But I don’t have time to worry about that. Not now.
Not yet.
I had an army to lead.
And we were about to have to fight, no matter how untrained we were.
Chapter 25
“I’M SORRY, BUT DR. Nevala is not currently available.”
I blew out an irritated sigh. I’d been trying to contact Kade on and off for the last thirty minutes.
We actually split up when we left the Shield office, Jeremiah and Shadow taking their own car and heading over to Janice’s in case the wolves showed up at her place and she needed backup, Eduardo veering off to stash Serena with his mother’s youngest sister, Alma. It was a tenuous enough connection that the wolves might have trouble tracing her there.
I’d gone with Brian and Tomás.
As soon as we were in the car, I began calling the hospital, trying to get through to Kade to let him know to call me on Tomás’s phone if he needed to contact me.
The operator at the hospital’s switchboard wouldn’t tell me anything other than Kade wasn’t available. I knew from experience that a response like that usually meant he was with a patient—and when he hadn’t called me back after half an hour, I feared he’d had to take Jeff or Bron, or both, into surgery.
But Janice and I had been texting in the meantime and had agreed to meet at the clearing where we’d executed Scott Carson.
“Get on I-20 headed west,” I instructed. “We’ll need to exit in a couple of miles.” I told him where, and Brian nodded as I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes.
Once we get on the highway, I’ll take a nap, I promised myself.
From the front seat, Tomás’s cell buzzed and I opened my eyes in case it was Janice again. He glanced down and handed it back to me.
“Kade,” I said, tired but glad to hear from him, and ready to get an update on his two new patients. “How are Bron and Jeff?”
“They’ll be okay,” he said. “But you need to get over here.”
I said up straight. “Why?”
I listened for a few minutes and then clicked off. “Turn around,” I ordered. “I need to get to the hospital now.”
I’ll say this for Tomás’s driver—he didn’t bother to ask questions before taking the first exit and heading in the opposite direction. Only then did he ask, “Which hospital?”
“Kindred,” I said. “I’ll give you directions.”
Quickly, I texted Janice with the change in plans.
“What’s going on?” Tomás asked. I admired his ability to wait to ask about his girlfriend. I wasn’t sure I’d be as calm in his place.
“One of the women carrying the lamia babies has gone into labor. She’s early, too, just like Marta was.”
“That’s the woman who carried Serena?”
“Yes. But Evangeline has three babies—she’s carrying triplets.”
My stomach clenched at the thought of those infants coming into the world just as the werewolves were planning to attack. “Give me a minute,” I said. “I need to call my father.”
Tomás listened to me talking to Dad, his expression turning grim. When I hung up, he asked, “Are there any particular additional dangers involved in a lamia birth?”
I shrugged. “No one knows. The lamias had their babies without any other shifters’ help. No one was ever around, no one ever assisted.”
Tomás frowned. “Then how are you sure the babies are early?”
We weren’t, actually. As with everything else, the timeline for their birth was guesswork.
I opened my mouth to answer when my phone rang again. I glanced down. The readout said it was Shane Wills.
I held up a finger as I answered the phone, indicating to Tomás that I would get back to him in just a minute. “Shane,” I said, and continued without waiting for a response. “Now is not a really good time.”
“Your father told me,” he replied. “I want to be there. I think I could help with the infants.”
I shook my head. I was willing to acknowledge that my father might have been right about Shane’s helpfulness in our fight with the werewolves earlier. But Dad and I were going to have to have a talk about his determination to tell his favorite graduate student all about me. This was a new habit, one that he certainly hadn’t had when I was growing up and everything had to be kept a deep dark secret.
“I don’t know,” I said to Shane. “I think it might not be safe around me right now—”
“I don’t care,” Shane broke in. “This is quite probably the most important moment of my life—as a herpetologist and possibly as a person. I want to be there to help. Even if I end up doing nothing more helpful than changing diapers, I need to be there.” His voice turned almost desperate. “If for no other reason than to represent the human scientific community. Someday, your people are going to come out, I’m sure of it, and I want to have been a part of whatever you’re learning about yourselves now.”
I blinked. He was certainly passionate, at least. I sighed. “You know where we’re going? Don’t say it aloud—just meet us there, okay? I’ll call Kade and see what I can find out, what we can arrange.”
“Absolutely. See you there.” I could hear the grin in his voice.
Hanging up, I handed the phone back to Tomás. “I’m sorry,” I said. “What were we discussing?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Tomás said. “We’ve got plenty of other issues to worry about right now.”
Yes, we do.
I gave Brian the final directions to the hospital, leading him to a side entrance almost no one but staff ever used.
“Leave the car here with the keys under the mat. I’ll get Kade to have someone come move it,” I said, and sent a text to let Kade know we were there. Swinging out of the car and moving through the entrance, I led the men down a long-tiled hallway.
Portraits of doctors lined the wall, interspersed with plants designed to be soothing—but nothing could hide the sterile hospital smell of it all.
We emerged in one of the central seating areas, an open space decorated with plants and soft, cushioned furniture. None of it helped soothe me as I paced back and forth, not far from the elevators, waiting for Kade to contact me.
It took everything I had to keep from dialing Kade again to demand an update.
I knew he’d show up as soon as he could, but I continue to worry about Evangeline and the infants, and the lack of news was driving me insane.
As it turned out, everyone converged on the waiting room at once: Kade, Shane, Janice, and several Council members—and, to everyone’s surprise, the werewolves we had fled the Shifter Shield office to avoid.
Chapter 26
KINDRED WAS SMALL, as hospitals go, but the lobby had sweeping ceilings up to the skylights and tile floors that echoed with the clip-clop of heels crossing them.
Kade hadn’t said anything to me, not by phone or in text, since he’d first called with the message for me to come to the hospital.
The volunteer working the front desk knew me—both because I dated Kade and because I’d been up at the hospital every day while Serena was still in the NICU. But she hadn’t heard anything from Kade, either, not since Evangeline had been taken into the delivery room.
And despite all the usual people who were allowed in delivery rooms, the doctors had declared Evangeline’s room off-limits—I assumed because they wanted to limit the number of people who might see a human woman give birth to three live snakes.
So there I was, pacing, when everyone arrived.
The first person I heard was Janice. Her low, sensible heels didn’t clack the same way the high heels of the woman coming in with a group of men across the room did. Janice’s shoes sounded real and solid as she came up to stand next to me.
From the entrance on the other side of the lobby, the werewolves approached with a group of men in suits and one woman. They look like a bunch of high-powered lawyers.
When they all converged on me at the elevators, I had taken several step
s away, toward the chairs, placing myself in the most open area of the room so I could be ready to drop into my serpent form on short notice if necessary.
Somehow I wasn’t surprised when Kade stepped off the elevators and moved up behind me. Shane hung back from the rest of the group but listened in from where he leaned against a nearby wall. After a few moments, I realized that Tomás and Brian had taken spots equidistant around us and had posed as if they weren’t connected to us at all.
Janice had brought a small group with her, too—several of the other officers from the North Texas Council.
They were all Council members who had voted to allow me in.
I stood up straight, prepared to meet the werewolves head-on. But Janice smoothly stepped in front of me, murmuring over her shoulder, “Let me deal with this.”
I nodded, secretly glad that she was willing to take care of it. I moved back one step, still leaving enough room to shift if I needed to, but staying close enough to jump into the fray, if necessary.
“Hello, Frank,” Janice said.
“Janice.” The leader of the werewolf group nodded coolly.
“How can I help you?” Janice stood calmly, her weight shifted slightly onto one foot, her arms hanging down with her hands clasped loosely in front of her. She looked open and friendly.
However, I had seen her eyes when she spoke to me—in her fully human form, they were a bright blue. They were also the first thing to change when she began to shift into her animal form as a badger.
And when she had glanced at me, her eyes had been completely brown.
She might look relaxed right now, but she was ready for a fight.
I couldn’t tell as much about the wolves from their appearance. As with other shifters, I wasn’t certain I would’ve been able to even tell they were wolves and I not been told beforehand. But now that I knew, something about the way they moved together as a pack, in the almost lupine stances they took, in the way their heads hung down as they looked at me—at all of us—gave it away.
I wasn’t certain if they even knew I was the lamia they were looking for. After all, I had moved through human society in Texas for my entire life without ever having been picked up on by a shifter—right up until the day I walked into Kade Nevala in his emergency room with a patient.
Since then, several shifters had been able to sniff me out. It was almost like that part of myself had come to life in a way that it hadn’t been before.
No one seem to have any idea why, least of all me.
With this group, I couldn’t tell if they were belligerent because they knew who I was, or because they were talking to Janice, or if that was their normal, standard behavior.
“We are here to let you know that we’re calling for a National Council quorum,” Frank said. His nostrils flared as he spoke, possibly in anger, but my bet was on his trying to sniff me out.
“That’s unusual.” Tilting her head, Janice crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes.
Frank’s dismissive shrug made me irrationally angry.
“It seems the only appropriate response to your own Council’s move of taking in a lamia and harboring it.” His raised eyebrows suggested he believed he just scored a point.
I felt my own eyes starting to shift, everything around me going gray. I was exhausted, but apparently not too exhausted to be pushed into a shifting rage by some asshole werewolf.
“You used a key word there,” Janice said. “It was, indeed, my Council’s decision. We followed pack, and shifter, and Council law on all levels when we voted to make a lamia one of our own. It has nothing to do with you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong—and why we called for a national quorum,” the werewolf said. “Anything having to do with the lamias has to do with all of us.”
I had to concentrate to control myself, to keep from lashing out at this man. It was all I could do to refrain from dropping into my serpent shape and striking.
But as I changed, ever so slowly, forcing myself to maintain most of my human attributes, I allowed the heat-sensing pits of a viper to form on my cheeks, alongside my nose. Instantly, the room sprang into view in my other sense, something that my mind insisted on translating as almost visual, like infrared or heat-seeking technology.
It wasn’t quite like that of course, though the pits could sense minuscule differences in temperature.
The extrasensory input had proven to be very useful several times in the past few months.
Right now, what it told me was that the werewolves were anxious.
Or ... they were putting off lots of extra heat, anyway, so they were at least experiencing some kind of heightened emotion.
I had to remember to avoid putting my own spin on what I saw.
At any rate, the wolves were more agitated than Janice’s shifters.
At the moment, Janice and Frank were having a bit of a staring contest.
I hoped Janice would kick his ass.
We all waited, until finally, Janice said, “Will there be anything else?”
Frank smiled slightly, as if he had scored a second point. “I will let you know when the National Council plans to meet here.”
“Please do,” Janice said. “You may leave now.” She flicked her fingers in a small dismissive gesture, and I almost laughed aloud. Somehow, with that one movement, Janice had turned Frank from an aggressor into some kind of supplicant—as if he had approached her to beg a favor rather than announce his intention to attack her politically.
The wolf glared at her for just a moment, but then nodded curtly and spun around to leave. The four wolves with him turned to do the same, except the woman. She stayed glued to the spot, her eyes narrowing as she gazed directly at me. I wondered if perhaps I was showing a little too much... snakiness. But in the end, I didn’t really care—they were going to figure out who I was eventually, anyway—so as soon as I was certain no one else was looking, I flicked my forked tongue at her, using it to taste the molecules of the air surrounding her.
She blinked, startled—whatever she might’ve suspected, I don’t think she expected to have it confirmed right then and there.
The air around her tasted like anger with an undertone of fear. It sizzled down the back of my throat, and I tried to parse out any other information.
But there wasn’t really much else to be had. She tasted like wolf. Like mammal. Like a strange mix of predator and prey.
When she turned to scurry after her colleagues, it was all I could do not to give chase.
Probably not surprising—wolves were usually big enough to prey on snakes. But I could outsize a wolf, even a werewolf, any day.
No, Lindi, you have more important things to do here.
Like find out what Janice knew.
Not to mention get to the room where Evangeline was giving birth to the babies who would join Serena under my protection.
Chapter 27
ONCE THE WEREWOLVES were out of hearing range, Kade leaned in close behind me and quietly said, “Eduardo left a message with the switchboard earlier. Serena’s safe.”
I blew out a thankful breath. “Good.”
“You can come up with me and see Evangeline, if you’d like,” Kade continued. “Just let me touch base with Tomás first.”
I nodded, and we waited until the wolves had walked out the door before moving toward Tomás and his driver, both of whom were still watching the wolves leaving.
They’re both carrying guns, too, I realized belatedly. I wasn’t used to shifters who relied on more than their own claws and teeth.
Then again, they did say they blew up a casino.
“They’ll both be okay,” Kade was saying as I joined them. “Jeff will take a little longer to heal, and it’ll be a few weeks—maybe a month—before Bron will be able to fly again. But she should regain full use of that wing.”
Tomás blew out a relieved breath. “Thanks, doc.”
“You’re welcome. You can go up and see them anytime.” He gave them the ro
om numbers and they hurried to catch the next elevator.
“We’ll catch up in just a minute,” Janice said, waving them on without us.
She turned to me. “I’m sending someone for clean phones so we can keep in touch. In the meantime, use the hospital phone lines if you have to call out, okay? And if there’s an emergency, leave a message with the hospital operator. I’ll check in with her every half hour or so.”
I nodded. “I plan to stick around while Evangeline’s in labor. I’m not going anywhere for a while.”
“Good. I’ll be in touch.” She touched me on the arm. “And don’t worry. We’ll take care of the wolves. They’re not going to be a problem.”
“Thanks.” I hadn’t realized how much I relied on Janice’s warm, calming presence to make my crazy new world feel normal.
Shane joined me and Kade on the elevator, while everyone else followed Janice. “When I left earlier,” Kade said, “Evangeline still had a ways to go before the babies were born—but they were doing well, all of them.”
I nodded, but didn’t answer, still worried about the wolves and their threats. But I inhaled deeply and squared my shoulders, preparing to put on a good show for Evangeline.
“What’s the standard gestation time for a lamia?” Shane asked Kade.
My boyfriend turned his hand up. “Uncertain, really. All shifter gestations that I know of are shorter than their human counterparts—but often much longer than their animal forms might suggest. That often means that our young are born in their animal forms and don’t shift until later—that gives them a chance to allow the human side to finish developing.”
Shane nodded and made some encouraging noises. “But Serena didn’t do that, did she?” he asked. “What form was she born in?”
“Human,” I said. “She didn’t change into a serpent form until she’d seen me shift.”
“She still prefers to be a snake when Lindy is around,” Kade said.
“I can’t blame her,” I said with a grin. “She’s a lot more mobile that way, and she seems to have imprinted on me in that form. But she much prefers snuggling in her human form with Kade.”
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