Wildfire Shifters: Collection 1

by Zoe Chant

  A satisfied, distinctly masculine chuckle floated through her mind, without her ears being involved in any way. *Yes.*

  Diana lifted her head to stare at him. “Was that you?”

  Callum’s lips curved. They didn’t move further, but she heard his voice clearly inside her head. *Hello.*

  “Wow,” she whispered. “Can I do that too?”

  He chuckled again, out loud this time, and rolled over to press a long, lingering kiss to her mouth. *Yes. Try.*

  She tried to focus her thoughts, which was terribly difficult when his tongue was doing such wonderful things. *HELLO MORE FUCK MORE RIGHT NOW YOUR COCK YES PLEASE FUCK ME HARD NOW*

  Callum burst out laughing.

  Diana covered her face, laughing too despite her mortification. “This may take a bit of practice.”

  He kissed her again, one hand sliding up. “You didn’t mean all that?”

  “Well…” She gasped as his fingertip circled her nipple. Reluctantly, she caught his hand, moving it away. “Whatever my subconscious thinks, we should probably get going. We can’t leave Beth with Joe and Seren too long, and it’s a long hike back.”

  His green eyes gleamed. “But a very short flight.”

  An embarrassing squeak escaped her as she realized what he meant. “You’d let me ride you?”

  His expression turned rather wicked. “Of course. But I thought you wanted to get back.”

  “Callum!” She slapped his rock-hard chest. “Right, just for that, you’re getting a tickling.”

  Diana attempted to make good her threat, but Callum twisted away, inhumanly fast. He pinned her wrists to the ground, laughing even harder despite her failure.

  “No fair.” She pouted at him, though a thrill went through her at the way he’d so effortlessly immobilized her. “Are all shifters as strong as you?”

  “If I say yes, will you be less impressed?”

  “Callum, you turn into a flying horse. Believe me, nothing is going to make me less impressed by you.”

  He chuckled, releasing her. “I’m about average for a shifter.”

  Diana cast a meaningful glance downward. “There’s nothing average about you.”

  Callum kissed her again. “Or you.”

  His cock was becoming increasingly above-average again, she noted. With a sigh of regret, she tore herself away, casting around for her discarded clothes.

  “We really should be getting back.” She picked up her bra. “If we’ve finished everything on your list?”

  Diana had meant it as a joke, but the lingering laughter in Callum’s face vanished instantly. A strange, icy sensation closed around her heart.

  “Callum?” It wasn’t her own anxiety she was feeling—she knew what that was like. With a jolt of shock, she realized that she was feeling his emotions, down that strange new bond between them. “What’s wrong?”

  He rolled upright, abruptly, reaching for his own clothes. “You’re right. We should go.”

  “Callum.” Her sense of him had gone weirdly cloudy, like he’d retreated into a fog bank. “You can’t just pretend everything’s okay. Not to me. I’m your mate.”

  Callum kept his back to her. He pulled his shirt over his head. “I shouldn’t have done this.”

  “Done what?” Diana’s stomach dropped. “You mean mate with me?”

  He nodded, every muscle tense. “Not yet. Not before…before you knew everything.”

  There was more?

  Callum’s shoulders dropped in a sigh. He turned around at last, doing up his jeans. His expression was cold and shuttered again, but now she could sense the deep turmoil behind that stony facade.

  “I didn’t want to tell you this until…until there was a connection between us,” Callum said, sounding like he was having to force out every word. “I didn’t mean it to go this far. I just thought…I needed…I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t leave me when you found out.”

  It was more than his dread knotting Diana’s stomach now. Whatever it was Callum had to say, it was clearly serious.

  Pulling up her pants, she went over to him. He flinched a little as she reached out. Before, that would have made her back off, but now, with the mate bond binding their hearts together, she knew better.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t want her. He felt he wasn’t worthy of her. Deep, crushing shame shadowed his soul.

  “Callum,” Diana said, taking his hands. “Just tell me. I’m not going anywhere. We’re soulmates. And even if you think we shouldn’t have mated until I knew everything, we were already bound together, by Beth. That’s a connection even stronger than magic.”

  She’d thought that would reassure him, but she might as well have taken a dagger and plunged it into his chest. Callum’s face never changed, but Diana could sense how every word ripped through his heart.

  “Diana.” Callum’s voice was hoarse, raw with pain. He let go of her hands. “I…I…”

  A loud, shrill ringing sound interrupted him. Diana abruptly found herself behind a wall of feathers, Callum’s glossy red flank crowding her protectively.

  “Um.” She pointed at his backpack. “I think that’s your phone.”

  The pegasus blurred back into Callum. Looking a little sheepish, he bent to retrieve the vibrating device, holding it up to his ear. “Callum Tiernach-West.”

  Callum listened for a moment. His face went even grimmer. His free hand clenched into a fist, knuckles white.

  “Understood,” he said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Diana’s heart thumped in fear as he lowered the phone again. “Was that Joe? Is something wrong with Beth?”

  “No. Min-Seo.” Callum was already gathering up the remains of their forgotten picnic, shoving everything carelessly into his pack. “I need to take you back to the base. Right away. You have to stay there. The squad will protect you while I’m gone.”

  “Gone? Gone where? Protect me from what?”

  Callum swung the pack onto his back, tightening the straps. All the angst she’d sensed in him previously was gone. His soul burned with dangerous, focused purpose.

  “Maurice,” he said. “He’s escaped.”

  Chapter 20

  Seren met them just outside the cabin. For once, the usually composed, calm woman looked less than totally serene.

  “Thank the Sea,” Seren said. Little wisps of hair had escaped her tight, cornrow braids, and her gray eyes were distinctly frazzled. “You’re back.”

  Diana slid off Callum’s broad furry back. Even her worry about the escaped Maurice hadn’t been able to totally overshadow the sheer wonder of soaring through the sky, carried on her pegasus’s flame-red wings.

  Now, with her feet back on the ground, all her anxieties crashed down on her like a landslide. Callum hadn’t told the rest of the crew about Maurice’s escape yet—there hadn’t been time. So why was Seren so relieved to see them?

  “What’s happened?” Diana asked, her heart like ice in her chest. “Where’s Beth?”

  “My apologies. I did not mean to alarm you. I assure you, Beth is fine. More than fine.” Seren pushed back her braids, still looking rather wild-eyed despite her reassuring words. “Joe has been having a wonderful time with her.”

  Diana started breathing again. “Ah. Sorry about that.”

  Callum, who’d just shifted back to human form, gave her a very puzzled look.

  Diana patted his arm. “Explain later. Don’t worry, Seren. I’ll ask Joe to babysit next time she’s got a tooth coming through and is snotty and grumpy. That’ll put him off.”

  Seren shook her head. “You misunderstand me. Beth was an utter delight until a few hours ago, when she was so obviously tired that we tried to put her down for a nap. This made her incandescently furious. Which apparently significantly upset her digestion. At both ends.”

  Diana winced, able to picture this all too well. “Oh. And you got stuck with the clean-up?”

  Seren had the haunted, thousand-yard stare of a veteran soldier re
turning from the front lines. “No.”

  “Well, I have to say, I’m disappointed in Joe. I expected better of him than to hand her back the moment—” Diana’s brain caught up with her ears. “No? What do you mean, no?”

  Seren gestured toward the cabin. “Perhaps it will be easier to show than explain.”

  Completely baffled, Diana followed Seren through the door. Inside, it was dim and peaceful. All the curtains were drawn, and a soft, deep lullaby filled the air. Gentle, ever-shifting pastel colors played across the bedroom, cast by the ridiculous nightlight.

  Joe was pacing up and down in patient, even steps. Beth sprawled bonelessly across the firefighter’s shoulder, deeply asleep, dribbling snot and spit in a wide damp patch across his shirt.

  The soft music stopped as Joe caught sight of them, and Diana realized it had been him, humming. He put a finger to his lips, never stopping his slow rocking motion.

  “Hi,” Joe whispered. “Don’t worry, her temperature is normal. She was just over-tired and ran out of cope. Poor little sprat.”

  Diana glanced at Seren. She was staring at her partner—her mate, Diana realized—with a sort of dazed, drunken expression. She looked like she’d just come home and found Jason Momoa waiting for her in her bath. With Channing Tatum.

  Diana smothered a grin as she realized just how thoroughly Seren’s plan had backfired on her. “Thanks, Joe. I’ll take her now.”

  Joe made no move to relinquish his burden. “But she might wake up. She’s only been asleep for an hour or so. I’m happy to keep rocking her.”

  “Joe.” Seren’s tongue ran over her lips. “Give Beth back to Diana and come with me. Now.”

  “But—” Joe broke off as he looked at his mate. He grinned suddenly, turquoise eyes lighting up with an unmistakable masculine heat. “Yes ma’am.”

  The instant Joe handed Beth over, Seren seized his shirt. Diana could practically feel the lust steaming off Seren as she dragged Joe away. Diana could only hope that the pair would make it as far as their own cabin.

  “I have to go too,” Callum said, pitching his voice low so as not to wake Beth up. He hesitated, looking torn. “Min-Seo wants me to use my pegasus abilities to try to find Maurice. But if you’d rather I stayed—”

  “No, go.” Diana settled Beth down in her cot as she spoke. Beth stirred fretfully for a moment, then surrendered to sleep once more. “We’ll be fine here. Will you tell the squad what’s going on?”

  “Already informed Rory.” Callum made a gesture at his own forehead. “Telepathy. It’s a mythic shifter thing.”

  “Okay, I’ve clearly still got a lot to learn about shifters.”

  And Callum, she thought with a shiver of unease. She still didn’t know what he’d started to tell her…

  “Diana.” Callum’s arms closed around her, drawing her close. “No more secrets. I promise. As soon as I get back, I’ll tell you everything.”

  The sheer rightness of his touch made her nagging worry fade and vanish. She leaned into him, hugging him back, breathing in his warm, reassuring scent. The strange connection between them burned so brightly that she almost felt that she should be able to see it, like a rainbow running between their hearts.

  “Be careful.” Reluctantly, she released him. “Stay safe. And come back to me as soon as you can.”

  Callum cupped her face. He dipped his head down to press his lips to hers. The kiss was only brief, but she felt it all the way down to the tips of her toes.

  “Always,” he breathed.

  “Gotta say.” Blaise leaned back against the wall, pushing her empty plate away. “It is such a relief to be able to talk freely at last. I’m so glad Callum finally told you about shifters.”

  Diana had barely touched her own dinner, even though she’d mainly been listening rather than talking. She was so stuffed full of new knowledge, there didn’t seem to be room for food as well. Her head spun with everything that the squad had told her: Maurice’s true nature, Lupa’s pack, hellhounds and Thunderbirds and body-snatching demon snakes…

  “I’m glad you told me about everything else,” Diana said. “And also, to be totally honest, terrified.”

  “I know all this must be overwhelming, but you truly are safe with us,” Wystan said. He cocked an eyebrow at Candice, placing one hand flat on the table, palm down. “A demonstration?”

  Candice grinned. She picked up her fork, holding it like a dagger, and jabbed it full-force down at her husband’s hand. An inch above his skin, it bounced off thin air, in a crackle of golden sparks.

  Candice held up her now-bent fork. “Wystan’s got this whole base shielded. Our ranch, too. Any enemy tries to set foot over the boundary, they’ll get a big surprise.”

  Wystan grimaced, looking a touch embarrassed. “As did the mailman, before I learned how to tweak the wards to only keep out people with evil intentions. I had to persuade him we had a faulty buried electrical cable that kept shocking him. I think he’s still reluctant to come up here.”

  “And the wards are just the last line of defense,” Edith chirped brightly from her customary position tucked up under Rory’s arm. “Between Callum, Fenrir, and Seren, pretty much nothing can even get close to the base without us noticing. And of course, there are the unicorns.”

  “Of course,” Diana echoed faintly.

  It had been kind of a relief to learn that she hadn’t been going crazy. She really had seen a unicorn on her first morning here. But it had also been quite a shock to discover that not only were there people who could turn into unicorns, there were also actual unicorns, living right here on Thunder Mountain.

  “Feel free to yell,” Buck suggested. The grumpy Superintendent’s scowl was even darker than usual, for all that he was bouncing a delighted Beth up and down on his knee. “Let it all out. Trust me, you’ll feel better for a bit of cussing and cursing. I know I did, when I found out about all this motherloving magic crap.”

  “You still yell,” Blaise pointed out.

  “I’m still pissed off about it all,” Buck retorted. “I like my fairy tales to stay where they belong. In stories.”

  Something tickled the back of Diana’s mind. “The creatures that you’ve been fighting, the ones that Lupa seems to be working with. You said that they look like serpents with horns? And the one that Lupa summoned, the one she was going to feed Joe to—she called it Unktehi?”

  “Something like that,” Rory replied. “You’d have to ask Joe or Seren. They were the only ones who were there.”

  Edith looked round, her brow creasing. “Where are Joe and Seren? They missed dinner.”

  “I think they’re, um, resting after looking after Beth all day.” Diana would put money on them being in bed, at least. “Anyway, I think I know what your demons actually are. Or at least, what my people would call them.”

  Wystan sat up straighter, scholarly interest sharpening his eyes. “Lakota legends?”

  “Yes.” Diana glanced at Buck. “You’re Lakota too. You know the tales of the Wakinyan and Uncegila?”

  A muscle tightened in Buck’s jaw. “No. My sister Wanda was the one who sat at our grandma’s feet, learning the old stories. Me, I was too busy playing football and trying to fit in with a bunch of dumb white boys, idiot that I was.”

  “Who’s Wakinyan?” Edith asked, stumbling a little over the word.

  “Not a who, a what. Thunder spirits. What you call Thunderbirds.” Diana hesitated, biting her lip. “You have to understand, for me this is a little different than learning that dragons and unicorns and whatnot are real. I’ve always believed in the Wakinyan. I just…well, to put it in Christian terms, it’s a bit like finding out Archangel Gabriel has been flying around the local woods starting wildfires with his flaming sword.”

  Blaise side-eyed Buck. “Probably shouldn’t tell you that someone was trying to shoot the Thunderbird down, then.”

  Buck grunted. “You thought an angel had murdered your entire family, you’d be dusting off your shotgun and a
voiding the local churches too. There’s a reason I kept my mouth shut. If people did believe me, I didn’t want this whole mountain crawling with would-be shamans.”

  “Heyoka,” Diana corrected. “People touched by the Thunderbird are heyoka.”

  “What does that mean?” Blaise asked.

  Diana struggled for an adequate translation. “Holy fools. Wise clowns. People who aren’t bound by normal rules, by traditions or even their own past. Though that doesn’t cover the whole concept by a long way. Anyway, people that the Wakinyan choose to speak to are…changed. Sometimes just for a little while. Sometimes forever.”

  “Well, the Thunderbird didn’t talk to us,” Rory said, frowning thoughtfully. “We’ve tried to communicate with it telepathically, but I never had any sense that it understood us on anything more than an emotional level.”

  Blaise arched an eyebrow. “Maybe we aren’t foolish enough.”

  “Rarely has that seemed likely,” Wystan murmured.

  “What was the other thing you mentioned?” Rory asked Diana. “The Un—uh, whatever you said?”

  “Uncegila. A great horned serpent. She had a consort, Unktehi, and together they spawned a ravenous brood, far more than the land could support. It’s a big sin, in Lakota culture, to take more than you need.”

  “Should be in all cultures, really,” Candice said. “We’d all be a lot better off if it were.”

  “Uncegila could have lived in peace with other beings if she’d stopped eating when she was full, stopped birthing more hungry mouths,” Diana went on. “But instead she was greedy. She and her brood would have stripped the world bare, if not for the Wakinyan. They battled the horned serpents, with fire and lightning. They called out to brave, true heroes, summoning them to defend their tribes. Uncegila was driven out of the world, but many stories say she still lurks with her few remaining children in the cold, wet places under the earth. Forever hungry, never sated. Waiting to emerge and feast once more.”

  Rory let out a low whistle. “And now we have a Thunderbird flying around starting fires. And horned serpents coming out of the earth.”