Unbound: Shifters Forever Worlds(16)

“I can’t discuss that with you.” Another thunderous crack punctuated her denial.

She couldn’t. It was part of the Ivy Creed that they not mix with other shifters. It was also not discussed with other shifter types. The ivy shifters kept to themselves and were the least known of all shifter types, even cryptic around other shifters.

She laying on his stomach, his hard muscles gave her a sense of comfort, his heartbeat next to her ear, his pulse synchronized with hers, it was easy to fall back into the days when they were the best of friends and so much more.

Thinking of those times was a fool’s folly. She had to let those times go. She was in the present now. He was Dane Forester, the famous Hollywood actor and she was a girl about to become another man’s mate.

Hot tears trickled down her face, pooling on his skin, trapped between them. This wasn’t the time for regrets. This was the time to move forward with the life her parents wanted for her.

God, her parents. She thought of the last day she’d seen them.



A day so very long ago, almost as long as it had been since she’d seen Dane…



Glory’s parents and her sister Honor were going out of town to look at colleges for Honor. Glory had begged off, saying she felt sick.

Sick was right.

She was pregnant.

And she had no clue where Dane was since he’d left town a few months ago.

So she’d decided to stay and nurture the morning sickness rather than be around her parents and have them figure out her situation.

Thank goodness ivy shifters didn’t have the same problems as other shifters. It wasn’t discernible that they were pregnant from a scent or the baby’s heartbeat.

Feeling bad she was pregnant with Dane’s baby and he didn’t know, she decided she should tell him. Dane’s uncle Frank Forester had been the only one she could contact who could reach Dane. So she’d called him the moment her parents left and made arrangements to see him.

She plaited her hair into a braid, threw on a pair of jeans, applied a little blush and concealer to hide the baby’s effects on her face and began a hike across the properties.

She was twenty minutes into the trek, well into the thick of the woods, when the first cramp struck.

Glory fell to her knees, grabbing her abdomen while sweat dripped down her face. It wasn’t hot enough to be sweating like this.

She leaned against a tree, holding her stomach, wishing the pains away.

The infernal cramps lasted forever it seemed. She wiped the perspiration from her forehead with her sleeve. Glory’s watch said she’d been there for more than an hour. She was late to her appointment with Frank. She pushed off the tree’s trunk, feeling lightheaded she looked down at a pool of red that bloomed at the juncture of her legs.

Glory’s gasp broke the forest’s unchanging sounds, all went silent except the wind that whistled mournfully between the branches.

That day Glory lost the baby.

The next day she’d found out her family was attacked.

The day after that she’d gone into the secret garden and sank into a hibernation state, not coming out for the ivy shifters that wanted to take her back to Massachusetts where her parents’ families were from. She’d shooed them all way, so numb with pain she hadn’t noticed they’d taken the bodies to Massachusetts to bury. She didn’t even process that they’d done that until much later, but that was because she was in hibernation.

She’d been in hibernation for several winters, shifting into her ivy in the secret garden, across from the spot where she’d put her baby’s memorial stone marker. She’d stayed there, not processing the changes in time, weather, or even herself.

She’d stayed in hibernation to let her soul heal, to avoid the grief she wanted to yield to after losing the baby and her family.

Untrimmed and unmaintained, over the years, her ivy had become a monolith, entwined and encircling the garden, with the tiny memorial stone.

One day, seven and a half years later — she’d counted the seasons — her ivy pushed her for a shift, insisting Glory take her human form. Glory resisted. She’d stayed awake, consciously pushing its attempts aside.

On the eighth day, it rained so hard, Glory couldn’t see her leaves on her furthest branches, the weight of the rain pulled her ivy down, fatiguing her even more. Glory had collapsed into a slumber, tired from her vigilant guard twenty-four hours per day for a week.

She’d awoken to a pulse of power raging through her. She clenched her body tightly against the feeling that she was being split into a million slivers. Spikes of pain coursed through her as her arms pushed through the ivy’s branches. Her legs collapsed beneath her, sending her crashing to the muddy dirt on the ground.

Half human, half ivy, she thrashed in the mud, a vision of flesh with brown and green patches where she resisted her shift. She battled with the ivy in her mind, while her body protested the excruciating shift, unaccustomed to the process after seven long years of stasis.

Glory arched her back, cursing at the ivy in her mind while the most inhuman sounds escaped from her human lips. Her throat was parched, the muscles in her voice box ached when she cried out. The effort to make sound was as painful as the sounds that came out.

Where Glory’s legs should have been, roots ripped out of the ground, flailing in the dirt, causing drops of murky dirt-water to fly.