Call of the Wild (3 page)

“As to the idea of grandchildren, I wouldn’t mind. Though it’s a pity the youngest of my children is the first to finally set her heart on one person,” he added with a speaking glance to his six bachelor sons. He wasn’t too sure of Laura’s rushed relationship. For the moment, in front of everyone else, he would hold his peace.

“Frieda, why don’t you give my family the background,” Laura instructed. She turned and looked at each of her family, one by one. “I need all of you to take a good look at me and then listen to what Frieda says with an open mind,” she said, giving them all another meaningful look.

Frieda stood next to Laura’s chair and cleared her throat. “Well now, I am happy to see all of you here. I’m sure there must be a reason why you’ve all been led here earlier than planned. We’ll work on figuring out all that later. For now, you need to hear how Laura was healed of her injuries.

“The short answer is—her mother healed her. More accurately, Laura had it within her the ability to heal herself, which passed to her by her mother. She didn’t manifest her healing earlier, because the one component that she needed to heal was missing. She found it here.”

“What do you mean, she found it here?” Doug asked.

“Yeah—and why do you say Mom made her heal? Mom’s been gone for years,” said Aaron.

He would have stood again, only he was still trying to figure out what to do with the very large cat draped over his lap. A cat he now knew was actually a woman named Marsha Brady. He wasn’t even going to try to understand why she was acting the way she was. Did he have catnip in his pockets or something?

He tried to keep his hands out of its fur. However, every time he became distracted by whatever else was going on in the room, he found himself touching her again. She was purring so loudly, he was having trouble paying attention.

“I really do think, Laura dear, that the proof should come before the explanations,” said Frieda.

“You may be right. At least they’ll be so shocked they’ll be quiet long enough for you to speak,” said Laura.

Wasting no more time, Frieda did the reverse of what she’d seen an actress do in a movie the previous week. She dove forward, as if she were diving into a pool. Mid dive, she shifted into the form of a housecat. After prancing around the coffee table for a bit, she leapt onto Steven’s lap, shifting into a ferret just before she landed. She ran up his chest to his shoulder, where she shifted into a spider monkey. In her monkey form, she moved from one brother to the next, ending up on the back of the couch by Doug’s shoulder. Jumping to the ground, she transformed again, this time into a unicorn. After neighing loudly, she shifted back into her human form.

“Surprise,” said Laura. “As you just saw, shifters are real.”

“What Laura said is correct,” explained Frieda. “There are people in this world with the ability to shift into an animal form. Thousands of years ago, so long ago the exact date has been forgotten, nine women of power came into this realm from another. There are two reasons—two stories for the women coming to this realm. The first is so they could have a love, which they were denied in their own realm. The second theory is they came here to build an army in secret. Whichever is correct, they all gave birth to sons. Those sons were the first shifters. When their sons married with human women in this realm, their children were also shifters—shifter genetics being dominant.

“Whether the nine returned here more than once or whether they never left, eventually, they gave birth to daughters. Those daughters were called changelings. This is because a daughter could shift into any living thing, and not just one animal like their brothers. In addition to shifting abilities, changelings are also full of magic, the magic of creation and motherhood,” Frieda explained. Looking around at all the faces she was happy to see they were all paying close attention and she continued her story.

“When a changeling girl is born, she is human. She’ll stay human until she goes through her changing ceremony. Over time, the ceremony was lost. As a result, nearly all of the changelings were lost. Shifters had to hide and became beings of myth and legend in order to protect themselves. Their numbers dwindled. Some species became extinct,” Frieda said with a sad little sigh.

“You see, a bear shifter can only have bear shifter children. Only a changeling could give birth to many different breeds of shifter children,” Laura explained.

“Laura is a changeling, just like her mother,” said Frieda.

“This is bullshit! According to your story, all of us should be shifters, then. I think I speak for all of us when I say that none of us have shifted into an animal—ever!” said Aaron vehemently.

“That’s because Mom didn’t mate with a shifter. Her changeling magic was never awakened. Mine was awakened accidentally right after I arrived. Actually, I have a suspicion Evan’s shifter is waking up as well,” said Laura.

“Me?” Evan asked in an almost squeaky voice.

Aaron was freaked out. He’d been having dreams about animals all his life. Only Steven knew about them, and Aaron had kept the worst secret even from him. In the dreams, men and women, even children, were in the form of animals. In all of the dreams, the animals were being tortured and killed. No way was he going to accept those dreams as an acceptable reality.

“No! There is no way any of us are becoming animals. These people have done something to you, Laura. They’re messing with your head. We need to leave, and we need to do it now,” said Aaron, pushing against the cougar still sprawled over his lap.

Marsha was saturating herself in the scent of this man. He smelled so good to her. She wasn’t really paying attention to what everyone was saying. Being near this male was like a mega-dose of catnip. He was stroking her fur, and she was purring like a motor boat; another reason why she didn’t hear everything that was said. It couldn’t be any big deal. It was only Alpha Laura’s family, after all.

She was unaware that Laura’s family didn’t know about shifters. How could they not? Laura was a changeling, who was mated to the National Alpha.

When Aaron began to tense up, his hands dug into her fur until it almost hurt. Then she started paying attention. She heard the underlying pain and anguish in his voice but, at the same time, his words cut deep. In that instant, she could only deal with her own pain. Jumping to the floor, she turned and hissed at him before stalking away. As she passed behind the couch, she batted the back of his head with a large paw before stalking out of the room, her tail swishing angrily and making chuffing growls in her throat.

Aaron couldn’t take any more. His head was pounding, and all he could recall were his memories of death. He didn’t even feel the strike to his head. He didn’t move. He stayed stock still, trying desperately not to fly apart.

Laura didn’t understand Aaron’s attitude. She expected all of her brothers to think shifting was cool.

“Aaron, if my changeling abilities hadn’t woken up and I shifted when I needed to, I’d be dead now,” she said starkly.

She still had nightmares about that day. Alexander moved around the chair and pulled Laura into his arms, where she clung to him. When they pulled apart, he sat down and brought her on to his lap, whispering his love into her ear.

Since Frieda had put on her little show, Doug Donahue had said nothing. When Laura made her statement about almost dying, he sat forward.

“What happened?” he asked in a low hard voice which, nevertheless, carried well. Each of her brothers quieted immediately.

Laura took a closer look at her father.

“A rogue shifter, and a member of the Shayatin, a group of magical humans that kill shifters to steal their magic, attempted to kill or capture me. After they shot one of my bodyguards, Clark, in the head, I didn’t bother to find out which. While my second guard, Jason, was being magically attacked by the Shayatin wizard, I shifted into a tiger and I kind of ripped off the head of the rogue,” she said quickly, before burying her head in her mate’s neck and breathed deeply.

After a moment she was able to continue, but you could have heard a pin drop in the room.

Aaron heard her say the bodyguard, Clark, had been shot in the head. In his mind, all he saw was a young boy’s head with blood spurting out, over and over again. His basic flight or fight instinct kicked in. There was no enemy here and to his mind, that didn’t matter. Standing, he then left the room. By the time he’d gone ten feet, he was running.

Aaron’s departure shook them from their stupor. Steven started to follow his brother, but Doug held him back.

“No, let him go,” Doug said. He turned back to his daughter. “Let’s hear the rest of your story, Laura,” he said.

“The Shayatin, a person who uses stolen magic to do evil, was killing Jason, literally sucking his life force out of him. I shifted again, this time into a dragon, the fire-breathing variety. After turning the Shayatin into a crispy critter, I picked up Jason in my claws, and flew home and hid in the garage. I’d gone into shock, so my dragon protected me. At that time, I still couldn’t walk without a lot of effort. I would have been helpless. The rogue wanted to rape me, and the Shayatin wanted to steal my life force,” she said.

“Where were you when Laura was attacked?” Doug asked Alexander.

“I was hunting the rogue. He’d laid a false trail.”

“Daddy, you don’t seem very surprised to learn that shifters exist. Aaron’s freaking out, but all the rest of you are taking this really well. Why is that?” she asked.

Doug looked over at his daughter. He still had a hard time believing this beautiful woman was his sickly child. “I’m pulling rank as your father. I think we need to let Alex and his parents entertain your brothers. You and I need to speak privately,” he said.

Knowing she owed him at least that much for disappearing the way she had, she led him down the hall to her office. She knew Alex and Frieda would see to getting her brothers settled in. Well, all of her brothers, except for Aaron. Aaron had stormed out of the house.

Stepping into the office, she motioned her father in and then closed the door. Laura plopped down in one of the two chairs in front of her desk, her father taking the other one.

“Well, overall, that went better than expected. Do you have any idea why Aaron is so freaked out?” Laura asked. “I mean, they all freaked out, too, about as much as I thought they would. Finding out there are people in this world who can shift into the form of an animal is a pretty big deal. Aaron, though, was way over the top. It’s as if he’s got some kind of prejudice against shifters before he even knew they existed,” she said.

“You’re right. His reaction was extreme. I’ll talk to him later and try to find out what bug he’s got up his ass. His behavior was very unlike him and over the line. I take it that mountain lion in the room is a shifter and not a pet?” he asked.

The mountain lion in question had followed Aaron around like a housecat, rubbing his legs and purring loudly. Then, when Aaron had become angry and belligerent, Marsha had hissed at him and stalked from the room, stopping only long enough to slap him in the back of the head with her paw.

“Yeah, Aaron’s going to have to work really hard to bring her around. One thing popular fiction did get right…shifters are powerfully affected by pheromones. They often use scent to find their soul mate. Sure, they can fall in love and marry their high school sweetheart. It’s just that they also believe there is a fated mate, the other half of their soul out there in the world. Most shifters, at least the ones I’ve met are about fifty-fifty on whether or not it’s worth it to wait for that one person. I mean, one day you mix up your directions and turn left instead of right and miss them. Marsha obviously thinks Aaron is hers. She may be having second thoughts about now.”

“Is that how you and this Alexander met? He got a whiff and decided you were the one for him? How can you trust that? You barely know each other. How can you be sure a relationship between you will last?” her father asked her.

Before she could answer his question, he was out of the chair and started pacing and ranting. Laura let him get it all off his chest. By that time, he’d worked himself up into a fine state. This lecture must have been building since she left. She sat back and just watched him as he segued from her relationship into cryptic emails and why she should have trusted her family more. There was also something in there about the NSA she’d have to ask him about later. For now Laura didn’t even attempt to counter his arguments—he’d run down after ten or fifteen minutes.

Sometime later, Doug paused to see if his words were having the effect he wanted. When he looked over at Laura, the goofy grin she wore told him all he needed to know. She wasn’t listening to a word he said.

When Laura realized her father had stopped, she spoke, “My turn? First, I want to apologize again for leaving the way I did. I just couldn’t see you letting me out of your sight if I told you I believed shifters were real. I wanted so badly to go meet them…for many reasons. Some of those reasons I’ll get into later. As for being sure of my relationship, you really don’t have a leg to stand on there. You proposed to Mom on your first date, after knowing her for less than one day. I just know Alex and I will be lucky to have even half of the happiness you and Mom had. Of course, I’m still going to be bugging you to start dating. Mom would want you to find happiness again.

“Secondly, I know you’re Mister Cool and everything, but you still weren’t freaked at all when Frieda pulled her reverse McGonagall and shifted into a housecat. So when did you learn about shifters?” she asked him, referring to a scene in the first Harry Potter movie. She had forced her family to watch all of them with her.