by Riley Storm
“Come on,” Alison said, stepping forward and grabbing one of his arms, while Chloe took the other. “To coffee!”
Liam tried to protest, but they dragged him along anyway. The lineup at this time of morning was short, and in just a few minutes they were back outside, but each of the women had a shifter-sized coffee mug in their hands. He watched as they drank, looking at one another, blinking, making faces. What were they saying?!
“I’m here too, you know,” he said when he could no longer take it. “But I don’t speak morse-blinking, so if you don’t mind using words? Verbal words…”
Alison spoke first. “You think Jennifer is your mate.” It wasn’t a question.
“The thought has started to cross my mind,” he admitted. “I…” he couldn’t finish he sentence. Admitting how he felt would be tantamount to admitting weakness.
“It was scary,” Chloe said softly. “Terrifying, to be truthful. To find someone you could not only trust, but trust implicitly, that’s scary on its own, Liam. What really freaked me out, was the speed with which Linden became that person. Within the span of a week, we went from saying hello, to knowing I never wanted another man in my life. Ever. That was the scary bit.”
Alison was nodding along to everything her friend said. “It happens quickly. Sort of without even knowing it. There’s no big moment where everything sort of reveals itself. More like one minute, you think you’re living your own life, the next the two of you are living a life together, and you couldn’t imagine it ever being any other way.”
“That does sound scary,” he admitted. “How did you do it, though? To trust someone like that…”
“Because I asked myself ‘what if this is real, and I don’t try it?” Chloe answered. Alison just nodded in agreement. “How badly would I regret that later in life? Yes, I might be hurt if I put myself out there and I’m wrong. But the hurt will heal. Regret, that can last a lifetime.”
Regret. That wasn’t something he’d thought of before. His focus had always been on if he trusted Jennifer, if he gave himself to her, what could go wrong. How badly it would hurt him, possibly even destroy him. Not once, however, had he considered the opposite.
What could happen if it goes right?
“Oh.” That was his only response.
“I know about what led you to come here,” Alison said softly. “How painful that must have been, Liam. I can’t imagine what you went through. But if you truly think this woman may be your mate, you have to try. If you never try, you’ll never trust again. Never feel close to anyone. What you need to understand, is that it’s never not terrifying, even when you haven’t been through what you have.”
“It’s not?” he asked. “I…I never thought it was difficult, but I figured…” He didn’t know what he figured, he realized. The two of them had admitted right from the start that it was scary, that they had been scared about it all.
“Always,” Chloe agreed. “Because you need to do it, to extend that trust, and you never know if it’s going to be reciprocated or not. That moment of vulnerability is one of the hardest things you’ll go through. But if she is your mate…oh Liam, if she is, the joy you will experience together. It defies words.”
He looked back and forth at the two women, both of whom had happy, beatific smiles on their faces. Their eyes practically glowed with joy as they reflected their feelings toward their mates. It was…wonderful.
But maybe not for him. They hadn’t been through what he’d been through. Liam didn’t know if he could trust himself and what he was feeling. That was the problem at the base of it all. How did he know what he thought he was feeling and seeing was real, when it had proven to be a lie in the past, with someone he’d known far longer than the week Jennifer had been in his life?
“You need to try, Liam,” Alison echoed, almost as if she could sense he was losing confidence. “If you fall off the horse, you need to get back on it right away, or you never will.”
“Maybe,” he said, not really meaning it.
“Just tell her some more about yourself,” Chloe suggested. “You don’t have to give her your trust implicitly. But open up to her. Share some of who you are with her. Your life. Talk about things you enjoy, childhood memories. Things like that.”
“I could do that,” he said, nodding. “Yeah. That might work.”
He felt a sliver of hope. He could talk about himself. Tell her who he was. There wasn’t much she could do with that information to hurt him. Certainly not more than Layton had.
“Good. Open up to her. Tell her why you hurt,” Alison urged.
Liam stiffened. “No. No I can’t do that,” he said, shaking his head.
“You’re going to have to make a decision at some point, Liam. She’s not going to stick around forever if you can’t give her a reason to.”
“Yeah. I know,” he said, rubbing his face, trying to figure out what to do.
Why do feelings have to be so complicated?
26
“I don’t know, Liam…”
He shook his head. “Not acceptable.” His face twisted up oddly for a moment, but then he continued. “If you fall off the horse, you need to get back on it right away, or you never will.”
Something about that phrase had a deeper meaning to him, she could see it on his face, but whatever it was, he didn’t seem ready to tell her.
“I’m not afraid of casting magic,” she admonished gently. “That’s not it at all. I’m just not sure about this.” She waved at the empty field.
“I told you. I’m going to stand farther and farther away each time it works. It will force you to concentrate harder on the spell, refining it. I think—at least, based on what you’ve told me—that’s how it will work,” he said sheepishly.
She tried to tell him maybe another time would be better, that she really wasn’t up to it now, but his eyes were alive, dancing with a fervor of azure life. He seemed…happy? Jennifer didn’t know exactly how to phrase it, but there was something different about him this morning.
Was it just a result of them fucking the night before, maybe? Endorphins and all that? She certainly had woken up with a smile on her face.
And a pain between my legs. Good Lord, it’s been a while.
That still didn’t explain his eager desire to bring her out to the field and get back to work with the magic. There was something driving him now, something she couldn’t quite put a finger on. Was he up to something? Whatever it was, Jennifer couldn’t figure it out.
“Yes, your logic is accurate enough,” she said in reply to his questioning look.
“Good. So we’ll do it that way, then we’ll get some more of the guys out here, and repeat it. Then more, etc. You get the picture,” he said, talking animatedly with his hands as well.
“Listen, Liam,” she tried to protest, but he shook his head, cutting her off.
“I know you’re scared. But I believe in you, Jen. I know you can do this. I support you.”
She wanted to groan out loud, to tell him his belief was misplaced. That they had seen at the train station it was quite evident she couldn’t do this. That she needed far more time and practice than they had available to them before she would ever be ready to go into a combat situation again.
“I appreciate your faith in me,” she said. “I really do. But Liam, I don’t think I believe myself. I don’t trust myself.”
His face bunched up in confusion. “What? Why wouldn’t you believe in yourself?”
Jennifer looked away. There was no simple way to tell him. He wouldn’t understand. After all, it was not like she could just come out and reveal the truth of it all. Even if she could withstand that shame, that didn’t change what lived in her. What she was afraid of letting out if she pushed herself too hard.
How do you tell someone you’re scared of the power inside you? That you aren’t sure you can fight the urge to use the power once you’ve tapped into it. He doesn’t understand what could happen if I do. Of who I could become…
It ran in the family.
“Jen?”
“Liam, I’m sorry. I am.” She lay one hand on his forearm, resting it there while she looked into his face, forcing herself to watch.
“Sorry for what?” he asked, worry clouding his eyes, shutting down the animation of his features.
“I don’t want to talk about that subject, okay?” she said softly. “Just, leave it.”
“Well what do you want to do?” he asked. “Just tell me what it is, so I can help. I want to help, Jen, but I’m useless when it comes to magic. I don’t know anything about it.”
“Well maybe you should stop telling me it’ll work out, then!” she snapped without thinking, her own fears and insecurities bubbling to the surface in response to his eagerness to help her, pushing back against the idea of her trying harder.
Liam’s arm disappeared from under her hand as he stepped back. His eyes were flat, face stern, unmoving, carved out of something harder than granite.
“I’m sorry,” she said, taking a step forward, reaching for him.
But Liam took another step backward, avoiding her questing hand.
Biting her lip, she stopped pursuing him, letting him keep the distance between them, opening the gap.
Did I just screw this up with him?
Her thoughts were no longer on her spells, on the assault on Moonshadow Manor. None of that mattered anymore, not with the way Liam was looking at her. She’d hurt him. Badly, by the looks of it.
“Do you want to practice or not?” he asked coldly, his voice tight. Emotionless.
“Um, okay,” she nodded. Maybe if she worked hard, he would relax, and she could apologize properly. Tell him she didn’t mean it, that she actually really appreciated his confidence in her, since she lacked much of it on her own.
“Alright.” Liam turned and marched fifty paces away. He didn’t turn around.
“Are you—”
“I’m ready,” he called, cutting off her tentative question asking the same.
“Right,” she said quietly to herself, blinking back tears. How could one little sentence like that affect his mood so much? What was she missing here?
It didn’t matter. He wasn’t ready to let her apologize. But maybe she could show him that his belief in her wasn’t entirely misplaced. All she had to do was cast the spell, but with more power behind it. That was it. Nice and simple.
Closing her eyes, she focused on the spell, on the different strands that wove together to form it. She called up the magic, linked it together, pushing it into her palm, feeding it energy. More energy. Her brain started to hurt.
Something deep inside her stirred in response to the demand for more power. Dark, cold, slithering, it reared its head.
Jennifer hurriedly slammed closed her mind, cutting off all the magic. The spell disappeared, the magic fizzling away into nothing as she cut off its source, unwilling to risk it. Not here. Not now.
Looking at her hand, she turned it over, fearful she may have been marked. Never before had she felt such activity while using her magic, as if a part of her knew she might come looking for it. Needing it.
But her hand was blank. Nothing but some wrinkles and dry knuckles.
“What is it?”
Liam had turned around and was looking at her now.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t.”
“Wait,” the massive shifter rumbled, starting across the distance toward her, one step, then another, before he broke out into a full-on run.
Jennifer watched him come for a moment, but her decision had already been made. Lifting a hand, she slashed open a rent in mid-air and walked through before Liam could come close.
27
He was lying on the roof, watching the stars begin to emerge. The night sky was clear as could be, following a day that had been much the same. With every passing minute, the light from the sun faded more, and the glittering skyscape above him became ever clearer.
Liam often wondered what it would be like to travel among the stars. To know life beyond his planet. It was an affliction that, to his knowledge at least, seemed to affect all shifters, regardless of race. The wolves of Canis, the bears of Ursa. The cats of Panthere and the birds of Raptere. All of them dreamed about life beyond. Out there.
Maybe it’s a quirk of our shifter blood, he thought to himself, wondering idly about their origins.
Nobody really knew where shifters had come from, only that they had exploded onto the paranormal scene around the end of the fourth century. By the early fifth, shifters were challenging vampires for rule of the world, and in the year 410 A.D., they had taken Rome itself, and slaughtered the Senate, effectively ending vampire control over the world as a whole.
Liam snorted, wondering what humans would think if they knew the Senate had still been the true face of power at the time, with the emperors that had appeared to rule simply being their playthings.
Of course, for that to happen, they would need to know one of the greatest empires in “human” history was actually composed of vampires. Which they don’t, for obvious reasons.
When the three primary shifter tribes had brought the vampires down, they had rewritten history to erase all mention of themselves and their enemies outside of legend and yore. The time of the vampires had ceased, and so started the fifteen-hundred-year war between shifters and mages, as the two major powers in the paranormal world fought for supremacy.
Maybe that’s why you don’t trust her.
That was an absurd thought, and Liam knew it even as he thought about it. Yes, shifters and mages had warred for centuries, but that fight had ended in 1912, at the battle of Novarupta in western Alaska. The mages had lost, and most of the bad blood had faded out as shifters claimed their spot at the head of the paranormal food chain.
Neither he nor Jennifer had even been alive back then. There was no reason to distrust her for something her ancestors had done. She certainly didn’t seem to harbor him any ill will. Well, not in the traditional sense of him being a shifter, at least. On a personal level, Jennifer had made it quite clear she didn’t want his help, that she didn’t trust him enough to believe him.
He could still see the fury in her eyes, the hatred with which she’d looked upon him. It wasn’t the words that hurt, but the expression she’d had in her face as she said it. Liam had been betrayed before, but he’d never felt so thoroughly reviled, and to see it come from Jennifer…that had hurt.
They’d slept together, and he’d figured she at least thought he was okay. But now…now he didn’t know.
Pop.
“It’s polite to knock,” he grumbled.
“Hi Liam.”
Jennifer stepped through a rent onto the roof about five paces away, keeping her distance.
“Knock knock,” he said in a monotone. “Who is it? No, I’m busy, try later please.”
“Seriously?”
He could feel the exasperation in her voice.
“What do you want?” Liam wasn’t in the mood for games.
“To apologize.”
Sighing, Liam sat up to face her. He was upset with her, and hurt, but that didn’t give him the excuse to be any ruder than he’d already been. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You didn’t deserve that treatment.” She looked away.
“Do you even understand why I’m upset?” he asked. “Because that sounded like a canned, rehearsed speech if I ever heard one.”
“Excuse me for feeling bad and thinking about what to say to you to try and fix things,” Jennifer snapped hotly. “Is that really so bad?”
“It is when you don’t even understand what you’re apologizing for.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, crossing her arms. “I was rude to you earlier.”
“It’s not what you said,” he explained to her, not feeling like playing games, deciding to just lay it out plain. “It’s how you said it. How you looked at me when you said it
.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve never felt so thoroughly hated by someone. Reviled. As if I disgusted you. Your words said one thing, but your face, your eyes…they said something else entirely,” he told her softly, flinching at the memory.
Jennifer’s face melted into an expression of horror as he spoke.
“That’s why I’m upset. Why I’m hurt.” He looked away, turning slightly as well, closing himself off from her.
“Liam…” she gasped. “I’m so sorry. I…” She stopped talking abruptly.
Glancing over his shoulder, he watched her face, seeing the emotions on it as she thought to herself.
“That wasn’t for you,” she said at last, lifting her head, meeting his gaze squarely. “That look. It wasn’t for you.”
He raised his eyebrows. “It, uh, sure felt like it. Who was it for then? Nobody else was there…”
“It was for me,” she said quietly.
“Now I’m confused. Why would you be disgusted with yourself? And why take it out on me? I was just trying to encourage you. To dig deeper. To use the power I know you have.”
“That!” Jennifer said sharply. “That’s why. Don’t. You can’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t encourage that. Please.” Her lower lip curled under her teeth as she chewed on it nervously. “I…that look you got, it was borne from my own problems. My own demons, okay? I am terribly sorry it came out then, that you felt it was directed at you, but I promise you, it wasn’t.”
She sounded sincere. But how was he supposed to know that? How was he supposed to believe her? Liam just didn’t know what was what.
“Is there any way I can make this up to you?” she asked softly. “To prove that I’m telling the truth?”
“Show me you can do it,” he told her. “Prove I wasn’t wrong to stick up for you, to fight for you and your plan to the others.”