Shifter Planet: The Return

by D. B. Reynolds

  She knelt next to him and began yanking the darts out of his hide, her anger growing with each one she pulled. They’d clearly wanted the animal alive—why else use tranqs instead of bullets? But they’d used so many that he might die anyway.

  “Help me,” she demanded, struggling to roll the heavy animal onto his side.

  “Fuck that,” one of the men growled.

  “He’ll die if I don’t move him, and I don’t think you want that,” she snapped, still yanking darts as she shoved her shoulder under the cat and tried get him onto his side.

  “Do it,” a rough voice ordered. She looked up to see Frank White giving her a hard stare. “He’s worth nothing to us dead.”

  Rachel wanted to be shocked, but she wasn’t. Once she’d recognized Wolfrum’s deceit for what it was, she’d lost the ability to be shocked by anything about this mission.

  One of the men dropped to his knees next to her, while two others each grabbed one of the cat’s legs on the left side. One of them gave a count and they all pushed and pulled in unison, turning the cat onto its side.

  “You’d better stop that fucking animal from dying, Fortier,” White growled. “He’s the only reason you’re still alive.”

  Rachel nodded wordlessly. Like she needed him to tell her that.

  She reached into her backpack for a bottle of water. Opening it, she poured some into the cat’s mouth, to keep his tongue and gums moist. Next, she pulled out every syringe in her stash, and filled them to the brim with antidote for the tranq. She needed to counteract the effects right away, before—

  “What are you doing?” White demanded.

  She glanced up at him. “You’ve overdosed him. He’ll die if I don’t counteract the tranquilizer.”

  “Fuck that. He killed three of my men without breaking a sweat, and we might still lose Ripper. I don’t want him coming around until he’s secured onboard.”

  She stared at him then. Secured onboard? They must have prepared for this. Of course, they had. Which meant there was a cage, maybe more than one, designed to hold this very powerful animal. No wonder they’d kept her on the margins of the shipboard routines. They hadn’t wanted her to see evidence of their true plans.

  “Do you want him dead?” she asked flatly.

  White glared at her, his mouth pinched tight with anger and maybe a little fear. “Keep him alive, but under. And remember, you’ll be the first one he kills if he comes to.”

  She didn’t bother to respond, but she put half the loaded syringes back into her pack. She’d need them later, because she had no intention of permitting them to leave Harp with this animal in a cage. She was going to do everything in her power to see to it that Wolfrum’s hunters were shut down cold. No more animals were going to be captured on Harp, even if she had to hike to the city on her own to be sure the proper authorities knew what was going on.

  Unfortunately, her best chance of achieving all of that was to go along for now.

  She stroked a hand over the cat’s silky, golden fur, and leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “I’m going to get you out of this, baby. Don’t you worry.”

  Chapter Four

  Ciudad Vaquero, capital city of Harp, aka “the city”

  Amanda Sumner de Mendoza stood on the balcony of her house in the city, one hand braced on the rough bark of the wooden support post, the other rubbing her swollen belly where two tiny shifter babies were just learning to drive their momma nuts. She’d never thought of herself as particularly maternal, but now, as she tried to persuade her two little hooligans to sleep a while, she knew a fierce protectiveness that eclipsed anything she’d ever felt. She’d never thought of herself as having much of a voice, either, but apparently the twins didn’t care about her voice or the words she sang. Mostly she simply hummed along with the song she heard in the trees, and that seemed to calm her two little shifters better than just about anything. Just about. Their daddy’s presence, his touch on her belly when he spoke to them, that was the sure thing. The kittens knew their alpha.

  She smiled, thinking that her darling Rhodry had better not get used to that kind of obedience from his offspring. Because these babies were hers, too, and she’d had a thing against authority figures for as long as she could remember.

  But for right now, they were peaceful, drinking in the ageless calm of the endless Green, the soothing rhythms of a forest in springtime. The Green always lived up to its name, but this time of year, the vast forest belt went wild with new life and growth amidst the amazing varieties of flora and fauna.

  She rocked slightly from foot to foot, knowing she’d have to sit soon. She could almost feel her ankles growing puffier, the skin tightening, her feet aching. She heard Rhodry’s footsteps approaching from inside and stepped back, intending to sit on the well-padded chair he’d arranged for her, when suddenly…everything changed.

  She staggered, crying out in pain, as the forest screamed its agony.

  “Amanda!” Rhodry was there the next instant, his powerful arms surrounding her, holding her on her feet when she would have fallen. He turned, placing his body between her and the forest, but they both knew there was no threat from that direction. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t in their backyard.

  “Aidan,” Rhodry whispered, and she looked up at him in surprise. “Something’s happened to him. Christ, I can’t—”

  “Shhh.” It was her turn to be the protector, to soothe all three of the men she loved, because her babies, too, had reacted to the pain in the forest’s song, something they could hear every bit as well as she and Rhodry. She sorted through that pain now, trying to make sense of it. “He’s alive, Rhodi. That’s what matters. And the others will have felt it, too. They’ll be on their way. Don’t go alone.”

  “I’m not leaving you, acushla. Who knows—”

  “Am I not a member of the Guild, de Mendoza? Did I not pass the trials, same as you did? I’m pregnant, not paralyzed. And it’s not like you’ll be leaving me all alone. There’s an entire city full of people just waiting for these two little terrors to show up.” Their twins weren’t the first on Harp, but they were the first twin shifters. The few shifters previously born as part of a twin pair had all been the male half of a male/female set—with the female twin being born a “norm.” Only males were shifters on Harp. In fact, the shifter trait was sex-linked, which meant the male offspring of shifters were always born shifter, while female offspring didn’t even carry the gene. “We’ll be fine,” Amanda assured him.

  Rhodry’s arms squeezed tighter, and he shook his head.

  “Rhodi, go. We’re perfectly safe.”

  “You’re right. The cousins will have heard the same thing we did,” he insisted. “They’ll already be on their way.”

  She pushed away from his chest and gazed up at him, this man she loved more than she’d ever thought possible. “Your cousins are more than capable, but Aidan will need you. There’s no one he trusts more.”

  Rhodry’s golden eyes had gone completely cat. They were always beautiful, but there was a wildness to them, a predatory calculation that wasn’t there when he was in full human mode.

  He nodded, then dropped to his knees, his hands big enough to span her growing belly as he pressed a kiss to it. “Take care of your mother, you little heathens. And be good until I get back.”

  Amanda would have sworn she felt the babies stiffen to attention at their alpha’s command. She threaded her fingers through his long hair and laughed, her hand trailing down his broad back as he stood up. “You be good, de Mendoza,” she whispered. “And come back to us.”

  “I love you,” he growled and took her mouth in a passionate kiss that made her forget all about her swollen ankles and battered bladder.

  “Love you, too,” she whispered. “We’ll be here waiting.”

  He gave her one final, hard kiss, then stepped back, stripping off his clothes as he moved. A moment later, he leaped first to the top of the bannister, and then off into the air in a swirling stor
m of black and gold. A huge, black hunting cat hit the soft forest floor, pausing to look up only once to where Amanda was blowing him a kiss, and then, in a haze of speed, he was gone. She heard the soft scrape of heavy claws on bark in the distance—but only because he’d let her—and then nothing.

  “That’s your daddy,” she murmured to her twins, love in every syllable.

  A soft knock prefaced the opening of a door in the room behind her. She turned, unworried, already knowing who it was.

  “Cullen,” she greeted him warmly. “You could have gone with Rhodry, you know. We’re fine here.”

  He gave her a faintly insulted look. “I’m right where I need to be, lass. Aidan will have plenty of help. You only have me.”

  She reached up and gripped his huge shoulder. Cullen was the youngest, and biggest, of the many Devlin cousins. Rhodry had asked him to look after her when they’d first returned from their harrowing journey off the glacier nearly two years ago. They’d both been betrayed by people they should have been able to trust, and Rhodry had needed to report to the Ardrigh about just how bad things had gotten. He’d only been gone a few hours, but Cullen had taken his bodyguard duties to heart, and he was still here. Still looking after her.

  She started to say something, to thank him, but a sudden movement rippled over her belly and she gripped his arm instead, her other hand pressed to the little foot stretching her skin as clearly as if she held it in the flesh.

  “Amanda?” There was a note of terror in Cullen’s voice that made her laugh. This giant shifter would face the hounds of hell for her, but not a pair of lively babies.

  “Don’t worry,” she said a little breathlessly. She eased herself down onto a chair, punching the pillows until they supported her belly. “We’ve plenty of time before these two little troublemakers arrive.”

  He drew a deep breath of relief. “Right. Do you need anything? Water? Food?”

  “Just some rest in the sun. The twins like it out here on the porch.” Her eyes drifted shut, and she felt a soft blanket fall over her a moment before sleep claimed her.

  Chapter Five

  “I’m going to get you out of this, baby. Don’t worry.”

  The woman’s breath had been warm against his sensitive ears, her voice low and intimate. Nice words, but how the hell was she going to deliver?

  Aidan couldn’t move yet, but his senses were returning with a speed that probably would have shocked his captors. He didn’t remember how he’d gotten there, but he knew where he was. He was on that damn ship. His nose was telling him that much, even without the added input of the hard floor beneath his body, the distant echo of muted voices, and the constant hum of the engine that thrummed against his returning nervous system with a unique sort of pain. He doubted his captors were aware of that, either.

  He kept his eyes closed, not because he didn’t want them to know he was awake, but because it made it easier for him to concentrate on the most important aspect of this whole fiasco—he could not permit himself to shift.

  Every instinct he had was screaming at him to do just that, because shifting back and forth once or twice would heal his injuries and restore him to full, roaring strength in no time at all. But he wouldn’t do it. Couldn’t. These men, whoever they were, thought they’d captured an exotic animal. And he had to keep it that way until he figured out how to escape this clusterfuck that he’d gotten himself into.

  He didn’t coddle himself into believing it was bad luck or happenstance that had brought him here. This was his fuck-up. He’d made the biggest mistake that anyone could—he’d underestimated the enemy. He’d followed them back and forth for days, suspecting their motives but never believing they represented a real threat. And they’d lulled him right into their trap.

  His only consolation was the certain knowledge that by now, every shifter on the planet was aware not only of his capture, but of the menace posed by the invaders. They’d made a huge mistake when they’d attacked the forest to get to him. Even trapped as he was in this metal cocoon, he could hear the trees blasting out a warning nonstop. Amanda had told him once that the trees had a special love for their shifters. Add to that the danger these Earthers had shown themselves to pose for the entire planet, and the trees’ song would be one long scream of warning.

  By now, his shifter cousins would be on their way out of Clanhome, and Rhodry would have launched a hunting party out of the Guild Hall, too. Aidan wasn’t sure how many of the human invaders he’d killed—one or two might only have been injured. But if those bastards thought one shifter was lethal, wait until they had an entire hunting party on their asses.

  He smiled inwardly. Thoughts of his cousins and impending rescue had him cracking his eyes open just enough to scan his surroundings. They’d put him in a cage. How fucking insulting was that?

  But he forced himself to set aside emotion and examine the enclosure for weakness, wanting to be sure he could break out when reinforcements arrived. There’d be a bloodbath once his Devlin cousins showed up, and he didn’t want to be sitting in a damn cage like a rabbit waiting for slaughter. He wanted in on the mayhem.

  What he found wasn’t reassuring, however. It was a damn good cage. Whoever their source had been, whichever Harper had betrayed his own people by revealing the existence of shifters, he’d given the invaders good intel on how to contain one. Or at least, he’d given details about the big cats, which were the animal face of shifters. Aidan still wasn’t convinced that the Earthers were aware of his dual nature.

  His other senses told him there were no people in the immediate vicinity of his cage, so he opened his eyes enough to take in more details. Two cameras were mounted at ceiling level, one on each wall, moving in a constant 180-degree arc to cover the entire holding area. His eyes widened. There were six fucking cages here. His capture was only the beginning.

  Or so they thought, he reminded himself. Their hunt, whatever its ultimate goal, was over. Their fucking lives were over. Because the safest outcome for Harp was for Aidan and his fellow shifters to leave none of their enemies alive to tell the tale. An instinctive growl rumbled up from his chest. He didn’t know if they had audio on their spy cameras, but if they did…so be it. Let them recognize the beast they’d invited onto their ship.

  Without warning a door opened to his left, far enough to the side that he couldn’t see it without turning his head and giving away the fact that he was awake. He closed his eyes to let his other senses take over, but a moment later, he detected a familiar scent.

  It was the woman. And she wasn’t alone.

  …

  “Is he still alive?” Rachel hurried over to the cage. The cat should have woken by now, but she wasn’t going to tell the guard that.

  “That’s your job, doc. It’s why you’re here.”

  “Open this damn thing,” she demanded, reaching for the bars of the cage door.

  “Stop,” Frank White barked, coming in behind her. “Don’t touch that.” He tapped a keypad on the wall, entering a four-digit code when the panel came to life. “The bars are electrified.”

  Rachel stared in horror. “Are you trying to kill him?”

  “Hell, no. He’s worth too much alive. We’re just making sure he can’t kill us. Go ahead. The field’s down, and the cell’s open. Do your thing.”

  Rachel wanted to tell him where he could shove his electrical field. But while White might be the worst of the lot, the entire crew—these people she’d spent weeks with, some of whom she’d considered friends—seemed wholly unconcerned with what they’d done. Not only had they caged this magnificent animal for money, but they’d inflicted wanton destruction on the forest and its inhabitants in order to draw him into their trap.

  She turned away without a word. Cursing Frank White might be satisfying, but it wouldn’t help the cat who was her main concern. She touched one bar of the cell door carefully, not trusting that the electric field was really off. White struck her as the kind of man who’d get a kick out of shocking
her, just for the fun of it.

  But the bar was cold and still, so she wrapped her fingers around it and pulled the door open, going immediately to her knees next to the golden beast. He was so much bigger than she’d thought. He’d minimized his size when she’d encountered him in the forest on her own, crouching down, keeping a low profile. It was typical predatory behavior, designed to lull one’s prey closer. A small thrill of excitement shivered over her nerves, despite the horrific situation. To see such a beautiful creature up close and personal was something she’d only dreamt about. It was why she’d continued her xeno-veterinarian studies well beyond what was necessary to qualify as a planetary specialist.

  She rested a hand on the cat’s side, soaking up the heat of his body, feeling the hard beat of his heart. Her fingers dug into his thick fur and slid all the way down his side to his hind legs. There was a wound there, with wet blood still staining the fur of his flank. The injury had probably been sustained in his headlong crash to the forest floor. She touched his leg gently, and he jerked in reaction just enough to reveal…oh yeah, definitely male.

  From his watchful position on the other side of the bars, White grunted in reluctant admiration, and Rachel smiled grimly. Men and their dicks. She hoped the bastard couldn’t get it up for a long time, thinking about his own inadequacies.

  “You don’t need to stay, White,” she told him, without turning. “You guys hit him with a lot of tranq. I’m going to hydrate him some, but he’ll be out for a while yet.” It wasn’t as if White could protect her, anyway. If the cat’s ferocious assault earlier was any indication, White would be dead meat in minutes if the cat decided to attack. And she wouldn’t exactly mourn his passing, either. Assuming she was around to mourn anyone. The cat had no way of knowing she hadn’t been part of this unspeakable crime.