by Amelia Jade
Karlie shuddered softly in her sleep and leaned hard against him. He had succeeded, hadn’t he? Fighting the urges of his bear to reveal how he truly felt, to tell her what he kept buried inside, hadn’t been easy. But it had been the right thing to do.
And didn’t that just sum up Raphael of the Stone Bears oh so well. Mr. “Do The Right Thing.” Rarely was he critical of himself for his desire to see that side of himself through. He had never taken when he could have given. This was his hardest test yet though, and he vowed to himself then and there as he cradled her in his arms that he would do the right thing this time.
Which started with getting her to safety.
“Karlie,” he whispered softly into her ear.
She stirred, and a relaxed, happy look spread across her face as she subconsciously pulled his arm tighter around her torso. He fought down the fluttering of his heart and gave her a gentle shake while repeating her name. This time she moved a little, but he had to repeat himself a third time before her eyes began to blink.
“What?” she asked blearily. “I was having such a pleasant dream.”
The way her eyes fixated upon him as she said that sent a thrill through his system, but Raphael reminded himself of his promise to do this the right way. He had no time to get distracted, no matter how tempting it might be.
“It’s been half an hour,” he said gently. “We need to get going.”
“Party pooper,” she teased, sticking out her tongue. She continued to blink and he saw her coming awake.
“Says the one who passed out,” he replied, flashing her a smile. “Where are you going?” She was still stark naked, and he watched intently as she headed toward the river.
“Gonna have a rinse,” she told him with a wink, before slipping into the water with only a mild cry at the temperature.
He decided to do the same, and followed her in to get clean.
***
“Why are we stopping?”
He angled the kayak toward the shore, beaching it swiftly. It was dark out, the hour close to or past midnight at least. They had been letting the current do the work for them most of the day, moving swiftly along, easily outdistancing what their pursuers likely thought they were capable of. The river didn’t appear to be moving as quickly as it actually was.
“This is our stop, everybody out,” he commanded. Once she was free, he shoved the paddles back in and kicked the kayak back out into the river.
“Hey!” she protested, but he grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back.
“We’re here,” he said. “My car is just up the bank here, hidden in some bushes.”
“That was a nice kayak though,” she said sheepishly.
He laughed. “Yes, yes it was. But this way, they won’t know where we got out, and when they eventually find it far downriver, they’ll hopefully be thrown far off our trail. We’re outside the property now anyway, so we should have a good head start on them.”
She nodded in understanding and Raphael breathed a sigh of relief. He purposefully hadn’t mentioned that if Vincent was smart at all, he would have sent men ahead to screen the river—including any areas where the road ran near it, such as this one. While Raphael had purposefully picked not the first, nor the second, but actually the third occurrence of a road near the river, he was still shocked they hadn’t been found again.
The odds of that were heavily against them after they were located the first time. Something was wrong, and he wasn’t sure what.
Unless none of the shifters pursuing us radioed in to say that they had located us…
That seemed too good to be true, but if they were able to make it to the airport unimpeded, then maybe they had gotten a stroke of luck. It would certainly be appreciated, and Raphael intended to make as much use of it as possible.
The drive to the airport itself passed mostly in silence. Now that she no longer had to watch ahead of them, Karlie had fallen into a deep sleep. Raphael was rather jealous, feeling the strings of sleep pull at him once more.
The blinding glare of headlights behind them changed that instantly.
“Wake up,” he snapped, punching the accelerator to the floor.
The big-block V8 roared with delight, the snarl of its power thundering through the interior as the large vehicle shot forward, picking up speed quickly. His eyes narrowed as the pursuing car fell back, then began to gain on them once again.
He realized they were at an impasse. The smaller vehicle couldn’t hope to stop them, but Karlie and he couldn’t hope to outrun them.
“How the hell did they find us so quickly?” his passenger asked, fully awake now as she looked out the rear window.
“They were probably watching the roads,” he said grimly, wrenching the steering wheel through a wide turn as the road meandered through the countryside. “Unfortunately there aren’t that many out here, and they had to know we’d make for the city eventually. It was just our luck that they happened to pick this one.”
The car behind them slammed into their rear fender, jolting both the occupants forward and throwing a slight wobble into the vehicle’s trajectory. Raphael expertly regained control.
“They can’t seriously think that little thing can stop us, can they?” he muttered. “Hold on, this is going to be rough,” he told her, waiting until Karlie braced herself.
Then he took his foot off the gas and slammed both feet down on the brakes as hard as he could.
Tires screeched and the smell of burning rubber ripped through the cabin a split second before they found themselves flung forward and tossed around like nothing as the speeding car slammed into their rear end. The noise was tremendous. Ripping, twisting metal screeched with ear-shattering sound while glass exploded and shards made a musical tune as they ricocheted off various surfaces.
“Are you okay?” he croaked a moment later.
Karlie nodded, though she looked to be in pain. “Ow,” she managed to get out.
He punched the accelerator once again. The back of their vehicle was destroyed, but it was nothing compared to the absolute devastation that had been wreaked on their followers.
“Don’t look back,” he said as her head began to turn. “Just trust me, you don’t want to see that.”
The front of the little white car was gone. Just gone. The engine had been pushed back inside the cab of the vehicle, inflicting instant death on the two occupants. The mangled, ruined corpses were not something he wanted her to see, and his hand shot out to force her head to the front as she tried to look back once again.
“Just trust me,” he said grimly. “Some things in life you’re better off without a memory of.”
Her eyes shot to him as he worked his jaw, trying to put his own memory of it aside for the moment. He needed to get them to the airport. That was their priority. Raphael took a deep breath, ignoring the shudders going through his body. He’d seen death before, many times. Far more than he had ever wished to, but it was something he had accepted in his role as a Stone Bear. He had been tasked to watch over his home. Genesis Valley was a rough place, and the humans who lived there were at a distinct disadvantage compared to the shifters who they shared the land with.
They needed help, and that was part of the reason behind the creation of the Stone Bear program. Raphael had been the first to volunteer, wanting to atone for mistakes in his past, and to help prove to the world that the shifter race wasn’t all evil.
It had been tough ever since the worldwide revelation of the existence of shifters. The “Outing” as it had become known had taken place almost two decades earlier, when technology had meant they were bound to be discovered sooner or later. So the elders of many various shifter groups had come together to reveal themselves to the world at large.
Not all of humanity had taken it well. Many had considered them abominations before God or signs of the devil, and all sorts of other labels of evil had been assigned to them. Entire groups of humans had formed to hunt down shifters.
Ma
ny of them had met with unfortunate ends, as they discovered just how outmatched they were by shifters. The prejudice with which said groups—still—operated had created a lot of backlash in a shifter community already dealing with numerous hardships.
Which was why when a dragon like Luthor promised them revenge, he’d found no shortage of signups to his cause.
“Are you okay?” Karlie asked softly, her hand reaching out to rest upon his.
“I’m good at killing. I’m better at it than most others, and have trained my entire adult life to be better at it. I’ve done it many times.”
He looked over at her. “And each time I do it, I feel as if I’m losing a piece of myself, as if I’m descending further into a madness from which I cannot escape. I hate it. I detest myself for doing it, even when I know I will never hesitate to do it if it becomes necessary.”
Raphael shuddered, meeting her eyes briefly before glancing back at the road. “Am I evil?” he whispered.
“No, of course not,” she said immediately, full of conviction. “You do not seek death. It is not something you wake up and decide to do that day. You strike me as one who would never raise their hand against a human, and who only ends a shifter when given no alternative.”
She pointed behind them. “Those men would not have hesitated to end you, and they may very well have done the same to me by the time they were done. You may have ended them, but you saved me,” she said, her voice growing quiet. “And for that, I am very thankful.”
Her hand gripped his tightly while she stared at him. He looked over at her as much as he could, wishing he could just stare into her hazel eyes for eternity.
Unfortunately it is she, not you, who will live for an eternity. That is why you cannot allow yourself to fall for her. Your desires do not match up with reality.
***
He kept wanting to look over at her again and again. Truthfully he wished to just stare. But he kept his eyes on the road, and in less than three hours they pulled up at the rental kiosk near the airport.
“How was your trip, sir?” the same, cheerful attendant asked as he walked up, obviously recognizing him.
Her look soured instantly as Karlie came out from around him. The two of them looked bedraggled as all hell, he knew, but she clearly sensed that Raphael was no longer “available,” if he had ever been so in the first place.
“Interesting,” he replied, pushing the key across the counter and leaving. “There’s some damage. However much it is, just bill it to my credit card,” he told her when she tried to get him to stay while she inspected it. He didn’t feel like answering any questions.
“Who was that?” Karlie asked neutrally.
Raphael quickly smothered any trace of the grin that had threatened to rip across his features. Was that jealousy he had detected in her voice? How did he answer?
“The same girl who happened to be here on my way in,” he explained. “She was grumpier than an old man with kids running across his lawn until she got a glance at me.”
He couldn’t help himself. He puffed up his chest and strutted like a peacock for a few strides. “I mean, who can blame her?”
Karlie began to snicker behind the hand she used to cover her mouth, giving him a long exaggerated roll of her eyes.
“Okay hot stuff, where to now?” she pressed, gesturing at the departing flight list.
“First available flight, regardless of destination,” he said without hesitation, ignoring her joke, though he did try not to sound too serious. He kind of liked this side of Karlie, not that he would ever say so. If he admitted to it, he would likely never see it again. Especially the part where she got jealous of someone else. That had been a boost to his ego, regardless of what he knew must be the final outcome between him and Karlie.
“I need to go to the restroom,” she said after they finished purchasing their tickets.
He didn’t let go of her hand at first, reluctant to let her out of his sight.
“We’re in a public place,” she admonished him. “I’ll be just fine.”
He frowned. It may be public, but it was also four in the morning. There were not many souls currently around. Still, he didn’t immediately sense any danger. “Okay, our departure area is that way,” he pointed. “Gate Twelve. I’m going to check it out. Meet me up there.”
She nodded and headed off for the signs indicating restrooms. Raphael rolled his shoulders repeatedly, trying to force himself to relax.
Gate Twelve was empty except for a man sleeping on the chairs, who looked like he had been there for some time. A lonely-looking airline employee was standing at the podium near the boarding door.
“Morning,” he said as cheerfully as he could manage, the pair exchanging rueful grins at being there that early.
“What can I do for you?”
“I was just wondering roughly how long until the plane starts boarding? I don’t want to be pushy, I just want to make sure we’re here when it does.”
“Another ten to fifteen minutes,” the man said. “We’ll do an announcement, so if you’re anywhere in the vicinity you should hear it.”
“Thank you, I appreciate that,” Raphael said, finding a seat to wait.
His eyes instantly began to droop as his adrenaline faded, and the lack of rest over the past few days took its toll on him.
“World Airlines Flight 83, now boarding at Gate Twelve.”
Raphael blinked his eyes as the words filtered through. That hadn’t taken very long at all, he thought, glancing at his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed.
He had fallen asleep! Frantically he looked around, trying to find Karlie.
What was taking her so long?
Chapter Eight
Karlie
She wasn’t even in the restroom yet, and her relief at being able to use real indoor plumbing once again was so palpable she could almost see it. Karlie had never been one for roughing it in the outdoors, and the past day and a half had more than pushed her to her limits.
Even if it was a public restroom, it looked like heaven to her. As did the privacy. Ever since the storm, Karlie had been in close proximity to Raphael, invading each other’s space. It had been a necessary byproduct of their escape, and it had even led to an intimate experience between the two of them. She regretted none of it, nor did she hold any grudge against him, despite the constant interaction.
But that didn’t mean she was unable to appreciate the freedom of just relaxing with no one around.
As if on cue, the click of heels on tile told her she was about to lose even this little shred of privacy. She was washing her face when the other woman came in. A quick glance told her the other woman was wearing hard-soled flats, not heels like she had first suspected. The pair exchanged an awkward smile and nod as the other woman approached the sink and mirror as well.
Karlie finished washing her face and patted herself down with some paper towels.
“Ahh,” she said, taking a deep, refreshing breath.
And stiffened as a scent wafted through her nose.
Shifter.
Karlie tried to keep her body language relaxed and natural, hoping that her sudden pause hadn’t been noticed. There was nobody else in the room besides the other woman. But now that the water was gone from her face, she could clearly pick up the smell of a shifter.
That left either someone very stinky on the far side of the door, or it meant the woman in the restroom with her was also a shifter. Could she just be someone else traveling through? The odds of that were rather…slim, Karlie knew. Still, it was possible.
“Late night or early morning?” she asked politely, continuing to towel her face dry as best she could.
“Early morning,” the other woman replied. “You know how work can be. ‘We need you to take care of something right away,’ that kind of bullshit.”
Karlie smiled. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Sometimes you just want be done with them, but you can never truly escape it.”
“No, you
can’t,” the other woman said, her voice suddenly changing.
Karlie started to drop into a defensive stance, but it was too late. The other woman had abandoned her pose at the counter and was already almost on top of her. The pair went crashing backward into the end-wall of a line of stalls, the flimsy metal bending under their impact, though it didn’t break.
“Just come with me,” the woman said, each word punctuated with a gasp as she struggled to overpower Karlie.
“No,” she replied, throwing the woman off of her. Not for the first time she wished that all the powers her father and grandfather had were available to her. If they were, she could flick their finger and this woman would be on the ground in a broken heap.
But not for Karlie. She had to do it the old-fashioned way.
Her attacker rebounded from the sink and came flying back at Karlie. The pair grappled and fell to the floor, exchanging blows as they tried to get the upper hand on each other.
“This would be so much easier if you just let me do my job,” the other woman said as she rolled on top of Karlie.
Not wanting to waste energy on a response that time, Karlie got one leg between them and used her strength to throw the other shifter into one of the walls. A couple of tiles cracked under her impact, and Karlie rose to her feet, hoping to follow it up with another blow.
Her guard was down, however, as she focused on going on the attack, and the shifter hit her clear with a right hook. Karlie stumbled back, the low-slung sink taking out her legs, until she was sitting on the counter as the other woman closed in on her.