Page 97 of Secret Shifters Next Door

We fell into a comfortable conversation. Ryland was easy to talk to and really didn’t seem to know who I was. He told me about becoming a teacher and how he enjoyed working with kids. I kept my real job a secret, instead telling him I was a fashion designer. It was the closest I could come to my actual career. It was honestly the best thirty minutes I’d had with a man who wasn’t my brother in a while.

“Listen, I have to head out in a second. Can I give you my number?” Ryland asked.

“Uh… yeah, sure,” I said, pleasantly caught off guard.

Ryland grabbed a napkin and pulled a pen from his pocket. He scribbled his number and name on it, then handed it to me. “Call me sometime. I could always use some new friends.”

Blushing, I nodded and tucked the napkin into the pocket of my jeans. “Yeah, maybe I will. Uh, here.” I took another napkin, put my own number on it, and handed it to him. “It really was nice meeting you.”

He took my number and slipped it into a pocket. “You too, April.” He grinned at me and turned to leave.

I glanced over his shoulder, and my heart fluttered. Steff stood at the door. Why had he come here? He had to know Kellan and Kris owned the bar now. He also knew how muchthey hated him for what he’d done to me. And why did he have that look on his face?

Steff wasn’t even looking at me. He was glaring at… Ryland? The expression on his face chilled me to the bone. Rage, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. He looked like he wanted to kill him. If Ryland noticed, he didn’t react. In fact, from behind, it looked like he returned Steff’s gaze and nodded as he went out. He brushed past Steff and went outside. Steff clenched his fists and spun on his heel to follow. What the hell?

FOUR

STEFF

A friend of a friend had posted on social media that Kris and Kellan were throwing April a welcome home party at the bar. I almost never went online and scrolled through stuff like that, but when I’d seen it, all I could do was think about going to see her. Was that the curse at work? Had Emily’s magic somehow gotten me to go online at the exact right time, the fingers of her spell twisting and tying me into the specific shape she’d wanted? Whatever it was, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head.

My gut instinct told me it would be crazy to go there. Not only would I have to see her again, but her brothers would be there. Kellan and Kris had been my best friends in high school. They’d introduced me to April. We’d had a bond so tight that sometimes I’d felt like the third brother. That had all been lost when I broke up with April. I’d attempted to contact them the first few months after I left and was met with beratements, accusations, and invitations to go fuck myself. While less severe than leaving April, that had been another heartbreaking moment. Losing friends was like losing a piece of yourself.

An hour had gone by, with me pacing my living room, attempting to talk myself out of it. Along with my own arguments about it being insane to go, my bear was not helping.It kept prodding and urging me toward the car. I couldn’t fight it all. There was too much going on inside my head. So, I broke down. By eight o’clock I found myself pulling into the parking lot of the bar.

I sat in my truck, washed in the glow of the lights from the parking lot. The building was the same as it had been when we were kids, but it had a fresh coat of paint in a new color scheme. It had taken considerable effort on my part to stay as far away from this place as I could. That wasn’t an easy task in a town this small, but I’d managed it. Now, after all these years, I was sitting outside again. I had a lot of memories here. In the back on Saturday afternoon, at fourteen years old, Kellan, Kris, and I had snuck our first beers. I grinned absently, remembering the way we’d all retched and complained of how awful it tasted before going back for another sip.

Right in this parking lot, I’d kissed April for the first time. A summer night two months after we’d first been introduced. Me, fifteen. Her, a year younger, and so beautiful. There was a hitch in my chest as I remembered the softness of her lips. It had been the greatest kiss of my young life. Now, more than eighteen years later, I couldn’t think of another that had ever been that sweet, that pure.

My hand shot up to the keys. I’d made a bad decision. It would be better if I left. The instant before I turned the ignition, the bear growled, and something happened that I’d never experienced. The bear asserted so much control over me that it spoke using my own mouth.

“No,” it growled.

My eyes bulged, and I touched my throat, then my lips. What the fuck? It had been my mouth, my breath, my tongue and lips, but that hadn’t been my voice. This really was the spell at work. A cold sweat broke out over my body, and a wave of dizzinessswept over me. This was crazy. I couldn’t go through with this, but my bear was insistent.

Before I knew it, I’d pulled the keys from the ignition and gotten out of my car. The bar loomed before me, and my feet propelled me toward the door. Pushed by a force I couldn’t even try to understand. All I could imagine was Kellan slamming a barstool over my head or Kris kicking me in the nuts. Would April simply ignore me, or worse, verbally eviscerate me? Call me all the most awful things she could think of? I swallowed hard as I pulled the door open and stepped inside.

The party was rocking. I’d never seen this many people in here when I’d been younger. Mr. and Mrs. Knight had let us help out even though we were underage. We weren’t allowed to touch any alcohol or even half-empty glasses. All we’d been allowed to do was take out the trash, sweep, mop, and bring out fresh glasses from the dish room. Back then, fifteen or twenty people would have been a busy evening. Tonight, there had to be almost a hundred people in there.

There were too many scents to discern April from the crowd. Sweat, beer, wine, multiple pheromones—I couldn’t make heads or tails out of the room. Instead, I scanned the crowd, hoping to see April, and hoping her brothers didn’t spot me. It took a few seconds, but I finally spotted April sitting at the bar. My heart ached as soon as I laid eyes on her. She was smiling, her bright white teeth contrasted with her red lipstick. I’d seen that smile dozens of times on billboards and magazines over the years. Those pictures had nothing on the real thing. For the millionth time, I berated myself for doing what I’d done. But that was in the past. All I could do now was focus on the future. The curse called, and I had to answer or die.

I was going to take the first step, but there was another silhouette beside her. A man. He was the one making her laugh. My bear snarled in jealousy. For once, I was able to ignore thebeast. There was no way I was able to focus on its jealousy. I was too busy holding back my rage. This son of a bitch? His face? I’d seen it before, that night all those months ago. This was one of the hunters who had accosted us. He’d stepped out of the trees behind Harley’s house. He’d tried to shoot Harley. My face warped into a scowl of hatred and anger.

He handed April a folded napkin and turned to leave. My fists were clenched and shaking at my sides. He shouldered past a group of people, and as he headed toward the door, he saw me. Instead of skidding to a stop, or even looking surprised, he kept coming. His eyes locked with mine, and a shit-eating grin spread across his lips.

He nodded and winked at me, before brushing past. “You don’t want to make a scene, do you?”

A growl erupted deep within my chest. Before I could follow him into the parking lot, I glanced over my shoulder. April had spotted me. She looked confused and was frowning deeply, a hand to her chest. My anger was too fierce to even try to talk to her now. I needed to find out what this asshole was doing. Dragging my gaze away from her, I spun on my heel and followed the hunter.

The guy was strolling toward his car, twirling his keys on a finger. Easy as you please, like he didn’t have a care in the world. Like he hadn’t walked past a shifter who wanted to rip him in half.

“Hey,” I called out. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

The guy stopped and turned his head to look at me. “Here? My job. Which is keeping my eye on you…” he looked me up and down and grimaced, “monsters, until my boss is ready to make his next move.”

This confirmed Tate’s suspicions. The hunters hadn’t been scared off for good. They’d only gone into hiding to plan andwait. How many times had I walked past one of them over the last few months and not realized it? And now one of them was flirting with April. Anger, so hot and brutal like lava, boiled inside me, and it scared me a little.

I stepped forward until our noses were almost touching. “Maybe you need to disappear. Vanish like those shifters you guys killed. What do you think about that?”

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