Unearthed

by Sara M Zerig

  Chapter Five

  “Chloe …” The name came out on a sigh. Ritt gripped the receiver painfully. “You’re not answering my calls, and you’re not returning my messages. I guess I’ll have to hunt you down.”

  He hung up calmly then threw the phone across the living room of his temporary apartment. There, that felt better, for all of a second. His mate was within his grasp, and he’d screwed it up—had defiled her in a public stairwell and then snapped at her. If they hadn’t been interrupted, he could have smoothed that over and set things right. But they were, and Chloe had been M-I-A since.

  The office manager told him that Chloe took some time off to focus on finals for school and that she may be traveling for the summer break. No one was sure when or if she’d be back to the center. He couldn’t even get a hold of her by phone.

  Ritt paced in the small living room of the apartment. Why should he have to stalk her? She obviously wanted him, too. Was it so unbelievable that he didn’t stop her? What kind of sick test of wills was that? It hadn’t even occurred to Ritt that she could be a virgin. Didn’t all girls give that up in high school?

  Why couldn’t he just be mated to another shifter? Shifters were always mated to other shifters. In rare instances, shifters from different species were mated, but a shifter was never mated with a human. Then again, Chloe wasn’t human.

  He couldn’t just claim a non-shifter female and bring her home. Chloe would have to accept him and his family, accept all that came with hiding their secret life. He had already sent word that he needed to meet with the elders—the older and wiser shifters of his family. That was the easy part. Having destroyed the landline phone, Ritt picked up his cell and made the call he had been dreading.

  “Ritt?”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Tell me you’re coming back. Staying through summer is too long.” Kimi Carter’s voice was insistent.

  “It won’t be much longer.” The center had enough counselors to cover the summer, but that wasn’t why he was calling her. Ritt steeled himself for the reaction to the news he was about to share. “When I do come back, I won’t be alone.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “I’ve found my mate.”

  A pause. “You met a shifter in Colorado?”

  Ritt winced. “No, I didn’t.”

  The silence that came after that bombshell was drawn out. Ritt heard her set the receiver down and walk away. He could envision it: she was bristling, tossing her long black hair, smoothing it back down, taking a deep breath, gathering a thin layer of patience so she could come back in three, two …

  “Does she know?”

  “No.”

  There was an exhale of relief. “Do not bring this girl home. It will end badly.”

  “It’ll be all right.” Ritt wanted to add that she’d like Chloe, but that wasn’t true. His mom wouldn’t like his mate—shifter or not.

  “You are in a strange place with people who are not like us. You need to be among your own kind so you can think clearly.”

  “I’ve already called Kent. I’ll let you know when we’ll be there.”

  “Ritt!”

  “I love you, Mom. I’ll call again later.”

  Ritt hung up the phone and scrubbed a hand over his face. His mother wouldn’t call him back right away. She was too mad. He hoped that giving her time to work through it and calm down would be better than showing up with Chloe unannounced. Then he rejected that thought. It was going to be a disaster either way.

  Kimi had raised Ritt as a single mother from a young age. She didn’t like most people and trusted no one, except for him and a select few shifters she had known all her life. As suffocating as it could be to be her only child, Ritt appreciated all she had sacrificed to keep him.

  His mother never spoke of his father, and when he asked questions as a kid, she became visibly upset. No one in the family would answer his questions either. Ritt only knew that he was dead.

  Whoever his father was, he was profoundly disliked and unwelcome among his kind. Ritt had told himself to let it go—that it was better to respect his mother’s feelings than to satisfy his curiosity. But not knowing was rough.

  When he was younger, who his father might have been occupied most of his waking thoughts. Had his mother loved him? Could she have, having been so young? Did he love her? Why did the others dislike him? Was he not her mate? Not a shifter?

  Ritt had all the abilities of a full-blooded shifter, but that could explain everyone’s refusal to discuss his father. Shifters only mated other shifters. Maybe his father rejected his mother when he learned her secret. Or maybe the family rejected him. In that sense, he could be physically alive but figuratively “dead” to his mother, because he was not welcome by the other shifters.

  He wasn’t worried about the family accepting Chloe, though. They would, he thought, once they’d met her. And if they didn’t, he didn’t care. It changed nothing for Ritt. Chloe was his mate, and if she wasn’t accepted there, he’d take her to live somewhere else and deal with whatever fallout followed.

  Of course, Chloe would have to come to terms with all of this—his being a shifter, his difficult mother, guarding a secret race from the rest of the world. It would be a shock to her system and take time. But ultimately, it would all work out. She was his mate. Nothing could change that.

  Kimi stared at the phone in its cradle on her wall as if she could see her son through it. A mate? Worse, a mate who was not a shifter? No, this could not be. Someone, some human, had led him astray. Ritt was blinded by lust or perhaps love. But a human was not his mate. That wasn’t possible.

  Hadn’t Kimi raised him to be smarter than this? More cautious? Of course, she had. He was her everything. Nothing was more important to Kimi than raising her son up right.

  Kimi knew Ritt going out to Colorado was a bad idea, but what could she do? He was grown, after all. She was tempted to call him back and unleash on his voicemail, but instead she returned to the partially completed blanket on the loom on her bedroom floor.

  She pulled at the oatmeal threads and continued the weave, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth as she went. Ritt said he had already called Kent. This was good. If he wouldn’t listen to her, he would listen to the elders of their family; he would listen to Kent, certainly. The old shifter was the closest thing Ritt had to a grandfather, since his own grandparents had passed years ago. They would just have to straighten everything out together when he came home.

  Chloe watched the end of Bridget Jones’s Diary from the comfort of the aqua-and-gray bedroom she had spent the better part of the past forty-eight hours in, ignoring her cell phone and email. Finals were over; no textbooks sprawled across her desk. The desk and bookshelf had been dusted, the aqua bedding had been laundered, and the adjoining bathroom had been scrubbed. She even polished the screen of the small TV that sat atop her bookshelf with one of those microfiber cleaning cloths. All she needed was a mini-fridge, and she’d never have to leave her self-imposed exile.

  Not that the exile helped. Her favorite romcoms couldn’t distract Chloe from obsessing over Ritt. When she saw him standing in the stairwell, her resolve to avoid him had gone right out the window. If she had just followed Dante to the bus stop, if she hadn’t turned around, none of that would have happened with Ritt. But she did turn around. Even walked through the door he held open, although she had no reason to go back inside.

  The visions from Dante’s past were tied to a need for affection, and her conversation with him had been a difficult one. Chloe had revealed just how much she understood about his life, and Dante broke, his loneliness washing over her, unrestrained. When she turned to find Ritt standing in that doorway, she had been too taxed by Dante’s emotions to reign in her own.

  Chloe wished she could read Ritt as easily as she could read others. Ritt could apparently read her just fine; he knew she wanted more than friendship from him. When he touched her in the stairwell, Chloe received
the same disjointed version of the vision she got when he had first kissed her. She didn’t even try to make sense of it; she gave in to the overwhelming feelings of lust and longing between them.

  That was it. That was her first time. And yeah, it was hot and exciting, but it was supposed to be hot and exciting with a serious boyfriend. Afterwards, Chloe had willed the ground to open and swallow her up but no such luck. The next best thing came in the form of an interruption. Knowing Ritt wouldn’t chase after her with someone else around, she made a break for it. The worst part? She’d probably do it all over again.

  “Chlo-eee!”

  Chloe squeezed her eyes shut and attempted to block out her roommate’s call from the hallway. She wasn’t ready to face the day, even though it was mid-morning. Nikki came through the door without knocking. “We’re going dancing tonight!”

  Chloe frowned at her. Nikki went to dance clubs with other friends, not Chloe. Mind-numbing blasts of electronica didn’t pass for music in Chloe’s book, and crowded clubs with sweaty strangers pushing up against her didn’t pass for fun. Plus, she was pretty sure the lights at a dance club would be just like the lights at Skatesville.

  Chloe had only been to Skatesville once, when she was fifteen. The sixteen-year-old she was crushing on finally asked her to skate, but when the regular lights dimmed and the disco ball came on, it had a strange effect on her eyes. Up close, Nikki said it was like bright green sparklers in Chloe’s irises. Instead of skating together, the boy had called his friends over to gawk at her. Everyone assumed she was wearing novelty colored contact lenses, and Chloe let them.

  “Remember Skatesville? We should get video of your eyes this time.”

  Chloe gave a tight, insincere smile. “That sounds like fun for me.”

  Nikki tossed her thick, fiery locks away from her shoulder. “It’s Friday, Chlo, and you’re a college student—not an old lady. I’m not going to let you hole up in here and watch Princess Bride all weekend. So, get up and get past whatever it is that’s been dragging you down, ‘cause I’m over it already.”

  Chloe opened her mouth to deny it, but nothing came out. She fully intended to watch Princess Bride at least once today. There was no point in lying to Nikki anyway. Nikki would see right through her, just as Ritt did.

  A year younger than Chloe, Nikki had skipped her freshman year in high school, and now they were attending the same college as juniors. Academics came easy to Nikki. Scratch that; everything came easy to Nikki. Popular and confident, the voluptuous Nicole Bradley was fully and shamelessly aware of her effect on the opposite sex. While Chloe majored in business because it seemed sensible and normal, Nikki majored in partying and doing unto cute boys as they would do unto her if she gave them half the chance.

  Nikki’s absent father had left her a little jaded and untrusting of guys in general. There were some hurtful memories, Chloe gathered, but her friend didn’t like to talk about it, and Chloe never pried. Somehow, Nikki had managed to grow into a happy and self-assured young adult without the emotional support of her father.

  Nikki paused at the door, eyeing her friend suspiciously from across the room. “What, no snarky response? No half-assed denial?”

  Chloe looked away, and Nikki rushed to the bed, standing over her. “Who was it? What happened? I’ll kill him!”

  “No, it’s not like that. I mean, it is a guy, but I was stupid, and I’m just having a hard time shaking it.”

  “The guy?”

  “The stupidity.”

  Nikki sat on the edge of the bed and faced Chloe. “Well, I say it’s about time you did something stupid. Live a little. You can’t stay a virgin forever.”

  At Chloe’s pained expression, Nikki gasped, “You didn’t!”

  Chloe’s silence passed for an admission. “You did it, and you didn’t tell me? You whore!”

  A tortured groan escaped Chloe. “This is why I didn’t tell you.”

  “Well, tell me everything now! How was it? I mean, I know you don’t have anything to compare it to but—” Nikki’s eyes narrowed then. “You don’t, do you? Or were there two of them?”

  “See, only you would even ask a question like that.”

  “This is huge! I thought you were saving it for marriage or …” Nikki scanned the bookshelf across the way. “John Keats or Robert Frost or … you know, someone or something else I don’t care about.”

  “They’re both dead.”

  “Spill.”

  “OK—minimum details and then we drop it.”

  “Sure.” Nikki shrugged noncommittally.

  “It was good. OK it was great. He’s older, twenty-nine.”

  Nikki squealed. “Is he a professor?”

  “No.”

  “Did he call you into his office to chastise you for your smart mouth and then shove everything off his desk to have his way with you?”

  “Nik, focus.”

  “Right,” Nikki shook her head. “Not a professor. Got it. Go on.”

  “He’s a counselor at the youth center, but it’s temporary. He doesn’t even live here. He lives in Arizona. I don’t know. I just feel like I waited all this time and then gave it up so quickly.” Chloe thought of the steel and cement stairwell where she was reduced to jelly beneath Ritt’s hands. “Now, I’m just a mess. He’s all I think about. I want to call him, but I don’t know what to say. I want to see him, but I can’t look him in the eyes. I’ve shut off my phone because I know there’s a message from him there, but I don’t know if I want to know what it says.”

  Nikki started to speak, but Chloe wasn’t finished. “My brain tells me I was stupid and careless, and now it’s done and a part of me. But all the rest of me just wants to see him again.”

  After a beat, Nikki said, “OK, to clarify, those weren’t the details I was looking for.”

  “Nikki!” Chloe fell back on her bed, wrung out.

  “You’ve never mentioned him, this counselor,” Nikki commented.

  “I’ve only known him a couple of months, and I only ever see him at the center. We ate our lunches together, and we talked a lot. But I guess I never really believed anything would happen.”

  Nikki’s deep blue eyes skimmed the ceiling as she contemplated the matter. “You know, it could have nothing to do with the guy and everything to do with the fact that you’re a twenty-year-old, red-blooded American girl, and it was just time to give it up already.”

  She went on as if assuming Chloe would disagree. “No, no hear me out on this. If it really was a mistake, then it was. Chalk it up to experience and move on.” Nikki shrugged. “We all screw up. In fact, if you screwed up more often, you’d probably feel a gazillion times better.”

  Chloe sat up with a choked laugh. “That’s your advice? Screw up more?”

  “Yes! It’s a well-known fact that you won’t get over your first until you’ve had your second. So tonight, we are going to go out and find a new Mr. Wrong on purpose.”

  Chloe thought about that a shade longer than she should have. “OK?”

  “Great!” Nikki bounded off the bed. “We’re heading out at nine-thirty, looking muy caliente! So, borrow something from my closet. And don’t lose it this time.”

  “I didn’t lose it. I left it in the locker room, and someone took it.”

  Nikki never stopped as she called back, “It’s still gone, though.”

  Chloe stood and scrutinized her boxer and baby tee clad image in the mirror hooked to the back of the door. Her 5’7” frame was well-toned from running regularly in the park. She didn’t have much of a bustline, but she was built proportionately. Locks of white blonde hair fell to her shoulders. Chloe Saville: serious student, loyal friend, thoughtful daughter, and virgin-no-more.

  Growing up in a middle-class neighborhood in the Springs, Chloe’s life wasn’t luxurious, but she never wanted for anything either. Her parents were in their forties when they adopted her. They were loving and encouraging, and Chloe loved them, but she couldn’t say that she ever felt
close to them.

  Her birth parents might have been more relatable. They might have had the same empathic ability, might have been able to help her understand it. But Chloe had been abandoned at a church as an infant, and whoever left her there left no clues behind. As a child, she’d lay awake at night wondering who they were, why they had to give her up, if they were even alive. She didn’t spend much time on those thoughts anymore, though.

  Alan and Margie Saville were good people. They had raised her to be realistic, respectful, and kind. They projected a normalcy that Chloe continually aspired to. Ideally, she would meet a nice guy after college, fall in love, get married, and raise a kid of her own one day. What she ended up doing for a living didn’t matter as long as she was happy and paying the bills.

  That was the general plan, and she supposed that what she did with Ritt in that stairwell didn’t totally derail it. They did have some crazy connection unlike anything she had ever experienced. Was he really her soul mate? Was there even such a thing? Where was that damned voice now that she was so lost?

  Maybe Nikki was right. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Chloe flopped back onto her bed and recalled the last thing Ritt had said to her. “Fuck, Chloe, what have you done?” … Yeah. It was that bad.

  Chapter Six

  The book-lined walls of her husband’s den stretched high to the domed ceiling. Dark wood and burgundy accents set a quiet, somber tone in the masculine chamber, but the incessant humming and low babbling from the corner of the room was making it difficult for Cara to concentrate. Aidan had said the tiny old shifter would be helpful in the search for their daughter. So far, Cara was not seeing it.

  All clan members had offered to help, even Zoya Caterra. But the Caterras had just taken in Zoya’s recently widowed sister, Zoe, and her four young children. This made their already bustling household of seven a riotous home of twelve, with children ranging in ages from four to sixteen. Zoya’s eyes were underscored by sleepless circles, and Cara hadn’t the heart to allow her to stay.