Page 1 of Imperfect Gifts
Chapter One
Genie walked out of the hospital on the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving and looked for Frost’s truck. Ten seconds later, it pulled up in front of her, and she climbed into the passenger side.
“I need to be the owl in the worst sort of way. Thanks for doing this.”
“You look beat. Rough shift?”
“Not especially. Lots of family members stopped by yesterday and last night, which always happens on a holiday weekend. I agreed to working four days in a row the week of Thanksgiving and Christmas when I came for this gig.” Normally, she worked three shifts of twelve hours for three days straight, and then had four days off. As a traveling nurse, she’d been brought in to give the hospital more manpower during the holidays. She’d worked the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights of Thanksgiving week, and now she was off for two days before picking up her normal Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night schedule.
It wasn’t safe for her to shift without protection unless she had access to an aviary, which she did not. She was a northern saw-whet owl, which is one of the smallest owls, not quite eight inches tall. Frost was a snowy owl, and had offered to shift with her, since he could keep her safe from any great horned or barred owls — or anything else that might want to eat her. If nothing else, he could hold them off long enough for her to fly to the ground andchangeto human, though the odds were, they’dstay away from him in the first place, so there wouldn’t be any problems.
“Normally, anyone who uses the Master Vampire’s property to shift and run, or fly, has to bring their own food. However, Brooke has given the two of us permission to feed on any squirrels or mice we could catch. No rabbits, though. She was quite clear on that.”
Rabbits, unless they were babies, weren’t usually an option for her owl, but Frost’s owl was freaking huge and probably loved rabbits.
Genie had come to Birmingham in the middle of October, and she’d be here until the middle of January. She’d signed a contract to work for three months at a major Birmingham hospital, with an extra shift the weeks of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. She was making nearly double her normal pay as an RN, and when she worked an extra shift on a holiday evening shift, she made three timesthatpay, with holiday overtime being time and a half of the holiday pay.
Genie hung out at the Chattanooga Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Club’s clubhouse in her downtime when she was in Chattanooga, her home base. They’d arranged for her to rent a small one-bedroom apartment from the Birmingham RTMC, which was why Frost was going to watch over her while she shifted. Technically, the bikers called her a sweetbutt, but mostly, she just liked to get fucked —a lot— when she wasn’t working.
The bikers had been the first to call her Genie. Her friends in elementary school had shortened her name to Georgie and it’d stuck, but her parents still called her Georgina. When she’d applied for the traveling job in Birmingham, she’d told them she went by Genie. She liked the nickname better than Georgie.
The bikers had a deal worked out with the local Master Vampire, so they offered food for her once a month. The peoplewho usually volunteered had been out of town, and Genie had offered to go when the MC said they’d pay two hundred dollars to anyone who didn’t mind feeding the vampire without sex involved in any way, shape, or form.
When she volunteered, they’d told her not to bother paying her December rent, plus they’d pay her the $200 once she’d fed Brooke for them. She’d known they were short on sweetbutts when she came, and she’d been excited about the fact this probably meant she’d be completely used up and worn out every time she stepped foot in the clubhouse — and the men of the Birmingham RTMC hadn’t disappointed her.
She’dfitin Chattanooga, but she fit here as well. There were more kinky bikers in Birmingham than there’d been in Chattanooga, but that was more than fine with her. Khan was the most intense of them all, but he was possibly the best Dom she’d ever submitted to. She didn’t have to worry about anything other than following orders when she was with him. No decisions, no choices to make. Best of all, no chance he’d fall in love with her and want to keep her.
And Frost was in love with a lynx shifter, so he was safe to shift and fly with.
Bikers don’t usually fall in love with the club sweetbutts, so Frost was the exception that proved the rule, she hoped. It meant she could fuck the single bikers in the clubhouse without worry of someone wanting more from her than she was prepared to offer.
“So,” she asked Frost, “we have a few hours to shift, eat, hang out in our owl forms while our food settles and absorbs, and then I shift back to human and feed an eight-year-old Master Vampire?”
That’d been the plan the last she heard, but she’d been at the hospital for thirteen hours, and plans frequently changed in the supernatural world.
“She’s damned near ancient, but in the body of an eight-year-old little girl. Don’t make the mistake of thinking she’s as cute and helpless as she appears.”
“I regularly fed Fawn in Chattanooga before she moved to Alaska. The more powerful vampires scared me too badly.” She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s quite it. Fawn is powerful, but she’s kind. Most vampires aren’t.”
“Brooke can be kind, but she can also be fucking scary. As long as you aren’t sexually attracted to her, you’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, that won’t be a problem. I don’t do women, much less girls.”
Chapter Two
Dev stood in the shadows, masking his scent, and watched the adorable little owl shifter with eyes of golden-brown strip out of her nursing scrubs, sparkle into a tiny owl with yellow-gold eyes, and then fly into the trees. The biker took a few seconds longer to remove his boots and then his jeans. He stripped the shirt off, stowed his clothes into the truck along with the owlets clothing, and then shifted into a mighty snowy owl with at least a six-foot wingspan. He took to the air as well, wings thumping the air at first, but then he was totally silent.
Dev’s home encompassed a little over twenty acres, and all structures were below ground. Dev had a bedroom in most of the Birmingham coterie houses, but this was the one he called home.
On this night, Brooke was staying here so she could feed from the tiny owl once she was back in human form.
He watched the miniature owl swoop down and catch a small field mouse. Twenty minutes later, she caught another. The snowy owl caught and ate a squirrel, but he noted the larger owl kept an eye on the smaller one even while he ate.
Snakes aren’t generally territorial, but the human parts of Dev needed to know who was in his space. It was more about security than a need to mark his land, though.
If you look up the largest prehistoric snake, you’ll find information on what archeologists call a Titanoboa, as big around as a school bus, with an estimated weight of over two thousand pounds. Dev wasn’t quitethatbig, but by modern standards, he was huge when he shifted into his full size — his body bigger around than a refrigerator, and his head half the sizeof a small sports car. Usually, he shifted into a smaller version of himself so he wasn’t so hard on the wildlife. Buying a bison and having it delivered ahead of time before achangewas expensive. If he was half his normal size, three good-sized deer were usually enough to fill him up.
The tiny owl shifter wouldn’t be a meal for his snake underanycircumstances. Dev’s snake wouldn’t consider the larger snowy owl worth his time.
