Obviously I had no choice but to walk, but if I did so as a dog I chanced being picked up and taken to the pound, which was definitely not a situation I wanted to end up in. My only other option, as I saw it, was to go in human form…and to do that, I was going to have to steal some clothes. I felt bad about having to turn thief on someone who had only been nice to me, but there was nothing else for me to do. Stepping down off the couch and stretching, I then walked down the little hall and into the bedroom. On the wall directly in front of me was a closet, to my right the bathroom, and to my left was a large area with a bed and a desk. I didn’t see a dresser so it appeared that all his clothes were in the closet.
Glancing in the direction of the bed, I listened for a brief moment to the sound of the stranger’s steady breathing. He was sound asleep. I phased back into my human form and stepped to the closet, sliding the left-hand door open as soundlessly as I could. I grabbed an OSU hoodie off its hanger and quickly pulled it over my head. Now I needed pants. A second’s glance told me that the side I had opened was all shirts, so I slid the door closed and stepped over to the right. Opening that door, I found the matching bottom and took them off the hanger. After sliding the door closed again, I stepped into the sweatpants as quickly as I could, tightened the drawstring and knotted it so they wouldn’t fall down, then turned and walked cautiously out of the bedroom.
I paused when I reached the front door, wishing I could have thanked the man for being so nice to me. But it was impossible, I thought with a sigh, and reached up to turn the deadbolt.
“Were you really going to leave without even saying goodbye?”
I froze instantly at the sound of his voice—I hadn’t even heard him get out of bed. My heart was now tapping a staccato rhythm against my ribcage as I thought frantically, wondering if I should reply or just leave. My manners won out and I said softly, “I’m sorry. I really have to go. Thank you for everything.”
“At least tell me what else you can turn into. Please—you’re the only shapeshifter I’ve ever known besides myself.”
Though my head snapped up at his words, I still did not turn around. It’s just not possible, I thought immediately. How could he be…?
But if he was, did that explain why he smelled so different than other shifters? Was it possible that I’d met a “true” shapeshifter?
“I’m not technically a shapeshifter,” I said slowly. “I’m werekind, specifically a weredog. Werekind can only turn into one kind of animal.”
“Oh,” he said, and I could hear a slight note of disappointment in his voice. “I was hoping you were like me. Looks like I’m still the only one I know.”
“What do you mean?” I said, compelled to face him then. My next question died on my lips as I turned and looked into his eyes—not that I had the breath to speak it. The moment our gazes locked I felt all the air in my lungs expel in a soft whoosh, and I took an involuntary step forward. In that moment it was as if all the pain, all the misery I’d been feeling after my ordeal…it was all bearable now…because he was here. He would hold me up when I felt like falling, he would dry every tear I cried, he would fight beside me when I was challenged, he would half my pain and double my joy.
He would complete me, because he and I were two halves of the same soul.
He can’t be the one, I thought. But…he is. How is this possible? I’m supposed to know him. He’s supposed to be a man of many talents, someone who was once my friend.
It occurred to me that, if the man before me was truly a chimaera, then he most certainly was a man of many talents. So the psychic had at least gotten that part right.
I took another step toward him and he took a step toward me. “Who are you?” I asked at the same time he said, “What just happened here?”
I blinked. “What…what do you mean?” I asked a second time.
“Try not to take this the wrong way, but the craziest fucking thing just happened to me,” he said. “I just looked at you and it was like… Never mind. It’s impossible.”
I chanced a smile. “Excuse me, but two seconds ago we were talking about werekind and shapeshifters. I’m not sure ‘impossible’ applies. Crazy might if a normal human heard us talking that way, but we’ve already established that neither of us is normal. Please tell me what you were going to say.”
The stranger, who because of what I’d just experienced no longer felt like a stranger to me, sighed and ran a hand through his tousled hair. I noted then that he was shirtless, and was clad only in a low-slung pair of pajama pants. He was lean but toned, his chest hairless, though there was a thin line of curls trailing from his navel that disappeared into the waistband of the gray cotton sleepwear. My already speeding heart kicked into overdrive at the sudden wave of heat-filled lust that washed over me.
“Fuck, there it is again!” the stranger said.
I shook my head to dispel thoughts of dragging those pants off his hips to see if he was wearing anything underneath. “Talk to me. Please. If you’re really the only person like yourself that you know, I may still be able to help you. I mean, we’re not entirely dissimilar.”
I wanted, needed, to hear him say the words I suspected he had been about to say, which was that he had felt it too—the pull of the pair bond. My earlier suspicion had proved true after all: I had imprinted on this man, this stranger, and I had the feeling that he had imprinted on me. Such a thing hadn’t happened in the two-natured community in at least three hundred years, according to our history. Werekind, for some unknown reason, had stopped imprinting on each other and had begun imprinting exclusively on humans. No one could figure out why, but it struck me then that it might well have been because the last known chimaera had died around that time. The beastly community no longer had a Beast Master to ensure that his subjects found their perfect matches among each other, so the magic had been forced to search for matches elsewhere. Not that we hadn’t been imprinting on humans even then, but in those days imprinting on other werekind was more common than imprinting on a human. Now, imprinting on humans was the norm. It was the only way to ensure the continuation of the species.
He raised both hands to his hair this time, fisting them in the strands as he looked at me. “I felt…” he began. “I felt this incredible sensation come over me just a minute ago. When I looked at you, into your eyes, I just felt like…like I’d been waiting for you all my life. Like you were everything I could ever want in this world, and that I would do whatever it took to ensure you were never hurt again, even if it meant sacrificing my own life. That’s crazy, right? Or did you just feel something too? What does it mean?”
“This is going to be difficult for you to accept, but I believe you just imprinted on me,” I told him.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“For werekind, imprinting means that we have found our soulmate—the one person in all the world that was made just for us,” I explained.
“But I’m not werekind,” he countered. “I’m a different kind of freak—sorry, shapeshifter.”
I tried not to take offense at being called a freak—after all, hadn’t I once felt that way, when I’d first begun phasing? That I was a freak of nature? That what I was couldn’t possibly be real? If I really was the only other person with the ability to change form that he had ever met, then I could understand how he’d be confused about the difference between us.
“You’re what we call a chimaera,” I said then. “A true shapeshifter. At least, you are if you really can become more than one animal.”
He laughed without humor. “I’ve been a few dozen different things in my lifetime,” he told me. “What about this imprinting?”
“Like I said, you imprinted on me. According to our history, chimaera imprint the same as werekind do. That feeling you got was your body physically reacting to my nearness…same as I just reacted to yours. I’ve imprinted on you too.”
His eyes widened. “But I didn’t get this feeling when you were a dog.”
“
Neither did I,” I replied, refusing to admit right now that I’d still been incredibly drawn to him. Whether that was some sort of early sign of my impending imprint or a normal human reaction to his being an attractive male was debatable. For all I knew, it was both. “But then we hadn’t looked into one another’s eyes as man and woman. The old saying about the eyes being windows into the soul isn’t entirely off the mark. Hell, it was probably coined by a shapeshifter.”
He shook his head. “I’m confused. You said you’re werekind because you can only turn into one animal, and that I’m a true shapeshifter because I can turn into anything. But you keep talking about shifters. Have you known others like me?”
The expression in his eyes had turned hopeful, and I hated to crush it. It was obvious to me that my mate (I was amazed by how quickly the phrase had become comfortable to me) had lived a very lonely existence, having never even met a werekind before, let alone another chimaera. His countenance became crestfallen as I slowly shook my head. “I’m so sorry, but no,” I said softly. “Unless there are more like you in hiding somewhere, you’re the first chimaera to be born in nearly three hundred years.”
“But how is that possible?” he demanded to know.
“At risk of sounding crude, you’re kind of an anomaly. Some legends tell us that only a handful of chimaera are born every few hundred years. Some say there are only two, a male and a female. Some even say there is just one at a time. Others say your species was incredibly prolific once, but that some sort of plague or natural disaster killed all but two, and that’s how come there are so few born. The origin of the chimaera is just as shrouded in mystery as that of werekind. We don’t know how we came to be, either. Just that we are. But because werewolf legends are so peppered throughout Eastern folklore, the wolves have claimed the prefix ‘were’ for themselves, and since there hasn’t been one of your kind in so long, the other werekind breeds took to calling themselves shapeshifters.”
He drew a breath and held it as he absorbed all that I had told him. I could tell that he was still confused, and I knew that I would explain things to him as many times as it took for him to understand.
Of course, I was confused as well. Alana O’Mara had said that my mate was a man from my past. Someone I had once called my friend. So who was this guy to me?
“May I ask you a question? Please,” I said. “I need to know… Who are you? What is your name?”
He chuckled as he looked at me and said, “That’s technically two questions, and I could ask you the same ones. But since you asked first, my name is Race. Race Covington.”
I did not think it possible that I could have withstood one more shock, but I was wrong.
Three
“Oh my God, no way!” I exclaimed, stepping forward yet again. I felt a huge grin spread across my face as I stared at him in disbelief. So that was why he looked so familiar!
“Uh, yes way—at least, that was my name last time I took a look at my driver’s license, my birth certificate, my Social Security card, and all the bills that come in the mail,” Race countered. “Well, actually, my legal name is—”
“Horace William Covington the Third,” I supplied for him with a giggle.
“How the hell do you know that? Have we met before?”
The psychic weredragon had been right, about everything. The man standing before me was definitely someone from my past, as he’d been Mark’s best friend for several years. Though technically he had never called me his friend, I’d considered him one of mine. I’d looked up to him in much the same manner as I had my brother, except in Race’s case, I’d also had the hugest crush on him. Not that I ever told him, of course.
I remembered all of a sudden that Race and his mother had moved shortly after his 14th birthday. I remembered spending an afternoon in my room crying because he hadn’t even come over to say goodbye to me. Well, he’d have actually come over to say goodbye to Mark, but he’d always been nice to me, the pesky kid sister, and I know he would have said something to me as well.
And fourteen—the year of the double-seven—was the age when werekind (and chimaera, according to the legends) shifted for the first time. Increments of seven were significant to the two-natured, as there was a long-held belief that the number seven had a mystical power behind it.
“I know that’s your full name because I heard you say it once,” I explained, “and right after you said that, you added that you went by Race because Horace was an old man’s name.”
“Seriously, how do you know that? We’ve obviously met before, and I admit you look kind of familiar—now that I’m looking at you like this—but I can’t seem to place you,” Race returned.
I felt like I was buzzing, I was so deliriously happy and excited. Who’d have thought that my destined mate was a guy I’d developed a crush on when I was a kid, one I hadn’t seen since I was nine? That he would be quite possibly the only living chimaera in existence, same as my brother was the only dhunphyr—or immortal human—in existence?
“You probably don’t recognize me because you haven’t seen my face in sixteen years,” I replied. “I’m Juliette Singleton—you used to be best friends with my brother, Mark.”
“No way!” Race exclaimed, echoing my own words of a moment ago. He then surprised me by closing the distance between us and throwing his arms around me. I returned his embrace by wrapping my arms around his waist.
“My God, I can’t believe it’s really you!” he said with a laugh, standing back to look at me but not letting me go. “How the hell could I forget those angel eyes of yours?”
I grinned. “Is that why you called me Angel Eyes when I was in my animal form?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I know huskies commonly have blue eyes, but the first good look I got of yours when you were the dog, it made me think of you—the you I knew all those years ago. Back then I thought you and your mom had the prettiest eyes I’d ever seen.”
I grinned even wider to hear him say he’d always thought my eyes were pretty. At the same time I was taking a breath, and I suddenly became very aware of how close we were, of how he still smelled like that funny mix of human and animal, but also very much like a man. Instinctively I leaned toward him to breathe his scent in deeper, infusing my memory with his very essence. I’d never forget what he smelled like now, not that I would ever want to.
Perhaps because he was also caught up in the moment, Race lowered his head, capturing my lips beneath his, his hands on my shoulders tightening their grip—and then the moment was ruined as I suddenly flashed back to the Day of Hell. Martin and Peter had kissed me as they forced themselves on me, and even though Race’s pillowy lips were quite warm, and not at all cold as theirs had been, I couldn’t stop the memory from bursting across my consciousness and I pushed him away.
“Juliette, what’s wrong?” Race asked.
“I’m sorry,” I said, breathing heavily. I knew I was on the verge of hyperventilating, and I put distance between us to try and reign in my rattled nerves. “It’s not you—it’s so not you. I just…something happened. A few weeks ago, something happened. I don’t even…”
Tears burned behind my eyes. How could I tell him what I’d been through? Race deserved to know, I knew that, but I had a hard time even thinking about it let alone saying the words. Deep down, I knew this was because I was suffering from post-traumatic stress for not having properly dealt with the kidnapping and torture and rape, but it was so damn hard. Thinking about it or talking about it meant having to re-live the pain and the fear, and I didn’t want to. It didn’t even matter that the men who had brutalized me were dead—I only knew that I didn’t want to think about it. Or talk about it. I just wanted to forget it had ever happened.
“Hey, don’t cry,” Race said softly when the tears spilled over. “It’s obvious that whatever it was, it’s hard for you to deal with. Baby I get that, believe me. And not to freak you out or anything, but right now I’m having the hardest time not running over to you and cr
adling you in my arms and telling you everything will be alright, and I’m wondering if maybe it will help you to explain that to me.”
I sniffled, thinking that having his arms around me was the most wonderful thing I’d ever experienced. I’d very much enjoyed being held by Race, however brief our first embrace had been. I wanted nothing more in that moment than for him to hold me again but I was afraid of having another flashback, so I forced myself to sit down on the same end of the couch I had fallen asleep on.
“You’re feeling the effects of our bond,” I said slowly, wiping furiously at the tears. “The imprinting bond drives each shifter to make his or her mate happy above all else. A mate’s safety is of the highest importance, especially once the bond is completed. You’ll be compelled to spend as much time as you can with me, to take care of me. See to my every need. I know that not just because that’s what I’ve been taught but because I feel it too. I feel like I have hurt you by pushing you away and I want to make it up to you, but I don’t think I can. Not right now.”
Moving slowly, probably because he could tell I was still feeling jumpy and vulnerable, Race walked over to my end of the couch. He lowered himself down to sit on the coffee table and positioned himself so that my knees were caught between his. Cautiously he reached for my hands. “If I’m too close, you just say the word and I’ll move,” he told me. “But I have to say I don’t want to move, Juliette. Whether it’s this bond thing or the fact that I’m ecstatic to have reconnected with an old friend—or even that I’ve finally met someone else with an impossible ability like mine—I can tell that you’re in a lot of pain, and I want so much to make it go away. But I don’t know any other way to do that except to hold you, and to listen whenever you’re ready to tell me what happened to you.”
More tears fell as I looked up at him, into his earnest, handsome face. I wanted to tell him. I needed to tell him. I wanted the pain to go the hell away, and I knew that the only way I could begin to drive it out of my mind and my heart was to talk about what had happened. I felt my hands squeezing his as if I could draw some of his strength into me.
From the Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) Page 4