Win (Were Zoo Book 3) Read online

  “I wish I’d met you years ago,” he said.

  “I wish that, too.”

  He opened his mouth to say something else, when there was a rapid knock on the door. He let out a sigh. “It’s the band.”

  She smiled. “Whenever you say band, I think about music.”

  He kissed her swiftly with a chuckle and stood. “Don’t ask me why gorilla groups are called bands.”

  Win opened the door and six men and one woman walked inside. “I wondered if you were going to come for a visit.”

  “Jupiter told Zane that there was a box with banana cream pies here,” Adriana said. “It was all I could do to keep everyone away until after dinner at least.”

  Lexy stood and joined Win as he introduced the other gorillas. Atticus, the alpha, was Zane’s dad. Zane and Adriana were mated. The others – August, Neo, Patton, and Nathan – weren’t mated.

  “I was the first mate,” Adriana said as she gave Lexy a hug. “My friend Celeste and I were the only human females in the zoo until you came along.”

  “I met Celeste at the security office earlier,” Lexy said. “She helped out in the kitchen with the special dessert, too.”

  Adriana smiled. “She’d only let me have one of the cinnamon roll cookies if I did something special for her manicure. It was delicious.”

  Zane nodded. “They sold out of them in two hours. Tayme said it was the first time they’d had a dessert sell out so fast.”

  “Wow, that’s neat,” Lexy said.

  Win went into the kitchen with some of his friends and got chairs, which they set on the other side of the coffee table from the couch.

  “I’m tempted to tell you guys that both pies are gone,” Win said.

  August said, “You wouldn’t be that mean.”

  Lexy walked into the kitchen and removed the pie from the refrigerator. She grabbed the dessert plates in the cabinet and a handful of forks from the drawer and returned to the family room. All the guys started to hoot happily and she was so startled by the sound that she almost dropped the pie.

  “That will take some getting used to,” Lexy said as she set the pie on the coffee table.

  “It’s a good sound,” Nathan said. “It’s how you know gorillas are happy.”

  “That’s not the only way to tell,” Win said, winking at Lexy.

  She blushed and laughed. “This pie really isn’t big enough for everyone to have a big slice. I can make more once I have my supplies from my apartment.”

  “When will that happen?” Neo asked, eyeing the thin slices she carved from the pie and set on the plates.

  “I…don’t know,” Lexy said and looked at Win.

  “The house arrest is over tomorrow morning, but I have to start pulling double shifts tomorrow too,” Win said, making a face.

  Adriana accepted a piece of pie and said, “The lions went with us to get my things.”

  “That’s pretty standard,” Atticus said. “If you send a request to Jupiter, he can organize some males to take her, and to keep things better for you, Jenni would certainly be willing to go.”

  “Who’s Jenni?” Lexy asked.

  “The only lioness in the pride. She’s a sweetie,” Adriana said.

  “I can’t drive myself?” Lexy asked, as she finished handing out the slices of pie to everyone, including Win.

  “It’s warring with my beast to even let you out of my sight, at all. I don’t want you to feel like a prisoner here, sweetheart, but your safety is the most important thing to me. I’ll feel better knowing that you’re being looked after when I’m unable to do it.”

  She liked how protective he was. “Okay, I understand.”

  “I’m sure I sound like a caveman.”

  “A little maybe, but I like it. I’ve never had anyone outside of my family care about my welfare. You make me feel very protected.”

  The pie disappeared quickly as the guys chatted about the park and how lucky Win was to have met his soulmate out in the human world. Lexy sat next to Win on the couch with his arms around her. The gorillas seemed like a big family to her, with Atticus as the father figure and the others as brothers. They included Lexy immediately in their joking, teasing her about baking banana pies to lure unsuspecting shifters. When they left two hours later, she had an appointment to get a manicure with Adriana after she got back from her apartment, and an invitation to dinner at Atticus’s home the next evening.

  Win shut the door and turned to face her. She lifted the dirty plates from the table, but paused at his intense look.

  “What?” she asked.

  “The dishes can wait, sweetheart,” he said gruffly as he stalked to her.

  She set them on the table and straightened. “Oh?”

  “I’m not done showing you how good we can be together.” He reached her, looming over her with a soft growl.

  She couldn’t help but smile. He made her feel warm all over. Even when he was being all caveman-ish. “I could definitely use some more convincing.”

  “It’ll be my pleasure,” he said as he lifted her into his arms and carried her toward the bedroom.

  She nuzzled his throat. “Mine, too.”

  * * *

  Lexy fixed two travel mugs of coffee for herself and Win while he finished getting dressed. She was excited to get a tour of the park. It had been a good twenty years since she’d been there with her parents, and the only thing she could really remember was riding a pony with Trina.

  Win joined her in the kitchen and kissed her cheek. “Thanks for the coffee. I’m pretty tired. There was this gorgeous female in my bed last night.”

  “Sounds like a real hardship,” she said with a smirk.

  “Oh yeah, I only want to have that happen every night for the rest of my life.”

  She chuckled as they left the house and stood on the small porch. “I seem to remember you saying something about a ladder.”

  “It’s on the side,” he said. He led her to one side of the porch, handed her his coffee, and then lifted a section of bark on the wall of the house, and she saw an electronic pad that had two buttons on it – one red and one green. He pushed the green button and the porch shook a little as a squeaking noise sounded. She leaned over enough to see that a ladder was extending from under the porch to the ground. It had hand rails on both sides, and was made of metal.

  “That’s neat,” she said.

  “Atticus is the one who had the ladders added. It hadn’t occurred to anyone that our mates might not be able to leap up and grab a branch ten feet off the ground. And it’s not exactly an easy thing to carry groceries when you’re hanging from the tree.”

  “I’ll bet,” she said with a laugh.

  “We’ll leave it down from now on, but anytime you want a ride from me, let me know.”

  She followed him down the ladder and across the open space. Each group had their own private living quarters under the park.

  “The wolves have a pretty cool area with homes that look like caves on the outside to mimic a natural den. The lions, elephants, and bears have homes like ours, but they’re on the ground.”

  “Are there other types of shifters aside from your groups?”

  “There are some bird shifters, and other big cats like tigers and mountain lions, but I’ve never met any others outside of the ones here. There’s a shifter zoo in Florida that has a small pod of dolphin shifters. They’re pretty rare, though.”

  “That would be neat to be able to swim like a dolphin.”

  He unlocked the security door to the stairwell that led up to the employee cafeteria. “Yeah, well, they have to perform in shows during the day. It might be neat to swim, but it’s probably not so much fun to jump through hoops for fish.”

  He started the tour in the cafeteria, which had counters lined with plates of food wrapped in plastic and kept warm under heat lamps. There were several refrigerators which contained drinks and cold food items. He held the door open for her and she squinted at the morning sunshine, shield
ing her eyes until they adjusted to the brightness.

  He took her to the security office, where he checked in with one of the guards and picked up a set of keys for a golf cart that was parked outside of the building. “I have to get to work in a little while, or we would walk and enjoy the tour. This is faster,” he said as he turned on the engine and pressed the gas. He showed her all the attractions, from the food stalls to the gift shop, and then he parked in front of a wooden sign that read “Safari Tours.”

  He led her to a blue camo jeep and helped her in, and then he climbed behind the wheel. “No one will be out in the main paddocks, but the norms might be out this early,” he said as he followed a trail.

  “Norms?”

  “Regular animals. The elephants handle the norms.” He stopped the jeep in front of a chain link fence. Beyond the metal links, she could see moose, and one man in a beige jumpsuit walking among them.

  “That’s Indio, he’s cleaning up the paddock.”

  “Ugh,” Lexy said, wrinkling her nose.

  Win laughed heartily as he pressed on the gas. “Yeah. I’m glad I don’t have to clean up anyone else’s poop.”

  “You said you were going to tell me about the tours.”

  “Right. Our people haven’t been finding our soulmates.”

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “What?”

  “Soulmates. I don’t understand why you have to wait for a connection. Why wouldn’t you date someone and fall in love naturally? Wouldn’t that person also be a soulmate?”

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that for shifters. Our natures want to be with the person who is right for us. There has to be a connection for not only the human side, but also the animal side. The soulmate connection isn’t just for us, the mate feels it, also.”

  He glanced at her and didn’t say anything for a long moment.

  “The connection works both ways because it’s safer for you, right?”

  He nodded. “I think sometimes our human emotions can be fooled into believing something that isn’t there. If I chose a human who wasn’t my soulmate, what’s to stop that relationship from ending and her telling the world about us?”

  Lexy let that roll around in her mind. She wondered if she could betray Win, but the moment the idea appeared in her thoughts, something deep within her rebelled. Even lying to her family, about this one aspect of her life, was something she was willing to do to keep him and his people safe.

  “I think I understand why you wait for the right person. Since I started dating, I’ve certainly made some bad choices with relationships, believing I was with the right guy but then figuring out later that I wasn’t.”

  “And if you made an error in judgment, you didn’t have to worry about him telling a secret that could destroy people.”

  “You won’t randomly date humans, but what about other shifters?”

  “There are shifters who will mate with another shifter who isn’t their soulmate. That’s different than being with a human who doesn’t know about what we are. Most, though, want to wait for their soulmate.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s a shifter dating company?”

  “That would be nice, but no. Some will travel to other zoos to see if they can find their mate, but most of us just hold out hope that we’ll meet him or her at one point. In order to bring more unmated females and males into the zoo, the council sent out free tickets to VIP safari tours to any qualifying people in the surrounding area. The VIP tours run every weekend from four to eight pm.”

  “I got one of those tickets, and so did Trina.”

  He stopped the jeep and put it into park. They were in front of the gorilla paddock which was empty. “You did?”

  She thought back to the colorful tickets and parking passes they’d received. “We both immediately figured it was a scam and tossed them.”

  “A scam?”

  She shrugged. “Who gives that kind of thing away for free? It sounded too good to be true.”

  He got out of the Jeep and came around to her side and helped her out. They walked to the fence. There were trees and large rocks in the paddock, and a shed.

  “If you’d come here with that tour ticket, we would have met. I would have been in my shift. There’s a protocol with the tours, and when a shifter recognizes his soulmate, the tour guides take him or her to the security office and the shifter changes into human in privacy and goes there. Adriana and Celeste both met their soulmates during a VIP tour.”

  She turned to face him and leaned against the fence. “I’m sorry I thought it was a scam.”

  He grasped the fence over her head and curled his fingers in the links. Looking down at her, he said, “Don’t apologize. We met each other on the side of the road. I can’t imagine a more perfect way for us to have met than with me coming to your rescue.”

  “My knight in furry armor.”

  “Soulmates come into each other’s lives at the right time. I wish I’d met you years ago, sweetheart, because it would give me that much more time to take care of you and protect you. But I wouldn’t change anything about how we met, because I got you and that’s all that matters.”

  “I’ve got you, too.”

  He lowered his head and kissed her, the rumble in his chest the one she’d come to adore so quickly. He was a shifter and she was human, but she couldn’t deny that they were perfect for each other. They just fit. She couldn’t picture her life without him in it, and she knew he felt the same.

  They continued the tour of the animal paddocks. When they stopped at one paddock, there was a big man walking among giraffes.

  “That’s Kelley,” Win said. “He’s an elephant shifter.”

  “Are the elephants all vets?”

  “Just Cael. We only have a few paddocks of real animals, so it’s not necessary to have more than one vet, but Cael does have friends at a local veterinary hospital and they will come in to help if it’s needed.”

  “Do you work on the Jeeps because you like being a mechanic, or is it because it’s something your people do?”

  “A little of both. When I came here, I didn’t know much about cars. I took some classes at night school for car repair, and Atticus is a great teacher and loves fixing things. I started off doing light work like oil changes and keeping the Jeeps clean, and now I can fix just about anything. Where did you get your love of baking from?”

  “My grandma. She loved to bake, and her favorite pie was banana cream.”

  “Is she gone?”

  “Yeah. She died when I was a teenager. My mom gave me her cookbook, which was old and worn. The pages were falling out and there were stains on some of the recipes, but it’s probably my most prized possession. I’ve made all the desserts in it, and most of the main recipes, too. What do your parents do at their zoo?”

  “They run a petting zoo.”

  “Aw. Is there one at this zoo?”

  “Years ago, but it was run by the wolves and the animals spooked around them.”

  She chuckled. “Poor things.”

  Win parked next to the security building. He glanced at his watch and then said, “I have two more places to show you, but we’ll have to be quick so I’m not too late for my first day of double-shifts.”

  She took his hand and they walked away from the security building, following one of the many paths to the various areas of the park. He stopped in front of a large, red barn. Pulling open the front door, he led her inside.

  She’d expected to see a typical barn interior, with a wooden floor and walls, equipment and boxes scattered around, but instead she saw what looked like a small apartment complex. Three townhouses lined one wall, and a central area appeared to be a large family room, with couches and a wall-mount TV.

  There were people working in one of the townhouses. She could see them through the open front door and hear their hammers and saws.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “It was created to help the mates with
their families,” he said. “When Celeste mated with Jupiter, she was worried about moving here and explaining it to her parents. The lions came up with the idea to create a fake apartment building. One apartment is actually real – it has electricity and running water, and will be furnished – but the other two are just facades. When the building is finished, Celeste can invite her parents over to see her new place, and she doesn’t have to worry about them wondering why she’s living at the zoo.”

  “She told her parents she just moved in here? That seems…strange.”

  He chuckled. “She has a job here. She works with Adriana at the nail salon. Her family, and Adriana’s, were told that the zoo owners offered them the apartment as part of their salary.”

  She hummed. The apartments looked amazingly real. They reminded her of the narrow row houses in San Francisco. Then suddenly things clicked in her mind.

  “I can use this apartment, too?” she asked, turning to face Win.

  He nodded. “Since you wouldn’t actually live in the apartment, whenever your cousin, or anyone else in your family wanted to come visit, we could bring enough of your things in here to stage it as if you did live here. I know you’re not comfortable lying to your family,” he said, but she stopped him with a kiss.

  Wrapping her arms around his neck, she smiled at him. “Your safety – the zoo’s safety – is important to me, now. I didn’t know what I’d tell my family about why I had to move out of my apartment and come here, but this is perfect.”

  He slid his big hands up her back and drew her closer. “Did I ask you to be mine? To really be mine?”

  “Not really.”

  He made a gruff, purring sound in his chest. “My sweet, Lexy…be mine.”

  Her eyes stung with tears. Emotion welled in her, happiness and excitement twining together. “Of course, I’ll be yours. We’re soulmates, after all.”

  The declaration was sealed with a kiss. One that devastated her senses and made her forget that they were in a barn with other people working nearby. She would have gladly stripped Win from his uniform and celebrated their declarations, but a few well-timed hammerings and she was quickly reminded they weren’t alone.