by Seere, Diana
He didn’t even look, frowning deeper, vibrating with fury.
Cold. It was becoming so cold. Her vision went black for a moment. It would be all right to die, having known love like she had. But then Asher would suffer. Her love. Her One.
Suddenly she felt as if an ice pick had penetrated the left side of her skull. Her eyes shot open.
“Zach,” she choked out, unsure she could stand the pain another second. “Please.” A rough, near-silent whisper.
Eyes shining, Zach pulled the backpack out from under Manny, who groaned but didn’t get up. Zach’s gaze darted between Asher and Sam. “This can’t be the only way!”
Asher grabbed the pack out of his hands and rushed to Sam’s side. “Serum,” he said, tearing it open, revealing the metal canister, the syringes. “Which one?” he demanded, turning again to Zach.
“It could kill her. It almost killed me, and I was strong and healthy when—”
“Which one?” Asher roared.
Inside, Sam told Asher. It’s time.
“Inside what? This thing?” Asher lifted the Egg, caught Zach’s affirmative nod, and twisted it apart. Cold steam hissed, revealing the frozen biological materials, the building blocks of the LupiNex serums—and a single prepared syringe, locked and loaded.
She’d prepared it in the elevator, knowing this moment might come.
“Please,” she whispered, feebly reaching for Asher, trying to keep her eyes open. If she died, she wanted his face to be the last thing she saw.
“You’re my One,” he said simply, softly. He lifted the syringe—she’d never seen his hands shake so violently—and drew the serum into the chamber.
She sighed, smiling at him, loving him. Their hearts pounded in unison, the Beat joining them more tightly than ever before—but one of those beats was fainter than the other and getting fainter.
Her fingers tightened around Asher’s arm. Mine. She wasn’t ready to die. She would fight death to have him. She would do whatever it took. She would survive her own experiments, her own science, her own irresponsible tinkering with life itself.
“Do it!” she cried. The blood caught in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. The agony in her ear came to a climax, as if an ice pick had finally pierced her brain after years of chipping away at it.
Everything went black.
Like Tomas’ fur.
* * *
He lived in two places at the same time.
The past. The day Claire and the baby died washed over him as if he were living it all over again, his mind and heart shredding, each cell screaming in denial, in torment, in agony.
The present. His beloved Samantha, eyes closed, breath ragged, her life force fading as each bifurcated second rolled by, splitting him in two.
Ghosts of the past grabbed at him, their hands on his shoulders, his elbows, his hands, his hair, caressing and pushing, urging and shoving.
Do something, those hands said. Do it now.
And then he instantly understood Zach’s uncertainty.
“What if I kill her? Or worse?” he asked everyone, no one, his own hands less steady than those of the spirits surrounding him, whispering encouragement in his ears. He accepted their presence without question, needing ancestral help to navigate this. When Claire had gone into labor and the birth had turned deadly, Dr. Santino ordered him out of the room, Claire’s anguish so raw, her hand outstretched, begging for him to stay. Listening to the doctors had been the wisest course, he’d assumed, for the experts could save them.
Not Asher.
But oh, that fear. That horror in Claire’s eyes, those delicate fingers beckoning him to stay. The last time those eyes had met his. Ever. He’d chosen what he’d thought was best at the time, but time itself had punished him forever for not being able to do more.
He would not make the same mistake twice.
“Brother,” Edward said from across the room, in human form but hands and feet on the floor, eyes closed. His voice was trancelike, soothing, but filled with mourning. “You have the energy. We have the magic here. I feel it. It calls me. You can do this. The prophecy must be fulfilled now. You must go all the way.”
He nodded, moving the syringe closer to his One, whose breathing came in erratic bursts.
“The serum isn’t safe,” Zach said, face twisted with emotion, sharp eyes darting between Samantha’s prone form and the syringe in Asher’s hand. “But she’s improved it since my lab accident. What happened to me won’t happen to her.” He did not sound convinced.
Asher’s eyes took in the fine scar lines across Zach’s long limbs from his wretched serum-induced first shift. “You cannot know for sure.”
Zach looked at the unconscious but breathing humans who littered the stone floor of the Novo Club, Tomas’ shifter army, all alive but in what condition? Which were shifters, which were humans, and which were… in between? Who knew what Tomas had done?
“What I know for certain is that she’s dying,” Zach said. “You have the worst choice a man could ever face, Asher, but if you don’t do this, she dies for certain.”
“Then I have no true choice,” he said, taking Samantha’s sweet hip in one hand, pulling down her pants, and positioning the needle at her fleshy, curvy hip. The creamy skin was innocuous, simple, so innocent. What beauty was he marring with this concoction? What abomination against the natural order was he about to commit?
Asher, she called to him, her voice a ribbon, a line of smoke, a dandelion seed on the wind in a sudden rain burst. A blistering series of colored images exploded in his mind, like fireworks made of a future not yet lived. Samantha in her spirit animal form, followed by two cubs. A small girl with curling red ringlets, holding hands with her mother, a dark-haired boy tagging behind, throwing rocks into the lake at the Montana ranch. The little girl running with a kite string, laughing. A nude, sleepy Samantha in his bed, morning light spilling into the room as they made love, her arms the perfect shelter for his heart.
“No,” he said aloud as Molly clung to Jess, Derry’s arms around her, gashes and claw marks scattered across his enormous brother’s body. Both women wept openly. “No. You will not die on me, Samantha Baird. Not today. And not on my watch, by God.”
And then, without hesitation, he plunged the needle in, closing his eyes, waiting for fate.
But nothing happened.
Not one damn thing.
Chapter 23
When Sam saw the pinprick point of light at the end of the long, cold darkness, she thought it was a joke. She was dreaming a cliché. She almost expected angels singing, a harp—or maybe an oncoming train.
But then the light expanded, drawing her forward, and she padded out of the shadows into the brightness. She felt the cold, hard stones beneath her feet, but the air was warm. People were there, too—her pack—smiling, clapping, weeping.
She looked up at them and smelled their surprise, their joy. Her One was closest to her, and she walked over to him to nuzzle his neck. Most of the blood on him wasn’t his own, she was glad to determine. It was… She couldn’t remember the enemy’s name, or his face, just a particular foul stench that she would always associate with the monster who’d tried to hurt her beloved Asher.
His name was Asher. There was no forgetting him, her love, her One.
He was a man and a wolf, now a man, and he put his arms around her and wept into her fur. Loving him, she welcomed the contact, although he was soggy and distressed; she knew this was what he needed right now. She also knew he would cry again when their first child was born, and then their second, their third, and then their grandchildren and… Well, of course he had always been an extremely emotional creature.
When his sobbing lessened, she turned her head, bumped her nose against his, and began licking away the tears and blood from his beautiful, perfect face. Mine.
“She’s just as I saw her,” a woman said, dropping to her knees and reaching out a hand. “No. Her aura wasn’t as beautiful as the real thing. Sam, you’
re gorgeous.” The woman—Molly, her name was Molly—laughed.
A familiar man she remembered as a friend caught Sam’s attention next. He was grinning from ear to—what had been an ear. Anger filled her as she identified the enemy’s scent again. Her enemy had done this to her friend. Yes, Zach was a friend. They were all friends here now, and the enemy was dead.
Zach came closer, still grinning, and gently shook his head. “You did it, Sam. Sure seems like your serum works. How do you feel? Lot better than I was, that’s for sure.” He held up his hand, wiggling the digits. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Her thoughts were sharpening with each moment, and she was able to recognize his joke: he was only holding up the middle one. Slowly her gaze locked on his; she let her long, pink tongue extend from her narrow jaws. Everyone laughed, and some began to cry again.
Flicking her tail along with them, she decided she felt like herself. Almost. Well, not really. She saw her red fur, her delicate paws; felt the swoosh of her tail, smelled the scents of friend and foe.
She felt better. The ear pain that had haunted her for so many years was gone, simply gone. And in its place was a new awareness of everything around her: humans and shifters; earth and air; thought, instinct, and love.
When her One joined her in his animal form, she almost screeched with pure pleasure. Damn, he was a gorgeous beast. He trotted over to her, pressed his body against hers, lifted his head to the ceiling, and howled. It was a celebration.
A reclamation.
One by one, the other shifters joined them in their animal forms. Zach became a giant wolf. Edward a mountain lion. Derry, of course, resumed his bear shape next to a black cat—Eva—and a tiger. Everyone who could resume their animal form did so, and she felt the tingling thrill of power rush through her through the stones under her paws and into her veins.
It was a Gathering, she understood suddenly. They had done this in Montana, but she’d been excluded. She sensed something special about here, the Novo Club, this underground space, something that united her with the other shifters in a way that made her feel connected and whole, more than she’d ever felt in her life.
Those who were injured or could not shift—Molly, Jess, Manny, now conscious, and even poor Morgan, whose gashes along his bare back were being worked over by the human women, who seemed vexed—were guided or carried to join a circle. The animals were including them as they formed a ring, facing inward, their paws extended into the middle, their heads bowed. In the middle was nothing but empty space. No, the air was glowing, sparkling with energy, crackling like fire over the bare flagstones.
The shifters bowed deeper, noses close to the floor. The fire expanded to touch every one of them with warm, shimmering heat. Sam saw the glow from different angles, felt different bodies wrap around her spirit—she was Molly, who had Seen so much, and Jess with the urge to heal everyone as soon as possible, she was Derry, enormous and gentle, and Edward, graceful and kind, and then a cat, and then a wolf—a wolf with a terrible pain where his earlobe had been.
All at once it was over. The fire vanished, taking with it her sense of communion with the others.
But then she realized she hadn’t seen the world from Asher’s eyes during the Gathering. Everyone but his.
We are already One, he told her. My eyes are already yours. As is the rest of me.
The urge to touch him with her human hands struck her like a physical blow. She needed to caress his skin, his human skin, and taste the sweat on his brow, lick her way down his collarbone to the hard little nipples, the lean ridges of his abdomen, the—
She found herself staring at the ceiling, splayed on her back, absolutely naked.
A growing number of voices exclaiming with happiness, reunions, practicalities, told her the other shifters had returned to their human form as well. Manny, always the professional, was already on his phone, checking the status of the damaged building upstairs, finding a secure exit for everyone in the Novo.
Then the joy died quickly.
“Asher,” Eva said, her somber sigh making Sam’s senses go on alert. “We need— You must— We— It’s Morgan.”
“What about him?”
“He is asking for you.” Something in her tone made Sam close her eyes, her nose filling, tears at the edges of both eyes.
“But Samantha needs me.”
Sam squeezed his hand and whispered, “Not as much as Morgan. Remember—he saved the Book. He—”
“Asher.” Eva’s voice was sharp. Urgent.
Desperate.
Turning her head, Sam watched as Asher reached the old, faithful servant, taking the elder man’s head into his lap. Bending down, Asher cocked his ear toward the small man’s mouth, listening intently. Slowly the other shifters encircled Morgan and Asher until all Sam could see was a band of the old snake shifter’s white hair, the group’s silence interrupted only by soft weeping.
And then Morgan took his last breath, leaving the earthly world with a quiet retreat.
Molly’s warm hand covered Sam’s right shoulder, making her shiver. “We tried. He is so old, Sam. Older than I ever imagined. He knew Napoleon! Served in his household as a small child. Can you imagine?”
“I can.”
A short gasp came from Molly, who laughed softly through her nose. “Of course you can. Because you’ll know. Oh, Sam, you’re a shifter now! Or you’ve always been one? What a beautiful sight that was, watching you change. Your fur, the auburn highlights, the fox spirit shining through you. And now you’re like Lilah. You two will know long lives. You two will…” Her voice trailed off as Jess and Molly caught each other’s eyes, a mournful yearning in each woman. The palpable feeling made Sam ache.
“Morgan,” she heard Asher say in the loud voice of a leader, “shall go down in shifter history as one of the architects of our salvation.” Murmurs and whispers of agreement, a few sobs and many sniffs accompanied the proclamation. Asher used his fingertips to close Morgan’s eyelids, then set his old comrade down gently on the ground, head tilted toward Eva, who wiped her eyes. She nodded as Asher spoke in a voice of comfort.
Sam closed her eyes, willing her body to give her strength again.
As she opened them once more, a face came into view, the only face she wanted to see right now. Dark hair hung down from his forehead, almost covering the gleaming blue of his eyes.
“Morgan?”
“He is gone.” Warm, strong arms wrapped around her, their message clear: But you are not. With the strength of his kind—her kind—he lifted her off the ancient flagstones and carried her out of the room.
Just as the exhaustion from her change stole her away, Asher’s comforting arms giving her permission to let nature take its course as she slipped into a deep sleep.
The sleep of the changed.
* * *
In human form, his own body had never been more than a portable structure for moving his mind from place to place, but he did have to acknowledge the fact that having Tomas’ disgusting mark fade away with all traces gone was a relief.
Even his attempt to carve the mark out of his body had not been as successful as simply killing Tomas. Ridding the world of his evil scourge was an act of kindness.
On this issue, Asher felt not a single drop of ambiguity.
Watching Samantha in repose as she slept in his bed, he took in the fine features of her face, marveling at the red hair and how light played upon the delicate strands like children frolicking on a beach. He smiled, unable to stop himself from touching her, the long, contented sigh that rolled out of her, pleasing him to no end.
“Hi,” she said, her Americanism quite charming.
“Hello, Dr. Baird,” he answered formally, which only made her laugh.
“Are we back to that nonsense, Mr. Stanton?” Her words were accompanied by a playful hand reaching for decidedly less formal parts of his human body.
“We are back to whatever you desire, Samantha. I am yours. All I have is yours as
well,” he said, meaning every word.
Sitting up, she inhaled sharply, eyes narrowing as she took in the room. “Wait! This isn’t the Novo Club. I… I fell asleep there. In your arms. But this is—where are we?”
“My bedroom.”
“You have a bedroom at the Novo Club?”
“We’re not in Boston, my dear. This is my bedroom in my cabin, here in Montana.”
“Montana?” Samantha rubbed her eyes as she sat up abruptly, the sheets pooling at her waist, giving Asher a delicious view of her half-naked body. “I’m in Montana?”
“Yes.”
“How—when—Asher! How did I get to Montana?”
“You flew.”
“I CAN FLY?”
Oh dear. He frowned. Had the serum altered her brain?
“You flew in a jet. My jet.”
Her hand fluttered over her heart. “Oh. Right. Of course. Foxes can’t fly.” Her giggles made his frown melt. “I’m a fox.” She plucked at the long, wavy strand of loose hair that floated over her bare breast. “A fox. I’m a fox. With fur.” Her lips parted, tongue running along the edges of her upper teeth. “And sharp teeth, but not now.”
“Foxes generally do have fur. Like wolves.” The pink tongue she pushed out of that sensual mouth made him think of what she could do to him, how she would look on her knees before him, his hands buried in that fiery hair, her throat working to take him in, his pleasure in that warm, wet mouth.
He hardened.
Asher cleared his throat, watching her, wondering what she was experiencing. Fortunately, Dr. Santino had conducted a brief examination once they’d arrived at the ranch and determined that the changes Samantha had made to the shifter serum had eliminated most of the negatives that poor Zachary had experienced during his serum-induced shift. But the doctor was on call, just in case.
“And you’re a wolf,” she said, nodding slowly as if taking it all in.
“Yes.”