“I shall even the odds, Chan,” Grandpa said, lifting his magik enough to free three more men from the table Fred had been at. They looked as confused as Fred.
“Oh, come on. I can take them. Just let them all go.”
She sensed the mysterious man behind her straining even harder to be free. He probably thought she was crazy.
Fred and his men laughed. “Sugar, consider yourself fucked.”
He lunged at her. This time Chandra didn’t hold back. She struck out hard, thrusting him backwards. Two of his friends charged at her. Dropping low, she waited until one dove at her before rising fast and driving her shoulder into his stomach. He flipped backwards with ease, gasping as he went. She couldn’t hide her smirk.
The other man swung out hard, narrowly missing her gut as she sidestepped and countered his strike, delivering a direct hit to his neck. The man dropped quickly and rolled away.
Fred flipped in midair, landed on his feet and put his hands out to his sides. Long claws emerged from them as his eyes began to swirl with black. “Surprise, the big bad wolf is ready to have some fun.”
Fred charged at her and she kicked out again, this time catching his chin. He slashed out at her. Chandra pulled her head back rapidly as his claws swept past her, so close she could feel the wind they generated. He tried it again and Chandra grabbed his wrist, twisted it hard taking him to his knees. She stomped on his other wrist, holding it to the floor as she snapped his arm with ease. He struggled for breath as she pressed his clawed hand to his throat and held tight.
“No, Fred, you’re wrong. I’m not the one who is fucked here.” Chandra could almost feel his intentions. She laughed at the man’s stupidity. “Go ahead, do a complete shift and try to bite me. You should probably think about the fact I’m holding your hand and pressing on a point that will not allow you to retract those nasty lil’ things you tried to gut me with so you’ll be slitting your own throat if you do shift fully or move too much.”
It was easy to see the question in his eyes. He didn’t believe her. “Go ahead. Retract them if you think you can,” she said, daring him.
The hand that was still pinned beneath her boot returned to normal but the one she held to his throat didn’t. His eyes widened. “How? What are you? You’re not a shifter. What...?”
“I’m someone who offered you a chance to walk away, to save you and your friends’ lives but you didn’t take it.”
They never take it.
The other men moved towards her and she shook her head. “Unless you really want him dead and me pissed, I’d turn around and leave. I suggest you hurry before....”
The door to the bar opened and Chandra knew it was too late for the men. Ferran entered slowly, eyeing up the men at the large table before setting his sights on her. He shook his head. “Tsk, tsk, Chan, such a bad girl showing up in town, not coming to see me and then saving all the fun of killing werewolves for yourself. You know how much I love doing that. Every last one of them should be wiped off the face of the earth.”
He pressed his hands together and brought them to his lips. “Oh wait, knowing you, you’re trying to do what you can to keep the peace. That’s always what you try to do, right? Make us all just get along.”
She didn’t answer. There was no point. Ferran knew her well enough to know he was right. Chandra didn’t need to confirm that for him.
He arched a light brown brow and smiled at what he saw. The situation didn’t look good. “How’s that working out for you, darlin’?”
“He agreed to take his people and leave, Ferran. He swore to me he’d just go. No one needs to die tonight.”
Fred started to say something and Chandra pressed his clawed hand to his throat more. He shut up.
Ferran shook his head slightly. His spiked light brown hair barely moved as he locked his blue eyes on her. “Now, Chan, you know I can’t let them go. You know how we feel about that type of filth around here.”
She swallowed hard. “Ferran, he swore to go and not return. No one has to die. No more blood needs to be shed. Enough people have died already. The cycle needs to be broken.”
“Chan, I do my best to keep my patience with you, to try to keep in mind you aren’t like us—that you don’t have an inborn need to kill and to protect but you wear my patience down. When I find you clearly in a position you were left to defend yourself, I have to wonder if your opinion even matters here.” He took a few steps in. “He had every intention of spreading his filthy seed, of creating more of them with our women, didn’t he?”
Chandra shook her head no but stayed silent.
“Jeanie!” Ferran called out.
Jeanie came rushing out from the back room and stalled when she saw what was going on. “Ferran?”
“Little sister, kindly tell me if these men were planning on doing something they shouldn’t. Something that involves taking privileges with you and with Chan.”
“I am not one of your women, Ferran,” Chandra said, giving him a hard look.
He narrowed his gaze. “Says you. One little bite and you will be. You’ll be claimed.”
“It doesn’t work like that for me, Ferran, and you know it.” In truth, it did if the person doing the biting was her true mate. Ferran was not. He didn’t seem to understand that though.
Shaking his head, Ferran laughed. “And what makes you so sure, Chandra? How do you know that when you’re accepting my seed and I sink my teeth into your tender skin, you won’t find yourself claimed?”
Standing tall, Chandra smiled. “I know because you will never sink anything into me again, Ferran.”
“Again,” he licked his lower lip, “don’t remind me I missed my chance, or I might forget I’m a gentleman.”
“I’ll be sure to remember for the both of us.”
Ferran put his hand out towards Jeanie. “Answer me, little sister. Did these men want to take liberties with either of you?”
Chandra watched as Jeanie glanced towards her, obviously looking for an answer. Ferran stroked her cheek and smiled. “Don’t look to her for guidance, Jeanie. I’m asking you.” Ferran put his head against hers and huffed. “You don’t have to answer. I already know. I could smell their lust when I entered. Go finish what you were doing. I trust you were a good girl.”
“Stop talking to her like she’s a child, Ferran.” It sickened Chandra how Ferran treated Jeanie.
Ferran smiled. “In my eyes, she will always be a child. Now, you, Chan, you are altogether different. So much younger than me but it doesn’t bother me. Why is that? How can I feel for you when, according to you, you aren’t even one of our women?” He walked towards her and slowed when he neared her grandfather. Chandra stiffened, unsure what Ferran might try.
“Gildas, old friend, it’s good to see you out and enjoying yourself.” Ferran put his hand on her grandfather’s shoulder and Chandra held her breath. “Do you think that granddaughter of yours will ever stop her humanitarian efforts or is she a lost cause?”
“Oh,” Grandpa said, not seeming the least bit concerned that a man who teetered on the edge of sanity had hold of him. “I think she’ll stop.”
Like hell I will.
Ferran patted her grandfather before walking towards her. He glanced at the jukebox and tipped his head. “Gildas, I find it odd that you’d have the red man’s music playing in your bar.”
“Red man?” Chandra asked, disgusted at Ferran’s derogatory term but not surprised by it in the least. “Even you can’t be that big of an ass. I could make kitty jokes to bring you down a notch or ten. You know what they say about throwing stones, Ferran.”
“What?” He grinned, no doubt fully aware of the fact he was pissing her off. “Do you have a stance on the red men, the Indians, as well? I don’t know why I’m surprised. You seem to have a stance on almost everything. It’s so very human of you, Chan. Your obsession with ancient religions, peace and harmony is sickening.”
“Then why hasn’t it managed to repulse you enough to
leave?” she asked, knowing she was pushing her luck with him but not caring. Someone had to stand up to the man while Wesley, her brother, was away.
Ferran put his hand out and motioned around at nothing in particular. “Because, I’m next in line to rule the pard, Chandra. Why would I give that up?”
“Do you really believe what you’re saying? Do you really think you’ll lead anything?”
“Yes, Chan, I do and so should you.” He took another step towards her. “I can’t promise to go easy on you when I do take over. I think you have quite a few things to learn. First and foremost, you need to learn to respect me.”
“Respect is earned,” she bit out. Holding her tongue wasn’t an option at this point. “Do something that shows me you’re more than you’ve let on so far and I might start, but until then, you will not gain respect. You rule through fear. That’s not the making of a great man, Ferran. It’s the start of their downfall.”
Clapping, he tipped his head to her. “Ever the one to speak your mind in the most poetic of ways. I adore that about you, to a point.”
“You weren’t always this way. I can remember a time that you didn’t hate like you do now.” Glancing at the floor, Chandra sighed. “I can remember a time when you had more than my respect, Ferran. You had my love. What happened to you?”
“Well, finding one’s parents, friends and neighbors slaughtered at the hand of werewolves tends to harden a heart, Chandra. And finding one’s soon-to-be wife beaten, full of claw marks and on the verge of dying doesn’t ever help. Having her wake with no hate for the species responsible, still every bit as concerned about peace as before it happened kills all rational thought.” He gave her a knowing look that left emotions she didn’t want to have flooding her. “Did you also try to reason with your attackers that night, Chan? Before the wolf-pieces-of-shit ripped you from our bed, did you try negotiating? Or did you go willingly?”
Chandra stiffened, careful to keep her hold on Fred’s hand. Her voice shook as she spoke, “I-I tried to stop them, Ferran. You, of all people, know I did.”
“They didn’t care about reasoning out our differences, Chandra. They didn’t care that they slaughtered innocent women and children—that they attacked a guardian. That’s what you are, isn’t it? It’s what you spent so many years hiding from me and it’s why you left to ‘study’ isn’t it?”
She didn’t answer. What was the point? He didn’t want the truth.
Ferran shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, Chandra. You don’t have to confess your secrets out loud. I know enough to know that the wolves didn’t show you an ounce of mercy, did they?”
“No,” she said, not wanting to remember that day.
He nodded. “And they came in such numbers you and your gifts couldn’t hold them back. How is it you don’t fear a repeat of that happening? How can you want to do anything but kill every last werewolf you run across, Chan?”
“I was nineteen when they attacked, Ferran. I didn’t know what I do now. I didn’t fully understand things.”
“And disappearing in the middle of the night to travel the world helped you to better understand them, Chan?” he asked, his voice strained. It was obvious he still hurt from her leaving but she didn’t have a choice.
“The call came and I had to answer. If Wesley summoned you and you didn’t answer there would be hell to pay. It was the same for me. They called and I had to go. I had to learn about who and what I am.” Licking her lower lip, Chandra focused on anything but the tears that wanted to come. “My time away helped me to see that the wolves aren’t all that way. Just like every one of your kind aren’t ruthless killers hell-bent on wiping out an entire race of the gods’ creatures. They have bad apples, too. We all do.”
You’re one of them.
Fury showed on his face as he struck his chest. “They ripped you from our bed, Chan! They came in and plucked a sleeping young woman, someone who refused to kill an insect even, from her bed and they forced you to watch as they slaughtered others. As they tried to....” He stopped and swallowed hard.
Chandra bent her head down, not wanting to remember what Ferran was going to force her to think about. It was a nightmare that she’d not only lived but often had to relive during her sleeping hours. It haunted her still and would until she took her last breath. At the rate danger kept finding her that would be sooner rather than later.
“Look at me, Chandra. Tell me they didn’t sense your power. You hadn’t learned to hide your magik yet and I wasn’t there to mask it from them. Tell me they didn’t try to.... Oh God, I can’t even say it.” Ferran struck his chest again, driving the message home.
The wolves had done horrible things to her. She already knew that. Having him tell everyone around them would accomplish nothing.
“They tortured you before they took you within inches of dying. Had Gildas not sensed your pain, felt his granddaughter’s life force being stripped from this earth, and alerted us to what was going on, you and everyone else would have died. Their intent was to wipe us out. To assure that our mates and future mates were destroyed. They got off to a fucking fine start, Chandra. How is my desire to see to it we survive a bad thing?”
She tightened her grip on Fred’s hand. “Because you kill indiscriminately. You don’t kill to protect yourself. You kill for pleasure now.”
Staring down at Fred, Ferran rubbed his stubble covered chin. “Let go of him.”
“He agreed to go in peace. Don’t shed any more blood. Please.”
“Very well.” Ferran’s eyes flickered. A sign his beast lurked just below the surface. “Let go of him.”
Chandra did so reluctantly. Fred lashed out with his good hand and caught her upper arm, slicing it wide open. Pain radiated through her. She cried out and jerked back. Ferran swept a clawed hand out and left Fred’s body falling one way and his head falling the other. Blood splattered up, hitting her in the face.
Turning quickly, Chandra covered her mouth as she fought not to be sick. The wound on her upper arm was deep and blood poured forth from it. She did her best to avoid looking at it or thinking about the body that lay in pieces behind her but it was next to impossible.
“Turn around and look at what your attempts at helping got you, Chan. Look at the thing you tried to protect. It tried, and would have succeeded, in killing you if I’d have given it a chance. Hell, it tried to take your arm off.”
She shook her head. “Ferran.”
“I told you to turn around.”
“The lesson has been successful, Ferran,” her grandfather said, sounding much closer to her than he should. “Holding the dove too tight will kill it. Is that what you desire? There is a reason Wesley forbids killings to take place around her, Ferran. It is not merely his need to spare Chandra from our very violent reality.”
“Gildas, she needs to learn not to interfere in pard business. I gave her the opportunity to have a say, equal to mine, but she refused to take it. Right now she could be telling me not to harm anyone and I’d have to consider her suggestion. Believe or not, I would respect what my wife had to say.” Ferran snarled. “She didn’t take the opportunity, and you didn’t make her.”
“One cannot force another to marry. To do so would be the same as building your home on quicksand.”
Ferran laughed. When he touched her back, she shivered. Leaning in close, he whispered, “We are far from finished.”
She drew in a deep breath, fighting the nausea that rode her. “Gawd, Ferran, I can feel his spirit around us. It’s desperate to hang on. It knows it’s going to hell.” The nausea intensified and it took all Chandra had to keep it together. “You didn’t have to kill him.”
Ferran cupped the back of her neck. “You’re wrong about this one. I did have to. You just can’t admit it’s true. He would have killed you, even Gildas will agree with me. Hell, even another of his own kind would agree.”
She cringed as she felt the dark spirits coming for Fred’s soul. Their cries, the haunting eerie echo
they made sounded so loud in her ears that she shook her head. “Please, no more death.”
Ferran dug his fingernails into the wound on her arm, sending pain radiating through her. “Concentrate on here, Chan. Stop drifting off into your mind. Places I can’t reach.”
“Chandra,” her grandfather said. “Ignore the call of the dark spirits. They will take you with them if they can. The mountain has seen too much death. They are too powerful for one guardian alone. Ferran, you know better than to kill next to her. She has no one to hold her to us. If they decide to take her and she loses the internal battle, she will die.”
Dark shadows spun around her, dancing a slow dance—the dance of souls. It was both captivating and deadly. She followed them, enthralled by them even though their cries tore at her ears, sending pain through her skull. Still, she reached out as one moved to her. It whispered to her in a language only a select few living souls could understand. It was the language of the dead.
Come.
The spirits swayed, as did she. The haunting melodies filled her head, chasing away the pain. She had to touch it, touch them. They formed the shape of a large gray wolf and she knew then it was Fred’s soul trying to lure her but she couldn’t stop herself.
“I have to get to him.” Bucking back hard, she tossed the weight off her back, paying no mind to the fact that it was Ferran and reached out further, trying to make contact.
“What the fuck is she doing?” Ferran’s voice sounded far away.
“The dead call to her, Ferran,” Grandpa said, sounding even farther away than Ferran. “To kill one so evil in her presence has left the gate open for his soul to attempt to capture her own. The fact he was a shifter, a wolf, only intensifies that for Chan. To guide spirits on earth is part of her destiny. Part of who she has always been. Part of who she will always be. This much you knew yet you chose to ignore it. You also know that she has a severe handicap in comparison to other guardians—she is not a shifter nor is she immortal. This you knew as well.”
“What is she looking at?”
“My guess would be that she sees whatever form the man you killed has chosen to show himself in. So far, it has not attacked.” The need to follow her grandfather’s voice was powerful but the lure of what lay before her was greater.
Shifter Fated Mates: Boxed Set Page 29