by Amelia Jade
“Stop acting so nervous,” she hissed. “You need to act normal.”
“I am not nervous,” he replied. “It’s just that this blasted thing doesn’t fit right.”
“It fits fine,” she said, pulling the door open and proceeding inside.
She didn’t even bother to hold it for him.
Okay, maybe that was a little rude, but I am not nervous.
He stepped inside to follow her. Several pairs of eyes turned to focus on him.
Maybe I am nervous.
Hurriedly he charged down the hallway he saw Karri heading toward, even as he took in the surroundings. The lobby was nice, small yet well appointed, giving an excellent first impression that even he couldn’t fail to miss. A second hallway led off immediately to the left, but they didn’t head down that one, instead walking straight back from the door down a corridor lined with offices. He did his best to try and read every name, but gave up soon after in his efforts to keep up with Karri.
Eventually they reached an area that widened symmetrically to the left and right. Each side boasted a desk with a figure sitting behind it, and then two doors behind them leading into nice offices. Andrew figured they must be for her and her father. The one on the left was closed, but he could see figures moving around behind. Maybe he’d get to meet the infamous Mr. Blaine that morning. Wouldn’t that be something. He’d have to do well to mention that he wasn’t a shifter, for Karri’s sake.
Following Karri into her office, he ignored the nearly open-mouthed stares from the two women sitting behind the desks. Inside he found a chair nearest the door and sat down as quietly as he could, keeping himself between her and anyone who entered. Karri meanwhile rummaged around in her bag, sat down at her desk, and began to look through her computer, acting as if he weren’t there.
It was going to be a long day, so he began to practice some breathing exercises he’d learned a few years before, helping to keep him alert and yet not needing to be extremely focused either. It would help pass the time more swiftly.
At one point he adjusted himself in the chair, and it squeaked beneath him. Karri almost flew from her desk, leaping six inches in the air in surprise.
“What the hell?” she gasped, clutching at her heart.
“Are you okay?” he asked, halfway to her before he’d even finished speaking.
“I’m fine,” she said, waving him away. “You just scared the shit out of me. When did you get in here?”
He frowned. “I’ve been here all morning…”
She lifted her eyebrows skeptically. “You’ve been sitting there all morning?”
“Yes,” he said slowly, drawing out the three-letter word. “Did you not realize it?”
“No, obviously not,” she snapped. “Why are you just sitting there?”
He frowned. “Because I’m here to protect you. Would you prefer I pace back and forth with wild arm motions and a fancy furry hat? I could do that too if you wish.”
“No, no prancing and arm-waving,” she said, shaking him off. “But you can’t just sit there.”
“What would you have me do?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “You’re my intern. Go…inter things or something. I don’t know!”
“I have exactly zero idea what that means. I barely understood what an intern was. Now you want me to go inter something? Doesn’t that mean bury it?”
He could see Karri getting exasperated, but before she could explode, the phone on her desk buzzed.
“Karri, your father would like to see you in his office.”
She rose immediately and walked around the desk. Andrew fell in step two feet behind her and half a step to her left, protecting her weak side. He did so without conscious thought. If Karri was going somewhere, he was going to be with her.
“Stay here,” she said when she realized he was intending to follow her.
“But—” he tried to say.
“No,” she said with more force. “You pick one of these chairs and you stay right here. I’m going across the hallway into my father’s office. I am not going to have you act as a shadow in my own workplace. You’re lucky you’re even here. I will have some semblance of privacy.” She paused, then decided to continue. “Besides, there is no way you’re meeting my father. Not happening, all right?”
He contemplated not complying with her, but decided that no harm could come from letting her go speak to her father. Maybe she would relax about him being her bodyguard if she saw that he was willing to work with her.
“Okay,” he relented, resuming his spot in the chair.
“Thank you,” she said, sounding surprised at her victory, before opening the door and leaving the room.
He heard a door across the hall open and close, followed by muffled voices. Andrew was trying to understand what they were saying when the door to Karri’s office popped open again. Shooting to his feet, he prepared himself for the worst.
“Oh, um, hi,” Karri’s secretary said, looking up at him.
Oh great. Andrew had seen the look on her face before. She was smitten with him because of his looks. He was well aware that the majority of shifters possessed looks that were considered by humans to be extremely pretty. It wasn’t the first time he’d been swooned over in public, though he very much wished it would be the last. Anytime a woman started acting all googly eyed over him it made for a very uncomfortable situation. Just like this was shaping up to be.
“Hello,” he replied politely.
“I’m Tina,” the short buxom woman said, gazing at him as if she were in a daydream.
Lovely. Can’t even speak properly.
“Hello Tina, I’m Andrew. Pleasure to meet you,” he said, dipping his head at her.
“Oh no, trust me, the pleasure is all mine,” she purred.
That didn’t just happen. Please tell me that didn’t just happen. That this isn’t happening.
“Well, I should, uh, get back to work,” he said as Tina advanced into the room. He looked around frantically for some way out, but he wasn’t finding anything.
“Yes, work. I think I can give you something to work on,” Tina said, plastering a suggestive smile all over her face.
Dear Lord, how much more upfront can this get?
“Ah, well, you see, Karri is actually my boss. So I have to do whatever she tells me to,” he said.
“Well, maybe she’ll tell you to do…something else,” Tina said, running a hand down her body.
Okay. Well, that’s how much more upfront it can get. Congratulations, you’ve found out. Now you win a prize.
“I’m sorry, Tina, but I don’t think Karri would like that very much,” he said, trying to get her to leave without having to be too blunt.
“I won’t tell.”
He almost felt bad for her. This woman was so mesmerized by his looks that she was coming on to him blatantly enough for it to be painful, and yet she couldn’t understand that he wasn’t interested.
“I believe in honesty,” he said. “I couldn’t do that to Karri.”
Tina seemed to clue in at last. She straightened and adjusted her shirt. “Very well then. Have a good day, Andrew.”
She spun on her heel and marched out of the office, her head held high. The instant the door closed behind her he sagged in relief.
What else was going to happen that day?
Chapter Seventeen
Karri
They’d made it. The end of the day. Other than a weirdness that had developed between Tina and Andrew, the day had actually gone by relatively smoothly.
“Can I at least stay at my place tonight? I don’t feel like moving in to the embassy.”
“Of course,” he replied. “I’ll find a place to stay on the grounds, so that I can watch over things.”
“You can crash on the couch,” she said.
“I don’t need to sleep inside,” he replied.
Unsure of what to say to that, Karri just nodded and kept walking to her car. Of course he didn’
t need to sleep inside, he was a shifter! So why had she been hoping that he would put up a fight?
Because you want him. To stay inside, of course.
No, she didn’t. In fact, him staying outside was a much better idea. “Okay,” she said. “That sounds good.”
See. Outside is fine.
They reached her car and he slid in while she deposited her bag in the rear seat. From the office she heard someone else exit. Glancing up, she watched her father walk toward her. He was parked three spots closer than she was. Karri waved at him and closed the door on the car.
Her father’s footsteps grew closer, but then paused at his car. Please stay there, she thought fervently, all too aware of the passenger in her car. They’d managed to avoid seeing each other the entire day. It was some sort of miracle, it had to be, but Karri wasn’t questioning it. Now though she sort of wished they’d already met. It would be a lot less weird to explain to her father who the random man in the car was if he’d already met him.
Now he would be making assumptions. And if he realized he was a shifter…ugh. This was not the way she wanted to end her day. She smiled at her dad and pulled open the door to the car. That proved to be her biggest mistake. The movement drew his attention from her to the vehicle. She saw the change in his body language as he walked over.
No no no. This isn’t happening!
“Why are you driving this thing today?” he asked, coming over to her.
Karri admired the sleek little electric vehicle. It was her other car, her baby, and she didn’t take it out too often, not wanting to put a lot of wear and tear on it. But of course, with her other car a wreck, she had no choice.
“I’ve just been feeling like driving it a lot lately,” she lied. “I needed a change, y’know?”
He nodded. “Yes, I get that. It sure is a nice vehicle, that’s for sure.”
Stay in the car, Andrew. Stay in the car. Take your normal chivalrous attitude and stuff it. Be fucking rude, but whatever you do, don’t get out. Stay. In. That. Car!
The far door opened. Groaning internally, she took a breath in and prepared to introduce the two of them to each other. Maybe she could make it short and sweet, so that they wouldn’t get around to finding out that he was a shifter. Or that she’d slept with him. Oh God, please no.
“Dad this is—”
“You.”
Karri blinked. She’d heard her dad angry before. Seen him mad. Listened to him yell at more people than she could count. All sorts of rage—icy cold, fiery hot, and everything in between. She didn’t think she could be surprised anymore by his temper.
She was wrong.
This was the first time she’d ever heard her dad promise death to someone with a single word. There was no other way to describe the sheer hatred and fury that one single word contained. Her dad wanted to kill Andrew. She turned to look at Andrew, and saw him staring back at her dad with shock.
“Karri…” Andrew began, but her dad just shouted him down.
“You do not talk to my daughter. At all. You…you…” then her father looked back and forth at the two of them. “Karri,” he asked very carefully. “What was he doing in your car?”
She turned back and forth between the two of them, at a complete loss for words. What was going on here?! They knew each other?
“Wait a minute,” her father hissed, leveling his rage at Andrew once more. “Are you sleeping with my daughter?”
“Father,” she snapped.
It was the wrong thing to do. Her protest must have confirmed it, his worst nightmare. She was involved with a shifter. It was too much for him. Without a single word her father turned and marched back to his vehicle.
Karri sighed. “Get in the car. I’ll handle this.”
She turned and went after her father. What the hell was his problem with Andrew? How did they know each other, and why was he so angry at him?
“Karri, no!”
Andrew chased after her. She was about halfway between the two cars when her dad reached into the bed of the pickup he’d chosen to drive that day, and pulled out a long object. Karri barely had time to realize it was a gun before she was tackled by Andrew. A split second later fire flared in the dark and a loud boom assaulted her ears.
Andrew grunted as they hit the ground, but he didn’t slow. The shifter popped right back up with her in hand and began to run.
“The car!” she screamed, still trying to make sense of what was going on, but knowing they had to escape. Her father had obviously lost his mind and was shooting at both her and Andrew, not realizing what he was doing.
“Too late!” he yelped as the driver’s side window imploded under the next blast.
“Father, you’re shooting at your own daughter!” she hollered, still stunned by the sudden turn of events.
The only response was another blast from the shotgun. Andrew grunted again, but it didn’t seem as if he’d been hit. Behind them footsteps clattered on the pavement as her father gave chase. Andrew wasn’t going as fast as she’d seen him before.
“What’s going on?” she asked, staying scrunched up in front of him, not daring to look behind them lest she take a shotgun blast to the face. “Why aren’t you running as fast as you can?”
“Can’t,” was the only reply she got.
“Okay, then we need another way to get out of here.”
“I’m working on it,” came the exasperated reply. “But this is all seat-of-the-pants flying here, Karri. I wasn’t expecting to get shot at by coming out of the car to introduce myself to your dad.”
“My father seems to have a bit of a problem with you,” she said dryly.
“Yeah. You don’t know the half of it.”
How he could stay so calm as more blasts rang out behind them was beyond her. They were gaining some ground, but something was wrong.
“Andrew, why am I bouncing around like this?” she asked nervously.
Without warning he began to tumble forward. Wordlessly Andrew twisted in place, positioning himself between her and the ground, cushioning her fall as he slammed into the pavement.
“Ow.”
“What the hell is going on? Get up!” she commanded.
That was when she saw the mangled ruin of his left leg. The suit pant had been mostly blown away along with much of the leg itself. She could see right down to the bone in one place. The sight made her queasy and she swayed on her feet.
“Karri get away from him!”
“You idiot!” she screamed at her father. “You could have killed me!”
All her father did was rack the shotgun intimidatingly.
“Karri, come on,” Andrew said, getting back to his feet. “Over there!”
She turned to see where he was pointing. They were almost at the end of the long narrow parking lot. A few more steps and they would reach the street.
“Step away Karri!”
She ignored the order, trying not to feel sadness at the maniacal tone to his voice. Something had broken inside her father, and she wasn’t sure if he’d be able to put it back together again. Knowing what it would do to her and her future, she made the toughest choice of her life and reached down to help Andrew to his feet. Whether or not she wanted to be with him, there was no way she was going to let her father kill him. Andrew was innocent, and he deserved to be treated that way.
“Come on,” she said, taking his arm and giving as mighty a heave as she could.
Andrew came to his feet—or foot, she supposed, and with her support, they began to hop along awkwardly. She slipped an arm under his shoulder and wrapped it around his back as best she could. A second later she yanked it back at the warm, wet feeling that pressed against her.
“What the hell?” she said, gazing at her arm in the streetlight as they reached the sidewalk and turned left.
Her arm was covered in a dark sticky substance. The smell of iron hit her nose almost at the same instant she tasted the metallic tang in the air.
“Are you hit th
ere too?” she gasped.
“Yeah. Come on. We’re almost free,” he said, trying to stifle a groan as he hobbled along.
Behind them her dad came closer, closing the distance with every second. He hadn’t fired again, and she hoped that was because he could see her and didn’t want to risk hitting his only daughter and eldest child.
But based on his earlier actions, she really wasn’t sure what he would do if a shot presented itself. He was clearly off his rocker at the moment.
“Where are you going?” she snapped as Andrew shrugged off her support and moved into the center of the street.
“Getting us out of here the only way I know how,” he replied.
Karri looked behind them, but they had moved far enough down the street that the building on the corner was blocking the immediate line of sight. For the moment, her father couldn’t see what was happening. Which was a shame, because Karri was witnessing the most amazing thing she’d ever seen.
Before her very eyes Andrew changed. Two huge lumps appeared on his shoulders, and a second later they burst open as the rest of his body increased in size as well. Huge wings, ten feet or more in length, shot straight up into the sky, feathers growing out from them even as she watched. Then they came down and obscured the rest of his body from her for a time, but not before she saw the golden-brown fur that had grown to cover the lower half of his body.
“Andrew?” she whispered in stunned shock as his body lengthened dramatically, still growing in size. The feathers on his wings continued to grow in, becoming thicker and thicker, until the entire apparatus tucked in at his side, revealing the changes to his face.
Gone was the hard angular lines of the man she knew, replaced by a curving yellow-orange beak that looked wickedly sharp. The yellow-orbed eyes of the bird half of his shifter flicked and focused on her. Paws the size of her head scraped gently at the pavement and the magnificent creature ducked low, extending one wing toward her.
So that’s what a gryphon shifter looks like.
Behind them tires screeched in the parking lot. Her father must have decided to run them down in his truck, thinking they were getting away from him.