I huff and feel my face redden. “I'm not a dumb ass.”
He nods. “Let me just say the words. This creature would've had to be inside your home, right?”
Of course. “Yes. How did a wolf get in my house? And better yet—why—and no damage?” I shake my head at the lack of sense the entire thing makes.
“No.” His light brown eyes meet mine. “Wolf-like.”
“What?” My jubilant mood at seeing Arden disintegrates, the ice cream beginning a slow reverse churn in my stomach.
“If that tooth is indicative of size, and I assume it is, this is a nearly seven-foot creature, which has wolf characteristics.”
I'm holding my breath.
Arden continues, “And the other characteristics are canine. So no. Not really wolf.”
My breath releases in a rush.
“What is it?”
“We know that vamps exist now so it got me thinking—”
I cover my mouth with both hands, guessing through my fingers, “Lycanthrope.”
The word pounds the silence inside my house to dust.
13
Talyn
“Say something, Talyn.”
I feel like a fish chucked out on a sand spit. Gasping and squirming.
I open my mouth to reply and the doorbell rings.
Arden and I jump at the same time. I give a nervous laugh, and he bounces to his feet. “Let me get that.”
I stand as well. “Don't play protector. You're a lab geek, not a super-hero.”
Arden gives me a crooked smile. “Let a guy pretend, Talyn.”
Someone on the other side of the solid wood door pounds with a fist. A women's voice yells, “Final Enforcement.”
Oh good. “I'm expecting them,” I explain to Arden as I rush to the door.
I swing it open and blink.
A tiny woman stands in front of me, picking her nail with an illegal switch blade.
I swallow hard. “Identification, please.”
She turns to face me, and flicks her flashing badge with a finger. Narah Adrienne, age twenty-four, One citation—Exonerated, 2022, vampire hybrid, Level 10 proficient.
I feel my eyes widen, and back up a step. The whole vampire thing still gives me pause.
Adrienne moves in, giving a small shiver as she crosses my threshold. “Seen enough?” Her voice is as tart as a lemon.
I nod, remember who the hell I am, and straighten my spine.
“I'm Enforcer Adrienne, assigned to case number,” she recites in a bored voice, “1001.”
“Nice to meet you,” I manage. “I'm Doctor Talyn Phisher.”
“I know,” she says, sharp eyes taking in my home. She spots Arden, narrowing her golden-green gaze on him.
Arden had backed up when he read Adrienne's badge. Her body is a deadly weapon. Not her weapons.
Her.
“Who are you?” she shoots at him, her voice like a club.
“Arden,” he replies quietly. “Who are you to the client,” she rephrases, walking around me and going straight for him.
He retreats.
A ghost of a smile rides her lips.
“He's my friend. He was here for a visit. Can we get down to the brass tacks, Enforcer Adrienne?”
She spins. It's so fast a movement I can't track it. More like a blur. “Brass tacks, huh?”
I'm unnerved and determined not to show it. I nod. “I think there's something stalking me.”
Adrienne flips long corn rows of platinum hair over her shoulder. Her inked body is lithe, sensuously muscled. Not from artificial time in the gym, like what I do just so I'm not a complete flab monster—but from her daily job.
“Something?” she asks, but not like she's really listening. Her catlike eyes flash to mine like twin suns washed by emerald. “Tell me.”
I blink. Seems like I've been doing a lot of that lately.
I recount everything. The blue eyes appearing. The creep from the gym, the stranger who I believe to be the mysterious blue-eyed man appearing—and beating the hell out of Jamie Duncan. When I finish with the way Cochran dealt with everything, Adrienne gives a low chuckle.
I frown. Cochran wasn't even vaguely amusing.
Her finger runs along my sofa table. I notice she's strategically placed herself between my front entrance, and the French glass doors leading to my small patch of back yard. She wants both exits in sight.
“What's your confidentiality policy?” Arden asks suddenly.
She cocks a pale eyebrow. “Are you speaking for Dr. Phisher?”
“Talyn,” I say.
She gives a tight chin dip in acknowledgment.
“No, but I was wondering.” I look at Arden and we exchange a look of understanding.
“I don't tell anyone anything.” Narah Adrienne doesn't over-explain things. She's a fact-stater. It makes me curious as to her background.
I'll pulse Google her later.
She cocks her head, eyeing me. Her eyes glitter like peridot jewels. I can't see fangs, though I'm ashamed to admit I have an almost freak show-act curiosity about vampires. Reality pulsevision just isn't enough.
Arden holds up the baggie with the canine.
Narah tracks it with eyes like a predator. She snatches it before he can take his next breath. We simultaneously gasp.
Adrienne ignores our reaction.
“Where's the original piece that this came off from?” Her eyes light on me with new interest.
Maybe I'm not some quack after all.
I walk to the junk drawer and slide it open.
I step back, sucking in air.
The tooth. It's gone.
Enforcer Adrienne must see my panic and she's by my side in a blur of pale flesh before I can form a question. “What is it?”
I feel clumsy—thick. “I had it right here—in my junk drawer.”
Narah asks, “How big was it?”
I widen my index fingers to about five inches apart.
Narah's low whistle threads through the kitchen like a creepy string plucked. “Looks like you've got yourself a Lycan problem.”
Arden gives me another look.
Her gaze moves between us, noting the glance. “What's with all the surreptitious looks, guys?”
“We wondered,” Arden says.
Adrienne's lips tilt. “You wondered, huh?”
“What with the world all vamping out,” he says then gives her a guilty look.
“It's okay, Arden—there's a lot of miscommunication.” She seems resigned to that fact.
Arden smiles slightly. “I don't know. You're as lethal as I thought a vampire would be.”
She grins. Fangs appear like sharp little pearly curved claws.
We back away.
“Chill out. I can't smile without some fang.”
I'm as tense as I've ever been in my life.
Arden recovers first. “So you're saying there are Lycans.”
“Yeah.”
I'm pretty sure the world at large doesn't need to know that yet.
We look at each other again, he shrugs. “So what can you do?” I ask, frustrated.
“Depends on what our boy wants.” She lifts a shoulder, black tank perfectly matching black combat pants. Weapons stud her belt, hanging off her like deadly jewelry. Except for her gage plugs in her earlobes, she doesn't wear any. No—I take that back—a slim metal band of Tungsten encircles her left ring finger.
“That's it,” I fling my hands out. “I don't know what he wants.”
Her pupils dilate, capturing my gaze. A weird sensation like static electricity flows over me and is gone. “Quack like a duck.”
“What?” I reflexively laugh.
Adrienne frowns.
Arden cooperatively quacks behind me.
I whip my head in his direction. I'm a little alarmed at how realistic he sounds.
His face is slack, eyes glazed.
I turn back to Adrienne and she says, “Okay—so here's the news: you're a hybrid.�
��
“A what?” I ask in a choked voice.
“Part-human, part-Lycan.”
I shake my head. It was a mistake to call in Final Enforcement.
She nods. “It's okay. A doctor will find abnormalities during a rudimentary physical. They're really looking for that now.” She chuckles again as though sharing a personal joke with herself.
I'm not laughing. I sit on my bar stool by the kitchen peninsula. Hard.
She continues. “That's why you've got a Changer sniffing around.”
“A Changer?” I ask through numb lips.
“Yup. You're Lycan enough to be changed and he's probably the boy assigned to do it.”
“Blue-eyes?” I ask, though I don't feel like I really need the confirmation.
“How bad did he tear up the asshole—Duncan?”
I don't even pause, “Badly. And fast.”
She nods thoughtfully. “Okay, so he won't hurt you.” She throws up her palms.
A quack sounds.
Adrienne's face screws into annoyance. She looks at Arden. “Stop quacking.”
Arden wakes up.
“That didn't work on me,” I note.
Adrienne looks at me, and I notice for the first time she's sort of pretty beneath all the piercings, tats and gage plugs.
She shakes her head. “A little test of mine. Lycans are resistant to vampire thrall.”
God. “Well that's something, I guess.”
We glance at Arden. He looks insulted. We ignore him.
Adrienne puts hands to hips. “So you're calling me in to—what?”
“He's stalking me—this Lycan man,” I explain to her slowly.
“Don't condescend to me, Dr. Phisher.” Her voice is instantly cold.
“I apologize, that wasn't my intention.”
“Might be natural,” she says coolly, her pale eyebrows rising slowly.
We stare at each other.
Finally she says something that gets my full attention, “He is a protector—not a stalker.”
“I don't want—if I am—Lycan, to be changed or whatever he's planning. He has no right.”
Adrienne's head dumps to her breastbone, and she speaks to the floor. “This isn't about rights.” Her face rises, eyes locking with mine. “You will die without him.”
“Die?”
She gives a sharp nod.
“What's his role?” I ask. I have to ask.
“It's different for Lycans, I guess. For vamp female hybrids, a male Turner brings you over through blood exchange.”
Gross.
She reads my expression and laughs.
“So he's going to fang her?” Arden asks with a nervous chuckle.
“Nope,” she says, “he's going to fuck her.”
14
Merck
I scent the female vampire hybrid the instant she slides out of her vintage Mustang.
I don't attack for a couple of reasons. One: she's female. Two: she's Final Enforcement. The word on the supernatural street is she has two males. Vampires—one a former Hunter.
My female would never be in a job as dangerous as this one.
I hang back, watching their conversation from my vantage point in a huge ash tree. My talons bite deeply furrowed bark, readying my stance in case the truly bizarre happens.
And Narah Adrienne decides to go berserker on my change.
When Talyn collapses, Adrienne reaches for her, and I jump from my perch.
I loathe what I'll have to do but I can't have anything happen to Talyn.
I rush the back door, shouldering through the glass in a ball of speed. It shatters into tiny pieces.
Non-tempered glass shreds me into ribbons.
A human male shrieks, pinwheeling backwards.
Hair sprouts from my skin as I go wolfen. I shake hard, the glass clinks to the ground as my skin repairs the shallow cuts that cover my exposed flesh.
Narah Adrienne looks up from an unconscious Talyn.
“Get the fuck away from my change, vamp.”
She rises smoothly, a wisp of a female and hisses, standing protectively over Talyn's body. “Do your worst, wolf.”
My eyes flick to the naked silver hardware in her hands.
I charge anyway.
I'm almost on her when two vampires plow through the glass carnage.
Narah's gaze shifts to their presence, and that's all the distraction I need. I backhand her, her head whipping to the left.
Her foot also connects with my chin but she's going down.
The two vamps close in.
They're her mates, I realize through scent alone. Their claim is all over her, knitted between them in a trio signature of claiming.
And pretty soon, my life will be next thing they claim.
THE END
SHIFTER
An Alpha Claim Brief-Bites® Novelette
Episode 2
New York Times Bestselling Author(s)
MARATA EROS
TAMARA ROSE BLODGETT
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2015 Marata Eros
Copyright © 2015 Tamara Rose Blodgett
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
www.tamararoseblodgett.com
TRB Facebook Fan Page
Marata Eros FB Fan Page
Cover art by: Willsin Rowe
Proofed by: Corinna
Synopsis:
Who can Talyn trust? Certainly not those she thought.
As the evidence mounts that something is seriously wrong, Talyn gains strength from the sameness of her life. Only to have it shattered when a seemingly innocent come-on turns out to be the beginning of the end of the life she knows.
When the local police disregard the facts, Talyn receives unconventional assistance in the form of Enforcer Narah Adrienne.
Until she finds that there is no assisting what plagues her, and that she's more sought after than she could have ever imagined....
1
Talyn
I open my eyes in the middle of world war three.
Two huge men crash through my already broken french doors, and immediately separate, staking their claim to the perimeter of my living room on opposing sides.
I try to sit up and heat sears through me. I groan.
“Stay down,” Enforcer Adrienne commands in a low voice of authority. A hand flashes above me like a flesh lightning strike and she flies backward, her foot connecting with a strong jaw on the way down.
Blue eyes.
But he's got more than blue eyes happening now—he's not all human.
Sharp teeth are barely contained in his mouth, a snub snout has wide nostrils that flare with his obvious emotion. He's seven feet tall of solid muscle. Forget six packs—he's got a keyboard of muscle on his stomach.
And he just attacked Enforcer Adrienne.
She gives back as good as she gets, his face rocking from the impact of her well-placed kick.
He stumbles backward.
The two men who came in through my back door open their mouths and hiss.
Oh my God—it's supernatural week. Hysteria begins to have its way with me.
I roll over, crawling through the bodies and try to reach the kitchen.
My gaze frantically rolls around the space as grappling begins behind me. Where the hell is Pooky—where is Arden?
“Tal!” I hear a geeky squeak from my left. I fling my hand out without thinking. Our hands touch. I hang on for dear life as Arden drags me to him. I look up in surprise, realizing Arden's stronger than he looks.
A lamp crashes and an electrical surge sparks from my archaic electrical connection.
Adrienne leaps to her feet, moving her jaw back and forth and comes to crouch in front of me and Arden protectively.
She and Blue Eyes square off. The two males look ready to pounce.
“Stand down, Lycan.”
The huge creature backs toward the door as the two vampires charge forward.
“No!” Adrienne says and they hesitate. “He's in Changing mode, guys. He's all hot to transition Dr. Phisher.”
The two huge men look like they'd like to transition him.
I note Adrienne calls me by my official title.
“Aeslin—Matthews, it's okay,” she says, clearly trying to talk them down.
The one with the bald head growls, “The hell it is, this mutt just struck our female.”
Adrienne nods as if she wasn't the one who was just hit. “I get it. But this is part of the job. You guys can't just burst in here every time some supe gets a bee buzzing around in their bonnet about bringing it.”
The other male, still giving Blue Eyes the stink eye, straightens slightly. “Nor can we stand back and watch another male beat on our female.”
Blue Eyes stands in the periphery, chest heaving, eyes darting surreptitiously between the trio.
Narah slaps her hands on her hips and gives a harsh exhale. “Males,” she mutters. She swivels her head, whipping all those small braids over her shoulders.
She turns her attention to Blue Eyes. “Name,” Adrienne barks.
“Merck,” he says with a voice that hovers between human and other. To my ears his voice sounds like gravel falling.
“Okay,” she spreads her hands. “Don't make me kick your Lycan ass.” The two males by her side protest. “Shh, Aeslin,” she turns to look at the slightly taller vampire of the two. His dark hair is in sharp contrast to the other guy—Matthewsʼ—nearly bald head. Her hand reaches up and cups his jaw. His face softens at her touch. If a face that hard can be called soft.
Shifter Alpha Claim 1-6 Omnibus Page 5