Chapter 10
MIKA
After the rehearsal dinner, Becca grabbed Gabe's hand, and away they went. It was the same way she'd dragged him off to the tattoo parlor two weeks ago, but it felt different this time. He felt like mine.
"I told you so," Bruce said beside me. Once again, we sat at a bar, the hotel's, with expensive bottles of liquor lit up by a giant screen pulsing with psychedelic colors. "Their friendship comes first."
"That's fine with me."
He laughed. "You should tell your face that."
I buried my head in my hands to hide my eyeroll. Bruce was one of my oldest friends, but he still annoyed the shit out of me sometimes, especially when he was right.
I wasn't like this. I wasn't a typical alpha, always flexing their muscles and keeping their omega within kissing distance.
I hated public displays of affection, but my body ached, the farther away he walked.
My head ached, and I was one loud rant away from getting myself thrown out of this bar, and maybe the hotel.
Bruce patted my shoulder, and the touch settled me. It was his final night of freedom as much as it was Becca's. "What do you want to do tonight?" I asked.
"The only thing I can't do with Becca." He looked expectantly at me, and my mind drew a blank. "Shift, Mika. I want to shift and run along the coast." He elbowed me in the side. "Remember when those kids thought you were an otter?"
"Who could blame them?" I tapped my nearly empty glass against his half-full one. "Have you ever seen a meerkat swim?"
"Still can't say I have," he teased. "Running through the foam as the tide rolls in doesn't count!"
"I'll show you." I took the final sip of beer and placed the mug on the bar top with a solid thunk. "Let's go."
"That's the spirit!"
After a quick stop in our rooms to change into tank tops, shorts, and flip-flops, we met in the lobby. Bruce's friend Isiah, the alpha shark shifter, joined us.
"Well, now I'm not going in the water," I joked.
"I thought you were a meerkat, not a chicken."
We teased each other all the way to the water's edge, and then we deposited our clothes on a driftwood bench overlooking the deserted beach.
Bruce was the first to shift, his giant paw prints the only sign he was there as he sped down the coast. I shifted into my meerkat at the water's edge, waiting for Bruce to return before I entered the water.
Isiah splashed into the surf, the foam settling around his waist. He spun in the water, his white belly glistening in the moonlight for a moment before his dark gray skin and protruding dorsal fin vanished against the dark water.
It was both the most awesome shift I'd ever seen and the scariest. Like most kids who grew up close enough to the California coast, I had a healthy fear of sharks.
Knowing Isiah was human on the other side of those black eyes and rows of sharp white teeth didn't do much to quell that fear.
Compared to the other alphas, I was tiny.
As a meerkat, I weighed twenty-five pounds at the most, while Bruce was a few hundred, and Isiah was at least a ton.
Bruce could chomp me in half with one bite, while Isiah could probably swallow me whole.
I didn't let that stop me. I dove into the water and came up sputtering for breath.
Meerkats are bad swimmers. Our bodies aren't sleek like otters, and our tails are rat-like.
My bowling pin shape helped with floating, but trying to move anywhere tired my back legs after a few minutes.
By the time Bruce finally returned to our stretch of beach and joined me in the shallows, I was ready to get out.
He had another idea. He sank his nose into the water beneath my pinwheeling arms and tossed me into the air.
I braced for impact with the water, but slammed against a wall of shark, instead.
So that was what it felt like for a druid in Dungeons and Dragons to be knocked out of wild shape and back into human form.
I hit the surface behind Bruce, my human lungs taking in too much water.
Isiah had thrown me right over the wolf's head.
My life flashed before my eyes as the shark swam up on me in two seconds, but then Isiah's worried frown filled my vision.
"You okay, Mika? I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to hit you that hard. "
"I'm fine," I wheezed as he pulled me into the shallows.
"Shift again," Bruce said. "It'll help speed up the healing."
Isiah's hand against my ribs felt like fire. "Yeah. You need to heal."
They laid me out in the wet sand, and I did my best to shift. Getting popped out of my meerkat form hadn't hurt, but I went through all seven levels of hell trying to get it back.
Finally, I shivered, panting, in my meerkat form. I pulled my tail between my front paws and petted it, as though the simple act could console my beast for the pain we'd suffered.
Bruce patted my head, and I shook the saltwater from my fur. Isiah laughed until I walked over to him and shook again.
"Hey! I said I was sorry!"
The shift back to my human form was easier now. I leaned back, inhaling deeply. No pain. Satisfied the shift had put me back together again, I marched to the bench where we'd left our clothes.
Bruce and Isiah followed me, their heads down so low they almost touched their chests.
"In less than twenty-four hours, you'll be getting married on this beach," I said, hoping a change of subject would bring back the fun we'd had before the playful shark attack.
"Yeah." Isiah clapped Bruce on the back. "Congratulations, man."
"Thanks." Bruce's eyes were shiny when he met my gaze. "I never thought this day would come."
"She and Gabe might have fled the country without us," I teased.
"She still thinks I'm in debt." Bruce sighed. "Dad said I couldn't tell her about the trust until we're legally mated, married, or both, so …"
"So, she'll know the truth tomorrow." I offered my hand, and he shook it. "Less than twenty-four hours before you can tell the love of your life the truth."
He nodded. "I hope she doesn't hate me."
Becca could hold a grudge, according to some of the anecdotes Gabe had told me over the past week, but no family secrets would change the way she looked at Bruce. They were doing the whole fated mates thing right.
If only Gabe and I would be so lucky.
When we called it an early night in the hotel lobby, I didn't expect to find Gabe alone in our room, no Becca in sight.
I paused with my mouth open, unable to ask the question on my tongue.
He looked so sweet and innocent, sitting with his back against the headboard, the blankets rumpled around him, holding a true crime novel a little too close to his face.
"Do you need glasses?" I asked.
"What? Oh, hi!" He put the book down in his lap and grinned at me. He looked so happy. And then he frowned. "Are you okay?"
"What? Why? I'm fine."
"Where did you get those bruises? Did one of my bookcases fall on you last week?"
I laughed. "Shifter metabolism, remember? I wouldn't still have bruises from a week ago."
"Then what happened to you?"
"Well, I might have gotten hit by a shark. They always say they hit like a Mack truck. That was not exaggeration."
"You got hit by a shark?" He screeched like my meerkat.
"Well, when you're playing with a shark shifter in the water, it happens."
Gabe stared at me with wide eyes as I explained what Bruce, Isiah, and I had done. After a moment, he grinned and waved his sparkling nails at me.
"Becca and I went to get manicures. Apparently, you boys decided to go for some full contact water sports instead."
"That's better than strippers, or gambling." Isiah had suggested both in the lobby, but my injury had ruined the mood on the beach, and no amount of debauchery would get it back.
"Do they hurt?" Gabe crawled out of bed and came over to me, tentatively tracing his fingers around the mottled bruises on my shoulder beneath my tank top. "This one almost looks like a meerkat." He tugged me to the full-length mirror on the closet door.
"Probably because I was thrown right out of my meerkat form."
"Seriously?" Gabe shook his head. "This is all new to me. Is this normal shifter behavior?"
I pulled him to the bed and tugged him into my lap.
"Sometimes, shifting into our animal form helps us to heal.
When we're forced out of our animal forms by an event, like getting hit by a shark, we might not heal so well when we shift into our animal forms the second time. That must be what happened."
He dipped his head with a solemn nod. "So, we won't be screwing around tonight. Got it."
"I didn't say that!" Not that I'd assumed anything resembling "screwing around," was an option tonight, but if Gabe was offering, I wouldn't let a few bruises stop me.
"You didn't have to." He poked at a bruise on the side of my pec, almost in my armpit, and I winced. "See? you don't have to say a word. You're still hurt. But if your meerkat wants to cuddle with me instead, I'm fine with that."
According to the old wives' tales my mom spouted without provocation, being close to our fated mates promoted healing, whatever that meant.
My meerkat cringed at the thought of shifting in this hotel room, high up in the air.
I was an underground creature. Still, the thought of cuddling in Gabe's lap while he read his book over the top of my head sounded oddly soothing. "Sure, let's try it out."
Gabe got to his feet, drawing my attention to the way his silk boxers clung to his delectable peach-shaped ass.
As I peeled off my tank top and board shorts, I wished I hadn't been so rudely tackled.
My meerkat form wished the same when I retook it for the second time after the incident. It still hurt.
Back home, I could scramble onto my bed without a second thought. This bed, with its plain frame and no footboard to climb, intimidated me. I must have hesitated a moment too long, because Gabe leaned over the side of the bed, his bouncing gold curls doing nothing to hide his laughter.
"Need some help?" He scooped me up with one arm, something I usually hated. The moment he made contact with my side, I went limp. His touch relaxed me like nothing else.
He pulled me into his lap. Usually, it would have taken me several long moments and tons of fidgeting to arrange my body in a tight circle.
With Gabe, everything felt perfect the first time.
He put me down in the right place, covered me with the perfect amount of comforter, and I snuggled down in no time.
Soon I was sound asleep in my mate's lap.