Secret Shifters 0f Spokane Complete Series Bks 1-4

by Selena Scott

  Danil scooped AJ up and full on sprinted out of the hangar. So did Emin and Maxim, who thought of their children as they galloped toward the entrance.

  Anton looked back, and in the first coherent thoughts his brain had had in an hour, he saw his brother taking care of AJ. He knew that she would be alright without him.

  With his militarized eyesight and finely tuned senses, Anton watched the explosion tear through Lana and Sergei. It was clear energy still, just matter and force flinging through the universe. Two or three feet out, the energy caught flame and he watched the fiery edge reach out its arms for him.

  If I stayed, he thought, Anton would die. But so would this beast. This horrible, murderous part of me. He saw the flame coming toward him like a lover.

  And then, somewhere, in the back of the beast’s brain, he remembered his actual lover.

  And there was no choice. There was never a choice.

  AJ screamed in horror and fury and rage as the fireball burst through the ceiling of the hangar. The smoke was too thick, she couldn’t see. She couldn’t see.

  “Anton!” she screamed, her legs giving out as his brothers surrounded her. As the rest of the soldiers fled into the forest.

  “Anton,” she whispered to the ground as she covered her head and howled.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Maxim could hear the pain of Emin and Danil lance out in his own brain as the building went up in flames. And all he could think was again, I’ve failed Anton again.

  He took a few running steps toward the collapsing building, determined to get in when he skidded to a stop. A large shadow was jogging out of the burning hangar.

  Its fur matted and melted. Its eyes wild and angry.

  Maxim rejoiced.

  Anton.

  Racing forward to greet him, he was shocked when Anton batted him aside, swatting him easily into a tree. Anton’s beast was singed and furious and a prisoner to his own rage.

  It roared its great roar and lunged at Danil, who stood in front of AJ, and then at Emin, who tried to pry him off of Danil. Anton wasn’t their brother right now, that much was clear as he sunk his teeth into Danil’s haunch and tore.

  Maxim roared as he righted himself, aghast, furious, and used all of his weight to rip Anton off of Danil. But the beast had already switched to Emin. Claw to claw, they ripped at one another and Emin howled as Anton batted his arm hard enough to break bone.

  Maxim bared his teeth, rammed Anton aside. He went skidding, gripping at the ground for purchase and gnashing his teeth at the bears. He started forward again but AJ flung herself in between.

  “Stop!” she screamed at the maniacal beast. “Anton! Stop!”

  He did stop. But he didn’t calm down. He stomped his feet and roared, chomping his bloody teeth.

  “No!” she yelled, raising her finger and pointing it like she would at a naughty toddler. And then when Anton took one aggressive step forward, she did too.

  “No!” she screamed again, getting in his face. He took another step forward, and she’d had it. She knew what she had to do.

  Gathering all her strength and gumption, AJ reared back and smacked the monster across its horrible face.

  The smack barely ruffled the fur of the creature, but still, it let out a fierce little whine and sat back on its haunches.

  “Lay. Down.” AJ ordered through clenched teeth.

  The beast did as it was told. She stood over it for just a second, for good measure, gritting her teeth and glaring.

  “Anton,” she said, finally falling to her knees. “Come back out. This is enough. It’s over. And I’m really tired and sick.” Without thinking, she reached out and traced her hand through the monster’s coarse fur. He let out another brief whine, pushing his head into her hand. “And I don’t know if anyone told you, but I was poisoned earlier today.”

  The beast raised its head, rage chuffing out of it again.

  “Enough, enough,” AJ flapped her hand. “No more of that, okay? I’m just saying that I have to get to the hospital and we can’t go if you’re still a rage monster or whatever this is.”

  She leaned forward, looked deep in the monster’s eyes. “So come out, Anton. Come back. I need you. Right now.”

  The beast shuddered, groaned, gritted its teeth against what seemed to be horrible pain. And then it was shrinking, its fur lightening. AJ watched in amazement as the beast shrank out of sight and into a bear. Anton’s bear. And the bear kept right on going. Until it was Anton lying there in front of her.

  He was breathing hard and reaching for her, tears tracking down the dirt in his face. “Bahinia,” he murmured into her hair as he gathered her close.

  “Motherfucker!” Danil shouted as he shifted and stood, looking down at his bloody leg. “Anton, you piece of shit!”

  “Da,” Emin growled, holding his broken arm at an awkward angle. “I love you, Anton, but you are piece of shit.”

  Maxim merely grunted, rubbing his bruised ribs from where he’d been tossed bodily into a tree.

  Anton’s eyes lit with horror as he looked at his brothers. “Christos. I cannot control - I am so-”

  “Save it,” Danil said, holding up one hand. “Whatever, you’re forgiven. I love you. Blah blah. Just drive us all to the fucking hospital.”

  ***

  Anton bit down on the impulse to hate himself for what he did.

  “I don’t hate the monster, so if you do, you’re just dragging us down,” AJ had told him before she had been wheeled away for examinations.

  That had been four hours ago, and now she slept calmly, curled into his side on the hospital bed. The baby seemed to be okay. That was the news the doctor brought an hour ago.

  “He’ll be fine,” AJ had whispered to Anton. “He’s half bear, after all.”

  “He?” he’d whispered back, but she’d already been drifting off to sleep.

  He’d been to see his brothers in their hospital rooms as well. Danil had been grumpy and tender; he’d needed 40 stitches. Emin had been philosophical about his pain, but was already regretting his choice to let Glory choose the color of his cast. Bright pink.

  Maxim had had more damage than they’d originally thought. Broken ribs and a punctured lung. But he was also the most jovial of them all.

  “That’s what you’ve been hiding this whole time?” he’d panted to Anton. “That little kitten? Come on. Show me something scary.”

  Anton grinned, small, but true. His brothers had seen his beast. They’d fought it. And still, they loved him. And this woman, he gently snuggled into her. She’d walked right up to him, laid a hand on his face. She’d held him at bay without fear. And still she loved him.

  “Anton?” AJ stirred and looked up at him.

  “Da?”

  “I want a big wedding. In your parents’ backyard. None of this elopement crap that your brothers did.”

  They’d barely talked about getting married since the day they’d decided to. But the thought of it had him really smiling now.

  “Do I wear suit?”

  “Yes, and I wear a white dress.”

  “White?” he raised an eyebrow and traced a hand over the tiny baby bump that had just started to pop.

  “Well, off-white, then,” she conceded before she turned into him and drifted back into peaceful sleep.

  EPILOGUE

  18 MONTHS LATER

  A big wedding. The dumbest thing he’d ever agreed to. Anton yanked at his tie and peeked out the back of his mother’s house. Half of Spokane was out there.

  Well, it was only 30 or so people. But still. That was a lot of people for Anton.

  Anything for AJ, he reminded himself. She’d wanted a white wedding. And she’d wanted to wait until she’d lost the baby weight. So, here they were.

  “Your Mama gets what Mama wants,” Anton whispered to the baby in his arms as he ducked away from the back window so he wouldn’t have to look at the guests anymore. Looking down at his son soothed him. Andrei had brown eyes and brown
hair, just like his Papa. But his eyes were heavy lidded and sleepy like AJ’s. Unable to stop himself, Anton pressed a kiss to his little guy’s chubby, sticky cheek.

  “Blech, Andrei. Bananas?” Anton wiped the sticky mess off his mouth.

  “Okay,” Katya said, charging into the room. “I take boy. Your wife is ready to marry you.”

  Katya had said ‘wife’ and not ‘bride’ because the only way that Anton had been able to wait 18 months to marry AJ had been to drag her down to city hall and get the papers signed about a day after everything with Navuka had gone down. She’d agreed, as long as they could still have a big, white wedding ceremony.

  Anton reluctantly passed off his son to his mother, a surge of love bursting through him as he watched the baby’s fuzzy little head bob away.

  He rarely had trouble with his beast anymore. Something about Andrei’s presence in Anton’s life had deeply calmed him. He wanted to be a gentle father. And he was.

  Besides, if the beast ever wanted to come out and play, AJ was more than ready to put it in its place. They’d acquired a few more tools for her to use. Her favorite was still just good old, natural slapping, hair pulling, and biting. Anton smiled to himself as he absently trailed his fingers over the fresh bite mark she’d given him on his chest just that morning.

  “Okay, little brother,” Maxim said from behind Anton as the music started to play outside. The guests quickly filed to their seats. “Now is time for you to go into hell for just 20 minutes. And stand in front of people. But then you will marry AJ. And then we party.”

  He smacked a huge hand on Anton’s shoulder and pulled him in for the hug. Something that all his brothers had been doing since that day with Navuka. Touching him easily. Joking with him. Never taking it easy anymore. They had no fear or sadness when they were with him. In their eyes, he was healed.

  And, Anton realized, maybe that was a big piece of the puzzle. To have your family treat you as if you were better. AJ certainly did. And Glory always had.

  Ivy and Dora had been pretty mad for a few days that they’d all rushed off to fight Navuka without them. And, he knew, they’d been less quick to forgive their husbands’ injuries than his brothers were. But Dora and Ivy had gotten theirs.

  “A girls’ trip,” they’d called it. They’d left for two weeks about a month after that day with Navuka. Gotten on a plane and flown to Europe. Their husbands, only minimally clued in to their itineraries, had been the grumpiest bastards imaginable for the entire two weeks. And when they’d gotten back, they’d said nothing about where they’d been.

  A week later, international news had broken. The President of Belarus had been arrested by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. Apparently, the enslavement and experimentation of a group of one’s constituents was frowned upon by the UN.

  Dora, a former PI and current investigative journalist, apparently knew exactly whom to pass some extremely damning evidence to.

  And that was all she was saying about it.

  It meant that the Malashoviks could breathe easy for the first time since Anton had been captured. The head of Navuka had been imprisoned, most of its soldiers were scattered, and Sergei and Lana were dead.

  They were safe. He was safe. Hell, they could even travel back to Belarus if they ever wanted. Anton would like to show AJ his home country someday. Take Andrei to see his roots.

  “I’m going first,” Danil said, straightening his tie and stepping in front of his brothers.

  “No,” Emin growled, dragging his brother back by the scruff of his neck. “Groom goes first. Then we go by age. You are last. And then bride.”

  “I’m always last,” Danil grumbled.

  But Anton ignored his brothers’ bickering. He took a deep breath and opened the door to the backyard. He felt the people turn to stare at him. But for once, it didn’t matter. Because he was stepping into his future. Walking forward into a life he never thought he’d be able to have.

  ***

  Well, it was a miracle, AJ thought as she twirled in Maxim’s arms. She’d married Anton Malashovik. She could barely believe it.

  She’d spent so long dreaming about him, and now he was hers. And she was his. She found herself effortlessly being twirled over to Ilya and she grinned back at Maxim. He was already running his hands over Ivy’s hair. It was a light, washed-out turquoise right now. She’d stopped dyeing it while she was pregnant. And boy, was she pregnant. She swayed back and forth with her husband, but it was about the best she could do on the dancing thing with her baby belly.

  And that was nothing compared to Dora, who sat back on a deck chair, a pillow stuffed under her feet and a virgin daiquiri in one hand. “Danil!” Dora called. “Will you get me a burger the size of your head, please? The babies are being real assholes right now.”

  Ilya and AJ grinned at each other. No one would ever forget the moment Dora had dropped it on Danil in the middle of dinner that they were pregnant with twins. A plane could have landed in his open mouth.

  Just then, Glory danced past, two glasses of champagne in one hand and a newborn in the other. Emin had gotten her pregnant again about two months after she’d given birth to her first girl, Joy. Now she bounced baby Grace on her hip and shoved a glass of champagne into AJ’s hands.

  “Here’s to pumping and dumping!” They clinked glasses as Emin came up behind Glory and slipped his hands around her waist.

  Katya danced with Anton, Andrei snuggled between them where he slept at her chest. She had tears in her eyes, smiling down at her grandson, smiling at them all.

  “Gram?” Linc asked from below, pulling at her dress. “Can I dance with you, too?”

  Anton shoved the two of them together before he ducked onto the dance floor and tugged his wife away with him. He slipped into the house with her, closing the door behind them and flipping the lock.

  “Anton, what-” AJ started.

  Her words were cut off as Anton picked her right up, waded through the galoshes and discarded shoes on the floor of the laundry room and set her right up on the washing machine. The way he had so long ago.

  Without preamble, he leaned in and kissed her. He could kiss her for the rest of his life. She was breathless when he pulled away.

  “That is what I want to do so long ago. Put you up here and kiss you like that.”

  “I thought you were mad at me that day,” she whispered, raising a hand to his hair. “That you were teaching me a lesson.”

  “I thought that you were scared of me that day,” he replied. “That I disgust you.” He framed her face. “But really, even then, I love you so bad it hurt.”

  “So much misunderstanding,” she shook her head, cast her eyes down. “For so long.”

  “Autumn,” he whispered, taking her chin and bringing her eyes to meet his. “Our story is not sad anymore.”

  “No,” she agreed, a smile creeping across her face as she nipped at his lip. “The sad part’s in the past.”

  THE END

  Preview – Chosen by the Dragon

  PROLOGUE

  “Come on, Beverly. You can frickin do this,” Lucy whispered under her breath as she watched the older woman tremble on one foot.

  Lucy wanted to reach out and steady her, but she knew it would mean more to Bev if she did it on her own. With a little groan, Beverly gripped the rails on either side of her and shifted her weight, stepping fully on her other foot.

  “Hell yes!” Lucy whooped and couldn’t stop herself from hopping up and down. “Bev, you did it!” She helped the woman ease back into the chair behind her. It was her first full step since she’d tripped and broken her leg two months before. Beverly stared up at Lucy; disbelief, joy, and fatigue all materializing on her face.

  “I can’t believe it, Lucy. I thought I might never- that I would be in the chair f-forever.” The woman’s voice broke as she finally gave words to the fear that had been plaguing her for weeks. She proudly wiggled her toes before reaching up and clasping Luc
y’s hands.

  It was moments like those that had Lucy coming to work every day. Not every patient was as lucky as Bev, but Lucy made sure they all worked just as hard, and healed as well as their bodies possibly could. She kneeled down and pulled Bev into a hearty hug.

  “Bev, that was the shit. Now let’s do it again.”

  The two women grinned at one another, their joy filling the whole room.

  Amos couldn’t tear his eyes away from this woman, Lucy’s radiant face. But he quickly straightened up as he realized he was leaning toward the television screen where they watched her.

  “That’s her?” King Dalyer asked from beside Amos, his voice dripping with skepticism.

  “What?” The Oracle looked up from the game he was playing on his cell phone. He squinted at the television screen on which he’d summoned up the feed of the woman at her work. “Oh. Yeah, that’s her.”

  “But she’s so ordinary,” the King said.

  King Dalyer wasn’t dumb. Actually he was searingly smart. But that was the dumbest thing Amos had ever heard someone say. Ordinary? The woman on the screen was hot as fuck.

  “Shit!” A sad womp womp sound came from the Oracle’s phone and he jammed it back in his pocket. Seeming to remember that he was currently performing a duty for the most powerful being in the human or dragon realm, he turned back to the television screen.

  “You think she’s ordinary?” The Oracle scratched his stubbly blonde beard. “I think she’s kinda cute.”

  Again, really dumb. Amos thought. Even in her loose scrubs, this woman was like walking viagra. Not that dragon shifters ever had to take viagra.

  “Well,” the King said as he tossed his hands up in the air. “If that human is really my only option, I’ll just have to make do. How do we get to her?”