Into the Light

by Tami Lund

  Leah’s phone chimed, and she pulled it out of her purse. She read a text message and then frowned. “My dad wants to see me.”

  Chuck was both relieved and disappointed. He desperately wanted to fuck her right now, but at least if she left to go see her father, he knew Duane wouldn’t have a chance to get to her. Once she was out the door, he would kick Duane out, send him back to Wyoming—or to hell, he didn’t care either way.

  Then when Leah returned—because he knew damn well she would—he would be alone in the apartment, and they could do whatever the hell they wanted. Even mate, if that’s what she wanted. As hot as she was at the moment, and the way Duane was drooling into her cleavage—Chuck figured he’d do anything she asked him to, so long as he got to fuck her again.

  A minute later, her phone rang, and she answered it. She talked briefly and then pressed a button on the screen to disconnect the call. “That was Andy,” she said as she stood up and faced Chuck and Duane. “He says that guy we met at the grocery store is back, and he’s at my dad’s house.”

  Duane looked at Chuck. “Tanner?”

  Chuck shrugged. He wasn’t giving this asshole a damn thing, not anymore.

  Duane turned to Leah and grabbed her arm, squeezing until she protested. “Is it Tanner?”

  “Ow,” she complained as she tried to pull her arm out of his grip. “I don’t know. He didn’t introduce himself. Let me go.”

  “It’s him,” Duane said. There was a wild look in his eye. “I know it is. Why else would you be getting a call? Take me to him,” he demanded.

  Leah tried to push him away. “No. Let go.” She struggled, but Duane was stronger, and Leah obviously hadn’t been expecting such rough treatment. Chuck had seen her kick enough shifters’ asses to know she could hold her own, normally. But within seconds, Duane had her arm twisted behind her back until she cried out again and stopped struggling, lest he break her appendage.

  “You’re taking me with you,” he said in a deadly calm voice. “I want to see for myself if it’s Tanner. I’m going to be the one to bring that Lightbearer back to my pack. You hear me?”

  Chuck watched as Leah blinked back tears and gave him a look that made him feel guilty as hell. He knew he could take Duane, especially since Duane seemed confident that he wasn’t going to do anything. But the thing was ... Chuck believed now, too. He had seen the Lightbearer with his own eyes.

  And if anyone was going to take the Lightbearer to the pack master out west, it sure as hell wasn’t Duane. Chuck knew he’d done the right thing that first night, when he’d copied a bunch of phone numbers out of Duane’s phone, while the punk had been passed out cold.

  Chuck scrambled to his feet. “I’ll drive,” he said, and he refused to look at Leah, who he knew was giving him a murderous look, because he could practically feel it.

  * * * *

  Rick Pantera introduced Tanner to his son. “That’s not the name you wrote down when you gave me your number at the grocery store,” Andy commented as he shook Tanner’s hand.

  “For obvious reasons, I was trying to keep my identity secret.”

  “I heard you left your pack ten years ago, because you and the pack master didn’t see eye to eye.”

  Andy really was as sharp as Tanner had suspected two weeks ago.

  “I did. The pack master is my father. I am his only legitimate heir, but I don’t hold to his beliefs about the Lightbearers, and I refused to accept that my legacy was to carry on his obsession.”

  “But the Lightbearers exist,” Andy said. “And you’re glowing.”

  Tanner nodded. “I’ve spent time in their coterie,” he said, watching Andy’s reaction. The young man appeared surprised and impressed, but not ... greedy or eager. He hadn’t really believed Andy was the one who gave him up, but Tanner never went into any situation blindly, if he could help it.

  “My father believes you can inherit their magic by killing them, but I believe killing them kills their magic too.”

  “So how do you inherit their magic?”

  The kid was definitely sharp.

  “You don’t,” Tanner replied. He lifted his hand, and all three shifters watched as his skin glittered in the sunlight shining through the window. “This is residual, from being in the coterie. It’ll wear off in a few days.”

  In truth, the glow had become more and more long-lasting, with each time he bedded Olivia. And since they’d mated—at least, by shifter law—it had yet to recede at all. But that was none of these shifters’ business.

  “Where is your sister?” Rick asked his son.

  Andy scowled. “She was with Chuck, but she’s on her way here.”

  Rick’s scowl matched his son’s. Clearly, neither male approved of Leah’s crush.

  They made small talk while they waited. Andy and Rick asked questions about life within the coterie, and Tanner answered carefully, being sure to give away nothing that might give either man any ideas. Through it all, neither Andy nor Rick gave any indication that they might change their stance on Lightbearers.

  By the time Leah made her appearance, Tanner was reasonably confident he could trust both men. Which was a good thing, considering what happened when she walked into the room.

  * * * *

  Tanner recognized Duane at almost the same moment Duane recognized him.

  “Fuck me, I found you,” Duane blurted, and he gave Leah a shove, sending her staggering into the room, as he pulled a phone out of his pocket and urgently began tapping on the screen.

  Tanner caught Leah and passed her off to her brother, and then he and Rick both lunged for Duane. The kid hit the floor hard and lost his grip on his phone, which went skidding across the wood floor until it smashed into the wall in the hallway.

  Tanner caught sight of Chuck out of the corner of his eye. When he looked up, Chuck had a phone in his hand and was tapping the screen just as urgently as Duane had been a moment earlier.

  “It was him,” Tanner called out.

  Rick looked up sharply and Chuck punched him. Andy pushed Leah into a chair and then hurled himself across the room, shifting into a panther as he did so. Chuck screamed when Andy attacked him. His phone hit the floor a scant second before he did. The screen cracked and went blank, and Chuck lifted his arms and cried mercy, while the pack master’s son put him in his place. Leah sat there and watched with a detached look on her face.

  And Tanner hoped like hell neither of those calls had gone through.

  Chapter 25

  Quentin Lyons was not a happy shifter. Precious little was right in his world, and his anger and frustration were so great at the moment that the energetic and creative human female who had been warming his bed for several weeks now could not even manage to excite him. He stood, staring out the window in the great room of his manor home, while the human woman knelt on the floor in front of him and tried to get his limp cock to harden under her ministrations.

  He was getting old. Ten, twenty years ago, he would not have let his troubles interfere with his own personal pleasure. In fact, he used to use sex as a means to alleviate the stress of managing the largest pack of shifters on the continent. To alleviate the stress of seeking the Lightbearers because he knew—he knew—they still existed. All he needed was one, and his damned son had taken her away from him.

  Disgusted with himself, Quentin grabbed the woman by the hair and pulled her away. He tucked his still-limp cock back into his pants and turned his back on the woman.

  “Go.”

  “But— ” He cut her off with a menacing growl.

  “Go, before I take out my anger on you.”

  She scrambled to her feet and fled the room, and Quentin thought, I am getting old. Now I’m giving them warning before I abuse them.

  But his heart wasn’t in it. The one he wanted to abuse was his son. The one he wanted to kill was the Lightbearer he’d made off with, more than two weeks prior.

  Quentin had clearly underestimated his son. All these years, he thought Tanne
r was just being stubborn—a trait he inherited honestly. He claimed he didn’t believe Quentin’s assurance that Lightbearers were very much alive and that someday, Quentin would capture one, and inherit it’s magic.

  All this time, Tanner had been hunting the Lightbearers himself, and had been significantly more successful than Quentin ever had been. He would never forget that sense of shock and excitement when he and his guards and trackers cornered Tanner in that parking structure in Vegas—only to realize he had three Lightbearers, not one.

  Three.

  Quentin shook with barely suppressed rage and jealousy. Jealousy over his own son, the one who had all but betrayed him when he left the pack ten years ago. Instead of trying to get away from Quentin and his beliefs, Tanner had been on his own hunt. And he’d found three Lightbearers.

  Quentin had been so furious when they returned from Vegas—injured, limping, and wholly unsuccessful, that he’d taken out his wrath on the very ones he’d handpicked to go with him in the first place. It was their fault. He’d chosen them for a reason and they’d failed.

  Damn it. Damn his son.

  He couldn’t even turn to the boy’s mother to take out his frustration on her, as he’d tended to do over the years. She had disappeared too, and Quentin was certain she was with Tanner. The damned shifter was forming his own pack, slowly but surely, probably with the intention of toppling Quentin the old fashioned way, instead of just inheriting the pack like he was supposed to. That irked, because he knew he could never defeat Tanner in hand-to-hand combat. Not anymore. His son was as strong as Quentin had once been, when he was in his prime, and unfortunately, Quentin was quite a few years past prime at this point.

  Damn it to hell. There had to be another way. He had to get to Tanner, kill those Lightbearers, and then kill his own son.

  There were plenty of other shifters in the pack who would suffice as pack master. It pissed off Quentin that his own damned progeny wouldn’t do it, but he knew now that he had to get over it. Even though he’d never once acknowledged any of them, Quentin wasn’t stupid. He’d spread his seed far and wide within the pack and even amongst the nearby human whorehouses. There were plenty of illegitimate offspring around him. He just needed to figure out which one was the strongest. Which one would carry on his legacy, in the way he expected.

  His phone vibrated, and he walked over to where it lay on a nearby table. The name Duane glowed on the screen, which surprised Quentin. As far as he was aware, the entire group of shifters he sent to Iowa had been killed. Yet another strike against his damned son.

  He pushed the talk button but the call disconnected almost immediately. Frowning, Quentin placed the phone back onto the table and turned away. A minute later, his phone vibrated again, indicating he had a text message from an unknown number.

  He’s still in Iowa. I found him. Not Duane. He’s he

  Quentin stared at the garbled message on the screen, trying to decipher what it meant and who sent it. He did not recognize the number, but a quick Internet search indicated it was an Iowa number, owned by someone named Charles Bronson. A search within the private files he kept in his phone indicated there was a small shifter pack in central Iowa, run by a shifter named Rick Pantera. He made a couple of calls and learned that Charles Bronson was a shifter who went by the moniker Chuck, and that he belonged to Rick Pantera’s pack. After that, the facts began to come together, like pieces of an intriguing puzzle.

  When Duane came to him two weeks ago, bursting with excitement and swearing that Tanner and the Lightbearer were in Iowa, Quentin had patiently questioned him and learned that on one of his many scouting expeditions, Duane had ended up in a bar in Iowa, where he met a couple of shifters who promised to let him know if they ever came across a Lightbearer. And they’d come through for him.

  Considering that not a single one of his shifters had returned from the trip to Iowa two weeks ago, Quentin had determined two things: That they’d found Tanner, and that he was far more lethal than Quentin had initially believed. Either that or the Lightbearer’s magic really was as potent as he hoped.

  Now, he received a call from Duane, but no one was on the line. And that was followed immediately by a cryptic text message from the member of some other pack. Quentin grabbed his phone and replied to the text, but he received a message informing him that the text was undeliverable.

  Interesting. He bellowed for Larry, the shifter who was always hovering nearby, ready to do Quentin’s bidding. “Get Finnegan and the others who returned from Vegas,” he commanded. “It’s time for them to redeem themselves.”

  Finnegan had been injured by a sword, which Quentin had watched the male Lightbearer conjure from thin air. Despite his injuries, Quentin had beaten on him, just as he had the others he’d taken to Vegas, because it had been their fault the damn Lightbearers and Tanner had gotten away.

  Three times. Three Lightbearers. And soon, there would be three deaths, and Quentin would be three times stronger than anyone else in the entire world.

  Chapter 26

  “He’s gone.”

  “If he isn’t, he’s hiding awfully damn well. Of course, he’s a shifter, so I suppose that’s entirely possibly.”

  “He isn’t hiding.” Olivia was absolutely certain of it. Tanner flew away three days ago and hadn’t been heard from since.

  When he discovered that Tanner left, the king tried to banish Lisa, Ariana, and the pups from the coterie. But Genevieve absolutely refused to let her mate do it. She’d fallen utterly and completely in love with Lisa’s pups, and had spent the last three days showering them with attention as only a grandmother could.

  Despite this, Lisa gave Olivia the cold shoulder, clearly blaming her for the fact that Tanner left. Ariana gave her sympathetic looks whenever they crossed paths, and Olivia wasn’t sure which she hated more. Lisa’s anger often sparked her own, but Ariana’s sympathy simply made her feel guilty.

  Dane packed a small bag and moved into Olivia’s private chambers, much to her father’s delight. When Olivia initially refused to let him into her chamber, he said, “Be reasonable, Olivia. We need to keep up appearances for now. At least until we can figure out a way out of this mess.”

  She reluctantly let him into the suite, but she made him sleep on the settee.

  When her father tried to tease her about the night of the mating ceremony, she’d coldly informed him that if there was a babe growing in her belly, it was most certainly not Dane’s. He’d been so flustered by her comment that he’d choked on a grape and Dane had to quickly leap to his feet and pull on his healing magic to dislodge the offending fruit.

  The coterie was in a tizzy over the continued presence of the shifters. Lightbearers flocked to the beach house to look at them as if they were some sort of circus side show. Some were simply curious, others utterly fascinated. Some were frightened, others were repulsed, and petitioned the king to send them on their way anyway, innocent babes or not. For the first time in five hundred years, the coterie was divided, and the king was forced to deal with the fallout.

  “This is my fault,” Olivia bemoaned, as she and Cecilia sat on the balcony jutting from her bedchamber and soaked up the few rays of sunlight that were filtering through the clouds. Another storm was brewing over the lake, and the day seemed to be growing darker rather than lighter.

  “Well, if you want to get technical, it’s really my fault. I’m the one who convinced you to go to Vegas. Everything sort of started there, seems to me.”

  Olivia leaned her head against the lounge chair. “I don’t know how to fix this. My father is going out of his mind trying to keep the peace, my mother has planned so many parties, there aren’t enough days in the year. I’m half afraid Dane is going to decide to try to muddle through having sex with me, and Tanner’s mother swears she has no idea where he might have gone.”

  Cecilia giggled. “Muddle through? Who muddles through sex?”

  “Dane, apparently. At least that’s what he said when I tried to t
alk him out of this whole business.” Olivia’s tone was grim.

  “You do realize Dane has absolutely no backbone, right? And that your father is his king, so he will do whatever your father tells him to do.”

  Olivia lifted her head and then let it drop against the headrest again. “Which means he will be a lousy king.”

  “Which means you will really be the king, and Dane will be the figurehead.”

  “I do not want to be king. Or queen for that matter. And I most certainly do not want to be mated to Dane. I’m not even sure I technically am.”

  “Uncle Sander performed the mating ceremony. I was there. You are mated.”

  Olivia did not respond. Something in her non-response caused Cecilia to sit up straighter and peer at her. “What are you not telling me?” Cecilia asked suspiciously.

  Olivia slanted her gaze to the side and watched as the wind wreaked havoc with the rolling waves of the lake. After another few moments, she sighed.

  “I mated with Tanner. Just a few hours prior to the party, in fact.”

  “I should have known,” Cecilia gasped. “Every time I walked in on you, the two of you were assuming the position.” She paused and then with slyness in her voice asked, “Was it good?”

  Olivia blushed. “Far more enjoyable than our mating ceremonies, I can assure you.”

  Despite the current mood, both women shared a giggle over that comment.

  Cecilia turned contemplative. “I wonder what it means?” she mused. “By shifter law, you are mated to Tanner. By Lightbearer law, you are mated to Dane.”

  “Considering I am a Lightbearer and currently residing within the coterie, I imagine our law overrides the other.”

  “Perhaps not,” Cecilia commented. “Have you coupled with Dane yet?”

  Olivia made a strangled noise of disgust.

  “Since you’ve obviously coupled with Tanner, it seems to me that there is a way you could persuade your father that he is truly your mate.”