by Zoe Chant
“You’re out of uniform,” Einar finally said mildly. “To say nothing of delinquent of your post for twenty-five years.”
Chef’s face got very red and his mouth grew thin, but he didn’t move.
Magnolia stepped closer to him, glaring at Einar protectively. “I didn’t write to you because anything has changed. I’m not coming back, and I’m not leaving my mate.”
Einar looked at her thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t ask you to,” he said gently. “I was wrong to, before.”
That was clearly not the answer Chef and Magnolia were expecting, and they exchanged wary glances.
“I was a young king at the time,” Einar continued. “I thought I needed to toe the line, play by all the rules. You were supposed to honor the marriage contract and Chet was supposed to honor his duty. I took it personally when you chose instead to honor each other.”
He held out an envelope, sealed with gold and red wax. “A gift from Their Majesties Signy and Kai Natt och Dag af Leijona, Chet. A full pardon of your absence without leave, a commendation for your service to the crown for the long and loyal protection of our cousin, and a complete, honorable, release of your vows.”
Chef took the envelope mechanically, looking dazed as his color washed away. Magnolia gave a little noise of surprise and covered her mouth, her violet eyes wide above her hand.
Then Chef was letting the envelope fall carelessly to the tile floor as he turned and crashed to his knees at Magnolia’s feet as if he could not bear to wait another moment. “Agneta Annika Margareta Solberg af Bjorn, will you marry me?”
“I will,” Magnolia wept. “I will!”
Chef surged back up to his feet, crushing her into his embrace and kissing her with less restraint than Graham had ever witnessed in him.
Einar grinned like a boy. If the bodyguards on either side of him were the slightest bit surprised by the sight of a giant cook kissing the king’s large cousin passionately, they didn’t betray a bit of it, stone-faced behind their sunglasses.
Magnolia was the happiest person that Graham had ever known.
She never met a day without a smile, and her cheerful optimism had buoyed many people out of blue days. She enjoyed herself without limits, took pleasure in everything, and spread her joy like a small—or not-so-small—celestial body casting light into the darkness.
But Graham thought now that he had never seen her truly happy before.
Tears ran down her smiling cheeks as she kissed Chef—Chet—and laughed in delight and hugged first him, and then her cousin who had been king, and then, to their great discomfort, both of his guards.
Chef, smiling and crying, and not caring who saw, shook everyone’s hands, including Breck’s, Darla’s—she stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek—and Graham’s.
Chef’s happiness was only quieter than Magnolia’s, no less.
Graham, watching them embrace again, suddenly found purpose, in a life that had been adrift of it.
He wanted to make Alice that happy.
It didn’t matter where, or how, but he wanted to bring that kind of joy to Alice, if he could. He wanted—he needed—to make her smile like that, to weep in happiness. He would spend his entire life in pursuit of that moment, and if it were ever possible to achieve, he’d spend the rest of his life trying to do it again.
He slipped out of the restaurant through the empty kitchen—the rest of the staff had emptied onto the deck to congratulate Chef and Magnolia and ogle the visiting royalty.
As Graham took the white gravel path back to The Den, he stewed over his options... move to Minnesota, find a job... tell Alice what Scarlet was. He was willing to do all of it.
He was chewing over that last idea in particular when his lion growled near his ear and he looked up to see a figure standing outlined in the light of The Den beyond.
It was one of the human furries, he realized, just a moment before he registered the gun in the man’s hands.
There was a sharp bite at Graham’s neck that confused him a moment.
A dart, he realized, and he growled and clenched his fists. The man fired again as Graham charged him.
Graham’s swing went wide as his blood seemed to turn to sludge in his veins. All his limbs were heavy. Too heavy. His second swing hit, but had no force behind it.
The man shrugged it off. “Save your fight for the cage, Grant,” he sneered.
Graham was confused that he was somehow leaning on the man rather than hitting him. “Not... Grant...” he managed. Alice loved Graham. That was who he wanted to be.
Then darkness took him.
Chapter 31
Alice woke up from her nap thinking of Graham.
This was not unusual. She couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Graham: his hands on her skin, his growl, that devastating accent when he spoke, the pain and guilt in his gorgeous blue eyes, those moments when he softened and let his guard down and she wanted to crawl into his lap and kiss him... It felt like she was never not thinking about him.
What was unusual this time was the anxiousness that was coursing through her. Something was wrong.
Her bear was as bothered as she was. He’s not here, she growled. He’s gone.
Alice realized that she’d gotten used to a sense of him in her head, a comfortable feeling of Graham like a familiar scent on a favorite sweater.
Rather than letting herself linger in bed a few moments, touching herself and thinking about his hands, Alice rolled out of bed and pulled her jeans on, swiftly stuffing her feet into her sneakers.
“Have you seen Graham?” she asked the first person she saw.
Tex, at the bar loading a tray full of champagne glasses, grinned at her, but kindly didn’t tease. “Last I saw, he was headed for the kitchen with a crate of tomatoes,” he offered.
“Gotcha.”
Alice took the stairs to the restaurant deck two at a time, the worry she’d woken to blooming in her chest.
The restaurant was in celebration mode; everyone was cheering and toasting and laughing.
At first, Alice thought it was just Mary and Neal’s upcoming wedding, but she realized that it was far more widespread than that; the entire restaurant deck was centering their attention on a cluster of tables in the middle, where Magnolia and Chef were sitting together with a stranger in a fine quality suit. Dinner seemed to be an afterthought to drinking and talking, and most of the staff were mingling with the guests and drinking rather than serving them.
It looked like fun, and Alice was usually up for a foot-loose, impromptu party... but Graham was still missing from her head.
She lifted her chin at Mary, across the room, and turned away.
Graham wasn’t here. Even if this had been his kind of gathering, which Alice doubted, she knew without hesitation that he was nowhere near.
She walked behind the restaurant, past the bizarrely-draped hotel; she had been warned about the fumigation deception to protect the shifters’ secrets and knew about the accidental human tourists who were being put up on the beach. Travis had even fabricated something foul-smelling to give the ploy extra depth, and Alice covered her nose uselessly as she passed it.
The Den was empty, quiet and dark on the cliffs; no one answered her knock, and when she went in anyway, Graham’s room gave the same answer.
If she thought he was in there, she might have opened the door and gone in without invitation. But her bear assured he wasn’t so Alice left The Den feeling more mystified and worried.
Her feet took her next to the upper gardens, and Graham’s close-guarded greenhouse.
She stood at the entrance of the garden a long moment, more hesitant to violate this space than she had The Den. This was Graham’s place, his sacred space.
Alice breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of green things, fruit, and freshly-turned dirt. It was evening, and somewhere nearby a frog was trying to tempt a mate as the chorus of night insects began to swell.
Graham was not here, either.
&nb
sp; She closed the garden door solemnly and stood for a moment.
The view from here was breathtaking. Alice could see down over the entire resort: The Den, the cliffs, the tented hotel, the festive restaurant, the cottages. The beach was a silver crescent in the falling twilight, and the waves wrinkled and flung themselves at the shore.
Alice squinted. There was movement at the dock, and it took her a moment to realize that two figures were walking towards the resort’s boat. No, one figure was walking, half-dragging the other. Someone had imbibed a little too much at Tex’s bar, Alice thought, but after watching them for only a moment she knew she was wrong: the second figure was clearly unconscious.
Graham, she thought in panic as the first man dumped him unceremoniously into the back of the boat.
If he was unconscious, did that explain why she couldn’t feel him in her head? She still knew he was there when he was sleeping.
Alice was already moving, running down the white gravel paths as fast as she could manage.
She had glimpses of the boat as she wove her way down through the resort, and saw it slipping quietly away from the dock as she desperately ran.
By the time she got to the dock, the boat had already passed the reef and she could barely hear the roar of the engine over the sound of the surf. It didn’t pull south and round the tip of the island, but headed north, and she stared after it in consternation.
Alice forced herself to think logically. If the boat had been going for the mainland, it would have gone the other direction. The only other place it could go was the abandoned installation on the other side of the island.
She set her jaw and bolted for the top of the resort, taking the steps two at a stride.
Scarlet was not in her office, but Alice went in anyway. Her bear’s hackles rose at once; this was risky and they both knew it. She stepped behind the desk, wondering if she dared to actually ransack it for the keys she was after.
Before she could work up the nerve, a silhouette appeared in the doorway, tall and ominous.
“Can I help you?” Scarlet sounded as serene as if she hadn’t just caught Alice creeping around in her office.
Alice braced herself for a fight. “I need the Jeep,” she said, balling her fists at her side. She didn’t phrase it as a request.
“Graham,” Scarlet said, eyes narrowing. “He’s... not here.”
“The boat,” Alice said shortly. “I saw someone dump him in the boat and go north.”
Scarlet gave a sound that was half growl and half a sigh of great wind. “I can’t go there,” she said, sounding frustrated.
“I can,” Alice said fiercely.
“You’ll need help,” Scarlet said, pulling a key down from a hook beside the door.
“There’s no time,” Alice said, reaching out her hand. The sense of urgency, of loss, was rising like a storm in her chest.
Scarlet was standing between her and her exit, the key closed in her fingers, and Alice started to bristle. “I have to go,” she snarled.
Scarlet’s green eyes drilled into her and for a moment Alice had to wonder what it was that kept the woman from the other side of the island, what could be possibly be strong enough to resist that will and the terrible power behind it.
Before she could gather herself to fight the woman who was standing between Alice and her mate—however helpless a fight it might be—Scarlet dropped the key into her outstretched palm. “I care about him, too,” she said simply, and stepped aside.
Alice was bolting before she could make any sense of that, key cutting into the palm of her hand.
The drive across the island was considerably less enjoyable than the same trip had been a week before. Gone was the cheerful comradery, and the leisurely pace. Gone was the sunlight, and there was no laughter at Alice’s lips as she pushed the Jeep as fast as she dared over the pitted road.
It took what felt like an eternity to get there, and Alice could only stew over the memory of Graham’s limp body being dropped into the boat, and mourn the comfortable feeling of him in her head that she hadn’t realized was her new normal.
The open gate to the compound caught her entirely by surprise and she drove in with more speed than she meant to; only afterwards thinking that she ought to have pulled the Jeep over and attempted some kind of stealth. There were lights past the house, and Alice could hear unexpected music and crowd noise over the Jeep’s engine.
Two guards suddenly loomed into the light of her headlights, bearing rifles.
“Ah, hi!” she called cheerfully, wishing she’d thought her plan through a little more thoroughly. She climbed out the Jeep, not wanting to shift and damage Scarlet’s vehicle if she didn’t have to.
Only then did she notice the two guards behind her, armed with nightsticks, and a chill went down her back; four guards was a lot even for her bear. “I was out driving around and got turned around in the dark,” she bluffed. “I’m a guest at Shifting Sands, do you know how I get back there?”
They didn’t look particularly convinced by her air-headed speech and one of the guards behind her suddenly said, “That’s the girlfriend of the guy I collected from the resort earlier today. Cyrus is going to want this one for leverage.”
One of the men raised his rifle and shot her.
For a split-second, Alice thought they’d shot her with a bullet and this was the end of her ill-considered heroism as well as her life. Then she realized that it had made a whooshing sound rather than a gunshot crack, and it was only a tiny sting of pain.
There was a small dart in her shoulder, and Alice rationalized that it must be a knock-out drug. She was briefly amused at the idea of a dart meant for a human having any effect on her bear.
But when she reached for her bear, ready to unleash an angry, five-hundred pound animal on the unsuspecting guards, nothing was there.
She was still reeling from the realization when they closed in on her, and her late attempt to defend herself was cut short with a staggering blow to the head from one of the nightstick-wielding guards. Before she could regain her balance, she was being bound and marched into the compound.
Chapter 32
Graham woke to the familiar sound of a distant, hungry crowd... and the loud growl of a nearby generator. He was lying on his side, darkened concrete before him, broken earth below him. It was bright, but after a moment, staring at his shadow, he realized it wasn’t daylight; a brilliant worklight was trained on him. He lay still, trying to make sense of things, to figure out what felt so terribly wrong.
Alice, was his first thought, but he had no sense of her nearby. She was simply gone from inside of him, and the hollow place she’d been felt like a gaping hole.
He glanced down without moving, and found that he’d been bound, at wrist and ankle, both anchored to the wall he was looking at. He might be able to break the chains as a man, but he could definitely break them as a lion... which was when he realized that his lion was as gone as Alice.
He must have made some kind of noise of alarm at the realization, because a boot found the small of his back.
“You awake yet, your lordship?”
Graham felt the hollow place inside fill with rage and recognition.
He rolled to the wall and brought himself up to a seated position. He was in a battered, three-sided concrete room. Bars had once enclosed the fourth side, but they had been burned and wrenched away. An extension cord snaked to a bright worklight on a tripod, focused on him. He felt like his limbs were heavy, and his bones were humming out of tune. “Cyrus,” he growled.
“Surprise!” Cyrus gave him a toothy smile, standing well outside of the range of Graham’s chains. One scruffy looking bodyguard stood just past him with a rifle in his hands. Graham couldn’t be sure if it had more sedative, or real bullets.
“You were a hard shifter to track down, Grant Lyons. Or Graham Long, as they call you now. Long time no see, Long.” Cyrus laughed at his own joke. “Johnny Ace was very put out that you didn’t want to pay
his hush money. It didn’t take him long to find another bidder.”
Graham only grunted.
Cyrus narrowed his eyes. “I owe you, Lyons, I owe you a lot. You busted up my business real good, didn’t you. And it’s been real hard to get it started again. Have to keep moving around, doing shows in new places, building new audiences. I had a good thing in London, and so did you.”
“There was nothing good about it,” Graham had to protest.
“You were good,” Cyrus reminded him. “Best fighter I ever had. Gave the crowd a real show, took a beating like a heavy bag and kept swinging. I would have made you rich beyond your wildest dreams. And you threw it away... for what? To be a gardener at a fancy resort where they treat you like trash?”
Graham nearly smiled. His life at Shifting Sands had been idyllic. He should have known it wouldn’t last.
There was a chorus of cheers from somewhere not far from them, and Cyrus grinned. “We’re warming them up for you, Grant.”
Graham got to his feet at last and could feel the sedative slowly leaving his limbs. There was still no whisper of his lion’s presence or the slightest hint of his mate-bond. “I’m not fighting for you again,” he said firmly.
“Oh, I think you are,” Cyrus laughed. “You’ve gotten soft over the years, Grant, and you’re weak.”
“Unchain me and see how soft I’ve gotten,” Graham challenged.
“Oh, you’re still a fighter,” Cyrus smirked. “But that’s not what I meant by soft.”
He snapped his fingers and a second, larger, bodyguard came from around the corner, a familiar figure stalking beside him.
Alice.
Her hands were bound, but only with rope. Her hazel eyes were blazing. “Graham? Graham, are you alright?”
“Does she even know your real name, Grant? I wouldn’t have guessed that girls would be your weakness,” Cyrus said thoughtfully, moving to brush her brunette hair back behind one ear. Alice jerked her head out of reach and glared at him.