Shifter Overdrive

  “But Nelly never planned to stay with me. She said she'd never mate with a mountain lion and would only marry within her pack. She took up with another boy and left me. I tried to win her back; some of the younger males in the pack ganged up on me and tore me to shreds.

  “No one gets in the middle of a shifter dispute. There are no laws. Might is right. The males were protecting their female from a foreign invader. She made her choice. After that, I couldn't stay in town anymore. That's when I left to live out here. I built my cabin. I hunt. Life has been good. Until now."

  "How awful."

  "It doesn't matter anymore. I'm comfortable with my life. I don't need any interruptions. If you want to stay, then stay. If you want to leave, then leave. I won't stop you, but I won't be changed."

  "Ronan, be reasonable,” she said, standing. She took a pace toward him.

  "I am being reasonable. This is me. Take it or leave it." His gut clenched as he said the words, but he meant every bit of it. He wouldn't be changed. He'd fought too hard to win his peace of mind, and he protected it like a mother protects her cubs.

  The look on her face stung him. Her mouth hung slightly open like she was shocked or about to speak. He knew he was pushing her away again. When it came down to it, he chose his solitude over her. While it made the lion inside him hiss and roar, the wounded human knew it couldn't be any other way. He wouldn't go back to society. Not now, not ever.

  He reheated the stew from the night before and gave her a bowl. She looked utterly disgusted but took a few bites anyway. "Maybe I'll visit you on the equinox," she said hopefully, pushing the bowl of stew away.

  "If you'd like. I don't stay in town long."

  "Even for one night? Even to see me?" She sounded desperate. It made him want to hide from her searching eyes.

  "Maybe," he muttered.

  "Well, if it's such an inconvenience, forget about it."

  He grunted at her words. He knew he was asking too much of her. She deserved better. She should find herself a nice human and carry on with her human life. He would bring her nothing but pain. "That's probably for the best,” he said.

  She huffed and stood abruptly, forcing the chair backwards with a screech. Ronan looked up at her. He kept his expression neutral, but he felt anything but neutral. He was torn inside. The last thing he wanted was to hurt her. After last night, he was bonded to her. His heart was tied to hers, and it hurt him tremendously to think of losing her. There was no choice. No other options.

  Makayla went to the window behind the table and gazed out into the snow. The rain had stopped. She peered into the distance as if she saw something that surprised her. Ronan could hear the sound of a motor. He stood and flung open in the door.

  In his front yard, Ashton cut the motor of a four wheeler and stepped toward him. Makayla came out behind him in her parka, her expression wild with delight.

  "Hello! Thank God you've come! I've been stuck out here during the entire snow storm."

  "Makayla Phillips?"

  "Yes!" she beamed.

  "A lot of people are looking for you. I'm Ashton Harding, Ronan's brother. I thought of all the places up on the mountain that a person could survive undetected, it was Ronan's cabin."

  "I'm alright, but I could use a huge coffee and a long, hot shower." Makayla's voice grew full and loud as she spoke of finally fulfilling her needs. Ronan could only stand silently and watch.

  She walked passed Ronan and took a step toward Ashton before turning to face Ronan in the doorway. "I'm grateful for everything, Ronan," she said in a low quiet voice. Her tone seemed to be pleading with him to say something, to give her promises he couldn't keep. "I'd like to see you again, but if you don't want..."

  "I do, Makayla, but we belong to different worlds. It's best if you go now."

  She lifted on her tiptoes to kiss him, but he turned away. Her lips fell on the scratchy stubble on his cheek. She drew back, her face full of disappointment and hurt at being rejected. He crossed his arms over his chest, protecting himself from her effect on his aching heart.

  "Alright then. Goodbye." Her words were curt, short and imperious. She turned on her heel and strode across the yard to hop on the back of Ashton's four wheeler.

  "See ya, bro," Ashton said, revving the engine. Ashton was such a little shit

  Chapter 11

  Ronan watched Makayla’s back as she bumped away on Ashton's four-wheeler. It took every ounce of his willpower to keep from shifting into cougar form and galloping after her.

  The machine disappeared behind the trees before its sound faded into the distance and long before the smell of burning gasoline dissipated from Ronan's front yard. She was gone.

  He mentally kicked himself for being such an ass. All at once, he missed her as if a piece of him had been sliced out of his gut and thrown on a fire. He gripped his stomach trying to make the feeling go away. The dull, burning pain lingered. He remembered this pain. This was the pain that had broken him before.

  Staggering into the house, he gripped the doorframe with his hand to keep himself from falling over. This couldn't be happening. All these years he'd spent hardening himself to the human need for others, and with one fatal encounter, he was undone. It was as if he were an eighteen-year-old boy again, nursing a broken heart for the first time.

  Ronan slid into a chair and slumped over the table, head in hand. He wanted to be alone, right? He examined his feelings carefully. Soft, gooey emotions had never made him comfortable, especially after Nelly. After fifteen years alone on the mountain, he'd thought himself hardened.

  Apparently, he was wrong.

  For all his heartbroken reclusiveness, he could still love. He'd thought himself lost to such things a long time ago when he closed himself off to society. Now, he could see it wasn't true.

  He didn't know whether to be happy or sad. And that just added to his confusion. He hadn't felt so much in years. Most of the time he functioned on instinct, moving through his day like an animal. He slept, hunted, ate, shat, drank water, picked herbs. Nothing was particularly jarring. There wasn't much joy and not much pain.

  Until now. Until Makayla walked into his world. She'd turned it upside down. Now he was a ball of emotions, and he’d become starkly aware of those emotions. Not good, not good at all. A hunter couldn't function this way. He needed his sharp senses and his cunning instincts to keep him alive out there. He couldn't be slowed down by feelings

  He stood from the table, sending the chair flying backwards behind him. It crashed against the floor. Tearing off his clothes, he fell into shift and ran into the forest.

  As he ran, he bellowed out a crying roar. He needed to clear his head. He needed to get all these feelings out and gone.

  Chapter 12

  Makayla checked into Mystic Harbor Resort and Spa and found herself in a luxury hotel room. She ran hot water into the massive jetted tub while drinking a huge double mocha latte.

  She put the coffee on the side of the tub and peeled off her dirty clothes. When Ronan's plain black t-shirt hit the floor, she felt the tug of regret in her chest. If only he weren't so stubborn.

  Makayla poured scented bubble bath into the bubbling water, and sank into the deep tub. The water was almost too hot and it soaked into her bones, thawing out the last week of snowbound cold.

  After Ashton had driven her back to the road, they transferred to a truck and drove down the mountain pass and back to civilization. She immediately bought a new cell phone and called her parents and her assistant to let them know she was alright. No one had any idea what happened to her or where to even start looking.

  It came as a huge surprise that she had even in that part of the state. Her mother informed her that they all thought she'd driven north to the highway and had been either kidnapped or had been in some kind of car accident. They'd called every hospital in Oregon looking for a woman with her description. The police didn't have any leads at all and suggested that she'd run away from her life when they couldn't loca
te her car or her body.

  After she had disappeared, her parents reconciled. Knowing her parents were getting back together, out of love and concern for her, made her almost happy she'd gone missing.

  She thought wistfully of Ronan as she laid in the tub. Maybe if she'd had another day or two with him, they could have made things work. She shoved the thought from her mind. He was too stubborn, too set in his ways to adapt to her. It was better this way, better for both of them.

  She turned her attention to more important matters. Everything at work was a hot mess. The last edition went out without her approval and had garnered some negative attention. Critics were already predicting the fall of the newly revamped magazine. As Makayla washed her hair with sweet almond-scented shampoo, she made lists of damage control priorities.

  The respite in Mystic Harbor would only last a day, but she needed to wash away the experience of the last week before going back to Portland. Her assistant would come to pick her up in the morning. But tonight, Makayla would relax in luxury.

  She lifted herself out of the tub and pulled on the fluffy white bathrobe with the resort logo above her heart. She wrapped her hair up in a towel and went into the bedroom where she put on some newly purchased lounge wear and opened a new laptop to log on to the Internet. She had to see this atrocious magazine edition.

  When she clicked on the email with the final layout and opened it on her desktop, her mouth almost dropped off. Not only had Lorna managed to get the mohawk article into the magazine, the entire edition had turned into some kind of punk rock tribute.

  Makayla flipped through the pages, each one worse than the last. What had happened to the articles about spring table settings and gardening tips? What had happened to the retrospective of the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival? Makayla was livid. Heads would roll for this. Not only was it a complete defiance of her authority, but it undermined her vision for the magazine, turning it into something entirely different.

  She dialed her assistant and pressed the phone to her ear.

  "Who is responsible for this fiasco?" she demanded.

  "So you've seen it?" he said.

  "Why didn't you tell me about this when we spoke earlier?"

  "Girl, you were just trapped in a cabin for seven days. You needed a hot bath and a massage, not an aneurysm."

  "Well, thank you for that, Elliot, but you should have known I would look at this as soon as possible."

  "Knowing you, yes. But I wasn't going to be the bearer of bad news."

  "How did this happen? And have you been at my shoes?"

  He laughed. It was a high pitched, tinkling sound that let her know he had. "Your shoes are safe. Don't worry about that. Lorna led a mini coup d'etat with the staff. She managed to get most of the designers and writers on her side, and they essentially created an entirely new edition while you were away."

  "Unbelievable,” she moaned.

  "You have to hand it to them though. They pulled it off so quickly."

  "Our readers don't want to know about punk fashion and the best places to get a pint of beer for a dollar."

  "That's not entirely true from what I understand. There's word on the street that a lot of people dig the new direction."

  Makayla squinted and rubbed her forehead. Could she be completely wrong about her readership? Most likely there was a middle ground. It was possible she had overlooked a segment of the market that craved Lorna's style, but she doubted anything this extreme would go over well for the bulk of them. Maybe Lorna didn't have to die in a fire after all.

  "We'll figure this out tomorrow. Tonight, I want you to send me all the sales stats, and the critical reviews, and I want tangible information about the fan base for this edition. Email it to me asap. I need to be armed when I come into work tomorrow."

  Makayla hung up the phone and closed the laptop. Irritation flooded her senses. Was her staff so disloyal that they would betray her like this? No matter if it was a good or bad idea, the fact remained that they'd taken the first opportunity to destroy everything she'd been working toward for the last six years.

  She laid back in the bed and tried to relax. After being in a car wreck and trapped in a cabin, the last thing she needed was to come home to this. She got under the covers and curled up in a fetal position. Thoughts of Ronan swirled in her overstressed brain.

  Life on the with Ronan with him had been so simple. There were no deadlines, no readers to please. The entire city of Portland wasn't breathing down her neck, waiting for her to fail. Part of her missed the simplicity. Even more, she already missed Ronan.

  His calm, quiet presence soothed her soul. His body gave her a kind of gravity. He was a place to fall, to connect, to dig deep roots in warm, fertile soil. She pressed her eyes closed, trying to drive him from her mind. Thoughts of the magazine were far less pleasant than the memory of Ronan's hands on her skin.

  She tossed in the bed and sat up. She wished she could call him, talk to him somehow. Now that she had left, it was like he disappeared off the face of the Earth. He was unreachable. He didn't exist in the modern world. The only way to see him was to trek out to his godforsaken cabin. There was no way she was going back there now. Maybe in summer time, when it was warm and she felt the urge to go camping. Not in the penetrating cold of the rainy season. No way.

  She ordered room service and sat at the table with her filet mignon and a glass of merlot. She found a new movie to watch on cable. It was all very civilized and convenient. Ronan would hate it. She imagined him chopping wood or hunting in mountain lion form. She couldn't help that she absolutely adored domesticated meat, fine wine, a good chick flick, and lipstick.

  After the credits rolled on her movie, and there were only scraps left on her plate, she opened her laptop to check for emails from Elliot. She found what she was looking for.

  Sales for the last edition of the magazine had dropped by 15%. Hundreds of complaints had been sent to the feedback email address from long time subscribers. Cancellations were at an all-time high. At least two articles had been written in daily newspapers about the fall of Portland Living Magazine. It was a nightmare.

  Elliot had sent her three other short articles from weekly independent papers, praising the new direction of the magazine, saying that Portland Living had finally, "gotten real about the real Portland." At least that was a consolation.

  She wrote a quick email to Elliot, closed her laptop, brushed her teeth, and curled up in bed. It was only ten at night, but tomorrow was going to be a long day.

  With the lights off in her room, the warmth of the gas heaters and the hum of electronics almost felt unnerving and foreign. She couldn't keep memories of Ronan at bay.

  She thought of his sharp teeth on her neck, his fingers inside her, his body pressing her down into his goose feather mattress. The memory of his hardness thrusting inside her while her legs wrapped around his waist, made her squeeze her legs together under the covers.

  She couldn't get him out of her mind no matter how hard she tried. Whenever she pushed Ronan aside, she thought of the endless damage control and months of setbacks she had to deal with at work. That only made her mind and body seek the comfort and simplicity that Ronan had provided even more.

  In the morning, she felt hung over and cranky. She didn't have time for either. She hopped out of bed, showered, dressed in a new business casual outfit, and did her hair and makeup.

  Elliot arrived at half past ten as expected and she met him in the front lobby of the hotel. He looked dashing and fashionable as ever, in a trim gray suit that hugged his slender body. He wore his brown hair long on top, and it hung over his left eye unceremoniously. He was a vision. She was so happy to see him.

  "Makayla!" He kissed both her cheeks and fussed over her health and safety until she brushed him off and insisted they go to the car.

  He'd driven one of the company cars, a BMW very much like the one that sat at the bottom of a hill along the rural highway. She slid into the cool gray interior of the
driver's seat and flipped on the radio. She needed to get back in the groove of things before going back to work.

  During the drive, Elliot read her additional sales data and customer demographic information that they’d recently collected. Nothing in the information seemed to indicate that her readership was interested in the new direction of the magazine. How she could keep her readers happy and appeal to the younger, hipper crowd was a troubling puzzle. She wasn't sure she believed it was possible.

  When they arrived back in town, she stopped at her condo to change into a suit before driving to the office downtown. She parked the car in the underground parking lot and readied herself for battle. She never would have thought she would have to overpower a staff revolt. She'd been a good editor in chief, or so she’d thought. They were all happy and well paid. What could have possibly led them so far astray?

  Makayla and Elliot walked toward the elevator door in the basement parking lot and took it up to the third floor. The door slid open to reveal the Portland Living sign behind the reception desk. The magazine had an entire floor of a fashionable office building in one of the most highly sought after shopping and business districts in Portland.

  She nodded to the receptionist who looked as if she might throw up as soon as Makayla walked through the door. With her fabulous Jimmy Choos clicking on the hardwood floors, Makayla made her way through the office. She brushed past the pale gray granite reception desk without a word to its skinny blond occupant.

  Most of the office floor was taken up by an open floor plan with desks and cubicles scattered throughout the airy space. Massive potted plants surrounded a comfortable sitting area near the floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the street below. The rest of the space was taken up by private offices and a conference room.