Shifters Forsaken: Shifter Romance Collection Bks 1-5 Page 16

  “How did you do that?” he mumbled as the stumbled toward the door.

  “Do what? You’re not making any sense.”

  “Why do you hate me?”

  He hated the sound of his tone but it couldn’t be helped. He had lost all control over himself.

  Exhaling, Berlin turned to him.

  “I don’t hate you. I just don’t think we should see each other. It’s not a good idea.”

  He snickered.

  “Your wish is my command,” he blubbered. Berlin continued to stare at him.

  “Are you serious about leaving?”

  “Yep! Movers will be here in…” He fumbled about for his cell phone but he couldn’t seem to find it. He shrugged.

  “Few hours, I guess. You’ll have a new neighbor to…” He forgot the word he was seeking and flopped against the door. “You gotta key?”

  “Oh.”

  He heard her inhale sharply and retrieve her keys, unlocking the front door. Briar lunged headlong toward his unit and she moved toward hers.

  “Briar…”

  “Hm?”

  He dug into his pockets, barely aware that she was still watching him.

  “Never mind. Good night.”

  “Night!”

  He heard her door open and close before slumping back against the doorframe. He located his keys but paused for a long moment, looking at his hand in shock.

  Oh no… no, no, no…

  Closed around the keyring was a claw, encased in a meaty paw of brown.

  Had Berlin seen him in transition?

  He tried to get the key inside the door but it took six or seven attempts before it worked. Briar shoved open the door and made his way inside, pausing at the mirror to take in his face. He had to close one eye, unable to focus properly but it didn’t take much imagination to see that he had shifted, at least partially, while laying in the grass.

  Or did I do it in the Uber?

  He recalled how fast the driver had sped away and nausea rocked his gut.

  Stupid! He cursed himself, dragging his beaten body toward the sofa and falling face-first into the cushions. Why didn’t I notice it before and why did it happen?

  His mind was already foggy as sleep covered his mind and in seconds, he had spun into the realm of slumber, but not before he remembered that it had been a full moon that night.

  ~~~

  Briar couldn’t be certain if the thudding was in or out of his head when he forced his lids apart.

  The sunlight streaming through the living room windows offended his senses entirely.

  “Mr. Pendleson?” someone shouted. “Ace Movers!”

  Oh damn! What time is it?

  He turned and rolled off the couch, onto the floor. Instantly, he was transported to the memory of him and Berlin doing the same.

  A fleeting memory tickled his mind.

  Did I talk to Berlin last night? Oh God, did I drunk dial her?

  “Mr. Pendleson? Hello?”

  More pounding ensued and he knew that they wouldn’t leave.

  You don’t want them to leave, he reminded himself. They need to move you. You start your new job on Monday.

  “Coming!” he tried to yell but his mouth was filled with cotton and nothing more than a strangled whisper escaped his windpipe. He threw open the door and stared at the two men. Relief crossed their faces.

  “Mr. Pendleson?”

  “Briar,” he mumbled, gesturing for them to enter. He pointed at the boxes and furniture, hoping it was self-explanatory. His headache was preventing him from speaking much more than that.

  Good God, what happened last night? he wondered, dragging himself into the kitchen for a glass of water and a Tylenol.

  I am going to kill Cory!

  An image of Vanessa floated through his head and he froze, gooseflesh prickling his arms.

  Did I do something stupid with her?

  He couldn’t imagine being drunk enough but stranger things had happened and Briar couldn’t shake the feeling that something had occurred the previous night.

  It’s just drunk guilt, he tried to assure himself. Nothing happened.

  He managed to choke back the pills and down a glass of water but he had to sit perfectly still to ensure he didn’t vomit.

  Closing his eyes, he willed the headache away.

  I don’t have time for this today, he thought mournfully, feeling like an ass for allowing himself to get so out of hand. As the darkness fell, he suddenly remembered Berlin helping him off the grass.

  Briar’s eyes flew open and he lurched forward, gasping.

  I shifted. I shifted in front of her.

  He leapt to his feet, forgetting the need to be still and rounded the corner into the entranceway.

  “You okay, Mr. Pendleson?”

  He didn’t heed the man and began pounding on the door.

  “Berlin!” he yelled, his stomach bubbling. “Berlin!”

  “If you’re looking for the lady upstairs, she went out when we got here,” one of the movers offered. A quick glance out the door confirmed that her car wasn’t there.

  “Are you okay, man? You look like death… no offense.”

  Briar knocked his head against the way and exhaled shakily. He was not okay, not in the least.

  Berlin knew his secret.

  There was no way she would come back now.

  Chapter Seven

  Truths and Consequences

  So I was right. He is a shifter.

  Berlin didn’t know why she was stunned by the revelation. She had probably known it from the first minute she’d laid eyes on him but she’d hoped to be wrong.

  I don’t need any more of them in my life. Dad and August already rule me like a puppet. The last thing I need is another bear to run my life.

  Berlin knew that the man she had gotten to know over the last couple months was nothing like her father or brother but her experience dictated that it was only a matter of time before he showed that side of him.

  They can’t help it. It’s how they’re bred.

  The problem was, Berlin could find no trace of such a bear. He was not in any database she searched on the dark web, not even someone who shared his birthdate. It was as if he wasn’t registered on the circuit but that seemed impossible. No shifter could live off-grid.

  She recalled that he had been adopted but even so, someone, somewhere must have a record of him, shouldn’t they?

  Unless he doesn’t know about himself.

  It was unbelievable that could be. Obviously Briar had to know about his abilities but beyond that, did he know he was part of a bigger picture? It didn’t seem so.

  Seeing him the previous night on the lawn, drunk and incoherent, had been shocking enough. But seeing him half-shifting before her eyes had almost taken her breath away.

  It would have been pointless to discuss it with him then but Berlin had waited up all night to speak with him. Until the movers arrived.

  He wasn’t babbling! He really is moving!

  Berlin wasn’t sure how much more she could handle in terms of surprises but she knew she couldn’t stand around and watch him leave.

  I’ll have to get to the bottom of this one way or another.

  She drove toward the center of Eugene, noting the time. She had some research to do that day for her thesis but it would have to wait.

  If I can figure out what’s going on with Briar before he leaves, maybe…

  Maybe what?

  She steered her car into the driveway of an inconspicuous house in Springfield and paused, exhaling.

  This has nothing to do with you, she reminded herself. Briar’s business is his own.

  But she didn’t back out of the drive and leave well enough alone.

  How could she when there might be shifters unlike the closed-knit circle of loons she’d always known?

  It was the main reason Berlin had begun to study anthropology. She longed to get to the root of the shifters and their origins. The information she
received from her brother and father could hardly be taken as gospel, their source of knowledge either a fountain of misinformation or deliberately wrong.

  It wasn’t until she was in her early teens that Berlin realized that something was different about her family. Her first shift occurred when she was twelve and it had scared her terribly.

  August laughed when she started to cry, unsure of what was happening, and her father had acted like it was some rite of passage, but Berlin had been horrified to learn about the beast inside her.

  “We’re special,” Marvin insisted when Berlin wouldn’t stop crying. “We’ve been touched by the gods to restore order on this chaotic planet.”

  It wasn’t for another couple of years that Berlin found out what “restoring order” meant.

  They’re murdering anyone they deem a threat to our lifestyle.

  At first, it seemed natural. After all, who wouldn’t want to protect their family from predators? But after several assassinations, Berlin came to realize that the people her sleuth were killing could not all be dangers.

  All I have is their word that these people are threats to us. How do I know it’s true?

  In fact, the more she thought about it, the more Berlin realized that her family and the rest of her tight-knit crew in Alabama were little more than zealots, hellbent on destroying mortals more than avenging the shifters.

  She just hadn’t found a way out of the life, no matter how much distance she tried to put between herself and the family.

  August always has “jobs” for me and I can’t exactly refuse. I’ve seen what happens to those they consider “shifter traitors.”

  A man appeared at the door, snapping Berlin back to attention. He stared at her questioningly and Berlin raised a hand in greeting before pulling the keys from the ignition and stepping out of the car.

  “Morning, Charlie.”

  He didn’t smile or respond as she approached.

  “What are you doing here, Berlin? You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

  He guffawed without humor.

  “Anytime you come here with that line, I end up looking over my shoulder for six months.”

  “No one knows I’m here,” she insisted when he didn’t invite her inside. “I swear.”

  “Yeah, you say that, too.”

  “Charlie, I think I’ve found a Forsaken.”

  He blinked once, his blue eyes shocked at the mention.

  “A Forsaken? Are you sure?”

  “No. That’s why I need your help.”

  Charlie looked at her warily, his myopic blue eyes narrowing from behind wire-rimmed glasses. He was still in his pajamas but thinking back, she couldn’t recall a time when she had ever seen him in anything but a pair of flannels.

  “Berlin, I like you, you know I do, but if your sleuth finds out—”

  “Charlie, why do you think I’m here? I don’t want to tell them anything! I…”

  She trailed off and stared at him, shaking her head.

  “If he’s a Forsaken, I need to protect him from the others before he’s discovered.”

  The look of uncertainty magnified tenfold but Berlin could see he was considering her words.

  “Please, Charlie. You know I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think you were the only one who could help me.”

  “I’ve heard that before, too,” he muttered but turned toward the entrance and grunted for her to follow.

  A deep relief flowed through her and she slipped inside, casting one last glance onto the street. She didn’t believe she had been followed but Charlie’s paranoia was infectious.

  Not that he doesn’t have good reason to be. He is living proof of what happens when the Avengers turn on their own. If August and Dad knew I had turned to him for help in the past, God only knows what they’d do.

  Charlie had lived in exile for twenty years. It had not been by choice although Berlin suspected that the man rather enjoyed the solitude of his life by then.

  His only crime had been standing up to the Avengers and trying to break out of the murder spree which the shifters had been so determined to maintain.

  Berlin had found him in her sophomore year after stumbling across the shifter database on the dark web and the rest had been history. Except that Charlie kicked and screamed every time she went to him for help.

  Of course he always comes through in the end but not without a theatrical production.

  Berlin often wondered what the old-timer worried about. It wasn’t as if he could be murdered, certainly not by one of their own. It wasn’t just against the code, it was impossible.

  “There are worse things than death, Miss Matthews,” Charlie explained when she asked him. “Much worse things.”

  She didn’t bother to ask what he meant. Her imagination was vivid enough without Charlie adding to it.

  We’re all batshit crazy in our own way, she reasoned. Who am I to say that Charlie’s paranoia is any less viable than my own?

  “What makes you think that he’s a Forsaken?” Charlie asked once they were situated in the front room. “What did he say?”

  “He didn’t say anything,” she replied. “He didn’t even tell me he was a shifter.”

  “Does he know you’re one?”

  She shook her head, reaching for the mug of coffee Charlie had placed there.

  “I can’t find any record of him but he’s adopted, presumably by mortals.”

  Charlie’s eyes narrowed slightly, like he was remembering something but it wasn’t quite coming to him.

  “I want to find out who he is,” Berlin continued when Charlie didn’t offer anything else. “How can I find out?”

  Charlie shrugged, smirking at the question.

  “You’re asking me? I’m not the one with access to databases and hit lists. That’s more your family’s style.”

  “Charlie, you know I don’t share in my sleuth’s purview,” Berlin grumbled. “Don’t give me a hard time now.”

  “You still have no problem carrying out their orders though, do you?”

  Berlin clenched her teeth and steeled her temper.

  “Say what you will about the zealots, Charlie, but even you have to admit that there are mortals out there who would happily see us locked up in cages with electrodes sprouting from our heads, running tests and drawing our blood until we die. Those are a threat to our way of life.”

  “I’m not going to rehash the morality of the issue with you,” Charlie sighed. “I don’t need to. You know as well as I do that there are far fewer of those threats out there than the sleuth will have you believe. More often than not, they are killing for no other reason than domination.”

  They stared at each other in silence, both knowing the other had a point but it was a debate they’d had many times over the years.

  And they were both right.

  “Never mind the Avengers,” Berlin finally said. “This is not about them and I don’t want them to learn about this one.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Berlin tensed and cocked her head to the side.

  “I’d rather not say at this point,” she replied. Berlin read the defensiveness on his face but he shrugged, forcing a smile.

  “As you wish. I don’t know what you want from me then. Like I said, I don’t have access to the same resources you do.”

  “I want to know how it could happen, how a Forsaken could slip through the cracks. Is it possible?”

  Charlie sat back against the worn corduroy couch, his mouth pursing slightly.

  “Anything is possible,” he replied. “But it’s more likely you’re jumping the gun. Forsakens are so rare, so…”

  He trailed off as if trying to convince himself that it wasn’t possible but there was a glint in Charlie’s eyes which Berlin couldn’t identify. Before she could question him again, he spoke.

  “Are you sure you checked your lists thoroughly?”

  “Yes but it’s more than
that, Charlie. I don’t think he realizes that there are more like him.”

  Charlie laughed shortly.

  “What are you saying? That he’s all alone?”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t think he just fell off the grid. I don’t think he was ever on it.”

  Charlie scoffed but she pressed forward.

  “Yes. Could that be? Could he be a fluke case? Is it possible that he was born outside of a sleuth by some throwback genetics to unsuspecting mortal carriers?”

  Charlie was silent for so long, she wondered if he had tuned her out entirely.

  “I don’t think that’s likely,” he finally said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that happening. He belongs to someone, some crew somewhere.”

  Berlin waited, sensing that there was more to the story.

  “But I don’t think that’s who he is if what you’re saying is true. For all I know, you might be as delusional as your father and brother.”

  Berlin ignored the jab.

  “Assuming I’m not,” she insisted. “Who do you think he is?”

  “A Forsaken,” he replied and Berlin groaned.

  “Yes, but from where? How? I thought that was an urban legend.”

  “Oh, the irony, it burns,” Charlie snickered. “A shifter talking about urban legends.”

  “Charlie…”

  “If you’re right,” the old man continued, “then he is likely one of the Original Forsaken.”

  “The Original Forsaken?” There was a ring of familiarity to the name but nothing she could grasp concretely.

  Charlie smiled, baring cracked, yellow teeth.

  “There were four of them, boys who disappeared one day. Some believed that they were kidnapped, others said their mother abandoned them. But there were four and they vanished into the night, never to be seen or heard from again.”

  “From where?” she demanded, her mind mentally documenting what she was hearing for posterity.

  “Some say Rhode Island, others New York. There are several theories.”

  Berlin stared at him dubiously.

  “And this is a real story? Four brother bears, vanished forever and no one ever bothered to look for them?”

  “I’m sure they were sought after but without a clue as to their whereabouts…”