by A. C. Arthur
Fortunately, for Nivea, that time was over.
“Okay, you’re right. I’ve been giving this some thought.” He took a deep breath and released it slowly, as if whatever he was about to say was so heavy he had to prepare himself to say it. “Why don’t you just pack up all your stuff and move into my room?”
For a moment Nivea didn’t think she’d heard him correctly and apparently her silence—and most likely odd glare—signaled him to expand on his little statement.
“I mean, if we’re sleeping together—and since everybody knows we’re sleeping together—then we might as well do it officially.”
She nodded slightly. “And moving all my things to your room is making our sleeping arrangement official?”
“Yes,” he said with another sigh as if this was truly hard for him. “I made it very clear to Rome and everyone else that we are together. They all know where we stand now,” he continued.
Nivea narrowed her eyes at Eli, resisting the urge she had to run over and swat at him with her clawed hand. The cat inside hissed because that’s precisely what it wanted to do.
“They all know that you’re sleeping with me.”
Now he looked exasperated, which Nivea thought was good. At least he was showing some emotion where they were concerned.
“Last time I checked we were sleeping with each other, Nivea. What is your problem? I thought this was what you wanted?”
And that was it, the proverbial straw that broke, yada, yada, yada.… Nivea was moving before she could think better of it. Her cat was pressing forward, taking this seemingly human situation in its own hands. With a pointed finger she jabbed directly into the center of Eli’s chest.
“You are an idiot!” she yelled into his face. “We were not sleeping with each other, asshole. I was making love to the shifter I thought was my mate! Now you go and tell everybody that we’re sleeping together and then come in here with your chest all poked out, spoon feeding me the information you want me to have, when you want me to have it like you’re doing me some big ol’ favor. Well, I’ve got news for you, Eli Preston. I don’t need any of this and I don’t need you!”
Her chest heaved, her hand wanted to shake but she willed it not to. Eli hadn’t moved, the bastard. He was still standing perfectly still, staring down at her through those stupid-ass shades that she wanted to reach up and grab. The moment she tried, he thwarted the effort by gripping her wrist when her fingers were a couple of inches away from his glasses.
“Don’t,” he said solemnly.
She yanked away from him then, taking a step back to steady her breathing. “That’s right. Don’t touch Eli’s precious glasses. Don’t ask Eli to share any piece of himself with you that’s beyond the physical. Don’t expect him to get past his big dark past and move into a blissful future with you of all people, Nivea, because that’s never going to happen.”
He opened his mouth to say something and Nivea’s hand flew up into the air to stop him. “Oh no, don’t you dare,” she said. “Don’t you dare try to say something that you think will make this better. It will probably only piss me off to the point where I’m ready to literally knock your head off!”
She was glaring at him now, knowing full well that her cat’s eyes were visible, and she didn’t give a damn.
“I want you and your arrogant words and thoughts to get the hell out of my room. And if you think of coming back here without offering…” Her words trailed off. “No, Eli. No. Don’t you ever think about coming back here or to me again. Ever!”
There was nothing he could offer, Nivea realized with a start. Nothing that Eli Preston was willing to give her that would fill the void that she’d just concluded might never go away.
* * *
That night Eli lay on his cot staring up at the ceiling until his eyes closed of their own volition. In an instant he was back in the Sierra Leone rain forest, the evening air thick with humidity beneath its thick canopy. The hut he and Ezra shared was unusually quiet and when he looked over expecting to see his brother in the bed beside him, it was instead the naked body of a female that had him sitting straight up. Breathing heavily he let his feet hit the matted floor, sweat already pouring from his mostly nude body. For endless moments he sat on the side of that cot staring at her curvaceous backside, the straight spinal cord, and long legs. Hair, dark in the dimness of the room, fell like a scarf onto the pillow. Up, down, in, and out, slowly, measured, she breathed.
When staring did not seem to be getting him anywhere and fear snaked around his neck like a noose, Eli stood. Deep inside like a pulse, the need beat slowly at first, then more persistently as he continued to watch her. It burned and when he swallowed, it felt like acid pouring over an open wound. It was so painful to want this way and to not be able to possess.
Acacia was not his. She was mated and nothing, not even the intriguing Topètenia twins were going to change that. Fine, he’d thought with a clench of his fists. That was the way it had to be.
Leanne was sweet and soft and accommodating, until he told her there would be no commitment. No marriage and no damned house with a picket fence to hold their children—their half-breed children. There was no future there for Eli because Leanne was a human and his gut instinct told him that humans would never understand or tolerate a Shadow Shifter. He’d been as honest with her as he could about his limitations and in the end, that honesty had killed her.
Just as the brutal honesty he’d had to face with Acacia had led to the outpouring of anger that had controlled him, forcing him and Ezra to kill her.
Now there was Nivea … no, he thought. Just no.
Eli turned away from the female lying on the other cot. Just as he’d done years ago after Leanne’s death. He was finished with females, done with all those trappings that mating and joining and loving entailed. It just wasn’t for him. It couldn’t be.
And yet …
“Eli,” she called to him, her voice like a whisper on the dew-scented air.
“Come back to me, Eli.”
He was shaking his head as the words were repeated. She begged, she needed. That burning inside him ceased, as if a slow, cool trickle had tempered it.
“Eli.”
Each time she spoke his name something inside him shifted. His cat reared up eagerly, intrigued by the voice, the calling. That dark pain that had been as steady a part of him as breathing lessened, until he had to completely focus on it to identify its presence. And the cool, the soothing, the need swirled around like a building storm.
When she called his name again he turned, his eyes opened wide—no sunglasses—ready and waiting to see, to reach out and maybe this time, just maybe to hold onto.
But when he looked down she’d turned onto her back and was staring up at him. Her eyes a soft brown, her cheekbones high, chin stubborn. Her hair was free, unlike the ponytail she wore when in battle. She lifted her arms to him, the scar from when Rimas had stabbed her in the shoulder long gone. And she called to him again, “Eli.”
“Nivea,” he whispered a split second before noticing the necklace.
Its band was a circle of pure gold. At the center was a cascade of quartz pieces surrounding a clear yellow orb like a halo. No, Eli thought with a gasp, an eye—a jaguar’s eye.
“Boden,” he whispered, his gaze glued to the necklace. “Boden’s joining necklace for Acacia.”
With a start, face damp, chest heaving, Eli sat straight up in his bed in his room at Havenway. He stared over to his dresser where he’d put the box that had been mailed to him at his shop.
He picked up the necklace, felt its heat in his palms as he held it, as if it were alive. It wasn’t and neither was the one it had been meant for. With a frown he realized that’s what all of this had been about.
Boden was sending him a personal message. The conniving bastard had been planning this moment, this revenge for his mate’s death, all along. And now Eli would have to come full circle. He would not return physically to the place and time t
hat had changed his life forever, but everything that had happened in the Sierra Leone rain forest was about to land right at his doorstep. He was finally going to have to deal with his past head-on, and that was just fine. If Boden wanted to try and take a piece of him, Eli was more than willing to oblige the exiled shifter. But he was certain that Boden had no idea what he was in for … and for that matter, neither did the rest of the Shadow Shifters.
Chapter 19
“Women,” Rome said as he leaned forward, placing the phone receiver into its cradle before easing back into his burgundy leather office chair. “Female shifters, I should say, are something else.”
Eli, who had been standing at the window looking down onto the streets of downtown D.C., seeing the people and cars milling about, turned slowly at the sound of his Leader’s voice.
“I guess it’s a good thing shifter pregnancies do not last as long as human ones,” Eli replied, very uneasy talking to Rome about his mate.
Rome nodded, a smile that Eli didn’t see often ghosting his face. “Twelve to eighteen weeks,” he said. “Well, she’s already five weeks along so more like seven to thirteen weeks to go.”
The usually composed and reticent Assembly Leader clasped his hands, released them, and then used one to smooth down his goatee. He rubbed both hands down his thighs, then looked up at Eli as if just remembering he wasn’t in the room alone.
“It’s not all that bad, you know,” Rome told him.
“What isn’t? Being a pregnant female or being the mate that’s waiting for said pregnant female to give birth?” He chuckled and slipped his hands into his pockets.
Eli wasn’t wearing his normal guard uniform. Whenever Rome went into the office or to court, Eli wore dress slacks and a button-down shirt and tie so that he appeared to be more of a colleague than a bodyguard. Today it was all gray, a color that signified his mood. Still, he had a job to do and he planned to do it no matter how he was feeling.
“Being mated,” Rome said seriously.
Eli didn’t reply. He didn’t know what Rome expected him to say, or what he was comfortable revealing. In the past few days he’d come to the conclusion that there was just too much that wasn’t a certainty in his life and he wasn’t pleased by that fact.
“You know, Shadow Shifters are born to mate. And they mate for life,” Rome told him as if Eli didn’t already know this part of their history.
“Like Boden and Acacia,” he said without really meaning to. Ever since the dream, no, the vision where Nivea was wearing Acacia’s joining necklace, Eli had been thinking a lot about that particular shifter couple.
Rome nodded. “That was an unlikely pairing, I admit. But once that connection is made there’s really no breaking it. Teodoro tried and it ended badly.”
“It hasn’t ended,” Eli snapped. “That motherfucker is here now looking for some measure of revenge.”
Rome held up a hand, his elbow now resting on the desk. “Whoa, let’s not get offtrack here. Boden is back and it’s to bring his own brand of hell and damnation to all of the Shadows. Because he believes we all betrayed him and conspired to have him murdered. Don’t think for one minute that his mission is solely aimed at you or Ezra.”
Eli sighed, shaking his head. “Nah, not solely, Rome. But he’s gunning for us too. How else do you explain him sending me that necklace?”
The morning after the vision, Eli had gone straight to Ezra’s room with the necklace in hand. His brother had taken the news a lot better than Eli had, possibly because Dawn had been sitting right beside him, her hand on his thigh while he held the necklace in his hands. Eli had unsuccessfully tried to ignore that little show of support. An hour later the twins had stood in front of Rome, Nick, and X, giving them a rundown of how what happened in the Sierra Leone rain forest connected to the necklace and verified Boden’s reappearance. He was the only one who would have had possession of the necklace he’d intended to give his mate the night of their joining—the night that Teodoro had Boden taken away.
“Yes, he wants a piece of you and Ezra because you dared to touch his mate,” Rome continued slowly. “That’s precisely the point I’m trying to make to you about shifters and their mating, Eli. It’s not something you can make go away or attempt to ignore.”
“On the mating level, this has nothing to do with me,” Eli said, knowing full well how absolutely wrong that statement was.
Rome simply stared at him until Eli found himself dropping into one of the guest chairs across from Rome’s desk and resting his elbows on his gaped thighs. “Look, I know what my limitations are. I know why I’m here and what my mission is. That’s what’s important.” He didn’t look up at the Assembly Leader, didn’t want to see the look of disbelief he figured the shifter would have.
“Your mate is important, Eli. That’s what Nivea was trying to make you see.” Rome gave a little chuckle then. “I have to admit, it’s been kind of entertaining watching her give you and every other male shifter at Havenway a cold shoulder the likes of which shifters living in Siberia wouldn’t be able to stand. She’s been one angry cat lately.”
“Tell me about it,” Eli said. She’d been angry and he’d been lonelier than he’d ever imagined he could be.
“But it’s because she sees so clearly what you allow to be blurred. I heard her tell Kalina she’d like to take your shades and ram them down your throat since you depend on them so much to hide who you really are and what you’re really feeling. Even though I thought that was a bit drastic, I trembled at the notion that she would actually do it if given the opportunity.” Rome sighed. “You hurt her, man. You hurt her pretty bad.”
Eli cursed, slamming his back against the chair and looking to Rome. “I didn’t mean to. The one thing that’s been constant and true in my mind is that I never wanted to hurt her. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep her from ever suffering again. Only the grace of some higher deity is keeping Richard Cannon alive and breathing in that cell.”
“I hear you,” Rome said with a nod. “But none of those words are what Nivea wants to hear, and I can guarantee you that none of them will ease the pain she’s enduring right now.”
“She’s reunited with her sisters. I see them going out to dinner and shopping and whatever else they do all the time now.”
“You know everything they’re doing, Eli. Don’t try to fool me. You’re watching her more closely now than you have in the last few months.”
Eli didn’t speak.
“Yeah, I know you assigned Prince and Naz to guard her whenever she wasn’t out in the field with you, which has been less than I would like since you’re still responsible for her continued training.”
Eli was about to say something but Rome stood from his chair, raising a brow that silenced him.
“What I’m saying to you is coming from the man, Eli. Not your Leader or boss or any of that crap. I’m talking to you man to man, shifter to shifter, because over these past years you and Ezra have become a part of my family.” Rome had circled the desk and now leaned against its edge as he stared squarely at Eli. “Accept it. Go to her on your knees begging she forgive you for being an ignorant ass and claim her. Claim your mate and make it known to the entire tribe that she belongs to you. Because if you don’t…” Rome paused. “Just do it, man, because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s painfully obvious how much turmoil you’re suffering by being apart from her.”
“You don’t understand,” Eli started to say.
Rome leaned forward, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “I understand completely about thinking you’re unworthy and doubting what your true destiny is. I fought my own for years. So I know firsthand just how futile it is. Embrace what was meant to be and get ready to have your mate fight this war by your side. We’re all going to need every defense we can muster and love is a much stronger one than weapons.”
Sure, Rome’s words sounded good, they didn’t call him the Lethal Litigator for nothing. The man could deliver closing argumen
ts that changed every mind on a jury when he needed to. And when necessary he stood in front of the Assembly of Stateside Elders and representatives from the Gungi and told them how he was going to run his division of the shifters.
That’s what he’d just done with Eli. He’d laid it all out so simply and so tight that Eli couldn’t figure out how to swivel around anything he’d said. He’d known Rome’s words were right, but that didn’t make doing what the Leader said any easier.
Luckily for Eli, there was a hurried knock at Rome’s office door before it flew open, a very excited Thelma, Rome’s secretary, running inside.
“Mr. Reynolds, something’s happened,” she said, one hand still holding the doorknob, the other fluttering at her neck. “Security came up and said they want to lock down the building. They’ve called the police and animal control.”
“Wait a minute,” Rome said to her as he walked to where she stood. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s something … I mean, a thing … or I don’t know, sir. I just came back from lunch and this van pulled up and soldiers got out and dropped this big … animal. There’s blood, oh my, so much blood,” Thelma finished and made a sound that said she needed to be taken to the restroom quickly before she lost her lunch.
“Okay, fine. I’ll handle it. You go on and get yourself together,” Rome told her. “Don’t leave this floor, Thelma. I want this building locked down.”
Eli was already up when his cell phone vibrated on his hip. Yanking it out of the holder quickly he answered, “Yeah?”
“We’ve got a problem,” Aidan said. “There’s a dead cougar in front of the police station.”
“What?” Eli yelled into the phone, catching Rome’s gaze as he pulled out his own phone to call building security. “Yeah,” Eli continued. “We’ve got something here too.”