Summer Cursed

I kissed him lightly. “You’re it for me. Scared or not, it’s you.”

“Same,” he said as he pulled me closer.

I pressed a kiss to his neck before snuggling into him and falling asleep in his arms.

I’m not sure how long we had been asleep before we heard the pounding on the bedroom door, but I felt groggy and confused when Liam opened it.

“We have a problem,” Philip said.

I groaned. “Of course we do.”

“We will be down in a few minutes. Please wake Isaac as well.”

Liam and I dressed and met them in the sitting room where I’d sat the first time I’d visited the house. Philip pressed a button on a remote and a panel in the wall slid open to reveal a large TV.

“What’s going on?” Liam asked.

“We didn’t stop the live feed quickly enough.” He pressed another button on the remote and a YouTube video of the shifters played.

I looked at the number of views and nearly puked. “I’m sorry… Does that say three million and change? Over three million people have watched this already?”

Philip nodded and scrolled down to the comments. Then switched to the local news, then the national news. People were going apeshit over seeing men turn into wolves on live TV. Riots were breaking out in some places. People were fighting in the streets. Stella had caused complete and total mayhem.

“Fuck.” I dropped my head into my hands as the urge to vomit grew. “Philip, is she awake yet?” I asked.

“No.”

“Double fuck,” I said, staring at my feet as if they had the answers.

“Don’t you have someone who can fix this?” Isaac asked.

My head flew up to see Liam’s reaction. He nodded as he took out his phone.

“I am sure someone is already all over it, but I will make a call to be sure.”

Relief washed over me. I may be an independent woman, but it’s nice to know my rich-knows-everyone-and-their-mother boyfriend could fix something without me having to fight my way through it.

He put the phone to his ear and walked out of the room. Fifteen minutes later he returned to two impatient shifters and one bored tribreed.

“Margaret said the Director of the FBI is coming on any moment to make an announcement.”

Before he could even tell us what the announcement would be, an alert sounded on the TV and there stood the Director. Philip split the screen to check YouTube. Someone had already removed the video. It was as though it had never existed.

Except for the three million people who’d watched it.

“He’s a shifter, isn’t he?” I asked. It was tricky when shifters had such high-profile positions since we don’t age. I knew for sure we have one on the Supreme Court. I always assumed she was paying someone to do her makeup to make her look older. But now I’m leaning toward her having a Fae hookup like Liam.

“He is,” Liam confirmed.

We listened the Winter packmate tell everyone the FBI had analyzed the video. Someone had doctored it. It was a magic trick, nothing more. He said a lot more, but that was the gist of it. It would take care of some people, but there’d be an offshoot of those who still believed it. Cults and groups would form full of shifter worshippers or hunters.

We still had shit to take care of, but the mass hysteria would die down soon, and we could relax for now.

“Well, that’s as taken care of as it’s going to get right now. They will handle it from here,” Liam said.

“There’s more,” Philip said.

“Tell us.”