One True Mate 1: Shifter's Sacrifice

by Lisa Ladew

  Trevor sucked in a breath. Mac knew him well. Knew exactly what he would be thinking. He waved his hand. “You know as well as I do it’s hard for us to get humans pregnant. And half-breeds aren’t dangerous, just… unpredictable. Like humans.” He sighed, knowing he needed to admit it. “What do I know about the One True Mates? No more than anyone. Maybe you’ll find some among the hookers.”

  Mac laughed long and hard at that. “You giving up, Trev-Trev? I almost like you better with a little spunk in you. Almost.”

  Wade returned to his seat and glared at Mac. “Enough, meow-mix-for-brains. Keep a lid on your disrespect or I will let Trevor have at you next time. The Light knows you deserve it after all you’ve been pulling lately.”

  Mac half growled-, half-whined deep in his throat, his version of an apology, but it did Trevor no good to hear it. Mac was a non-issue to him. All he cared about was Wade releasing them. Getting out of there.

  The police radio on the table crackled, a distorted male voice sending out instructions.

  All units, respond to the area of 15th and Terrace Dr. Multiple reports of an explosion outside a store.

  Wade held his hand up and turned up the volume. They all knew who made explosions happen. Trevor tried to care, tried to start the strategic side of his brain, but he couldn’t.

  Until his best friend’s voice crackled over the radio.

  “Unit 632 here, Central,” he heard Blake say, his voice excited, his breath coming in pants like he was running. “I’m right around the corner. I heard the explosion. It’s him, it’s Khain, I know it is. I can feel him. I can hear him!”

  Mac swore and stood, and so did Wade. “Fucker isn’t supposed to say that name on the radio and he knows it!” Mac yelled, even as Wade snatched up the radio and bellowed into it. “632, backup, you wait for backup! Who’s close by?”

  Trevor stood, his desire for self-destruction suddenly replaced by his need to help his friend. But more than that, he finally had his chance. If he got out there quickly enough, he could finally see Khain face to face. Finally prove that he was the subject of the prophecies… or prove that he wasn’t. He’d been preparing for this his entire life.

  That is, if Blake was right. If Khain had finally resurfaced for the first time since he’d murdered Trevor’s own mother, stealing her from his life. Since he’d murdered almost every female shifter on the planet, robbing the very future of all the shiften.

  Trevor shook his head, a growl building deep in his chest, his teeth and claws growing of their own accord. He stood and sprinted toward the door, not hearing Wade’s frantic words to him as he ran.

  He couldn’t stop, no matter what they were.

  Chapter 6

  Ella pushed outside into the sunshine, feeling the bite of the autumn wind touch her face. Instead of the cold clearing her head, the intrusive thoughts immediately got worse, making her sag against the building. They weren’t painful, at least not physically, but mentally they were like nails on the chalkboard of her mind.

  The Promised. I can smell her. She’s scared.

  The vision or hallucination she had seen earlier in her attic screamed into her mind, the face of the boy on the swing set with the strange shirt filling her range of view, making her momentarily blind. She tried to take a step, but faltered. She blinked her eyes again and again, until the face cleared.

  Ella looked around, feeling frantic pulses of fear pulling at her. She hated the feeling, but was helpless to stop it at the same time. Somehow she knew that this was no panic attack. This was not more evidence that her mind was falling apart. This was something much, much worse, and she had to run, had to hide, had to get away from whatever was coming.

  She swung her head left, then right, crouching slightly, ready to run as soon as she knew what she was running away from. The street looked normal. A mother pushing a baby carriage toward her from her left. A shopkeeper sweeping off the street to her right, a loud group of Girl Scouts, moms in tow, heading into the ice cream shop across the street.

  To her right, one block away, a man appeared, turning the corner. A huge man with muscles that had to make women stare and an exotically handsome face, all harsh lines and dark eyebrows framed by long dark hair. To Ella, he looked like a Polynesian warrior from another time, but also like death. He wore hip-hugging jeans and a black t-shirt with a cartoon rendition of three pink pigs in champion’s poses, holding up their fists in triumph. At first glance, the man seemed normal, but Ella knew immediately he was what she should be running from. It was his thoughts she had overheard, his intentions she was reading and reeling from.

  His eyes found hers and she hugged the wall next to her in fright, making small noises of fear and hating herself for doing so. She had no way of knowing the color of his eyes from this far away, but she knew they flashed yellow all the same. He lifted his left hand to his mouth and puffed on a cigar and she felt her fear ramp up inside her. She whimpered again, the noise getting her going finally. Her feet moved on their own, pulling her away from him, anywhere but where he was. He passed the shopkeeper, who didn’t look up, but took a step backwards as if sensing something he didn’t want to deal with.

  Ella kept backing up, until she heard a baby’s cry behind her. She threw a glance over her shoulder and saw the mother with the stroller had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, the stroller sideways, blocking most of the way past. Ella pushed away from the wall and stepped off the curb. She couldn’t lead this man towards the mother and baby. He might hurt them. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did, as sure as she knew her own name.

  A laugh from the direction she was traveling in caught her frantic attention and she whipped her head towards the sound. Some Girl Scouts, ten or twelve of them, walked aimlessly down the sidewalk in groups of twos and threes, all with ice cream cones in their hands, giggling.

  She couldn’t retreat behind her. She couldn’t draw the monster─ she was sure that’s what he had to be─ across the street. And there was no way she would head toward him. That left only one choice. Back into Mrs. White’s store. She had to have a back door somewhere.

  Ella forced herself back to the door, hating how the action took her closer to the direction she didn’t want to move in, even as the man grinned knowingly at her. He was close now, within twenty feet of her. She could see his eyes were actually blue, not yellow. Not that it mattered. The fat, pink pigs on his shirt seemed to dance obscenely and for the first time she saw the words on the shirt.

  The Three Little Pigs are Heroes

  Ella whimpered again, then slipped inside and slammed and locked the door.

  “You, girl!” Mrs. White said from behind her. “Get out of here! We’ve done our business! All sales are final. You can’t have your things back.”

  Ella blinked against the darkness of the shop and hurried into the center of the room, throwing glances behind her. “Mrs. White, we have to get out of here. Someone is coming. He means to hurt─”

  “Now you listen here, girly.” Mrs. White ducked behind the counter with surprising ease. When she reappeared she had a shotgun in her hands, pointing straight at Ella. “I’m not going anywhere, but you most certainly are. I’ve asked you to leave, I won’t tell you again.”

  Ella froze at the sight of the gun, then looked back at the doorway. If he came, maybe the gun would dissuade him.

  The four square windows were still clear, a bit of cold blue sky showing. She looked back at Mrs. White, her inexplicable fear still palpable, but somehow more controlled now. “You know, you really shouldn’t pull a gun on people unless you are willing to use it.”

  Mrs. White scoffed and socked the gun into her shoulder. “Try me, honey, I’ve shot two husbands and a tax collector. It won’t bother me for a second to shoot you, too.”

  Before Ella could even blink at that, a darkening in the room made her palms sweat. She turned slowly, knowing what she was going to see.

  The face at the window made her suck in a breath and thi
nk she must have misjudged the man’s age before. She would have put him at twenty-five, but now he looked older. A hearty and terrifying fifty. As she backed away, his features shifted slightly, wrinkles disappearing before her eyes, and now the man was a wise and menacing thirty. Still unbelievably tall, with biceps like beams of sculpted steel.

  She knew what she was seeing was not who this man really was. She also knew she’d been waiting to meet him her entire life. Something wound his fate with hers, something dark and rancid that she didn’t want to face.

  She’d dreamed of him.

  The door opened slowly, appearing to float open at some mental command.

  “Oh God,” Ella breathed, her legs shaking. She turned her body so her back was to Mrs. White and she took several unsteady steps backwards until she felt the counter dig into her back.

  “What in the hell are you doing, girl?” Mrs. White hissed at her, then in a normal voice, she spoke to the man who was walking through the doorway, a satisfied smile on his face. “Hello there, what may I help you find?”

  Ella saw the gun was gone. “Mrs. White, your gun, get it. Get it now.”

  The man smiled, as if the two of them were being naughty girls, hoping for a punishment. “Promised. Come here.”

  Ella shrank against the counter, whimpering again at the voice. It wasn’t human. It couldn’t be. It sounded like death moaning at your windows to be let in, and it made her skin crawl with the sensation of a thousand spider feet. Her hands snuck to cover her ears. She snaked her way around the counter, meeting Mrs. White there.

  Mrs. White’s face had gone gray, and her eyes moved between the man who had just entered and Ella. “What’s going on here? Some sort of a crazy sex game between you two? I won’t have that licentiousness in here, you understand?” She reached under the counter again. Ella would have rejoiced if she didn’t feel sick to her very core.

  The man raised his right hand and passed it in front of him, almost lazily, even as his left hand flicked ashes on Mrs. White’s floor.

  Mrs. White began to shriek as her fox stole came to life, let go of its own tail, and sank its teeth into her shoulder.

  Eyes wide, stomach constricting, Ella raised her hands and went for Mrs. White, unsure of what she could do, but wanting to help.

  “No!” Mrs. White shrieked, as she fought with the fox, her wrinkled hands wrapped around its midsection. “Stay away from me! How did you do that? Oh, you hateful little bitch!”

  Ella shrank away, running into the back wall of the place. Her fumbling, grasping hands found a doorknob. The back door! She had to run, had to get away. She turned around, grasping the door knob and twisting but she knew immediately she wasn’t going to make it.

  He’d somehow crossed the room in an instant and was right behind her. She could feel his presence, like a wall of stiff fabric pressing into her from behind.

  His hand grasped her shoulder. Ella screamed at the touch, and at the strange sensation that filled her when it happened.

  Fireworks consumed her vision and her body took over, but her mind was gone.

  Chapter 7

  Trevor yanked the wheel and slammed on the brakes to avoid running through the yellow crime tape. He threw the truck in park and twisted the keys violently, even as he opened his door and jumped out. Trent and Troy had already leaped out the window and were racing into the heart of the scene, causing people to jump back in fright.

  Unorthodox behavior, but this was an unorthodox situation. Damage control could come later.

  Within moments, Trevor stood in front of a burned-out storefront, having picked his way over blackened bricks the entire way. Fire was on scene standing by, but nothing seemed to be burning anymore. Trevor sniffed the air and smelled only lingering scents he would sort through later, including one enticing sweet smell that made his blood pound. Khain was long gone. Trevor’s shoulders sagged.

  This wasn’t his moment after all.

  He could see his brothers inside, working, scenting, both as disappointed as he that Khain had come and gone.

  A woman in an ambulance parked nearby swore and screamed, one hand clamped to her shoulder, blood running freely under it. The paramedics tried vainly to get her to calm down and let them treat her, but she kept screaming and baring her teeth at them. Behind another ambulance, twenty girls dressed in Girl Scout uniforms clustered together, throwing scared glances toward the screaming woman.

  “Lieutenant,” a voice called, and Trevor turned towards his friend, relief filling him.

  “Blake, damn it, you almost gave me a heart attack. Did you see him? Was he really here?”

  Blake stepped close and looked around before he spoke. “The baby-killer? Yeah, that fucker was here alright. I didn’t see him, but I knew it was him before I even got here.”

  “How?”

  Blake looked up at Trevor and shook his head, slowly. “I could feel him. Like nothing I’ve ever felt in my life. Like I was a magnet and he was a big-ass piece of steel. I couldn’t have waited for backup even if I wanted to. It was like I was born just to hunt that fucker down.”

  Trevor shook his head and grasped Blake’s arm. “That’s exactly what you were born for, what we all were born for. You know that, but you still have to wait for backup. You can’t fight him alone.”

  Blake waved it away. “I know, I know, but, Trev-man, I could feel him. And I could hear him talk in my mind. I swear I know the exact second he popped into existence here, and the exact second he popped out.”

  “Is that because you were so close to him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “What did you hear him say?”

  “First he said, ‘she’s close, I can feel it.’ Then a minute later he said ‘The Promised. I can smell her. She’s scared.’ A minute or two after that he said, ‘Promised. Come here.’ But that last one was different somehow.” He shook his head and held up a hand. “Don’t ask me how. I don’t understand it. I don’t get any of it. I just know it was different.”

  He pointed to the end of the storefronts where a road t-boned into the one they were standing on. “I was giving a speech at the middle school two blocks down Crescent St. when I first heard him. It was like a humming in my mind. I left the classroom, just walked out. I couldn’t have stopped myself from coming this way even if I wanted to, even though I didn’t know why. As soon as I heard him say The Promised. I can smell her, I knew it was him. I was still running up that road there when I heard the last thing he said. I couldn’t see him, but I could still tell where he was, or at least where my body wanted to go. Then I heard the explosion. By the time I came around that corner, this whole wall was gone, and so was Khain.”

  “What did he sound like?”

  Blake grimaced. “Bad intent. Like if an Anaconda talked to you while he was squeezing the life out of you.”

  Trevor eyed the hole in the red brick in front of them. It really wasn’t Khain’s style. “Those sound like thoughts. At least the first two things he said. I’ve never heard of any wolven being able to hear his exact thoughts before, not even the Pumaii. No one’s seen him on this side for over two decades, but I’ve studied all the past interactions with him. No one’s ever said they could hear him like that.”

  Blake shrugged his wide shoulders. “I know.” He looked hard at Trevor. “Someone beat me here. He saw Khain.”

  Trevor leaned forward and grasped Blake’s arm in a pincer grip, causing the other male to wince. “Who? Where is he? I must talk to him!”

  Blake pulled his arm away and nodded at the dirty sidewalk just to the left of the gaping hole in the building. He took a step that way and pointed at what looked like a pile of ash. “There’s a twisted piece of black metal in there that is probably a gun, and another gold lump that certainly used to be a badge.”

  “Ah fuck,” Trevor breathed, pushing a hand through his hair. “Do we know who it is?”

  “My guess is Pickett. I heard him on the radio just before the explosion, he
said he was next door. I told him to wait for me, but…”

  The two males stared at the pile of ash heavily. Trevor had heard of Khain doing something like this before, but he’d never seen it.

  Blake cleared his throat, his voice strained. “Poor bastard. It was his first day back to work since he got hurt.”

  Trevor shook his head, unable to say anything. He had never wished so hard to be the wolfen everyone thought he was before. To be the one who finally brought the murdering bastard down would be the greatest victory available to his kind.

  Someone pushed past him. Trevor looked up and saw Mac heading into the shell of a building. Troy growled at him.

  “Back at you, mangy mutt,” Mac said, then stood in the center of the room, hands on hips, head high, turning in a circle.

  Trevor heard a new vehicle pull up to the scene and stop behind him. He stepped backwards to look past Blake. The rest of his team was arriving.

  Harlan stepped out of the driver’s seat of the KSRT’s work truck and raised a hand to Trevor. Trevor watched him go into investigatory mode immediately, taking in the scene as a whole, his nostrils flaring. Beckett and Crew also got out of the car. Strong warriors, all of them, and Trevor was glad to have them on his side even if none of them particularly cared for him. Except Harlan. Harlan was the only member of the KSRT who hadn’t immediately seen Trevor’s placement as the new boss two years ago, usurping Mac, as an act of war. Harlan was the oldest member of the KSRT, and possibly the one who’d lost the most at the hands of Khain. He’d lost his mother just like all the rest of them had, but having been older already, he hadn’t grown up in the war camps. He’d been mated before all the females had been lost. For almost a full day. Harlan would never rest until Khain was stopped, and he never let his ego get in the way of that. There were four other members of the KSRT, but Trevor hadn’t expected to see any of them. They all worked best alone.

  Trevor tipped a hand to Harlan, then turned back to his friend, a weariness settling in his bones that he hadn’t ever felt before, now that his adrenaline was waning.