by Amelia Jade
But once again she surprised him.
“I know,” she said bluntly. “I doubt I truly understand, or comprehend what it means. But I’m aware that I can’t go back to anything I had.”
He shook his head. “So why, then? Why throw it all away?”
Nadia hesitated.
“It’s okay, I won’t judge you,” he assured her.
She smiled faintly. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, trust me.”
He shook his head. “No, I won’t. I’ve probably heard crazier things.”
“Okay. But I warned you,” she said, then sat back onto the couch and began to speak.
“Ever since I hit puberty, around twelve or so, I began to have very strong hunches. Gut feelings. Instincts. Whatever you want to call it. At first I thought everyone experienced this sort of thing, that it was completely normal and part of growing up, but nobody really talked about it. So I didn’t say anything. But they got stronger, and I noticed a pattern.”
“A pattern?” Jared was intrigued now. He’d never heard of such a thing.
“Yes. If I listened to my hunch, things would inevitably work out for the better for me. It wasn’t always instantly visible, but looking back I was able to see how. But if I ignored it…” she trailed off.
“Something bad would happen,” he finished.
“Exactly,” Nadia said, looking away. “So this morning, I got an urge.”
“To come to me?” he asked curiously.
She shook her head. “Not at first. At first it was simply to get out of the building. No matter what it took, to get out and never, ever go back. But as soon as I was out, and they began to follow, my mind recalled you guys. And suddenly I knew where I had to go.”
She sat back, arms crossed. “Still think I’m not crazy?”
He smiled. “I can change my shape into that of a nearly two-ton bear. It can communicate with me as a separate entity, in a very simple sense. So no,” he reassured her, “I don’t think you’re crazy. I have a friend I want to ask about your hunches, to see if he knows what it might be about, but other than that, I don’t think you’re too crazy.”
An old dragon, one who had seen everything, came to mind. If anyone would know, it would be Ferro.
“Well, this is a relief,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Most people I’ve told this to think I belong in a nuthouse.”
“I’m not most people,” he told her firmly.
“So I’ve noticed,” she said with a noticeable sultry air to her voice.
All of a sudden the tension was back in the room.
Chapter Six
Nadia
What are you thinking?!
She was flirting with him. Not subtly either. This was a blatant thing!
With a rush of blood to her face she turned and fled back to the washroom before things could go any farther. She closed the door behind her as gently as possible, before turning and resting her hands on the counter, staring into the mirror.
Was the flirting such a bad thing? The pit of her stomach, where she normally felt the guiding sense of what to do in certain situations, was noticeably quiet. This was something she would have to figure out for herself.
Great. Why couldn’t it pick now to tell me what to do?
He was hunky, sexy, handsome, gorgeous, panty-melting. Pick one, and it described him, depending on the situation. He was all of them and any of them. She had felt herself growing aroused as she rubbed his shoulders while trying to get him to relax, to think clearly and without worry. It had been a tactic to try and ensure he didn’t get them into a bad situation by worrying over things he couldn’t control, but it had backfired by making her want to sit in his lap and grind her hips against him until he took her, right then and there.
Yet she had only met him a few hours ago. She knew his name, and that was about it! He was a shifter, and he was on the run from another group. Was he truly a terrorist? Why had he been labeled one? In essence: What the fuck was going on? That was what she needed to know before she could make any more decisions.
Sexual promiscuity was not a normal thing for Nadia. She’d had boyfriends before, but this was on a different level completely. Never before had her drive to sleep with someone come so quickly, and been so urgent as well. Her body seemed to respond with instant arousal whenever she was within a few feet of him. Could it just be his bear? Could that affect her differently?
I don’t know. And that’s the problem.
So go find out then.
As if trying to tell her inner-mind to shove it, she decided that’s exactly what she would do. Nadia pushed off the counter, splashed a bit of water on her face, and patted it dry. Then she left the washroom and walked over to where he was still seated at the laptop.
“Anything yet?” she asked, not wanting to push his concerns to the side.
“No, not yet,” he replied.
“Okay, well, while we wait, can you answer some questions?” she asked.
Jared turned to look at her. “I can try, absolutely. I can’t compromise any classified information, but I’m sure I can shed some light on things.”
“What the hell have I gotten myself into?” she asked plainly, not waiting any longer to get into the meat of it.
“A war.”
That was not what she had expected to hear. “I’m sorry. Details please? A war?”
He turned the chair to face her and leaned back. “Yes, a war. Shifters were revealed to be public knowledge more than seventeen years ago.”
“Right. I remember that,” she said. “I was a little kid, only eleven at the time, but that was such a big deal that one couldn’t miss it.”
“Well, everyone heralded it as a great thing. Shifters could go public and not have to worry about being persecuted any further.”
“Yes. After so many years—centuries I guess, actually—of hiding, you could be free with who and what you really were.”
The big shifter snorted. “Well that was a big load of crap,” he said. “Nothing like that ever happened. From the get-go there were riots and protests, saying we should be rounded up and kept in certain areas only. All kinds of things.”
“That’s horrible!” she said with a gasp. “I never heard about any of that.”
“Of course not,” he said. “The news never reported it. It wasn’t worth it. Things like that have been going on for years. But if you searched for it online, there were plenty of things available.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, wanting to reach out to comfort him, but forcing herself not to.
“It’s okay, it had nothing to do with you,” he said. “It died down after a while, as shifters went half-underground again. We stopped being so public, and it became harder for them to come after us. But they never stopped. As the world grew tighter with the internet, the distaste and outright hatred for us grew again, until it was worse than before.”
She could feel the hurt, the depression, that such treatment must instill in someone. The desire to try to help ease that burden welled up inside of her, but Nadia knew she needed to let him finish the story first.
“At some point,” Jared said, breaking the momentary silence, “things began to escalate. There was fighting between the shifter races as some of the more powerful ones tried to take complete control. Human governments have long wanted our powers—for us to become their special strike units, to do things humans cannot.”
“I had heard that most of the time shifters decided to stay apart from human wars and conflict?”
That was the official line, at least. With everything that she had seen, and was now being told, Nadia wondered if that was the truth. It wouldn’t be the first time the government had lied to its people, of that she was sure.
“For once, the truth is as you have heard it,” he replied. “There are some of course who have decided to involve themselves, though most of them are mercenaries.” He flashed her a humorless smile. “The pay is better.”
“So why is there a
war going on?” She had a better picture of things now, but there was still something missing.
“At some point, the governments decided to get involved. They tacitly supported an organization dedicated to finding a scientific way to take our abilities and give them to humans without the whole turning-into-an-angry-animal part.”
Nadia couldn’t contain her shock. The gasp of her sudden inhaled breath echoed in the room. “Holy shit. That’s not possible.”
Jared looked at her calmly, unflinching.
“Is it?” she asked after a moment.
“Not only is it, but they have done it. Their serum, named Extremis, has produced all sorts of results. We even have several people on our side, fighting for us, who have been injected with it.”
“Really? What happened?” she asked, intrigued now. This was the stuff of science fiction.
“Well, one of them gained our abilities. Strength, speed, healing, better vision. She’s still completely human, but is now an enhanced version.”
“Fascinating,” she whispered. “And the other?”
Jared frowned, as if he was considering an answer. She thought he was going to say nothing, but he shrugged his shoulders instead. “The other was injected with both that and an experimental serum that turned her into a full-blown shifter.”
Nadia’s jaw popped as it fell open. “No way. You’re lying.” But she could tell by his face that he wasn’t.
“That’s so cool!” she exclaimed, sitting back onto the couch.
Jared’s face closed off. His shoulders tensed and his eyes went flat.
“Or…it’s not?” she asked, confused by his sudden change in attitude.
“Each injection of the serum requires the life of a currently living shifter. All their blood is drained from them and modified in some as-yet-unknown way, that distills it into a vial no bigger than your finger. That holds the power to create a new shifter.”
The blood drained from her face as he continued to speak, outlining the horrors of what he and his kind were facing. And she had called it cool.
“Oh my goodness. Jared, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…” she trailed off as he raised a hand.
“It’s okay, you didn’t know. I won’t hold it against you.
Words continued to fail her. Nadia felt terrible for acting like the death of one of his kind, perhaps even one of his friends, was the coolest thing she had ever heard of. What kind of person did that? She should have waited for the whole story! Now he would hate her.
“So the war is between this organization and the shifters?”
He nodded. “Yes. Myself and the others, the group labeled as terrorists, are members of a shifter Underground resistance. We’re dedicated to preventing this Agency, as it’s known, from spreading to other cities and eventually across the globe.”
“That sounds dangerous,” she said.
“It is.” The response came instantly. “But it’s also necessary. Not every shifter has the training that my men and I do. It is up to us to fight for them, to protect them.”
Nadia’s head nodded up and down.
“How are you going to stop the Agency?” she asked in a half-whisper, positive she knew the answer, but needing to hear it all the same.
“By killing them all, I’m afraid.”
The statement was blunt and matter-of-fact. Jared knew that his enemies wouldn’t give up, and he knew the lengths he would have to go to end the war. Somehow, knowing that seemed to put her at ease around him. He wasn’t lying to her, nor trying to sugarcoat anything. He was telling her the truth, as if she were an equal.
He trusted her, to a degree. Or at a minimum, he was willing to treat her with some respect, despite the fact that she was human, and not part of his team. Nadia appreciated that despite everything that he knew about her, and some things that he did not. She quailed at the thought that eventually she would have to reveal everything that she knew.
Nadia heard a voice speaking, and she couldn’t believe it was hers.
“How can I help?”
***
What did you just say? Did you just ask how you could help him fight a war? Are you stupid?
Nadia wasn’t sure what to say to her own questions. There was an immense feeling of guilt that she was keeping bottled up inside of her, until she could find the right time to tell Jared the complete truth. But how did that become her volunteering to help him end a war?
Because you owe them. It’s the right thing to do. You’ve already thrown your lot in with them; might as well try to help them out.
“Nadia, that’s not something you want to ask,” he said gently, trying to let her down, she thought. “These guys do not play nicely. If they find out you’re helping us, they’ll go after your family to get to you.”
She took a deep breath. “That’s not a problem.”
The shifter’s eyebrows rose questioningly.
“I don’t have a family. My parents and older sister were killed when I was a child. There is nobody for them to go after. I don’t even know of any cousins.”
There was a strange glint in his eye as she revealed that fact.
“What?” she asked.
“I’m sorry,” he told her, his voice thick with emotion. “I truly am. I know how that must have been, growing up without anyone around you.”
“Something tells me you know that better than most,” she said slowly, looking deep into his eyes and finding the pain she thought she would see there.
“I do,” he said, his voice a whisper. “And I’m so sorry you had to go through that as well.”
Nadia was forced to clear her throat before she could respond. Her chest rose with the long, slow inhalation of air.
“But even with that, I don’t know where you might be able to help us,” he said. “Right now things are in complete disarray. The raid on our base was completely unexpected, and put our plans to assault their base on hold, possibly indefinitely. Surely it won’t be until we are able to regroup.”
As if in cue, the laptop behind him dinged, the soft chime more than loud enough to startle the two of them. Jared practically leapt to the seat to read the messages.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Three members, safe and sound together,” he said, pride infusing his voice at the knowledge that some of his team had escaped unhurt.
“That’s great!’ she said, happy to hear it. She knew Jared had been trying to hide just how worried he was. His efforts had been far from successful, but she recognized after massaging his shoulders that his worries weren’t going to go away until people started reporting in safe.
Something changed in his posture, however.
“Jared?” she called when he didn’t immediately say any more. “What’s wrong?”
He turned to look at her, and his face could have been made from stone for all the emotion that showed on it.
“They got away cleanly, but not immediately. Someone got taken,” he told her. “They tried to rescue him, but were chased off before they could.”
“Do they know where he was taken? Maybe all of you can go after him,” she suggested.
He nodded. “Yes. But they had to go all the way to the other side of the city and go to ground just to escape. So they aren’t available to help in time.”
“Is there a time limit?” she asked, confused why that would matter.
Jared was already moving, looking at his gear and checking that his boots were tied.
“Yes. If we wait, they’ll drain his blood like the others. My team is composed of Alpha shifters. We’re bigger, stronger, and faster than most bears. If they were to create a serum from his blood, who knows how powerful it would make the Agent it gets injected into.”
“Oh. That’s not good,” she said, rising from the couch.
“What are you doing?” he asked as she made her way to the door as well.
“Is there a vehicle hidden away here somewhere?”
“Yes,” he said, saying it slowly enoug
h that it elongated into several syllables.
“I’m driving,” she said, giving him her best “Don’t argue with me, you’ll lose” voice. “You need to concentrate on your mission. Besides, I’m far less conspicuous than you are,” she said dryly, looking him up and down.
To her surprise, Jared cracked a smile. She had expected a protest, with him trying to be heavy-handed to protect her and saying it wasn’t her fight. But instead, he respected her desire to help, and simply gave her an acquiescing nod.
“Very well,” he said. “But you stay in the car, and you don’t do anything stupid, heroic, or anything besides sit there and wait for me to come back out.”
“Deal,” she said. “I want to help, but I’m not stupid. I know that getting in the middle of fighting shifters is not the path for long life. I want to help, but I also want to live.”
It still astounded her that she wanted to help, that she was willingly putting herself into harm’s way. It was as if her brain were making these decisions for her, without consulting her. Was she letting her physical desire for him entice her into making stupid decisions? Or was she doing what needed to be done?
“I want you to wear this,” he said, pulling a baseball hat off the nearby rack. “Put your hair up into it.”
She arched an eyebrow at him.
“Please?” he said. “For me? It will make me feel better about all of this. Those long brown locks of yours are a little too identifiable for me.”
She smiled at the compliment of sorts, and took the cap from his hands. “Very well,” she said, tucking her hair up and putting it on. “How’s this?”
“Perfect.”
“Don’t get used to it though,” she said. “I like my hair down.”
“Me too.”
“I’ll bet,” she replied swiftly, without missing a beat, enjoying the flirty banter far more than she should have.