Claiming Her Heart

by Ellis Leigh

  Magic.

  Magic that got shit done. With an audible pop, sparks flew, and every security light in the building went out.

  “Blessed be, young one.” Scarlett took a step back, grinning when she turned my way. “For your sake, I’m going to hope the guy doesn’t have a backup generator in his office. Now go, so I can update Julian.”

  Thoughts of my mate swirling in my head, I went. Climbing, jumping, racing up, over, and into the Federal Bank building. I had a much better chance of sneaking in and out without notice with the power out, one I couldn’t squander. So I hurried, even as I stalked slowly down the stairs and into the hall. As I approached the door to the office where the idol sat.

  Dropping to my knees, I slipped a tool kit out of my bag. It held a myriad of metal sticks and pokers, some with curled ends, some grooved. I selected the one I was most comfortable with and set out to pick the lock on the door. Sweat dripped down my forehead as I both tried to concentrate on the lock and keep an eye on my surroundings. There was nowhere for me to hide if someone came down the hall and no way for me to disappear.

  Locks tended to have a mind of their own, a personality. Some were stubborn and refused to give until you spent half an hour convincing them. Some needed to be seduced with soft touches and easy strokes. Others required a little added force to pop. The lock I needed to disengage decided to cooperate with me that night, clicking into an open status within just a few minutes of me prodding it. Seemed like a good omen to me.

  I pulled my hoodie up around my head, covering my face, before slowly opening the door and creeping inside. No alarms sounded, but that didn’t mean anything. There could be a signal being sent to the office’s owner right then. He could be minutes away. It was my time to move.

  With quiet steps, I walked to the bookshelves…and froze. The idol was missing.

  I scanned each shelf again, my heart racing as I came up empty. Oh no, this couldn’t be happening. All the work, all the effort. The risk. And it was gone? Where could it have been taken and why? What would I tell Harley? I’d failed through no fault of my own, but it still stung.

  Eyes burning, stomach sick, I took one more look around the room…

  And nearly cried in relief when I spotted the carved wooden figure sitting on the desk across the room.

  Fucking A, way to give a girl a heart attack. I kept my head down and my hood up as I hurried toward the desk and grabbed the idol. Once it was in my hand, I slipped it under the strap of my tool bag and headed for the door. I was done with this job. Almost.

  Or so I thought. The scent of bear hit me just before the whispered words did.

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t get that.”

  I closed the door to the office behind me, looking over at the familiar strawberry-blonde bear shifter standing just a little down the hall. In my way. “You’re Harley’s mate.”

  Her painted lips turned up in a sarcastic smile. “Whatever gave you that impression?”

  “I saw you…at the hotel with him.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t make us mates. I’m his sister, Shiloh.”

  Huh. Okay, then. “Why don’t you want the idol?”

  Her eyes dropped to the figurine against my chest, looking sad and almost lost. “Because it’s not ours.”

  “So? I thought you could use any idol to complete your matings.”

  “Have you ever driven someone else’s car or used their computer? The technology works the same in theory, but the feel isn’t quite right.” She shook her head slowly, her eyes locked on the statue. “That idol will help our clan mate and have babies, but the matches won’t be quite right. Our true mates won’t be the ones picked because the magic isn’t meant for us.”

  That struck me hard. I couldn’t imagine my life without Julian in it, couldn’t even begin to think about being tied to someone else. He was my heart…half of my soul. My love.

  “That sounds—”

  “Depressing as fuck?” She raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, it sort of is. Especially since I know who my mate is, but we won’t be together if that idol falls into the hands of my brother. We need our clan’s idol.”

  “But Harley said your idol was destroyed.”

  Her inner bear seemed to push forward—face hardening, wicked curl appearing on her lip, and menace pouring from her body. She may have been pretty, but she was also scary as fuck when she was pissed. And apparently, something about her brother and their idol pissed her right off.

  “He lied.”

  If she expected me to be surprised, she’d be disappointed. “So if it’s not destroyed, where is it?”

  She lifted a chin toward the door behind me. “That lawyer guy? The one whose office you busted into? It’s at his house.”

  My wolf growled low, both of us knowing where this was going. What was coming. Still, I had to ask…

  “Which is where?”

  “On the same island where your mate lives, little wolf.”

  FOURTEEN

  Julian

  The wait for Angelita turned out to be much longer and harder than I’d expected. I’d gone in knowing I’d be nervous, understanding that she had planned to complete her mission without my help. Fine. I was man enough to give my woman room to do her thing…just not so much that I couldn’t jump in if she needed me to. Which was why I’d called in Scarlett to be her second.

  Angelita must not have needed me to, though. She’d been silent for a long time, as had the witch backing her up. Too silent.

  I dug deep, trying to feel my bond to Angelita. To locate that same warmth from the link between us I always felt when she was near, but there was no warmth. Only static and…cold.

  Scarlett’s unique ashes smell greeted me, but it was her voice that set me on edge. “We have a problem.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What do you mean, you’re not sure?”

  A pause. A long one. But then she quietly said, “She’s gone.”

  A boulder the size of my entire island landed in my gut—at least, that’s what it felt like as my stomach tightened and the floor dropped out from under my world. “Gone where?”

  “Quiet down. People are looking.” She grabbed my arm and tugged me closer, lowering her voice even more. “She took forever, so I went to check on her like you told me to do. The office was empty, and there was no sign of her anywhere in the building.”

  There was no thinking to be done, no decision to be made. There was only one goal. “We have to go find her. We’re going to need help.”

  “I know. I already called Shadow. He’s pissed at me, but he’ll be here in a minute. Come on, let’s go see what we can figure out.”

  I gripped her elbow as she led me through the coffee shop and out the door. The night air had grown colder, the street quieter, all while I’d sat and done nothing. Whether it would be the anger or the guilt that ate me alive, I had yet to see. But one would. And soon.

  We rushed down to the alley where Angelita would have started and ended her mission, but the bond inside of me never grew warmer. The static stayed, the distance between us too much. And while most of my mind focused on worry about Angelita, a tiny part raged. The base side of me, the instinct. The part that said if Angelita had run into foul play, whoever had put their hands on my girl would regret it. I’d rip them apart with my bare, human hands. I would not lose my mate over some bear clan’s fucking mating idol.

  I didn’t hear Shadow arrive—I rarely heard the man move—but I felt Scarlett tense up next to me and knew that backup had arrived in the form of her half-tiger, half-wolf shifting mate.

  “It reeks of bear by the front door,” Shadow said, his voice hard.

  Scarlett stepped around me, moving closer to Shadow. “Maybe the guy who set this up pulled a switch?”

  Shadow grabbed my arm, giving me a squeeze before inching past. “That doesn’t fit the scent.”

  That answer didn’t sit well with me. “Why not? You sai
d you scented bear.”

  “But it’s a female bear.”

  “Are you sure?” I followed Scarlett’s guidance as the three of us moved deeper between the buildings. All the way back to the alley that ran along the rear.

  Shadow stopped, audibly scenting the air. “Yeah. Female bear, and Angelita got into a car with her. The scent disappears at an empty spot.”

  “What do we do?” Scarlett asked.

  There was only one thing to do. “We go see the bear that hired her and find out who took Angelita.”

  * * *

  The Grand Hotel where Harley had rented a block of rooms was one of those restored buildings from an earlier era. People raved about how gorgeous all of the shiny wood trim and grand staircase was. I gave no fucks for the history of it—I wanted to know the present. Particularly, the location of one bear shifter. Finding that information out would fall on the shoulders of the witch, though.

  Once Scarlett had spelled the desk worker and determined the bear’s room, I raced up the stairs and felt the walls for room plates.

  The growl I released when I finally found one could have stood up against one of Shadow’s for sure. “They don’t have fucking Braille.”

  “Let me help you.” Scarlett placed my hand on her elbow and strode down the hall, pulling me with her. I was already pissed because my mate was missing. The fact that I couldn’t even find a damn hotel room without help from someone else was merely more shit piled onto me. Which might have been a good thing because by the time Scarlett stopped, I was in a full-blown fury.

  “This is it,” she whispered.

  I didn’t pause for a second. Reaching out, I placed one hand against the wood to get my bearings before taking two steps back. Then I kicked the fucking door in.

  “Where is she?” I yelled as soon as I stepped inside. “Where’s Angel?” My voice caught on her shortened name, my need to keep her safe overriding everything I knew.

  “Who the fuck…” the bear growled low and deep, the sound of him growing closer making the hair on my neck stand on end. “You’re the little wolf’s mate.”

  He must have moved too fast because Shadow snarled from behind us as Scarlett edged around me.

  “You’d better stay back, bear,” Scarlett said, then the smell of burning paper exploded through the room.

  “You work with witches?” Harley asked, his voice high and angry. “That’s bad form, old friend. Witches are quite undesirable.”

  “I’m not your friend, and this witch could burn you alive from the inside if she wanted to. So you’d better start answering my question. Where’s Angel?”

  The bear huffed a sarcastic laugh. “Did your girl get caught?”

  “No, she got taken by a female bear shifter.” I stepped closer, my anger driving me. My focus locked on bringing Angelita home. “Any idea who that could be?”

  Harley roared, his animal side obviously taking over before he raced past me and out the door. Scarlett grabbed my elbow and followed the huffing, pounding footsteps.

  “Did he shift?” I asked quietly, unsure what to expect.

  “No. But he looks close to it.”

  “Can you handle a full-grown bear?”

  Shadow scoffed. “Kid, you have no idea.”

  “And this is why you’ll be rewarded later, my love.” If Scarlett’s voice could have been more sarcastic, I had no idea how. “Fire is a base fear, kid. I’ve got this if he shifts.”

  Okay, then.

  Harley must have knocked another door down because the sound of the wood splintering broke like a gunshot. “Motherfucker. I’m going to kill her.”

  He wasn’t the only one who could growl. “You’d better not be talking about my mate.”

  “I’m talking about my sister.” He huffed a breath, hurrying past me once more. “Come on. I know where they went.”

  Scarlett squeezed my arm as if to argue, so I said the only thing I could. The only thing that mattered in that moment. The only word I knew would keep her moving.

  “Angelita.”

  And so she led me to follow after the bear.

  FIFTEEN

  Angelita

  The place where Shiloh took me wasn’t a house. Huge and sprawling, it ate up the shoreline and blocked the view of Canada from the road. I couldn’t even see the end of the house from where I stood…it just kept going.

  Not a house. A fucking mansion. “This guy’s a lawyer?”

  She huffed, obviously buying that story as much as I did. “Yeah. An expensive one who deals in getting companies off after being sued by the workers they injured.”

  “Oh, that sucks.”

  “Big-time, but that’s not what we’re here to deal with. Come on. You can see the idol from the other side of the house.”

  “You’re awfully familiar with this place.”

  “I did what I needed to do to track my idol down.”

  What she needed to do… That sounded an awful lot like… “You…had a relationship with this guy?”

  She paused, her face stiff and expressionless. Her eyes fierce, though. “You have a mate, yes?” At my nod, she cocked her head. “How far would you go to be with him? To secure that mating bond and spend the rest of your life by his side?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come, too bogged down by guilt and regret. I’d been refusing Julian—my one and only mate. I’d been stopping us from completing our bond because I was too afraid to turn him. Too afraid to lose him. Shiloh had no such fear. She’d forced herself to step away from her mate, to spend time with another man. A short-term hell in exchange for a long-term heaven.

  When I didn’t speak, her lips twisted into a smirk. “You have a lot of growing up to do, little wolf.”

  I couldn’t argue that one.

  Conversation over, we snuck around the side of the house until we reached a window looking into what appeared to be a sort of library. An older man sat behind a desk, working on a computer with his back to us. Oblivious. At least fifteen idols—all very similar to the one I had against my chest—sat on the bookshelves almost directly across the room from him…and us.

  So many look-alike statues. “He sure does like your idols.”

  “I think he has some bear shifter in him from generations back. He collects a lot of our stuff.”

  “Really? That seems weird.”

  “It happens. Shifters breed with humans, those babies stay in their human world, the shifter genes get diluted until the next generation can’t shift at all, and then one day you end up with a human who has an obsession for artifacts of shifter cultures he doesn’t actually know exist.”

  “Yeah. Like I said. Weird.” I inched closer, inspecting each idol as well as I could from the distance. “I hope you know which one is yours. Otherwise, I’m going to need a great big bag.”

  Her eyes never wavered. “Second shelf, right side, third one in. That’s ours.”

  I found the idol in question, memorizing its placement. Its details. Committing it to my mind so I wouldn’t pause once inside. “I’ll put the fake one in its place—give us a little extra time to get away from here.”

  She glanced at me, her brow furrowed. “That’s a good idea. You’re smarter than I thought, wolf.”

  “Never doubt me, bear. You’re doing all this for your mate. I have the same motivation.”

  “Then we’re on the same page.” She backed up, tucking herself into the bushes. “He goes for a cup of tea every night. We just have to wait for him to want it.”

  I eased back, watching. My blood pounding in my ears. Julian had to have figured out I wasn’t where I was supposed to be by now. He was probably freaking out with worry. The useless earpiece sat in my bag, but not my phone. I’d left that at the apartment like an idiot. I had no way to actually talk to my mate from so far away. Next time—

  I bit my lip to keep from grinning. As stressful as all this was, I knew there’d be a next time. Another target. Another mission. But when we signed o
n for that one? I’d make sure Julian was by my side the entire time. Or at least, in my ear. We just needed better technology.

  I almost yelped when the man stood up from his desk, the motion fast and abrupt enough to shock me right out of my thoughts. Time to get this mission completed.

  Shiloh grabbed my hand, practically vibrating in place. “You’ve got about seven minutes to grab that idol and get out.”

  “Is there security?”

  “Tons, but no cameras and the perimeter stuff is off when he’s home. When he leaves, he arms the doors and windows.” She pulled me closer, making sure every word carried the weight of its importance. “Seven minutes, tops. I’m not rushing in there to save you if you screw up.”

  I really needed to work with wolves and not bears. Loyalty must have skipped right over their breed. “Seven minutes, 420 seconds. Got it.”

  I walked right up to the tall window in front of me. A crank lever sat inside, tucked against the frame. Grabbing a couple of long, skinny metal pieces from my tool kit, I went to work on the edges, counting the entire time. At 147 seconds, the seal popped, and I was able to pull the window open.

  I stood inside the office at 164 seconds.

  Made it to the bookcase at 229.

  Switched the idols at 315.

  But at exactly 403, the plan went to shit.

  “What do you mean the power’s been down for almost an hour? You should have called me sooner.” The man rushed into the office just as I slipped behind a chair along the side wall. He had his phone to his ear, probably talking to security at the Federal Bank building on the mainland. Scarlett’s little trick with the electricity must not have been temporary.

  The man yanked open a drawer on his desk, grabbing something that jingled…keys, probably.

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Guard my fucking office until then. Do you understand?”

  He stomped out the door, and I sagged against the chair in relief. Well, at least until Shiloh’s words about the security on the house played through my head. Fuck, he was leaving…which meant he was about to arm the house.