He very badly wanted to kiss her, anywhere, everywhere, even as the ground under his feet went mad.
When the shaking stopped and the world settled into a more reasoned lucidity, Jenna opened her eyes and stared straight up at him, beseeching. The electronic clamor of hundreds of sounding car alarms rose into the night air above the city to create a ghostly requiem for the quake. It was underscored by the rising shouts of panic and shock from the restaurant behind them.
“I felt it coming,” she whispered up at him, her voice thin and frightened. Her hand curled around the front of his shirt. “I felt it in my bones. I smelled it. I tasted it.”
It was then Leander realized the Assembly had their answer.
So did he.
He set her gently down on a chaise lounge with a whispered reassurance and left her, briefly, to use the phone inside. A mild pandemonium had broken out inside the restaurant, which Geoffrey was doing little to assuage, being too busy with his alternating fits of screaming, hysterical hand-waving, and hyperventilating. The paramedics arrived within minutes and took control. At his insistence, Jenna was one of the first to receive their attention, but they found nothing wrong with her. Though shaken, she was fit, unhurt, perfectly sound. They advised her to go home and get some sleep, and then they turned their attention to the others.
She pushed away from him when he came back to her, looked at him as if she suddenly knew some terrible secret—his secret—and disappeared into the night like a ghost, before he could speak, before he could catch her.
She was wicked fast. She could run even faster than he, though he was stronger, faster than anyone in all the colonies. Faster than any other predator on earth.
Except, evidently, her.
He hadn’t been prepared for that either.
When he lost her trail around the dark corner of the bank building at Second Street, when all he could smell when he opened his senses was the vanishing trace of her perfume diffused through the heated, salt-laden air like a memory of something almost forgotten, he very nearly lost his mind.
Her apartment was the only place he could think to go—the only logical place to wait for her, though he kept carefully out of sight. He shed his clothes behind a stinking Dumpster in the back alley as he Shifted, discarding the handmade Italian suit as if it were offal, then rose as a fine mist to settle against the rough stucco wall of her apartment building.
He hovered there for hours in the warm evening air, spread so thin it was uncomfortable, knowing one strong gust of wind could tear him clean apart. He was thankful it wasn’t below freezing; there wouldn’t even be any bones left if he died like this.
The night was arid, the heated air so much drier than in England, even at the edge of the sea. He didn’t need to breathe—spread sheer and disembodied like smoke—or feel his heart beating like a drum or suffer the scorching of his blood through his veins. The sensations and burning passions of his body had disappeared. It was peaceful. Restful.
If only he could shut off his mind too.
He imagined her lost, injured, attacked by drug addicts, rapists, gang members. The longer he waited, the worse his fantasies became. For the first time in his life, he cursed himself. If he had the Gift of Foresight, he would know where to look. He could protect her.
He could do something.
She finally came stumbling through the silent, early hours of the morning with the look of a zombie raised from the dead: disheveled and shuffling, gray-faced, wide-eyed, stiff. The elegant lines of her dress were creased and thrown out of kilter, as if she’d slept in her car or fallen down. Repeatedly.
This did little to alleviate his anxiety.
He slid down the uneven wall of the old apartment building, molecule by molecule, flowing softly over cracks and bumps, past dark window panes, melting silently through the climbing ivy and flowering hibiscus until he found her bedroom window.
He settled as a gray plume of mist against the sill and waited.
Jenna came into sight through the dim corridor from the kitchen like a ghost materializing through the night, moving so slowly she seemed drugged, hands lifted slightly out in front of her as if she didn’t trust her eyes to lead the way. She didn’t turn on any lights. She stood in the doorway to her bedroom with one hand on the doorjamb, just looking around. She stared silently at her bed, the small desk in the corner with its lamp and photo frame, her closet door half-opened, the shoes she’d pulled out and decided not to wear earlier still lying on the carpet at the foot of the bed.
She finally passed a shaking hand over her face, smoothed her hair, and reached behind her neck to unzip her dress.
Leander sank from the windowsill and floated above the bed of mint outside her bedroom window, the fragrant, velvet leaves brushing against him, ruffling his edges. He allowed her the privacy of undressing and climbing into bed without his gaze on her, though it was all he could do to resist breaking down her door, taking her back to Sommerley right then, forcing her to return with him to the place he now knew was her rightful home.
She looked so lost. So frightened. So...vulnerable.
You are Alpha. She is Ikati. Do not fail her!
The need to protect her lashed at him, sudden and insistent. Unmerciful.
It had been done before. There were safeguards in place for these situations, defenses that would keep her bound, provisions in the Law. He could take her back, keep her there, make her safe.
Against the demand of every nerve in his body, he restrained himself, and waited.
Once inside her apartment through the now-familiar crack in the bathroom window, he Shifted to man and watched over her as she slept to make sure she was unhurt, watched for any sign of distress, watched to see if she would need him.
Arms akimbo, hair splayed wild over the pillow, she slept, restless and moaning, tossing the sheets like a drowning swimmer fighting the vast, relentless sea.
It was only when she finally began to stir from her haunted sleep, late in the morning as the sun slanted saffron and gold through the windows, he’d been able to leave her and return to the hotel.
“So it’s true, then,” said Christian, low. “The little stray can Shift. Who would have thought?”
From the sofa of the presidential suite, Christian watched Leander in the chair opposite with eyes that were unnaturally bright. He was tense and grim and there was something unusual in his voice, a hint of ragged emotion Leander had never seen him display before. Something about his whole demeanor set Leander’s nerves on edge, his instincts on high alert. Why would he care if Jenna could Shift or not?
“If she can sense an earthquake, smell the ghost of a decades-old fire in a glass of wine, and outrun me, I think she can definitely Shift. In fact,” Leander said, carefully watching Christian’s face, “she may turn out to be the most Gifted of us all.”
Leander kept his gaze on Christian as he stood from the couch, walked over to the glistening expanse of windows, and ran a hand through his thick hair.
“Son of a bitch,” Christian murmured, and nothing more.
“You seem...disturbed, brother.”
Christian turned to look at him. A muscle flexed in his jaw. “We’ve found the free-born, half-human, incredibly beautiful daughter of the tribe’s most powerful Alpha ever, and you’re telling me that not only do you think she can Shift, but that she might turn out to be more Gifted than us all. Yes. I’m disturbed. I’m definitely disturbed.”
Leander’s left eyebrow cocked. “Incredibly beautiful?”
Their gazes held for just a bit longer than Leander liked. Then Christian turned back to the window with a shrug. “None of my business, I suppose,” he muttered to the sunny view. “Second sons never get first choice.”
“Welcome to my world,” Morgan said from behind them as she swept into the room. “How’d you like to never even have a choice because what’s between your legs happens to not be a penis?”
“For God’s sake, Morgan,” Leander said sharply, hi
s patience beginning to unravel. He turned to glare at her. “Enough of that! We need to focus on getting Jenna back to Sommerley before she runs away again. Before she Shifts for the first time. Right away. Today. Now.”
“No!” Morgan put her hands on her hips and glared right back at him, defiant.
She stood in the middle of the elegantly appointed suite wearing a dress he hadn’t seen before. It was made mostly of air, a thin wisp of black silk to her knees with diamond cutout patterns throughout, revealing large swaths of tanned, perfect skin and sculpted abdominal muscles. He narrowed his eyes and wondered how much it had cost him.
And were those python skin heels?
“Absolutely not! We’ve got another few days before her birthday! There’s no reason to rush this—”
“We are not on vacation, Morgan. Our purpose here is not to relax, sightsee, or shop—”
“Easy for you to say!” Morgan snapped, eyes flashing bright green and blade sharp. “You’ve been able to come and go as you please! You haven’t been cooped up your entire life, waiting for a chance to escape, hoping for—”
“Hoping for what?” Leander enunciated, quiet and very calm.
They stared at each other across the room.
“If you think the life of Alpha is better than yours, easier than yours, you are very sadly mistaken, Morgan.”
For all his privilege and money, for all the power that came with his position, he often wished, in the secret dark heart of his soul, the role of Alpha had fallen to another.
He alone was the leader. He alone held all their fates in his hands. It was not, as Morgan imagined, an all-access pass to happiness and fulfillment.
No. It was closer to a curse.
Morgan lifted her chin. “And how do you propose we go about this?” she asked icily. She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped one python-clad toe against the plush carpet. “I could use Suggestion to get her to go along for a while, a few hours possibly, but that will only go so far. How are we actually supposed to get her back to Sommerley? Kidnap her?”
“I think we should just tell her the truth,” Christian said from his position at the window. “She must know she’s different. What if we Shift in front of her and tell her she’s one of us?”
“And then what?” Morgan shot back, turning to give him a frosty stare. “Throw a bag over her head and drag her off when she freaks out and runs away?”
Christian ran a hand through his mass of shining black hair again, leaving it in disarray. “No. But we could drug her.”
“I was being sarcastic, Christian,” Morgan said with an exasperated sigh. “There’s no way we’re going to manhandle her, she’s not some piece of—”
Leander gripped the carved wood arms of the chair he was sitting in with such force they splintered under his hands. Morgan and Christian fell silent and looked over at him.
“If either of you had paid any attention during the Assembly meeting, you would know the plan,” he snapped, eyes blazing. “We will get her alone. We will subdue her with your power of Suggestion, Morgan. We will—”
The phone on the desk rang, interrupting him. He inhaled a long breath, released his grip on the chair, stood stiffly, and walked over to yank the receiver from its base.
“Yes,” he said into it, curt and low.
“What’s a few days’ difference?” Morgan said quietly to Christian, lobbying for his agreement.
He stretched his long arms out and put both palms flat against the glass, looking down at the view of the city below. “Agreed,” he murmured, almost to himself. “We should stay here awhile and...get to know her better before we take her back. Before her mind is made up for her.”
“What?” Morgan said. “What does that mean?”
He didn’t answer, and the tension in his shoulders suggested he wasn’t in the mood for more conversation.
She unfolded her arms, and the slender ruby bracelets encircling her right wrist released a knot of fiery sparks in band over faceted band. She shook back a swath of long, glossy locks from her face and glanced over at the ruined arms of Leander’s chair. “Anyway, if she isn’t home,” she persisted, “do we hang around her front door for a few hours, waiting for her to magically appear? Like that won’t look suspicious? Or are we supposed to go try to find her—”
“We don’t need to find her,” Leander interrupted quietly, setting the phone back down in its cradle. He turned to gaze at both of them with an odd look on his face, as if he’d just considered something deeply arresting.
“She found us. That was the front desk on the phone. She’s in the lobby.”
8
Jenna remembered very clearly the last time she saw her father alive.
It was a few days before her tenth birthday and raining very hard. The water sliced like needles down from the sullen, slate-gray sky. This would have been unusual for the month of June in most places, but at that time her family was living on Kauai, one of the smaller of the Hawaiian Islands. It rained almost every day in that green and lovely tropical paradise.
They’d been there a few weeks, no more. Boxes were still half-unpacked in the living room. Her mother never really bothered with completely unpacking all their belongings. They’d be packing them up soon enough again, she knew.
The smell of green vegetation, blooming plumeria, and wet, loamy earth soaked through everything in their small home. Her mother had left all the lights burning to ward off the gloom of a tropical summer storm, but her father had gone around the house in silence, turning off the bulbs one by one, stealthy and taut and ever unfathomable.
It was one of the things Jenna remembered most vividly about him. The way he always preferred to move in the dark, like some nocturnal creature of the forest on the hunt for dinner.
She’d been watching him again from her favorite hiding place, the tiny space under the stairs she’d turned into a warm burrow with pillows and blankets and her love-worn teddy bear. One of Teddy’s eyes was missing, the other a jaunty speck of black against plush caramel cheeks.
Her mother said she was too old to keep carrying him around, but Jenna couldn’t bear to part with him. Teddy and the clothes on her back were the only solid proof that she had a past.
Her father caught her watching, as he always did. Even when he didn’t call her out on it she sensed he knew her eyes were on him. But this time he called her name, motioned with his hand for her to crawl out from under the stairs.
She kept Teddy in her arms as she went over to him and climbed onto his lap in the rocking chair, watching the rain slide down the windowpanes like silvery tears. Through the glass she saw trees and grass and flowers smeared into muted plots of color as the patter of rain increased.
“Jenna,” he murmured into her hair. He held her tight in his arms and rocked back and forth, slowly kicking off the wood floor with one strong, bare foot. “Do you know who loves you?”
She was too young then to hear the tremor in his voice, so she smiled and wound her arms around his neck, nuzzling down into the warm space between his shoulder and neck, feeling happy and warm and oh so safe. He’d built a fire in the small fireplace in the living room; it crackled and sparked and threw off lovely waves of wood-scented heat.
“You do, Daddy,” she answered, the same answer every time.
“And do you know why Daddy loves you?” He tipped his head back to gaze down on her with those sparkling green eyes, his handsome face almost fuzzy that close.
She loved seeing him like this, unfocused and blurred in her half-lidded gaze. He seemed more real somehow. The detail of his eyelashes, the dark stubble on his chin, the pure white of his teeth as he smiled all served to make him less of a mystery, more...hers.
The mysterious, ragged scar on his jaw was still fading as it healed, four thin, ugly slashes of red going slowly to white, marring the perfection of his burnished, golden skin. He’d come home with it the day before they moved here.
“No,” she said, already knowing the an
swer but wanting to hear it again.
“Because you are a princess,” he whispered into her ear, stroking her back and hugging her even tighter. “Golden blonde and beautiful, strong and brave and worth any sacrifice. My princess who will one day be a queen.”
But something bothered her about this answer, something she hadn’t thought of before.
“What’s a sacrifice, Daddy?” she asked, wrinkling her brow to look up at him. He only smiled and kissed her forehead, rocked her back and forth until she fell asleep, warm and safe and happy against the hard expanse of his chest.
When she awoke the next morning she was in her bed, tucked in with Teddy under the threadbare patchwork quilt, and he was gone.
Since that night, every time it rained Jenna thought of her father and had to swallow the flame of agony that rose in her throat.
It wasn’t raining now, as she sat calmly in the lobby bar of the Four Seasons next to an enormous display of aubergine calla lilies and scented jasmine that loomed somewhat ominously over her table. It was blazing hot and so dry her eyes were sticky, but she was thinking of her father just the same.
She was thinking of her father because she had seen his face in Leander’s mind.
The first time Leander touched her last night—that light pressure on her arm as he’d explained in his low, attractive voice how he ordered the Latour in memory of his parents—she’d felt a singular tremor course over her skin. The same current of heated electricity that she’d felt so deeply in the store—and again when he met her eyes in the restaurant—passed from his fingertips.
But she was still in denial. She’d dismissed it as nerves.
The next time, it was heat and static and a sudden blur of smeared color that swam before her eyes as his hand rested on hers over the stem of the wineglass. Her heartbeat surged as she tried to concentrate on it, to make the colors coalesce into something coherent.
Jenna forgot all that when the sound of the earth rending a mile below their feet hit her ears minutes before the shaking even began. Then she could only concentrate on standing upright as the vertigo hit with the first shockwaves of pressure, as the acrid smell of heated, fissuring bedrock stung her nose.
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