Then, her brow caved in on itself. “That doesn’t explain where you were for the rest of the day. When I came home, it was like you cleared out for good.”
He grinned, a slightly crooked expression, and stole another kiss. “Does that mean you really want me?”
Of course. Definitely not. Oh, she couldn’t tell anymore.
“Try not to get yourself killed. I might be calm on the outside, but the only thing keeping me from going out and hunting that man down is the fact that you’ve been shaking since I got you home.”
“I am not…” Chelsea tried to argue, but when she lifted her hand, the tremble was obvious. “Well, shit.”
“I want to drown him,” Zane said, his gaze going distant. “I could trap him under the water until he felt the same panic you felt earlier. It would be too easy to overpower him. He’s only human.”
She grabbed Zane’s face and drew his attention back to her. Now was the moment to say something sweet and loving. It was the moment to draw him back from the edge of anger, where he might do something he would regret.
“Quit being a creep.”
He burst out laughing and snatched her up, hugging her tight.
“Being close to you puts my beast at ease,” he confessed.
Maybe there was something to this mate idea, after all. Chelsea wasn’t convinced it would last forever. She didn’t know what the next day would bring or where Zane would go next, but she was enjoying the bit of time she did have with him. He laughed at her stupid jokes and made her feel a little less empty than usual.
“Where else did you go today? Did you creep around your old family’s place?”
Zane stiffened. “So, that’s what you learned the other night?”
She forgot that she’d never mentioned the things Zara told her. She’d let Zane wonder what she knew. Which brought to question what else he could be hiding. Zane had a million secrets. They were obscured by the murky water he’d risen from.
“Zara tried to blow my mind, but I’m not a gullible fool anymore. She tried to tell me that having a mate meant finding true love. I called her bullshit.”
Zane growled. He rose to look her in the eye. Her heart fluttered, skipping several beats. “I’ll convince you one way or another, Chelsea.”
Hearing her name on his lips was enough to make her eyes roll back. He pressed her back into the bed and crawled over her until his body covered hers. Calloused hands slid up her arms and pressed her into the mattress. Zane ducked his head and dragged his teeth over the bite mark on her neck.
She shuddered. Sensation rippled through her, from her core to her fingertips.
“You are mine,” he growled.
The sound filled her chest. It wrapped around her like a warm hand. There was a promise in that embrace, one that could never be broken. That Zane never wanted to break.
She dragged in a breath and a rush hit her. Love. Safety. Commitment.
She could have all these things. They were possible. All she had to do was say yes. Zane would give her all she’d ever thought impossible.
That’s what she thought with her ex-husband, too. Her love for him had run deep. It’d been the enduring kind of love that was willing to look the other way a couple of times, willing to endure a little heartbreak for the sake of the long run. There was no way to tell right here and now if this would end the same.
Her heart was bursting with need, with a want that only Zane could ignite, but she feared what might happen a month from now. Two years from now. She didn’t know how long shifters lived, but from the looks of the others, they would remain beautiful long after her human body started to fade. Would Zane want her then? Would he still say the same sweet words?
Chelsea couldn’t give in to Zane’s persistence, no matter how badly she wanted to. Her body rebelled against her mind. It wanted to stay beneath him and enjoy all Zane had to offer. She forced herself to move. She pulled her wrists free of his grasp and rolled out from under him until her feet hit the floor.
Before he could say anything, she lurched out the door. She grabbed a throw blanket from the couch and went out to the front porch. Wrapping the blanket around her shoulders, she sat in the dim light of the porch sconce and tried to rid herself of these overwhelming feelings.
If Zane really was going to stick around…no, she couldn’t allow herself to consider it. Relationships hurt. They never lasted. Maybe Zara had found something more permanent, but Zara had faith. Her family showed her how this kind of thing worked. Chelsea didn’t know the first thing about keeping a man.
Zane pressed his face into the sheets and drowned the howl inside him. His beast wanted vengeance. It thrashed and snarled, clawing for the door so that Zane would go out and hunt down the human who wanted to hurt his mate.
Chelsea belonged to him. She was the only reason he wasn’t starting a war with his old clan. It was for her sake that he set aside his vengeance. Sooner or later, Alistair would strike. Zane went to watch them, to make sure they weren’t planning their attack. He should have stayed with Chelsea.
She needed him more right now. She lived on a precarious ledge, always falling off and into the hands of danger. He didn’t know how he was going to manage both. Zane was only one man. He could not keep Chelsea safe and stop the clan at the same time. Protecting his mate seemed like a lifelong task.
Which meant the clan needed to be stopped sooner rather than later. Chelsea would miss him tonight, or not. She kept running away from him. Just when he thought she wanted him to stay, she scurried away. The signals were confusing. He would give her the space she wanted tonight. Maybe it would help her realize what she wanted.
There was no way she didn’t want him the way he wanted her. They were mates, written in the stars by fate. Zane craved her touch, the sound of her voice. It had to be the same with her. At least, that was what he wanted to think. She’d thought he’d left and immediately went out in search of someone new.
Even if the man hadn’t attacked Chelsea, Zane still wanted to kill him. Zane wanted to remove every finger that touched her bare skin and blind him for looking at her with lust. But he didn’t. Zane kept himself where he was needed, by Chelsea’s side.
For the first time since leaving the lake, Zane wondered if the curse on him would never end. His mate kept running. She seemed to feel the same, but then would turn her back on him. When he was gone, she sought out other men. What if his mate never loved him the way he loved her? Zane had already given his heart over to her. It belonged to no one else.
Would her heart ever be his? He was too proud to ask it of her. Too afraid to watch her take it and smash it. Zane didn’t want to think she was capable of such cruelty. His mate would never…but he didn’t know what went on in her mind. He could not read her thoughts or see into her soul.
He got back onto his feet. The scent of their lovemaking still clung to the sheets. He was sad to leave this den, but he couldn’t linger. Not if he wasn’t wanted. Not if he had other things to do.
Chelsea wasn’t in the house. He didn’t see her until he stepped outside to leave. His heart stopped at the sight of pain twisting her expression. He should have stopped and asked her what was wrong, but he wasn’t sure if it was his place. Her thoughts were her own, as she had shown him by walking away.
He pushed past her, leaping down the steps. She called out to him. Her voice betrayed her loneliness and confusion. It almost stopped him. Almost.
“I’ll come back,” he promised her. “If I don’t, then it means I’m dead.”
She gasped. Her footsteps raced up behind him. He didn’t turn around, but he didn’t move either. It would have been smart to shift and take to the sky where she could not follow. If he trekked on foot, then she would be able to trail him.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Her voice lowered. “You’re not going to actually kill that man, are you?”
A growl rumbled his chest. “No. That wasn’t my intention. I have other things to take care of.”<
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A moment of silence ticked past. The night was quiet. Nothing chirped or croaked. The serenity of a cold fall night had settled in.
“Do you remember anything you did while you were in the lake?”
The question caught him off guard. He wasn’t expecting her to ask about that. Last he knew, she didn’t believe the curse. It was one thing to believe in shifters when one transformed before her eyes. The curse was something else. It was intangible.
“I remember…” He didn’t want to dredge through the horror that plagued his mind. The anger and violence of his nightmares. Chelsea didn’t need to know about what he saw or the things he did in them. “Nothing.”
The only sound was the shuffle of her feet behind him. Then, she asked, “Are you going to bother the other dragons? Was that where you were all day?”
“I have to make sure they aren’t going to hurt anyone. I’m the only one who can stand in their way.”
“Yeah, but what makes you think they’re going to hurt anyone? You don’t know the kind of people they’ve become in the past ten years. Maybe they were jerks in the past…”
“They weren’t,” he confessed. “My clan was…they were good people. I saw someone with them that was evil. If they’re still the good people I remember, then why are they working with a monster? Shouldn’t I make sure they aren’t going to burn the world?”
“When did you see this evil person? If you don’t remember anything from your time in the water and I’m the first person you saw once you got out…”
Zane shook his head. “I went back to spy on them. I have so many questions that need to be answered, and I thought maybe I would find something that proved me wrong. Instead, I saw Alistair in the flesh. He’s returned, and I need to stop him.”
“Alistair?” Her voice was faint, like she was trying to recall the name.
“You should stay away from them for a while. I know your friend mated one of the dragons from my old clan, but it won’t be safe to visit her until I know Alistair is gone once and for all.”
She snatched the back of his shirt. “There is one of you and five of them! I can’t let you fight them. I won’t.”
Maybe she did care, after all. Zane could have kissed her in that moment, but she probably would have scampered back into the house to hide from him. He wished he knew what she was so afraid of. That was a task for another time. Tonight, he needed to pay his clan a visit.
Chelsea held his shirt tight. She anchored him where he stood. Not to be deterred, he ducked out of it with a simple twisting step. She gaped down at the empty shirt hanging in her hand. Before she could move, he ducked close to leave a kiss on her cheek, then summoned his beast.
The darkness obscured him. He opened his wings and took flight for the first time in years. The wind didn’t remember him, and it took a while to find his balance again. He wobbled, heart stuttering with each dip of his wings. Higher and higher he went. The lake and the cabins weren’t far by flight.
There was no fire in his chest that he could use to burn down the cabins, but he could use the witch’s twisted magic in the lake. That was his greatest weapon. His only weapon besides teeth and claws. If it came to it, he would plunge into the lake to harness its power.
A sliver of steel blue appeared on the horizon ahead. It quickly stretched larger as the lake unfolded before him. He’d worried that this new body wouldn’t be able to carry him. His thinner wings seemed to carry him fine, albeit a bit wobbly. His form was streamlined for powerful currents, so air washed over him like it was nothing.
Above the world, he felt invincible. He was himself again, before the curse took him. It was a state of being he never thought he would get back. The youthful Zane was lost to time, dead in the bottom of the lake. Yet, here with the world stretched out beneath him he felt like he could be more than a revenant.
Maybe the cold in his blood would fade. There was a chance he could get his fire back.
He shouldn’t have indulged such thoughts. The universe quickly reminded him of his position when his wings crumpled. The muscles of his shoulders twitched and gave out. His wings became as flimsy as tissue paper, flapping in the wind, out of his control. He plummeted.
Zane gritted his teeth and tried to regain control of his shoulders, but the muscles refused to comply. They weren’t used to carrying his weight. The water had sapped his strength. He wasn’t even half the man he used to be.
He was a dead weight.
He was useless.
A snarl ripped from his muzzle. The beast clawed the air. It forced his wings out straight again. The effort sent fire through his body. The muscles were underused. They couldn’t handle flight. The most he could do was angle himself and glide toward the water.
The surface of the lake was as unforgiving as the earth from the height he fell. It pushed back and threatened to shatter bone before it swallowed him whole. His head spun from it all. Failure tugged at him, a reminder that nothing was as it had been. He was no longer a dragon. His form had become something else.
Zane roared and the water around him trembled. The lake answered to his fury. The waves above turned white and crashed with ferocious sound. This was what he’d become. As much as he wanted to reach for the skies again, he worried he would forever be trapped below. Under a spell, under the water, under the control of Alistair.
No matter what he had become, Zane couldn’t let Alistair lead the clan astray again. Zane would destroy them all to keep that from happening. The memories he held, of friends and family, would always be just that. In the past. The clan had become something dangerous.
Time had changed everyone.
Zane kicked off the bottom of the lake and pushed toward the shore where the cabins sat. His back screamed and it would hurt later, but he didn’t have the time to stop.
7
Chelsea swore under her breath. There was no Alistair among the other shifters. When Zara spoke of the others, she never mentioned an Alistair. Zane had it all wrong. He was going to start a fight over misinformation. The person he saw couldn’t be Alistair.
She dashed back onto the porch and scrambled to find her phone. The cab couldn’t come fast enough. The thought of using a cab to race a dragon made her laugh, a hysterical edge trying to take it over. Time ticked by, moving achingly slow when she knew Zane was already on his way to the others. When the cab finally pulled up, she practically threw herself into the back seat.
“Step on it,” she cried out, urgency gripping her lungs too tight.
She couldn’t breathe. Not when she knew Zane would throw himself against an unbeatable force. He was only one man. He could be the strongest shifter, and still he wouldn’t be able to go up against five others. More than that. Chelsea knew Zara was a fox shifter. She didn’t know what the other women in the clan could do.
What they could become.
Chelsea suddenly felt very small. She was human. What did that mean to the world of shifters? These were men who could take the shape of not just normal beasts, but the shape of dragons. Zane was the size of a tractor trailer truck. Were the others smaller? Larger?
She knew nothing. Yet, she was throwing herself headlong into this fight.
It wasn’t that she wanted to die. She really didn’t. It was just that Chelsea found trouble over and over again. At least, this time she was no longer drunk. The adrenaline from the kind of day she was having managed to wash it away. The only thing muddling her mind was panic.
Fear that she wouldn’t get there in time. Worry that she would be unable to do anything.
Could they breathe fire like dragons in the storybooks? What other magic were they capable of? Zane had told her almost nothing. She was going to sit him down and make him explain everything once she got him back. If she got him back.
She cringed. These thoughts kept interrupting her. Doubt was trying to steal him away. She wasn’t even sure if he would stay once she claimed him. If she claimed him. Everything between them was uncertain. He claim
ed they were forever, but she didn’t believe in forever.
All she knew was the moment she had. The right here and now.
“You want to go to those run-down cabins by the lake? Now, I know you take a lot of chances with your safety, but I’m not sure this is one you want to take. Places like that aren’t safe for a girl on her own…” Ed, the cabbie, warned her.
Chelsea groaned. “If you don’t press down on the gas pedal, I’m going to…” she couldn’t think of a good threat. If she was drunk, she would have threatened to puke on the seat. “Dude, just get me there. Right now.”
Ed grumbled something under his breath. She was tired of relying on this cab company just so she could get around everywhere. It wasn’t like Zara could come and pick her up whenever she needed a lift.
Chelsea sucked in a breath. Zara.
Quickly, Chelsea sent a text to her old roommate. She warned Zara that Zane might be coming their way and that they shouldn’t attack him. This could be resolved without fighting. Chelsea wanted everyone to be able to walk away from this.
Chelsea stumbled out of the cab, not bothering to even say goodbye to the driver. A cabin door opened, making a rectangle of light appear in the darkness. Someone stepped outside. Chelsea took a moment to scan the sky above, but the light had burned her eyes. She couldn’t make out anything but cloudy darkness.
“Where is he? Where is he?” Chelsea mumbled. Her heart was racing. She couldn’t find Zane anywhere.
The person in the light skipped down the steps and ran toward her. Everything else was calm. No fight had broken out yet. She couldn’t believe that she’d beat Zane here. It seemed impossible. No, it was impossible. Zane had flown.
He should have arrived by now.
A tall woman with tattoos and pink hair took Chelsea by the shoulders. “You’re the one who warned us about Zane?”
“I am…” Chelsea kept looking over her shoulder, like she might find Zane stumbling out of the woods.
No, that wasn’t where he would be. The first time she saw him shift, he’d slithered into the lake like he’d been born into it. Zane was hiding out in the lake. He was waiting and lying low.
Zane (Keepers Of The Lake Book 6) Page 6