“I apologize as Alpha of my pack. I told them to let you through, but tensions are high right now, and we rarely let strangers in. I will talk to her later. She went against my orders and needs to be punished anyway.”
“Fair enough,” I replied.
“Sandwich?” he asked, lifting up what looked to be a turkey sandwich—with real turkey. He probably went and hunted the wild bird himself.
“No, thanks. Did your kitty form get it?” I asked, still trying to figure out what kind of shifter he was.
Amusement filled his eyes. “Kitty?”
“Oh, political correctness. Right. Feline, then.”
He let out a laugh and shook his head, and I knew he wasn’t going to even let me narrow down the options.
I sighed, giving up for now. “Fine. Let’s go take a look around.”
He nodded. “Give me a moment. I need to go change, and I’m still waiting for some of my trackers to return and report back.” He took a bite out of his sandwich, disappearing through a different door than the one I came through.
I settled on a stool and poked at a bruise on my arm. That Arcia woman had a steel grip.
Apparently, Slade was hungry because he began making his own sandwich. With real ham. Again, the wild pig was probably hunted down. Processed foods were too good for shifters, especially when they could just use their teeth and claws.
A few minutes later, a woman came in. She was a shorty, with pale green eyes that made me think she saw beyond what was in our reality. Her strawberry-blonde hair was put up in a messy bun and a little girl-child held her hand with a big toothy grin, her fluffy brown pigtails bouncing as she hummed.
I blinked as the little girl-child’s eyes met mine. After a moment, she squeaked and disappeared back through the door.
“What was that?” I asked, trying to keep the horror out of my voice. A girl-child. Children always put me on edge.
Slade turned to me. “What was what?” He looked over at the door and frowned. “Gwinny, what are you doing here?”
“I can only rest for so long.” Her voice was a soft musical as she scanned the room until she stopped on me. She stopped walking, her eyes blinking a few times. She tilted her head to the side. “Who are you?”
“Nyssa.”
“Nyssa what?”
“Just Nyssa. What was that?” I pointed towards the door.
The woman froze, probably stuck on the fact that I just admitted I didn’t have a last name. The lack of a last name was a clear indicator that someone originated from the Woodlands. It was how we were “labeled” within a city. Most people were wary when they realized you only had a first name. Apparently, Gwinny was one of the wary ones.
I snapped my fingers in front of her face to draw her out of her thoughts.
“Jasmine,” she finally answered, no clues to her thoughts or feelings on her face or in her words. “She hasn’t reached the age to shift yet, so she’s easily frightened.”
“Jasmine. A girl-child.”
Gwinny cocked her head to the side. “Yes, a child. She’s a young one.”
I shivered at her response. It wasn’t that I hated children. They were just so... weak. Easily killed. Unable to protect themselves.
She pursed her lips and came closer until she stood next to me. I was still taller than her, even sitting down. She crawled up onto a barstool. She was so small, like a little girl-child herself. She gave off that feeling too. Weak. I grew uncomfortable next to her. I hated being around the weak in general, both children and adults. They made my palms sweaty, heart pound harder, and breathing a little more difficult.
I suppressed a shiver as the energy around my body shuddered.
“Ah. I see.”
I wasn’t so sure if she saw anything. Her eyes had a weird glazed look, and I felt like she was seeing through me. “How old are you?” she asked.
“Uh, twenty-eight.”
She shook her head. “No, really, how old?”
“Twenty-eight.”
She frowned. I sighed and pulled out my wallet from my back pocket and showed her my hopper license. “See? Twenty-eight.” I even pointed at my supposed birthdate in case she was hard of seeing. Of course, it wasn’t my real one. Hard to tell them when I was born when I couldn’t remember it.
She pursed her dainty little lips and gave it back to me. “You’re too old to be twenty-eight.”
“Should I feel offended that you think I look like an old lady?” My body stiffened, and my words were a growl.
Her eyes widened. “No. No. I’m sorry.” Tears filled her eyes. “That isn’t what I mean.” She fidgeted in her chair.
Crying? Seriously. Son-of-a-gun. One look to scare off a child and only a few words to get a woman crying. I was a menace to the innocent.
“Nyssa, back off,” Slade’s voice filled the air with a deadly warning. He never used that tone with me. I looked over at him. His body was still, humming with energy he was ready to lash out with. I stiffened, understanding the intended danger. He thought I was threatening his Gwinny. My body went defensive on instinct. The air thickened with our aggression.
Gwinny shook harder. “No, Slade. Not her fault. Mine. I offended her.”
“She still needs to back off.” His voice went a couple octaves deeper, gruffer. The moment he attacked, we were so on.
“Or what?” I rose to the challenge.
“Don’t—”
“Stop!” Gwinny practically howled, loud enough for footsteps to come rushing through the swinging door.
Landus was back with more shifters behind him trying to see what was going on and prepared to jump into a fight. Death was written all over his face, and I had to admit, it kind of turned me on. I mentally shook my head, getting my thoughts back in order rather than thinking about what his body could do in a fight. I really, really, wanted to bait him.
“What the hell is going on?” he demanded, eyes going from Slade to Gwinny, and then to me.
“Nothing,” Gwinny said, her voice a higher pitch, her distress showing. He looked away from me to give her his full deadly attention.
Great. Now I felt like a bully, and I didn’t even do anything.
Landus’s silvery eyes turned into a storm as he turned to Slade.
“Slade?”
“Nyssa upset Gwinny.”
“No.” Gwinny shook her head furiously. “My fault. I offended her.”
“You didn’t offend me,” I finally said.
She turned to me, her eyes wide. “I didn’t?”
I shook my head. “I was just joking with you.”
Her eyes got wider, the pale green going even paler. Her lips made an O shape as she realized what had happened.
“Oh my, I feel like an idiot now.”
“You can’t joke like that with her,” Slade snapped, the tension leaving his body.
“Well, how was I supposed to know your Gwinny didn’t know about sarcasm?”
“My Gwinny?” he sputtered. “She’s my sister.”
I looked between the two of them. “I don’t see it.”
He shook his head furiously.
Landus cleared his throat. “How about we go find our gate now?” he asked. “The rest of the trackers have returned with nothing to report. They lost the attackers from earlier this morning.” His fists were clenched, and the air was thick with his anger and frustration. If I were a lesser being, I would have been inching my way out the door.
Good thing I wasn’t.
I nodded and hopped down from the stool. I watched in amusement as Gwinny crawled off. I was so tempted to just pick her up and put her down on the ground but with Slade ready to rip out my throat, I kept my hands to myself.
Landus disappeared back through the door, and I followed, falling into step next to him.
Chapter Eight
I remember the wind blowing. Howling as it whipped around me but never touching. My insides were boiling, hot anger pressing against my skin, wanting to get out. I remember a
feeling of desperation. I needed to win. If I didn’t, I would die. I didn’t want to die.
—Nyssa’s Journal
I silently followed Landus back through the massive pack house and out to his front yard. The sky was now clear of the pinks of the rising sun, and the heat of the sunlight tickled my skin.
“Everyone is overly protective of Gwinny. She’s young and innocent and has a weak body,” Landus said, starting to pace, as we waited for everyone else. His hands were in his jean pockets. Every couple of minutes, he’d drag one through his black hair. He didn’t want to be contained, he wanted to be free, to be his beast, and to run around, tearing out the throats of his enemies, but he knew now wasn’t the time. The energy was building up around him, thick and heavy. He was on edge. But he had to wait, and his beast knew this. His beast knew patience. Not many did.
“A shifter with a weak body? I thought you guys don’t get sick or anything.” I drew my eyes away from the way his body stalked back and forth.
“We don’t, but her gift takes a toll on her body.”
“Her gift?” I remembered her pale green eyes and the way they had paled even more as I interacted with her. Definitely wasn’t normal among shifters.
He sighed and rubbed at his face briefly. I finally noticed the dark circles around his eyes. These intruders were driving him up the wall.
“She can see and sense things we cannot, but when she uses her gift, it weakens her.”
“Energy.”
“What?” He stopped and looked at me.
“She can see and manipulate energy, can’t she?”
His body stilled. “How did you know?” he asked in a growly voice.
Some things began to click in place. The small weak body, the pale eyes, the way she looked through me and knew I was a lot older than I looked. For the overprotectiveness, someone must have tried to use her, and it probably nearly destroyed her. Now everyone treated her with kid gloves.
“Nyssa?” he growled, and I could see the tension in his body. He was prepared to fight if he thought I posed a risk to his precious shifter.
I rolled my eyes. “She used it on me. I could feel her using the energy.”
Besides, I had met someone with similar eyes two years ago. He was half-dead already from overusing his gift in such a short span of time. Those with this kind of gift were normally fine if they allowed themselves time to recover; sometimes they pushed themselves too far, and it killed them. It didn’t help that they had an inherent need to be selfless. They tended to need someone around to reel them in, or they’d go too far.
His eyes widened and some of the tension left his body. “She what? We told her not to use her gift. She’s still recovering from trying to help us find the gate.”
Landus swore a couple of times.
I slapped his back.
“Don’t worry, Gorgeous. No harm, no foul, and besides, it wouldn’t take much to read my energy.”
“What did she say that offended you?”
“She called me an old lady.”
He snorted. “You’re what, twenty-five?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“You’re a baby.”
I smirked. “Why thank you, old man.” Which he most likely was. Shifters could live for a very long time. A shifter I had met in the Woodlands was well on his way to being eight hundred years old.
Slade joined us shortly after, probably after tucking his sister away. I didn’t even know he had a sister. They looked nothing alike.
More shifters came out, wanting in on the hunt. They were the ones who had been hanging out playing video games. Slade introduced them to me.
The group shifted around, anxious and excited to start, and I felt the same.
“Where have you guys checked already?” I asked Landus.
“Everywhere,” was his simple reply.
Right. Of course.
“Well, obviously not if you haven’t found the gate yet.”
His eyes hardened, and he growled, a deep rumble coming from his chest.
I raised my hands and stopped myself from rolling my eyes. “I’m just saying. You say there’s a gate, but you haven’t found one yet. You missed a spot then.”
“Or they’re just really good at hiding the location,” the youngest shifter spoke up. He looked like he still had a few years to go before he grew some hair on his face and probably his chest too. Being a baby-face had to suck for him, especially in a shifter community where it was all about fear and intimidation.
“Okay. Fine. Do you at least have any idea what area the gate may be in? If I’m correct, you guys practically own this whole mountain.”
“You’re correct,” Landus said. “Plus the mountain next to it.”
“Well shit. We will be playing needle in a haystack,” I grumbled. “How far have you guys gone out when chasing them before they disappeared?”
“Not far, maybe a mile into the woods. We chased them in different directions, so we don’t even know what way.”
I nodded. “I guess we do this the hard way. We will walk circles around the cabin, moving further out with each rotation. I need each shifter to act as a marker for me so I know where the starting point is and how far in to move. I say, every quarter of a mile, I need someone to mark the spot. We will create a simple grid. Eventually, I’ll pick up on the gate, and we can narrow it down from there.”
“How close do you have to be before you sense it?”
I shrugged. “Depends on the gate. The really strong ones I could probably sense up to five miles away. Those are the ones that scream at you for attention.”
Landus cocked an eyebrow. “That’s pretty far. I’m the most sensitive shifter, and I only sense them a mile away or so. I’ve personally scoured these woods looking for this damn gate.”
“This particular one isn’t screaming, it’s trying to hide and doing a damn good job of it.” I thought of that boss-man I fought the other day in the gate at the vampires’ place. His gate was well hidden too and probably would have stayed like that if some guard looking for a quick romp in the woods hadn’t stumbled upon it.
“Nyssa?”
“Huh?” I looked over at Landus, realizing I was silent for a little too long.
“What are you thinking about?”
“The gate at the vampires’ place. The only way they noticed was because some guard’s fancy accidentally stumbled upon it, getting killed. It wasn’t on their normal security check route. Probably would have stayed hidden if someone hadn’t decided he needed to let loose.”
“You think this is the same?”
I shrugged. That was one case and this was another, and we didn’t really have much to compare with. I figured that one had to do with revenge on the vampires. Vamps tended to piss people off on a daily basis. They practically made a living off it.
I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. I felt like I was missing something, but I had more important things to pay attention to at the moment. “Anyway, let’s get this show on the road.”
Landus nodded, and his shifters scattered into the forest. He and one other, Zayne, stayed with me. They knew the land, knew hidden pockets, and where not to go unless I wanted to fall off some unseen cliff or into a hole.
We walked in silence, the only noise coming from Zayne. Somehow he was managing to step on every single branch and leaf on the ground. He even kicked a rock. Loud. Very loud. Landus was quiet, a true stalker, and practically on par with my talents.
When we got far enough out, I stopped and gathered myself, opening up to the energy around me. If I wanted to find this gate, I had to be very careful. At a snail’s pace, we picked our way through the brush, and I made sure to scan as far out as I could without risk of missing something. I wouldn’t be surprised if this damn gate was small enough that we’d have to crawl through. The two shifters stayed with me, quiet and observant, but letting me focus. The only time they interrupted was when they needed to fix my route so we stayed on course.
Chapter Nine
I remember the first time I killed something. It was a grotesque beast with extra arms and hair where it shouldn’t be. It squawked at me, trying to dig its claws into my chest. I remember something dark and warm swirling in me. Rising up. Next thing I knew, the beast was dead at my feet. I killed it.
—Nyssa’s Journal
Zayne sighed, that one sound packed with all the impatience of a child. He kept running his hands through his long dark brown hair, putting it into a loose braid and then undoing it, only to repeat the action. He showed all the signs of a typical bored teenage girl-child, and I knew because I had met one of Cecil’s coven mates who acted the same—she was sixteen. Zayne was twenty-two.
I eyed his expression and smirked.
Cue the whining in three... two... one.
“This is going to take all day,” Zayne huffed out.
Nailed it.
“Then leave,” Landus said. His words were simple enough, but there was a warning in there because Zayne’s honey-colored eyes widened before he hid his shock. He shook his head and looked down.
“Sorry, Alpha.”
We continued on, the search slow but thorough. A light thumping grew in my head from searching for so long. Why was his damn property so huge? It took an hour just to circle around his cabin, plus doing quick sweeps of the slightly smaller homes that surrounded his. The shifters weren’t living next door to each other, but were at least within howling distance with the pack house as the epicenter. By the third time around, and after carefully searching six other cabins, I picked up on the gate.
“Got it.” I smirked in victory and turned to face the right direction. A tether reached out to me from the gate, and once it brushed against my skin, my body gave a slight jolt. The tether tightened to my very core of existence.
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