Shifters of Grrr 1 (33 page)

But not me. Not my bear.
 

Here, I was king.
 

As I made my way around the octagon, still playing at the crowd, I heard the familiar sound of flesh tearing and bones rending. Before I had a chance to turn around, a deafening roar sounded, silencing the cheers from the crowd. The distinct scent of a big cat was suddenly stronger, and I turned to see a massive mountain lion crouched down in front of me, its fangs bared and claws ready to strike.
 

My bear snarled as I braced myself, preparing to shift. My opponent had violated the rules. Shifting during a fight was strictly prohibited. But I’ll be damned if I wasn’t going to defend myself.
 

I started to clear my mind, letting the bear’s consciousness overtake my own, but it was already too late. Before I could shift, the massive mountain lion lunged toward me, its fangs digging into my shoulder as I threw my arms up in a defensive posture.
 

I roared as the pain ignited my senses, doing everything I could to force my opponent off of me. I threw a pair of punches into the lion’s stomach, but to no avail. The beast continued to tear into my shoulder, absolutely deadening my left arm.
 

I was bleeding profusely then and the world was starting to spin. I knew it wouldn’t be long before I lost consciousness or worse. But there was nothing I could do get the monstrous beast off of me.
 

BOOM
!

An explosion sounded from the back of the arena, followed by a sickening thud right in front of my face. The mountain lion’s grip on my shoulder lessened suddenly and the beast dropped to the floor of the octagon, a tranquilizer dart protruding from its neck.
 

I stared at the mountain lion for a long moment before collapsing to the floor, the world suddenly fading into black.

MEGAN

My backpack jostled against my shoulder as I walked away from the bus stop, my earbuds blasting the latest Billboard 100 pop song directly into my brain. I jarred my head from side to side in time with the beat, doing my best to keep the singing in my head and not on the street. It was one thing to walk down the road jamming to some over-hyped music, it was something else entirely to offer it to uneasy onlookers. Not that there were many strolling about at that time of night, but still.
 

I had just left my study group at the campus library and my head felt like it was about to explode. No matter what the professors said, there really was such a thing as studying too hard. And I’d just proved that an eight-hour cram session was all it took to reach that limit. No matter. Today I was an over-tired medical student, tomorrow I’d be a doctor. Assuming I passed my exam, that is. And then there was the whole residency thing. So, at least in name, I’d be a doctor.
 

Dr. Megan Holt
, I mused as I continued bobbing my way down the street.
It has a nice ring to it. Megan Holt, M.D. Even better.
 

Something about accomplishing a lifelong goal has a way to make a girl feel upbeat and like nothing in the world can defeat her. In fact, at that moment, I felt like nothing could rock my current position in life. I was solid.

So of course when I saw the mutilated and brutalized man slumped up against a dumpster in the alleyway I was passing, you can imagine why my eyes nearly jumped out of my skull. It was, to say the least, surprising.
 

Even with four years of medical training, on top of two decades of being bombarded by the gruesomeness of the Internet and Hollywood, the sight of the man’s bloodstained flesh was enough to send a wave of nausea through my body.

Shit!
I thought to myself, forcing my feet to carry over to the man. He looked rough, but judging by the steady rise and fall of his chest, I could tell that he was still breathing.
 

I knelt down in front of the man, tossing my backpack to the side, and doing my best to clear my thoughts and tone down my alarm. I was ready for this. I’d been trained for this. No one would be better prepared to handle this situation that I was. Well, no one in shouting distance anyway. And by the time an ambulance got there, it could very possibly be too late.
 

“Sir, can you hear me?” I asked the man, but to no avail. He didn’t so much as flinch or flutter one of his long, gorgeous eyelashes.

First things first, I held two fingers against the man’s throat, checking his pulse. The faint drumming of the man’s carotid artery let me know that he wasn’t too far gone, and I immediately went to inspecting his body for wounds. The most obvious wound, and likely the reason he was slumped up against the garbage in the first place, was a pair of deep gashes in his shoulder. The blood looked like it had begun to clot and I shook my head in disbelief at that. Judging by the amount of blood on the man’s bare chest and back, as well as the pool of the stuff surrounding him, he should be dead, not in the process of forming a scab.
 

In addition to the puncture marks on the man’s shoulder, there were a series of scrapes and cuts all across his body, from head to toe. His sides were heavily bruised and at least a few ribs were fractured. Beyond that, he looked solid. Or, well, as solid as a half-dead man in an alleyway can look. Whatever had happened to the guy - I was guessing a mugging-gone-wrong - he’d somehow managed to stay alive. That, in itself, seemed like a miracle to me.
 

I reached over to my discarded backpack and unzipped it. I always kept a spare sweater with me in case of nippy weather, so I pulled it out of the bag and started to spread it out. Even with my curves, the sweater still dwarfed the man’s massive size. He was, I noticed, one of the beefiest looking guys I’d ever seen. From head to toe, the man was pure muscle, and his broad shoulders reminded me of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. He was, to say the least, quite the specimen.
 

I bit my lip and just stared at him for a second. I’d never been this close to someone so well-formed before. Especially with them being naked. He was a marvel to behold and, honestly, there was something incredibly alluring about him. Something…familiar.
 

I shook off the thoughts and went back to work, grabbing my scissors from my backpack. I accidentally nicked myself on the blades, cutting just deep enough to draw a small stream of blood. I dismissed the cut, wiping the blood off on the sweater. I then started to shred the sweater. In a matter of seconds, I’d come up with a few makeshift bandages, and began to work them onto the man, wrapping them carefully over the wounds on his shoulder. If I’d have had any antiseptic with me, I’d have lathered the sweater up first, but as it stood, this would have to work. I wrapped up the man’s shoulder, ensuring that the bleeding had stopped completely, then sat back to examine my work, wiping the blood on my hands off onto pants as I did. Given the resources I had, I thought I’d done pretty well. Even if the man’s miraculous healing had done most of the work for me.
 

Just then, the man’s eyes flashed open, revealing two orbs of perfect green that delved into my soul. The man made a scrunching motion with his nose as if sniffing the air around him. His face screamed confusion and rage all at once and, for a moment, fear began to dig its claws into my brain. As quickly as it came, though, the expression faded from the man’s face, replaced by a look of weariness and fear of his own. He mouthed something and, for the first time, I realized that my headphones were still blaring senseless lyrics into my ears.
 

“What was that?” I asked, removing the earbuds.
 

“Where…am…I?” the man stammered, obviously in pain.
 

“Corner of Elm and Third,” I told him. “Well, in an alleyway near there anyways.”

“Who…are…you?” he did his best to raise a finger in my direction.

“Megan,” I told him, then for some reason added, “I’m a med student.”

The man nodded slightly as if that somehow explained the curvy redhead hunched down in front of him.

“I’m going to call you an ambulance, okay? You’re stable, but I think you could use a little more care.” I told him, starting to dial 911 on my phone. Really should’ve done this ten minutes ago, Megan. I scolded myself.

To my surprise, the man started shuffling awkwardly to his feet, waving me off with one hand, “No…hospitals.”

I arched an eyebrow at him, then stuffed the phone into my pocket. “Okay… Well, you’re not going very far looking like that.”

The man waved me off, a look of defiance swirling in the midst of his near-emerald eyes. Then he turned toward the end of the alleyway and started walking away from me, grunting with each step.

How rude.

“Dammit,” I cursed, jumping up, grabbing my bag, and chasing after him. “You can’t just walk around all beat up like that. You’re either going to kill yourself or get yourself killed.”

The man looked at me for a long moment then smirked. There was something about the way his lips curled up into that shrill grin, flashing just a sliver of pearly white teeth, that sent shivers down my spine. It was…enticing. Something inside of me, something primal and raw, threatened to rise to the surface, and I found myself letting out a barely audible purr.
 

Must be adrenaline
, I lied to myself.
 

The man must have heard me because he arched a seductive eyebrow and cocked his head to the side, his thick and tousled hair bobbing as he did. I’m not going to lie. As I stood there beside a half-naked, well-muscled, wounded Adonis, my panties started to melt. I’m a warm-blooded woman who hasn’t had a proper lay in over a year, can you blame me?

“You can…always stay at my place?” I heard myself saying, then added for good measure: “Just for tonight, to get some rest.”

“How…far?” the man grunted out, seemingly not taking notice of my would-be sexual indiscretions.
 

I took a breath, thankful that he didn’t seem to be picking up on whatever had come over me. “A block over. And up an elevator.”

The man nodded, then wordlessly strode toward the end of the alley. I walked beside him, taking care to monitor his progress as we went. The longer we walked, the more adjusted he seemed to become. It was like watching someone heal right in front of me, and my curiosity was starting to get the best of me. Normal people didn’t heal like this guy was.
 

Several minutes passed before we made it to my building, then I guided the man to
 
the elevator and, finally, to my door. I dug the keys out of my bag and slid them into the lock, the entire time my mind reeling with the fact that the gorgeous specimen beside me was going to see the inside of my apartment. I had never had a man over before. Much less an injured, muscular, sex-god of a man.
 

Holy cow, Megan. Get a hold of yourself.

I flipped on the lights as we entered the apartment, pointing the man toward the couch as I went to grab a few towels and blankets from my closet.
 

“I’d offer you the shower, but it won’t do you much good without a change of clothes,” I shouted down the hallway as I dumped my backpack off in my bedroom.
 

“A shower would be great,” the man said from the doorway behind me, leaving me both startled and bewildered at once. Gone was the forcefulness in his voice. Instead, there was a growing easiness, one that seemed to be settling over his entire body at once. He was breathing better and didn’t seem to be in as much pain anymore.
 

“Right,” I managed after what felt like forever. “I can get you some clean bandages too. Maybe put something non-infectious over the open wounds this time.”

The man just smiled at me, sending chills down my spine, then pointed toward the bathroom door. “Is this where the shower is?”

I nodded, then watched him stride into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
 

After a few minutes, I heard the water turn on. Which, of course, is when I realized I was still holding the towels in my hand.
 

KALVIN

I stood in the shower for as long as I could, letting the steaming hot water fall on my haggard flesh. My body still ached, but the wounds were healing. Albeit, much slower than they should have been. As a shifter, I was blessed with a much more rapid healing factor than normal humans. In fact, when shifting from bear to human, I would regrow completely new flesh altogether. It was why shifters tended to have baby-soft skin. The thing is, in order to shift from bear to human, I had to be able to shift into a bear first.
 

And for whatever reason, that was something that I couldn’t seem to manage.
 

Ever since I’d woken up in the alleyway, it was all I could do to even get a sense of my bear. He refused to come to the surface, refused to even offer me his strength. I felt like a cub again, broken down and weary, unable to connect with the beast lurking inside me. More than that, I felt defenseless.
 

I didn’t know how I’d gotten to the alley, but I had my theories. Most likely, I’d been tossed aside like last week’s trash after my bout with the mountain lion in the octagon. The shifters in the fight club were bloodthirsty and losers were never treated well. Never mind that the asshole had broken the foremost rule of the club, shifting right there in the middle of a bout. The last thing I remembered was seeing that tranquilizer dart sticking out of his neck. What had happened to him, I had no idea.