by Alyssa Day
He gently disengaged the cub’s teeth from his sleeve and set it on the floor, then stood as well. Kat stopped, inches in front of him, and stood as if trapped. The room shrank around them, and he felt his throat drying up as he looked down into her eyes yet again. “Kat? I—”
“Door,” she blurted out. “You’re blocking the door.”
“Oh. Sorry. Door.” He moved aside and, for the second time that evening, she fled from him.
He smiled slowly as he watched her. If he’d been a predator, the sight of her flight would have incited him to the hunt. He took his time before following her down the hall, waiting for the urgent hardening of his body to subside. “We may be in trouble, Lady Kat,” he murmured to himself. The cubs on the floor gazed sleepily up at him. “Because I’m suddenly feeling very predatory.”
Alaric shimmered into mist and soared away from the ranger’s cottage, disturbed by what he’d sensed from the shape-shifter with Bastien. In a burst of speed, he shot up and out and didn’t descend until he was floating above the midnight blue waves of the Atlantic Ocean. As he spiraled down into the water, regaining his form on the way, he channeled the magic of the portal into Atlantis.
Grimly hoped that the portal would cooperate. It had a decidedly capricious nature, much akin to that of the sea god himself.
Fortunately for the urgency of his mission, the portal opened immediately and he stepped through onto Atlantean soil. Immediately felt the peace of his homeland rush through him, sweeping through the corroded corners of his soul.
Though not even the peace of Atlantis could fill the emptiness of some losses. Some wounds would never heal. Her enormous eyes flashed into his mind, and he nearly flinched.
Quinn.
His eyes gleamed with power, startling the two portal guards who’d fallen back at his entrance. They bowed deeply. “Alaric. Prince Conlan sent for you,” one ventured, not meeting his eyes.
He nodded and headed for the palace. The news that Bastien’s shape-shifter liaison almost certainly had Atlantean blood in her superseded his own pathetic longings for a human he could never have.
Quinn had made that clear, as if his own duties did not dictate the same.
Tangled up in his own black mood, he failed to sense Conlan until the prince flashed into form before him on the path. “What news, Alaric?”
Alaric lifted his head, masking the bleakness of his thoughts to calm control and arranging his expression to reflect the same. “There is a problem. Our shape-shifter has Atlantean blood in her.”
“What? Are you sure?” Conlan ran a hand through his hair. “How is this even possible, in a shape-shifter?”
Alaric raised one eyebrow. “Considering the nature of your beloved and her sister, I am unsure as to why you are so surprised by this development,” he said sardonically.
“But a shape-shifter? Is it even possible for an Atlantean to breed with a shape-shifter?”
“Clearly it is, at least if the mating involves a human with slight traces of Atlantean DNA from an ancestor who was born more than eleven thousand years ago.”
Conlan looked at Alaric and nodded. “You were right.”
“I am always right. Can you be more specific?”
Conlan’s lips twitched in a ghost of a smile. “When we met Riley and Quinn, you said everything was changing. After millennia of fighting the shape-shifters on behalf of humanity, now you tell me that they—at least some of them—might be our descendants.
“It’s difficult to know who to battle, when the identities of the combatants switch in the middle of the game,” Conlan continued.
“Yet it is even worse than you know, my prince.” Alaric closed his eyes and sent his energy winging out from his body to refresh itself in the air and waters of Atlantis. As the pure power of the sustaining elements of his home rushed through his body, he felt the energy grow within him until a shining nimbus of energy glowed around his entire body.
Conlan folded his arms. “That bad?”
“Worse. Bastien’s little shape-shifter may well be just that—Bastien’s shape-shifter.”
“You don’t mean—”
“I do. Their energies parallel. They have the potential to reach the soul meld.”
Conlan’s face hardened. “To the palace, then. We have much to discuss. I don’t know if I can allow that.”
Alaric laughed, but fell into step with his prince. “Think on how you feel about Riley. Not even Poseidon himself could have barred you from your desire to unite with her. With Bastien and his shape-shifter, you may not have any choice.”
Six
“You’re going to have to tell me about it sometime,” Bastien said, following Kat down a muddy, overgrown path. She’d explained that they were at the very beginning of the dry season, and the path had been covered by as much as three feet of water during the height of the May through October rainy season. They’d passed through stands of dwarf cypress and pinelands, mostly in silence, while she quite determinedly ignored him and he tried desperately to think of something liaison-like to say.
Since he still wasn’t sure what a liaison did, he was good for trying Denal’s advice to try to “build a bridge of understanding” between their two cultures. What better way to do that than by hiking a dozen-mile roundtrip path through humid swamp country? Yeah, so irony wasn’t his strong suit, no more than diplomacy.
Yet as he gazed at the curved backs of Kat’s endless legs, he realized he could think of quite a few better ways to build bridges.
“Tell you what?” she called back, not looking at him. She wore her uniform and her official status like a shield against him today, and he’d seen no trace at all of the breathless woman who’d run from him the night before. Instead, he’d heard commanding intelligence in her telephone conversations with various members of her ranger force and the local paranormal ops unit.
From the way her phone had rung incessantly, and the side of the conversations he’d overheard, both groups respected her insights and her authority. He’d seen the deference in the actions of the zoological staff who had come to transport the cubs to a secure facility for care and raising. She’d said goodbye to them with sadness, and in her kindness and play with the cubs he’d seen a flash of the mother she would one day become.
The knowledge of her bearing another man’s child sent a stabbing pain through him that he refused to contemplate.
This hike was an attempt to investigate a vague report of trouble in the area that had been filed the night before, before their scheduled meeting with Ethan, the panther pride’s alpha.
But he was still curious. “Tell me about your gift.”
She stopped, finally turning to face him. “What are you talking about?” Honest confusion clouded her eyes, and she put her hands on her hips. Six miles of walking, and she wasn’t even winded. She had warrior spirit in her, his woman.
The woman. Not his woman. The woman. Dammit.
“Your gift. The ability to calm aggression. Is this a shape-shifter ability that has been kept secret before?”
She blinked, then laughed bitterly. “Gift? Right. You mean curse. The lovely ability I have to calm hostility and aggression in everyone, including myself. The gift that keeps me from ever becoming a true shape-shifter.”
Somehow, he felt the fury radiating from her. He saw the evidence—the clenched jaw, the narrowed eyes, the hands fisted on her hips. But he felt the rage and pain, somehow inside himself. Impossible. But true. He tried to form a coherent question. “How does it—”
She cut him off. “How do you think we get in touch with our animal sides? We tap our animal instincts. A panther is a true predator. I can’t reach the predatory side of myself, dual-natured or not, when my gift automatically switches on to calm any aggression anywhere around me.”
Kat pulled her hat off, wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “That includes, in case you were wondering, any of my own aggression.”
He flinched at the anguish searing through
him. Wondered how he could possibly feel her pain burning in his blood. “Kat, I—” But even as he formed the words, a blanket of calm muffled her emotions.
She sliced her hand through the air, dismissive. “No. I didn’t tell you because I want your pity. Just thought I should let our Atlantean liaison know that I’m a poor choice to be your counterpart. I’m a half-breed who will never truly be a panther. You’d be better off with somebody else.”
He reached out, couldn’t help himself. Touched the curve of her cheek with his fingertips. “Quinn said you. You were the one. Prince Conlan agreed. And this is my first assignment as liaison, so perhaps we can figure this out together.”
She seemed to hold her breath, staring up at him. He could lose himself in her gaze. Sink into the warmth of her amazing mouth and spend the next hour or seven kissing her. Touching her. Plunging into her.
Her face suddenly pinkened as though she could read his entirely unliaisonlike thoughts, and she took a jerky step back from him. “Well, um, okay. We—we’ve checked this path, and there’s no sign of the trouble that—”
Her head snapped up, and she lifted her face into the sluggish breeze, as if she were scenting the wind. “Do you smell that?” she whispered, the lines of her face gone hard, her eyes feral.
He shook his head. “All I smell is swampland. What do you—” he broke off, Atlantean senses sharpening. His sense of smell may not be as keen as a panther’s, but his hearing was preternaturally sharp. “Moaning. That way.” He pointed through a grove of trees and took off at a dead run. The moaning had sounded human.
Even in human form, Kat moved like the panther she was and seemed almost to flow through the underbrush to meet him as they found the source of the moaning. It was a shape-shifter—another panther. The man stared wildly up at them, throat drenched in scarlet blood from the wounds that ripped through the side of his neck. “Kat? It was Terminus,” he said, voice rasping with the effort. “Tell Ethan. Terminus did this.”
Kat dropped to her knees next to the man, tears streaming down her face, already barking orders into her radio. She gave their location, then dropped the radio on the ground and reached for the man’s wrist, trying to check his pulse. “Nicky? No, Nicky, no. You have to hang on. We’ll get help, I promise.”
Tears streamed down her face, and Bastien stood there, helpless with rage. Wanting fiercely to grab her, throw her over his shoulder, and spirit her away from any possible danger. Knowing he couldn’t. He fisted his hands on the hilts of his daggers and scanned the area, though his senses told him the attackers were long gone. Those were vampire bite marks, and the morning sun burning down was sufficient evidence that the vampires had gone to ground.
Nicky held up a hand to Kat, and she clasped it in both of her own. “I’m sorry, Kat,” he managed, hoarse voice fading even as the light in his eyes did the same. Bastien watched as the man’s eyes changed. Turned to panther eyes. His death was fast approaching.
Kat shook her head wildly back and forth. “No. You tell me you’re sorry later, when you’re better,” she commanded.
“You deserve to know, Kat. Ethan…Ethan wants you. His plan…his…” Nicky’s chest heaved in a shuddering gasp, and then his head fell to the side and his hand slid limply out of Kat’s grasp.
Kat lifted her head to stare at Bastien, agony in every line of her tear-stained face. “But it’s Nicky. He can’t be dead. He’s my friend.”
Bastien couldn’t stop himself. He knelt to sweep her into his arms and lifted her, cradling her to his chest. It was imperative that he soothe her; his soul demanded it. “Shhh. I am so sorry for the loss of your friend. May Poseidon and the gods of your ancestors watch over him on his journey into the light.”
He bent his forehead to touch hers, trying to transmit his sympathy and sorrow for her loss. Wishing he could take the pain into himself and protect her from it.
She clutched his shirt and gave in to a firestorm of sobbing, but it lasted less than a single minute. Then, abruptly, her tears stopped. Her breathing slowed down from its frantic pace until it was rhythmic again. Measured. Calm.
She looked up at him, and the force of the anguish in her eyes dimmed, as he stared into them. “Please put me down now,” she said, clearly trying to pull her dignity around her.
His arms tightened involuntarily, but he forced himself to release her. He gently set her down, so that she stood on the path before him.
“You see,” she said, utterly calm. Features utterly still. “I am not merely half shape-shifter. I am half human. My gift, as you call it, blocks me even from the wholly human emotion of mourning for a childhood friend. I’m neither human nor shape-shifter, but a bastard hybrid—half of each.”
Her lips twisted with evident self-disgust. “And half of nothing is still nothing.”
Before he could speak, he heard the hum of the all-terrain vehicles thundering up the path behind them. Voices calling out for Kat. She shouted out to them, and the opportunity was lost.
But Kat’s gift apparently only worked on aggression. Because the torment racking through Bastien at the sight of her pain and self-loathing didn’t abate in the slightest.
Seven
Bastien entered the enormous house designated as the home and headquarters of the Florida panther alpha, walking slightly in front of Kat. He didn’t like what he’d heard of this Ethan character, and every protective instinct he’d ever possessed was on overload.
The sensations of predator and violence permeating the house didn’t help, either. He tuned his senses to high alert and stopped, waiting.
Kat, walking with her head down, bumped into him and stopped. He glanced down at her, and his breath caught in his throat at the sight of her slumped shoulders and the tortured sorrow in her gaze. “What is it? Why are we stopping? Ethan said to meet him in the pool room,” she said, voice low and hoarse.
“Really? One of his own is murdered, and he has time to play a game or two of pool? Not much of a leader, is he?” Bastien heard the sharp sarcasm in his own voice and realized it might not be the proper tone for a liaison to take. Then the atmosphere in the airy entrance hall changed a split second before he sensed the danger and whirled to face it, daggers drawn, body poised in front of Kat.
The man standing in the entranceway was completely familiar to Bastien, though he’d never seen him before. Three centuries of protecting humankind from shape-shifters had taught him a few lessons. This man was the alpha. It was clear in his stance—shoulders thrown back, legs apart. Head thrust aggressively forward.
This had to be Ethan, and he expected instant subservience.
Too fucking bad.
Kat moved to walk around him, and Bastien put out a hand to block her. “Perhaps you could introduce us,” he said, eyes never leaving Ethan.
Ethan’s lips drew back from his teeth a little, but he said nothing in response to Bastien’s comment. Simply folded his arms across his chest and waited.
Kat pushed Bastien’s arm down and looked up at him. “Ethan is the alpha of my pride,” she said, impatience in her voice. “You don’t need to protect me from him.”
“Oh, is that what he’s doing?” the shape-shifter’s voice was silky. “Maybe you could tell your friend that you’re mine, and he interferes with pride business at his own risk.”
The fine hairs on the back of Bastien’s neck went up at the words. “I know about pride hierarchy, shifter. Be advised that Kat belongs to no man, least of all one who allows his female to attack Kat with her nastiness.”
He heard Kat’s sharp gasp at his words and figured he’d pay for them later. But something deep in his soul had rebelled at hearing the man refer to Kat as his.
She’s mine.
Ethan snarled and shot ten feet toward them in one giant leap. Bastien raised his daggers and prepared for battle. But Kat stepped between them, holding her hands up. “Don’t make me use my secret weapon,” she said, weariness infusing her voice. “Don’t we have better things to do when Ni
cky…when he—”
Bastien waited for the alpha to stand down. The man’s muscles tightened and then relaxed, and he inclined his head to Kat and Bastien. Bastien thrust his daggers back in their sheaths, then put his arm around Kat’s shoulders. “You are correct, yet again.”
He squared his shoulders and held out a hand to Ethan. “My apologies. I mean to offer insult neither to your family nor to your honor, and I offer sincere condolences on the loss of your pride-brother. I am Bastien from Atlantis, and we need to talk.”
Ethan waited a long moment, then grasped Bastien’s hand and shook it. “No apologies are necessary. I can understand why a man—or an Atlantean—would want to defend Kat’s honor. She is one of our pride’s greatest treasures. Her…gift is of incalculable value to our defenses.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed as he stared pointedly at Bastien’s arm resting on Kat’s shoulder. The smoldering possession in the way Ethan looked at Kat made Bastien want to smash something. Or someone.
Kat spoke up again. “We need to talk about Nicky, if you two are done marking your territory. Which, I might remind you, does not include me.”
Ethan evidently agreed, at least to the part about the need for a conversation, since he held up a hand to direct them to the room from which he’d just entered the hallway. Bastien smiled his best liaison smile. “After you.”
Ethan’s lips twitched in a half-smile, and he strode in front of them toward the doorway.
Bastien reluctantly released Kat’s shoulders, but stopped her gently when she began to follow the shape-shifter. “Are you well?”
“No. No, I’m not well in any way,” she said. “But we need to do this.”
Bastien followed her through the doorway into an enormous room dominated by an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Ah. The pool room. Someone was doing laps down the middle. He raised one eyebrow at the sight. “I didn’t know panthers even liked water.”
Ethan shrugged. “We like it well enough as cats, but I’ve found that most of us love it in our human form. And the benefits of being the man who owns the pool are obvious.” He jerked his chin toward the edge of the pool nearest them, where a nude woman stood up in the water, lifted her head, and shook droplets from her hair. Her eyes sharpened when she saw them.