One True Mate 1: Shifter's Sacrifice

by Lisa Ladew

  “I’ll get you another burger,” Trevor said, standing up.

  “I ate two already. I’m stuffed.” Her bad smell cleared quickly as she focused on Trevor.

  “You don’t eat enough. How about some ice cream?”

  “Trevor, did you watch me eat? I ate as much as you did. Do you want me fat?”

  Trevor stopped mid-stride and turned around. “I want you happy. I want you full. I want you to eat dessert if you want it.”

  Troy jumped up to the couch, ate his two burgers in two bites, and ignored his salad. He watched the two at the table, interested in the way their smells shifted in response to every word they said and every word the other said. Ella shook her head and gave Trevor a look, but her smell said she was pleased.

  “How about coffee? Or tea? Or wine? What do you like after dinner?”

  Troy snorted. Trevor was lost completely. Light help him if something ever happened to that woman.

  “Tea. With lots of cream.”

  “Coming up.”

  Ella’s scent changed precipitously and even Trent raised his head to look at her. “I have to tell you something, Trevor. You tell me if it’s important or not.”

  Trevor was the last to know how serious it really was. He moved about in the kitchen like he didn’t have a care in the world. Like they were two ordinary beings with no demon at their door.

  “Go for it.”

  “Ah─ yeah, well. Ok.”

  Troy could see her gathering her thoughts and her will and he admired her for it. She looked down at the floor and spoke in a rush, the story that spilled out of her unbelievable, and yet totally believable at the same time.

  Trevor had forgotten the tea and come to sit next to her, his hand on her leg. When she finished speaking he stared into her eyes for a few moments as she fidgeted, then spoke.

  “How old were you?”

  “I’m not totally sure. Ten, I think.”

  “Was this here, in Serenity?”

  “No, down south more. I think we lived in Champaign-Urbana.”

  “You’re certain it was him?”

  “Well no, I’m not. Can he do that? Make himself look like a kid?”

  “He can make himself look like anything he wants to.”

  Ella nodded, as if she expected that. “The voice was the same. I’ll never forget that my entire life. The way it sounded. Like rocks rubbing against a chalkboard.”

  “Tell me again, how you repelled him?”

  She shook her head, her face tight. “I don’t know. I just did. It was nothing I tried to do.”

  “And last week, when you met him downtown. Was it the same way then?”

  “Yes, I didn’t try to do anything. I was scared out of my mind. So scared I couldn’t even think. He touched me, and just like that, he was flying across the room into the wall. I felt the energy come out of me like a big pulse or something, but I didn’t command it.”

  Trent’s voice rumbled through all their heads. Wade needs to know. Someone needs to contact the felen and wolven down south. See if a report was ever made and if so, what the immediate aftermath was.

  Trevor gathered Ella into his arms, smoothing her hair, massaging the muscles in her back. I’ll call Wade in a minute.

  Troy watched Ella and Trevor, noting how Trevor’s scent mixed with Ella’s then transformed it, easing back Ella’s fear and upset with an overpowering, all-consuming concern and touching care.

  He felt the first stirrings of jealousy in his own chest and he hated it. He hopped off the couch and headed back outside.

  ***

  Mac and Graeme were out of the car, leaning against it and talking softly in the darkness, facing the house. Both had a careful go-along to get-along scent about them, as they talked and learned each other’s strength’s weaknesses, quirks, likes, and dislikes.

  Mac threw his head back and laughed at something Graeme said. Troy heard himself growl involuntarily. If Mac weren’t such an asshole he wouldn’t be so bad. He had a good sense of humor and was a strong fighter, someone you wanted on your side. But until Mac got over whatever issue he had with Trevor, he would always be enemy number two.

  Mac saw him. “What’s going on in there? Smells like dinner.”

  Ella saw Khain as a child. He came after her and she repelled him somehow. Same as she did last week.

  Graeme hauled his ass off the car and stared hard at him.

  “No way─”

  Mac took a step forward. “What, what did he say?”

  Graeme repeated it and Mac gave a low whistle. “So it’s true. Not only do they exist, but they’re strong.”

  Very strong, Troy agreed.

  Mac leaned back against the car again and waited for Graeme to look at him. “Do you think there’s a one true mate for you, fire-breath?”

  Graeme raised an eyebrow. “Thanks for the compliment. And I dinna. Dragen sex is rather… complicated. Dragen birth and babies even moreso. I am afraid I am destined to remain alone until The Light claims me.”

  “But ye got yer hand, right mate? Rosy and her five sisters won’t never leave ya!” Mac called out boisterously in a passable Scottish accent, his words hanging limply in the air as Graeme ignored them.

  Troy smelled a deep layer of sadness coming off Graeme. He tried not to feel pity for the male, but the prospect of never mating made it hard. Until he realized he was in the same situation. That made his jealousy of his brother a triple-edged sword.

  Mac broke the silence again, softer this time. “That’s hard.”

  Troy looked up, surprised.

  Graeme nodded silently in the night, as did Troy.

  The lights in the house went dim. Mac snarled. “Damn slacker, going to bed already while the rest of us pull guard duty.”

  The light in an upstairs window came on and a female form passed in front of it, then Trevor appeared, pulling the curtains. The light turned off, then a softer one flickered through the curtain, maybe a candle.

  Graeme raised his chin. “I’d say he’s doing exactly what he’s supposed to be doing right about now to ensure the future of the wolven. More than any of the rest of us.”

  Troy chuckled, then outright laughed when he smelled jealousy come off Mac in waves.

  If he and Graeme weren’t getting any, at least Mac wasn’t either. Not at that moment, anyway.

  Mac’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out and looked at it. “Damn. We gotta go.”

  “All of us?”

  “No, we’ll leave one felen, the bearen, Beckett, Trent and Troy. The felen are reporting Khain came through but just for a minute, not long enough for them to pinpoint his exact location, and now there’s another disturbance in the Pravus near the bluff. It was nothing last time, but we can’t take any chances.

  Graeme nodded toward the house. “We aren’t telling Lieutenant Burbank?”

  Mac shook his head. “Like you said, he’s busy.”

  Chapter 38

  Khain paced, fire shooting out of his fingertips, his eyes imploding and reforming in his head. “Boe!” he shouted. “How long do preparations take?”

  Boe yelled back something he couldn’t hear. Khain let out a string of curses and paced harder. When he’d been in the Ula, he could feel the new shiften determination, and something like hope. He knew exactly what it was about. The Promised had been discovered and some mangy shiften was mounting her all night long. Maybe a hundred mangy shiften. The better to ensure her pregnancy took.

  Light fuck it all! He hadn’t been able to take her. The one he wanted over all others. He hadn’t been able to stop the curse of the first Promised.

  But maybe there was still time, if Boe would just finish with that foxen he had snatched from his evening walk. He’d gotten lucky with that one. Boe had recounted the locations of all the foxen houses he’d known when he’d lived in the Ula, warning Khain repeatedly that it was different up there now, and there might be nothing to find. But as soon as Khain had popped over to the second location, the
air had been rich with the vibration of foxen, and he’d found one in a lamb’s shake and been able to pop back over to the Pravus without alerting any felen. He hoped. He hated how the felen in the area were able to track him so quickly, but he couldn’t move anywhere that they were more lax. This was where Rhen was, and somehow, she gave him strength.

  Besides, he had plans along those lines. He hadn’t quite perfected his vibrational subterfuge and it hadn’t worked when he’d gone into the Ula like he thought it would, but he was closer. Maybe someday he’d be able to walk among the humans and the felen would be none the wiser.

  Khain had marked the area where he’d found the foxen for future mining, but now he just wanted to get started.

  “Argh!” he screamed, clenching blood from his fists, his eyes shooting all the way across the room and then taking a moment to regrow in his head. “Boe! I want him now! I wait no longer!”

  “Yes, Sire,” Boe said, pulling an inert foxen behind him on a cushion of air. Boe had learned a few tricks over the years.

  Boe positioned himself directly in front of the angel’s enclosure and Khain did the same. Boe turned to him questioningly and Khain nodded. He was ready.

  Boe threw all of the locks on the tiny door at the bottom of the angel’s enclosure. Khain stared on. The angel was weak and there would be no fight in him. The byzant metal Boe had mined from the inner edges of the Pravus did its job well.

  Boe opened the door and slid the foxen in. Khain could sense the foxen’s thoughts and sensations at once, as the extreme light and heat of the angel woke it up as soon as it was inside.

  The sight of the angel began to unwittingly destroy the foxen’s mind and body, and as it disintegrated, Khain was treated to the inner thoughts and knowledge of the angel, as the two beings within the enclosure began to merge. The ground rippled under his feet as the angel woke and began to complain.

  Khain had discovered this by accident, when Boe helped him wrestle the angel into the enclosure after they had first caught him, years ago, weakened by his forty nights of debauchery. Khain had no problem touching or looking at the angel, but Boe had done it only under great duress, and whenever he was too near the angel, Khain could hear it’s innermost workings. Boe had almost lost his hands and arms that day, but Khain had been able to arrest most of the disintegration.

  Still, the angel had put up a great fight, destroying so much of Khain’s house that Boe had needed to move them while Khain slept off the damages from the battle.

  When he’d woken, years later in human time, but only a few moments for him, he’d tried to make sense of what he’d heard from the angel’s mind, but he couldn’t. All he could get was a general location in the Ula. He’d gone to the Ula, in that location, and found a pack of human boys about to molest a human girl in a satisfying fashion. He’d stayed to watch, but something about the girl had called to him. He’d been unable to stay away from her. What had happened then had amazed and destroyed him. The girl had hurt him. Almost as bad as the angel had. A human girl!

  He’d retreated back to the Pravus to recover, and try to figure out the great and shameful mystery, which he never had. Until he’d thrown four more foxen in with the angel and learned to better interpret what he heard as they were dying. The girl was a Promised, the first Promised, the one with the most of the angel’s blood in her, and somehow she had some sort of a power against him. A power he would know if he could. Would destroy if he could. Would harness if he could.

  He’d tried again with the girl, a young woman now, more curious than anything, steeling himself beforehand with power, trying to drink from the angel like an emotional vampire stealing good thoughts and strong character.

  Then he’d gone after her. The experience had left him shaken and harmed, but not as laid-out as he’d been the first time. Siphoning the angel’s energy, her father’s energy, before and after had helped greatly.

  He hadn’t been able to mark her, as she was a curious blank to him, unlike most humans. But he had her address from the angel and had watched her through the eyes of foxen in his sleep, until he knew what was going on with her life, and had overheard an appointment she had.

  Khain pulled himself back to his home, where the angel rumbled angrily in his cage. He dialed in to the conduit that foxen had created, opening himself up to catch any bits of information he could.

  An image flashed before him, of the house of the mother on the night the Promised was conceived. A young girl, a toddler maybe, creeping through the house, eating Cheerios out of the box and clutching a stuffed teddy. An older sister.

  Khain raked what more he could out of the conduit before the foxen disappeared altogether, then began to make his plans.

  Chapter 39

  Ella woke up with a start, listening to the old farmhouse creak in the early morning wind. Trevor lay beside her, breathing deeply, his naked form under only one sheet, when she’d needed two blankets, even curled up against him. Her eye traced his face and his shoulders, and the cut of his body under the sheet before she crept out of bed and stood, trying to decide what had woken her.

  She found her pants and dug out her phone. Accalia had sent her two messages over the last few days but Ella didn’t know how to answer them just yet. Accalia wrote fan fiction for all the members of the chat room they’d met in, and one memorable story Ella had read had dealt with almost the exact situation she was in right now. A human women falling in love with a werewolf. Ella shook her head, for the first time wondering if perhaps she’d gone all the way crazy and what was happening to her was really a dream, or some mental-health-drug-induced nightmare.

  Then she realized. She hadn’t blacked out or walked in her sleep recently. She wasn’t even hearing voices in her head anymore, unless you counted Trent and Troy, and she didn’t think they counted, because they were real, weren’t they?

  She looked at Trevor on the bed again and wondered, remembering the feelings of surety she’d had when they’d first touched. The feeling that everything was right in her life─ for the first time.

  Before she could follow the line of questioning again, her phone came alive in her hand, the screen showing a crisp picture so lifelike, she swore she could see his hands moving in space.

  She stared, horrified, about to drop the phone and scream for Trevor, when the man was replaced with her sister’s face, her makeup smeared, her mouth a rictus of terror.

  The main selfie camera panned to the man and he held a finger to his lips, then said something. Slowly, she moved the phone to her ear, not wanting to let it get too close to her, but knowing she had no choice. When it was within six inches, she heard the man speak.

  “Lose the wolf. All the wolves. Or she dies in front of you.”

  Oh, good God, that voice, it made her physically ill. And what did his words mean? How could she lose any of them? She looked around frantically, realizing if she went down the stairs, Trent and Troy would wake up immediately. They slept a lot lighter than Trevor did.

  She tiptoed out the door, not daring to pull it shut behind her, all the way to the room on the other end of the hall. She went into the bathroom there and cowered in the very back corner, then turned the phone to her face again. The man was there. She held the phone up to her ear.

  “Very good. Meet me at your house. One hour on the dot. Any shiften follow you or even know about it and your sister’s blood will forever stain the nice carpet in your entryway.”

  “Wait!” Ella whispered fiercely. “I have no way to get to my house! I don’t drive.”

  “Tell me where you are. I will come to you.”

  Ella considered, her throat squeezing off any air she might have been able to pull into her lungs. If he came to this big house, surely Trevor and Troy and Trent were a match for him. And there were more shiften in the driveway. But what if they couldn’t? What if someone got hurt? Plus he would always know where Trevor lived after that. She bit her lip drawing blood. She had no idea of his limitations. Did he even know where
she was? No, he couldn’t, or he wouldn’t be asking. She couldn’t bring him here.

  “I can be at the stone cat on the west end of Serenity in twenty minutes,” she finally said. “You’ll let my sister go?”

  “Of course, that’s how this works, isn’t it?”

  The phone went dead.

  Ella curled a hand around her lower belly and wondered if she really was going to go to him.

  Did she have a choice? Her sister might not treat her well. Her text the night before saying she was back in town had been less than kind, but her sister was still all she had left of the family she had been born into. And Shay was still a human being.

  Right?

  ***

  Ella ran down the road in her sneakers as fast as she could. The twenty minute deadline had come and gone. It had taken her almost ten of it to figure out how to get out of the house and off the property without anyone seeing her. Finally she had climbed onto an overhang on the roof and slid down a tree, tearing her pants in two places, then ran through the farmland and woods back towards the main road. Once she found it, she turned left and ran for her sister’s life.

  Ahead, she saw the stone statue of the big cat guarding the entrance to Serenity. The three statues on the three major roads into town made more sense to her now. The red wolf, the stone cat, and the growling bear. There was so much she still didn’t know about the area though. Were there shiften only in Serenity? Or everywhere? Would she live long enough to find out?

  She had to believe Trevor would come for her. Somehow. If she could just hold on─

  A rip in the world appeared in front of her and before she could even slow her steps, she ran right into it, tumbling down three feet, landing on a cracked, hard ground that hadn’t existed a second before. She hit the ground hard, rolling, seeing fire spurt out of the dirt in front of her, and putting her feet out to stop her forward momentum. Her feet slid right into the fire and her pants blazed almost instantly. She stood and beat it out with her hands, then remained bent like that, breathing hard, not daring to look around.