The Shifting Storm (Book 4)

by Jeff Hale

  “No, Kat, no!” I said hoarsely. “I didn’t mean for that to happen! She came in, I was so pissed, I—I don’t know why I allowed that to happen, I wasn’t trying to hurt you.” My voice broke on the last word and I felt her hand touch my hair.

  “Darien, look at me,” she said, “please? Please?”

  I let her turn my head, didn’t bother to hide the remorse I felt, saw her frown as she ran a fingertip through the singular tear trail on my cheek.

  “Nina can be very… compelling.” She sighed. “She’s made it no secret that she finds you attractive and I don’t think she’s bothering to maintain even a semblance of a relationship with Dave anymore. I just figured you’d be able to fend her off better.”

  “I’m sorry, I am.” I lowered my eyes, shame washing through me at letting her down again. “But that girl has a will to match mine, if not stronger. She’ll be an Alpha when she shifts for the first time. It doesn’t happen as often with females, but when it does…” I shuddered. Alpha females weren’t quite as common as males, and most ended up ruthless and vicious while trying to place themselves above the men who normally ran things. My mother was one of the few exceptions.

  “A lot of shifter women are submissive then, like Alex?”

  I nodded. “But you aren’t, not even close, and you’re not Alpha either.” Then again, Sasha had been neither submissive or Alpha, so it made sense.

  “That a good thing or a bad thing?” she asked, trying for some levity.

  “Good thing. I like my women with spunk,” I muttered.

  She laughed, leaning in to place her lips against my forehead. I felt her breath waft across my skin as her hands came to rest on my shoulders.

  “Forgiven?” I dared to ask her, knowing I didn’t deserve it.

  She didn’t respond for several seconds, then she breathed out the word, “Yeah,” and I let my head fall forward against her breasts.

  She might have forgiven me, but I would bet just about anything that she would never forget.

  

  SEVENTEEN

  KATELYN

  My second session with Bianca was the day after Nina had wormed Darien out of his pants. Deep down I didn’t really blame Darien for what had transpired. When Nina was determined to get someone, it usually happened. Darien’s theory that Nina would be an Alpha when she shifted made a lot of sense, especially with the high levels of the lust aura that she could throw around already. I just wished I knew why she felt the need to have sex with my boyfriend when she could have any other guy she wanted. It was hurtful, and because of it I showed up at Bianca’s apartment in a grumpy mood, something that the other woman picked up on very quickly.

  “Everything all right?” Bianca asked me as she shut her apartment door behind me.

  I sat down on the couch and blew air up past my bangs. “Not really.” I didn’t elaborate.

  She pursed her lips at me. “If you can’t focus, it’s going to make learning this that much harder, Katelyn. I won’t pry, but it might help if you got whatever is bothering you off your chest.”

  I just sat there silently for a couple minutes, then I shrugged. “Maybe. My boyfriend and I had a fight yesterday.”

  She reached for a mug that sat on the coffee table and I saw a brief glow around her fingers as they wrapped around the ceramic. She took a tentative sip out of it, then nodded to herself. “I take it you didn’t resolve the issue? Or did you two break up?”

  I shook my head. “We resolved it, sorta, and we didn’t break up. It’s just…” I sighed and stared up at the ceiling. “One of my female friends, she’s gonna be a cat shifter, like me… and she decided to take advantage of my boyfriend’s state of mind before we patched things up.”

  Bianca was a smart woman and I didn’t need to go into details for her to understand what I meant. She snorted. “Doesn’t sound like much of a friend, if you ask me. Are you all right with the fact that he cheated on you?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, is it cheating if someone makes you do it? She turned the lust aura up to broil on him, so I’m not sure he really had a choice,” I said sadly.

  “Isn’t your boyfriend a shifter?”

  “Yeah. He’s the Alpha of the adjudicating pack for this side of the country actually,” I told her.

  Bianca blinked at me a few seconds. “Really? You’re part of his pack though, right? Not the Vegas pack?”

  I nodded quickly.

  “Doesn’t that make you, what is it, an adjudicator, too?”

  “I guess it does. I have the mark anyway.” I pulled my neckline down just enough to show her the ‘Justice’ scar. “His father’s an Elder on the European Council.”

  She took another sip of her coffee, then set the mug back down on the table. “I did not realize you were that well connected.”

  “Is it important?”

  “No, just something for me to keep in mind. But, if your boyfriend is an Alpha, and obviously a pretty strong one if he’s the head of an adjudicator pack, shouldn’t he have been able to fight off your friend?” She lifted a brow.

  “You’d think so, yeah, but she’s freakin’ strong, up here.” I tapped my head. Nina was going to be horribly powerful one day, even for an Alpha, and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe there was something in her family genetics, maybe it was just how she was wired.

  “I see. Well, shall we give it a try? See if you can focus?” Bianca suggested.

  We did give it a try, but we didn’t make any progress. If anything, I took a step back. Despite talking to her about it, my mind was still too distracted, still too raw, to try to coherently channel power. I gave up after an hour and Bianca just told me not to worry. She told me to keep practicing at home, and we made another appointment for the weekend after the first of June. She was getting ready for the summer mini-sessions to start and needed the next week to prepare for them. There was a part of me that wanted to tell her not to worry about it, that I would figure it out on my own.

  Kris’s birthday was on Saturday, her nineteenth, and at her insistence, we spent it with just her, Matt, me, Darien and Alex, a small little party at my apartment. Mine and Darien’s relationship was strained, although we were trying to work through it. Darien had finally admitted to me how claustrophobic he felt being stuck in one spot for so long. I had already enrolled for one of the summer mini-sessions, along with Kris and Celeste, but I told him that after I finished the one I was taking, we could take the next month to travel if he wanted. I hinted that sightseeing in Europe would be on my list.

  I had seen Celeste a couple times, and hadn’t seen any more marks on her, but she hadn’t exactly let me search her for them either. When asked, she would admit to having a few arguments with Travis, but she claimed he hadn’t laid a hand on her since that night.

  I wanted to believe her, but I didn’t.

  So I continued my campaign to get her to leave Travis and find some nice guy instead (yes, I had Alex in mind), but to no avail. I just hoped that when she finally asked for our help again, it wasn’t too late.

  Darien’s nightmares had finally stopped, but I was still having my own strange dreams occasionally. The most common one I had anymore was being able to use the non-shifter powers I had to a greater extent. Unfortunately, the talent for controlling them in my dreams did not spill over to real life.

  Nina had quit coming by the apartment, but I still saw her occasionally for lunch or shopping. I would catch her looking at me speculatively every once in a while, like she was waiting for me to say something to her in regards to Darien, but I kept my mouth shut, refusing to let her know how much she had wounded me. I was pissed at her, but for whatever reason I had a hard time wanting to break the friendship and kept making excuses for her. I was starting to sound like Celeste.

  It was during the second day of June that I got a frantic text from Sayuri telling me that Nina was down at the old nightclub behind the Circus Circus. I had known that Nina was spending a lot of time with the weretiger cou
ple, both in being mentored on becoming a cat shifter and, I assumed at least, in their bedroom, but I hadn’t realized that she had gone as far as fraternizing with the rest of Henry’s pack. I knew Darien had Marked her a long time ago, back when he’d realized how dangerous Henry’s pack was, so that she would be protected in her choice of whether or not to become a shifter, but I wasn’t sure how secure that protection was.

  I sighed, packing up my books and smiling apologetically at Bianca as I ducked out of the middle of my one and only class. I didn’t bother to call Darien. He and Henry had managed to keep out of each other’s way for the last couple of months and I wanted to keep it that way.

  It didn’t take me long to get to the lot behind the Circus Circus. It was a warehouse now, but at one time it had been a nightclub. I stared at the building with its dark painted windows, fighting the urge to get back in the car and leave.

  The last time I’d been in here, I’d almost died.

  I wiped sweaty palms on the sides of my black denim jeans and opened the set of painted-over glass double doors, my stomach churning. I crossed the small entryway, then let myself into the main room, standing there with my arms crossed defensively as I looked around, feeling somewhat comforted seeing an Asian couple across the room from me. Sayuri and Takeo were both slightly built, both sporting long dark hair and dark eyes when they weren’t in their weretiger forms. I hadn’t seen them in a few months.

  The place hadn’t changed much. Most of the old tables and booths were still there, the leather on the bench seats scarred with age and abuse, pieces of wood scattered here and there. The seats were filled with shifters, at least twenty, some still in human form, some in Aspect. There was at least one other cat, a puma, and a couple of wolves, as well as the gator shifter that I recognized from my last enforced visit here, plus a variety of others. Henry had a fairly large and diverse pack.

  In the center of the encircling booths, in a clear area between two support columns, sat a large table of heavy wood, a metal beam about four or five feet above the table and running across the room. The beam was newer than most of the other fixtures; I had broken the one that had been previously there.

  Standing on the table was Nina, not a stitch on her, her left hand cuffed to the beam. Standing at the base of the table, in the process of taking his clothes off, was Henry.

  “Nina!” I shouted, running forward, only to be held back by two shifters still in human form, a male and female, both dressed in bondage casual.

  Her head went up, but instead of the look of fear I had expected, she actually looked rather exultant. She gave me a patronizing grin. Henry heard me too, and turned to see who had intruded on his little gathering, his angular face breaking into a malicious smile.

  “Well, if it ain’t the half-breed’s little woman,” he called out gleefully, rubbing his hands together. “To what do we owe the dishonor of your presence, bitch?”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment, my brain too terrified to form words as I confronted Henry. He was full-blood Native American, what tribe I didn’t know, a huge man, broad as a truck and close to eight feet tall, his head shaven. The tribal tattooing along both sides of his face and his arms had been added to since the last time I’d seen him, now stretching across his scalp and covering most of his upper back. The hooded and fanged skull tattoo, the one Henry had had before, that had disappeared when Darien had taken his pack, was back, only now it was low on the back of his neck instead of his forearm.

  Baba Yaga’s symbol. Wonderful.

  This might have been an even worse idea than I’d thought, but despite how I felt about her now, I needed to make sure Nina was all right. I made the mistake of dropping my eyes, seeing way more of Henry than I ever wanted to.

  I pointed to Nina. “You’re violating the oath that you made to Darien, Henry.” I was proud of myself for managing to keep the tremble of fear out of my voice.

  He laughed, a long deep sound that echoed off the walls. “I ain’t violating nothing, ‘cept maybe this sweet thing here in a minute. I promised that breed a yours that I wouldn’t lay a finger on him or his… unless they asked for it.” He slapped Nina hard on one buttock, the sound sharp even through the hushed conversation noise of the watching shifters.

  I heard a hiss come from Nina, but her mouth was pursed in pleasure, not pain.

  “I put ya up there against yer will, pussy cat?” Henry asked her, one hand sliding up her leg until his fingers were between her thighs, moving against her in a way that made her moan and writhe, eyes on me as he licked his lips.

  “This is my…” Nina moaned again, “choice, Kat… tired of… waiting… go ‘way if… it bothers you.” Her knees buckled under her under Henry’s ministrations and she dangled from the cuff.

  Henry withdrew his hand, held it in front of his face and slowly licked his fingers, still pinning me with his gaze, before winking at me.

  “No, she can stay and watch,” Henry said, a sadistic gleam in his eye as he hopped up onto the table and grasped Nina by the legs. “I can show her how a real Injun fucks.” He drove himself into Nina in one swift motion, her ululating cry of pleasure bouncing off the glass.

  I backed away slowly, taking up a position in front of the door where I could make sure Henry didn’t do anything to Nina that she didn’t want, but still far enough away that I didn’t have a front row view.

  It was only then that I noticed the man in the far corner of the room, fedora pulled low, and black trench tucked around him as he leaned against the wall. I’d seen him before, when Henry had almost killed me. I was surprised that he was here, then again I’d been surprised the first time too; the guy was not a shifter, but other than that, I didn’t know what he was.

  Nina cried out again, catching my attention and I looked up to see her straddling Henry, her face twisted in ecstasy, despite the fresh blood running down her thighs. If having sex with Alex hadn’t been enough to change her, this certainly should.

  I yelped in pain as the door behind me suddenly burst into hundreds of tiny glass shards, peppering my back, and I managed to barely roll to the left out of the way as someone came charging into the room. I came up in a crouch, senses on high alert as the newcomer stopped rather suddenly about halfway between me and the big table, and conjured blades gleaming fire and ice. He looked around as though sizing up the situation, giving me a brief glimpse of his profile.

  That one glimpse was enough to send my heart into my throat.

  Aerick.

  What the hell was he doing in Vegas, let alone propelling himself into the middle of a shifter Ritual of Blooding? Last I knew, he was still in Colorado, but then again, I had gotten that information from an incorporeal messenger that I hadn’t seen in a couple months. Obviously he’d gotten back. When? I had no clue.

  I felt guilty over the little thrill of happiness that went through me, but I had never hidden from Darien that I still loved Aerick as well.

  “Hey, Henry. We’ve got company,” the fedora wearing man in the corner spoke up. If he was on a first name basis with Henry, it would explain his unhindered presence.

  “If it’s another babe wanting a piece, get her over here. If not, it can wait. Damn these new bitches are always tight,” Henry complained in a grunt, not paying attention to anything but was Nina was doing to him.

  Nina looked up, shocked surprise on her face. She pushed herself off of Henry, actual embarrassment staining her cheeks as she tried to twist her body in such a way as to hide herself. It was odd behavior for her and as I glanced to my right, I saw the reason. Dave was standing in the doorway, something held loosely in his right hand that I couldn’t see.

  He was a little bit smaller than Aerick, leaner, with shoulder-length dark-blonde hair that was pushed to the other side of his face. He was wearing worn jeans and a t-shirt. His whole body was shaking with anger.

  Nina pulled at something taped to the inside of her left arm, the key to the cuffs, and used it to free herself as Dave moved f
urther into the room. I could see barely contained rage on Dave’s face, and before Aerick had a chance to stop him, Dave launched himself toward the big table.

  Henry was sitting up, shouting obscenities about being interrupted. As he turned to look at the cause, Dave came to a sliding stop at the edge of the table, right hand already coming forward with momentum, gripping a short lead pipe. The blow to the head caught Henry by surprise, and if he hadn’t been a shifter, and a bear shifter to boot, he’d have probably been making a trip to the emergency room with brain damage.

  Unfortunately for Dave, Henry was a shifter, a huge one. Henry rocked with the shot, an insanely amused grin curling his lip, then palmed Dave’s head, stood, and flung him across the room into the wall on the other side of the door. Dave fell to the floor with a stomach turning noise.

  “Dave!” Nina screamed, leaping off the table and making a beeline for where Dave lay.

  Henry made as if to follow, ignoring Aerick, who hadn’t done anything to him… yet. Aerick stepped in Henry’s way and dropped into a fighting stance. Knowing Henry, if it was anyone else, I would have thought they were nuts, but I’d seen Aerick fight, so I hoped he could take care of himself. Nina was sitting on the floor on the other side of the door, clearly wanting to do something to help Dave, but afraid to touch him for fear of hurting him more. I darted over to them.

  “You’d better pray to whatever force or deity you believe in that he lives through this unscathed. If he doesn’t, I’ll make sure that you’re eternally regenerating your limbs every hour on the hour as I cut them from you. Slowly,” Aerick threatened, jaw clenched.

  “Ha!” Henry’s laugh was short, guttural. “You think you can do anything to me, sorcerer? I’ve killed dozens of your kind. Even killed one of MAGE’s vaunted Councilors once. What have you got? Some puny elemental weapons? That Councilor put up more of a fight than you can hope to. What are you, an apprentice, journeyman at best?” He was putting his pants back on as he recounted his kills, trying to impress Aerick. I was pretty sure Henry was a feral shifter, and while that kind of thing might have looked good to another shifter, it would probably just piss Aerick off more.