by Mason Sabre
“I know.” She got it. One of her own tigers finding her out alone and with the possibility of danger. He was doing his duty. She let her gaze drifted longingly over the field. The greenery had grown back now. This was one field that seemed to grow better for what the Humans had done. Stronger even. Her mother said it was because it was so close to the river. That and the burnings that had cleared out all the bad shit and laid a path for fresher, clearer soil. “I was going to shift by the river.”
“You’re out of luck there. The tide is in.” He glanced at his watch. “Probably will be for another hour or so.”
Shit. Of course it was. Why would anything be going in the right direction just now? Besides, maybe it was for the best. Cade’s house was just across the waters. Going through the lanes, it took a while to drive there, but swimming … she’d have been there in no time. They had done that once, when trying to sneak Phoenix back to Cade’s place as fast as possible. Cade had found the boy bruised and battered in the forest, barely holding on. The only way to get him to safety and try and save his life was to swim across the river. Every other road and lane had been blocked off by Humans looking to eliminate the young half breed.
Maybe going home and shifting wasn’t such a bad idea …
Just … the idea of being caged, even by her own land, had her screaming in her head.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” she asked. “I’ll pay you. My own stupid fault for being lazy with the damn car.”
“Of course. But no, I’d never hear of taking payment. Besides,” he grinned, “tomorrow, I get to have bragging rights at rescuing you.”
She did smile at that. This was where she was so different to Stephen. The attention he had got was bigger, louder, and my God, he had relished it. Had he ever cared that the women slept with him just so they could say they’d fucked Stephen Davis? She didn’t think so. Even he didn’t know half their names. It was the women who had tried to cling on that annoyed her. There was never a woman in the world who would have been able to tame her brother …
Thinking of him bit into her emotions and brought up a longing. If there was a chance he was alive …
“If you want to run, I could drive you to the Fell? You go there? I could shift myself.”
Gemma tried hard to bring her head back around, not realising she had drifted off.
“You don’t have to run with me. Just an idea.”
“No. No. It's fine.” She tried to stall so her brain could catch up. Running with someone—two people, not the pack—was intimate. It was like a date of the Other kind, but one that came with trust. The most vulnerable part of being a shifter was that moment between person and tiger. Going for a shift with someone, alone … it meant something. “How come you're out here?” she asked suddenly, switching gears. The area where her father’s house was located wasn’t anywhere anyone ever needed to be. It was a destination, not a through route.
He nodded and indicated back along the lane he had just come from. “One of your guys had a breakdown. They called me out.” He fished into his back pocket for his wallet and then snagged out a card, handing it to her. “I was fixing it up and getting them going.”
She took the card and stared at his name and number and a note that said twenty-four hour call out. “Don’t you work in an office? With Tom?”
Karl slipped his wallet into his back pocket. “Yep. I pay my bills with the office work, and it keeps me in Society. But I love cars. Old ones, new ones. Doesn’t matter to me. I buy them, fix them up and sell them. I offer a service to Others, though. People within the Society Arms. I’d love it to be my full-time gig. I came out to your brother once. He had smashed into the front of—”
“Our father’s car?” She remembered that. He’d been out nearly all night. Nearly got his ass dragged to the cage for it. “He said he’d come out and found it like that.”
Karl grimaced, holding his hands out, and she smiled.
“It's fine. I should have guessed.”
“I can take a look at your car if you like? Is it at your house? I can pick it up. I have a low rider. Be a good chance for me to get that thing out on the road. You don’t have to pay.”
“No. I’ll pay.” She waved his card at him before slipping it into her own pocket. “Thanks.”
They walked towards his car, and she let herself relax a little. Maybe it was the change of topic or just that another of her kind was close. She didn’t know. But the weight of it all had eased enough that she at least felt she could breathe.
“Soooo …” he said after a moment. “Do you want a ride home or the Fell?”
Gemma cast a quick glance back toward her parents’ house. She could go back there. She could run there, spend the night and get a ride home in the morning … if she really needed it. But then … it was a night with her father. The man who was going to pick her mate … her mate. Another tiger. Gemma looked back at Karl … He was tiger. She bit on her lip because the idea forming in her head was wrong—terribly wrong. “The Fell would be great,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“No … I—I—” He clamped his mouth shut, a tick working in his jaw. “Well, shit.” He let out a puff of breath. “Should we go?”
She nodded, and as she smiled at him, her phone rang, blaring out an obscene rendition of some popular tune. Cade’s name flashed across the screen … an image that sent her heart tearing back into his murky corner.
Her thumb hovered over it.
“Everything okay?” Karl asked when she simply stared at the buzzing phone.”
Her gaze snapped up to his. “Yes,” she murmured, swiping the opposite way to decline the call. “It’s nothing.”
Chapter 24
Natalie
If Natalie could have moved time by will alone, she would have. Leaning against the window, she let the cool glass touch her warm cheek, all the while her heart sinking deeper inside her. It had been an hour since she had called him—a whole hour since he had told her that the meeting was done and he was on his way back. But he still wasn’t home.
She cast another glance at the clock and sighed. Each minute passed by painfully and created a lump in her throat. This was some new form of madness. It was insane. She knew it was, and yet, she couldn’t stop the thing inside that craved him—called to him.
Just come home. Please.
The Davies’ house wasn’t that far away … no more than fifteen minutes to get there, not a whole hour. It took everything for Natalie not to crumple to the floor from the weight of her own anxiety. She had dared to hope … dared to think that he would be coming home like he had promised. She was a fool.…
She sucked in a shaky breath and let it out slowly. Cade was a good man. She had to remind herself of that. He wasn’t like all the assholes she had dated before him. Shit. He wasn’t like anyone she had ever known. If there was ever a specimen of a man, a real man, Cade was it. He was more male in one breath than any man she’d ever come into contact with. He made her want things she didn’t think possible. He made her dream of a future she had been sure she couldn’t have. Just the presence of him, and his wolf, brought about things … hopes and dreams … that she had put away long ago. Like a ray of hope, he made things seem possible. And he hadn't even touched her yet.
She let out another sigh and wiped the glass where it fogged up from her breath, the cold glass a vast contrast to the warm air in the room. Every part of her willed headlights to appear in the distance.
This was stupid. She rolled her shoulders, trying to relieve the tension that had gathered there. The road outside was just an endless path of darkness. It was more believable to her that Cade wouldn’t come along it. That this was his way of getting out of running together.
She shouldn’t have asked him. It was too much, too soon, for him.
Pushing away from the windowsill, she made herself close the curtains and shut herself off from this weird obsession. This wasn’t like her. She didn’t cling onto men….
&
nbsp; But this was Cade.
He brought these feelings out in her, and she wasn’t all that sure what to do with them.
She went around the room, putting out the three lamps she had lit in hopes that the soft glow would make Cade feel more relaxed when he got back.
But this arrangement between their parents, it was scary for him, she was sure. Just about as scary as it was for her. But it didn’t stop her from trying.
She flicked the last lamp off with a loud click that seemed to penetrate her nerves.
In the hallway, she hesitated. She usually left the light on there for Cade. He didn’t need it, of course, being wolf, but it was what they had used to do for her father … a light to show him the way back from whatever horror it was he may have seen that day. It was through him that her and her sisters had inherited their powers. Her father had been a master at them. He was able to bend time in his mind when and how he wanted … he could reach for the images he saw.
Natalie didn’t want to reach for the images of Jessica. She didn’t even want to touch her.
Clicking the lamp on at the end of the hallway, she drew in a deep breath. Whatever was keeping Cade was something beyond his control. That was all.
With a grim nod, mostly to convince herself that that was all it was, she went up the stairs. Her intention was to go to her room, lie down and wait, but she found herself stopping outside Cade’s room. She could always tell when he was in there. There was a warmth that seemed to seep out … the detection of another wolf close to her. But all she felt now as she placed her hand against the door was the emptiness in there. Swallowing hard, she pushed down on the handle slowly, feeling guilty for being an intruder into his private space.
The soft click sounded loud in her ears, an alarm of her guilt for going where she wasn’t meant to, but as she opened the door, Cade’s scent wafted out thick and strong, threatening to destroy every ounce of sense in her. She had to close her eyes and hold onto the door as her wolf perked up and slammed into her, demanding the male wolf she could scent. Her lips parted, her breathing hitching as need surged through her.
When she finally felt she could move and think again without the intrusion of every animal instinct she was fighting, she let her eyes open. The room was dark, except for the moonlight that came in through the window. The moon was near full. Another week and they would all meet as a pack. This would be her first run at this place within the ranks. She would no longer be standing at the back with her sisters. No … Now she would be a breath away from the alpha, and side by side with one of his own. That alone was like having a seat in the royal palace. She only ever dared to imagine it.
Each night was like a gentle calling from the Luna cycle. Only those of her kind could hear it. Maybe that was why she was feeling so undone just now—the close call of the moon. That call, though, it tugged at her abdomen like an invisible umbilical cord connecting her to the nothing out in the world … it needed to be connected to a child. That link between a mother and her own … Her mother had told her about it, tried to explain it, but maybe this was her finally understanding.
Perhaps that was why it hadn’t been so hard to accept when her mother had told her that Cade had selected her. Somewhere deep inside, she had wished for him to choose her, but she never imagined he would. Kara would have been the better choice ... But then, she wasn’t one to be tied down just yet. She was young and free. The other choice was Beth, and God, the thought of that made Natalie’s heart hurt. There would be no man, no other person really, suitable to look after her.
She padded barefoot into his room, the feeling of the soft rug he had placed across the hardwood floor a startling difference. She pictured him walking in here, had seen it enough times that she had no trouble bringing it to her mind. Except, in her head, he was waiting for her, shirtless and ready. He’d hold his hand out, beckoning her to come closer, a sensual look on his handsome face, that smile that tilted one corner of his mouth slightly …
It would be a call to claim her.
She had to press a hand to her chest to steady her thumping heart. Her vivid imagination was cruel sometimes, filling her mind with images of entwined limbs, meshed lips and writhing bodies …
Fanning her flushed cheeks, she walked further into the room, then paused by his bed. She let her fingers gently graze the edge, trailing them along as she walked around it. After a moment’s hesitation, she gingerly sat on the edge, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply as a richer scent wafted up to her from the bed—all male, all Cade—drowning her … intoxicating her.
The shirt Cade had been wearing before his shower lay discarded across the pillow, and Natalie’s fingers reached for it before she could stop them. She fingered the edge of the fabric before she allowed herself to grab hold of it and bring it to her nose. Without thinking, she inhaled deeply, the male delicious scent going right to her wolf, like a calling card.
Her wolf moved inside … ready … revelling in the possibility of what could be next ...
She froze.
There was something else tangled with the smell in his shirt ... something, sweet, delicate, like sunshine and earth. She moved the shirt away, trying to clear her senses, and then brought it back to sniff at it again—like a crazy possessed woman.
Her nose twitched, but Cade’s scent was too strong … too overpowering for her to be able to accurately detect the other scent. This was her mind playing tricks on her … this was what happened when she allowed the gates in her senses to open. Everything flooded in.
It made her crazy.
She shook her head at herself and placed Cade’s shirt neatly back where she had found it.
What was she doing?
She had kept herself alone for so long … Not that she didn’t date. She did. But this was the first time she had ever lived with a man—and not in the safety of her parents’ home.
The sound of gravel crunching under tyres made Natalie catch her breath.
He was home.
She leapt off his bed and dashed to the window just in time to see his car pulling up into the small driveway at the side of his house. She glanced at her watch. Almost an hour and a half had gone by, and he hadn’t bothered to call her to let her know he had been held up. She tried to tell herself she had no rights to this, but really, she did. She was the potential Mrs MacDonald … More than that, their tests had showed they were a match, and unless his father contested it, which was highly improbable since he was the one who had wanted this union to happen in the first place, there would be no reason that these two wouldn’t be matched by the Society … So yes, she had the right to be mad that he was late home and hadn’t said.…
As the car door opened, she scurried out of sight, hiding behind the curtain. She wasn’t ready to see him yet. Wasn’t ready to face whatever it was he might say to excuse himself—or worse, not. She didn’t know his tells yet, wouldn’t know if he was lying, but she knew how she felt.
Out in the hallway, she paused at the top of the stairs and listened. The back door to the kitchen crashed open and slammed into the stone wall. Natalie frowned. Cade was not a man to make so much racket.… Something was wrong.
Before she knew what she was doing, she had raced down the stairs and into the kitchen. She gasped when she saw Cade hunched over the sink, his shirt muddied and covered in blood.
Oh, God.
She raced over to him as he fumbled with the tap, her heart jackhammering. All the anger she had just been feeling turned to guilt. While she had been getting mad at him for being late, he had been in some kind of trouble…. “Cade … What happened?”
Cade let go of the sink and slid down to the floor, his breathing coming ragged, his face wet with perspiration, his hair stuck to his head. He tried to speak, but only managed to hold his head up a moment before it flopped back. He clutched his arm to his chest, blood seeping out onto his already torn and bloodied shirt. “Vampire …” he wheezed as he tried to breathe.
Vampire.
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bsp; She gently extricated his arm from his grip and inspected the wound. It was like a festering pit, black, wide open, and oozing.
“A vampire did this?” She had never seen a vampire bite on a shifter before, but she knew they were bad. It was the mixture of blood that metabolised everything with such speed, and blood that was dead. They didn’t mix. It wouldn’t kill the shifter, but it sure as shit would hurt like a hell as the shifter’s body tried to remove the dead invasion from its system. But this … this was something different.
Jumping to her feet, she grabbed a clean towel and stuck it under the tap. Squeezing out the excess water, she fell to her knees in front of him again and got to work trying to clean around the infected area. He let out an agonised growl, his head lolling to one side, and Natalie winced. Every time she touched his skin, he let out a whimper. God damn it. How had this happened?
As soon as she had cleaned away most of the blood and dirt, she set it to the side and reached up to gently cup his face, turning it so that he could see her. His eyes were open, but the whites were red, his pupils the bright blue of his wolf as he tried to fight what was happening inside.
“Look at me. Stay with me,” she said as his eyes tried to close. He swallowed hard, licking his lips. Natalie pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “You’re burning up.”
“Silver,” he said. “He had silver teeth …” His words were quiet, barely audible.
Silver teeth? What fucking madness was that?
“We need to get you out of this shirt.” She reached for the top button, popping it open. His eyes closed.
“Cade?”
It took a moment for him to respond, and then it was just his mouth moving, no words coming out. He was sweating so much that it ran down his face in droplets, and she had to wipe it from his eyes.
“We need to cool you down.” She remembered once, when Beth had had a really bad episode, she had got a fever. She had been burning up so much that she had ended up going into a fit, and the only thing that had worked had been to carry her and place her into a bath of iced water. There was a weight difference between Cade and Beth, though. It wasn’t going to be possible, and Natalie didn’t think he’d be able to get himself up the stairs.