Unbound: Shifters Forever Worlds(4)

He hunkered low, muscles bunched and with one powerful launch was on top of the brick wall, balancing carefully.

He scanned the building. It wasn’t a house at all. Nor a cabin. It was a walled garden.

But who was talking? He looked between the trees, the thorny bougainvillea growing on the walls, the rose bushes in the center.

Nothing.

No human at all.

And he picked up no human scent. Nor animal scent.

How can that be?

At the far end, ivy leaves rustled, as if moving with the wind.

Except there was no wind.

“Someone’s watching us.” The ivy moved, softly swaying.

“Who is it,” the other voice said. A different kind of ivy, larger leaves, a darker green moved this time.

Plant shifters? He’d heard they existed, but he’d never seen any.

Dane cocked his leopard head.

“Yes, I see him. It’s a cat.”

Were they talking? Or were they linked, minds synced the way shifters did, to communicate when in their shifter form, able to talk in each other’s heads.

How can I hear them? Is it because they’re plant shifters? Does their linking work differently? There was only one way to know.

I’m not a cat,” he interjected in the middle of their sync.

”Oh, Glory, it’s a talking cat.” The darker green ivy with larger leaves said.

“I heard it,” the lighter colored ivy said.

“I’m not a cat.” He leapt down, faced the two ivies, glaring at them with his fiercest snow leopard glare.

He studied the lighter ivy. Something about it hooked his attention. “How can an ivy have a name like Glory? Or any name at all.” He swatted at her leaves.

A cry emitted, loud, girlish. “You hurt me, you mean cat.”

The ivy rustled and rippled, as if the wind were blowing it again, though this time as if the wind were gusting.

Before Dane’s very eyes, the ivy shifted, the light colored leaves becoming a human body, topped with the darkest red hair and lightest green eyes he’d ever seen on a human.

“I’m Glory,” she said. Her hand cupped over her arm, tiny rivulets of blood seeping between her fingers. “And you hurt me.” The glare she gave him matched his own.

He shifted into his human skin. “You called me a cat.”

She scowled. “You’re not a dog.”

“I am not a cat. I’m a snow leopard. What are you?”

She looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “I’m an ivy, duh.”

“I’ve never heard of a plant shifting into a human.”

“We keep to ourselves, our own kind. We don’t talk to other kinds of shifters.”

“Why not?” Suddenly he felt as if he wasn’t good enough. A plant was making him feel that way.

Except this girl wasn’t a plant. She was a pretty thing, about his age, with fair skin, red hair, luminescent green eyes and a sassiness that appealed and yet repelled him.

“Glory, Honor.” A voice from outside the walled-in garden said.

Glory put a finger over her lips, a warning in her eyes that he wasn’t to say a word. “Yes, Mother, coming.”

“See you later, Mister Cat.” She opened a door that wasn’t visible from the outside and slipped out of the walled garden.

Honor, who clearly was the other ivy, shifted into a human form, the same age, with hair more brown than red and eyes that were a deep dark green. She looked at Dane, gave him the once over and dismissed him with her glance.

She followed Glory out the door, promptly closing it behind her, effectively sealing Dane from anyone’s view, but also assuring he could see nothing.

He shifted into his leopard immediately and jumped to the top of the wall, then over, landing on the ground softly, his paws alighting on the soft dirt.

He looked around.

No sign of the girls. Neither one of them. Nor of the voice that called out to them.



And that was Dane’s first encounter with the one who eventually impacted every major decision he made.





* * *



His phone rang. He looked at the screen. The area code was Bear Canyon Valley. Had to be Mae.

He tapped the phone’s screen to receive the call. “Aunt Mae.”

“Dane Forester, as I live and breathe. If it weren’t for the movies you star in, I’d wonder if you were still alive. You’re not very good at staying in touch with family.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you aren’t, but that’s okay. I know you snow leopards like your alone time. Though for the life of me, I don’t see how you get that when you’re always in the public eye.”

They don’t get to see me. They see the roles I play. “I juggle it, Aunt Mae. Stan said you called. Uncle Frank died.”

“He did.” She sighed, a sound that came across more as static on the cell phone to Dane. “They’re reading his will.”

Dane didn’t respond. He didn’t have hard feelings toward Uncle Frank, but he couldn’t imagine being back in Woodland Creek. A pain knifed through him, a pain so severe it pulled his breath from his body and left him in a void.

How can Glory still affect me, all these years later?

He wasn’t asking anyone, it was a rhetorical question, but by damn, his leopard took that opportunity to remind him that she was his fated mate. That there was no other, never would be another… no matter what he did.