by Lisa Ladew
Table of Contents
Title Page
Glossary
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
Notes from Lisa xx
One True Mate 1; Shifter’s Sacrifice
by Lisa Ladew
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons or organizations, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Copyright © 2016 Lisa Ladew All Rights Reserved
Book cover by The Final Wrap waves Hi Rebecca!!
Cover model: Burton Hughes
Photographer: Eric Battershell
Special editorial assistance by The Blurb Diva and Savan Robbins. Without you, I would be lost, and much less interesting. Thank you.
Thank you to Kristine Piiparinen for all of your help with everything, again, as always <3
Thank you beta readers, arc readers, babes, and all of my readers. Goodness you make writing worth doing and so much easier and fun.
I also want to thank Fay Reid, Sandra McAulay and John McAulay for being my Scottish language and culture consultants.
Thank you Carin Borland for your evil help ;)
And special thank you to Amanda Quiles, my Shifter Guru.
Glossary
Bearen - bear shifters. Almost always work as firefighters.
Citlali - Spiritual leaders of all Shiften. They are able to communicate with the deities telepathically, and sometimes bring back prophecies from these communications.
Deae - goddess.
Dragen - dragon shifter. Rare.
Echo - an animal with the same markings of a shiften. Usually seen as a harbinger of bad things, but could also be a messenger from the Light.
Felen - big cat shifters. Almost always work as mercenaries. They are also the protectors of Rhen’s physical body and a specially-trained group of them can track Khain when he comes into the Ula.
Foxen - the Foxen were created when Khain forcibly mated with female wolfen.
Haven, the – final resting place of all shiften. Where The Light resides.
Impot – a shiften that cannot shift because of a genetic defect caused by mating too close to their own bloodline. Trent and Troy are not thought to be impots because they were born during a klukwana.
Khain - also known as the Divided Demon, the Great Destroyer, and the Matchitehew. The hunter of humans and the main nemesis of all shiften.
Klukwana – a ceremony where a full-blooded shiften who mates another shiften does so with both in animal form, then the mother stays in animal form during the entire pregnancy. The young in the litter are always born as their animal. Wolven from a klukwana always come in at least 4 to 7 young. Bearen are always two cubs, and felen are unpredictable, sometimes only one. Shiften born from a klukwana are almost always more powerful, bigger, and stronger than regular shiften, but many parents don’t try it because of the inherent risks to the mother during the (shorter) pregnancy and the risk that the shiften young may choose not to shift into human form. A lesser known possibility is that the shiften young will have a harder time learning to shift into human form, especially if no one shifts near them in the first few days after birth.
KSRT - Kilo Special Response Team, or Khain Special Response team. A group of wolven police whose primary goal is to hunt down and kill Khain, if that can be done.
Light, The – The creator of the Ula, Rhen, Khain, and the angels.
Moonstruck - Insane. Shiften who spend too long indoors or too long in human form can become moonstruck slowly and not even realize it.
Pravus - Khain’s home. A fiery, desolate dimension that sits alongside ours.
Pumaii - a small group of specialized felen tasked with tracking Khain when he crosses over into our dimension.
Renqua - a discoloration in a shiften’s fur which is also seen as a birthmark in human form. Every renqua is different. The original renquas were pieces of Rhen she put inside the wolves, bears, and big cats to create the shiften. Every pure-blooded shifter born since has also had a renqua. Half-breeds may or may not have one. Some foxen acquired weak renquas when they mated with shiften. Also called the mark of life.
Rhen - the creator of all shiften. A female deity.
Ruhi – the art of speaking telepathically. No humans are known to possess the power to do this. Not all shiften are able to do it. It is the preferred form of speaking for the dragen.
Shiften - Shifter-kind.
Ula – earth, in the current dimension and time. The home of the shiften.
Vahiy – end of the world.
Wolfen - a wolf shifter. Almost always works as a police officer.
Wolven - wolf shifters, plural.
Zyanya - When a wolfen dies, the funeral is for the benefit of humans, but the important ceremony is the zyanya. The pack mates of the fallen wolfen run in wolf form through the forest, heading north to show the spirit the way to the Haven. When they reach a body of water, they all jump in and swim to the other side, then emerge in human form.
Chapter 1
The three wolves raced through the forest at top speed in the waning moonlight, the large one in the lead urging the others to go faster, harder, push themselves to their limit. But even his perseverance couldn’t hold the other two for long. As they neared the clearing, the two black wolves slowed, panting and grinning and gigging each other with their hips, the one with the brush of white on the very tip of his tail snapping playfully at a pocket gopher who chose that moment to push his head out of his hole to see what was going on.
The black and gray wolf in the lead, with the boomerang-shaped patch of white on his left shoulder, didn’t slow. He pushed himself harder, driven from somewhere deep inside to give everything he had until the very last second, like always.
He felt the danger coming from his left a split second before it reached him, but there was nothing he could do. It was coming too fast. The large animal hit him on his left flank and they both tumbled together, a mass of fur and limbs, over the forest floor, their teeth snapping, their mouths frothing, as they both snarled and tore into each other, their bodies only stopping when they slammed into a tree.
>
The wolves separated, rolling away from each other. As they rolled, they both shifted into human form, fur disappearing, legs lengthening, thickening, hips changing shape, muzzles shortening, claws retracting and reforming, eye color changing. Both males scrambled to their feet in fighting stances, naked, but still ready to throw down.
“What is your problem, Mac?” Trevor Burbank, a tall, Mack-truck of a man, shouted, but before his second-in-command could answer, the other two wolves caught up to them, both launching their bodies at Mac and knocking him to the ground when they made contact. “Fuck,” Trevor swore, running forward to get into the fray before his brothers tore Mac to pieces.
Trevor elbowed his way past the furiously shaking bodies of his brothers, one at Mac’s thigh, and one at Mac’s throat.
“Get your mutts off me,” Mac snarled.
Aw, hell no. He didn’t just say that. Trevor clamped his hands around the jaws of the wolf at Mac’s throat and pulled the opposite way of the bite-down, knowing Mac could heal his own leg if he shifted, but if his throat was torn open, he could bleed out before he ever had a chance to recover from that. “Trent, Troy, he’s not worth it, let him go,” he forced out, all of his energy focused on keeping Trent from killing Mac right then and there.
Mac screamed and Trevor knew that Troy was grinding into his leg, maybe all the way to the bone. “Troy, stop!” Trevor demanded. He aimed a few kicks at Troy’s flank while still cranking Trent’s jaws apart. Blood flowed down his fingers and across Mac’s neck. The minimal pain in his hands told him only some of that blood was his, and as he looked closer, he could see several of Trent’s teeth violating Mac’s skin.
“Trent! Lay off! You’re gonna fucking kill him! He’s an asshole, but you can’t kill a wolfen for being an asshole, the Citlali will fry you!”
Finally, Trent eased slightly. “Let him go,” Trevor continued, his voice taking on a soothing quality. “Even dogs like him have their uses. He doesn’t have to like me.”
Trevor ignored the growl that came from Mac’s throat and caught his brother’s thought like it was a ball launched at his face.
He does have to respect you.
Trevor grinned sourly. We can’t force him to, he sent back.
We can let Troy bite his balls off though.
Trevor laughed out loud, relieved to see Trent letting go of Mac’s throat, even if it was reluctantly. He turned to look at Troy who had also let go, but Mac’s thigh was a mess of dirty hamburger. Too bad, so sad.
As soon as Mac was free he scrambled to his feet and limped away, leaving Trevor and his brothers on the cold forest floor, watching the blood drip from Mac’s leg and neck.
“The Chief wants you in the office in thirty minutes,” Mac threw over his shoulder, just before he shifted and loped off.
Trevor watched him go, admiring the fierce strength of Mac’s pure white animal, even as he disliked the male. Trevor wanted to like Mac, it would make his working environment much easier, but with as much as Mac hated him, Trevor had no choice but to feel the same. He didn’t blame Mac though.
Mac thought Trevor was a fraud, and Trevor agreed.
Chapter 2
What little was left of Ella’s past lay spread out in front of her in the large attic, packed into boxes or sitting in random spots, as if left there by a busy toddler. Ella eyed it, knowing she shouldn’t go through anything, she should just allow the resale shop to come in and take everything, but she was feeling grumpy that it had to happen at all. She knew there was nothing valuable in the boxes, but she still felt obligated to check. God helps those who get off their asses, and all that.
If she didn’t come up with fourteen thousand dollars in the next two weeks, she would lose her aunt’s house, and she had no idea if that would be a blessing or a curse. So her ass would be in motion until she figured something out.
Turning her attention back to the dark and dusty room, she tried to mentally divide it into the most likely spots to search, but was distracted by a soft rubbing against her leg. She looked down to see Chelsea, a black and orange harlequin cat twisting its body around her ankle and she smiled, bending to pet the feline on the head. As she did, her aunt’s other cat, an all-black cat except for a bit of white on the tip of his tail, named Smokey, rubbed against her too, then looked up at her with sad, golden eyes and meowed once.
Her smile vanished. “I know. You miss her,” she told the cat softly, her voice echoing in the large attic.
Ella couldn’t say the same, but she wouldn’t tell Smokey that, not that Smokey didn’t already know. Ella snorted, then bit her lip. “Sorry,” she whispered to no one in particular. Now that she had no other humans to talk to, having conversations with the cats seemed normal, but she knew it wasn’t. She feared it was just one more reason to believe she was going insane.
The cats looked at her as if to ask if she was going to stay up in the drafty, dusty attic and Ella nodded before she could catch herself. The cats meandered away and she watched them, until Chelsea carefully picked her way down the attic steps and Smokey dropped to the floor and began to clean his paws.
Ella’s phone chimed in her pocket, startling her. No one knew her number except her mom and her aunt, and both were dead. She had no friends, her mom had made sure of that. Except Accalia. Online friends count.
Ella pursed her lips and wondered if in fact they did, really, but Accalia didn’t have her number, so it didn’t matter anyway.
She looked at her phone. The text had no name with it, but she knew immediately it was Shay. The words were too vicious to be anyone else.
So you finally did it. You killed them both. I want what’s coming to me you fucking bitch. You better not have spent all the estate yet.
Ella’s hands trembled as she muted the conversation and put the phone away. The only question now was, how long would it take her sister to show up at the house where she would not be so easily muted? Was she in town, or on her way?
Ella turned back around to the boxes, desperately trying to distract herself. She could do nothing else. The van from the resale shop had taken all the furniture, the china, the hutches, and her aunt’s and mom’s clothes the day before. Today was all the miscellaneous things left downstairs and everything in the attic, and she needed to get to work.
She ran her fingers over a trunk to her left, then opened it and peeked inside. Clothes. Old clothes. She eyed a standing mirror and wondered if it was worth anything, but a quick check with Google told her no. She pushed her long, black hair out of her eyes and made a face at herself in the mirror, choosing not to look at her wide hips and the pooch forming in her belly, like maybe she was two months pregnant. She stress-ate, always had, and no matter how much she exercised, it didn’t seem to matter. Maybe now her stress would back down a bit and she could try to get a handle on her life and the way she looked.
Ella moved away from the mirror, moving moth-eaten blankets and kicking through a pile of platform shoes, feeling completely hopeless. There was nothing good up here, she should just turn around and─
A crashing noise called her attention and she whirled around to see Smokey leaping through the air away from a tipping pile of boxes. The top one had already hit the floor and spilled its contents everywhere.
Ella watched the cat stare hard at her. The cat wanted her to look in that box. She was sure of it. Ella walked forward slowly, then shook her head and swore softly. The cat didn’t want anything and she was a fool to think so. Hadn’t her mother told her that a thousand times?
She shooed the cat away from the mess and straightened up the closed boxes that had fallen, then knelt down to gather the contents of the open one. Mostly cheap jewelry. Fake pearls. Rhinestone earrings. Beaded bracelets. Ella didn’t know a lot about jewelry, but she knew this stuff was junk. Probably her mother’s. Aunt Patricia had never worn jewelry, and when she saw Ella’s mother wear it, she would shake her head, press her lips together and mutter something under her breath. Ella couldn’t re
member it exactly, but it started with Neither love the world nor the things in the world…
“How about your cats, Aunt Patricia, were they of the world?” Ella said absently as she shoved the jewelry back into the box. “Were you allowed to love them?”
Without warning, her thoughts repeated, then doubled on top of each other, causing a dizzy sensation that rocked her until she couldn’t remember if it was her mother’s jewelry and her aunt who hated it, or her aunt’s jewelry and her mother hated it. She shook her head, hating the queer sensation that had been happening so frequently lately. Her mother had liked jewelry. Of course. She knew that.
She shoved the last necklace back in the box then froze as a shiny gold pendant caught her eye. She pulled the knot of fake stuff away from the pendant, her eyes glued to it, as she felt suddenly transfixed. Had she seen it before? She couldn’t remember but a feeling of déjà vu hit her hard, like maybe she’d had this experience before.
Which made no sense.
The pendant was an inch and a half tall, and in the shape of an angel, its head bent, a small gem that looked like a too-large crystal ball between its hands. She hooked the delicate gold chain of the pendant and raised it out of the box, taking a step back with her prize in her hands. The gold piece dangled at the end of the chain and twisted, revealing its back side. Which wasn’t the back of an angel, like Ella expected.