Thankfully the one thing her mother had always taught her was to make sure her dash-sack was ready to go. It was packed with first-aid supplies, fake I.D.s, some clothes and feminine products along with some knives and other small weapons. The only thing she needed was the cash that she kept locked away.
She cursed herself with every second she wasted. Next time, she needed to make sure that she had at least a couple grand shoved into her sack in case of emergency.
She finished shoving the cash in then headed straight for the door.
Only to have it open right in front of her.
She let out a scream and jumped backwards, ready to go on the assault.
“Jaelle, are you okay?”
“God, David, why are you home?”
“Okay, not exactly the welcome home I was anticipating. Then again, I didn’t expect you to be home, either.” He gave her a quizzical look. “Something happened on the farm and our entire police department was there. All of us were sent home. What happened to you? Why are you covered with blood?”
This could not have gone worse. Cursing inwardly, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him in a hug.
“Something terrible has happened,” she whispered into his chest. Although it wasn’t the broadest in the world, or the most muscled, it was familiar and comfortable, smelling of home. She took one last deep breath before disentangling herself from his hold.
“What? What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t have time to explain. I have to go.”
“What do you mean?”
She let her hands rest on either side of his face, standing on tiptoe to press a single kiss to his lips. “Goodbye David. Please, be safe.”
“Goodbye? What d’y—”
But she was already pulling away and sprinting out the door. Once, she would have knocked the man unconscious and made a break for it, but she didn’t want David’s last memory of her to be one of being bludgeoned in the head.
She sprinted toward the forest, sliding her backpack over her arms, leaving her life behind her. She felt the tiniest pang of sadness in her, but it was nothing compared to the terror and utter need to get out as quickly as possible.
Trees flew by Jaelle, each one marking the distance between her and what had been her little haven for two years. Where would she go next? East, obviously, away from the murderous Aberrant that may or may not have killed one of her coworkers.
Ex-coworkers. She reminded herself.
The thought didn’t settle well with her and the back of her throat began to prickle uncomfortably. Was she going to cry? She couldn’t remember the last time that she had actually shed tears over something that wasn’t a sad puppy video online, and she couldn’t believe it was because she had let herself grow attached to that rinky-dink town. She had always known it couldn’t last, and that every day that she did have there was a gift, and yet here she was, sprinting through the forest with increasingly watery eyes.
Minutes passed, the ground flying beneath her feet as she escaped. She was running like no human could, but not quite fast enough to outrun a wolf Shifter, or any sort of feline Shifter, and she was too worn out to take any other forms.
All she needed to do was make it past the quarry. There was a river there where she could make sure they lost her scent in case they started tracking her. If she managed to get through that, she would be fine.
Except… she was pretty sure she was catching the scent of a bear.
It was close, too close, and followed closely by an array of scents that warmed of danger. There was no way she was going to make it far enough with the entire hunting pack on her tail.
It seemed she only had one choice.
Abruptly, she changed her direction, veering onto a different course. Her breath was echoing persistently in her ears and her lungs were beginning to burn. But she had to keep going. Slowing down meant death, and she wasn’t quite ready to die yet.
She could hear them closing in on her, coming from every direction except for her front. But that was probably her front was becoming increasingly closer to a sharp cliff-face. The very same one that allowed Braywire to stay remote and safely far away from the highway.
Jaelle skidded to a stop, her heart squeezing as she turned to face the attackers. It took several moments, but eventually they erupted from the line of trees one by one.
First was a bear, and she didn’t need a label to know exactly which hunter that was. Then there was a pair of wolves, and a tiger. Geeze, where had they come from?
But there was only eight to their number. That didn’t seem right. Weren’t there ten the last time I had seen them?
They all came to a stop, forming a semi-circle around me as they shifted back into their human forms.
“This is disappointing, Jaelle,” their leader, Bradly said, face grim.
“Would it help at all to say that I’m innocent in all this?”
“We know you’re not the Aberrant we were tracking. I’ve been hunting him for over a year and you’re nothing like his style.”
Her mind braked hard and then tried to reverse. “If that’s so, then why the chase down?”
“After you left the shop, we came in and had that sonofabitch surrounded. But, like always, he managed to get away and took one of my men out with him. As he was flying off, he outed that he wasn’t the only abomination around. We picked up the clues, followed your scent, and now here we are.”
“You know he’s just using me as a distraction, right? To let him get distance while he digests all the farm animals he slaughtered?”
“How do you know about the farm animals?”
“David works there, remember?”
“Ah, right. The boyfriend. I imagine that he knows nothing about Shifters?”
“Of course not. How stupid do you think I am?”
“I don’t think you’re stupid at all, which makes this that much worse.” Suddenly there was a gun pointed at her, barrel shining in the bright, morning sun. “I am aware of exactly how he’s playing us, but we can’t exactly let a known Aberrant go. Even if there is currently no record of your crime, it’s just an inevitability. So it would greatly help us catch this fellow before he murders someone else if you didn’t struggle or draw this out.”
“Really? You can just kill an innocent woman in cold blood?”
“There is no such thing as an innocent Aberrant.”
Her stomachs twisted at those words. She had heard them all her life, but she dreaded that they were true. Was it just a matter of time before she went mad and started hurting others? Maybe she should just give herself up to the hunters.
No. That’s not what her mother had given her life for. Jaelle would fight tooth and nail to stay alive. To survive, and flourish.
“It’s a shame you think that,” she murmured, before turning and running straight toward the cliff.
She could hear them shifting behind her, and several shots were fired in rapid succession. Something sharp and burning bit into her calf, but she didn’t let it distract her. She reached the lip of the cliff then launched herself into the air, flying out into the open like an avian about to take flight.
And then she fell.
Wind whipped by her as she hurtled downward, rapidly approaching the rough water of a lake. With the last of her energy, she shifted into one of the few fresh-water fish forms she knew and crashed into the water below.
Chapter Four: Little Slice of Apple Pie
Life flickered in an out of comprehension for a good while, clouding Jaelle’s judgement of what was real, and what was fake.
She guessed she had hit the water a little too hard, and she had lost her fish shapeshift soon after she had gone under. The water whisked her away in earnest, fighting to keep her down and away from oxygen.
Somehow, she had managed to get back to the surface enough to take a deep breath in, but she couldn’t force herself to assume another shape. Her body was entirely spent. So, she was forced to be
tossed around by the waves, bashing into rocks and being pulled under by currents.
The sun slowly began to lower in the sky, her only way to mark that time was passing at all and that she wasn’t just stuck in some sort of watery, Aberrant purgatory.
Then, finally, she hit a sort of rip-tide. But instead of hauling her out into the depths, it pushed her onto some sort of solid surface.
Gasping and coughing, she opened her eyes to see she was partially on a sandbar, just a few feet away from the shore. She laid there, gasping and trying to collect herself, before pulling herself forward.
She was definitely running on empty. Her muscles were protesting and locking up in turns, slowing her progress. But she didn’t stop. Not until she was safe and out of the water, splayed out on the rocky beach like a catch of the day.
She lay there, coughing up dredges of water, wondering what the hell she was going to do next. Reaching behind her, she was afforded a sigh of relief when she realized that she still had her backpack. At least that was going for her.
But she couldn’t stand up, hell, she didn’t even think she could sit up. She knew she needed to get up soon, but her body was flat out refusing to move.
She heard footsteps approaching her, and readied herself for capture after all the work to survive. But as the sound came closer, she realized that she wasn’t smelling any of the hunters that had cornered her on the cliff. Was this a new one? Some sort of ace in the hole that wasn’t being revealed until now?
“Hey, are you okay?”
They had reached her and were kneeling down beside her now. Blearily, she looked up to see a young man about her age, with a shock of red hair and piercing green eyes. She definitely would have recognized him if he was among the hunter’s number.
“Help,” she whispered, looking up at him with the neediest expression she could.
“Whoa, you’re bleeding there. Let me call an ambulance.”
“No,” she gasped. “No doctors.”
“No doctors. Why…?” A look of understanding crossed his face. “Oh, you’re a Shifter, aren’t you? Did humans do this to you?”
Yes. That’s exactly what happened. Weakly she nodded. “Humans,” she repeated.
“All right, I got you. Don’t worry. You’re gonna be fine, okay?”
She managed to smile before her eyes began to close on their own. She felt strong arms wrap under her and lift her up as her mind went under. She just hoped that she woke up someplace warm.
*
Jaelle had never been much of a gym-head, most of her workouts coming from real life situations that involved a lot of running for survival, but she still enjoyed the pleasant sort of burn that ran through her muscles after a good blitz.
But the scorching, sore pain that lanced through her as she woke up was anything but pleasant. At first, she didn’t want to open her eyes, but she was wracked by an insistent thirst to go along with the excruciating ache in her muscles.
Well, there was only one way to break the ice and see where she was, and that was to open her lids. Slowly, she did so, and was relieve when instead of finding out she was in some sort of prison, or back of a hunter’s jeep, she seemed to be a comfy sort of bachelor’s cabin.
She tried to groan a greeting, but only a faint, echoing rasp came out.
“Oh, hey there, you’re awake.” It was the same man who had found her earlier, his brow furrowed. “You’ve been sleeping for almost two days. Here, I’ve got some water for you.” He pressed a thick cup to Jaelle’s mouth and she greedily drank it down. Like a cool wave, relief washed over her and she collapsed back to the bed, feeling her body heal itself.
“There you are. You looked like you’re pinkening right up.” He had an easy-going smile that helped her relax, letting her guard down just enough not to eviscerate him on sight. “You think I can look at that leg of yours?”
“That’s an interesting pick-up line.”
“I figured the picking up part happened when I got you back to my place. Now’s the whole morning after part where look awkwardly at each other and figure out who puts their pants on first.”
“I dunno. Normally, my mornings after are pretty pleasant.”
“Yeah, but I’m guessing most of your night befores don’t involve being shot. Unless you live a very interesting life.”
“It’s certainly has been a roller-coaster.”
With the utmost respect, the young man gently lifted the bottom of the blanket that was covering her, rolling it up just to her knees. Jaelle looked down and saw that her wounded limb had been wrapped rather lovingly in gauze and cleaned like a five-star kitchen.
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“I’m a wolf Shifter with no real pack. You learn to bandage yourself if you want to get by in this big ol’ world.”
“You’re not wrong. Being alone can be just as dangerous as being over-crowded.”
“Sounds like you’re talking from experience.” He laughed as he finished removing the gauze from her leg. She was so caught up in the pleasant conversation, she didn’t think that she should be worried about his reaction until it was too late.
“It’s gone,” he breathed, turning her calf this way and that while his tone escalated. “How is it gone?”
“I guess I should have mentioned that I got extra blessed with that Shifter healing thing.”
“Extra blessed? This is like… supernatural.”
He looked from her face to her leg and back again. She had a stark choice of how she could play this. Either knock him out and make a run for it, or see if she could play on the helpless damsel narrative he was probably building in his head.
She was tempted to do the former, but there was something coiling in her belly. A primal need for a little warmth, a little comfort, and the expression in his eyes was one that hinted such a reprieve might be possible.
“Supernatural? What gives you that idea?” she said before breaking into a fit of giggles.
And just like that, the tension was broken as her caretaker blushed. “All right, poor choice of words. But this is amazing. I don’t recognize your scent, so are you some sort of… avian Shifter or something?”
“Aquarian, actually,” she answered. “Dolphin, from the islands.”
“Oh,” he said with understanding. “So, are you like, one of those poly-asians?”
“Polynesian? Uh, sure. Yeah.”
“Wow. I’ve never met anyone from the islands before.”
“Well, I’m happy to be your first then.” Cautiously she sat up, making sure her body could handle it. With each passing moment, that hunger in her belly was growing, flowing through her veins without interruption. She wanted to be fed. To be satiated. Wrapping her arms around his shoulders and bringing her face close to his, she inhaled his thick, masculine scent. “Hey,” she murmured, eyes hooded and full of want.
“Yeah?” he asked, voice cracking adorably.
“Do you have any food?”
“Food? Uh, yeah. Sure.” Confused, he pulled back from her, blushing slightly. “I think I’ve got a good steak still in the fridge. How do you like it?”
“The only proper way for a Shifter to eat it.”
“Gotcha. Blue rare.”
He went off into another room, giving Jaelle a chance to clear her head. Her heart was racing and her blood was pumping in her veins like she had just been struck by lightning. Every nerve in her body was tingling, craving something she couldn’t give it. It was too soon. Too risky. And yet she was standing up, throwing off the blanket and walking to the kitchen on her newly healed leg.
“Oh, hey there. Did you need a glass of water?”
“No,” She growled, feeling the last of her composure drain away from her. She could feel her teeth growing to sharpened points and her skin grow hotter. She was losing it, and fast.
“Uh, is there something else then?”
“…yes.”
And then she was on him, pressing her form to his and insistently c
laiming his mouth with her lips. She knew it was stupid, and it wasn’t like she had asked his permission, but she couldn’t stop herself. She was just so hungry for what he could give her.
His mouth opened to hers, then suddenly she was being spun around and lifted up onto the counter. She laughed giddily, wrapping her legs about his waist before her fingers went to work on his shirt.
After several moments, he pulled away suddenly and she groaned at the lack of contact. “Are you sure about this?” he asked, eyebrow raised. “Like, I’m all for gratitude, but you don’t have to repay me like this.”
As much as she applauded his confirming her consent, part of her was beyond irritated that he was delaying the inevitable with words. Words that were silly and stopping him from devouring her whole. Gripping him, she yanked him back to her and went right back to kissing him with all the passion churning within her.
She made short work of his shirt, pulling it from his frame and throwing it to the floor. He was no David, or even that Bradley fellow, but he wasn’t anything to look down at, either.
He was busy as well, tearing open the buttons of her work uniform, pulling the thick fabric down to her waist. His mouth moved from her lips to the side of her neck, his sharp teeth breaking the skin there. She repaid him in kind, running her hails down his back hard enough to draw blood.
“You like it a little rough, huh?” he asked, pulling away from her once more. But this time, his eyes were glowing a vibrant green.
“As rough as you can give it to me,” she answered, bearing her teeth in a snarl.
“Those are some strange teeth for a dolphin Shifter,” he murmured, sounding less than sexy.
“Transition forms sometimes do some strange things. Now, are you going to ravage me or what?”
“Whatever you say.” With that, he lifted her up, carrying her out of the kitchen and depositing her onto the same bed she had awoken on.
From there his hand went to what remained of her uniform, pulling it down her legs slowly, kissing her flesh as it was exposed to him bit by bit. He hooked his fingers into her underwear as he went, depositing all of it on the floor so that she was completely bare.
The Aberrants Box Set (Books 1-5) Page 3