by Sara M Zerig
The warlocks climbed the steps back to the townhome steadily, aware they could not see who was watching from other units or the park across the street. Aaron closed the door behind them and pulled the scrying mirror out of his pocket. This was not how the report to his father was supposed to go.
Cara was sitting at the polished dark wood vanity, securing an earring, when her husband walked in. Having taught all day at the school for healers, she was freshly showered and changed and readying herself for her next meeting with Chloe. She caught Aidan’s gaze through the mirror.
“Delia is coming with me tonight. The shifters have told Chloe about her. I think it will be good for her to meet—”
“We have a problem with Nikki,” Aidan interrupted.
Cara turned from the mirror. “Who?”
“Chloe’s human roommate. She pepper-sprayed Aaron and Will and drove away.”
Cara pushed back from her vanity and stood. “Pepper-sprayed? How is that possible?”
“There was something about the photograph she did not believe, and she caught them off guard.”
Cara thought a moment. “Where are the photograph and parchment now? Did she take them with her when she left?”
“I do not know. Why?”
“Perhaps Abby can locate the parchment, since it has been recently spelled?”
“Perhaps. If you work with Abby, I will work with Aaron and Will.” Aidan added under his breath, “They clearly need guidance.”
Chapter Twenty
It was a beautiful dream set in the Shifter Realm desert. Ritt was happy and free to shift whenever he wanted. Kimi was there too, free of her past and in love. Chloe’s heart leapt in her chest as she saw that her mate and his mother were right where they belonged. And then it occurred to her … she didn’t belong here.
Chloe awoke to a heat cramp in her stomach. She had slept through most of the day again. The heat of the Shifter Realm was like an energy vampire. Is this how she would spend her days? Hiding from the heat in a cave?
She reached for the water skin beside the bed and attempted to quench her thirst. It did not seem to matter how much water she drank throughout the day; Chloe still felt parched. She stood from the bed and patted at the dead cell phone in the pocket of her shifter dress, telling herself she would be able to call Nikki and her parents soon.
The muted voices of the others from the dining area drew her out. The shifters were still talking about the hunt. Bathed and changed, they all looked far better than Chloe felt. Stevie had left her blonde and black ringlets down, spilling to the waistline of her white dress. Pali wore a black strapless outfit with her golden waves pulled up atop her head. Chloe looked down at her now rumpled blue dress. She probably should have taken a bath and changed before coming out.
Ritt came to her side. “Are you sure you’re up for this? I can bring food to you.”
“I think I’m just dehydrated. I hate to be so much trouble.”
Ritt walked her to the chair beside his. Pali handed her a steaming wooden bowl of what Chloe guessed to be antelope stew. “You must be hungry.”
Famished. Chloe took the bowl gratefully and caught sight of a thick scar at the base of Pali’s neck, much like the one she’d noticed on Stevie the day they had arrived. She looked away, attempting to hide her surprise.
“Something wrong?” Pali asked.
“Markings,” Stevie said knowingly. “Not used to them.”
“No?” Pali inclined her head toward Ritt. “But you’ve marked her. It is faint, but I can smell it.”
Stevie and Pali scanned her from head to toe. Ritt paused with his spoon midair, not following. It occurred to Chloe that neither Ritt nor Kimi had seen Stevie’s scar under her long hair.
“The base of the neck,” Kimi advised. “But, you still wouldn’t see it unless you looked close. It heals up to just a few puncture marks.”
The pair of Shifter Realm females were astonished.
“Why?” Kimi asked. “How do you—”
Stevie flipped her hair behind her marred shoulder, revealing her mark to Kimi for the first time. Kimi looked from Pali’s thick scar to Stevie’s and then back again. She paled, shrinking from Dane’s side.
“Kimi?” Dane reached for her, but Kimi dodged him, hopping to her feet and pacing back.
“This is how you mark your mates?” Kimi’s voice quaked with a mix of fear and indignation.
Chloe was struck with a deep pang of empathy for Kimi. She could feel Ritt tensing beside her. A vision of his cat form, crouched and ready to pounce, sprang to mind.
Dane, of course, didn’t understand. “It’s just a marking.”
“No.” Kimi pointed to Chloe, saying, “That’s a marking.” Then she pointed back to Pali. “That’s a mauling.”
“Kimi, no, it really is not that bad,” Pali rushed to assure her. “We are proud of our mating ritual and the scar it leaves. But, you could leave your hair down if you wish.”
Kimi ignored Pali. Wide chocolate eyes implored Dane to say something, anything, that would reassure her. But Dane didn’t see that.
“This is the marking ritual of our realm,” he said in that authoritative tone of his. “We cannot be mated without it.”
“Then we cannot be mated,” Kimi replied firmly, turning away from him.
In a flash, Dane leapt before her to block her exit from the cave. The quickness startled Chloe. How could he move so fast, as big as he was? Ritt strode to his mother’s side. “She’s made her decision.”
Chloe caught the flex of Dane’s jaw as Colton and Lok moved to stand behind Dane in a show of support. Chloe panicked. Dane wasn’t going to let his mate walk away and he and his family were prepared to fight Ritt to prove it. Chloe stood, but Stevie grabbed her, whispering, “Never interfere.”
The she-wolf was too strong. Chloe couldn’t shake free, but she had to stop this. She had to reach them. If only she could get Dane alone and explain.
“Brother, this is a matter between mates,” Colton warned.
“You’re not my brother, and they’re not formally mated,” Ritt replied coolly. The other shifters were easily a foot taller than he, but Ritt wasn’t backing down. He wouldn’t, Chloe knew, not when it came to his mother. Kimi was shaking, her eyes glued to Dane’s in a kind of frozen horror.
Nails began to elongate on both sides, and Chloe realized, if they fought, it would be in either partly or fully shifted forms. She closed her eyes and willed her panic to subside. She blocked out the rush of adrenaline in the shifter males, Kimi’s crippling fear, and the tense anticipation of the other shifter females. She reached beyond all of it and knew what she had to do.
Chloe opened her eyes and called out, “Wait! Dane!”
Dane looked past Kimi and Ritt to where Stevie had a hold of her.
“There’s something you don’t know.”
Kimi spun to face Chloe. “Don’t. You. Dare.”
Chloe spoke only to Dane. “Just hear me out. If it doesn’t change anything, then you can all tear each other apart, but hear me out first.”
Intrigued, Dane moved toward her. Kimi hollered with a stomp of her foot, “No!”
Ritt was saying something, asking Chloe and his mother what was going on. But Chloe was hyper-focused on Dane and Kimi and what needed to be done. This had to work.
“No, no, no!” Kimi shouted, pushing both hands into her mate’s abdomen in an ineffective attempt to keep him from reaching Chloe. Her feet slid against the smooth rock beneath them as Dane continued easily.
Stevie released her grip on Chloe when Dane reached them. Kimi hissed at her, “If you tell him, I will never forgive you.”
“I won’t tell him,” Chloe promised, taking hold of Kimi’s wrist. “You will.”
With Kimi’s wrist in one hand and one palm flat on Dane’s chest, Chloe closed her eyes in concentration and tapped into Kimi’s memory. Acting as a conduit between Kimi and Dane, Chloe revealed what Kimi couldn’t, forcing the immutable shifter to understand. The
cruel past coursed through Chloe with an intensity tenfold of what she had experienced the first time.
The evil details were sharper. The pain was suffocating. He bashed her head into a boulder and shred her clothes from her body, his claws tearing into her flesh. She tried to fend him off, but he snapped her wrist with one hand like a toothpick. He laughed mockingly at her screams; no one could hear her from the remote location. Hopelessness overtook her. She was too small, too young. She was nowhere near strong enough to fight this shifter, and they both knew it.
Tears streamed down the sides of Chloe’s face unchecked. She vaguely sensed Ritt’s presence near her and abruptly let go of Kimi and Dane, not wanting Ritt to know. Not like this.
Dane and Kimi stumbled back from her, reeling. A loud growl erupted from Dane as he shifted instantly from large man to massive wolf, his linen pants shredding off. The wolf turned haunted dark eyes to Kimi before letting out a heart-wrenching howl to the sky and sprinting out of the cave.
The others gawked at Chloe; apprehension filled the air. She was in no shape to address them. Violently trembling, Chloe’s skin felt prickly and numbed at once. Her head throbbed, and the tears continued to pour. She couldn’t stop them.
The usually controlled Kimi was lost. “Where did he go?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ritt said. “He’s gone.”
“It matters to me,” Kimi quipped, asking Lok, “Where would he go?”
“For a run, probably,” Lok said, eyeing Chloe. “Something has upset him greatly.”
Despair washed over Kimi’s face. She spared Chloe the briefest of glances and stalked out. Ritt called after her.
“Let it be, Ritt,” Kimi called back.
Ritt turned questioning eyes to Chloe. He needed an explanation, but she couldn’t give him one. The emotions clung to her like residue of the vision that had poured through her: terror, desperation, hopelessness.
Pali handed a large bowl of stew wrapped in cloth and two spoons to Ritt. “Take this to your room. We’ll watch for your mother and Dane.”
“Thank you,” Ritt managed, pulling Chloe alongside him.
Chapter Twenty-One
Chloe sat on the bed, rubbing at her temples with numbed fingers.
“What is going on?” When she didn’t answer, Ritt snapped again, “What the fuck is going on?!”
She recoiled from the anger that leapt from Ritt like another assault on her already traumatized senses. Forcing her painfully chapped lips to move, she said, “Can’t tell.”
“You can’t tell me? You’re my mate. There are no secrets between us.”
“Not mine.”
“My mom’s? She told you …?” Ritt straightened as he put it all together. “No, she didn’t tell you anything. You saw it. And you’ve known it since you met her.”
“Just go,” she told him. “Go find her.”
Ritt was too angry to see her physical distress, and that anger was only making things worse for Chloe. The numbness of her skin was turning to a dull ache all over. The tears all but burned the sides of her face.
“Chloe,” he growled her name through gritted teeth, exasperated.
“Go,” Chloe repeated, dropping her aching head to her hands. She couldn’t ease his anger, and she couldn’t be near it either.
Chloe heard him walk out of the room; she did not pick up her head to watch him leave. Her stomach turned suddenly, and she stumbled to the bathroom. Her belly gurgled and churned, but there was nothing in it to toss up. She wasn’t sure how much time passed while her body heaved pointlessly over the toilet—an hour or so, maybe. Then the nausea lessened, and a kind of claustrophobia took hold.
She wasn’t getting better, wasn’t able to move on from the vision. She needed to get out of the cave. Her lungs needed fresh air.
Making her way down the stone corridor, Chloe scanned the adjoining hall from the shadows. She could hear their hosts arguing from their room and wondered if she’d been the cause of that, too. Then she caught the muffled sound of Kimi’s voice closer by. She leaned in toward the corridor to Kimi’s room, trying to make out the other voice within. It was Ritt.
“Who was he?”
So, Kimi had given in and told him after all. Maybe she had been prepared for this day, even while hoping it would never come. Chloe knew eavesdropping was wrong, and she didn’t need the added emotion from this conversation but couldn’t seem to tear herself away.
“He was no one. A soulless, evil shifter who had been cast out of his own family and was looking for a safe haven in ours.”
“And he’s dead now?” Ritt asked hollowly. “Kent?”
Chloe didn’t hear her reply. She suspected Kimi had confirmed non-verbally that Kent had been the one to kill her rapist. Silence.
“And Chloe has known for days,” Ritt said finally. The disgust in his voice nearly brought her to her knees. The churning of her stomach intensified again, but Chloe didn’t run back to the bathroom. She headed to the exit.
Chloe made a quick and silent retreat on shaky legs from Colton and Stevie’s cave. The open air helped. Winding down the interior wall took forever. She heard the faint voices of families in their homes, but no one was disturbed by her descent.
It wasn’t hard to find her way across the vacant marketplace, despite the blurred vision of her aching eyes. Few shifters were about, all in their animal forms, but they either didn’t notice her or didn’t care. Her steps quickened toward the low glow of the tunneled exit.
The tunnel was empty. Chloe stumbled a few times but never fell, determined to make it out. No one was chasing her, but there was an urgency propelling her on, as if the only cure to her ailment was space between her and the dwelling.
Winds were fierce outside the wall—warm, but her body shivered against them. She pushed forward with no clear direction other than away until the dwelling wall was small in the distance behind her. The dark emotions of Kimi’s vision were fading now, but the adrenaline that had gotten her this far was also waning. She was dehydrated and weak from hunger.
Chloe dropped to the ground and felt a jab in her sternum. She pulled at the silver disc on her necklace. “Cara?”
“Hellooo? Cara?”
Delia Kincade let herself in through the unlocked front doors of the palatial St. Cyr residence when there was no answer. She was certain she was on time. Her search of the extensive main floor turned up no one. She moved to the grand staircase, the dark wood steps curving up and away from the white marble floors below.
Delia had dressed for the visit in a deep green gown made of the finest silk and pinned her hair in a twist. When Cara asked Delia to meet her long-lost daughter in the Shifter Realm, Delia was more than flattered. She was honored. At twenty-three, she was the oldest witch in Coven history to have not discovered her talent, so there was not often occasion to feel honored.
Sure, she was well-known for her designs, but in a world where magic was everything, she was nearly magicless. She knew all the basic spells and could transfer, but that was about it. No seer or healer abilities had emerged, and her lack of witch’s talent was only magnified by the fact that her brother was the epitome of a protector by Coven standards: strong, handsome, charming, and loyal to the Coven Council.
Being the Coven outcast had worked in Delia’s favor, though. Witches and warlocks put in countless hours to develop their talent, and once the talent matured, the Coven Council determined what they would do with it. While her brother and others were enlisted to assist in community projects and inter-realm missions, Delia was pretty much left to her own devices. Basically, being “talentless” equaled freedom.
Delia loved her home realm, and she loved her clan. They were her family. But she also loved freedom. She enjoyed meeting new people in other realms. All told, she had more friends outside her home realm than she had in it.
Delia knocked at the doors and peeked inside the upstairs rooms as she went. Each room was furnished with a bedroom set and appointed with thick
white carpet, dark wood finishes and glass doors that led to a stone balcony. Each balcony had a view of the river that wound around the St. Cyr’s property and cut through this end of the Northern Forest. The river ran behind Delia’s residence too, a short walk down the cobblestone path from here.
It was a shame that so many rooms of the St. Cyr home went uninhabited. Aidan and Cara had once wanted a large family. After Cara miscarried—or thought she had miscarried—they had decided not to have more children. The estate went mostly unused, except for the rare occasion when the St. Cyrs’ hosted guests from other clans.
A remote noise came from the only upstairs room Delia had not checked. She hesitated before the double doors at the end of the hallway, knowing it must be the master suite and not sure she should invade the privacy of her clan’s leader. But a desperate cry drew her in.
The massive suite was capped by an all glass back wall of windows and doors that led to the balcony. The plush carpet was ultra-soft under Delia’s bare feet, but she did not pause to appreciate it. Thick covers made from a silvery velvet blanketed the four-poster bed carved from dark wood; a sheer silken canopy was draped atop the bed posts. Delia stepped gingerly past the bed, seeking the source of the call for help—Cara’s scrying necklace lying on a vanity.
“Cara! Cara!” The voice was raw and cracking, warring with the sound of wind. “Cara! … Mom!”
Chloe … Delia palmed the necklace and closed her eyes, transferring to the site of the call. She arrived in the middle of a shifter desert, about a mile outside of a dwelling, in the dead of night. Chloe sat on the ground alone, wearing a rumpled shifter dress. Her bare knees were drawn up to her chest. She was injured, but Delia was unsure how. Delia crouched beside her.
“Stars, Chloe” Delia exclaimed. “What happened to you?”
“Cara?” Chloe pressed.
“She left her necklace, and I heard your call.” Delia lifted the back of her hand to Chloe’s forehead. “You are not well. You need a healer.”