by Zoe Chant
Plus, men didn’t like a woman as rough around the edges as Shoshanna was. They saw her pretty face and her curvy body, and they thought she’d be sweet and feminine. Then they had a rude awakening once they actually started spending time with her.
Except Kevin, but they weren’t romantic with each other. They’d come out of that lab with a different kind of a bond. He was her brother. They were their own tiny shifter clan, and she was happy with it that way. She didn’t need a fairy tale Prince Charming shifter mate on top of that.
“Now boarding Flight 632, Miami to Hartford,” the airline lady announced, and Shoshanna got up. Time go to home.
The flight was long and boring as usual, except that somewhere over Virginia, Shoshanna sat bolt upright as her body was overwhelmed by the sensation of falling.
The plane’s crashing! she thought wildly.
But it wasn’t.
No one around her was reacting at all, and when she looked out the window, the clouds were floating peacefully past, just like they had before.
But she’d been convinced she was falling. And now she felt terrible, sick and awful like she never was on planes.
Maybe I’m getting a bug, she thought uneasily. Shifters were rarely sick, though.
After a few minutes, the sensations subsided, although she still felt a little nauseated. She settled back in her seat, wondering what that could have been.
***
Max didn’t really wake up. He just moved a tiny amount closer to consciousness. Just enough that he was aware that something was wrong.
Had he really been asleep? He remembered falling. Crashing to the bottom. And then just a long, long haze of darkness, pain, and cold.
Everything was still dark. He still hurt. And he was still cold.
Could he move?
He could. It hurt more than anything he’d ever experienced, a blinding, almost paralyzing pain, but he could.
As he moved cautiously around in his seat, he realized that he wasn’t just cold, he was wet. River. There’d been a river. They’d crashed over the ridge into the river.
He pried open his eyes. He’d been expecting bright, stabbing lights, but instead it was dark. Night? It was already night? What time had it been before? He couldn’t remember, and that was disturbing.
There was a figure next to him. Tom. Max reached out to touch his shoulder, see if he could be woken up as well.
Then he processed what Tom looked like. The way his head was pressed against the broken windshield.
With cold, shaking fingers, Max checked Tom’s neck for a pulse. He had to leave his hand there for a long time to be sure that he couldn’t feel one, but finally he accepted that it was true. Tom was dead.
Because of him. He knew it was because of him, even if he couldn’t quite remember why right this second.
Max forced himself to focus. It was almost impossible. He felt like there was a layer of cotton wrapped around his brain, keeping him from thinking clearly.
But he knew he needed to get out. He was in his car, and the car was...half-in, half-out of the river. It was good it hadn’t gone any further, or he probably would have drowned.
Carefully, Max undid his seatbelt. Then he tried the door.
It was stuck. He pushed on it, trying to summon his lion’s strength. The lion in him was just as woozy and hurt as his human side, though, and it took a long time to lever the door open. Ten minutes? He wasn’t sure. It was hard to keep track of time.
His phone. His phone would tell him what time it was, and anyway, he needed to call someone and tell them what had happened, so that he could...do something. He wasn’t sure what. Something needed to be done, though, he was certain.
Who, though? He wasn’t sure. Could he trust anyone? His siblings, he could trust them. But, he remembered suddenly, none of them were in the country right now. Seth was...somewhere. Reid was somewhere else. Alexandra was in Hong Kong, he knew that.
He found his phone in his pocket. The screen was cracked and it wouldn’t turn on.
No phone. All right. He could get out by himself. He gave the door one last shove, and it sprang open. Water rushed in.
It was cold. He could only barely tell, though, because he felt so numb all over. Could he stand up?
Max hauled himself out of the driver’s seat on what felt like willpower alone. His limbs were sparking with pain where they weren’t numbed by cold. He tripped almost immediately and found himself underwater.
He had to fight not to inhale in surprise at the sudden immersion in freezing water, and then fight harder to get back upright. He came up coughing, and instinctively started to shift.
It hurt like hell. His body cracked and shivered, and the change was slower than it had ever been. But after a long, painful moment, he was a lion.
Max relaxed almost immediately into his lion’s mind. He couldn’t seem to muster his brain into any sort of complicated thoughts as a human. It was time to let his less complicated half run the show.
In lion form, it was easier to move, although he was still in severe pain, especially along his flank and in his right rear leg. He was also still woozy, and finding it hard to make decisions.
Help, he thought, finally. I need help.
That wasn’t something that Max Rowland was used to admitting, even to himself. But his lion was injured and vulnerable, and the animal side knew it even if the human side didn’t like it.
His lion also knew exactly where to go.
Mate, it thought. Our mate’s den is near. She will help us.
That was wrong, somehow, Max knew. But how could it be wrong? Of course his mate would help him. Of course he should go to his mate, tell her there was danger, and they could fix everything together. That was the right thing to do.
Besides, if he was in danger, she might be in danger somewhere, too, all by herself. He needed to make sure that she was safe.
Slowly, his lion limped out of the river and turned toward his mate’s den. He knew where it was. He thought his mate might be farther away, because he couldn’t sense her there herself, but she’d come back to her den. He’d see her soon.
He went slowly, under the cover of darkness, toward his mate.
***
Shoshanna had hoped that she’d feel better after the plane landed, but she didn’t. She still felt sick and a bit achy, and also just plain uneasy. There wasn’t any clear reason for it. She spent several useless minutes being paranoid, watching the airport crowd surreptitiously to see if anyone was following her, ducking into a restaurant and coming out the other side, making an abrupt turn and stopping to see who came after her.
She didn’t see anybody. Her instincts were screaming at her that something was wrong, but she had no idea what it was.
Struck by a sudden fear, she pulled out her phone and called Kevin.
“Hey,” he answered almost immediately, sounding cheerful. She relaxed. “What’s up? You back from Florida?”
“Just got in,” she told him, heading for the long-term parking lot. “How’s sunny Boston?”
“Cold. Impossible to get around in. The usual. I have no idea when this guy even sees his mistress, because so far he’s only cheating on his wife with his job. Hopefully I’ll catch him out in the next day or so. You got anything else lined up?”
Shoshanna shook her head, forgetting that Kevin couldn’t see her for a second. “Nope. I’ll work on it when I get home.”
“Take a couple of days off, how about,” Kevin suggested. “You deserve it, after a solid week on the job.”
“In Miami,” she pointed out. “You told me when I left to treat it like a vacation.”
“Did you treat it like a vacation?” he asked. Shoshanna was quiet, and he snorted. “Didn’t think so. Seriously, take a long weekend, I’ll see you when I get back and we can line something else up. Sleep or something.”
“What’s sleep?”
“If you figure out it, tell me.” They were only half-joking.
She
and Kevin both had found it almost impossible to sleep in the lab’s cells. It was how they’d become friends in the first place, talking quietly in the middle of the night while everyone else was exhaustedly unconscious.
Even though they were free now, neither of them slept very well anymore. Insomnia, nightmares...they both spent their fair share of time in the office at three AM, just because they’d rather work than lie awake remembering.
“I’m at my car,” Shoshanna told him, digging for her keys. “Good luck with the husband.”
“Thanks. See you when I get back.”
Shoshanna smiled fondly as she hung up. She always missed Kevin when he was gone. She’d grown up an only child of a single mother, and had had no idea what it might be like to have a sibling until she’d met him.
Sure, he was annoying sometimes, but she was pretty sure that’s how brothers were supposed to be. And as much as he teased her, and gave her a hard time about working too hard and being a killjoy, he worried about her and helped her just as much.
And she’d never, ever admit this to Kevin, but Shoshanna needed someone to remind her not to be a killjoy sometimes. It was easy for her to take things too seriously, to react with annoyance or anger. Sometimes she was envious of Kevin’s ability to be lighthearted about his problems, make them seem like jokes.
Of course, sometimes it was a pain in the ass. But that was what family was like.
Feeling a little better, she got in her car and started the drive out to Nowheresville, New England.
Kevin had given her a hard time for making her commute such a pain, but Shoshanna loved being so far from any cities. She was always tense and alert in a city, aware that she didn’t know any of the people around her, and any of them could turn out to be a threat at any time.
In a big city, there were too many factors for anyone to control. She didn’t have any power over what might happen, and she knew it.
Besides, living in the middle of the woods meant that she could shift and run whenever she felt like it, and that was something she’d be hard-pressed to give up. After living in a tiny cell for so long, having the space to run was one of the most important parts of her life.
So she headed out of the city for the long drive home. It was late, and there were almost no other cars on the two-lane road through the trees. It was like she was alone in the world, a feeling she usually enjoyed.
But tonight, she was still caught up in the uneasy feeling. Now it was coupled with a sense of urgency, like she had to get home because something was wrong.
Nothing was wrong, though. She knew nothing was wrong.
After all, if she was all right, and Kevin was all right, then nothing could be wrong. Even if her house had burned down while she was away, as long as she and Kevin were okay, she could deal with it.
Still, she drove faster than usual, keeping a careful eye out for deer. If nothing else, she wanted to get home and prove to herself that everything was normal.
When she saw her house, she told herself, Look, there it is. Still standing. Nothing’s wrong. She pulled into her driveway, relieved...
And saw the large figure curled up on her doorstep.
Shoshanna’s breath caught. Her headlights were illuminating the front of the house, and she could see that it wasn’t a human, but rather a large animal. A very large animal. As she brought her car to a stop, the headlights played over damp, unruly fur, and caught on the golden mane.
A lion. It was a lion.
A shifter, it must be—there weren’t any wild lions roaming around Connecticut forests. The only lion shifter she knew was Seth, who she’d met on her last day in the scientists’ lab. Was Seth in trouble?
Slowly, Shoshanna turned off the car. The headlights died, leaving her and the lion in total darkness. Her cheetah eyes adjusted quickly, and she stared at the lion’s prone form.
What if this wasn’t Seth? What if it was someone else, what if this was a trick to get her to come investigate, and then men with tranquilizers appeared out of the woods to take her away again—
Calm down. Panicking wasn’t going to help anything. She pulled her phone from her pocket, found Kevin’s number, and hovered her thumb over it, ready to call the second something happened. Then she cautiously got out of the car.
No paramilitary force materialized to cart her away. She walked slowly toward her front step.
And froze.
Now that she was closer, looking right at him, knowledge hit her like a bolt of lightning. She stopped short. A new understanding was coursing through her body.
It wasn’t Seth. Because this lion, fallen to the ground at her front door, was her mate.
Shoshanna stood there, frozen in disbelief, for a full minute. If the certainty hadn’t been so deep in her, if she hadn’t known down to her bones that this was her mate, she wouldn’t have believed it was possible.
She’d been half-certain that she’d never find her mate. She definitely thought that he wasn’t going to just drop down from the sky onto her head, that if she wanted to find him, she’d have to start spending more time in shifter communities, getting to know the unmated men.
The idea had made her skin crawl. Shoshanna wanted to be left alone. She’d thought that maybe in another couple of years, it might be easier. She had plenty of time, after all. And if she never found him, that was fine, too. She was happy enough alone.
But she wasn’t alone anymore. Her mate was with her.
Finally, she took a few steps forward, came close enough to really see him. And she realized for the first time that he was hurt.
Of course he’s hurt. People don’t just take naps on doorsteps if they’re doing fine.
His fur was wet and dirty, but there were also traces of blood on it. He looked unconscious, which was a bad sign—it took a lot to knock a big predator out. And exotic predator shifters, like cheetahs and lions, knew better than to fall asleep in their shifted form where someone could see them.
Slowly, Shoshanna knelt down on the step next to him. “Hello?” she said softly.
She hadn’t expected a reaction, but to her surprise, he stirred. His eyes blinked open, revealing the barest sliver of gold around blown-wide pupils. He made a rumbling noise deep in his chest, and she barely contained an un-Shoshanna-like squeak of surprise.
Instead, she told him, “I’m Shoshanna. I’m going to help you.” Was that warm, gentle voice really coming from her? “I need you to shift. All right? I can’t get you inside like this.” Adult male lions weighed something like 500 pounds; there was no way she could move him while he was shifted.
She wasn’t sure if he understood her at first, but then his eyes closed and he shivered. The change was excruciatingly slow. His fur blurred and started to disappear, his bones creaked, and he was obviously in pain. After a long minute where he was neither one thing nor the other, a blond man in a bedraggled suit was lying on her doorstep.
As a human, he looked more exhausted and hurt than as a lion. His face was bruised and pinched with pain, and his eyes blinked at her dazedly. His shirt was almost entirely covered in rusty-red blood.
Shoshanna reminded herself that he was a shifter, and whatever had made him bleed so much was probably already on its way to being healed. Panicking was not helpful.
“Can you tell me your name?” She kept her voice steady.
“Max.” His voice was weak, but deep, not breathy like she’d been expecting.
“Okay, Max. We’re going to get you inside.”
When she touched him, it was like feeling lightning course through her hands. Her mate, this was her mate. She wanted to wrap him up in her arms and never let go.
She forced her instincts down. Getting him inside, cleaned up, and warm was the most important thing. If his life was in danger, she’d have to find a shifter doctor who could make it out here quickly, which would not be easy. She needed to focus.
Carefully, she helped him sit up. His face went tight with pain, although he didn’t make a s
ound.
“How badly are you hurt?” she asked him, having to keep the panic out of her voice again.
“I don’t know,” he said, quietly but steadily.
That wasn’t good at all.
“All right.” She forced herself to sound businesslike and not afraid. “We’re going to get you inside and check you out.” She stood up and unlocked and opened the front door, then crouched down next to him again. “Come on, put your arm around me.”
He was more than willing to do that, although she knew it hurt him. If he were a human, she’d be unwilling to move him in this state, but shifters were much more resilient, and in any case she couldn’t just call an ambulance for a shifter. Not unless she wanted curious EMTs staring at wounds that just melted away before their eyes.
Once she got his arm over her shoulders, she said, “All right. Now we’re going to stand up.”
Somehow, the silence that followed seemed like a big, sustained wince.
“I’d pick you up and carry you,” she told him, “but logistically, it’d be more trouble than this would.”
She could probably manage it. Shifter strength was good for a lot. But even sitting down, she could tell that he was much taller and bigger than she was. Getting him through the door without banging him against something would be nearly impossible, and she’d be afraid that she was putting pressure on his wounds.
So instead, she braced herself, held onto his wrist and his torso, and stood them up.
He made a single pained noise, and then went silent.
“Don’t stay quiet for my sake,” Shoshanna said, a hint of her usual acerbic tones creeping back into her voice. “I’m not going to lose any respect for you because this hurts.”
But during the whole process of carefully turning around, stepping up into the house, and walking down the hall to her bathroom, where she lowered him carefully to sit on the bench built in her shower, he didn’t make a sound.
She dashed away to shut the front door, coming back as quickly as possible; she didn’t want him to fall onto the tub floor. She wished she had paramedic training or something, so she’d know what was best in this situation. Even if paramedics were trained to work on humans, not shifters, it would be good to know something.