by Helen Scott
Sanctuary at Midnight
Wardens of Midnight
Helen Scott
Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Also by Helen Scott
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Sanctuary at Midnight
Wardens of Midnight Book One
Copyright © 2018 by Helen Scott
Cover Design © Natasha Snow
Editing by Courtney Umphress
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the brief use of quotations in a book review.
This book is intended for adults only. The sexual activities represented in this book are a work of fiction intended for adults. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously by the author. Any resemblance to actual places, events, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Chapter 1
Valentina’s head pounded as her jaguar clawed at her skin, desperate to come out. She hadn’t shifted in over a month. Her cat wasn’t used to going so long without a run and was now throwing a hissy fit about it inside her skin.
The gentle rev of the engine refocused her senses as she drove out of the city toward Woodhaven, the estate the pack owned. Not only did they own the one hundred acres that the sprawling mansion sat on, but the surrounding parcels of land as well, giving their animals plenty of room to roam, which was exactly what she needed. She could already visualize the path she knew her cat liked to take, wooded with lots of trees to climb and a stream where she would stop and relax.
An accident had diverted her from her normal route home, adding an extra half hour to her journey just to get through all the diverted traffic, but it wouldn’t be Chicago without a car accident and traffic.
She sighed, thankful that she was at least on the country road that would take her to the long private driveway she craved so much. Her lights flashed over something on the edge of the road. Skin, and lots of it. She could have just swerved around it, but the shape of it made her stomach clench.
Valentina slowed and moved her car to the side of the road, pausing before she reversed along the curb to the person sprawled out on the grass, silently cursing herself the whole time. Woodhaven was only a couple miles away. Why couldn’t this person have been after her turning? She had just passed the horse farm and briefly wondered if the person had been thrown from a horse. That wouldn’t explain the nakedness, though.
She pressed the button with the dual red triangles to turn her hazard lights on and got out of the car. It was late enough that the road was quiet, and with cornfields on one side and a few homes scattered here and there on the other, it wasn’t one of the major roads to begin with.
The grass was still wet from the evening’s rain as she navigated the soggy ground as best she could in her heels. The wind brought the smell of the horses to her, along with the clean scent of the rain as she hobbled around the wet ground. Finally, the person came into view. A lean, muscular back topped off with wide shoulders was what she kept her eyes on as she tried not to notice the firm, round behind the man had.
She crouched next to him and listened for a pulse; her cat’s hearing was strong enough that even in human form, she should have been able to pick it up, but there was just the ambient noise of the bugs in the surrounding vegetation and her own pulse thundering in her ears. She really hoped it wasn’t a dead body. As she took a deep breath, she extended her hand and connected with his skin. A steady but light thump, thump greeted the pressure of her fingers on his neck, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Thank the elders he wasn’t dead. Moving humans when they were injured was tricky, and she knew there was a possibility of doing more harm than good depending on how he was injured, but she didn’t have another choice.
Gently, she rolled him over onto his back, careful to keep his groin out of her visual range so she could give the man some privacy. The scent that wafted up from the ground as she disturbed him was most definitely not human, though. The woodsy, earthy smell of the horses was so pungent, she must have missed it at first. Now, she was left with a choice, either call in a cleaner and wait for them to show up, which would probably be over an hour given the traffic she had just driven through, or take him back to Woodhaven.
Sitting on the side of the road for an hour was a luxury her jaguar wasn’t going to give her. Its claws scraped along the skin of her fingers, and she had to focus to prevent her fingernails from shifting. Once her cat had eased off, she lifted the man into a fireman’s carry and eased him into the back seat of the car. She had been lucky that no one had driven by, and she wanted to get out of there before her luck ran out.
The driveway for Woodhaven was long and winding, and if the driver wasn’t careful, or was going too fast, it was easy to spin out into one of the trees that lined the paved area. She pulled through the archway into the area lined with what looked like barn doors but were actually garage doors. She pressed a button to open hers, and as she parked the car, she dialed Liam’s number, hoping their resident doctor was home.
“Alpha,” his low voice greeted her over the phone.
“Are you home?” she asked, knowing her tone sounded urgent and would set the man on edge.
“Yes.”
“Meet me in medical.”
“On my way.”
The brief exchange was all she needed to make sure that someone else was there to help her when she brought the stranger into the house. Hauling him out of the car was more challenging than getting him into it, but eventually she had his limp form over her shoulder once more and began to make her way to their medical bay.
She passed through the back door of the garage into the hallway toward the house before turning right, only to find Liam waiting for her. As he took in the sight she presented him with, his eyes questioned her own as his eyebrows raised ever higher toward his dirty blond hair.
“And who is this?”
“No idea. He was unconscious on the side of the road a couple miles away.”
“Put him over there,” Liam said as he threw on a surgery gown and snapped gloves into place. He was a skilled surgeon and didn’t mind getting his hands dirty in his line of work, but outside the operating room, he was a fastidious man, so it didn’t surprise her one bit that he had covered up before greeting his patient. “You need to run,” he said as he came back over. “I can feel your cat straining against you. Go. I’ll secure him before I begin my examination.”
“Are you sure?”
He simply nodded.
When she didn’t immediately turn away, he carefully added, “Take care of yourself, Alpha, or you won’t be able to care for your pack.”
“Thank you,” she said wi
th a sigh, and sprinted out of the room.
She was in one of the bathrooms in the pool house before she knew it and was quickly pulling her clothes off as fast as she could. Shifting wasn’t what Hollywood made it out to be in their fantasy or horror movies. There was no pain, no skin tearing or teeth falling out, no clothes shredding, just one form taking over the other, like coming up to the surface of a pool to breathe. She could have kept her clothing on and shifted that way; it was what she normally did, and maybe if she hadn’t waited so long, she could have. The problem was for her, the longer she waited to shift, the more abrupt the shift became, and since she had waited over a month, she knew if she shifted with her clothes on, she wouldn’t be able to retain enough control to keep them on, and they would simply get destroyed in the process.
Once her jaguar was free of the constraints of her human form, she let loose an almighty roar that shook the walls around her. Her cat stood and shook her dappled coat as she flexed her claws and stretched her back before darting out across the patio and into the woods.
Valentina gave up control and relaxed, letting her conscious mind retreat and the cat have full control. As her animal’s stride ate up the ground, she saw the sun setting behind the trees. Even though her cat’s vision was mostly black and white, she knew the sky would be filled with warm tones, coating everything in gold. Her last thought before she let her human mind completely fade out was about the man she had found. Who was he, and what had he been doing that wound up with him naked and unconscious on the side of the road?
Chapter 2
Elijah’s body ached. He couldn’t remember what had happened, but it felt like he’d been hit by a truck. When he tried to raise his hand to itch his nose, he found himself restrained. He checked both arms and legs, only to find all his limbs had been tied down with something. Panic clenched his gut as some of his memories surfaced. He’d been restrained before, and that hadn’t worked out well for him or his captors. His memory might be fuzzy, but he sure as hell remembered that, or at least some of it. When he cracked his eyes open, he found a face he didn’t recognize staring down at him.
“I’m Dr. Page, but you can call me Liam. You were found unconscious by the side of the road and brought here to help you recover. Can you tell me what happened?” The man’s icy blue eyes watched him carefully.
“No, I don’t remember anything.” He kept his voice calm but could feel his heart hammering in his chest. “Why am I restrained?”
“For my protection. I don’t know what your animal is, so I didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks.”
“My animal?”
Liam frowned at him then, and Elijah could tell that the man wanted to say something but was holding it back. “Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”
“I was out having some drinks with my coworkers. We’d won the contract we were bidding on, so we decided to celebrate.”
“I see. Did anything unusual happen?”
“Not that I can remember.”
“I see,” the doctor said again as he turned and wrote something down. He quickly pulled out his phone and tapped away at the screen, sending a message no doubt. Elijah wasn’t sure what was going on, but he knew he wanted to get out of there.
“Look, I feel fine, and unless there is something wrong with me that you haven’t told me about yet, I would really like to go home.”
“You’ve been here under supervision for over twenty-four hours. I would rather not release you as soon as you wake up, especially if you are having memory issues.”
“I’m sure my memories will come back.”
A woman’s voice called from the hallway, “Can I come in?”
“Please do,” he said, and greeted the woman as she entered.
Elijah’s body roared to life at the sight of her. Thick waves of dark brown hair cascaded over her shoulders onto a soft blue sweater. Her perfectly pouting lips were a blushing pink, and her deep amber eyes stared into him as she walked forward, warming him to the tips of his toes. He wrenched his eyes away, refusing to let them travel down her body and take in the curves he had no doubt were there.
“Liam, how is our mystery man?”
“Seems just fine, aside from some memory loss.”
Her gaze sharpened on him then; he could feel it like a spotlight being focused on its subject. “You don’t remember what happened?”
“No.”
“Valentina, can I speak with you a moment?” Liam interjected before the woman could ask him any more questions.
The two stepped to the side and seemed to lower their voices to the point of silence, because he couldn’t even hear them whispering to one another. When she looked over sharply at him, he wanted to demand that they explain what was going on, and rail against them. Anger boiled in him at the thought of being under someone else’s control, being at their mercy. He swore he would never let it happen again, not after everything that had happened, and he’d be damned if he would break that promise.
His vision seemed to fade, the colors washing out to almost black and white, and something pushed against his skin, but he couldn’t see what it was.
“Liam . . .” The woman’s, Valentina, apparently, smoky voice called the man’s attention to Elijah even though he had been looking away. Now, they were both staring at him, a slow, satisfied smile growing on her face as she continued to watch him.
“A cat, great.” The doctor sighed.
“What’s going on? My vision is all blurry. What did you do to me?” His voice rose in anger.
Valentina pulled a rolling stool over to him and undid the restraints that held his wrists down so he could sit up. The small amount of relief he felt was almost enough to quell his anger.
“I have something to tell you, and you may not believe me at first, but I can prove it if you give me the chance . . .” She trailed off, waiting for some kind of reaction from him.
He gave none. Elijah had no idea what this woman wanted from him, but he wasn’t about to respond to every provocation. He had to keep his cool, maintain control.
“All right, you probably weren’t aware, but there are beings in this world who refer to themselves as shifters. They can switch between their human and their animal form at will. Forget everything you learned from the movies about them being beholden to the full moon, or being some kind of grotesque half-man, half-animal hybrid. There is simply one and then the other. Ice is not steam, and steam is not ice, although they are made of the same substance.”
A laugh began to bubble up inside of him at the idea of people who could also be animals. Had he been kidnapped by a bunch of crazy people?
Before the laugh could escape, she added, “Would you like me to prove it to you?”
Something about her calm confidence, how in control and in charge she was, grated against his skin.
“I’ll take your silence as a yes. You don’t believe me right now, but I’m a jaguar shifter. In a moment, I will change into my animal. She has had a nice long run and is feeling docile, but I would prefer for you not to agitate her, if possible. She may sniff you, possibly lick you even, but she won’t be violent unless you are violent first. I retain some control, but if you make her angry enough, she will shut me out, so please try to remain calm.”
Elijah just gaped at her as she got up from her stool and turned away from him. Valentina pulled off the blue sweater that had made her look so touchable a moment before, revealing the olive-green spaghetti strap dress she had on underneath. Up to that point, he hadn’t even noticed she was wearing a dress, something he was actually proud of, but now it was all he could see. The way the stretchy fabric looked so comfortable to the touch and hugged every curve. The last thing he’d expected was for her to strip down completely, but that was what she did. The dress puddled on the floor around her ankles, displaying her tawny skin like a piece of art.
Before he could even take in the fact that she was removing her panties, her skin rippled, and suddenly, in a blur too fas
t for his eyes to track, she changed, her skin seeming to flake away from her, leaving something else behind. A large jaguar sat before him for a moment before shaking its pelt. The tan color shifted back and forth, moving the black rosettes so it almost distorted the color.
Liam sat on the floor in front of the big cat with his arms spread wide. The big cat padded over to the doctor and bumped its head into his, rubbing the fur just above its eyebrow along his jaw. The low almost-coughing noise coming from it was enough to raise the hairs on the back of his neck, but when it turned into a low clicking sound, it reminded him of a cat purring. It took a couple big breaths, huffing them out, before it padded over toward him.
He froze. The cat’s yellow and gold eyes watched him with an uncomfortable intensity. Its mouth opened to reveal long white canines. It also made the growling noise louder, and when he flinched slightly, the thing hissed at him.
“Valentina, be nice to our guest,” Liam said quietly.
The cat turned and hissed at him before padding even closer to Elijah. It sniffed his foot, which was strapped down, so he couldn’t retract it, and then it sniffed his other foot before moving up his thigh to his hand. All he could do was sit there frozen and mentally will the cat not to eat him.
Just as suddenly as the cat had appeared, Valentina was there again, turning away from him and dressing quickly. When she turned to face him once more, he couldn’t look at her. It had to be a trick, right? Like a laser show or a hologram where they made dead musical artists perform again. Just smoke and lights.