Page 6 of Shifter and the Succubus (The Pack #1)

Jason pulled up to Griffin’s huge house—how big did a house have to be before it was called a mansion?

—and hesitated. It had been two days since he was released from the hospital, and physically he was healed.

But that didn’t necessarily mean he was ready to handle being a shifter.

Did he want to do this? He pushed out a deep breath before loosening his death grip on the steering wheel so he could shut off the truck.

He needed to decide what he was doing soon since it was cold as hell and the residual heat inside the truck wouldn’t last for long.

In a moment of weakness—or was it strength?

—he had agreed to meet with Griffin. He couldn’t keep living in denial, and if the shifter leader could help fill in the blanks for him, then Jason had to try.

He opened his truck door, and the cold air attacked him.

There was no other word for it. And yet they were supposedly heading into spring.

Why had he chosen to live in Cleveland again?

Before he made it to the front porch, the door opened and Beatrice greeted him.

Griffin’s younger sister was a study in elegance.

Her long auburn hair was pulled into some fancy twist, and she had on a green turtleneck sweater that brought out the green in her eyes.

She was a beautiful female, especially when she smiled.

A twinge of guilt accompanied the thought, but then he wanted to slap himself.

He wasn’t involved with anyone. He could appreciate beauty when he saw it.

“Hello, Jason. So glad you could come to dinner.”

“Thanks for having me.” He stepped onto the porch, and she backed up so that he could come inside.

“Let me take your coat.”

He shrugged out of his coat, and she hung it in the closet.

Jason turned and looked around the entryway.

He hadn’t been in Griffin’s home since the poacher case they had worked, and it overwhelmed him, then and now.

A large maple staircase took up the two-story entry, which was surrounded by doors leading to a multitude of rooms. He couldn’t imagine living like this.

The farm he’d been raised on was modest.

He pulled on the sleeves of his shirt. He had never cared about clothes before, but he was feeling underdressed.

“You ready to see His Royal Highness?” Bea asked.

Jason froze for a moment. “He doesn’t really go by that, does he?”

Bea burst out laughing. “His ego might like it. But we don’t call him that. I just wanted to get you to smile. You look like you’ve been sucking on lemons.”

Jason couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from turning up. “Lemons, huh?”

“Yep.” She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. “He’s all roar and no bite. And we just want to help if we can.”

He nodded before she led him to the back of the house into a large kitchen that was bigger than his entire apartment. The room smelled of spices and cooked meat, making Jason’s stomach grumble.

Bea smiled. “I’m glad you came hungry. I made curry. I hope you like spice.”

“I do.” He watched the pots with bubbling food on the stove. “Do you need help with anything?”

“Can you finish setting the table? Everything is piled on the end there. Seamus ran off before he finished it.”

He looked at her in question, and she smiled. “Griffin is his family name, and my brother is called that as a sign of respect from the pack. Since I’m his baby sister, I get away with calling him by his first name.”

“Griffin isn’t your name?”

“No. It’s Montgomery. Seamus and I have the same mother. She remarried after Seamus’s father died, and had me.”

Jason stepped over to the table and set out the place mats, plates, and silverware. He was setting out the glasses when Griffin walked into the room.

“Jason. Glad you could make it. I see my sister already put you to work.”

Bea turned and pointed a spoon at her brother. “Someone was supposed to set the table and ran off before he finished.”

Griffin smiled. “I got a call. Pack business.”

“Excuses, excuses.” The oven dinged. “There. The naan should be done; can you get it out of the oven before you get another strategically timed phone call?”

Griffin looked over at Jason. “Do you see what I have to put up with?” He didn’t wait for an answer before grabbing oven mitts and then pulling out a pan of flatbread.

He set it on the butcher block counter on the kitchen island.

Then Griffin transferred the bread into a basket and placed it on the table.

Jason watched their interplay with fascination. He was an only child. He didn’t have any siblings to bicker with growing up, so he was always interested in family dynamics.

Bea brought over a pot of curry and then grabbed a bowl of rice and placed that on the table as well.

“Let’s eat while it’s still warm,” she said.

Jason hesitated for a moment, not knowing where to sit.

Griffin gestured to the closest seat. “You can sit anywhere, Jason. We don’t have assigned seats here.”

“We can do casual,” Bea said with a wink.

They all sat and started to pass around the dishes and fill their plates. They spent a couple moments trying the food in silence.

“This is excellent,” Jason said. “I’m glad I didn’t bring Misha. He could have eaten all of this himself.”

Bea chuckled. “He does love food. I’m always amazed at his capacity to eat.”

Griffin reached for some naan and dipped it into his curry. “I’m a bit surprised you came on your own. It would have been fine to bring one of your teammates with you.”

“I know. But I wanted to talk freely.”

“Of course. I want to be honest with you. And I would have done the same in front of someone else.”

Jason set his fork down, ready to start the real conversation. “I know you… we …are kind of secretive about the animal we turn into. I want to know why.”

Griffin reached for his glass of water and took a sip before he answered.

“It’s true. Our animal is sacred to us. Outside the packs, we don’t tell others about our animals unless we choose to.

Our packs are close-knit, and centuries ago we protected the truth from other supernaturals to stop them from using our animals against us.

“Now it’s more a matter of sharing our animal side only with those we care about. Within the packs, we don’t really need to share anything since we can normally sense each other’s animals.”

Jason’s breathing sped up, and he sat up straighter. “Now that my healing powers have kicked in, can you sense my animal?”

Griffin looked at Bea for a moment and then shook his head. “No. I can’t sense anything. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have an animal. Often before the first transition, it’s hard to sense.”

“Except we don’t know that I’ll ever change,” Jason said.

“We don’t know that you won’t,” Bea chimed in.

Griffin nodded. “Bea’s right. Which is why I wanted to talk to you. If you want to explore your powers, I would ask that you work with someone in the pack. If you’re not comfortable with me, then you can work with someone else. I can give you some suggestions.”

“What’s the deal between you two, anyway?” Bea asked.

Griffin glanced at Jason before answering. “When Jason was hurt during the poacher case, I sensed that he might be shifter. Without telling Jason, I had Dr. Jensen test his blood. And when it came back positive, I had investigators check out his background and found out he was adopted.”

Bea sat back. “Wow, Seamus. That’s pretty gutsy, even for you.”

Jason agreed with her.

Griffin frowned. “At the time, the pack was under attack, and Jason shows up here and isn’t what he appears to be. I needed to figure out if he— you —were a threat. I’m sorry I pulled the rug out from under your life. I don’t know what I would do if someone told me my past was a lie.”

Now it was Jason’s turn to take a sip of water and decide what he wanted to say.

Damn, Griffin was a bit too honest. But wasn’t that why he came here alone?

You can’t ask for the truth and then balk when you hear it.

He set the glass down carefully. “Do you know how I learned that supernaturals were real?”

Griffin and Bea shook their heads.

“I was in the military and had been assigned to an archaeological dig since the area they were excavating was volatile. One night while on guard duty, I heard a sound in one of the tents. I found what I thought was a man with fangs and claws and then moments later some kind of monster materialized out of thin air. They were trying to kill the people on the dig site. Several of us escaped that night, but many were hunted down and killed.” He looked down at his fist clenched on the table and attempted to relax his fingers before continuing.

“I made it my mission to figure out what the hell had attacked us and found out it was a vampire and a demon. I took it upon myself to rid the world of evil.” He chuckled but it rang false in his own ears.

“Of course, I had forgotten that nothing is straightforward in this world, and I became as bloodthirsty as the bastards I was fighting against. When I first met Misha, I shot him with a poisoned bullet. He would have died if Kyle hadn’t pulled the bullet out of his shoulder. ”

Bea’s eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything.

Griffin sat back and studied him. “Your confession isn’t going to stop me from wanting to help you.”

Jason stared right back. “What if I told you I tried to run Kyle and Dalton over with my truck?”

Amber flashed in Griffin’s eyes. Jason had hit a nerve.

The shifter leader still had a place in his heart for Kyle even though she had chosen Dalton over him.

“Your point? We’ve all made mistakes. Are you wanting me to list out my regrets?

If so, we’d be here most of the night. The difference is that you learned that not all supernaturals are evil, and you’ve been helping the Bureau ever since. ”

Right. What was his point to this, really? “I just wanted to lay it all out on the table.”

“Noted. Does that mean you’re willing to work with someone in the pack?”

“Yes.” The question was, did he want to work with Griffin?

Bea leaned forward. “How about you work with both Griffin and me. We can take turns helping you. That way, when you get sick of Seamus, I can step in.”

“Hey!” Griffin grumbled.

Jason grinned at her with wide eyes. “You’d be willing to save me?”

Bea’s face lit up before laughter erupted. “Absolutely.”

“I’m sitting right here,” Griffin said.

Bea patted his hand. “We know. I’m all about keeping you humble.”

“You’ve got that job down pat.” He looked at Jason. “In all seriousness, can we help you learn about your powers?”

Jason swallowed. He needed to move forward and stop whining about his unknown past. “Yes. When do you want to start?”

Griffin and Bea exchanged glances before Griffin answered, “There’s no time like the present.”

Not the answer that Jason expected, but ripping the Band-Aid off made sense.

“Don’t be nervous,” Bea said.

“I’m not nervous.”

Griffin shook his head. “First lesson. Shifters have a strong sense of smell. So much so, that some say we can smell emotions.”

Jason frowned. “How?”

Bea answered. “Our bodies react to different hormones and chemicals produced by emotions. Fear, sadness, happiness. The stronger the emotion, the more we can sense it. For example, fear often gives off an acidic or briny odor.”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin with that,” Jason said.

“I actually think you already use this power to a certain extent,” Griffin said. “Kyle told me that you were an interrogator in the military and were very good at it.”

Jason shrugged. “They taught me what to do.”

“It’s more than that. Have you ever just known that someone was lying even though everything pointed to them telling the truth?”

“Yes.”

“I think at a subconscious level you can scent emotions.”

Jason blinked. “Okay. So how do I make it conscious?”

“When you’re around others, note their emotions, and then smell them,” Griffin said.

What the hell?

Bea burst out laughing. “Wow. You want to tell Griffin to stuff it.”

“Can you smell my emotions right now?”

“I don’t need to. The look on your face says it all.”

Griffin actually cracked a smile. “I don’t mean to sniff them like a creep. I mean pay attention to the scent. If you think about it, you’ll start noticing similarities for emotions.”

“Okay.”

“Vampires are hard to read, so stick to practicing on humans and demons,” Bea added.

“Got it. What else?”

Griffin exchanged a look with Bea before continuing. “I want you to start communicating to your animal side.”

His heart thumped hard at the suggestion. “You want me to talk to a nonexistent animal?”

Griffin frowned. “If you think it’s nonexistent, it won’t ever materialize. You have to be open to the possibility that there is an animal wanting to link with you. Just talk to it. Don’t ask it to show itself unless you’re here at the house.”

Before Jason could respond, Griffin held up his hand to stop him. “These restrictions are necessary right now. You don’t know how to handle your animal, so someone will need to guide you. Plus, we don’t know what your animal is. I don’t want you turning into a grizzly bear in your apartment.”

Now his heart thumped double-time. “Holy shit. I could be a grizzly bear?”

“You can be anything," Bea added.

He wasn’t sure why he was surprised by that, but he was. Shortsighted on his part given the fact that he’d seen polished Bea’s kick-ass tiger side a couple years ago.

Knowing Jason’s luck, his animal was probably a chipmunk or a sloth. There wasn’t anything sexy about a sloth.

But then he didn’t have anyone to impress now, did he? Especially a stubborn Succubus demon who had kicked him to the curb.