Abandoned and Unseen

by Alexandra Ivy

  “We’ll fix this,” he whispered, his words a vow.

  “I know.” And she did. She might not have believed this cat before, but she knew from the way he tracked and the promise in his words that he would find a way to fix this. And she’d die before she gave up. There was no other option.

  “Anya.”

  She turned at her brother’s voice, pulling away from Cole in the process. She didn’t know why the feline kept touching her, but he needed to stop before something happened. Something idiotic.

  “Be safe,” her brother said softly, his eyes on Cole and not her. She cleared her throat, and Oliver looked down at her. “I can’t see what is coming.”

  “I know,” she whispered. She patted his cheek then kissed his chin. “I’ll come back with them. I promise.”

  He nodded. “I’ll keep the house waiting for you. If the SAU patrols come near, we’ll keep your absence hidden.”

  She closed her eyes, knowing if their escape were noticed, it would mean not only her death but likely the death of those close to her, as well. The SAU didn’t take rebellion lightly.

  She turned away from her brother and climbed the fence, slightly envious that Cole could jump it in one motion. She was a bear and slightly heavier than the other shifters because of her DNA. She might be able to climb as well as a cat, but she didn’t have the same balance.

  When she hit the ground on the other side, her knees ached, but she took the pain in stride. It helped her remember that everything she did from here on out would be dangerous. She looked behind her, but Oliver was gone. Her brother probably didn’t want to stand by the fences for too long and attract attention. On that note, she raised her brow at Cole, who had a serious frown on his face.

  “What?”

  “Just keeping up with the scent. I’m better as a jaguar, but it’s not like those are very common in the Colorado landscape. It doesn’t matter that we’re in a forest where seeing a bear would be common, the SAU will shoot on sight. I have to concentrate harder to track like this. It’ll take more energy, meaning we can’t go as far in one day.”

  “I know, Cole. I don’t blame you for having to go slower. You’re trying to save my children.”

  “Far cry from what you’d usually do, though.”

  She shrugged, following him closely and keeping an eye on their surroundings. While he kept tracking, she would watch their backs. He couldn’t do it all at once, so she would do what she could to keep them safe.

  “I’ll berate you when we have Owen and Lucas back.”

  She would not think about her use of the word we just then.

  “Good enough.” He grunted. “Fuck. He got into a car here, Anya.”

  She froze and looked down at the tracks at their feet. “No. No. We can’t lose him.” For some reason, use of a vehicle hadn’t occurred to her. Of course, it should have, but she’d never driven before. She didn’t have the need within a den.

  “I can still track him, but doing it this way is going to be a whole lot harder. If he went into the city, I might lose the trail completely since the scents will be mixed so well. We’ll have to find him using other ways if that’s the case.”

  She fisted her hands at her size. “What other ways?”

  He met her gaze, his cat in his eyes. “If we can’t use our sense of smell, we’ll ask around, find out who knows something about shifters being hidden and taken away.”

  Anya took a step back. “What the hell? You can’t just ask a human that? It’s a dead giveaway that we’re shifters. They’ll kill us.”

  “You’re right. They will. That’s why we won’t ask a human.”

  She blinked. “You’re talking about the Unseen.”

  Cole let out a breath. “Thank God. I was worried you didn’t know what they were, and I vowed to my Alpha I wouldn’t speak of them to those who didn’t know.”

  “Andrew didn’t vow me to secrecy since I wouldn’t tell anyone anyway. I shouldn’t have blurted it out to you as I did, but you caught me by surprise. You’re telling me that we’re going to find the Unseen and try to find my sons that way?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  Anya let out a breath. “Fine, then. Let’s go. We don’t want to stay in one place for long.”

  “Got it.” With that, he went back to his tracking. She’d never seen him so in his element. His face contorted as he concentrated, but then he’d relax ever so slightly, only his jaw remaining strained. The amount of energy it must take to use his ability as he did was staggering. She couldn’t pinpoint the individual scents of her sons and Frank after the human piece of trash had gotten into the car. Now she only smelled exhaust fumes and her own desperation.

  And the spicy scent that was all Cole.

  Not that she would be thinking of that. At all.

  Ever.

  They moved toward the city of Denver quickly and in silence. Cole needed to focus, and she needed to keep her bear from panicking. She was far stronger than her bear, but on edge as she was, it wasn’t easy to keep in control. Her gaze kept going to the mountains in the west and the plains in the east. There was nothing more beautiful than the landscape of the Denver area. Once the shifters had roamed free through these woods and peaks. They’d lived and worked within the human world, yet could shift to their other half and be free in the wilderness.

  When the Verona Virus had hit over twenty-five years ago, only the humans got sick. Anya never knew exactly why the shifters were spared, but she had her suspicions. As time passed and more humans died with no cure in sight, others noticed that family groups hadn’t gotten sick. Shifters were immune to the virus, and in the process of trying to find a cure, her people were revealed to the public. Shifters were not only able to help create a vaccine, but they’d also inadvertently started their own path to death.

  The humans—what was left of them after the Verona Virus had decimated a third of them—were fearful of what they didn’t understand. The government fast-tracked laws and stipulations, and the Shifter Accommodation Unit was born. They were the fourth branch of the government and didn’t have to wait for Congress, the courts, or the President to make decisions.

  Around each major city within the United States—and perhaps the world—compounds had been built for the three species. Ursines, Felines, and Canines were separated from those they loved and placed into camps where they had almost died from neglect. The SAU had eventually given them enough leeway to live and form new Packs within their cages, but it had brought them close to their extinction.

  Where once, shifters would mate with different species, they were then forced to find their mates and have children with only their own kind within their respective compounds. That would have been fine for some, but not for all. When the SAU forced the cats and bears into the River Pack’s Canine compound, it opened up possibilities. There were now enough shifters that perhaps people could find someone they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with, but it was still a far cry from where things had once been.

  Only in recent months had a human been bitten and changed into a shifter during a mating. That had once been rare, but part of their culture. Now it was taboo. The SAU hadn’t been aware that there were ways to make shifters, and now they had an idea. That idea had led to Cora and Soren’s kidnapping.

  By Frank.

  The man who’d fathered Anya’s babies.

  It had all come full circle, it seemed.

  As they reached the south side of the city, her legs grew weak and she knew they needed to rest.

  “I can track from a moving vehicle,” Cole said suddenly. “I’ll get us one, steal it since no one is going to give us one. But I can still track while driving.”

  “I don’t know how to drive,” she said, taking a sip of her water. She handed Cole the bottle and tried not to watch the way his throat worked as he drank.

  “I do,” he said simply. “I had to learn. We’re about an hour away from downtown Denver if we drive. I have a feeling that
Frank is on his way there.”

  She frowned. “Why? Aren’t there more people there?”

  Cole shook his head. “Parts of downtown are completely abandoned since there aren’t as many people living here as there once was. We’re about a twenty-minute hike from Colorado Springs, which lost almost all of its population when the virus hit. We’ll have a better chance of getting a vehicle here and making our way up to the city.” His brows rose. “Places near large military bases got hit hard. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  Her mind whirled, trying to process everything he was saying. “I…I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either. All I know is that my cat is telling me to head north. And downtown has tons of old buildings that are perfect for a doctor on the run. I don’t know if I’m right, but we’ll find out as we go along. As for now, we’ve been at this for a few hours and I’d rather find a place to stay for the evening and make our next steps soon.”

  “But we need to keep going.” Her babies needed her.

  “I get that. We’re going to go for a couple more hours. That will give us time to get the car and drive for a bit. But I want us to be clear-headed and ready to fight if we have to once we get closer to the city. I’m getting beat by keeping my tracking up for so long.”

  The fact that he would admit to such a weakness told her something—what she didn’t know.

  “Let’s get going, then.”

  He nodded. “Frank had a car. We’re on foot, so he has an advantage, but Anya, we’re going to find them.”

  “I know,” she said softly. She didn’t know how she’d live if she couldn’t find them.

  They went for another thirty minutes until they reached an older neighborhood. She had lived in one similar to this when she’d been outside the compound. She’d played in the streets and rode her bike. She’d played tag with her brother and had laughed with her friends.

  “These cars will be dead, Cole.”

  “Yeah, but we can find a way to jump one or something. I’m not without talents.”

  She frowned but followed him, careful to keep her eyes on their surroundings. If they were caught, they were dead. There would be no second chances.

  They searched through a few of the garages, breaking through small windows in some cases, walking right in others. People had left their lives in a hurry all those years ago. It was a wasteland out here. What had once been privilege was now theirs for scraping by.

  “I can’t believe there’s no one here,” she said as they entered the fourth garage on their search for a vehicle they could work with.

  “There’s some in other neighborhoods I bet. This one’s just closest to the compounds, so humans probably don’t want to live out here. Denver’s growing, I know that much. I bet the other cities are, as well. It’s been a quarter of a century, and though the virus left a lot of the major cities without as many people, the humans are bouncing back.”

  “The rural areas didn’t get hit as hard with the virus, if I remember right,” she said, recalling memories of a time when she’d been free.

  “Yep. The cities got hit the hardest. Some rural communities didn’t get a single hit at all. I have no idea what the actual landscape looks like now. I just know Colorado Springs was one of the hardest hit, hence why it looks like this. I remember them saying something like ninety-six percent of the city died from the virus. A part of the percentage left living were shifters. The other hightailed it out of here.”

  “So many people,” she whispered.

  Cole’s jaw clenched. “And those that survived voted to have us put in cages.”

  She shook her head. “They voted for a way to be safe. Or at least that’s what they thought.”

  He blinked at her, and she raised her chin. “You’re defending the humans that slaughtered us. That branded your children and put collars around our necks.”

  She closed her eyes, remembering Lucas’s and Owen’s screams as if they had happened that morning.

  “No. I’m not. Not really. I’m saying they made a mistake. They thought in the moment and killed us, imprisoned us. I won’t forget that, but I can’t be angry all the time. If I am, then I can’t raise my children.” It was something she’d learned when she’d held them to her chest for the first time, their little heartbeats fast and perfect.

  He studied her face for a moment then turned back to the Jeep in front of them. “I think this one will work. There’s an old unit out here I can finagle to give us a jump. Plus, there are a couple of batteries on the shelf that look unused. I’ll create a current and we can get on our way.”

  She’d angered him with her words, and she knew she should have taken them back. She hadn’t said what she wanted to. Not the right way, and now he’d put distance between them. Only, perhaps they needed that distance.

  She took a step toward him, ready to help, when her body gave out.

  She gasped, her knees hitting the cement floor of the garage as she tried to breathe.

  “Anya!” Cole knelt in front of her, his hands on her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

  Her bear pushed at her again; only this time she finally understood why her bear had been acting so oddly the past couple of days. Her breasts ached, her nipples pebbling at the scent of the man in front of her.

  She licked her lips, a moan escaping her. “Not right now,” she groaned.

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Yeah.” She sucked in a breath and put her hands on his forearms. “Mating heat.”

  Cole’s eyes widened, and she would have laughed at the reaction if she weren’t in so much pain. She needed sex, badly. It was part of their shifter DNA. Not all shifters dealt with it, but her family did. And it wasn’t easy. It was their baser instincts coming to the forefront, their animals trying to procreate. It wasn’t love, wasn’t true desire.

  Only when it was this hard, this…hot, she knew it was based on something akin to desire, to an emotion she didn’t want to name. She’d been through this before and had found a nice male bear to scratch the itch. But this time, she knew it wouldn’t just be an itch. This was Cole, and there was something different about him.

  The only person who could help was the man in front of her.

  The man who she didn’t want to desire, even without the mating heat riding hard.

  Oh shit, indeed.

  Chapter 6

  Cole tried not to freak out. Considering his dick was hard and his hands were fisted by his sides, he wasn’t sure what he was going to be able to do. He’d been around women in their mating heat before, but he’d never participated in what they needed in the end. And considering the mission he and Anya were on, this was the worst possible time for her to go into making heat. It may be a common thing among shifters, but that didn’t mean it was something the two of them were ready to deal with at the moment.

  He thought back to her aggression when it came to him, and the fact that she hadn’t known what to do with her body when he stood too close. Or even how she’d reacted to him the past couple of days. He wanted to curse. She’d been having trouble all along but hadn’t known this was coming. And if she didn’t take care of herself, if he didn’t help her in some way, she’d be in pain. It also didn’t help that he wanted her under him like no other. He’d been lying to himself when he thought it was just anger and annoyance when it came to her presence—far from it. His cat wanted her, and damn it, so did the man. He wanted her spread out before him—naked, willing, wet, and his.

  Only he wasn’t sure that was the smartest thing to do right now. They were both running on a short supply of energy in a high rush of adrenaline. If they did this, everything would change. It wouldn’t be a mating. Mating heats weren’t like that. But it would be something. What, he didn’t know. But he had a feeling Anya had no idea either.

  She closed her eyes and groaned. “Cole. It hurts. Why does it hurt so much this time?”

  “This time?” He frowned but did his best not to step forward. As soon as he steppe
d closer to her, all would be lost. He wouldn’t be able to hold himself back anymore. As it was, he’d been keeping himself back for far too long. He hadn’t even realized he was doing it until he felt the burn of unrequited need flame hot when she was near. It wasn’t her fault that his cat wanted her. It wasn’t her fault that the man didn’t know what to do with either of them.

  Anya blinked up at him, desire and pleading in her gaze. “I’ve been through this twice before. But it’s never been as intense as this. It’s always been something I could handle on my own. Or with just one man for just one time.” She lowered her head and let out a soft moan. “But this time it’s worse. Why is it worse?”

  He watched her sway on her feet and he cursed. Stepping toward her with his arms out, he brought her closer to his chest and let out a groan of his own at the heat of her body pressed along his. He couldn’t believe how fucking hot she was—and not just how she looked. Her skin was like a raging inferno, and he knew if she didn’t get some form of release soon, her bear would be in trouble. He already had a momma bear on the lookout for two of her cubs on his hands; he didn’t need a bear in the delirious haze that came with a mating heat denied, as well.

  He cupped her face and brought his forehead to hers. He took a deep breath, inhaling her sweet scent that did nothing to help his aching cock. It only made him harder—something he didn’t think was possible.

  “I’ll do this, I’ll take care of your bear, and take care of you. But no matter what happens right here? It’s something we’ll have to talk about later. Because we’re already pretty fucked up as it is. You get me?”

  She rubbed her breasts along his chest, her nipples hard points. “I get you. We’ll talk later. But I need you.” She pulled back, a wince on her face. “I never thought I’d say that.”

  He cursed. As much as he wanted to hear that, he had a gut feeling that she didn’t mean it the way he hoped—that she needed him beyond this moment, this night. But he wasn’t about to think about that, not when they were outside the compound without their collars and anyone could come upon them at any moment. Like he’d said before, this was the worst possible time for something like this to happen. He just prayed that he wasn’t making a giant mistake. That they weren’t making a giant mistake.