Shifter's Claim (The Shadow Shifters)

by A. C. Arthur

  “His name was Kazmere Rutherford. He used to work for me,” he replied.

  She blinked a couple of times then slowly dragged her tongue over her lips. “Did you kill him?”

  The question seemed loud in the otherwise semi-quiet room. It also seemed accusatory as if in the instance that his answer was yes, she might not approve.

  “I did,” he told her anyway.

  She sighed heavily. “I should say thank you because I’ve been feeling pretty pissed off during my bouts with consciousness. But I don’t know how I feel about knowing you can kill so easily.”

  “Killing is a part of our genetic makeup and most oftentimes is warranted, living in the forest among other wildlife. But as a half human living in a human world, it’s also a choice.” Bas took a deep breath when she did not respond right away. “Kazmere betrayed my trust. He worked with me only to feed information to my enemy. But I would not have killed him for that alone. Aiming at you, hurting you is what sealed his fate.”

  He’d released his arms, using his hands to grab hold of the edge of her bed, gripping the metal so tightly his knuckles whitened.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  Bas nodded in reply.

  “Can you come closer?”

  Bas froze. He had been very still in the first place but now he didn’t even blink. Her lids were partially closed but she looked at him expectantly. The words replayed in his mind and he felt a gentle stirring from his cat, a nudge that was intended to move him forward, to do what she’d asked of him. But Bas refused to make the same mistake twice. He could never live with himself if he did.

  “I’ll come back later to check on you,” he told her before turning away.

  “Bas,” she called to him as he reached for the door handle. “This wasn’t how I meant for this trip to turn out, you weren’t who I thought you would be. This entire time I’ve been working toward getting this story and saving my brother. I wanted to be their hero, yet again. I guess that sort of made me feel important, like I had a purpose in this life. You don’t have to worry, however, I’ll never write that story about your people, your family. I’ve been researching Rome and the people around him for weeks, uncovering nothing but his loyalty and dedication to those closest to him. Coming here, I had the chance to see up close how committed you and the other shadows are to each other and to your cause.”

  She paused then, coughing a little, causing Bas to hold his breath in the hopes that she wasn’t suffering any side effects from the surgery that removed the bullet from her upper shoulder.

  “You can walk away now,” she continued. “You can turn away from me and run back to your private suite where you can retreat even further into yourself for the rest of your life. I’ll be okay. I’ll go home and I’ll live my life.” She hesitated a second that seemed like a millennia. “I’ll live my life without you.”

  There was something to be said for a woman who could take a bullet only six hours ago then lie in a hospital bed and speak words that made him feel as small and inconsequential as a piece of lint. And that something was phenomenal. Bas knew that without any doubt, just as he knew she’d been absolutely right, she would be okay without him. He knew she would go home and continue on with her life without a moment’s hesitation. He’d never thought differently.

  In a perfect world he would turn around, walk over to her, and tell her … tell her … that he was all wrong for her, that her life would never be the same with him in it. Then he’d tell her what he realized the sweet scent that only permeated the air when they were together meant and the constriction he’d identified in his chest signified. He loved her.

  Straight from one of those sappy romance novels he’d seen Jewel reading, Bas felt like a botched-up hero. He hadn’t protected Priya, but he sure had avenged her, and he hadn’t given her enough candlelight and roses, but he had made love to her with an abandon that he’d never felt with another female. He’d told her what he truly was, but he hadn’t told her he loved her or what had kept him from loving all these years. And he wouldn’t, he thought as he pulled the door open and quietly stepped through to the other side.

  He wouldn’t doom her to a life full of secrecy and danger; love, for all its frilly and exciting tendrils, was not that perfect.

  * * *

  He hadn’t come back, Priya thought two days later when she was still confined to the hospital bed. Jewel had brought her bag, purse, and laptop from Bas’s suite, a sign that he was truly finished with her. A sign that she’d swallowed without so much as a sigh. This was what she did, what she’d had to do all her life—she took the good with the bad and was blessed to live another day regardless.

  She’d spoken to Lolo, who wanted to board a plane and head out west to see that she was all right. Smiling into the phone as he’d spoken with such compassion and concern for her safety and welfare, Priya had wondered why she couldn’t fall in love with this guy. Why was she so adamant about choosing the wrong one? Her e-mail box had been almost full with messages from Agent Wilson and Maury, who somewhere within those many messages had fired and then rehired her.

  After about forty minutes dedicated to sipping on the bland apple juice the nurse had brought to her and cleaning out her e-mail box, there was a knock at the door. She didn’t have to give permission to come inside, the two guards Bas had stationed in the hallway would do that for her. The only reason she knew they were out there was because Paolo had come inside to talk to her, to apologize for not protecting her the morning of the press conference. She liked Paolo, thought he was an honest guy, except for his Shadow Shifter secret. Syfon was a little more reserved, but he too had come inside to check on her periodically. It seemed strange, but Priya knew she was going to miss these guys when she went back to D.C. Especially Jacques, who only came when he thought she was asleep, talking quietly to the doctors, giving orders to the nurses, and otherwise making sure she had everything she needed.

  The only male shifter she hadn’t seen was Bas.

  “Hi, honey,” a soft voice whispered and Priya had to blink twice to make sure she was seeing who she thought she was seeing.

  “Mama?” Priya whispered as she watched Karen Drake enter her hospital room. “What are you doing here?”

  That question died without an answer as following behind Karen came Malik. He was five foot eleven, his slim frame garbed in jeans and an oversized plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

  “Hey, peanut,” he said in his raspy voice.

  Priya sat up in the bed, closing her laptop and pushing it down beside her. “Malik,” she whispered about two seconds before her older brother had crossed the floor, grabbing her in a hug that caused pain to shoot through her shoulder and down to her fingers. She didn’t care, she wasn’t letting him go and dared him to release her.

  “I’m so happy to see you, so happy you’re okay,” she was saying into his ear.

  “I’m glad you sent someone to get me. You’re always looking out for me,” he said when she finally released her hold on him and he drew back to look into her eyes.

  Priya stared up at him, feeling all kinds of uncomfortable to see the sheen of tears glistening in his eyes.

  “I’d be dead by now if it wasn’t for you,” he told her. “All those rehabs and bail outs from jail and now this.” Malik shook his head. “I’m gonna do better, peanut. I promise you I’m gonna do better this time.”

  Priya cupped his cheek where his beard had begun to grow in. The hair made him look older, more mature. The slight slump in his shoulders and the way he reached up a hand to tweak the end of her nose, made her believe his words like she never had before.

  “Thank you, baby,” her mother said, leaning in to hug Priya when Malik had moved out of the way. “You promised to bring him home and you did.”

  Priya hugged her mother but didn’t really know what to say. She had promised her that she would bring Malik home safely, but she hadn’t really believed herself then. In fact, it wouldn’t be po
ssible now if it weren’t for …

  “How did you get here? How did you know where I was?” she asked them.

  “Those people that came to get me, they took me to the hospital and waited while I got fixed up,” Malik told her. “Then they took me back to Mama’s house and told me a nurse would come by to check on me and give me more pain pills if I needed them. You know the hospital wouldn’t give me a prescription.”

  Priya nodded her agreement with the hospital’s decision. The last thing Malik needed was to become addicted to another drug.

  “Then last night that nice girl came back with these plane tickets. She said you’d been hurt and that we should come and see you, to make you feel better,” Karen finished.

  Priya’s hands shook as she listened to them, nodding. “That was very nice of them,” she said. “Very nice indeed.”

  “The guy, I think his name is Eli, he said he might have a job for me at one of his barbershops. You know, as soon as I get myself cleaned up.”

  Priya didn’t know who Eli was, but she presumed he was a shadow and that he too, was acting on Bas’s command. A part of her wanted to pick up the phone and call him to thank him once more. There was also the hope that the call would lead to a visit from Bas, and maybe, just maybe … No, it was foolish and she wouldn’t put herself through that again. This was the way Bas wanted things and she had to respect that, no matter how much it hurt.

  “That would be great, Malik,” she told her brother.

  “He’ll get cleaned up,” Karen began, reaching out a hand to take Malik’s in hers, then threading her fingers through Priya’s. “He’s going to get that job and you’re going to get better and come home and we’ll be just like we were before.”

  Malik smiled, bending down to kiss his mother’s weathered cheek. Priya smiled also, reveling in the joy of having her family here and safe. Her life would be as it was before, only improved because Malik would be better and Karen would be happier. As for Priya, she would be just fine, she would have her job and her friend Lolo, just as she’d had before she’d met Bas. Before she’d known about Shadow Shifters and their secret society.

  * * *

  “So, what, are you like her personal Santa Claus now?” Rome asked from behind.

  Bas stood at the hospital room door, looking through the narrow window at the reunion between Priya and her family. He’d called Nivea the day he left Priya in the hospital and asked her to check on Karen and Malik Drake. Sending the airline tickets was an afterthought, a consolation to Priya for all the unnecessary pain he’d caused her.

  And none of it had soothed his guilt. Not until she hugged her brother and closed her eyes to the emotion of having him safe in her arms. Then Bas had felt satisfied, and almost happy himself.

  “She deserves it after all she’s been through,” he said without turning to face his longtime friend.

  “Eli told me about her brother and where they found him.”

  Bas nodded. Eli had called him the morning after he and Nivea had found Malik Drake and given him more news he didn’t want to hear. “I was going to call a meeting before you left to go back home.”

  “I can understand that things have been a little unsteady out here,” Rome said. “But I have to admit I’m trying like hell not to be bent out of shape with all your secrecy. Why didn’t you just tell me why she was hunting down the story? I could’ve helped sooner.”

  At that Bas did turn. He walked past Rome to the waiting room down the hall from Priya’s room, stopping in front of a row of empty chairs.

  “The moment she came here she became my problem. I needed to deal with her on my own,” he told Rome, who was already shaking his head in disagreement.

  “To be quite honest, she’s been your problem since day one at that hotel,” Rome told him. “You’ve been protecting her ever since.”

  Bas didn’t argue with that fact. “I knew she wasn’t going to stop until she got hurt. I couldn’t let that happen,” he said then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Rather, I didn’t want to let that happen. I guess in the end I couldn’t really stop it.”

  “You couldn’t stop falling in love with her or claiming her as your companheiro?”

  No, Bas thought. He was not going there, especially not with Rome, not here and definitely not now.

  “Eli told you about the rogues and the owner of the house where he found Malik?” he asked, changing the subject.

  Rome gave a slight smile, then nodded as if agreeing not to push Bas any further than he wanted to go. “Yeah, he told me. Bianca Adani is listed as the property owner.”

  Bas nodded. “Which begs the question of why rogues were forcing Priya to expose us. All they had to do was shift in public and the task would be done.”

  “That wouldn’t prove I was a shifter or that more existed and were trying to form a democracy here. Whoever was behind this wanted Priya to expose everything about the tribes, not just one side. And they definitely wanted me and my reputation to come crashing down with the story.”

  “So this is all about you?” Bas asked. “And they call me the conceited one.”

  Rome chuckled then, soliciting a grin from Bas.

  “It’s about all of us and everything we stand for. Somebody doesn’t like it and doesn’t want us to succeed,” Rome told Bas.

  After a few moments of silence Bas looked to Rome again. “He’s dead, Rome,” he said slowly.

  Rome slipped his hands into his front pants pockets, shrugging as he said, “We have no proof of that.”

  And they didn’t, which meant there was a good chance the rumor wasn’t true. And if that was the case, the situation with the shadows and the humans had just gotten ten times worse.

  Chapter 30

  Washington, D.C.

  Four weeks later

  The latest shipment of guns had been late, but the savior drug was pulling in massive amounts of money each week. Enough so that Darel not only had a house in S.E. that they used for their headquarters, but he’d also purchased his own personal condo for times when he needed to get away from the day job. A month ago he’d been at full staff, in two locations. Now, he was only working one, not sure he should trust anyone to start again on the West Coast.

  He’d sent one of his best fighters out there with Palermo and both of them had ended up dead. In fact, the entire crew out there had been wiped out, no doubt by those meddling shadows. But that was okay, Darel planned to keep right on building up his clientele on the East Coast. When it was time to venture out he would know, but for now, it was time to simply enjoy his money and the power he was gaining on the streets by keeping his workers armed sufficiently.

  Darel paused the moment he walked through the door of his condo. Something wasn’t right. All of his furniture was where it should be, the entertainment center covering one wall in the living room with the couch and love seat facing that way, and the desk that ran along a side wall with the picture of Mount Rushmore hanging above it. Darel didn’t give a damn about the national monument, it was for humans, not him. But the picture was large enough to cover the hole in the wall that afforded him an unfettered view into his bedroom on the other side. The bedroom where he could hear someone.

  Only three people knew about this place and one of them Darel didn’t trust as far as he could spit. Bianca had come into his life months ago with a haze of suspicion hovering around her. Seducing Sabar had been a part of a bigger plan for her, Darel had sensed that the moment he saw her. And he’d tried to warn Sabar, who, unfortunately, was too damned arrogant to heed the advice. That was when Darel decided to take matters into his own hands and now, as he came to a stop in the doorway of his bedroom, he would deal with the repercussions of that decision.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Bianca turned quickly, almost falling out of the swiveling desk chair where she’d been sitting.

  “You’re back,” she said, bringing a fluttering hand to her neck. “I was just waiting for you.”r />
  Darel wasn’t buying that for one hot minute. “You always wait for me fully dressed, at my computer, doing what?” He looked around her because she’d regained her balance in the chair and had eased over so her body would cover the computer screen.

  “Sending an e-mail?” he questioned but didn’t really expect an honest answer from her. So instead he grabbed her by the shoulders, moving her and the chair to the side so that he now had an unfettered view.

  Then he chuckled, turning slowly to see Bianca twirling the edges of her dark hair. Even guilty as hell she was fucking gorgeous. The most perfect and delectable female shifter Darel had ever laid eyes on. Five feet eight inches tall, legs longer than the best orgasm, breasts high, perky, and 100 percent real, a willing and skilled mouth always painted with the most exceptionally shaded gloss, and ice-blue eyes that could pierce through a man’s soul if he let them.

  In a flash Darel had his hands around her neck, pulling her from the chair and tossing her onto the bed. She gasped for breath as he climbed on top of her, shaking her head as his fingers tightened, cutting off her air supply.

  “You’re not as smart as you think you are, Bianca.” He spoke in a deceptively calm voice. “I knew somebody had to be tipping them off. I knew it was no mistake that they kept hitting my drops.”

  She grabbed his wrists, smacking at them futilely as her beautiful blue eyes bulged. In moments she would shift into a sleek and gorgeous white Bengal tiger.

  “You’ve been a bad, bad, girl, Bianca.”

  She tried to talk, tried to explain, he figured, but Darel simply tightened his grip. “What else did you tell those shadows?”

  Her head moved from side to side, the tips of her earlobes turning red. She kicked wildly, her knees slapping him in the back and Darel’s dick hardened. A nuisance distraction, this arousal that came whenever he got physical with Bianca, even if that physicality was going to result in her death.