EUAN: Outback Shifters #3

by Chant, Zoe

  “Sure,” he said, after thinking it over. “I’ll just need to let Robb know – but I can’t see that he’d have any problem with it, if I’m with you. At least, I hope he wouldn’t. I can at least ask him.”

  Euan didn’t sound completely convinced of his own words, and Delilah bit her lip. “Thank you,” she said, trying to smile at him. It wouldn’t be his fault if she couldn’t, but she really hoped she could.

  Delilah found her eyes drooping as Euan steered the car up Jenny’s driveway and out into the street. She was more exhausted than she’d even realized, but she honestly didn’t think anyone could blame her for that. More than once, she jerked awake as her head tried to drop down onto her chest to sleep.

  She’d almost dropped completely off again when Euan’s voice woke her, coming through the intercom.

  “That’s all good,” he said. “Robb’s given the okay. What’s your address? I’ll take you home right now.”

  Delilah was too sleepy even to feel properly grateful – she pressed the button for the intercom and gave her address as best she could through a head that felt like it was stuffed full of cotton wool.

  “There’s a parking space for my apartment, but I don’t have a car so you can just park there,” Delilah remembered to tell him, through another massive yawn.

  Maybe she finally fell asleep, because the next thing she was aware of was Euan’s mildly concerned face looking down at her, as his long, rough fingers gently touched her forearm.

  “Delilah – I’m sorry to wake you. We’re here.”

  Delilah blinked, disoriented, though her heart was pounding as she looked up at him.

  “Here? Oh – my place.” She suppressed the yawn she would have done right into his face, and began fumbling with her seatbelt.

  As she came more fully awake, it suddenly hit her just what a complete disaster area her little apartment was right now. It was way too small for her to ever have guests over, so she hadn’t even made her bed – and it being a studio, her rumpled sheets and tossed-around pillows would be on full display. Not to mention all her half-finished paintings, messy paint palettes and glasses of painty water, the spattered drop sheets she’d laid down to protect the carpet…

  Oh God, he’ll think I’m a massive slob, she thought as she stepped out of the car, only just remembering to grab her handbag on the way out. But there’s not exactly a lot I can do about that now…

  Her feet felt like lead as she made her way up the steps to her apartment, Euan following behind her – not because she was dreading showing Euan her place, but simply because she was so tired.

  And, probably, because I overdosed on sugar at the party.

  Jenny had of course had quite a lot of real food available too, but in between all her running around Delilah had hardly gotten to eat any of it.

  Taking her keys out of her handbag, Delilah paused at her door. “It’s a little messy,” she warned Euan. “But it’s kind of small, and… well, I don’t have much space for painting, so it’s all just kind of… out there.”

  “It’s not a problem,” Euan said.

  God I hope I don’t have anything totally embarrassing uncovered, Delilah thought as she opened the door. Like a giant nude study of someone with exactly Euan’s build right in the middle of the room…

  To be honest, that wasn’t likely – Delilah liked painting portraits and figures, but she hadn’t done one in a while. Nonetheless, the paranoia was real until she poked her head inside and saw the only uncovered painting was a nice, inoffensive stylized landscape she’d been adapting from a photo.

  Okay, well, that’s not so bad, Delilah thought, letting out a relieved sigh and stepping into the room.

  What was just as bad as she’d worried it would be was the rest of the apartment. She’d had no idea she’d be having anyone back here – disaster area didn’t really begin to cover it.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” Delilah said, as she tried to unobtrusively kick a pair of underpants behind her laundry hamper. “Uh – I sometimes get caught up in painting, and then it’s two in the morning and the last thing I feel like doing is cleaning, so, uh, I make a resolution to do it tomorrow after work, but then… well, you know…”

  Delilah glanced at Euan as she lifted a pile of clothes from her tiny couch and ferried them over to the wardrobe, shoving them inside. He didn’t appear to be looking around judgmentally – instead, his attention seemed to be focused entirely on her one uncovered painting.

  “This is beautiful,” he said after a moment, his voice low and soft. Almost marveling.

  “Oh, it’s just a little pet project,” Delilah said, coming to stand next to him in front of the canvas. “I don’t usually like landscapes, but they’re kind of important to be able to do, for color mixing, perspective, things like that… not to mention that they’re sometimes easier to sell than abstract paintings, unless you’re already very famous. I thought I could add my own touch and make it more interesting, though.”

  Her own touch in this instance had been some wildly fantastical swirls in the sky, trees wavering with stars caught in their boughs like fairy lights, and strange animals slipping between their trunks.

  Maybe I got a little carried away, Delilah thought doubtfully. She glanced at Euan, wondering what he thought of it all – and was surprised to find his expression intense and enraptured.

  “I mean it,” he said after a moment. “It’s beautiful, Delilah. Like you’ve painted a dream.”

  “A pretty strange dream,” Delilah said, but she couldn’t deny that her heart sped up a little at Euan’s words of praise. “But thank you. That really means a lot to me.”

  “It reminds me of –” Euan started to say, then stopped abruptly.

  Delilah wondered what he’d been about to say, but wasn’t sure if she should press him. There were a lot of things she was realizing she was intensely curious about, now that she was thinking about it – like what it must be like to be a shifter, and have access to a whole other side of life. How shifters had come to exist in the first place.

  And how Euan lost his abilities…

  She swallowed. Maybe that was too personal a question. Euan certainly did seem to have been affected badly by losing them. She didn’t know what had changed his mind about being her bodyguard, but he’d seemed completely against it at the start.

  Because he thought he couldn’t do it without his shifted form.

  Delilah felt curiosity racing through her, but she didn’t want Euan to think she was prying. Really, she just wanted to know more – about shifters, of course, but more specifically about him. He’d mentioned his childhood only in passing, and it sounded completely different from her comfortable and entirely normal suburban upbringing. Had that been because he was a shifter, or was his family just like that anyway? And why did –

  “Are you hungry?” Euan asked her, breaking into her thoughts.

  Delilah forced herself to laugh lightly. “It’s like you read my mind. I don’t think I have much here though – I could go shopping? Or I do have some leftover pho in the fridge – it should be enough for two. If you like, I could heat that up for us?”

  “You should take a seat. You’ve had a long day,” Euan said. “And you’re exhausted. Just show me where the saucepans are. I can manage.”

  “Oh – no, I couldn’t let you do that,” Delilah told him. “It’s my house, I can’t let you do all the work. I’m the one who wanted to come back here, after all.”

  “Delilah, you’re dead on your feet,” Euan said firmly. “Good manners or whatever you want to call them don’t matter to me at all. I can heat up some pho. Go take a seat – I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Delilah blinked, looking up into Euan’s eyes – and saw he meant what he said. He really was determined to heat up her leftovers for her.

  “Well… okay, if you’re sure,” she said. “The saucepans are in the cupboard under the sink. The pho’s in the fridge, in the carton. You like beef? Because i
t’s beef.”

  “Beef is great,” Euan said, opening the cupboard and reaching down. “Go take a seat.”

  Delilah did as he said, flopping back on her couch. She blinked slowly as she watched Euan going to the fridge and taking out the carton of pho, before moving back to the stove.

  God, he really is unbelievably hot, she thought, gazing at his profile as he took the lid off the carton. And unbelievably… nice. Once you get to know him.

  Delilah felt her eyelids drooping, and she struggled to keep them open, if only so she could keep watching Euan for a moment longer.

  She heard herself yawning again – and then, she knew no more.

  Chapter 10

  Darkness.

  There’s darkness all around her, completely blanketing all her senses.

  Delilah moves her head, but it doesn’t make any difference – the blackness is so thick she isn’t even sure she’s moved at all. She can see nothing, hear nothing, sense nothing around her. She may as well be in the center of a black hole.

  Fear crawls up her spine.

  Where am I?

  She tries to open her mouth to speak, but somehow, her mouth won’t seem to obey her brain’s commands. When she tries to find her voice, she finds it stopped in her throat.

  What’s going on?!

  Fear turns into panic, churning in her gut. She struggles, but she’s not sure she’s moving – nothing seems to be working the way it should, her bodily limbs included. She almost feels as if she’s falling while staying perfectly still.

  It’s then that she notices it – the smell of salt water, sharp and thick, filling her nostrils. Is she near the ocean? Somehow? But she should be able to see the city lights at least, if she’s wandered by the harbor – there’s nowhere in Sydney she could go that’s by the water where there isn’t at least some light.

  If nothing else, there should be starlight, moonlight, something…

  Delilah twists her head around. Her ears are ringing now. It’s the only sound she can hear.

  A pale shape moves through her vision – finally, at last, she can see something – and it takes her a moment to realize it’s her own hand as she flails it past her face.

  That means there has to be some light, however faint, she thinks, as she moves her hand past her face again, just to reassure herself that she did, in fact, see it.

  But the idea that there must at least be some light isn’t that comforting, compared to the growing pressure in her head, the squeezing feeling in her lungs.

  Is it just fear that’s doing this? Delilah wonders – she knows that panic can do weird things to the body, like chest pains and feeling faint.

  But it’s not quite that. Again, she realizes she feels like she’s falling in slow motion, the crushing feeling growing worse by the second –

  Oh my God, she thinks, with a sudden, horrible clarity. I’m not falling. I’m sinking…

  Sinking into deep, black water. Water so deep she can’t see anything above or below or to either side of her. Water so deep it’s crushing her.

  But that doesn’t make sense – if I’m underwater, how am I even still alive? she thinks desperately. The water is filling up her nose and her mouth and dragging her further and further down, but somehow, it isn’t killing her yet…

  Delilah looks around wildly, thrashing her arms and legs, but it does no good. She just keeps sinking – but, strangely enough, she realizes through her panic, instead of the water getting even darker the further she sinks into it, it seems to be getting lighter.

  Staring ahead of her, eyes stinging, Delilah tries to see where on earth the light ahead of her is coming from.

  No – is that – it can’t be –

  Pure terror unleashes itself through her body as she finds herself staring at – at –

  “Delilah!”

  Delilah flailed blindly, gasping for breath, her chest feeling as if it were about to burst. Her fingers raked the air, trying to fight back against whatever was holding her upper arms in an unrelenting grip, strong, firm and unyielding.

  “No – no – ! Get away –”

  “Delilah, it’s me – it’s Euan. It’s okay. You’re safe. I promise.”

  Delilah struggled away from him, hearing Euan’s voice but unable to stop her body’s panicked thrashing.

  “Hey – just calm down. Everything’s all right. Just take a deep breath. Just breathe.”

  Delilah shivered as she felt a large hand running over the top of her head, fingers threading through her hair. It was a soothing motion – and it worked. Her muscles unclenched, her fists unbunching. Her heart still hammered in her chest, but she felt her mind beginning to clear of the pure, unthinking panic that had clouded it.

  “Euan?” she gasped, when she thought she might be able to talk normally again, only to hear her voice emerge from her mouth as a tiny, frightened squeak.

  “It was just a dream,” Euan told her, his hand still running over her hair, from the crown of her head to the back of her neck. “It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

  “No – no, it wasn’t just a dream,” Delilah said, her voice shaking. “It was – it was –”

  Delilah tried hard to keep the threads of what she’d seen from slipping away from her, but everything about it was already fading from her mind.

  Just like a dream, she thought, biting her lip. Maybe Euan is right…

  “I don’t know what it was,” Delilah admitted a moment later. “It just… it felt so real. I don’t even really remember anything about it, but I know I –” She broke off, uncertain how to explain what she’d felt.

  “You woke up from a nightmare this morning as well,” Euan said carefully. He pulled back, his hand leaving her hair. Delilah missed it immediately – but it was only now that she realized how close they were sitting on the couch. She was practically in Euan’s arms.

  Somehow she managed to stop her instinctive response, which was to leap backward and begin apologizing for depositing herself on him like this. Euan didn’t seem to be too worried about it – his large hand still rested on her arm, his eyes intent on hers.

  “I… I did,” Delilah managed to stammer when she could find her voice again. “But I don’t really remember anything much about that one either. Do you think that… that having those dreams is because of – of –”

  She wasn’t even sure how to put it into words. Because of what happened to me seemed a little too broad. Of course she’d be having some pretty weird dreams after seeing what she’d seen and learning what she’d learned over the past few days!

  But that’s not quite what I mean.

  “I don’t know,” Euan said after a pause. “I do know that Robb is doing his best to try to find someone – anyone – who might be able to give us more information about what you saw, and what it might mean.”

  “He’s still looking?” Delilah’s heart sank a little, though realistically she knew hardly any time had passed at all since she’d seen the man in the alley disappear.

  Euan nodded. “I spoke to him – very quietly – before, just to let him know we’d be a little later than I originally told him.”

  Delilah blinked, not quite understanding.

  “You… you were asleep,” Euan continued, after a slight hesitation. “And after everything you’ve been through, I decided you needed it. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

  “Oh. Right.” Delilah looked down, feeling embarrassed. Geeze, she was still in her nice dress and everything – the skirt was all crumpled up where she’d been lying on it. She must’ve just completely zonked out. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize.” Euan’s tone wasn’t chastising, but it was firm. “You don’t need to. If I’d thought there was a need, I would have woken you. I wouldn’t have wanted to do it, but I would have. But I didn’t see any reason not to let you sleep.”

  “Thank you,” Delilah said, sincerely. She wasn’t sure she felt better, exactly, especially not after the strange, unsettling dream she’
d had, but she did definitely need the sleep. “Did you at least eat the pho?”

  “I… did,” Euan admitted. “I was kind of hungry. But there’s plenty left for you. Do you want it now?”

  Delilah rubbed a hand gingerly over her stomach. Did it ache due to the lingering anxiety left behind by her dream, or had she just eaten too much sugar at Emma’s party?

  “I’ll try it,” she said. “Maybe having something other than fairy bread, chocolate crackles and honey joys in there will help settle it.”

  Euan nodded, standing and heading back to her kitchen counter before Delilah could make a move. A protest rose up in her throat, but she swallowed it down, deciding that it’d be useless – she already knew Euan would only insist on warming it up himself.

  While he stirred the pho in the saucepan, his back to her, Delilah looked down at her hands and tried to remember the details of the dream she’d had. It felt important somehow – maybe it had been just a dream, but there was something about it that felt… almost like it was a warning.

  The man in the alley told me he was trying to give me a warning. That I had to tell the Agency about something…

  Well, she’d found the Agency without really trying to, or even knowing what it was. But what was she supposed to tell them now that she’d found them? The answer might have been in her dream, but she couldn’t remember anything about it, except that it had been terrifying. The details hovered at the back of her mind, completely, maddeningly, just out of reach.

  “Here you go.”

  Delilah looked up as Euan placed a steaming bowl of beef and glass noodle pho in front of her. The delicious scent of the broth rose up to her nose, and Delilah realized just how hungry she was.

  “Thanks. My God, I think I need this.”

  Her first attempt to pick up the chopsticks didn’t go very well. Her fingers were shaking too much to grip them properly, and Delilah realized picking up a steaming hot bowl of pho probably wasn’t a good idea right now, with hands that were shaking like hers were.