It was a perfect, cool evening, and we left our clothes folded on a bench there for the purposes and shifted. I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of the magnificence of this dragon as he took to the air. I followed, wondering what it would be like to lift into the air with such power and grace. I adored my bear, but we lumbered along. Power, yes, we had that, but grace? No. Falkan flapped those great wings and flew over me as I headed up the hillside, enjoying the crunching of last fall’s leaves under my paws.
The countryside here was so wild and natural despite being so close to civilization. It was my bear’s absolute favorite place to run, and I enjoyed it as well. After a day in the office—my former office—it felt good to get outside and breathe.
It was a magnificent experience, and I didn’t think it could get any better—until we saw him. A wolf, but not a wolf. Something more. My bear went on high alert, planting his paws and changing directions to follow the wolflike creature. I flicked a glance upward to see Falkan following as well. We had to meet him. He was…ours.
Chapter Five
Kyle
I wasn’t a big one for traveling for work, but lately, it seemed it was all that I did. There were some days I wished I didn’t accept my promotion. Being stuck in the city might not be great, but it was better than this.
It used to be that the salespeople would go out and explain our systems or troubleshoot, and that made sense. They were the ones selling the product and knew the clients best.
But lately, the company didn’t want them dealing with helping the people who already owned our products and for them to focus more on getting new sales. I understood from a salesperson’s perspective why this change was so popular. Of course, you wanted to get the next sale and not linger where the opportunity was already exhausted.
In theory, it sounded like a great idea. Have the experts on our software work with the people who had adopted our products. The only thing was, people hated change, and some of the companies I visited felt like they were being, in their words, “passed off to the C team,” and it made my job far less fun.
My last trip had been horrible, the department manager telling how little he thought of me every opportunity he could get. At least, this week was looking brighter. Honestly, I was kind of looking forward to being in San Diego. Animals, one of the only thriving venues known to be for all shifters, as well as other paranormals and even a few humans, was our client.
There were plenty of shifter biker bars for the fiercest of predators or clubs near packs that catered mostly to whatever animal lived there. But Animals had made a name for itself at all their locations for welcoming everyone. I heard there were even red pandas at this location, and like me, red pandas didn’tactually look like their name. No one would see me in my fur and call me a wolf, just like no one would see a red panda and exclaim panda.
I felt like I was coming to a safe space. A club where I wouldn’t be forced into shifting or mocked for my beast, one where I could explain my computer program, help with the upgrades, and call it a day. It was what I needed after three months of traveling nonstop to places where I was tolerated, at best.
I checked into my hotel and wondered how my company could be paying the many hundreds of dollars for the crappy room that I had. Maybe San Diego was just really expensive, or maybe the hotel manager saw them coming.
It was clean enough, though, and I took a quick shower before heading off to my meeting with Zevo. I’d talked to him on the phone before, and we’d Zoomed a couple of times. He was a nice guy and one of the few people I’ve worked with on this end of things who didn’t blame me for any problems they were having. They understood that it was a learning curve and that it would take some fine-tuning before everything would fall into place.
This was the second Animals to take on our software, so I was confident all would go well. And unlike our sales team, it didn’t matter to me if they bought more or not. I still got paid the same.
Usually, when I went to meet with customers, I showed up in business attire, but Animals didn’t seem like the kind of place where I should show up in a suit and tie. Instead, I threw on some jeans and a T-shirt and headed on over. I parked far in the back, not wanting to take a spot from a customer.
When I opened the car door, my beast started being a butt, pushing at me, asking me to shift.
No, we are not doing that here. You know we’re not.
Shift,he insisted.Shift.
I closed my eyes and pushed him all the way down. I was not dealing with that crap today. But when I got out of the car and shut the door, he didn’t stay down. He pushed his way through before I realized what was happening and took off running. Running, running. I’d never lost control of him, not for even a split second, and it was terrifying.
But it was not as terrifying as when I looked up and saw a dragon circling overhead. I was nothing but a little snack to a dragon. It could clutch me with his talons or snatch me in its mouth, and no one would know. My first instinct was to bolt back toward the car, but when I turned around, there was a bear there, coming right toward me like I was his prey.
When you were the prey, being piss-your-pants scared came with the territory. For it to be like with the hunter where I was scared I’d be hurt or killed…or in this case, torn to shreds. But that wasn’t what scared me. What had me in a tailspin was that I recognized them as mine. My beast did too, chanting over and over and over again in my head.Ours. Ours. Mates. Mates.
But he didn’t understand. This was going to be just like back in my pack, and just like with my ex, and I was going to be rejected. Only, in the past, the rejection came from people who had already, in theory, loved me and cared about me. These two alphas wouldn’t have the chance to get to know me well enough to have that play a part at all. They were going to see my “walking on stilts” body, laugh, and walk away, and I wasn’t sure I could handle that.
The dragon landed in front of me and took his skin first, followed by the bear.
“Can you come out and talk to us?” the dragon alpha said.
“Please,” the bear said, “come out and talk to us. We promise not to hurt you. See?” They both held their hands up. “No claws.”
It wasn’t their claws I feared would tear through my heart.
But it didn’t matter what I thought anyway.
It didn’t matter if I believed them, if I was still scared of them, or if I wanted to jump into their arms and beg them to keep me.
Because my beast refused to give me back control.
