The Minotaur's Kiss

by Erin St. Charles

  Diana entered the small private room. Julie Wheeler appeared battered and swollen and impossibly tiny in the hospital bed. Diana glanced around the room and noticed Mac and Bubba standing in the shadows, talking in quiet tones to Amanda Wheeler. Diana's gaze lingered on Mac for a few seconds, her heart fluttering in her chest so fast that she felt almost dizzy.

  She breathed in the mingled scents of the shifters in the room. Julie and her daughter smelled like freshly cut grass and some kind of burning spice, and Bubba smelled like himself, a faintly sharp scent that was common to mostly meat-eating shifters.

  Relief and excitement mingled with her residual resentment at having been lied to. Her body began to react to him, and she felt like a melted marshmallow inside. Her emotions were a confused jumble of anger and longing. She reminded herself that this man had lied to her. And as near as she could tell, it was for no other reason than he was afraid.

  Afraid of her reaction? Afraid of committing to her? Afraid to have children of his own?

  Her mind conjured the sensation of his arms around her after they were attacked at Julie Wheeler's apartment. Had he known then?

  How long had he known about her pregnancy? Had he just been courting her out of obligation? In her heart, she knew something was wrong the day of the fair. He'd been evasive, but he'd said he would tell her what was bothering him once the handover was done. When had he planned to tell her?

  A lump formed in her throat and tears stung her eyelids. She blinked rapidly to keep them from rolling down her cheeks. She was a fool, almost in tears over a man she could not be with...would not be with. Only he was the father of her child, and she wouldn't keep his child away from him. It then occurred to her that he might not want to be there for his child...their child. The idea of his rejection of their child made her seethe with irritation, but her stupid body still ached for him.

  Mac paused in his conversation and as if sensing Diana, turned to lock eyes with her. There were no surreptitious glances at a person with near panoramic vision. Diana glanced away, making a show of looking as if she hadn't noticed him at all.

  Mooning over a man who doesn't really want me... Foolish. Stupid.

  Mac excused himself from the conversation and approach Diana, his arms outstretched as if to embrace her. Her body wanted him to take her in his arms, but she held a hand up to stop him. His arms dropped to his sides as he looked down at her, his expression brooding. His huge body loomed over her, and she had to resist the urge to lean into him. As angry as she still was, somehow being close to him now was a comfort. She nodded at Julie and cleared her throat.

  "How is she doing?" Diana made herself look Mac in the eye.

  He paused before answering, looking at her so tenderly that Diana felt her resolve to reject him waver. "Not good, but they think she'll pull through. She was hit by a car. The driver said she jumped in front of him and he didn't have time to stop."

  Diana let this sink in for a moment, then asked, "Why?"

  Mac sighed and ran his fingers through his short hair and glanced first at Julie, then Amanda. He started to reach for Diana, then seemed to rein himself in. He nodded at the door.

  "Let's go talk outside."

  In the corridor, she crossed her arms over her chest and looked up at him, reminding herself once again that she was angry at this man.

  "Well," she demanded with a hiss, cocking an eyebrow.

  He gave her an exasperated sigh.

  "We think she was running away from her kidnapper and threw herself at the car that hit her."

  Diana blinked at Mac, not expecting this revelation. He continued.

  "They found her south of the city. Other than the injuries from the car accident, she looked clean and well fed. They think she either escaped from a nearby location or escaped while being transported. We have drones surveilling the area."

  "Why would she do that?"

  "Probably because she didn't have a choice." He was staring at her intently, his hooded eyes more hazel than blue.

  Diana frowned. If Julie had jumped in front of a moving car, she must have been desperate to get away. Thinking of their run-in with the changeling at Julie's apartment, she thought she could understand why Julie might choose being hit by a car over a confrontation with the changeling.

  "When will she wake up?"

  "No telling. As you know, shifters heal faster than most people." She caught a husky lilt to his voice, and she wondered whether he remembered when she'd knelt before him to pick splinters out of his knees after he'd "helped" her with her bathroom renovation--with disastrous results. The memory loomed in her mind at this moment, as it had for the past several days as she replayed the highlight reel of their relationship in her mind, trying to figure out how she could have trusted this man.

  Perhaps he sensed her defenses slipping, and he stepped a little closer to her, and she stepped back. Her shoulders slumped. She cast her eyes down to the antiseptic slickness of the white and gold flecked tiles. Suddenly, there wasn't anything else to say. Julie Wheeler had been recovered. Julie would survive this ordeal, and there was nothing else for Diana to do.

  Silence hovered between them. Diana cleared her throat and shifted her legs impatiently.

  "I think I should get going," she said, eyes cast to the floor. As she turned to leave, she felt his hand touching her arm gently.

  "Diana..."

  "I need to go, Mac."

  "Baby, please listen to me."

  She looked at his hand on her arm, then up into his eyes, which held a sad, pleading quality that made her heartache.

  She choked back a sob and tried to tug her arm away. But he held on, his heat radiating through the fabric of her tunic. She wanted to sink into his heat, allow her body to melt into his, listen while he told her everything would be okay.

  "Mac, let me go--"

  Something in her voice attracted the attention of the guard at the hospital door, who shifted on her feet and glanced over at Mac and Diana. Mac dropped his hand. He scrubbed his bristly hair with his fingers and gave her a pained look.

  "We need to talk...about the baby."

  These words hit her like a slap in the face.

  "Mac, I can't. Not right now." She took a big step back, well out of his considerable reach.

  "What are you going to do?" His eyes cast to the floor, then up at her again.

  What was he asking her, exactly? Was he asking whether she would terminate the pregnancy? Was that all he cared about?

  "Please tell Bubba to let me know when Julie wakes up."

  Mac made no attempt to stop her when she turned away from him and headed for the elevators.

  Chapter 40

  Wednesday, October 11, 2079. Evening.

  Anita Bodie kept a small law in a converted bungalow that put Mac in the mind of Diana's cottage. Like everything that mattered in Mac's world, the office was conveniently located near where he lived and worked, as near as his mate and the child nestled in her womb. Close in distance, always on his mind, but emotionally unattainable.

  The tiny office cut an incongruous figure amid the canyons of skyscrapers that dominated downtown Dallas. Retired from both the police force and from the bench, Mac's mother now worked part-time from this office, doing pro bono work in the shifter community, an interest she had first developed when Mac began his transition twenty-five years ago.

  Mac stood at his mother's front door, frozen by the guilt of not visiting more often. And as he stood at her front door, pushed aside the feelings of guilt he had for not visiting her more often. He wasn't sure why he was even there at the moment, what he hoped to accomplish, nor how he would be received.

  He stood on his mother's front porch, his head almost touching the ceiling, and raised his hand to knock on the door. Before his knuckles landed the door swung open, and his mother stood there beaming up at him.

  "Nice to see you son." He looked into eyes that were exact replicas of his own, deep blue with a hazel starburst near the pupils.
He also had her deep olive complexion, which did not wrinkle easily, and she looked much younger than her seventy-two years. She stepped forward to hug her son, and he stood there with his arms out, before awkwardly placing them around her. His mother was taller than the average woman, no doubt a trait inherited from the shifter father she never knew, but he still dwarfed her. He was acutely aware of the physical differences between himself and the rest of the family. He had been a "husky" kid and had morphed into a hulking adolescent who loomed awkwardly over everyone else in his family. The proximities that accompanied the normal affections of close family still produced a profoundly distressing sense of unease, a feeling of not belonging, that frankly exacerbated the low-level alienation common to his kind. The only person he could hold without feeling agitated was Diana.

  He tried to ignore the unease and embrace his mother, but she must have detected something in the way he held her that made her back up and look at him.

  "I forgot you no longer like being cuddled." She looked up at him with a sharp expression in her eyes. He gave her a befuddled smile, struck by how well his mother knew him.

  "No matter," she said, with a breezy tone to her voice. "Come in, boy."

  He was at least a foot taller than his mother, and she was dwarfed by his large size as she pulled him into the tiny cottage and guided him into what had once been a parlor and bedroom, and now served as her office.

  As a boy, Mac had shown up at his mother office after school, but never this particular location.

  "How long have you been in this office?"

  "A few years, which you would know if you came along more often." Her eyes twinkled at him, her expression teasing.

  "Mama, why haven't you retired yet?" His mother had had an illustrious career, first as a police officer, studying the law after becoming one of the youngest police lieutenants in the history of the Dallas Police Department. Later, she'd become an attorney and then a family court judge. He supposed his mother's example was instrumental in him choosing to become a protector of the weak, as much as the Minotaur ancestry she had unknowingly passed along to him.

  "Why should I? I set my own hours and take the cases that interest me. Why not keep working?"

  His mother called over her shoulder as she bustled toward the kitchen in the back of the house. He stood in what passed for a foyer in shotgun houses like this one. He saw his mother's personality reflected in the furnishings: the comfortable-looking sofa that looked as if it would swallow a person whole, the worn wooden coffee table with a collection of tactile toys, the old Persian rugs scattered around the room. He had heard through the grapevine that his mother combined her law enforcement, law, and bench experience to advocate for shifter children. While his mother wasn't a shifter, she had been raised in an orphanage and had a son and grandson who were shifters.

  The house was as straightforward as Diana's: cozy, unpretentious, homey. It bore the faint, flowery scent that always clung to his mother. Further into the house, his mother's sedate office was an intimate space that encouraged relaxation and shared confidences. He noted the screen at the far end of the room, cycling through the childish drawings her clients had made. Her plain wooden desk crouched at the opposite end of the room, and behind it, a tufted swivel chair made of vegan leather.

  He frowned at the small screen turned to her chair. A digital album of family and close friends, including several of him with his parents and siblings in which he loomed at least a head taller and wider in the shoulder than everyone else.

  One of these things is not like the other, he thought ruefully. He felt suddenly out of place again, reminded of why he'd stayed away so long. Diana's words to him at the fair came rushing back, as well as the tortured look on her face at the hospital. This reminded him that he'd failed her spectacularly. He turned away from the photo album, shoulders slumping.

  He should leave his mother's office now. He should walk down the hall, open the front door, down the steps, and into his truck. But he fought the urge to leave, realizing that Bubba was right about telling Diana everything from the beginning. Had he done that, he would have saved himself a lot of heartbreak. Instead of appearing on his mother's doorstep like a lost puppy, he could have walked in with Diana on his arm, introducing his mother to the love of his life.

  "What are you brooding about?"

  His mother had returned as he was lost in his musings. She set down the teacups and looked up at him, shoulders squared and eyes stern.

  He must have looked confused, because then she said, "My son, whom I haven't seen in the flesh in two years, shows up twice in the space of two weeks, looking down in the mouth. Why don't you come clean and tell me what you're doing here?"

  He told his mother everything. About how he met Diana, about how she was his mate, her family, her nieces, everything suitable for mixed company. When he got to the part about Diana being pregnant, he saw the color drain from his mother's face. She sat down in her guest chair and took several deep breaths.

  His brow creased in concern.

  "Mama?"

  His mother face was a mask of fury. Oh shit. He had said something wrong.

  Mac picked up a teacup, knelt in front of his mother, and held it out to her tentatively.

  His mother pushed the teacup away, causing some of the hot liquid to splash over his fingers. He winced at the pain as his mother began her sputtering rebuke.

  "You never so much as brought home a girl, never attended a dance, never went on a date. This. This is how you tell me I'm going to be a grandmother again?"

  His mother's face began to relax a bit, but Mac wasn't sure what to make of it. Was she happy or displeased?

  "You're forty-two years old. I just never thought I'd live to see the day." Her eyes went misty with unshed tears. "And now you're going to be a father." Her voice softened on that last word. She had a daffy, glazed expression on her face. She sighed with contentment, and he relaxed. His mother was pleased with his news. Too bad Diana wasn't.

  His mother now looked at him now with a dewy expression.

  "I'm happy for you son. Despite what you may think you deserve to be happy." She waved a hand at him, indicating she wanted help getting to her feet again.

  "Give me a hug, boy." He reached down and engulfed his mother

  "Mama what am I going to do?"

  His mother pushed him away, looked up at him with a cranky expression, then slapped his bicep with irritation.

  "Beg," she stated flatly. "Beg and grovel."

  "But..."

  She held up a hand to forestall his objections.

  "You deserve to be happy, whether you think so or not."

  This had him pulling up short and looking at her in astonishment. Clearly, his mother hadn't heard a word he'd said.

  "Do you still roam the streets at night?"

  "Well...not really."

  "Because you don't need to anymore. Because you found the woman you were always meant to protect." Her blue eyes looked into his, and he realized she was right.

  "Ulysses, she'll get over it. If she's the kind of woman you say she is, she just needs time to process everything. A month ago, she didn't even know you existed. Now she's having your baby." His mother gave him another shrewd look. "She is having your baby, isn't she?"

  Mac chuckled. "That's what she told me before she kicked me to the curb."

  "It's going to be okay, son." His mother looked up at him and beamed again. "It's gonna be nice to have another little baby around. Charlene's boy is seven now, and I doubt she's having any more."

  Mac shrugged. So much time had passed since he had kept up with his family, and he was surprised that so much time had passed since his younger sister Charlene had had her youngest. At the moment he did not have the same confidence his mother had in the likelihood of a positive outcome. Perhaps sensing her son's discomfort, Anita changed the subject.

  "Tell me about this case the two of you are working on," his mother said, looking up at him.

&n
bsp; Mac was grateful for the distraction. Once again, he began spilling his guts. When he was finished, she asked him something completely unexpected.

  "Have you looked into a possible link with Pantheon?"

  Mac frowned at her. "Why would they be involved?"

  "Well, it seems odd that this...creature would come after Diana at the same time the two of you are both assigned to a field inspection rotation where a bar girl goes missing, then a concubine handover where the changeling shows up again--for some reason. It can't be a coincidence."

  His mother's years as a cop, then a prosecutor came to the fore. She tended to be suspicious of everything and everyone.

  "I really think we are looking at a lone perpetrator kidnapping women for ...whatever reason," said Mac, frowning. "It was probably collecting trophies at Julie's apartment when we went looking for her."

  His mother shrugged. "Maybe you're right," she conceded. "I think it's too much of a coincidence."

  Mac had turned this possibility around in his brain but rejected it. He could think of no reason why Pantheon would kidnap sex workers. It seemed that everyone in the world wanted to work for the company. Still, it was hard to argue with his mother's instincts.

  The chirping of his Omni interrupted his stray thoughts. Bubba's scarred face appeared on the screen.

  "What?" Mac barked. His mother gave him a quizzical expression. Mac turned away from his mother and looked at the screen.

  "I'm on my way to the hospital. Julie Wheeler is awake."

  "She is?" Julie was expected to recover...but so soon? He couldn't wait to tell Diana - she had been so worried about the woman. Then he remembered: Diana was not talking to him. Fuck.