouldn’t tell anyone, even my cousins, ’cause they couldn’t do it, and they might tell on me.

“I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t even control it. Granny tried to help, but she didn’t know how to help me.”

“She didn’t remember what your daddy did?”

Addy shook her head. “She’d married Granddad, knowin’ about him, and it was Granddad who taught Daddy. But Granddad died before I was born. There wasn’t anybody else.”

Mark cursed softly under his breath, but when she looked up at him again, he was only shaking his head.

“Let’s sit down a minute,” he said, reaching out to her.

When she didn’t take his offered hand, he didn’t try to touch her but just gestured toward the ground. Addy let herself drop to the soft turf and brought her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them protectively.

“First off,” Mark said, “you gotta know there’s nothin’ wrong with you. There are a lot of Shifters in the world, though most people’ll tell you they don’t believe in ’em.”

“Are you the only one in your family?” she asked, her curiosity overcoming her fear for the moment.

“No. Gosh no. There’s all three of my brothers, our dad, our Uncle Bart. Grandpappy and Great-Grandaddy were both Shifters. There’re some cousins, too.”

“Are you all…I mean, do you all become…”

“Bears?”

Addy nodded.
 

“Yeah. We’re a bear clan. They tell me Grandpappy and Great-granddad looked more like grizzlies than black bears, like us, but they were both pretty big men.”

Addy snorted in disbelief. She couldn’t help it. “And you’re not?” She dropped her eyes, then, embarrassed to have him know she’d noticed anything about him.

“They say that Great-granddad was almost seven feet tall,” Mark said, stretching out his legs and leaning back on his elbows, “though I’m guessing that’s probably an exaggeration. Sort of like Paul Bunyan.”

She smiled in response to his tone of voice and started, finally, to relax. Then she thought of the way he had morphed—Shifted—right in front of her.

“How do you control it?” she asked. She looked up to meet his eyes once more and prayed he would understand how much she needed to know.

He sat up again, and reached for a nearby stick, worrying it between his fingers as though trying to find the best way to explain it to her.

“You don’t, at first,” he said. “I was about three when I started, too. Course, I had the advantage of a father, uncle, and big brother to walk me through it. At first, it was just fun—a game Matt and I played with our daddy and uncle. But then, they started to take us aside and teach us how to focus, how to control what was happenin’ to us—and how important it was to keep it a secret from anyone outside the family. Truth was we kind of felt sorry for the other kids in school, on account of they couldn’t Shift.”

“I never went to school,” she said. “Granny had to keep me home and close, because I couldn’t ever choose not to change—Shift?” He nodded. “So I was home-schooled, which turned out okay. I mean I probably learned a lot more than the other kids did, since I earned my GED when I was fifteen. I don’t think I missed much.”

Mark raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Fifteen? Wow. I’m impressed.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Addy said. “We have a pretty big library, and Granny’s a terrific teacher. Plus I had one-on-one instruction all the way through, and I’ve always loved to read. And anyway, just look what you can do.” She gestured down the slope toward where he had been standing when he’d Shifted. “Are you always in control that way?”

“Heck, no,” he said, sitting back up. “You remember I said our band avoids all that glitter and bright lights, pyrotechnics and smoke crap? We avoid really big crowds, too, ’cause if any of us start feelin’ cornered, well, we can sometimes Shift without thinkin’ about it, and that can be more than awkward.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Course, sometimes you have to take a chance. That happened to us just last spring.”

“What happened?” This Addy wanted to hear, since these were the times that really scared her.

“Well, me and my brothers and Uncle Bart were playing pool at this place in Nashville. It was a real dump, but we’d found it a good place to hang out on account of they had a bunch of illegal gambling goin’ on.”

“You and your brothers gamble?”

“Heck, no—I mean Ma would kill us, if she ever thought that—but we figured we could really relax there, ’cause no one was likely to ask too many questions.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, well, anyway, we didn’t know Mel was tryin’ to find us.”

“That agency woman?”

“Yeah. Turns out, she’d heard us play, and was trying to track us down. Somebody told her where we liked to hang out.”

“Uh-oh.”

Mark snorted. “You get the picture. See, Mel came in, and we were in the back room. Before she could come find us, some low-life in the bar started hittin’ on her. When she said ‘no,’ he got really mad and started to hurt her.

“That’s about the time Matt went back into the bar to get us some more beer. Well, he heard Mel scream, and jumped in to help, and before we knew it, we’d all Shifted, Matt to handle the guy on Mel, and the rest of us to keep the biker crowd off Matt.”

“Was Mel okay?”

“Oh, sure. A little shaken up—and I’m not sure she would’ve taken us all home with her, iffen she hadn’t been—but everything turned out okay. The thing is, Matt left the guy pretty bloody, and we were lucky nobody in the bar wanted to attract the attention of the police, so they just let us go.”

Addy had mangled a wildflower, while Mark was speaking, and now she tossed it aside.

“How did Mel handle…well, what did she think about…what you can do?”

“I won’t say she accepted it as normal or anything—not right away, that is—but Matt did save her, and we all pitched in to help her keep her job at the talent agency, so it gave her a couple of reasons to be open-minded about the whole thing.”

“And now she’s really goin’ to marry your brother?”

Mark grinned. “Yeah.”

Addy shook her head. “I hear what you’re sayin’, but I don’t know if I can do what you do. I’ve never been to a city before, and I don’t know if I can face all that…well, that newness, all those people…and still stay myself. I can’t just turn it on and turn it off like you seem to be able to do.”

Mark shifted to his knees and held out his hand.

“Let’s see.”

“What?”

“Let’s see if you can ‘just turn it on and turn it off’ if you try,” he said, straightening and offering her both his hands.

“I can’t just…”

“I’ll be you can, Addy. I’ll bet if you just relax and let yourself go, you can do it.”

Addy’s gaze flickered between his golden eyes and his offered hands, uncertain, then she took a deep breath.

“Do you really think I could?” she asked, incredulous.

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Screwing up her courage, she moved to her knees, and after only a moment’s hesitation, she laid her hands in his.

She pictured the mountain lion in her head, and in another moment, she felt the change—the Shift—begin deep inside of her. She looked up to see Mark’s golden eyes sparkle as his form began to waver, and then they were standing head to head, on four legs instead of two. Addy felt suddenly intimidated—Mark as a bear was not only more than a foot taller at the shoulder than she, he now probably outweighed her by two- or three-hundred pounds. She shied back, warily. Then the bear proved he was still Mark by rolling over on his back. Belly up, he looked back at her, grinning.