by Diana Seere
And now he was connected to an entirely new species.
By serum.
A gust of wind ruffled the fur on his hindquarters, the twin sensations of wood against his snout and the air between all four legs coming to him in touch, then pictures, and finally words as Zach found himself standing.
On two legs.
He looked down to find his naked body just there, the familiar disorientation pulsing through him as he adjusted from animal to human form, foot soles scraped and burning, palms on fire. A sticky substance coated his right thigh and a flicker of images—pine trees? Evergreen bushes with long green spikes?—floated through memory.
The hair on his chest—which had thickened considerably since The Incident—was matted and wet, half with perspiration, half with some dirty, oily slick he couldn’t identify through smell. Walking into the room, he hesitated before the upholstered couch, the gray tweed so clean, so civilized that he stopped himself from sitting on it, muttering, “Bad dog,” to himself as he padded into the bathroom, the shower beckoning.
Every part of him felt disjointed. The obvious fact that he straddled two worlds was suddenly, briskly clear as the showerhead pounded his back, the water hitting like hot needles. The protective layer of fur that coated him in wolf form was gone in body, but in spirit it lingered, leaving him shivering, dazed, his big palms opening wide and resting against the tiled wall as he forced himself to take deep breaths, ears winding down from picking up every sound and tracking it, gauging danger by vibration.
It wasn’t the shifting that was hard.
It was the homecoming.
Returning to his human state was jarring, leaving him in a vicious, hangover-like state, one that seemed worse here. He inhaled steam, his lungs feeling expansive, enormous, chest rising and falling, his abs curling in and out as he watched water run in rivers over his naked thighs, down to a gold drain that looked like a mandala, a key, a talisman.
“I’m going crazy,” he muttered, but as he snatched the bar of soap from its carved granite dish and began to wash his chest, he felt some part of him come together, an integration that rocked him slightly, his feet moving apart on the wet floor to balance him. He paused, the soap foamed along his navel, as he took a few seconds to let the shift be complete.
Opening his eyes, he saw he was back in full, simultaneously relieved and sad.
He looked down at his hands, scars from his first shift dotting the skin on the back near the wrists, peering as if they held clues to what had happened with the delivery of Gavin and Lilah’s twins. How had he known exactly what to do? Not one part of what happened with that second baby was rooted in science. It was magic. Sorcery. An ancient power he would have considered as ludicrous as homeopathy and crystal healing just a few months ago. Zach was a scientist, a skeptic by trade.
People didn’t turn babies in distress by laying on hands and thinking it.
Yet he had.
Watching his new body held a certain morbid fascination for Zach, the penis an impressive specimen, if he did say so himself. Comparison is the death of ego, he knew, but…
As he ran one hand down his eight-pack, the slope of his belly long and lean, he tried to remember his former self, the way his body had been shorter, tight, and spare. Bones had less cushion, his neck inches smaller, his legs short and compact. Old Zach was just fine, a medium-sized man who had a doctorate, a great lab job, a future.
New Zach was a beast.
Literally.
His fingertips brushed against his cock, jerking the damn thing to life, the familiar swell of an erection an escape he gave in to.
“Sophia seems to like it fine,” he said to himself, indulging in a single stroke, knowing he couldn’t be satisfied with just one. Lust rose up in him as he let two terribly conflicting thoughts take up real estate in his mind:
Would she have liked his old cock?
When could he have sex with her again?
Closing his eyes, he touched himself and imagined her, willing that bizarre Beat between them to come to the forefront. As the water pounded his back, steam filling the glass-enclosed shower, his body so tense even the hot water did not help, he tried.
Failed.
Tried again.
Failed.
He looked down at his hand and let go, knowing nothing—not even a quick yank—would soothe him except for her.
He had to find her.
Now.
Furious with himself and knowing he was just putting himself through more tortured pain and angst by seeking her out, he rubbed shampoo on his head and finished the shower, pointedly ignoring the massive erection that bedeviled him.
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he mumbled to himself as he dressed quickly, throwing on someone else’s clothes, the T-shirt they’d provided a lovely shade of brown that matched his eyes, though it was tight, contoured, and tailored. The cotton had a foreign feel to it, almost silky. Probably European.
He laughed to himself, mind blown by everything. Every part of this strange journey went back to a moment he hated himself for—the moment his grip had slipped at the lab, jostled by someone walking behind him, the needle piercing his skin.
The pain.
The blinding light, followed by a cold, harrowing darkness that felt like eternal death.
And then… nothing.
He shook his head, willing the memories away. Being chased by his own demons was the worst possible way to spend his time right now.
Chasing Sophia was so much better.
As he slipped out of the building, he found himself outside in the darkness. In the distance, a helicopter landed, workers sprinting toward it, unloading boxes. The ranch was a well-oiled machine, running twenty-four seven, he assumed, knowing how wealthy the Stantons were. And yet—he knew so little about them.
Time to change that.
Without a mental map of the buildings and rooms, he’d have to make his way to Sophia through trial and error, his legs aching as he walked up a narrow stone path toward the main house. The slight discomfort felt good, like a deep muscle that has finally been stretched so that blood can rush in, giving new life, a fresh start. This was going to be an awkward conversation, a stretch.
He was determined to see it through, to find a bridge to understanding between them, to quell the need for her that made being apart so maddening.
“Oh! Mr. Hayden!” Ariana, the maid, chirped out his name in surprise as he rounded a corner, nearly crashing into him. The last time he’d seen her was when she’d delivered the panicked news of the babies’ pending birth earlier that day.
“Hello, Ariana,” Zach said, peering over her shoulder. “Can you direct me to—”
“Of course!” She looked relieved. “This way.”
By the time Zach realized he was being taken not to Sophia’s place but to Asher Stanton’s office, it was too late. Edward was on a separate path to his right, carrying a bottle of champagne in each hand. As he looked up, the tall, somber man’s face changed in an instant to one of camaraderie.
“Zach! The hero of the day! Come join us.”
Would he have been invited if not for Ariana’s mistake? Zach wondered, nodding graciously to Edward. It wasn’t his fault. The guy seemed nice enough, if repressively quiet. Following Edward inside the office, he discovered they weren’t alone.
Oh, no.
Every single Stanton man was in the room.
All of Sophia’s many brothers.
He hadn’t planned on being the center of attention at a Stanton brother drinkfest, but then again, Zach hadn’t planned any of the past few days’ events.
Scratch that. Not days.
Make it months.
So much for finding Sophia and burying himself in her.
“Zach!” Derry boomed, his voice juicy and bombastic. “Join us in a toast!”
His conversation with Sophia rose up like a demon. When did life involve so much emotional whiplash? One minute he was pressing Sophia for details
on how much danger he was in being under her family’s control.
And the next, he was being offered champagne while socializing with said family.
“No, thank you,” he said, preferring to remain sober. When in doubt, don’t.
“Nonsense!” Derry persisted, pouring a very sloppy flute filled with golden bubbling drink. “Libations are required when one of our own procreates!”
One of our own.
Zach was the only child of only children. No siblings, no aunts and uncles, no cousins. Once his parents had died, one after the other by the time he was in his first year of grad school, separate cancers taking their toll, he’d lost that sense of being “one of our own” anywhere but at work, in the lab.
And look where that got him.
Zach drained his glass and set it on a table, ready to leave already.
Asher Stanton stood, dressed in his version of casual: a charcoal-gray suit, pressed dress shirt, cuff links glistening in the light as he drank a mouthful from his glass. No tie.
What a party animal.
But Gavin rose and crossed the room in quick order, embracing Zach like an old friend. “Thank you,” he whispered fiercely, the hot push of alcohol-soaked breath making Zach smile. “You saved her. You saved them. I don’t know how in the bloody hell you did it, and while Asher cares, I don’t. Not right now.”
At the phrase “Asher cares,” Zach stiffened.
Edward pressed a half-full glass of champagne into Zach’s hand during the hug. “You’ll need this. Trust me.”
Gavin unwound himself from Zach and—did the guy actually wipe a tear out of the corner of his eye?
Emotions were in abundant supply here.
Shifting his weight from one leg to the other, Zach stood awkwardly, the men spread out like a baseball diamond. If Zach were home base, Gavin would be second, Derry first, Edward played shortstop, and Asher was at third.
You have to cross third base to make it home safe.
“How did you do it?” Asher asked him, eyes narrow with interest. Not anger.
“I don’t know.” Zach wasn’t going to shine them on or play games. As he locked eyes with the patriarch of the Stanton family, he suddenly saw the resemblance he shared with Sophia. So many questions poured through him, scores tumbling like a rockslide.
“I believe you. You really don’t know.” Asher crossed the room, brow down, his long fingers tugging at the top of a leather-bound book on a shelf behind his desk.
Derry groaned. “Not now, Asher. It’s not the time.”
“It absolutely is the time,” Asher replied, his voice filled with a tiny thread of amusement. “How could it ever not be time?”
“We’re celebrating Gavin’s children. Your new niece and nephew. We’re not giving Zach yet another ridiculous test. The man has more than proven himself, for goodness’ sake.”
Ah. So they were testing him.
Asher didn’t respond, the unspoken message clear: Derry’s protests simply didn’t matter. Asher Stanton would do whatever he wanted and expected to be obeyed.
“Can you read this?” he asked, setting the old book down on his desk, waving Zach to him like a student in a classroom being asked a question the professor knows he can’t answer.
Why wouldn’t he? The words were obvious.
“Of course. I have a PhD in biochemistry from Michigan. I’m capable of reading English.” He looked at the words, frowning.
The room turned inside out, so quiet Zach felt as if he’d seamlessly moved into a parallel universe where all the layers of life ceased to be, and only silence reigned.
“What,” Asher choked out, the hand gripping his glass corded and taut, white knuckled and teeming with tension, “does it say?”
Zach leaned down, looking carefully at the splotchy, worn page Asher had turned to. “‘A Chronicle of All Known Animal Changelings and Spells to Secure Them Safely Home,’” he read, making a snort of amusement as he ran one fingertip down the page to a particular passage. “Who knew that eating a live frog curbed the need to mate during a full moon at Samhain?” He read further. “But only for a wild boar shifter. Huh.”
“Dear God,” Asher said, his face white as a sheet, hand shaking as he set down his glass. For a moment Zach thought the man would clasp it so tightly it would splinter into a thousand tiny pieces.
“Come on,” Zach said, searching out Derry and Edward for connection, to counteract Asher’s bizarre behavior. “Is this some sort of hazing? Make me read silly books and I’m in the club?”
“You’re in the club, all right,” Derry said, his dark blue eyes big and wide with a mixture of awe and amusement as he searched the room, landing on Gavin with raised eyebrows.
“Read on,” Gavin urged, finishing his full glass of champagne like a frat boy at a kegger.
All four Stanton men crowded around him as he read smoothly, halting here and there at English constructs that were centuries old. The patterns weren’t Old English or even Chaucerian—he’d taken enough advanced English classes to have a cursory knowledge of that, and this wasn’t it.
This was its own unique version.
He flipped a page, careful not to brush against what appeared to be illustrated text that used gold in the ink, the words reminding him of the Book of Kells, which he’d seen at Trinity College in Dublin on a European excursion. Great care had been taken some centuries back to preserve what Zach now read, the words increasingly harsh in tone, warning the reader about the many dangers “animal changelings” faced.
“What does it all say, Zachary?” Asher’s use of his full name snapped him out of his thoughts. Zach looked up to find all four men staring at him.
“You want me to read it all?”
“You can? Every word?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus,” Derry muttered.
“Not quite, but close,” Gavin said under his breath, his mouth curling up into a strange smile. “And my serum made him.” He gave Asher a pointed look.
Ice water filled Zach’s veins at that comment. With great restraint, he tenderly, carefully closed the book, then took his own flute of champagne, drinking it in one long series of swallows, setting the delicate glass down.
He faced Asher full on, palms flat against the desk, face-to-face.
“You’re done testing me. It’s time for me to test you.”
Derry’s face split with a grin.
“You are not—” Asher began.
“Am I free to leave the ranch at will? Right now?” Zach interrupted him, tired of being dominated.
“Why would you—”
Zach’s hand curled into a fist, smashing down on top of the old oak desk so hard he felt his bones give, the pain vibrating through the wood, into the floor, finding an end somewhere in the earth’s crust as if he summoned a demon, a goddess, an angel.
Sophia. My Sophia, he mused, the intrusive thought a balm, a mantra, a lifeline.
A call to arms.
“I’m asking the questions,” he said in a quiet, deadly voice.
“Yes,” Gavin said. “You are. You were never a prisoner.”
“Tell that to him,” Zach snapped, glaring at Asher.
“Ask away,” Gavin said, moving next to Asher, the brotherly resemblance clear in their features but not in their emotions.
“You injected this man, Mason Webb, with the same serum that changed me. You killed him later. Is that what you’re planning to do with me?”
“Dear Lord, no,” Asher exclaimed, his mask gone as earnest emotion showed on his face. “Why would you ever think that? And we didn’t inject him. Tomas—”
“Gee, Asher, I don’t know,” Zach replied, sarcasm dripping from his words. “Because you told me I couldn’t leave? Because you openly said I’d be better off dead? Because you described how all of you killed the only other human being who became a shifter because of that damned serum? How could any thinking man not come to the conclusion that all of you Stantons represent the single greates
t threat to my existence?”
“We didn’t kill Webb. He’s dead because—”
“Don’t lump me in with them,” said a strong female voice behind Zach. He whipped around to find Sophia standing in the doorway, wearing a green wrap dress, her hair winding down her shoulders like a black silk scarf, eyes blazing with self-righteous fury. He throbbed for her, the intensity so sudden he felt his heart skip a beat before thumping in his chest at triple time, heat flooding his arms and legs, his body drawn to her like iron to a magnet. Controlling his breathing became hard, the splintered sense that he was in danger fighting for dominance inside his heart, which told him to touch her, to be with her, to give in.
“You know better, Zach,” she added, jutting her chin up in defiance.
“Do I?”
Chapter 13
Sophia didn’t know who she was more angry with—Asher and her brothers for toying with Zach, who had been through more than enough for any man—or with Zach himself, who lumped her in with them.
After everything they’d shared, how could he still think she was just another Stanton? Moments ago, although she’d been completely absorbed with Jess, Molly, and Lilah and her babies, Sophia had heard Zach calling her. She’d responded to the Beat.
She could see the love in his eyes. Well, there were other strong feelings too, but it was all wrapped up in love.
“Yes, you do know,” Sophia said. Zach, she added silently.
Zach’s face twisted with longing, but he spun on his heel to face Asher. “You say I’m free to go.”
“If I say it, it is true.”
“So I can pack up my bag and leave? Not that I have a bag, come to think of it. My wallet? I’ll need an ID and credit card to get home. Do you have it? Will I have to play more games, pass more tests, save more lives, before you return my own possessions to me?”
Sophia clenched her teeth together. She understood Zach had been through a lot, but he didn’t have to act like everything he’d been through was such a bad thing. They’d found each other, right?
Yes. Yes they had, damn it.
“Zach, your wallet is in the dresser of the room you’ve been sleeping in,” she said coolly. “Where it’s been since you arrived.”