by Nara Malone
* * * * *
Coffee sloshed over the rim of his cup, leaving a burning track across his knuckles. The mental control that allowed him to hold his skin impervious to molten wax couldn’t shield the simple scald of diner coffee. Marcus put down the cup, his hand still shaking, but not from the burn. He dabbed at the mess on the table with a wad of napkins, letting the burn linger on his fingers, any distraction from his internal inferno was welcome.
“Here, let me.” Franny batted away the wad of soggy napkins, but rather than wipe the table she wrapped his hand in a white towel she’d apparently soaked in ice water. The burning faded under her capable hands.
Marcus didn’t want help, or company, but he had no energy for the witticisms and one-liners that usually made up their conversations. Franny however was bubbling over with energy.
“So, she didn’t invite you in for coffee last night. Smart girl.”
“Does nothing that happens in this town escape the diner gossip mill?”
“We got better things to talk about than your sex life, sugar. But you got one of the worst cases of coffee withdrawal I’ve ever seen. And running a diner I see plenty. I might take it to mean you cared enough not to pressure her. But knowing your kind, it’s probably just a prolonged dry spell giving you the shakes.” She let his hand go.
He put his hand under the table to conceal tremors. “Not this morning, Franny. I have a headache.”
“You hurt that little girl and you’ll have worse.” As if to emphasize the threat, Franny dispensed the muddy puddle on the table in one vigorous swipe. “It may not look like she’s got much to a guy like you, but she’s worked hard to get what she has. She showed up here looking for work with nothing but the rags on her back. She doesn’t need some smooth talker looking for a tumble to knock down what she’s built up.”
Marcus stilled Franny’s hand with one of his. “I know. I know more about where she came from and how to protect her than you do. I know more about Allison than she knows about herself.”
Franny jerked her hand from under his. “How? That girl’s as closed as a book can get.”
“Because we came from the same place and we’re hiding from the same thing. And if I didn’t care what happens to her, I wouldn’t be in need of your coffee.”
Franny chewed that over while she folded her soggy towel into a square. With a satisfied nod she left him to his misery.
He should be with Allie, but he didn’t trust himself around her another second. After hundreds of years resigned to the knowledge that he would never have a mate, having one land suddenly in his lap pushed even the supreme self-discipline of a high magus beyond its limits.
His thoughts skipped and hopped from one thing to the next like links on a webpage. How had a human male, one of Eddie’s caliber, gotten hold of a female Pantherian child to raise? Was the male human? Was Allie Pantherian?
Around him the murmur of customers, the clink of tableware and plates acted as a shield, white noise, to keep him focused within. Well, not focused, directed inward was more like it. He plucked one thing he knew for certain from the midst of his whirling inner dialogue—Allie could shift. To what he didn’t know. She’d projected herself onto the shifting plane and then she’d gotten stuck. Marcus pulled her back, not daring to shift up himself.
By sheer force of will, like a distance runner in the last mile, Marcus had held off the shift that threatened to consume him, the wild male unleashed by the call of a mate. She wasn’t ready to see herself for what she was, let alone him. If he didn’t go carefully he’d scare her away. Before he could guide her into discovering her true nature, before he could teach her pride in her uniqueness, he needed to get himself in hand.
Allie wasn’t a stand-out-from-the-crowd kind of girl. She liked uniformity, conformity, blending in. Understandable, since she was hiding. But the need to blend in was rooted in something deeper. He’d suspected the truth when she mentioned sleepwalking and her dreams at dinner. He knew when they’d played the candle game, had watched her control the light as if she’d been born to it, in minutes rather than the months it took him to teach young males who apprenticed with him to learn mind games.
Marcus was sure Allie had recognized a difference in herself and had the survival instincts to know the difference would never be accepted. Her sense of self-preservation pushed her to fit into the norm designated by the society she’d landed in.
He knew she was a shifter and she recalled being a white kitten. What kind of kitten, he wondered. Tiger? Leopard? And among a species whose offspring couldn’t shift until puberty, what did it mean that Allie could shift as a child? Allie could be the key, a missing link back to the tribe where Marcus originated.
A saucer of glazed doughnuts skidded across the table. A paper package, a single-dose packet of headache tablets slid to a stop next to his coffee. He looked up, startled that he could be so lost in his own thoughts as to not hear Franny approach.
She didn’t stay to chat. He hadn’t asked for more than coffee, so he couldn’t turn away the peace offering. He swallowed the aspirins and tried one of the doughnuts. It was soft, fragrant with warm sugar, still hot from the fryer with stickiness that clung to his fingers, reminding him of Allie and the stickiness of her heat.
The diner door opened and closed with a jingling of bells as customers shuffled in. It was still early enough that Franny worked the counter and tables alone, her voice, bold and brassy as she called out visitors’ first names, traded insults and delivered the “usual” to some fifty individuals without mistake as the clock counted down the minutes until Allie’s normal arrival time.
He could not face her. Not yet. Not until he knew more about her. He had two goals—find the source of the Pantherian females who had appeared in this area and keep Allie safe from the thug who had raised her.
For now, he would leave Allie to Jake’s capable guardianship. He couldn’t trust himself with her until he had some time, distance to rein in his primal response and behave responsibly. That left Marcus the job of figuring out where the females were coming from. And find Hella. Once again he’d been distracted from his original goal.
He decided to leave before Allie’s imminent arrival broke through his resolve to stay away. He had to do what was best for her and for his family.
* * * * *
Jake crammed himself into the seat beside Allie. His knees and feet stuck out in the aisle. He’d hoped to avoid having to go this far. He’d already purchased a bus ticket he didn’t want and then had to purchase a duffle bag to go with his journey, filling it with toiletries and new underwear, a size too small, that he hoped he wouldn’t need.
There were other seats on the bus, so he didn’t ask Allie if she minded him sitting next to her. Her tight-lipped grimace when he hunkered into the tiny space told him what she thought of company. He pretended he was oblivious, and even allowed her the temporary escape into whatever she was reading on her cell phone.
The bus doors slapped shut. The driver droned on over the intercom about rules, destinations and expected arrival times as the engine revved and air brakes released with a hiss.
Jake shut his eyes when the bus rolled backward. Humans really needed to master teleporting. His stomach went queasy with the twist and lurch of changing directions, and he had to look. His mind grappled with keeping visual balance while being conveyed down the street in a vehicle he didn’t control, by someone he didn’t know well enough to trust.
Gingerly he adjusted his bulk and his seat to a position that produced the least discomfort. Then he contemplated how he might talk the young lady at his side into going back home. It would be really nice if he didn’t have to kidnap her.
He watched her attention stray from the screen in her hand to the window. Watched her grip on the phone tighten and saw they were passing the diner. The magus—Marcus—he reminded himself, was there. Jake didn’t relay the situation. He’d never seen Marcus act this way over a human female. He’d never known him to be
unsettled by anything, staying calm and controlled even when he fought to save his son’s life.
The scrap of a female in the seat next to him didn’t have any outward feature that could explain Marcus’ distraction. But in the few minutes they’d spent chatting he’d felt something beneath the standoffish surface reach out and grab him, ignite his protective instincts to a degree he once believed only a mate could inspire. Not that he knew that experience firsthand. Not that it was an experience he’d ever expected to know firsthand—there were no females left in the Yeti tribe. Yet something about this female, a vibration that seemed to emanate from her like an aura, aroused and soothed at once.
No wonder the magus was such a mess. An extended amount of time in her presence would do that, and more. What Jake didn’t get was how the same female could have that effect on Pantherians of different subspecies. Marcus was Pantherian and Jake was Yeti. More baffling, she couldn’t be Pantherian. Which left what?
It left him sitting next to a woman Marcus had warned him not to have contact with, riding a bus out of town with her because that was the only way he could follow his instruction to watch and protect her. Although he could have followed at a distance, his first pledge was to protect and keep the magus safe and that meant figuring out if she was a threat.
They passed by the newspaper office.
“Her schedule never varies,” Marcus had said. It was five minutes past the time Allie should have been at work. Thirty minutes past the time she would have gone to the diner for her breakfast. He wondered why she had to pick today to break out of her comfort zone.
She’d put a hand to the window as they passed. Her palm and spread fingers left a print when she withdrew it. He watched her let go with the simple flutter of lashes descending, like pulling a shade on what she chose to leave.
They were on the highway, headed north when her phone rang. She hit the mute button and went back to her reading. A few minutes later the phone buzzed with a text message. Jake could see the message when she opened it.
Franny is worried. Me 2. Where R U?
Allie hit the delete button. She plugged in headphones and clicked on a music app. Jake knew because he recognized the song title that flashed like a beacon every few seconds. Slow Dancing in a Burning Room.
When she started to sniffle, brushed away a tear with the back of her hand, Jake wanted to throttle Marcus. His first lapse in loyalty in all the time he’d served the magus. What the fuck was he supposed to do now?
He offered his handkerchief.
“Sorry,” she said when she accepted. “Allergies.”
The same song title kept flashing, unchanged, as the miles ticked away.
They were stuck in morning rush-hour traffic, getting on I-95 from Fredericksburg when the next text came.
Franny wants cops. I said wait ’til noon. Call!!!
Allie turned off the power button and dropped the phone in her pocket.
That wasn’t good. Jake waited a few minutes and then eased his own phone from his shirt pocket, hitting the button and holding it so he could just make out the time. He had two hours to convince her to phone home before the cops were called in.
The last two people to see Allie were the last two people in town who would want the attention of authorities aimed in their direction—Marcus and Jake. It wouldn’t take long to figure out, after they discovered Jake and Allie left on the same bus, that Jake and Marcus were connected. Things were really going to get sticky if he had to take Allie back against her will.
* * * * *
Marcus caught Oliver scrolling through pages of rabbit photos. “I believe we’ve had this discussion before. You’re not supposed to mess with Jake’s computer.” Scooting Oliver aside, he took over the keyboard. He knew this was where to search for information. He just didn’t have enough information to know what to search for. “Let’s make a deal. You can use the computer, but only when I’m with you.”
Oliver looked at him, dark eyes gleaming with intelligence, whiskers wiggling. Marcus sought a deeper connection, certain there must be some more satisfactory way to communicate.
A rattle of window glass and the ting of a bell, accompanied by scents riding a current of air signaled the shop door opening and closing, though he knew he’d locked it. Oliver took a flying leap from the desktop to Marcus’ lap just before a familiar voice called.
“It’s me.”
“Maya? You’re alone?” Marcus called back.
She came in, her face flushed pink, blue eyes sparkling with mischief, blonde ponytail bouncing to emphasize her exhilaration. “Yes, I’m alone. I took the truck from the farm and lit out while everyone was asleep. It’s a long drive in from the mountains.”
“You have a driver’s license?”
“No. You drive and you don’t have one.”
“That’s different.”
“You’re starting to sound like my brother, Magus. Females can’t do this or that. Males can do what they want. How is it I’m the only one rules are supposed to apply to? I thought you were more enlightened.”
“I’m also able to divert attention and pull a few mental tricks to get myself out of tough spots. That’s the difference that concerns me. Not your gender.”
“Then apprentice me.”
“It’s not allowed.”
“Magus, we’ve already broken just about every decree the high council has penned from the beginning of time. Ean and Adam aren’t allowed to have a mate and they took one anyway. You look the other way.”
“That’s different. We believe Marie is a genetic mutation abandoned by her Pantherian parents and raised by humans, the laws don’t address her specifically.” Though he suspected the high council would have plenty to say on the matter if they knew about it. He wasn’t going to offer Maya any more firepower. She was doing well enough on her own. The girl was born with a rebel streak. No wonder the wasting sickness had skipped over her. She’d probably just refused to have anything to do with an illness that wouldn’t let her call the shots.
“And what of the law stating males who lose a mate can’t retain guardianship of their children?”
“Again, the mother is with the children and Marie chooses to keep Adam and Ean with her. More fuzzy legality.”
“If she were in Pantheria, where they rightfully should have taken their family, the council wouldn’t agree. They took Adam from you. His mother wanted you to raise him.”
Not enough to stay and join him in the process. Nikayla had chosen exile over Marcus and their offspring. She’d chosen exile over revealing which other male had added to the conception. While it was forbidden for females to share pleasures with a male before joining a mating triad, young Pantherians often did, selecting only one partner so unexpected pregnancies wouldn’t result. Marcus had been foolish enough to play that game, foolish enough to think he was the only one playing with Adam’s mother. She insisted right up until they took her from the island it was so. A child conceived by one male instead of a pair was the equivalent of a human claiming a virgin birth. Genetics were genetics. A Pantherian female required sperm from two unique male donors to conceive. After more than three hundred years, Nikayla’s betrayal still burned.
“You think prying into my personal failings will win you what you want?” It irked that his sensitivity was obvious enough to silence Maya, who normally pushed way beyond where she should.
“I’m sorry, Magus, that was unforgiveable.”
“Marcus, if you please. Remember where you are if you want to be allowed to stay.”
She brightened. “You won’t send me back to the farm?”
“I should send you back to Pantheria. But we can use an extra pair of hands right now. While it’s rare, my son and his family aren’t the first triad to deal with seven infants at once. They can manage without you for a week or two.” The long hours and sleepless nights infant care demanded were not the way to convince Maya to return to Pantheria and submit to the high council’s demand that she take ma
tes and start a family. A taste of the drudgery and responsibility of looking out for herself might.
“Thank you, Magus. I’ll be the best apprentice.”
“I didn’t say as my apprentice. I said I need some help. That’s all.”
“Oh come on, Marcus, what’s one more rule? If the council discovers you’ve been protecting me, apprenticeship is a tiny transgression compared to harboring me.”
“Those rules are meant to protect. Besides, protecting you from forced breeding is not the same as exposing you to apprenticeship training.”
He doubted Maya would have patience for the years of study required. And she would have to take the long-form training. He could not do what he did with Allie to Maya. Maya was like a daughter to him. While outwardly the two might appear the same age, Allie had that “old soul” quality, a wisdom about her that sometimes had him feeling like the student.
He held up a hand to ward off further argument. “Let’s see how you handle the responsibilities I give you now. You haven’t as yet done anything to prove yourself ready for apprenticeship.”
Maya knew enough to snatch the crumb he offered.
“What do you need?”
“Working for me will make taking care of seven infants at once look easy.”
“I’m ready.”
“First, I’ll need you to help around here, when Jake has to be away. He mentioned bringing you in before, so I doubt we’ll have any resistance from him.”
“Done. You can count on me, Magus.”
He waited…she frowned but caught on much faster than Jake.
“Oh right. Marcus. I’ll remember. Mag—Marcus. It just takes some getting used to.”
“I also need you to get this to Adam for DNA analysis.”
He withdrew a small plastic sandwich bag from his pocket. Hair he had stolen from Allie’s brush was coiled neatly inside.
“If I contact Adam, Ean is going to come here and collect me before I do even one of the items on your list.”
“Look, Maya. I have enough problems to solve. You want to work for me, figure this out. You need to settle this with your brother. Family bonds are sacred. He and Adam have enough to juggle sharing care for their mate and their new family without you adding conflict. You convince Ean you’re reliable and responsible enough to be on your own. Mention that I need you to help, but that can’t be your only argument. Make things right with them. And don’t do that by pitting them against each other. Clear?”
