Claimed by Caden

by Serena Akeroyd

  His eyes flared wide, and he shook his head.

  “We’ll be back in twenty minutes. You better be here, the car, too. If not, I’ll send your picture to the cops, and drop them a line about how I saw you behind the wheel of a really nice ride. Do you hear me? And there’ll be a little something for your trouble on the way out.”

  He nodded quickly, and when she stared him out again, making him bow his head, she smiled with satisfaction. Turning to Caden, she motioned with her hand. “Come on. We don’t have long until someone starts looking for the car.”

  He bit back a smile, but did as she said. Together, they walked toward the motel. It didn’t say much that the entrance stunk of piss, and the reception had a cage around it. As soon as the door closed, he asked, more curious than concerned now, “Why did you imply we’d stolen the car?”

  She shrugged. “It was the best way to keep it safe. I could be wrong, but I don’t think he’ll touch it unless he has to.”

  “Won’t he just run off now we’re in here?”

  “Maybe. But, I doubt it. Sixty-five bucks for twenty minutes work is worth the hassle.”

  He grunted. “Well, I hope it works.”

  “Christopher will kill us if it doesn’t,” she mumbled with a groan. “I didn’t know you had a thing for cars, but I know he does. I just hope that little bastard does what I paid him to do. Let’s get Tommy, and we can get the hell out of here ASAP.”

  “Agreed.”

  They headed to the desk. It was empty. As was the rest of the hall. Then, suddenly, there was a shriek, and the sound of heels scurrying over the chipped tiles on the floor.

  “They don’t pay me enough for this shit. Fucking weirdo Johns. Growling...since when was that a fetish? Wrecking the furniture. I’m the one that’ll have to pick that shit up.”

  The mumbles were loud enough to echo down the dingy hall to the reception.

  He looked at Lia and said, “Well, I think we can safely say Tommy’s still here.”

  When a woman with pink dye bleeding through her hair appeared down the hall, dressed like a punk on speed, he called out, “You got a Tommy West staying here?”

  “In 2B?” Lia added quickly.

  “You gotta be fucking kidding me. You here for that sick fuck, already? I only just called your lot.”

  Lia looked at him, and whispered, “She thinks we’re the cops.”

  He snorted. “I may not be as street smart as you, babe, but I managed to figure that out.” She grinned at him, unoffended, and he just rolled his eyes as he spoke to the receptionist. “We’ll get him out of your hair.”

  The woman still grumbled. “You can tell the sick bastard I’m keeping his security deposit!”

  Caden waved a disinterested hand, and started down the hall the receptionist had just traversed. Signs led them up the stairs, and oddly, while the room started with two, it was actually on the third floor.

  From the staircase, sounds filtered from the rooms. The crashing of furniture, of growls, and wood splintering as it hit the walls echoed toward them. “Shit, he must have hit the transition,” Caden spat as he ran down the hall, Lia at his side, and together, they banged on the door.

  “Tommy? Tommy, it’s me. Lia! Can you hear me? It’s Lia!”

  A sudden silence filled the room.

  “Keep on speaking to him. Calm him down.”

  She nodded. “Tommy, I’m here to talk. You wanted to talk to me, remember? Caden is fine now. So here I am. Are you going to let me in?”

  More silence. But that was better than the roaring, splintering, and crashing sounds of before.

  “Come on, Tommy. It’s me!”

  Finally, a grunt sounded. It was close to the door. Close enough that Caden knew Tommy was on the other side. Listening.

  Shit, the man was probably terrified. Thinking he was some kind of science experiment gone wrong. He couldn’t let him continue thinking that because the other man’s terror was palpable.

  “Tommy, it’s Caden. What you’re going through, I went through when I was a kid.”

  Lia squeaked at him. “Shut up. He’ll listen to me.”

  “No. He’s scared. And he thinks if he opens the door, he’s going to hurt you. But you’ve got more control than that, don’t you, Tommy? You’d never hurt Lia, you’d never hurt her baby. Yeah, you heard right, Tommy. We’re having a baby. You’re going to be an uncle.”

  Silence was the only answer they got, until, “Go away,” sounded through the doorway.

  “I can’t go away, Tommy. I need to help you,” he told him. “You can’t deal with this on your own, nor should you have to. If your mom and dad were still around, they’d have explained all of this to you. But they’re not, and I’m here. You’ll just have to trust me. You’ve trusted me with your baby sister for all these years, so why should you stop trusting me now?”

  “Monster,” Tommy gritted out. “I’m...monster.”

  The tenor of his voice let Caden know that Tommy was either partially shifted, or he was fully shifted.

  Neither option filled him with glee. He’d hoped to find him in his human form. It would have made it so much easier to get back to Anchor. As it was, Caden didn’t know if the beast would be able to sit inside a car for the two hours it took to reach Anchor.

  They needed to calm him down, and fast.

  “You’re not a monster. Or, if you are, Lia is as well, and me, too. Are we all monsters? Or are we just different? Huh? Can’t we be that, Tommy?”

  “Something...from...comic book.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. To me, humans are weird.” He whispered the last part. “They can’t understand what we are, but at least for us, the beast in us can manifest. For humans, it’s stuck inside them. Festering away. That’s why they have so many serial killers. You never find anything like that in my society.”

  “Can’t come out. Lia...danger.”

  The short, but full first sentence had Caden sucking in a breath of relief. “You don’t have to come out. We can come in. Lia’s not in danger. She’s like you,” he lied. “She can take care of herself, and I’m here to make sure you don’t hurt her as well. But I don’t think you’d ever hurt her. I don’t think you’re capable of doing something like that.”

  “I’m not myself, Caden. I’m not. I can’t promise anything.”

  Lia looked at him, and the relief he felt was shared by her. Tommy was starting to talk normally, that was a good sign.

  “Let us in, Tommy. We can help,” Lia murmured, voice soft. “You’re my brother. Not a monster. And if you call yourself that, then you’re calling me that, too. I don’t take that kindly, buster.”

  A strangled laugh sounded from the bedroom, and then, with a creak, the door opened to unveil the pitch-black darkness of the room. Lia frowned, but started to step forward. Caden glared at her, dragged her back, and stepped in front. Hooking his arm behind her, he kept her close as they moved into the room.

  The door closed with a creak, and the light snapped on. Both of them blinked at the sudden brightness. Then glanced around what had once been an undoubtedly shoddy room, which was now wrecked to pieces.

  His eyes drifted over the bowed bed, the smashed dresser, and the legless chairs. Eventually, he found Tommy amid the carnage. Crouched on the floor beside the door, his back was to the wall, and his head rested against his knees.

  He was naked, far too thin, and he could see parts of his body that were healing. Huge tears in his skin, patches of redness where fur had undoubtedly sprung through too-small human pores. He winced at the sight of his brother-in-law and wished like hell he’d realized what the hell was going on with his wife and her family before Tommy had had to suffer through this alone. Had he been in the clinic, they’d have doped him up. The drugs wouldn’t have made the shitty transition pleasant, but it would have been a damned sight easier than this.

  “Tommy!” Lia cried out, apparently just spotting him herself. She ran over to him, then froze when his head shot up to loo
k at her. Caden could understand why. Tommy’s head wasn’t exactly its usual self.

  His face was half-shifted. No fur on his face, thank God for that, because she’d probably have fainted at seeing something which was pretty grotesque. But his eyes were almond-shaped. A bright minty, and completely inhuman, green. His jaw was elongated, stretched into a partial snout. And Caden knew, if he opened his maw, there would be huge-ass fangs lining his jaw.

  “Tommy,” Lia gasped, then threw herself beside him, and burrowed against his side. “Tommy, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry I didn’t come the other day. I didn’t know. I didn’t realize, I swear it.”

  From his defensive crouch of before, Tommy lifted a scratched and wounded arm, and curled it around Lia as he frowned down at his sister’s weeping form. He looked up at Caden, obviously confused.

  “She loves you, Tommy. You’re not a monster.”

  Tommy’s eyes closed and his jaw trembled.

  Slowly, he nodded, then buried his face into his sister’s hair.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I can’t believe we have to leave him at the clinic.”

  Caden eyed her with a faint frown. “Lia, you saw him in that bedroom. He had the wherewithal to hide out, but if the cops had reached the motel before we had, they’d have seen him like that. We don’t advertise what we are, honey. Keeping him here is best for everyone. Tommy included.

  “More importantly, he’ll have the help he needs. Do you know how painful it is for a man to go through the transition? It’s easier for females. You don’t shift like guys do. Your eyes will, your claws might extend, but that’s it. Plus, you have the added hormones from the babies you carry, which helps, but males don’t. They have nothing to ease the suffering of having the bones in your skull shift…. It’s fucking agonizing. We had to study it at school.”

  “You had classes on a half-breed’s shifting habits?”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Well, it was a Sex-Ed class. It was to try to discourage us from mating outside of our kind.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Foot in mouth, Caden?”

  He grinned. “I didn’t exactly listen to it, did I? I mean, I mated you knowing you weren’t my kind. Surely I get kudos for that?”

  She sniffed. “What about the whole ‘humans are weird to me’ spiel you told Tommy?”

  “I’d have told him blue was green to get him to calm down. Let’s just be thankful it worked! He needs to be here, Lia. They can give him the help he needs.”

  She nodded, but her lips were pursed. “I can understand it, but I don’t have to like it.”

  “That’s because he was calm when you were around. If you saw him on the rampage, being very un-Tommy-like then you’d understand and like it,” he told her frankly. “It won’t take long for him to learn to control himself, and until then, there’s always the phone.” When she didn’t reply, he muttered, “Let’s be glad Tommy’s safe and sound, and that we’re taking the car back in one piece. Your instincts were right about that kid.”

  “I knew too many like him back when I was at home. They just need the right incentive.”

  “Sixty-five bucks, your bracelet, and the threat of grand theft auto works every time,” he teased, and was relieved when she chuckled.

  “Yeah, that was rather smart of me, wasn’t it? I’ve just stopped my mother in-law from hating my guts. I can’t imagine what Christopher would have done if we’d come back in a cab.”

  “He’d have killed me, and been nice to you.” When she scoffed, he shook his head. “No, seriously. You watch how differently both mother and father treat you when you get home.”

  “But I’m still not like you.”

  “No, but the baby will be. Babies like ours tend to follow the bloodline of the purebred parent. Your bloodwork presented the Wolf in your DNA as recessive. So, in our case, our babies will be Lions.”

  “Lions. Shit.”

  As he pulled onto Main Street, he turned to cock a brow at her. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m carrying a Lion. That sounds so wrong.”

  He snorted. “You’re carrying a baby, Lia. You’re not going to birth a cub.”

  “Thank Christ for that!”

  Caden reached for her hand and rested it on his thigh. “I’m sorry you had to learn about all of this in such a crappy way.”

  She shrugged. “It’s not your fault my mom and dad didn’t tell us.”

  “No, it isn’t. I just wish you hadn’t seen Tommy like that. The transition is tough, Lia. You won’t see him that way again. We shift or we don’t shift. It’s not like in the movies. We’re one or the other. I wish you could have seen my Lion before you saw Tommy at his worst.”

  She squeezed his fingers. “Damn, I was lucky to meet you.”

  He grinned. “That could be said for both of us.”

  “You can still show me your Lion today. I’d like to see it.”

  Despite himself and his inner voice telling him to be cautious, he was excited by her request. “Seriously? You would like to see him?”

  At his excitement, she chuckled. “Yeah, I would.”

  He grinned again, then peered up at the sky. “There’s probably enough daylight for you to see me in the woodlands. That’s where we all run,” he explained.

  The brakes squealed as he took them away from Main Street and headed down through some narrow lanes that led them out onto the parking area beside the woods.

  Lions were creatures of the morning for the most part. They preferred to run after dawn hit than at dusk, and the number of cars in the lot reflected that fact. There were two trucks, but that was all.

  “Why aren’t there more people about? If this is the place where you all get together and run?”

  He shrugged as he parked the car beside one of the trucks. “We tend to do things in the morning. That’s why I go for my run then. We have meetings and congregations either before dawn or just after. All of our important occasions happen when the sun rises. I guess it’s just tradition.”

  She frowned at that. “I’d say that’s a weird tradition, but at the same time, you all turn into Lions, so I guess that’s pretty normal.”

  He rolled his eyes at her. “Come on. We’d best get out before we lose the light.”

  As he climbed out of the car, she followed him, and hand in hand, they walked down the arched pathway that led into a deeper clearing. The arch had been formed hundreds of years ago by joining the longest branches of two trees on either side of the path. Now, with autumn just hitting, the branches were heavy with red-gold leaves, and the pungent smell of nature and all its bounty hit him as they meandered into the clearing.

  “Is this the changing room?” she asked, staring at four piles of heaped clothes on the grass.

  “Yeah, I guess you could call it that.”

  “Ooh, I’m glad you’re the kind of shifters that have to strip to shift.”

  He frowned. “As opposed to?”

  “Ones that magick themselves into shape and then back into their clothes.”

  “You really read too many paranormal stories.”

  She smiled at him, sweetly. That meant danger. “I know. Like you said earlier, they’ve put me in good stead. At least I’m not totally freaking out at the idea of you turning into a Lion.”

  Caden grimaced. “As great as that is, I promise you, I won’t look like your brother did.”

  “Thank fuck for that,” she retorted, sounding bolshie but she also wrapped her arms around her belly.

  He hated that she’d had to see her brother in that half-state. Where he was neither shifted nor human. He had looked like a monster, like something from a sixties’ horror film. At least a pure-breed Lion was a Lion.

  He was about to start stripping off when she mumbled, “I won’t look like that, will I, Caden? I–I won’t have that whole half-snout thing?”

  He’d love to lie to her, but he wouldn’t. “Baby, I told you already, you’re not going to look like me when I s
hift. Male half-breeds can shift fully, but not females. You’re going to get bigger. Even in your human form. The next time you see Tommy, he’ll look different. It’s only natural. It’s like you’ve both been going through puberty for all these years, and now, you’re turning into adults.

  “You’ll get taller, your muscles are going to develop. Your senses will improve so you can see and hear so much more. The most that’s going to happen is what’s already happened by the sound of it. Your pupils will elongate, your claws extend. Other than that, you’ll have all the powers of a shifter without the actual shift.”

  She frowned. “That’s not fair.”

  He couldn’t help but laugh. “I thought you’d have preferred that!”

  “No. That means when you want to go running, I can’t go with you.”

  “Of course you can. You’ll be fitter. Stronger. You’ll have a larger metabolism, too.”

  She perked up at that. “That means I can eat more without putting on weight, right?”

  He snorted. “Trust you to pick up on that.”

  “Hey, buddy, some of us have to work at looking good, you know. We can’t all eat ten bear claws and not worry about the repercussions.”

  “Well, neither will you once you’ve had the cub.”

  She bit her lip at that, then narrowed her eyes. “So, I’m like Superwoman, then?”

  He jerked a shoulder. “Depends. You can’t fly, but if you want to put your fist through a wall, then you’ll be A-OK.”

  A wicked grin curled about her lips. “I think I can cope with that. Plus, I don’t have to go through what Tommy does.” She patted her belly. “Morning sickness sucks, but it’s twenty-four carat in comparison. Thanks, baby.”

  He grinned at the sight of his mate talking to her belly. “Yeah. Female half-breeds have it easier. You’re exposed to the cub’s hormones, and that exposure sort of pushes you over the other side. Pretty much while you sleep, the changes will take place. Males don’t get that opportunity. So it’s a longer, harder, and more painful process.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, so much easier. We only have to give birth. And we all know how joyous an experience that is.”