Shifting Shadows (Sparks Collide Trilogy) Read online

  Trent laughed “Yeah, I bet you’ll try.”

  “Hey, don’t say I never took one for the team.”

  I stared him down “Well you’re not taking this one, until we know more about her, back off.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” He headed over to a group of blondes in the corner, giggling drunkenly. They latched onto him like they were starving and he was a four course meal. It was everyday crap around us though and it was getting old.

  I swallowed the rest of my drink in one gulp and took off for the band playing outside. Trent followed. “Look man, I know you’ve been bored lately but this girl is no one. She doesn’t need a full on investigation.” I sighed as we stepped onto the back patio, the music was loud but with our hearing we could understand each other just fine. He was right. I had been bored, restless even. It seemed no matter what shit I caused, it didn’t make any difference. It used to. It was like a game. Go out, wreak havoc in the supernatural underground, see Dad for the first time in weeks, get yelled at for my idiocy, and then be ignored again. It was a vicious cycle but recently, my father didn’t even put effort in his “Don’t be an a-hole” speech. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize he’d given up on me.

  “Yeah, you’re right. Doc’s no idiot and it doesn’t matter anyway.” He gave one sharp pat to my back and waved at some girls in the crowd.

  “Running later?” He asked as he walked toward the girls.

  “Yeah” I lied, as I called back. More like now. I turned into the woods behind me and was gone.

  Chapter 3

  Kira

  Driving back to the apartment, I kept checking on Christina to see if she’d fallen asleep yet in the backseat. I told her it was ok if she wanted to go with Xander instead but she insisted and mumbled something about the chase. She was a bit toasted but I took her at her word.

  Tonight had been fun. We had played pool and I wasn’t as abysmal at it as I had expected. Before we left, Chris and I even danced a little. I don’t know if the music was good but the band was loud, with a steady beat and that was enough for me. I even met a few other people. Most of them were at Brisdale University too. That left me wondering.

  “Chris, do Jay, Trent, and Logan go to Brisdale U, too?”

  “Yes, yes, and no” she slurred “Jay’s there, getting his m-a-asters in polit, politicical? No, political science, although really he just messes around but Trent’s going into his second year as a law student and Logan went into the real world after under-drag as an advertising exec.”

  I assumed she met undergrad and continued. “And Logan still comes to house parties?”

  “Well, yeah if you grew up here then you hang out with the locals, a party is a party and it’s the weekend. Woooo.” She shouted the last part.

  I nodded, “makes sense.” From my rearview mirror I saw her sit up.

  “So which one are you interested in? Logan? No, I bet it’s Jay.”

  “No, he was kind of rude, actually.” I replayed meeting him in my mind and all I could picture were his eyes, alight and focused on me. The intensity in them had turned the color impossibly more purple. “I’m not interested in any of them, at least not right now. I was just curious.”

  She snorted and sang “Whatever you sa-ay.” I rolled my eyes and parked the car outside our building. Our apartment wasn’t very big but it was mine. It meant my freedom and I loved every speck of it.

  ************

  Jay

  Trent caught up to me about an hour later in the woods behind my house. I was eating an orange off one of the trees. I saw the red-brown coat of his wolf form come around the bend and I threw an orange to him. He spit out the clothes he was holding and caught it in his mouth as he came to sit by me. He played with the orange for a while with his paws until I grabbed it, peeled it, and handed it back to him. He whined happily and ate it.

  It was nice never having to worry about being seen because the woods and the entire neighborhood belonged to the pack. We lived in the gated, exclusive community of Wyldwoods Estates. It held large, opulent homes all built by Porter, a member of the pack who happened to be the contractor for us all. The thing about this neighborhood wasn’t the huge houses or the acres of woods held behind the houses. No, it was the fact that only Werewolves lived here. If you’re not in our pack, you’re not moving in behind these gates and that was that.

  Moments later, a naked Logan appeared from behind the trees, holding his clothes in his hands. He was cracking his joints and stretching out, obviously having just changed back into human form. “Hey, want an orange?” He shook his head and began to re-dress, holding up his pants and stepping into them.

  “Why did you leave the party so early, man? You missed out on some very hands on ladies.” A yip noise came from Trent in agreement. Logan’s hazel eyes looked satisfied and I wondered the last time I’d felt that satisfied with anything.

  “Don’t know. Don’t you guys ever get sick of the same girls, the same town, and the same shit?”

  Logan nodded “I guess but it’s not like we don’t have diversity. We live in a college town.”

  I pushed my hands through the grass and felt comforted by the dirt beneath it. “A private college that mostly townies go to but the few new people that come around don’t stick around. After a few years they get to leave and have lives.”

  “Hey, we have lives, great lives. Have you seen the houses we live in, seen the girls we could get? Hell, we’re freaking werewolves. We get to do things no else gets to do. We’re practically gods in this town and the humans don’t even know half of the reasons why.” He didn’t understand what I meant but I don’t know why I expected him to. He loved what he did everyday. His job fulfilled him and he was on top of the world. I was being pushed into my preordained destiny of a life and I couldn’t hate it anymore if I tried.

  “I guess you’re right,” I lied. I wondered when lying had become so easy for me. It was practically second nature, or maybe third. I wondered what my wolf nature would count in that equation.

  He smirked, “Of course I’m right. Oh look, Trent’s sleeping. You ready to go in?”

  “Yeah” We pushed Trent until he huffed and stood up on all fours. We walked to the house that we shared. While we could’ve had our own homes, it seemed excessive as young, single guys. Trent and I didn’t want to move back into our childhood homes when we graduated college, so we shared a newly built one. Then when Logan graduated a year later, he moved in too. It gave us our pretend privacy even though we lived in the same neighborhood as our parents.

  I stared at my childhood home as we passed by it and thought of my father, alone inside of it. “We’ll be back there for the Barbeque tomorrow” Logan said as he nodded to my point of interest.

  I wasn’t looking forward to more family bonding time. “Great.” I said, clearly overjoyed. I turned away from the house and didn’t look back.

  Everyone got to my father’s house around 5 p.m. on Sunday for the neighborhood full-moon Barbecue. My father held weekly meetings with his council every Saturday morning. This included me and my chosen council but he included all of the pack once a month to eat and catch up on more social matters. For obvious reasons we did so on the night of the full-moon. The convenient forest of our backyards allowed us to roam free in our other forms.

  According to legend, werewolves were created by biting humans and spreading some sort of disease but that was bull. We were our own species. We were born this way. We have families and no amount of biting would turn a non-werewolf into one.

  Not that we would bite humans. Human is part of what we are just as much, if not more than the wolf side. We stay away from humans because we have no reason to interact with them. When we’re wolves we want to be surrounded by nature. Humans today are as far away from that as possible.

  The only reason that legend of wolves biting humans existed is from those times when lone-wolves had gone insane from too much isolation. At that point all that would happen is the vic
tims would die not suddenly morph into one of us. We weren’t even the only type of shape shifters alive. Shape shifters of other animals were just extremely rare. Werewolves, for whatever reason, tended to survive and populate easier. My Uncle Eric always said it was because of our pack mentality. We stuck together and we made it through to the 21st century.

  That’s why nights like tonight were important. It was good for the pack, to keep us centered in a civilized world where distractions like car payments got in the way of our true needs, connectedness and shifting.

  The Montgomery’s were the first to arrive. This included Max, Mena, their younger brothers Todd and Charles, and their parents Chrome and Marie. The whole family possessed extreme intelligence and were invaluable to the pack.

  Max and Mena were 21 and would be in my council once I became the leader just as their parents were in my father’s council now. It wasn’t necessarily a rule but Max and Mena earned their spots in their own right. They were deemed the “genius twins” which wasn’t very clever but it was oh, so accurate. They both had a shit-ton of degrees, taking college courses since middle school. They’d always done so from Brisdale and still managed to become well known in most academic circles.

  Max focused more on scientific research and was big into technology while Mena was amazing with numbers and a tactical genius, outsmarting champion chess players by the time she was six. Together they were pretty much unstoppable.

  I greeted them and all but Max and Mena headed out to the back for my father, the pool, and the grill.

  Will came in with his parents, fighting as usual and I stiffened. Will came back from Texas last month, after being at grad school for the past two and a half years. He now had a Masters in construction management and had landed a job with Porter’s construction firm. Yes, it was the pack’s go to builder but beyond that it was also a well respected firm in most of Central Florida. If Will hadn’t gotten the job at such a great company he might still be there with his friends in the Southern Texas pack.

  Maybe it would be better if he’d stayed there.

  Unfortunately Will and I had our share of problems. My former best friend was now a casual acquaintance.

  “James” Will’s father, William Pendleton Sr. said as he nodded to me, saying my name like a curse word.

  “Jay, honey how are you?” his mother, Jackie gave me an air kiss on the cheek, making sure not to mess up her blood-red lipstick. I tried not to cringe while keeping my guard up.

  “Fine, Jackie. How are you?”

  “As good as anyone with my husband can be.” She laughed loudly “Oh but that’s to be expected. So what has our strong, future Alpha been up to?” She said the entire thing with twisted fake cheer on her face, not giving her aforementioned husband or better yet her embarrassed son a second glance. I sighed.

  “I was just chatting with Max and Mena here.” I said pointedly.

  She turned to my friends as if noticing them for the first time. She looked down her nose at them as usual. “Of course, well aren’t you two looking…sweet.” This was her typical insult to people who were smarter, younger, or better looking than her. I always found it amusing that to her, sweet really was an insult. Maybe it was because it was something no one would ever think to call her.

  “Thanks” Mena said brightly because she knew how to play the game. Being a female werewolf wasn’t easy.

  Max just shrugged, he didn’t have to respond.

  Will was growing more agitated by the moment. To anyone else he looked calm but I knew him like I knew the back of my hand and I noticed the tick in his jaw. As the silence grew he finally snapped. That is to say, Will spoke up, which he hardly ever does. “Mom, Dad, why don’t you guys head out back, now.”

  “Great, I’m ready for a drink but then again anyone would be after five minutes with your mother.” William Sr. said to his son.

  “Well isn’t that predictable?” Jackie said to us. “But I’m glad we can agree on something, a drink is quite necessary. Ta-ta, children” Will’s parents gave each other smug, disgusted looks and walked away.

  When his parents shut the door from the back patio, we all took a collective sigh of relief. One of the worst things about werewolf culture was its noticeable lack of divorce rate. It wasn’t romantic and it wasn’t because they took their vows seriously. It was simply unthinkable for werewolves to divorce. There’s a large process involved in choosing a mate and to divorce would mean admitting to a major mistake. This meant people like Will had to grow up listening to his parents fighting on constant repeat.

  Will looked to me but didn’t meet my eyes as he asked “Wii?” Max, Mena, and I nodded in agreement and headed to the den.

  We decimated Max and Mena, and seeing as they were technology geniuses, it wasn’t freaking easy. Eventually Logan and his brother Brandon found us in the den, smelling of the ocean and surf board wax.

  Logan looked to the screen and back at us. “Things never change man. Shouldn’t you be greeting your subjects, my lord?” he bowed pitifully, his blond hair falling forward, and I chucked a pillow at him.

  “Sit down and shut up. You can be on Max and Mena’s team.” Logan frowned as his little brother laughed and headed over to Will and myself. Brandon, Will and I fell into sync as we always had. That is, until Annabella and Trent showed up.

  Trent threw himself into a recliner as usual and Annabella sat in the large gap between Will and me on the couch.

  “Hey guys” She settled in, in her delicate way, messing with her necklace just for something to do with all her energy before she looked up and said “Will, Demi told me to tell you she’s waiting for you downstairs.”

  The room went silent but the message was clear, Game Over.

  Demi, the female Alpha, had been like a sister to me my whole life. Now it was like I didn’t even know her. Growing up, Will, Demi, and I were the sole children born to each of our families. Without siblings, we played with each other. Things were never quite sibling-like between them but Will never acted on it. Then when Will comes back home from Texas he finally gets the nerve to ask her out. They’d been inseparable ever since. That would’ve been fine, great even if Will hadn’t made it some weird choosing thing. Now he barely spoke to me but had plenty of time for Demi.

  Will placed his wiimote down on the table, “See you guys at dinner.”

  “Dude, whipped much?” this came from Mena and it was true but any of us guys could’ve told her not to waste her breath. Will didn’t even respond and left the room. “I was just kidding” Mena said sadly.

  “We know” Logan answered “He’s just loved her forever and he never thought it was ok…” he drifted off and everyone looked to me.

  “What?” I shouted. “I didn’t want her like that. She’s like my freaking sister; a bitchy, high maintenance one.”

  Annabella placed her hand over my arm and it calmed me slightly, as an Omega’s touch could do.

  Alphas and Betas were always in a pack but it was rare to have an Omega. Omegas were the quiet strength of the pack, the glue that held everything together. We were lucky we got Annabella when we did 9 years ago and she was lucky to have found us too. Life hadn’t gone so well for her before she showed up here but she never brought it up, so neither did we.

  “We all know you don’t see her like that but for the longest time, Will didn’t” She said and I scoffed.

  “Well he’s stupid then. He could’ve just listened to me.”

  Max shook his head “I don’t think he would’ve believed you even if he had. He was always so set on how things should be. You know, Alpha with Alpha.”

  “Well it looks like he got over it.” I said.

  Annabella grabbed the wiimote from where Will had set it down. “It’s just the honeymoon stage for them. Things will be back to normal in no time.”

  “True” Logan agreed but no one believed them.

  At dinner time, we sat out by the pool and enjoyed some food. While some legends got it so wrong it
was comical, one of the things they got right was the werewolf’s undying love for raw meat. Or in this case, we grilled our food to medium rare. It was crowded as always but there was still plenty enough to go around.

  My father stood behind the grill, chatting with the large group surrounding him. They were hanging on his every word. I went towards him, intent on some grub and not much else. His eyes shot to mine and the crowd became quiet. Freaking nosy neighbors. “How can I help you, son?” he asked mildly.

  “Steak would be great.” He put a large piece on my plate and turned away coldly. What did he think I was going to say? “I’m ready to reform and be your puppet. Let’s hug?” I eyed the trees and wondered how far I’d get without my friends following behind. Not far enough, I decided and dug into my meal.

  “Still alive, I see.” I turned to see a tall man with smiling gray eyes and graying hair to match.

  “Nice to see you too, Uncle Eric” and I meant it. “Also, you might have something to do with me being alive still.” He acknowledged that with a nod. We were referring to the many fights I got into and how he had to put me back together most times.

  The last fight I’d gotten into was only a few nights ago. It was a friendly fight with a pack member named Darrell. We were playing as wolves do but he got a little too excited when he thought he would beat the Alpha because I’d been going easy on him. I’d been totally distracted with the thoughts in my head, not taking it seriously. I sensed the change in him almost too late and I had to fight him for real. It didn’t take long to bring him down but in the meantime I had a gnarly scratch that went from my neck down my entire back. It was gone now.

  “I do what I can, James. Though I wish you’d keep out of trouble in the first place.”

  “What would the fun in that be?”

  “More fun for me, I assure you.”

  “Well don’t worry too much about me, Uncle. I’ve got things under control. Speaking of which, I met your newest employee. She’s very…human.”