The Billionaire Shifter’s Final Redemption: The Billionaire Shifters Club #6

by Seere, Diana

  The door opened.

  Still in human form, though barely, he found himself the source of a very confused Samantha’s stare, his temples pounding, head split by a lightning bolt of adrenaline and perverted magic.

  The perverted magic of evil.

  “You’re not Tomas!” she said, looking at the phalanx of people who filled in the space behind him as Asher’s head pounded, hard, as if someone struck him with a flat slab of marble across the top of his head. His hip felt like heated iron, and his ears perked at the sound of a door closing on the other side of the lab.

  “Get him. Find him. Kill him,” he growled to Edward, Derry, Lars, and Eva. Zach remained, taking in the laboratory, the layout, the dead bodies on the steel slab.

  Morgan had not followed, he knew, because someone needed to stay in the Novo to manage shifter affairs.

  And potential casualties.

  “He— Tomas was here!” she whispered as he touched her, the pull to be connected greater than any other emotion. Asher could not have kept his hands off Samantha if he had tried, the need greater than the pain that made his head feel like a nerve-filled anvil being struck by a blacksmith’s hammer. “I didn’t realize it at first,” she continued, her body shaking, “but I could feel him, like he was breathing down my neck, like he was smelling my hair, and OH MY GOD, ASHER WHAT IS WRONG?”

  The ring of a smartphone. The sound of the air-filtration system. A police siren in the distance. He heard them all as her eyes beseeched him to answer her question, but he could not. His hands felt the warmth of her skin through the lab coat, one finger graced with the silky red strands of her long hair. The weave of her coat, the scent of her shampoo, the change in the light behind him as Zach approached, his breathing fast. Derry reappeared, moving with purpose, as if called back.

  Asher felt it, observed it, knew it.

  And he knew something else.

  Reaching for his belt buckle, he unclasped the damn metal obstacle, opened his trousers, and yanked down the right side of his pants to expose his hip, eyeballs throbbing so hard his vision pulsed.

  Derry moved swiftly toward him as Sam took one step back and looked down. “Asher?” Derry asked in a voice one used to gentle an out-of-control animal. “Asher,” he said again, the name firm this time. “What in the hell are you—”

  Fingers turned into claws as Asher let himself partially shift, the need settling deep in his belly, which tightened so hard. He breathed through his navel, felt the world through his hand, and with a finality that felt like the death of a universe, he sliced through his own skin, removing the mark Tomas had left.

  Pain meant nothing. Samantha’s shout of empathy meant more.

  Closing his eyes, he waited, ignoring the blood, ignoring the questions.

  Pressure on his hip made him open his eyes as Samantha shoved a long section of her lab coat into the self-inflicted wound. He saw only the top of her head as she pressed, snapping orders to Zach.

  “We need one of the shifter doctors! Now! He’ll need stitches, and—good grief, Asher, why?”

  “He was in me. No more. Gone now,” he answered in short phrases, the connection between his speech centers and his mouth interrupted by pain.

  “He’s never been in you. You are you and you alone. What Tomas did is—”

  Laughter, low and taunting, filled Asher’s ears. The slam of a door. The start of a car engine. The scent of petrol and garbage.

  And then the feel of motion.

  He looked down at his hip, his open belt, his long legs planted firmly on the sterile laboratory floor.

  “Samantha,” he said, his voice making her look up, eyes worried.

  As they should be.

  “Samantha, I still see through his eyes. I saw you moments ago. He was here. He was so close. How can I still see through his eyes when I cut him out of me? How dare he. How dare he?” he growled, the shift in flux, his body in two forms at the same time, suspended between, the pain horrible and everywhere.

  “I felt him. He was there.” Any other woman would have demurred, would have minimized, would have hemmed and hawed.

  Direct as ever, she got to the point.

  “Did he touch you?” Asher demanded the answer.

  “He was about to.” She touched her ear. “I felt him. I turned around and you were there instead.”

  A woman Asher had not seen in years appeared, carrying a medical bag and wearing a scowl. “Self-inflicted wound? Have you gone mad?” she snapped at him, her eye roll absolutely designed for him to see.

  “Excuse me,” Samantha said, rising up, her fingers unyielding as Bianca Martin, a shifter doctor Asher had known for years, edged her out of the way.

  “Bianca,” he said with more formality than necessary. “How kind of you to help.”

  “That’s me. The great giver.” Bianca snorted. “I’m here to investigate you. Not operate on you.”

  “It’s just a few stitches.” He started to stand.

  Bianca pushed him down, Samantha’s eyes darting to the hand on Asher’s shoulder. “Sit. For once in your life, Asher Stanton, let other people be in control so you can recover.”

  Their conversation was being observed by his increasingly angry One.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded of Bianca as she bent before Asher, face directly in front of his crotch.

  “Fixing my patient. Are you an MD?” The question was rhetorical.

  Samantha moved, though her expression made it clear she didn’t like it. Crossing her arms over her chest, she displayed blood all over the edge of her lab coat, her hands, her sleeves. “I am not. But I am this man’s mate.”

  A mischievous flicker in Bianca’s eyes made Asher groan. “You? Mated to another human?” she said as she swabbed the wound with some chemical that forced Asher to suck all the air out of the room and into his lungs. Back to his human state, he found the scene jarring. Too many parts of his world were colliding.

  And Tomas had escaped.

  Ignoring the bait, he was about to ask Edward for a phone when Manny burst into the room.

  “Sir? It’s Mr. Gavin. His penthouse has been broken into.”

  “Let me guess,” Asher said as Bianca stabbed the needle into his flesh, her neat stitches quick and perfunctory. “Only books were stolen.”

  Manny nodded curtly.

  “Dammit. What is he doing?”

  His wound was small, and Bianca was determined. His question hung in the air as she tied off the line, then applied an antibiotic cream. Samantha grabbed the gauze and tape as Bianca looked for it.

  “I can do this part,” his One said in a voice so dripping with territoriality that Asher had to smother a laugh.

  “I’m sure you can, dearie. Lab rats are good for cleaning up,” Bianca said, snapping her gloves off and leaving them next to Samantha.

  “Don’t bother,” Asher whispered in her ear. “She is not worth it.”

  As Samantha finished dressing his wound, he looked at Bianca and informed her, “The ‘lab rat’ you’ve so rudely scorned is the inventor of a serum that will save countless women and babies from BirthDeath, Bianca, so hold your tongue.” He glanced down at his hip. “And you’re losing your touch. One of those stitches was a bit crooked.”

  “Once an asshole, always an asshole,” Bianca declared as she stormed out. Asher did not recognize the man with her, but he followed silently.

  “What was that about? An old flame?” Samantha’s words were casual, but her tone was not.

  Pulling her into his arms, he sighed into her hair. “Contrary to what you may think, my dear, I’m not well loved by everyone,” he said dryly.

  She did not laugh. Her embrace tightened. “Don’t leave me again,” she begged.

  “Never.”

  Over Samantha’s shoulder, he saw that Eva and Manny spoke with huddled heads, catching Asher’s splintered attention.

  “Eva? What is it?” he asked as Samantha fussed over him. He straightened hi
s spine, accepting the pain. If it removed even one drop of Tomas’ power, it was worth it.

  “There is another book here. Not just in the Novo Club.” Eva’s words carried through the large lab.

  “Where is it?”

  “Wherever it is, I’m coming with you,” Samantha announced as she stripped out of her lab coat. A young woman appeared, cleaning up all the messes, scooping up the coat and the stitching tray, the chunk of scar resting atop a torn antiseptic cloth wrapper.

  Good riddance.

  “You’ll stay here with Zach,” he informed her.

  She patted his injured hip lightly. “Nice try, cowboy, but no.”

  “No one has ever mistaken me for a cowboy, Samantha,” he announced, tightening his decidedly English accent.

  “And no one has ever mistaken me for a doormat, Asher.”

  With that, she followed Eva, who led them to the staircase.

  And closer to war.

  * * *

  Sam kept her fingers wrapped tightly around Asher’s arm as Eva led them through the LupiNex facilities to a rear service elevator. Sam recognized it as the old elevator that led to the waitress entrance for the Platinum Club, Molly’s old boutique, a private corridor in the lobby, and to the secretive, exclusive shifter club deep below ground.

  “It’s in the Novo?” Asher asked Eva.

  Something about his voice made Sam look sharply at him. He’d been wounded, but he sounded pretty good. Not at all like a man who’d just carved a chunk of flesh out of his side and then had a scalpel-wielding snob with the bedside manner of a serial killer stab him with needles.

  The lovely woman had obviously been an old flame. How could Asher ever have looked twice at that stuck-up, vindictive she-monster? Lab rat. At least I don’t look like a rat. Or turn into one. I bet she’s a rat shifter, with those teeth.

  Eva hit a button, and the old elevator came to a creaky halt. “Not the Novo. The wine cellar.”

  “There’s a book in the wine cellar? Why didn’t you say so before?” Asher demanded.

  “I’ve had very little time to think about the question. Unfortunately, you didn’t see fit to include me in the details of this crisis before today.” Eva shot Asher an impatient look. “While you were busy practicing surgery upon your person, I suddenly remembered something that I’d previously had no reason to question.”

  “Show me. Take me to the wine cellar,” Asher said, striding out of the elevator car into a corridor far older than the regular floors of the building. The floor and walls were discolored, uneven stone, reminding Sam of a medieval castle—the basement cells where they locked up and tortured people.

  “Who would put a book down here?” Sam asked. She’d matched her steps with Asher’s, refusing to let him out of arm’s reach. The man had shown himself capable of dangerous self-harming impulses.

  Eva gracefully maneuvered ahead of them and opened a dark, creaky door. Black wall sconces cast uneven light into the space.

  From a bottom shelf on the opposite end of the room, Eva pulled out a thick, leather-bound book in poor condition. “I’d assumed it was merely an old inventory log. It predates my time by at least a century. There used to be papers there as well, bills and notes from the old days, but they turned to dust several decades ago.” She offered the book to Asher.

  To Sam’s surprise, Asher didn’t lift his hands to take it. “That cannot be it,” he said. Then more firmly, “It is not the one.”

  “You haven’t even looked at it,” Sam said.

  Nodding as if to shake off a dream, Asher lifted the book out of Eva’s hands. Just as he turned it around to face him, the wall sconces flickered.

  “What was that?” Sam asked.

  “Old wiring,” Eva said, but she sounded unsure.

  Sam tapped the book. “Well?” From what she could see, the book was unmarked, the cover loose, and it stank of dust and mildew.

  Asher gently let it fall open. Rows of words in a language she didn’t recognize were lined up against columns of numbers, all in a slanted hand.

  “It looks like a list of accounts,” Asher said.

  Eva nodded. “Indeed. As I said.”

  “This cannot be the book we seek.” He turned a page, then another. “Could it?”

  “A powerful book might have powerful camouflage,” Sam said.

  “Or it is ancient rubbish, of no use to anyone,” Asher said.

  Eva shrugged and moved to the door. “Probably. I mention it only because you seemed to have looked everywhere else already. Leave it, discard it, your decision.”

  The lights flickered again.

  “I think you should take it,” Sam said, stroking Asher’s back. If there was any chance the old text could protect his life, she would carry it herself.

  “Yes, perhaps you’re right. To be safe.” Asher ducked his head and rested it a moment against hers. Their breath mingled in the cool air of the cellar. “I’ll have Manny’s team guard it until we can remove it to Montana.” He turned his head. “Eva, are there any other—” He cut himself off, seeing that his cousin was no longer with them.

  “Eva?” Sam called out.

  “She’s gone back upstairs already,” Asher said dismissively. “Even at this critical moment, she cannot leave others in charge of managing that club. The Platinum has been an obsession of hers since it opened. At first I thought it was financial necessity that drove her, like other Nagys, but she seems to actually like the work.”

  “Is that so hard to believe a woman would enjoy working?”

  The corner of his mouth curved faintly. His gaze caught hers, amusement sparkling faintly in the depths of his dark eyes. “Yes indeed,” he said. “Quite.”

  Sam pulled her head back. “Oh really?”

  “I’ve always felt a woman is best suited to mothering, birthing, and loving,” he said.

  Sam pulled back another few inches. “Excuse me?”

  “Not in that order, of course,” he added, his handsome brow drawing together. “That would defy the laws of nature.”

  Sam’s teeth clamped together. She didn’t trust herself to speak. This was the man she was going to fight to the death over?

  “Therefore, with my apologies,” he continued, “I amend my statement to be the following: loving, birthing, and mothering. Followed by more of the same.”

  “Don’t count on it,” she said tightly.

  He raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “But of course I must express my deepest, most profound gratitude to you for making it all possible.”

  “I beg your pardon.” She had now stepped so far away from him that the corks of several wine bottles were digging into her shoulder blades.

  The second inquisitive eyebrow went up. “Thanks to your research, a woman mating with a shifter can survive the birth experience,” he said. “Allowing future births.”

  “And so fulfilling her natural role,” Sam said. “The only one. Making babies.”

  “And taking care of them, of course.”

  “Of course.” The bottles were now digging into her lower back, upper arms, bottom, and calves. Any minute now, she was going to pick one up and hurl it at his head. “After everything I’ve done, everything I’ve accomplished, that’s all I’m really good for. I’m not a scientist, I’m not a friend, I’m not a human being.”

  “I thought you were, but apparently you are a little bit fox as well.”

  “A fox who makes babies.”

  He moved closer, pinning her against the rack of wine bottles. “You seem upset, darling. Was it something I said?”

  “You—you—” She was too angry to speak. She clamped her fingers around a bottle and lifted it out of its safe nest on the shelf.

  He caught her wrist just before the hard glass came crashing down on his skull. His sensual mouth curved into a mischievous smile. Holding her arm in the air, he bent his head and stole a quick, firm kiss.

  In spite of herself, she softened in his arms. He’d been teasing her. Asher Stant
on, the sober, arrogant patriarch, had been making a joke.

  “That wasn’t funny,” she said, grabbing his shoulders and pulling him closer.

  He let the book drop to the floor. “You’re beautiful when you’re angry.”

  Their mouths came together in a sweet, hot dance. The playfulness faded, and then they were frantic, hurried, serious in their need.

  “If anything happened to you—” she gasped.

  “My life is nothing without—”

  “I won’t let him—”

  He slipped his hand under her coat, pushed it away, licked the curve of her throat. “I won’t let him.”

  Several rushed, wordless minutes passed until she found herself topless, barefoot, and wearing only a pair of crimson-red panties.

  “I rather think those can stay,” he said, patting them over the curve of her hip. “Quite. Quite acceptable.” His voice dropped to a growl, and then he dropped to his knees.

  She’d managed to open his shirt, exposing the bandage, and unfasten his trousers. They didn’t have time for this. They shouldn’t—

  But then, as if a switch had been flipped, she forgot everything she should fear, the threats above, the suffering before, the challenges ahead, and there was only this moment. Her One. Here, in this old cellar, they needed to join together one last—

  No! Not the last. Only the last before the end. Before they had fought and won.

  A quiet, sober voice spoke from deep in her heart: if they fought and did not win, at least they would have this stolen moment.

  Still kneeling before her, Asher guided her to the massive oak table in the center of the room. Her bare thighs bumped the planks, and she let herself recline backward on its surface. Asher’s hands explored her ankles, her calves, and her hips while his mouth dropped kisses on her upper thighs, slowly working his way inward and upward.

  “Indeed, this undergarment is acceptable,” he mumbled between her legs, exploring under the elastic band with a long, strong finger, the tip of which tangled in the thatch of her curls.

  She spread her legs wider and dug her fingers into his hair. He was warm and alive and hers. She was his. The lights on the walls flickered and went out for a long moment, but the moment he held the fabric aside and pressed his mouth into her wet mound, they flashed on again.