It hurt more this time, but Cressida refused to cry out in pain. Instead she just dug her nails a little into Reza’s shoulders and turned her head, biting him right back. When she tasted his blood in her mouth, she lifted her head, and with a spike of white, almost excruciating pleasure, she came, and he came with her. Shuddering and shaking, they clung to each other, and Cressida realized too late that she should have turned to hold on to Kelly instead.
Because Kelly was on his feet suddenly, roaring, enraged, and then Reza gripped her too tightly and screamed right back at him, and Cressida knew what would happen next. They would shift and tear into each other, and Cressida would be caught between the two of them.
“No!” she shouted, pushing Reza back. She climbed off him and got to her feet, naked and bloodied by both of them, her hands up to hold a distance between them. “No, stop it! I have claimed you both and been claimed by you!”
Kelly stood on one side of her, snarling and seething air between his teeth. And Reza stood on the other, his whole body rumbling with rage, but she didn’t move. No running. She stood between them, willing her heart to be calm, willing their rage to subside. She begged every deity she could think of, and then she stomped her foot.
“I demand you both calm the fuck down!” she cried.
She would realize later that the power had come not only from the mark, but from inside her own heart. No other god or gods could have controlled Kelly and Reza in that moment; she had to take control of them, of the power of the mark, herself. And once she did, like a bolt of lightning cracking between them, she felt the mark on her throat flare to life. It burned, at first, and then the burn eased into a dull, languorous ache—not unlike, Cressida thought, the one she felt developing between her thighs. Satisfying instead of truly painful.
Kelly bowed his head, hands on his hips, and nodded a little as he calmed down. Reza stood for a moment longer, breathing hard, before he too bowed his head and the tense line of his shoulders relaxed. Cressida stepped to the side and took Kelly’s hand, and then reached back and took Reza’s, and she gripped their fingers tight and let out a startled, amazed laugh.
“We did it,” she said, smiling. “We did it.”
Chapter 10
After the marking, they were all too exhausted to do anything other than lie down and go to sleep for a time. The Keeper had given them until dawn, and none of them were in a position to trek through the jungle. They could barely stand between them. So they just lay down on the furs on the cavern floor and slept.
Reza came awake first, and realized that his hand was still in Cressida’s. So was Kelly’s. Neither one of them had snuggled up to her while they slept, because the mark kept them at an even distance unless invited. Reza had heard many, many legends about the mark, many old wives’ tales, and many bits of information from the marked men and women in the tribe. He had never heard, though, of one mate being so much in control of the mark as Cressida seemed to be. But then, he’d never heard of two alphas marking the same mate, and certainly never of a human being marked. They were creating new legends, he realized.
And his heart was full to bursting for her. The mark connected him to her, and also to Kelly. He could sense calm and relaxation from the bear. The mark bound the three of them together and Reza had no doubt that whatever he felt in any given moment, Cressida and Kelly would feel it too. Or at least they would know he was feeling it. Under different circumstances, he might have thought of that as an invasion, the stripping away of his private thoughts and feelings. But not now. Now he simply felt affection and respect and love for them both, and wanted to let them in. There was something truly incredible about it.
He let go of Cressida’s hand and sat up, crawling over to pick up his trousers and climb into them. Almost as soon as he released her fingers, he realized that Kelly was awake as well. The captain looked at him with calm, sleepy brown eyes, and then with a nod he sat up as well and reached for his pants too. Cressida stirred, shifting a little on the furs, and seemed to resist waking, but eventually she yawned and stretched and rolled onto her back, looking at the two of them with the most brilliant, satisfied blue eyes that Reza had ever seen. She smiled, a cat with her full share of cream.
“Good morning,” she murmured.
Reza couldn’t help but smile back, shaking his head. He grabbed up her blouse and trousers and tossed them at her. “Get dressed.”
She grimaced and then sat up, doing so. “We need to find the Keeper.”
“Something tells me she’s waiting for us,” Kelly muttered.
“We’ll get the jewel and then we’ll get the hell off this island,” Cressida said, as she pulled her blouse over her head.
Reza looked down. He folded his arms. They must have felt the whistle of regret and doubt that moved through him, because he realized they were both looking at him right as he felt it. He shrugged.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You don’t want to leave?” Cressida asked softly.
“It’s not that.” He sighed. “I don’t want to leave my sister. And Prija. They want more than what the village and the tribe will give them.”
Kelly seemed to hesitate, looking at Cressida, and then shrugged. “They could come with us. If you think we could get to them and still get off the island in one piece.”
“It would be a great risk,” Reza admitted. “One we probably shouldn’t take.”
“But we will take it,” Cressida said. “If you want to, we’ll take it.”
Even though he knew he had loved her before, Reza felt a fresh swell of adoration for Cressida bloom within his heart when she said that. How amazing to think that she had been such an object of both disgust and desire to him, when first he’d laid eyes on her. At once captor and perhaps savior. Now he knew which, for certain, but life had taken a turn that he could never have anticipated. He nodded, and did not thank her again, because sure they could both feel the gratitude that throbbed through him.
“But first,” Kelly said, and he flashed them a quick, fierce grin. “Treasure, at last.”
Cressida laughed. “Once a pirate, always a pirate.”
Reza chuckled. They finished getting dressed, and Kelly took the still-burning torch from the sconce to lead them out of the little room and back into the wider expanse of the cavern. Once they could see the dim, not quite predawn of the jungle outside, Kelly stowed the torch once more in a sconce on the wall, and they walked out of the cavern and back into the stone courtyard beyond it. Reza paused by the pool, looking back at the cavern. The fangs of the beast, the gaping mouth that looked to him like a tiger midroar.
Cressida took a seat on the edge of the pool, and in a few short minutes the sound of snakes hissing filled the air. They writhed out of the edges of the jungle in myriad colors now, green and brown and red and white, circling the three of them. A light suddenly leapt from beneath the water of the little pool and Cressida stood up. The three of them turned to watch as the Keeper of the Jewel emerged from the water, rising as if she floated. But now, around her neck, she wore a great stone set on a golden chain. The stone itself glimmered and sparkled in the light, droplets of water reflecting off its smooth surface. It swirled with color, sometimes red and sometimes gold and sometimes black. The Keeper stepped from the edge of the pool to the ground and smiled.
“At lassst.” She sighed. “Worthy claimants.”
“We did it,” Cressida said, smiling.
“We can have the jewel now, can’t we?” Kelly asked.
The Keeper laughed softly. Reza felt her laughter like a sling of ice down his spine. It was not menacing, but it was meaningful, and he could not have said why, but it made him wary.
“I told you,” the Keeper said to Cressida, “that this is not a mere bauble.”
Cressida nodded. The Keeper reached up and unclasped the jewel from around her neck, settling the stone in her palm.
She went on, “The Jewel of So Sur will set you
free, my dear lady, but it is not a jewel to be sold. Once you put it on, you cannot take it off. It will be with you forever.”
Reza watched a frown curve Cressida’s mouth. “I don’t understand.”
The Keeper smiled again. “You have risked everything to claim this treasure. If you don’t understand yet what will truly set you free, perhaps you never will, even with the jewel’s help.”
Reza saw a flash of anger in Cressida’s eyes. He felt the spark of her temper in his own heart and was positive that Kelly felt it too. But neither one of them was fast enough to stop her when she reached for the jewel.
“Cress, wait,” Kelly said.
But it was too late. Cressida snatched the jewel right out of the Keeper’s palm, her mouth a firm line, set with determination.
“Don’t,” Reza said softly, stepping close to her side. “Cressida, don’t put it on. You don’t know what it will truly do.”
Cressida was looking at the stone, turning it around in her hands. She looked at the Keeper and then up at him, an eyebrow arching faintly.
“Just because it isn’t what we thought it would be,” she said calmly, “that doesn’t mean it isn’t what we need, what we truly want.”
The Keeper bowed her head and turned, walking back towards the beastly face of the cave. The snakes hissed loudly and followed her, a coiling knot of slithering limbs.
“The tigers will be here ssssoon,” she said as she vanished into the shadows crowding the cavern mouth. “Hurry.”
When she was gone, Cressida looked at Kelly and then met Reza’s eyes again. She smiled reassuringly. “It’s going to be fine.”
“You don’t know that,” he argued.
“Yes I do. Take heart, my love.”
Then, before either one of them could try again to convince her not to, she slipped the chain up and around her neck, beneath her hair, and clicked the clasp into place. The heavy stone landed in the valley between her breasts, and all of them stood and waited, the air so still and their breath so shallow that Reza thought he could even hear the ripples of water in the pool bumping lightly into each other as the wind whispered across its surface.
And then suddenly Cressida gasped, and a bright white light filled her eyes. Reza took a step back and Kelly joined him, and together they stood staring at her.
“It’s changed her,” Reza breathed, eyes wide as he took her in, watching as the Cressida he knew shifted, her pale skin vanishing beneath a brindle of gold and black and cream, and she became the tigress of his dreams. “She’s a tiger…”
“No,” Kelly said, looking at Reza sharply, confusion riddling his brow. “She’s a bear.”
“You’re both wrong,” Cressida laughed suddenly, her voice a blend somehow of human and animal, of howl and hiss and caw. “I’m everything.”
Chapter 11
Cressida could feel the Jewel of So Sur flooding its power through her. She felt her very essence changing, re-forming, flirting with fur or claws or wings or scales, whichever creature her mind flitted towards. She felt that she could be anything she dreamed of, anything she could imagine, and the possibilities were dizzying. She understood now what the Keeper had meant when she said that the jewel would free her. She had never in her life felt more free, more possible, more wide open to the world and yet able to conquer it.
She closed her eyes and tried to focus, though, tried to remember her own skin and so retain her human form, and when she exhaled and opened her eyes to look at her two alphas, she settled, the light in her eyes flickering out. The stone felt warm between her breasts, against her skin through the fabric of her blouse.
Reza and Kelly were staring at her with plain astonishment on their faces.
“It turned you into a shifter,” Kelly realized aloud.
“It turned her into all shifters,” Reza clarified. “Any shifter.”
Cressida nodded and stepped forward, reaching to take Kelly’s hand in hers. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “The Keeper is right. We can’t sell this. We’ll find another way to save your den, I promise. The jewel was never meant for that.”
Kell grimaced and looked down, but he nodded. “I understand. This...you...you are...amazing, Cress.”
“I don’t know what I am,” she admitted softly. She looked at Reza. His eyes were low too. “But I am yours. I am both of yours. Always. Nothing and no one will ever take me away from you two.”
Kelly reeled her in close and pressed a kiss to her temple. Reza reached out and brushed the backs of his fingers down her arm. She shivered, but felt warm between the two of them. Warm and loved. And now she understood him, the weight of the stone around her neck that of a thousand beasts, a thousand roaring animals. They stirred her heart and her blood with a ferocity and thirst for freedom that she would never have thought herself capable of controlling. But she did, and the mark helped her do it, and she knew she was strong enough.
Their tender moment was interrupted, however. She heard Reza hiss in warning and then they turned, watching the jungle get swept aside as Chaiya walked into the little stone clearing, a dozen tribal warriors at his back. He bared his teeth at them in warning, the warriors fanning out behind them, circling them. Cressida felt hope dry up in her throat, sensed Reza and Kelly tensing on either side of her for a fight.
“No,” she whispered. “No, we were so close.”
“It’s not over,” Reza whispered back. “Just follow my lead.”
“There is no escape,” Chaiya announced, holding out his hands as if to display his warriors. With a start, Cressida realized that she could understand what he was saying. The stone was translating for her. “You are caught. You, blood betrayer, Reza. And your foreign invaders. The hunt is over and now you die.”
The chieftain’s son prowled closer, his movements feline and dangerous, and Cressida thought his eyes even looked a little scarlet in the low light beneath the canopy, a little blood-hungry. She heard Kelly utter a low growl behind her, and she squeezed his hand. He might not have understood Chaiya’s words, but she knew he got their implication well enough. If he shifted and raged now, they might be lost. She trusted Reza, and she refused to believe that she had just attained this great treasure only to lose it so quickly.
Reza stepped forward to meet Chaiya, at an equal distance between where Cressida stood holding Kelly’s hand and the points of Chaiya’s warriors’ spears.
“You are the invader,” he said quietly to Chaiya. “You and your blood hunters have invaded this sacred space.”
“It is our island,” Chaiya laughed. “We have not invaded anything.”
“This space is the Keeper’s territory and you know it,” Reza told him, eyebrows lifting. “And your father knows it. This place is the heart of the island, and protected by the Keeper of the Jewel. She would not thank you for spilling blood upon these stones.”
“Then I’ll take you down the mountain and spill your blood there,” Chaiya hissed. “And the bear’s blood. And your woman’s blood. And let the waves come up the beach and clean your very existence from the island’s memory.”
“There is a new Keeper,” Reza hissed back, and then he bared his teeth as well, and Cressida knew a challenge when she saw one. Reza pointed at her, and she almost took a step back, but managed not to. The stone between her breasts burned hotter suddenly. “See, she wears the stone, she keeps it.”
Chaiya’s eyes went right to the stone around Cressida’s neck, and she saw rage fill his face, purpling his complexion. She thought he might shift and dive at her right then, but Reza stepped forward and shoved him roughly back. The push shook Chaiya out of it and he turned towards Reza and screamed in his face.
“You defile the heart of our home!” he shouted.
“She was judged worthy,” Reza said coolly. “We have defiled nothing. And she bears my mark. A single move against her is a move against the Island, the Jewel of So Sur, and me. And since you have already invaded what we have agreed is
the Keeper’s territory, I challenge you.”
Chaiya’s expression went slack with shock at that, and then he laughed loudly, but the sound held no humor at all in it. “You challenge me?”
“To a blood fight,” Reza said. “Just like you wanted.”
Cressida felt her heart start hammering so hard she thought it might burst out of her chest. She let go of Kelly and went to Reza, grabbing his arm.
“No,” she said. “No, you can’t do that.”
“I have to do that,” Reza told her softly. “It’s the only way to get off this island.”
“But what if you lose?” she asked. She felt tears prick her eyes just at the thought.
“If I lose,” Reza said slowly, “then you both die. But if I win, then they can’t touch us or anyone under our protection ever again.” He looked at her, his green-gold eyes alight with fierce determination. “I can do this, Cressida. Believe in me as I have believed in you.”
That sank her heart right into her heels. She squeezed his arm, throat tightening against the impending tears. He leaned in and kissed her, his lips soft against her own, and she took his face in her hands and kissed him back a little desperately.
“I only just got you,” she whispered.
“You won’t lose me,” he promised her.
Chaiya grunted loudly. “At least when you lose him,” he drawled, “you die and join him soon after.”
“Shut up, you miserable shit,” Cressida snapped at him.
He blinked at her, but plainly had no idea what she’d said. Apparently the stone did not translate both ways. Reza got an arm around her and walked her back over to Kelly, who stood practically vibrating with anger.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked them.
“I am going to fight Chaiya for our freedom,” Reza told him simply.
Kelly grimaced. “Is there no other way? If we could get a message to the beach, my men will come…”
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