Fated for the Phoenix: A Shifters in Love Fun & Flirty Romance (Mystic Bay Book 5)

by Isadora Montrose

  He had done this so often that a new layer of soft, flexible skin had grown on his palms and fingertips, replacing the rough scar tissue. His fine motor skills had also returned. Too bad no one wanted to be operated on by a crazy surgeon. A blind, crazy surgeon.

  Frankie bent over his palm and touched it gently. “Lava from Mount Kilauea,” she breathed reverently. “Souvenir of your accident?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the first one I’ve told,” he said. “I was hoping you might remember if I have a mate and where I left her.” He tried for humor. But the bleakness in his voice told the truth.

  “Can’t help you, Rafael.” Her voice was full of pity. Pity was even worse than sympathy. The chair creaked as she sat back down. “If you want some more free advice, eat that puppy. Lava is good for whatever ails a phoenix. And that rock is way too old to transform your bride.”

  He knew that, yet his hand closed protectively over the egg. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “When I fetched an egg for Cameron,” she confided, “I ran into some trouble underground. Cerberuses. I wound up injured and exhausted. Had to keep switching between lesser and greater phoenix too.*”

  Cerberuses were hell-hounds. Giant three-headed canines straight out of some ancient Greek’s nightmares. Against his will, Rafael was interested. “Big energy suck,” he commiserated.

  A phoenix could transform from human into either a hawk-sized bird, or a gigantic form with a twenty-four-foot wingspan, but in between shifts from lesser to greater phoenix, they had to return to human. Each transition used a shiftload of energy.

  “Yup. I even had to regenerate.” She spoke as if the memory was painful. “I wound up eating magma. The results were miraculous. Eat that rock, Rafe. It can only help.”

  He put it back in its bag and stuffed it into his pocket. “I notice you don’t suggest that I regenerate.”

  “It’s contraindicated in your situation,” she said gravely.

  “Really?”

  “It’s too tempting to allow the fire to burn you to ash. To die in the flames. I felt the temptation, and I wasn’t suicidal.”

  “I’m not suicidal!” he cried.

  “Sure you are. You’re barely hanging on by your fingernails, my friend. It’s no wonder Aunt Lois and Uncle Sam are so worried. Look at this place.” She was scornful.

  He knew that fast food containers were piled on every surface. And the dishes hadn’t been washed since the last time the housekeepers were in. But it wasn’t his fault that Frankie had shown up out of the blue. His staff wasn’t due until tomorrow.

  “I don’t even know what you’re doing here in Portland anyway,” she continued. “This perpetual cloud cover is a bad idea. You should have stayed in Hawaii where there’s sunshine. Bit late now, but Dad would be happy for you to use our Arizona place. Non-stop sunshine and plenty of private air space to fly.”

  He scowled at her. But he had no answer. He just knew Hawaii held no appeal. Nor Arizona. Three years ago, when the Air Force had tossed him out, Portland had drawn him like a moth to a flame. He was used to this condo. He had no desire for change. He could vegetate in Portland as well as anywhere else.

  “We get sun here,” he protested. “Too much. It hurts my eyes.”

  “Uh huh. A phoenix dazzled by sunshine. That isn’t weird.” There was an eye roll in her voice. “A blind man dazzled by sunshine. That’s not odd. Millard Fillmore. You need a keeper, Rafael D’Angelo.”

  “I. Do. Not. Need. A. Keeper. And FYI, the doctors are baffled by my light sensitivity.” He was certain it was caused by the damage to his paranormal senses. But the medics didn’t know he had once had paranormal vision and it was going to stay that way. He had enough black marks on his records.

  “You needn’t sound so proud of being weird, Rafe. You need some wholesome occupation. Why don’t you ask Linc or Cam to help you locate your mate?”

  Like her husband, Cameron Reynolds, Frankie’s brother was a Special Forces veteran**. Rumor had it Linc was still plugged into the military information grid.

  Rafael clutched his egg tighter. “If I have a mate. Talk about your wild goose chase! I don’t even have a suspicion of who she might be. Or if she’s a phoenix or a mortal. All I have is this piece of obsidian. Which as you pointed out might be a relic of the crash.”

  “Maybe you met her at Tripler Medical?”

  “Which is why she showed up at my bedside. Not.” He had been three hellish months in the burn unit. Another seven on the psych ward. Plenty of time for his mate to show up, if she wanted to marry an ugly crip.

  He recalled being stationed in Honolulu. Or rather he recalled some of his tour there. He had served eighteen months at Tripler. It was only the last six months of that posting which were a total blank. The three months preceding that blank had come back in sketchy outline. Totally unreliable. He had only the haziest of memories of his time in the jungle.

  Much of his hospital stay had been mercifully obliterated by the induced coma. But there were no unexplained visitors. If he had ever had a mate, she had abandoned him as soon as he was blinded and injured.

  “Linc and Cam could still take a look. Maybe there’s some good reason she stayed away?” Frankie was her usual upbeat and determined self. It was wearying to argue with her. How did Cam endure it?

  “Maybe I’ll call him.” Or maybe not. Apathy reached out and embraced him in its gray clutches. His phone beeped. “It’s time for my antidepressants.”

  *Phoenix Alight

  **Phoenix Aglow

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mystic Bay,

  West Haven, Oregon

  Samantha~

  “There is nothing wrong with Carmody, Mom. Nothing at all!” Samantha Belfast spoke as sternly as she could manage. A unicorn is always respectful of her elders. A unicorn does not lose her temper.

  Araminta Belfast firmed her lips into a tighter line. Even her neatly dyed brown hair in its careful bun radiated displeasure. Her purple eyes narrowed. “I cannot agree with you, Samantha. Carmody simply does not behave as a unicorn foal ought.”

  “She’s a perfectly normal three-year-old, Mom,” Samantha concealed her exasperation under a facade of calm. A unicorn never raises her voice. “She gets up to mischief, but that’s normal. She’ll grow out of it.”

  “It’s not normal for a unicorn,” Araminta repeated with an air of performing an unpleasant duty. “You were perfectly behaved when you were three. You never answered back, or ran off, or disobeyed me. That child is out of control. Mark my words, if you can’t control her now, by the time she’s a teenager she will be in reform school.”

  “Is this about Carmody climbing out of her playpen?” Mom and Dad had never recovered from the shock of finding Carmody sitting on the fireplace rug teething on the china shepherdess from the mantelpiece. Not that she had damaged the ornament, or burned herself. Her crime was figuring out how to get out of her playpen unassisted at eighteen months.

  Mom stiffened. “I had forgotten about that,” she said. “But I guess that should have been our wake-up call. Even as a baby, you stayed where you were put.”

  “Perhaps I wasn’t as smart as Carmody,” Samantha shot back.

  It was hard enough being a single mother without having to worry that your child was manifesting antisocial behavior. Her friends had been at pains to tell her that Carmody’s mischief was merely a sign that her common sense had not yet caught up with her intelligence.

  But Samantha still worried. She had turned into such a nervous Nellie. A unicorn is always calm and poised. But calm and poise no longer came naturally. Right now she wanted to shriek and stamp her hooves.

  “Watch her,” people said. “Until she grows up a bit.”

  “Kids don’t learn to walk so that they can go where you want them to. They learn so they can escape.”

  “If she leaves the house when she’s supposed to be sleeping, you need better locks that she can’t reach.”

  “In ten years, these
will be the stories you use to embarrass her when she does that teenager eye roll thing.”

  What they didn’t say was that Samantha needed another pair of eyes and another set of hands to tag team Carmody until she matured.

  Araminta sniffed. “Certainly you were smart. But unicorn foals learn the rules and follow them. I think you should be worried about,” she paused delicately, “Carmody’s antecedents.”

  “Her antecedents!”

  “I mean her father, of course,” Mom said, as if the word ‘father’ were a curse that singed her tongue. Although unicorns never used profanity. “I think we have to be alert for signs of hybrid vigor.”

  Samantha pulled on all her patience. A unicorn is never rude. Never confrontational. “I know what antecedents are, Mom. Carmody’s are just fine.”

  She had told no one the full truth about Carmody’s father, and she did not plan to. Not even her parents. Make that, especially not her parents. Unicorns did not lie, but just the same they were entitled to their secrets.

  Rafael was dead, but he had died a hero. He and all his clan were more than respectable. Phoenixes might be birds of prey, but they were honorable. Most of Rafael’s people served in the armed forces. Rafael himself had been a highly decorated Air Force officer and a surgeon. He had died as he had lived, on a rescue mission. And shattered Samantha’s heart, but not because he was a criminal. Because he was her soul mate. The other half of her heart.

  His death had been a blow from which she would never recover.

  The elegant lines of Araminta’s face lengthened. Her lips thinned even more. “You cannot just ignore signs of hybrid vigor, Samantha. You need to take steps to rein in that child’s antisocial instincts.”

  Mom was basically accusing her only grandchild of being a criminal deviant like the Haverstocks’ brood of serial killers.

  “You are overreacting, Mom. Carmody doesn’t have any antisocial instincts. She is one of the best-behaved kids in her group at daycare.”

  “And that’s another thing. I cannot approve of the way you let her play with hunters and hybrids. We never let you play with – with – predators.” On West Haven, if hunter was not a neural term, predator was a direct insult.

  Maybe if Mom and Dad had let her play with all the children in Mystic Bay, and not just the ones they approved of, Samantha wouldn’t be an emotional wreck now. She reminded herself that her mom was genuinely worried and drew a deep breath to center herself. Unicorns do not quarrel. But this was one fight she wasn’t backing down from.

  “Carmody plays with all the children in her group. She’s friends with all of them. And there is nothing antisocial in her interactions with any of them. Including the hunters.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know where she picked up that trick of disappearing,” Araminta countered. “Jimmy Peterson has a nasty way of vanishing that is most worrisome in a predator, and worse in a hybrid.”

  “Jimmy Rutherford.” Samantha stressed his last name, his father’s name. “Is a sorcerer-cougar mix, he has a ton of talent, but he is one of the sweetest, kindest children in Carmody’s group. You can’t blame Carmody’s childish foolishness on him. She’s just as close to Jessie Babcock, who’s a rabbit. And Jess is about four times as naughty as Carmody.”

  “A most unladylike bunny,” Araminta scoffed. “I hear Jessamine punched Jimmy in the nose and got herself thrown out of daycare.”

  “That was months ago,” Samantha protested. “Littleland has a no-violence policy. They very properly suspended Jess for a couple of days for hitting. She and Jimmy patched up their differences and are now the best of friends.”

  “Hmph.”

  “Mom, even if I agreed with you – which I don’t – I couldn’t pull Carmody out of daycare. I have to work. And there is only one daycare in Mystic Bay. One. She is thriving there. She has friends and an opportunity to play with other children. Other sensitives. Are you offering to watch her instead?”

  Araminta bridled. “Certainly not. Your father and I couldn’t possibly take full-time responsibility for a foal who doesn’t follow the rules. Not at our age.”

  Since unicorns live for hundreds of years, and Araminta and Parsifal Belfast were barely into their second century, by unicorn standards they were not even middle-aged. But Samantha did not call her mother on her evasion. Unicorns did not lie, even by implication, but they also respected their parents.

  “And that’s another thing. You shouldn’t be working as a salesclerk in that third-rate souvenir shop. With your education, you should be working as a nurse.” Another old grievance.

  But Samantha wasn’t ready to resume her stressful career as a psych nurse. Maybe she never would be. “If and when the Mystic Bay Hospital has an opening for one, I will apply.”

  That wasn’t exactly a lie. While she no longer felt psychically strong enough to work as a psychiatric nurse, perhaps she could handle general nursing just fine. But not the shift work. Not as a single mom.

  “Hope Greene has been a kind and considerate employer,” Samantha defended her boss. “She never asks me to work past Carmody’s pick-up time. And even in the summer she schedules me for only one weekend a month.”

  “I wish I believed that Hope realized what an honor it is to have a unicorn working in her little shop, but I don’t think she does.” Araminta’s voice remained cold. “If you have to be a salesclerk, why don’t you get a job at the Mystic Bay Artists Co-op? At least they sell real art.”

  “Because the co-op is entirely staffed by members. Of which I am not one, nor likely to be.” You had to be a productive artist to join. Samantha didn’t have a creative bone in her body. Her talents lay elsewhere.

  And Mom was wrong. The Greene Gallery wasn’t being honored by Samantha’s presence. Samantha was lucky to have a boss who respected her inability to shade the truth, which was more or less part of the art of sales. At which she sucked.

  Fortunately, Hope’s stock pretty much sold itself. And Samantha was good at the paperwork and running the cash register. And replacing the goods as they flew off the shelves.

  “Does this mean you won’t watch Carmody this Saturday?” Samantha inquired with excruciating politeness.

  “I did promise,” Mom reminded her icily. “I plan to take her to the Drake Museum. Looking at ships should keep her out of trouble.”

  Samantha forced a smile. “Thank you, Mother.” A unicorn is always grateful for the smallest of mercies.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Portland,

  Rafael~

  “A unicorn shifter? You think my goldarned fated mate is a fricking unicorn shifter?” Rafael bellowed into his cell. This is what you got for taking idiot advice. More idiocy.

  Lincoln D’Angelo’s booming laugh spilled out of the cell and filled the condo. “I did not supply any adjectives. Let alone expletives. And I didn’t say that Samantha Belfast was your mate. Just that she has a little girl who is a unicorn-phoenix. Carmody is three years old.”

  “But a unicorn shifter! For goodness sakes, Linc, talk sense. What on earth would I have in common with a unicorn?”

  A prissier, fussier, more timid set of shifters did not draw breath on the planet. They were the ultimate tremblers. How could he have fallen in love with a unicorn? Or she with him? This was bullcorn.

  But if his mate was a unicorn, maybe that explained why she hadn’t stuck around when he had been injured. Unicorns were fragile and skittish. He had been in rough shape. Hard for any woman to handle, let alone a nervous unicorn shifter.

  Lincoln broke into his musing. “You need to check out this woman, Rafe. Samantha Belfast is living in poverty – nothing dire, but she has trouble making ends meet. She’s raising a child alone. If she’s your mate...” his cousin paused a beat. “I’d be ashamed, if it were me.”

  “Tell me again how you heard about her,” Rafael said to buy time. Lincoln didn’t make mistakes.

  “My buddy Anton Benoit* lives in the San Juans. On a little speck of an island
called West Haven. He married a local woman. Benoit is one of my FA volunteers. A bear shifter and a former Marine. We were speaking yesterday. He thought he should tell me that one of the residents has a fatherless daughter who is a phoenix-unicorn mix. And of course Frankie mentioned you might have a lost mate. Cam and I have been making some inquiries.”

  Lincoln had just told him that his friend Anton worked for the shifter police. Although the family spoke as little as possible about his volunteer work, Rafael knew Lincoln was one of the coordinators.

  The Fuck Alls, as they called themselves, because they handled those cases the regular authorities could do fuck all about, policed rogue shifters. If Benoit was one of Lincoln’s investigators, he was the kind of bear who you could trust in a tight spot.

  “Uh huh,” Rafael said. “What exactly did your vigilante say?”

  Linc laughed off his insult. “He said that one of my nieces is living in Mystic Bay – which is the only town on West Haven. I asked why he thought she was a D’Angelo, and he said he didn’t. He just doesn’t know of any other phoenix clan. He assumed she was one of ours. If she’s not yours, she belongs to one of your brothers.”

  “He’s got a point,” Rafael acknowledged reluctantly. “We’re a prolific family, but we’re all one big, happy clan. At least in America.”

  He thought for a bit. Probably a good long bit, judging by the way Linc’s breathing turned impatient. Since Rafael’s eyes had failed, his hearing had become hyper-sensitive. “But this unicorn is not Mike or Gabe or Uri’s mate.” Any of his brothers would have mentioned a mate if he had one. “Could she belong to some unrelated phoenix?”

  “Who? In America, it’s just us D’Angelos. Play the probabilities, Rafe. You just ruled out Michael, Gabriel and Uriel. My brothers are mated. The Wyoming branch is all accounted for. It’s on you, Rafael, my man. You better go claim this Samantha Belfast.”

  “Looking like this?” asked Rafael bitterly. He made it his practice to only go out when the light was dim. “Probably scare them both to death.” He could not see his own face, but his fingers told him he was a monster.