by A. C. Arthur
Everything she’d said had seemed cryptic, like there was more meaning to each word that I just wasn’t catching on to. It reminded me again of things I’d heard over the past weeks like “half-breed” and “shadows.” And then when I’d confessed to Caleb that I liked that he was different and his reply had been, “You have no idea,” I’d thought there was more but hadn’t known what. Blame this overactive imagination on the romance novels and the ability I had to be taken swiftly into another world, into another mind, to other emotions and … and it left me with what? More questions.
“What are you talking about? Why don’t you just tell me what you came here to tell me?” I’d said to Lidia.
And she did.
And I didn’t believe it.
I didn’t believe—no matter how many books I’d read, how many worlds I’d ventured into through fiction—that there was another species living among us. She’d left me then, after dumping a gigantic pile of “what the hell” in my lap, she’d just left, giving me a simple card with her name and her cell phone number.
That night I cried for hours, unable to get started on my new life, unable to believe what I’d just heard and swearing not to ever, ever, read another book again. I didn’t want to deal in fiction anymore, didn’t want to believe in happily ever after or to get lost in a world or people that just were not a solid part of this reality. My “flightiness” as my mother had often called my love of books and the unknown, had finally gotten the best of me. I’d balled up that card with Lidia’s number on it and just lay on the floor until morning.
With the new day I’d convinced myself it was time to start over once more and had headed out to do just that, only to find a big black truck sitting in front of the building when I stepped out. I dropped all my bags when two men, fine as hell and built like wrestlers, climbed out of the backseat. They both wore dark shades, one dressed impeccably in a navy-blue suit, while the other was more casual in black jeans and a black button-down shirt that molded perfectly over his bulging muscles. That one I remembered but couldn’t figure out why.
“Zoe Fallon.”
The one in the suit said my name.
I was so stupefied at this point I could only nod.
“I need you to come with us.”
I shook my head this time, vehemently. All books and fiction world aside, I was not getting into a strange black truck with these two big ominous-looking men. Hell no!
Then the one I remembered took off his glasses and stepped up beside me. “We’re not going to hurt you,” he said. “Just come with us.”
I’d heard those words before, at the hospital. This man had been at the hospital with me.
“No. I’m not going,” I insisted. “And if you don’t get out of my way I’m calling the police.”
The other one, the guy that looked really hot in his business suit, took off his glasses to display warm brown eyes. He smiled and I almost swooned, which I’m guessing was the desired effect, then he said as simply as if he were stating the time of day, “If you call the police, you’ll never see Caleb again.”
Against everything I’d convinced myself of the night before, the ban on romance and all that came with it, the hopes that all that girl had said to me was wrong, the hurt of Hanna’s actions, the memory of my mother and her issues, everything, just slipped away. I heard his name and all the heat and emotion that had been between us that night before the fights and the hospital came rushing back and I couldn’t help it, I replied without hesitation, “Alright.”
***
“What are you doing here?” Caleb asked when he’d finally stopped kissing me.
He’d carried me to the huge house I’d seen only from the beach, through a lower level patio door, where he’d quickly pressed me against the wall and kissed me again.
I loved kissing him, loved the way our lips fit perfectly and our tongues knew the steps to the dance without practice or thought. His hands were everywhere, up my skirt, clenching my back, in my hair, grasping my cheeks. I felt consumed and more than ready for more.
So when he finally pulled away I was a little dazed and giggled to keep what little bit of focus I had left from drifting away.
“I get the feeling you’re not overly upset by my presence,” I replied.
He was looking at me now, his dark eyes glazed with desire and filled with questions. It was my turn to run my fingers through his hair, to push the unruly strands back from his face and watch with pleasure as they dropped down over his forehead once more.
“I’m not complaining,” he said. “But I don’t understand.”
I nodded. “We might be a little more comfortable talking if we sat down.”
Caleb shook his head immediately. “I’m not letting you go, not this time.”
I’d read those words before, hoped to hear them in real life at some point and was elated that they were coming from this guy at this moment.
“I don’t intend to let you go either.”
He was shocked, I could tell, and it was an emotion he didn’t like. Then again, Caleb wasn’t the talkative or emotional type. I guess I’d have to fill that gap in this relationship. So I moved until he loosened his grip and my feet finally hit the floor. I took his hand and led us over to a huge futon on one side of the wall. The fading light from the outside still illuminated this room as there were no curtains at the patio doors. It looked like a changing room with one wall full of shelves that held towels and other beach items. There was another door which I assumed might be a bathroom, then the futon and two other lounge chairs, all sitting on a black-and-white tiled floor.
We sat and Caleb pulled me close. I entwined our fingers and looked up at him before saying bluntly, “I know what you are.”
“What?”
“I know about the tribes and about your parents.”
His entire body tensed, his eyes growing dark, just before he looked away from me.
It was exactly the reaction I’d expected, the same one Lidia had warned me about. After spending more time with her and the other females of the Topètenia tribe in FL’s big house in Virginia, I had a good taste for how their men, or rather, male shifters, responded to emotion and pent-up anger. If it was an outsider dealing with them then they should beware. But I wasn’t an outsider, I’d given up all that I knew to make this trip to Florida, to approach him, this guy, this Shadow Shifter that I was in love with. No way was I going to let his prickly attitude stop me.
“Lidia came to see me about a week after I was released from the hospital. She told me everything and then she just left. I didn’t know how to digest it all and wondered if I should even try. When I finally decided to just walk away, two guys that I originally thought might be from the Mafia or some kind of dangerous crime family came to get me and I really didn’t have a choice but to go with them.”
Caleb turned quickly then, eyes blazing as he glared at me. “Who came to get you? What did they do to you?”
I lifted a hand then, warmth spreading through my chest at what I saw. My fingers, only a shade lighter in complexion than Caleb’s lightly bearded cheek, grazed his cheekbone, then moved up to smooth his thick eyebrows. He blinked and I smiled because the dark brown eyes that I’d always thought were so sad were now golden orbs, a slit of black down their center. He was looking at me with his cat’s eyes and I wasn’t afraid, I was enamored.
“They explained everything to me and they showed me your world, your family,” I said.
“I don’t have a family,” Caleb said, closing his eyes. “My parents are dead.”
“Like I sometimes wish mine were. My stepfather at least.” I cupped his face with both my hands then, waiting until he finally looked at me once more. “But you have so much more than a mother and father. You have an entire tribe willing to stand behind you, to support you, to go against their very beliefs to come and get me because they thought I was the only one who could save you for them.”
“I don’t need saving,” he said, jerking aw
ay from me and standing. “I don’t need their interference. I’ll never join them. Never!”
“Because your father despised them once he found out what your mother really was?” I kept talking but didn’t stand to join him. Instead, I gave him the space he felt he needed.
He spun around so fast I did jump, a little, but I kept my hands folded in my lap, my gaze focused on him. There was so much pain, so much anger, his shoulders were rigid with the weight he’d carried all these years.
“No!” he roared. “Because my mother ignored everything she was taught and fell for a man that could never understand, could never be what she needed him to be. His hatred killed her and her love for him cursed me!”
Every part of me ached for him, ached for the loss and the pain that he’d endured. I know I’d had my own tribulations through life, maybe that was why I could so easily accept all that I’d learned in these last weeks, and why I could so completely love this man.
“But I understand, Caleb. I know who and what you are and I understand what your people are and why they are here. You understand those differences too. You’re not like either of them.”
“No, I’m not like anybody and that’s exactly why I don’t belong with them and I don’t … I didn’t think …”
He couldn’t get the words out, but it was okay, after weeks of thought and with the help of Lidia I’d figured out what was behind Caleb’s sadness and this connection that had been gnawing at me since the first night I’d seen him walk into that bar. It wasn’t my romantic mind, although that kiss on the beach would make for searing pages in any book. A book which I’d buy a hundred copies of just to read over and over again. It was the companheiro calor, the scent of shifter mates. I’d learned all about its intensity and its importance and as I inhaled I thought I could even smell its sweet aroma wafting through the air around us.
“You didn’t think it was right for you to fall for a human like your mother did.” I stood up then, rubbing my hands down the front of my dress. “You didn’t think that it was right to fall for a shifter female either because she would think you were less than her, half of her. You don’t belong because you don’t want to choose where to belong. Is that about right?”
He looked at me this time as if I had two heads, as if he just couldn’t believe I would say these things to him. Well, a couple of weeks, maybe even a year ago, if someone had told me I’d walk away from the independence I’d wanted for so long, that I’d give up my room that was a piece of crap and my job that paid excellent tips but left me almost too tired to actually pursue the college degree that I wanted, to travel to Florida to convince a guy that I’d met only two months ago that I was in love with him and that we were meant to be together, I would have laughed in their face. No matter how truly romantic it all sounded.
“Everyone has their own path, Caleb. Human or otherwise. I had to accept that about my mother, that’s how I could leave her and my sister and brother there in that house on my eighteenth birthday. I walked away because that was my path to take. My mother stays because that is hers. You kept coming back to that bar, sitting there ordering wings and nachos and Blue Moons because you felt the same thing I did. You felt that we were meant to be, that we were mates or what you call them, companheiros.”
“You talk too much,” was his curt reply as he turned away from me again.
“True,” I agreed, moving closer to where he stood but not touching him. “And you don’t listen well enough.”
“I’ve heard that before,” he grumbled.
“I won’t leave you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I won’t turn my back on you to go back to my people or my world.” I stepped to him then, putting both my palms in the center of his broad back, moving them over his shoulder blades, down his sides until I had wrapped my arms around his waist. I lay my cheek against him, listening to the steadiness of his heartbeat, hearing that it now matched the rhythm of my own. I inhaled deeply and loved the scent that moved through me, swirling around and cocooning my heart. “And I won’t tell the secret because I love you and who and what you are too much to ever put you in that type of danger.”
I held on for what seemed like endless moments, loving the feel of him in my arms but really needing him to respond so I wouldn’t feel like a total ass.
If it was sweet words I really craved, they would not come. If I thought the next actions would be right out of a swooping romance novel, I would have been beyond wrong. Instead, Caleb turned to me, his cat’s eyes still glaring. His strong hands grabbed my ass once more, lifting me right off the floor and carrying us both back to that futon. He was over me seconds after he laid me on the chair, his hands ripping away my panties with one quick yank.
I opened my mouth to speak but was silenced by his lips on mine, his kiss hungrier than I’d ever experienced and sweeter than I—or any romance novel writer—could have ever imagined. So, okay, I wouldn’t talk, I’d simply take this rush of desire, this burst of heat so potent it took my breath away. His hands moved quickly, as his tongue delved deeper, dueling with mine. My hands were in his hair, nails raking over his scalp as I tried to keep up, tried to take all that I possibly could of him.
In mere seconds he’d unbuckled his pants, freeing his arousal. His teeth scraped along the line of my jaw as both hands resumed gripping my bottom, lifting me slightly off the chair to meet the quick and deep thrust as he entered me. I gasped, arched my back, then sighed as he spoke.
“I know that you’re my companheiro,” he said, his voice gruff in my ear. “I’ve known that you were mine since first seeing you.”
His words were a thin layer over the deep thrusts he made and I matched. They hovered in the air around us, cocooning us, sealing the fate we now both accepted. I loved this moment, this feeling, this complete absorption that until this exact moment I’d only had the pleasure of reading about.
“I know about the human world and the shifter world and I don’t give a damn about any of them,” he continued.
My fingers were digging into his back, my eyes half-closed, mouth opened as I gasped and whispered his name. So when he suddenly stopped all movement I wanted to stop breathing, forever.
“I don’t give a damn about anything but you.” Caleb was looking at me then, not with his cat’s eyes but with his dark brown ones, filled with lust and desire and something that pricked a tiny hole in my heart. “I only care about you and being everything I can be to make you happy, to make you understand that I love you.”
Tears immediately filled my eyes as that tiny hole in my heart was filled with his words, the sincerity of them, the totality of them. Caleb lowered his head and kissed the first tear to fall and I gasped his name.
“I love you,” I whispered, and he began to move over me once more. It wasn’t fast and fevered, hungry and needy as it was a few moments ago, but slow, tender, meaningful, and I loved every minute of it. I loved every part of him.
CHAPTER 17
Caleb
It had been three weeks since we left Florida. Marta was doing much better after the remedies Ary Delgado had supplied for her—remedies that were not of the human world. Ones that I would be forever grateful for because I never wanted to lose Marta, I never wanted to lose the best mother I could have ever asked for.
Marta and Zoe hit it off immediately as Zoe had quickly taken to helping Ary with whatever she needed to keep Marta comfortable. I spent more hours watching the two females that meant the most in this world to me together than I could count. Watching the human and the shifter bond regardless of their obvious and not-so-obvious differences.
I grew up a lot in those days of watching and listening and allowing myself to believe. Running was cowardice, avoiding was disastrous, and not living was downright criminal. Gil had told me that and I believed him wholeheartedly.
I came back to D.C. with Aidan and Brayden, and missed Zoe desperately as she stayed behind to continue to help Gil with Marta. Training beside my brothers was like old times. The
three of us didn’t miss a beat in the physical tasks required of us. We spent hours behind closed doors with Nick Delgado going over security issues and weak points and even more hours with X reviewing the human government infrastructure, until finally, the day had come.
Havenway was still in its early days and most of the old buildings were in various stages of construction, but we’d been summoned to what was being called “the briefing room.” It was a little after noon as I closed the door to the room I’d been assigned to and walked down the long hallway. I knew what this was about, knew what going in there would mean and I was okay with it. I knew who I was and why I was put here and I was ready to take the next step.
Knowing that Zoe was waiting for me in the house where I’d spent a lot of my teen years had a lot to do with my acceptance. She knew everything there was to know about me and she was still there, still waiting for me, still loving me. My heart swelled with the thought because I never thought I’d have someone like her, with feelings that rivaled my own. I just never assumed this was where my life would end up.
“You ready for this?” Aidan said, meeting me as he entered the hallway from another direction.
We were wearing the black cargo pants, T-shirts, and black industrial boots that had become our uniform as of late.
“I’m as ready as you are,” was my reply.
He reached for my arm. “Just checking,” he said with a grin.
Aidan had checked daily for the bracelet. Topètenia males received a leather bracelet with the Topètenia insignia branded along its length, after their first completed shift, usually around the age of sixteen. I hadn’t worn mine since I’d turned eighteen and left the Sanchezes. The morning after Zoe arrived in Florida I’d put it on. She’d touched the leather and asked me about the bracelet and I’d explained it to her, told her about the transition of the Topètenia shifters from child to shifter to soldier. She’d smiled at me and pride had swelled in my chest. Today, I looked over at Aidan’s matching bracelet and felt that same pride.