The Luck of the Shifters

Seamus O’Leary was abducted from his home in Australia and imprisoned for months in the Pacific Northwest. He arrived in Grizzly Cove with his spirit broken from being forced to stay in his animal form for months. Human again, and unable to shift without the crutch of alcohol, he is trying his best just to get through each day…until a chance meeting changes his life forever.

Moira Kinkaid came to Grizzly Cove with a dual purpose. First, she is supposed to give the bear shifters who live there all the information her powerful Clan has collected about the sea monster known as the leviathan. Second, she’s checking the place out for her cousin, the Kinkaid Alpha. If the place is as promising as it looks, some of the Kinkaid billions might be invested in the up-and-coming town. But, when Moira stumbles across a handsome, drunken man on the beach, suddenly her mission changes to something much more personal.

Drawn to each other, the two very different shifters share a highly magical Irish ancestry—and a passion unlike anything either has ever known. From the moment they meet, they are nearly inseparable. Something about their relationship seems almost inevitable, but they are both hiding things. Moira is a covert business operative and Seamus fears his inner animal is broken forever. Can these two find middle ground and healing in the safe harbor of Grizzly Cove?

She was taking her time getting to know these people. It wouldn’t do to ride into town and try to take over. Moira knew better than that. She had to see what she could contribute here, first, before she let loose with her selkie viewpoints and knowledge—which were usually quite different from those held by land shifters…even those in her own Clan.
So she was walking the beach, trying to get the lay of the land. She’d never been to this part of the Pacific coastline before, and she was enjoying learning the timing of the tides and the personality of the waters here. It was a lovely place.
Except for the drunk passed out on the beach a few yards away.
Moira sighed. It never failed. There was always one drunkard in the group—even though it took enormous amounts of alcohol to affect a shifter. Their metabolisms made it difficult for most drugs or other substances to affect them, so a person really had to be dedicated to get and maintain a stupor.
She knew many of the residents here were veterans, so she felt a little pang of compassion, even though she didn’t know this particular shifter’s story. Yet.
She couldn’t just leave him where he was. The tide was coming in, and he was face down on the beach. If he didn’t wake up soon, he’d most likely drown. Even this far away, she could catch a faint bit of his scent. What wasn’t soaked in alcohol was furry, not fishy, so leaving him where the water would cover him wasn’t a good idea. With a resigned cadence to her feet, she marched over to the unconscious man.
Moira wasn’t sure how he would react, so she prodded him with her toe first, hoping to wake him. When he didn’t respond, she pushed a little harder, flipping him onto his back.
Her breath caught when she saw his face for the first time. Hard, angular features were slack in sleep, but he was a handsome devil. His hair was unruly and naturally curled. It was dark now, with moisture absorbed from the sand, but she saw hints of gold in the tousled curls.
He wasn’t a giant of a man like the other bear shifters who lived here. No, he was built more like a muscular, fit, totally hot human, which suited her just fine because she was rather petite for a selkie.
And why in the world was she thinking about this strange man’s stature in relation to her own? Moira shook herself. She’d come here to do a job, not get mixed up with some sad case shifter who drank too much.
Now that she was closer to him, the scent of alcohol and fur mixed with…eucalyptus? Just faintly, but it was there. Maybe he liked cough drops? Though, as far as she knew, shifters didn’t really get casual colds the way humans did. The good-looking guy on the sand at her feet was a puzzle, that was for sure.
She touched him with her toe again, trying to nudge him awake. She didn’t want to get too close in case he woke up disoriented and took a swipe at her. She’d startled awake a few lion shifters from her Clan in the past and had learned to approach cautiously.
A faint groan was her reward. Maybe he was waking up.
“Hey, mister, you’re going to get hit by the tide if you don’t get up soon.”
Another growling moan sounded, a bit louder this time. She nudged him with her toe again.
“Oi! Leave off,” he growled, the few words tinged with a thick accent. She couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t sound like one of her cousins from County Kerry in Ireland. He didn’t sound American, either.
“Hey, mister, get up or you’re going to get wet in…” She looked at the approaching line of sea foam. As a water shifter, she was a good judge of the tide, and it was coming in fast now. Yeah, the drunk guy was going to get wet. She almost sighed. Here it came… “Three, two, one,” she counted down, watching the inevitable as the water sloshed over the man’s sneakers and up to mid-thigh.
“Shite, that’s cold!” The man skittered away from the retreating tide, suddenly mobile. Moira wanted to laugh, but refrained, merely following his progress with a smile she couldn’t repress.
He ended up a short way up the dune, sitting on his butt with his knees drawn up and his arms resting over them, his head hung low as he dragged his hands through his shaggy hair. His jeans were wet from the middle of his muscular thighs down to his scuffed sneakers, and he wore a denim jacket over an Army green T-shirt.
“Do you need me to call anyone?” she asked tentatively, moving a bit closer. She didn’t want to leave him out here like this if there was something she could do to help. He was in sorry shape for a shifter.
Bloodshot blue eyes met hers. Then, they narrowed as he took her in.
“You’re not a bear, and you’re not a fish,” he said, looking her up and down. “And you’re not human or witch. You’re a shifter, but what sort?” He sniffed in her direction—rather rudely, she thought—and then, his face went even paler, if that was possible. “It can’t be…”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she couldn’t help but remark.
“Maybe I have. Or maybe the selkies have sent you to take their revenge on my worthless hide once and for all.” He lowered his gaze, dipped his head, and she thought maybe she’d glimpsed tears in his eyes before he’d hidden them. His words were troubling.
“I’m a selkie, but I’ve come here at the invitation of the Alpha to consult on the leviathan problem. Who are you that you recognize my kind? And why do you think we’d seek revenge against you?”
She tried to put a bit of firmness into her voice. Her brothers were so much better at intimidation than she would ever be, but she’d learned a thing or two growing up with them.
“Because of the boy,” he whispered, lifting his head to stare into the approaching waves as if they held the answer.
“What are you talking about?” she asked when he hadn’t said anything further for a while.
She’d waited to see if he would go on with his cryptic words, but he seemed to be stuck in a memory, staring straight ahead. Perhaps he was reliving something or seeing something only he could see.
Or perhaps she’d had the misfortune to run across a loony-tunes bear shifter on this stretch of desolate beach. Well, she could always run into the surf and disappear under the waves if he turned violent. Bears might be good swimmers, but she’d bet they could never out-swim a seal shifter.
“My name is Moira. What’s yours?” She tried a different tack when he didn’t answer.
That seemed to get a response. He blinked and turned his head to gaze up at her as if seeing her for the first time. Maybe the alcohol he’d soaked his head in was starting to burn off a bit. His glassy eyes seemed to take a moment to focus.
“I’m Seamus,” he answered, a little bit of a twang to his words that didn’t sound Irish to her trained ears.
“Sure and with a name like Seamus, ya aren’t from the old country?” She put on the best imitation of her Irish cousins’ brogues she could manage.
His eyes narrowed. “Neither are you, sheila, though you claim a name just as Irish as mine.”
“You’re an Aussie!” She snapped her fingers, smiling. It was the use of the term sheila that had given him away, though she suspected he’d done it on purpose.
He tapped his nose, then pointed at her, one corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. Her breath caught. When Seamus smiled… Whoa, momma. And that had been a weak smile at best. She wondered what a full-wattage, all-out smile would do. Maybe cause an earthquake? Some sort of seismic shift?