21. Cole
Eva strode in with a determined look on her face. She stood and looked at the three of us, her arms folded across her chest. What the fuck?Who was this woman and what had she done with our timid little human?
Silas glanced over at me in surprise, but Tanner just snorted with amusement. I had no idea what was going through his mind, but I wasn’t sure what to think.
This girl was not the same girl who’d trembled against me in the clearing, her face white with shock. Back then, I’d been worried Eva was going to have a breakdown. She’d clearly gone through a lot of shit none of us knew about. There was only so much a person could take before they broke apart.
The Eva standing before us wasn’t broken. She’d come in here looking for a fight and it felt like we were about to get our asses handed to us on a plate. It was unexpected, to say the least.
I’d been concerned, I freely admitted, that it would take months for Eva to trust us. There had been a few occasions where she relaxed enough to let us see who she was before she met that fucking bastard, Brent, and had all the fight knocked out of her. But until now, she”d still had her guard up.
It was a joy to see her standing tall and with fire in her eyes. I was proud that she could experience something as shocking as seeing a man shift into a wolf for the first time and not lose the plot completely. The moon knew it was a lot to take in.
“So which one of you assholes is going to tell me what the fuck you are?”
Tanner chuckled and downed his drink. “You ready for the Grimm fairytale now, baby?”
Her eyes narrowed in annoyance, but she didn’t rise to his jibe.
“So you’re all…shifters?” Her bottom lip quivered slightly. It made me want to pull her into my arms and hold her so tight that she forgot to be afraid. Only I had a feeling that she would punch me in the face if I tried.
My wolf whined. He’d been out of sorts since the cat attacked us. For one, he was pissed that Silas got to take it down. He felt that was his job: protecting our mate. And yeah, he was still banging on about it. Two, he hated seeing Eva upset. We were supposed to comfort her, he told me. Repeatedly. With a lot of attitude.
“Yeah. That a problem?”
“Stop being such a dick,” Silas snapped in Tanner’s direction. Then he turned to Eva. I could see hope in his eyes that maybe, just maybe, she might be OK with this. Like me, he wanted her to stay. And also, like me - and Tanner, I realized - he wanted more. Was it fucked up we were all half in love with this damaged little human?
Probably.
Did I care? No.
“No, it’s not a problem. I just know nothing about shifters.” She stepped forward and sank down on the edge of the sofa, keeping a whole heap of space between her and Tanner. From the way his jaw tensed, he wasn’t happy about that. Well, fuck him.
By behaving like a complete douche, he had fucked up his chances of having any kind of relationship with Eva. That was on him, and he was the only person who could fix the mess he’d made.
“Most people don’t.” Tanner’s lip curled up in annoyance. We’d all been to bars where the locals gave us shit for being different. Yet the minute we threatened them, they pissed in their boots. It was laughable, really. Humans feared us but made no effort to understand us.
If there were fewer of us, humans would have rounded us up by now and shoved us all into prison camps. But the shifter population was large enough to be a genuine threat to humans, so they mostly left us alone.
“Then tell me who you are, the stuff that isn’t on Google.”
I walked over to retrieve the mug of cocoa I’d made for Eva. She smiled at me when I handed it to her.
“Thank you, Cole,” she said.
“You’re welcome, sweetheart.” I wanted to kiss her, but I made do with briefly touching her arm before sitting next to her. To my relief, she didn’t attempt to move away.
Tanner scowled in my direction, and I raised one eyebrow. Yes? He threw me a glare and then poured another large measure of his favorite whiskey.
“We’re all wolf shifters, but there are other kinds, too. Like lion shifters, coyote shifters, etc. Most large animals can be shifters. Plenty of smaller ones as well, but they mostly stay out of sight.”
“So, as a wolf, you’re not controlled by the moon?”
Tanner snorted and rolled his eyes. “No, we’re not fucking werewolves. We don’t howl at the moon, and if I bite you, you’re not doomed to turn into one of us.”
Eva flushed bright red, and I contemplated slamming my fist into Tanner’s face. From Silas’s furious expression, he felt the same way.
“Ignore our brother, Eva,” I said. “He just can’t help being an obnoxious prick.”
“I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I’m sure that was probably offensive, but I really don’t know anything about shifters. Only the stuff kids talked about at school, and that was based on rubbish they’d read online.”
I reached out and squeezed her hand. She threw me a grateful smile, and I smiled back at her, reassuring her she hadn’t offended us.
“We shift when we want,” Silas told her. “It’s like breathing to us. When we’re in wolf form, our animals are in the driving seat for the most part, so they do things that animals enjoy, such as hunt and play. We are ultimately in control, though, so when I shift, my wolf wouldn’t attack someone unless I wanted to.”
“Have you always had a wolf inside you?”
“Yes, but they don’t come to the fore until we reach adolescence. Most of us shift for the first time when we hit age 13 or 14. It’s like puberty on steroids for males, and not much better for females. There’s a lot of aggression to work out, which is why we don’t really integrate into the human population.”
Eva chewed her plump bottom lip as she listened. It was so cute.
“How do you manage when you shift back…I mean, erm… because you don’t have clothes…” Once again, her cheeks flushed red while she looked at the floor. I had a feeling I knew exactly what she was thinking about, and from the smirk on Silas’s face, he did as well.
“Shifting destroys our clothes, so we try to undress before we shift, and then have clothes ready to put back on when we shift back. Obviously that doesn’t always work out so well, as happened this afternoon.” Silas shrugged. “Nudity isn’t a big deal for us. We’ve grown up with it and are comfortable getting naked around other shifters.”
“OK, I guess that’s good?”
“Are we done with this fun little QA?” Tanner snapped. “I have shit to do.”
“So sorry for inconveniencing you.” Eva looked down her nose at him and sat up straighter again. I loved how she refused to let Tanner keep knocking her down. She’d found her backbone, and it was good to see. “Feel free to fuck off if my desire to learn more about who and what you are is too much for you to handle.”
“I would, but it’s my home,” Tanner snarled. “So why don’t you fuck off instead?”
Eva’s lip wobbled, but she didn’t run away as I expected.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be out of your fur the moment the road opens.” Silas choked back a laugh at the ‘fur’ reference, but Eva’s sense of humor failed to impress Tanner.
“Good. I can’t fucking wait.”. He grabbed the half-empty bottle of whiskey and stormed off.
I bit back a groan. This antagonism between them was going to make things difficult over the next few weeks. I wasn’t blind. It was obvious Tanner and Eva were attracted to each other. But they were both fighting it tooth and nail.
I just hoped they could find a way to resolve their issues, or Christmas was going to be a real fucking nightmare.