by Roxie Noir
Where’s Hudson?
Julius tried his best not to panic. The girl, whoever she was, seemed okay, and that was important but where was Hudson?
Fifty feet away, at the bottom of the stone stairs, a human was sprawled on the ground, surrounded by a lion, a wolf and a grizzly, a gun a few feet away on the pavement. The lion had one paw on his back, wicked claws fully extended, and was quietly growling in the man’s ear.
Julius felt an involuntary chill snake down his spine. Lions gave him the creeps.
Ash Spencer, his cousin-in-law, ran up, his own gun in one hand, and pointed it at the human. He started shouting, too, but now Julius could tell that everything was under control.
“Are you okay?” he asked the girl.
Her brown eyes were the size of saucers and she was still breathing hard, but she nodded. He gave her one more long, searching look, and then stood. She rolled over, grabbed her sign, and scampered off.
I have to find Hudson and then I have to find out who that was, Julius thought. His best suit, the custom-fit one he’d spent half a month’s salary on, was filthy and probably ruined, but that didn’t matter right now.
Stay calm and you’ll find him, he thought. He stood up straight and searched the pandemonium for his mate — even though the six-foot-six blond behemoth stood out in most crowds, he blended in pretty well with a bunch of grizzly shifters. Julius let his eye skip from person to person, but there was no sign of the other man yet.
It felt like there was a hand around his heart, and it was starting to squeeze.
Julius started walking down the steps and into the crowd, doing his best to act calm, but his mate wasn’t there. He imagined Hudson bleeding on the ground while he had been protecting some girl he didn’t even know. He imagined someone else holding Hudson’s hand as the blood stain spread across the flagstones.
The hand around Julius’s heart gripped tighter, and he could feel sweat trickle down the back of his neck.
He can take care of himself, Julius thought. He was in the Lost Souls for ten years before you even met him. He knows how to handle gunfire.
Julius took a deep breath, his eyes frantically flicking from person to person, none of them his mate.
How could I possibly live without him?
“Hudson!” Julius shouted, finally losing control. “HUDSON!”
Then, the crowd parted for a moment and there he was, kneeling on the ground, his back to Julius, but Julius would have known his mate anywhere. He ran to him, pushing aside humans and shifters alike, until he finally reached his mate, collapsing to his knees beside him.
He was covered in blood.
“It’s hers,” Hudson said, seeing the alarm on his mate’s face.
Julius realized that they were in front of a woman, her face nearly gray, lying on her back. Hudson had her jacket balled up and pressed against her shoulder.
“Shooter winged her,” Hudson said, his low, gravelly voice calm and collected. “She’s lost a lot of blood but she’ll be okay.”
The woman opened her eyes slightly, looked at Hudson, and closed them again.
As if on cue, Julius heard the wail of sirens, pulling around the corner.
“They got the shooter,” Julius said, trying to reassure the woman. “He’s not going anywhere.”
She nodded, faintly. He didn’t recognize her, but she was some sort of shifter — wolf or coyote, it smelled like. Sometimes he had a hard time telling the canines apart, especially in this much pandemonium.
Then two EMTs were there, Hudson was calmly telling them what had happened and what he’d done, and they were nodding and telling him they’d take it from there.
Hudson nodded once and let go. The woman moaned softly, and then the EMTs got to work.
The moment that Hudson’s hands were free of her, Julius wrapped his arms around the other man, holding him close.
“I’m covered in blood,” Hudson murmured in his ear.
“I don’t care,” Julius murmured back.
He felt Hudson’s arms wrap around him too, holding him tight, and he inhaled deeply, smelling his mate’s scent: leather and musk and a the faint but ever-present smell of engine grease.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Hudson said.
Then he pulled back just enough for Julius to kiss him, hard.
Julius could still feel the adrenaline jolting through his veins as he pressed his lips against Hudson’s, snaking his hand around the other man’s jaw, holding him tight as Hudson parted his lips to let Julius’s tongue in, wrestling with his own.
Then they broke apart, both still breathing hard. Julius closed his eyes and rested his forehead against his mate’s, letting himself be thankful for just a moment that they were both okay.
From behind him, he heard a woman’s acid voice.
“At least there’s only two of them,” she said. She sounded as if she was watching a dog take a dump on her favorite shoes. “They can’t reproduce.”
“Don’t look,” Hudson murmured, too late. Julius had already turned and searched out the speaker.
She couldn’t have been more than fifty, but the frown lines etched into her face made her look at least fifteen years older. Her hair was piled on top of her head, and she wore a plain long-sleeved shirt, a long denim skirt, and tennis shoes.
Julius recognized her immediately: Barbie Taylor, one of the most outspoken anti-shifter activists in America.
Standing next to her was the girl he’d protected. The curvy, gorgeous brunette.
Julius growled, despite himself.
“Come on,” said Hudson, his gruff voice right in Julius’s ear. “Don’t do this.”
Julius could feel his mate tense up. Hudson hated the Taylors just as much as he did.
He forced himself to stop growling, and Hudson kissed his neck, just under his ear.
Then Hudson froze. Instinctually, Julius knew he’d seen the girl. He could feel in his mate the same sudden freeze and overwhelming need he’d felt only a few minutes ago. He ran his hand over Hudson’s thick side, feeling every muscle underneath his black t-shirt, his eyes still locked with Barbie’s.
Hudson bit his earlobe, hard, and Julius gasped.
“They ought to take them all to the woods and fence them in,” Barbie said, the corners of her ugly, pink-painted mouth turned down. “Come on, Quinn.”
Quinn dipped her head, cast one final, inscrutable look at Julius and Hudson, and then followed Barbie away.
They watched her go, both barely breathing. When she finally disappeared into the crowd, Julius turned to face Hudson again, looking deep into his mate’s eyes.
For a long moment, they were both speechless.
At last, Julius spoke up.
“It’s a bad time,” he said. “This can’t happen now.”
Hudson put his thick hand gently on the side of Julius’s face and ran one thumb along his partner’s cheek.
“I’m not sure we get to decide that,” he said, quietly. “But let’s take one thing at a time.”
Julius nodded. There was still chaos all around them, people shouting, children screaming. They were both still kneeling on the stone steps, where Hudson had been when Julius found him.
“Come on, Attorney Bloom,” said Hudson, a slight smile on his lips. “Don’t let them ruin your show.”
Julius gave Hudson another quick kiss and then stood, ready to face anything.
2
Quinn
Quinn Taylor felt like everything had just happened in slow motion. She followed her mother through the crowd, looking for their little band of protestors.
Her mother, walking ahead of her, was still spewing vitriol left and right, walking with her head high, ignoring the vicious stares of everyone she walked past.
“Disgusting,” she said. “Revolting.”
Quinn had no idea what to think. Two days ago, she’d have agreed with her mother wholeheartedly. After all, she’d been hearing both of her parents say terr
ible things about shifters for most of her life.
But then again, two days ago, she’d never actually met a shifter before. There were none in her little town of Eastham, Nebraska, and the news seemed to always be full of shifters doing bad things.
Now she was in Cascadia — the shifter state — and none of the terrible things she’d been waiting for had happened. She hadn’t seen anyone torn apart by an out-of-control shifter. She hadn’t been sexually assaulted by roving groups of shifter men.
Hell, she hadn’t even been hit on. At most, she’d seen triads out and about, always two men and a woman, but they always seemed so normal. Going out to dinner, running errands, carrying adorable sleeping babies.
And then, to top it off, when the gunshots had rung out, everyone in her group dove to the ground to save themselves. It had been the shifter lawyer who’d protected her.
The hot shifter lawyer. She’d seen him on TV, but in person, there was just something about him. The way he’d just thrown himself over her without thinking twice. Later, the way he’d held his mate, both kneeling on the ground. They’d been much happier to see each other than she’d been to see her own mother.
“Quinn,” snapped her mother, jolting her from her reverie. “I asked you what was wrong with your wrist.”
Quinn looked down, doing her best to get back into reality, and realized that she was holding her left hand tightly around her right wrist, so tight that her right hand was turning purple.
“Were you shot?” shouted her father, practically diving toward her through the small throng of people standing around, still holding anti-shifter signs.
“What? No,” she said, almost rolling her eyes.
He ignored her, reached out, and grabbed her hand, yanking it toward him.
“Ow,” she said as he pulled on it, turning it over and inspecting her hand. He reminded her of a hawk sometimes. His thin face looked older than his age, fifty, and between his protruding eyebrows and sharp cheekbones, looked like a bird of prey.
“That hurt?” he asked.
“That’s why I said ‘ow,’” Quinn said, scowling.
He ignored her and flopped her wrist from side to side, watching her face.
“Ow,” she said again, pulling her wrist back. “I must have fallen on it or something.”
“It was that lawyer,” said her mother, standing next to her father, her permanent frown on her face. “He leapt on top of you like he was on fire and you were a pool of water.”
“He probably orchestrated the shooting just so he could rub his disgusting shifter genitals on you.”
Quinn’s mouth dropped open.
They’re insane, she thought.
“He was shielding me from bullets,” she said, trying to sound reasonable.
By now there was a small cluster of protesters crowded around them, all with their anti-shifter cardboard signs.
One of them, Vince, a forty-year-old man who was balding but still had a ponytail, spoke up.
“They’re sex maniacs,” he said authoritatively. “Even if he was shielding you, you’re lucky he didn’t just have his way with you right there on the courthouse steps.”
I bet you’d love to see that, Quinn thought. She’d never liked Vince. On forearm, he had a tattoo of America, but the three shifter states — Cascadia in the west, Meriweather in the middle and Cumberland in the east — were blacked out. The thing gave her the creeps.
“You know that they’re out of control perverts,” said her mother, casting Quinn a disapproving look.
Quinn pressed her lips together and said nothing, but felt uneasy.
On the one hand, she’d believed the same as her parents all her life: that shifters were more animal than human, and ought to be treated as such. After all, at twenty-five, she still lived at home and ran her parents’ website, ShifterSexManiacs.com, which did a decent business in anti-shifter t-shirts, coffee mugs, and beer cozies, as well as being a general hub of anti-shifter information.
On the other hand, the only person who’d been violent that day was a human.
“How are the people who were shot?” she asked, suddenly.
Vince shrugged. “They weren’t people,” he said. “They were shifters.”
Anger rose inside Quinn, and she opened her mouth to argue, but her father walked up to her again, an EMT right behind him.
“That lawyer sprained her wrist when he tackled her,” he declared, managing to sound weaselly and pompous all at once.
“Can I see your wrist, please?” the EMT said. She was tall, with long tawny hair and sharp cheekbones. For a moment, she locked eyes with Quinn, and Quinn’s heart beat a little faster in her chest.
The other woman’s eyes were light brown, nearly gold.
She’s a lion, Quinn thought, looking around at the other humans in her group.
They don’t know she’s a shifter, she thought. They haven’t been paying attention to anything besides themselves since they’ve been here.
Quinn held out her wrist and the other woman took it gently, poking and prodding.
“Does it hurt when you flex it?” she asked, softly.
“A little,” said Quinn.
“And when you bend it?”
“Kinda,” Quinn said.
The other woman nodded.
“You probably strained some of your tendons by landing on it wrong,” she said. “You can get it splinted if you want, but you’ll be fine in a few days.”
“Thanks,” said Quinn.
“No, it’s sprained,” interrupted her mother, bearing down on the EMT. “I used to be a nurse, I know what a sprained wrist looks like.”
The EMT raised her eyebrows, and Quinn saw her eyes flick around the crowd.
She probably has much better things to be doing, Quinn thought.
“You’re more than welcome to get a second opinion,” the EMT said.
Her mother’s scowl deepened, and Quinn wondered if she’d just realized that the EMT was a lion.
“We will,” she said. “That animal won’t get away with this.”
Quinn closed her eyes, wishing she could just disappear.
“Have a good day, ma’am,” the EMT said, picking up her kit. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, there are people with real problems.”
She shot Quinn a deadly look and then walked off.
“Come on, Quinn,” her mother barked, ushering her toward the van.
Hours later, Quinn was back in her motel room. Even though her parents had basically required her to come along on the trip with them, since they needed all the people they could muster to protest triad marriage, they’d made her pay for her own motel room.
She didn’t really mind, though. For once she had some peace and quiet where she could sit and think without her parents constantly telling her what to do and how to feel.
She flopped on the queen bed and turned on the TV, where a woman with an enormous fake smile was selling jewelry. Quinn stretched, wriggling her fingers and toes, even the ones in the splint.
As the woman went on about 14 karat gold, Quinn looked at the splint on her arm. As soon as they’d left the protest, they’d found a doctor two hours away who refused to treat shifters and had taken her there.
The list of doctors who refused to treat shifters was on the website that she ran, of course, and as her parents had consulted it, Quinn had felt a little sick. She’d been the one to put that list together. When she’d done all that research, she’d thought she was just doing her job — it hadn’t really sunk in that these were doctors who only wanted to help a certain kind of sick person.
Now, the thought revolted her.
The doctor had recognized her parents right away and promptly declared her wrist badly sprained, even signing a statement to that effect for her father. Then he’d wrapped her up in a splint and sent her on her way.
Quinn tore the splint off in one quick motion, moving her wrist freely. There was no way it was sprained, and the knowledge of what her parents had d
one — and what they were going to do with that signed piece of paper — made her furious.
The saleswoman on TV droned on and on, and Quinn got up and started pacing. The discarded splint was in the middle of the floor, and she kicked it, making it bounce off the far wall.
Sure, shifters were different. And maybe her parents were right that shifters and humans should live in different places and not interact with each other too much.
They did turn into animals, after all, and the thought of a triad was pretty weird.
They were still people, though.
Hadn’t the lawyer proven that? He’d protected her when none of the humans she’d thought were her friends did.
Not to mention the way he kissed his mate made her feel funny inside. She didn’t know that she’d ever seen someone so desperately in love, to the point that it almost made her teeth hurt. Her own parents had barely glanced at each other before collecting their followers and heading out.
She sat on the bed.
I’ve got to get myself out of this mess, she thought. I can’t go on living and working for my parents.
Then, a thought came to her.
I could call George. I bet he’d help me.
She’d found her older brother’s information online a few weeks before. It hadn’t been hard, she’d just had to hide it from her parents. Quinn walked quickly to her backpack, pulled out a thick fantasy novel, and pulled her brother’s number from page 337.
Then she held it in her hand for a long time, just looking at the numbers.
They wouldn’t forgive me, she thought. They’d cut me off, just like they did to him. I’d be out in the streets.
She put the phone number back in the book and stashed it away again.
3
Hudson
It was nearly ten at night when Hudson and Julius finally got home. They lived on a quiet back street in Granite Valley, a neighborhood full of old Victorian houses with yards.
Quaint was the word that Hudson found himself using to describe the neighborhood. He felt like he fit in about as well as an eagle in a flock of hummingbirds. It wasn’t a place he’d imagined living, but here he was. The only one on the block who still had the faint outlines of LOST SOULS tattooed on his back.