Excerpt: The Shifter's Best Friend at the Beach Wedding

 

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Marla said. “I feel bad always asking you to be my chauffeur.”

Devon, ever the gentleman, held the door open on the passenger side of his SUV.

“It’s no problem,” he said, as he always did when she apologized for their once-a-month ritual. “I know you don’t like to drive that far, and I don’t mind.”

Marla paused as she was about to climb into the car. She placed her hand on his arm. “You’re a good friend, Devon.”

* * *

You’re a good friend. 

That stung.

Good friend. Yeah. They had been friends a long time. And friends was all they would ever be.

No matter how much he wanted more.

Devon knew he shouldn’t resent being Friend-zoned. If anything, he was the one to blame. Early on in their relationship, he was certain there had been a time when they were both aware of the chemistry. Marla was shy, but her eyes and her smile and invited him to take things to the next level. Or maybe she never felt that way about him, and he had only projected his own strong attraction onto her, hoping she felt the same way about him.

He would never know if he had only imagined the instantaneous physical spark between them. He had made up his mind he was never going to push their relationship in that direction. Marla didn’t want a part-time playmate. She was interested in a long-term relationship that involved a church and a frothy dress. To be honest, that was what he wanted to. He wasn’t a player by nature. When he fell for a girl, he fell hard.

After all, he was a shifter. And shifters, no matter what their totem animal, mated for life. His animal was a ram, and his people had the reputation of being even more stubborn and traditional than most shifters. Some even called them stodgy and old fashioned. Devon preferred to think of it as classic. And Marla was classy. She deserved a man who could give her the whole package dressed up in a silver ribbon and a gold ring. 

Both of their families had lived in the little mountain town of Arcana Glen for a long time. Both of their families had settled down at the time of the Silver Rush, when the town was formally established. The Lawsons had a long history of contributing cowboys, sheriffs, firefighters, teachers and mayors. The Bellwethers owned farms, but were also known for being mountain guides, outdoor sportsman, and all-round hearty independent mountain folk.

Both of their families attended the same church, Main Street Mountain Church, located unsurprisingly, on Main Street. Both of them routinely volunteered in various holiday and local festivals in the town square. There was a Lawson library, and a bellwether bell tower. 

But despite all that shared history, there was still a huge gulf between Marla Lawson and Devon Bellwether. Through no fault of his own, he possessed magic, the ability to transform his entire body into that of a huge, powerful, intelligent ram. And through no fault of her own, Marla was mundane. Not only did she not have a drop of magic in her body, but she would resist noticing it, even if it was performed right in front of her.

Only a traumatic event, a truly life or death situation, could switch a mundane into a sensitive, a human able to perceive magic. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing, even if the only way to Achieve it was through trauma. The human still would not possess the ability to use magic. Devon had spoken with sensitives, some of whom had previously been ordinary Mundine’s, and they usually told him they would go back to being the way they were before in a lick. 

One of those was Marla’s own brother, Cody. Devon didn’t know how Cody had found out magic was real, but he could guess it had not been pleasant.

“It’s no good knowing that magic is real, but I can’t do a damn thing about it,” Cody had said to Devon, the one and only time they had ever discussed it.

Devon, shocked to hear that from Cody, had asked cautiously, “What do you know?”

Cody had also leaned forward, with a hard steel glare in his eye. “I know you are one of them, Devon.” He added. “If you hurt my sister, I will kill you.”

“I would never hurt Marla,” Devon had said. And he added, with a flash of anger, tightly controlled, “You know that, Cody. Your sister and I are coworkers and friends.”

“And it better never go past that,” Cody said.

“I don’t need you to tell me that,” Devon retorted.

Marla would have been furious if she had known that her brother threatened Devon. But although Cody’s attack came out of nowhere and Devon was offended at the time, in retrospect he did not blame the man for protecting his sister. Devon would have done the same.

And in the end, just as Devon had promised Cody, no one needed to tell Devon to do the right thing.

He loved Marla too much to marry her.

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