Unearthed

by Sara M Zerig

  “Oh, no you don’t.” His voice was nearly a growl. His eyes were intense, a golden simmer around the irises. He lowered his lids and brought his head to the side of hers. “That’s for me.”

  Ritt interlaced his fingers with hers and kissed her soundly. Chloe knew he was attempting to regain control … and failing. Stairwell-Ritt was back.

  He pushed deep inside her slowly, and she cried out into his mouth. He broke the kiss and dropped his head to her shoulder. She felt his breath, hot and ragged against her skin. Chloe angled her hips to take more of him, and Ritt pumped into her steadily, driving her to the climax she craved. Her orgasm drew his out, his release spilling deep within her, his groan muffled against her shoulder.

  They lay entangled a while, catching their breath. Chloe nudged Ritt’s head with hers playfully. He lifted his eyes, the gold edges gone.

  “Fuck, Ritt, what have you done?”

  Despite the difficult confrontation with his mother they were headed for, Ritt was in a good mood. Chloe had brought a small bag with her, assuming they would only be gone for the weekend. Ritt didn’t mention that they might be gone longer than that; Nikki could send Chloe her things if they were.

  They were two hours outside of the city on the highway. Chloe had kicked her sandals off and pulled her feet up to the seat. Her platinum hair was pulled into a low ponytail at one side of her neck. Ritt’s gaze lingered there. The urge to mark her was growing stronger, but she wasn’t ready for that yet. He told himself it wasn’t the most important part of their mating.

  Chloe loved him. He knew it when he took her into his arms in the club the night before. And this morning, when she agreed to come home with him, he could see that she was realizing it, too. That was what mattered most.

  It didn’t always work that way, even between mates. Physical attraction was instantaneous. The recognition of the other as their mate soon followed, at least among his kind. But love and acceptance could take longer. He knew of one shifter who had been put off by his mate for six years before she accepted him. Six fucking years. Ritt didn’t have that kind of patience.

  “What’s your mom like?” Chloe prompted. “Kim, right?”

  “Kimi.”

  “You said she makes blankets?”

  “Mostly as a hobby. She sells some of them online, but she’s pretty much retired on what her parents left her.”

  “What’s she like?” Chloe asked again.

  “She’s young—she was only a teenager when she had me. She’s quiet, proud, overly cautious. If she doesn’t say much to you, don’t take it personally.”

  “You’re nervous about me meeting her,” Chloe surmised.

  Nervous wasn’t the word. It wasn’t going to go well, and there was no way to prepare Chloe for that. Ritt had already told her that his father had died before he was born, and his mother was the overprotective type. But it was difficult to appreciate what that really meant, without meeting her.

  “I just know how she is,” Ritt told her. “She lives with our extended family—friends of family she grew up with—but I’m her only living blood relative. She has no siblings, no aunts or uncles, and my grandparents died when I was a kid.”

  “How did your dad die?”

  Ritt kept his eyes on the road. “Don’t know.”

  “Didn’t you ask anyone?”

  His knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. “No one will talk about him.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Ritt snapped.

  Chloe pulled back like her hand had been smacked and turned from him. Ritt willed himself to relax. Chloe was his mate. Nothing was off-limits to her. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just a sore subject.”

  Chloe didn’t respond; she was lost in thought, staring out the window. Ritt sought to draw her out. “No one in the family liked him, and no one talks about him. Whoever my dad was, my mom either loved him so much that it’s painful to think about him or didn’t love him at all and was saddled with me as a mistake.”

  Chloe turned back to him, her black-green eyes compassionate. “I know what that’s like, wondering about your parents. I’ll always wonder why my birth parents gave me up, if they were like me, if they had visions like I do.”

  Ritt had been wondering about Chloe’s birth parents too. “Can I ask you something? You said you didn’t want to be a counselor. Why? With your abilities ... and you’re obviously drawn to help people.”

  “I am. That’s partly why I volunteered at the center, but I only interact with the kids when I get visions. And I couldn’t do it for a living full-time.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s draining. If I’m around too much of it, I start to feel sick. I need a break to recharge. Having Nikki around helps. She reminds me to lighten up. She pushes me to go out and have fun.”

  Not surprising. Ritt took one look at Nikki and pegged her for a party girl. But she was also vigilant; no one was going to get roofied on Nikki’s watch. Chloe had deemed Nikki worthy of best-friend-slash-roommate status, and that was enough for Ritt. His mate was sweet and sensitive, but she wasn’t stupid.

  “And taught you to avoid tequila?” he asked knowingly. “Was it too many margaritas?”

  “Yep. And now all forms of tequila are forever off limits,” Chloe declared, making a sideways slashing motion with her hand for emphasis.

  “I figured the club was Nikki’s idea.”

  “Yeah, she was on a mission to find me a—” Chloe stopped abruptly, and Ritt hazarded a glance in her direction.

  “To find you a what?”

  Ritt could see Chloe mentally sifting through the words. She ended up with, “To find me a way to get over things.”

  “Things?”

  “Well, you.”

  Ritt laughed. Nikki was way out of her league on this one. “I hate to break it to you, Chloe, but there’s no getting over me.” He flashed her a grin.

  “Wow,” Chloe returned. “Cocky much?”

  “Confident, not cocky. And for the record, I’m confident that there’s no getting over you either.”

  “Because I’m your mate?” Chloe used air-quotes around the word mate.

  “Mm-hm,” Ritt confirmed, amused. The word was as common as the words wife or husband in his family. It was foreign to Chloe, but she wasn’t objecting to it, which was a good sign.

  “When you introduce me to your mom, will you tell her I’m your girlfriend or your mate?”

  “Mate.”

  “And you think she’ll …” Chloe left it open for him to fill in the blanks.

  “She’ll hate it, if she even believes it. Typically, our mates are—” Ritt caught himself. “People like us.”

  “What does that mean?” Chloe laughed softly. “People like you?”

  Ritt kept quiet. He glanced at Chloe. She was considering picking through his brain again; he could see it.

  “Don’t, Chloe.” She dropped her eyes to her lap contritely, and Ritt returned his eyes to the road, smiling to himself. “When you meet my family, we can tell you everything.”

  In total, it took about 12 hours to reach Ritt’s family’s ranch in Arizona. They made a few quick stops on the way but ate in the car. Chloe didn’t mind the long drive. It gave them time to talk freely.

  She shared more about the visions with Ritt, relishing the lack of apprehension she felt. Ritt in turn elaborated on his “extended family” and his life back in Arizona. It sounded like a simple enough life on the surface, except that they both knew there was some big secret he wasn’t allowed to share without the “family’s” blessing. Were there mafia members in Arizona? She hoped not. It was bad enough that Ritt was expecting the meeting with his mom to go badly.

  Ritt pulled up to a security gate and punched in a code. A dirt road picked up where the paved road ended just beyond the gates. A rocky ridge, too large to be called a hill but smaller than a mountain, dominated the center of the property. The road led them right up to it and then curve
d around. Behind the ridge sat a long, ranch-style structure painted gray. It looked more like a compound than a home. They drove on to the semicircular driveway and parked directly in front of the double doors.

  Ritt’s mother was home but no one else was, Ritt had told her. He had left messages with the three other members of the family he wanted Chloe to meet. Two of them, Nathan and Joseph, worked late on Saturdays. The third, Kent, was retired but out and about somewhere. Kent was considered the patriarchal figurehead of the extended family.

  One front door swung open as they left the car, and Chloe caught her first glimpse of Kimi Carter. Ritt had told her that Kimi was a young mother, but that felt like an understatement. As they drew closer, Chloe thought Kimi was either on to some unbelievable beauty regimen or she had been really young when she had Ritt.

  Kimi was dressed casually in a loose-fitting white top over black leggings. Shiny black hair fell to just above her trim waist, which was disproportionately small to the swell of her hips. She was about an inch taller than Chloe. Her perfectly round face held chocolate brown eyes similar to Ritt’s, but those eyes were not friendly. Kimi stood with a fist on one ample hip.

  “Hello,” Kimi greeted crisply.

  “Mom, this is Chloe,” Ritt spoke slowly and calmly, setting the tone.

  “Come in.”

  Inside, the décor was modern with a feminine touch in a color scheme of black, white, and gray. An open great room expanded before them with vaulted ceilings and skylights. Two large, black leather sectionals curved in a semi-circle across from a wall-mounted, large-screen television. Framed black and white photos of wildflowers filled one accent wall.

  Kimi led them to the center of the great room. Taking a deep breath through her nose, Kimi’s eyes settled on Chloe. “No marking?”

  Ritt didn’t answer that, so Chloe asked, “Marking?”

  They both ignored her. “This girl is not the one.”

  “She is,” Ritt countered.

  “Because she’s young and pretty? I raised you to be smarter than that.”

  “She is my mate. Accept it,” he gritted out.

  The whole exchange was mortifying. This was ten times worse than Chloe had anticipated. She had never met someone who instantly and intensely disliked her before.

  Ritt had told her that people in his family believed in mates who were destined to be together. Even so, it was odd to hear him and his mother refer to her as his mate and the one. The term marking was new, and their avoidance of the subject wasn’t lost on Chloe.

  Chloe could see there was more than just skepticism in Kimi’s glare. There was a blatant distrust, a near-irrational fear of people in general. Kimi was definitely carrying some kind of emotional baggage.

  Chloe instantly regretted the thought. It seemed to have triggered the floodgates. Brutal images rushed at her. She sensed Kimi was just a child—maybe twelve but already developing. A man had been drinking, leering at her throughout the evening. He was a friend of the family, someone she should have been able to trust, but he attacked the moment he got her alone.

  The rape was horrifyingly violent. Fear and desperation overwhelmed her. She could hardly see through swollen eyes in the heat of the next day when she’d been found naked, brutalized, and barely breathing, somewhere in the middle of a desert. Months later, she would learn she was pregnant.

  Chloe bent forward, gasping for air, nauseated. Ritt caught her arm. “What’s wrong?”

  She blinked away hot tears and looked to Kimi. Kimi didn’t look angry. She looked … vulnerable. This was the secret she had been protecting when she refused to speak of Ritt’s father. This was what their “family” had sworn to keep from Ritt.

  “I feel a little dizzy.”

  Kimi snapped to attention at that. “I’ll get you some water.”

  Ritt leaned in close as Kimi left the room. “Did you see something?”

  “Nothing clearly.” Chloe felt a stab in her gut at the lie. “You’re right. She’s very protective of you.”

  Kimi reemerged with a glass of water and handed it to Chloe. She had thawed some. Chloe sat back on the couch and sipped at the water, cognizant that Ritt was watching her. Ritt’s cell phone buzzed from his pocket, and he fished it out.

  “I need to take this.” Ritt looked from Chloe to Kimi as if warning them that they would be alone together. The phone buzzed again, and Ritt stepped out of the room to answer it.

  “You know,” Kimi said coolly.

  “I didn’t mean to invade your privacy. I can’t stop it.”

  Kimi seemed not at all interested in how Chloe knew. “You’ll tell him.”

  Chloe pondered the water glass, still feeling queasy. “No, this isn’t my secret to tell. I think you should tell him, though.”

  “Do you?” There was a haughty pitch in Kimi’s voice as she snatched the glass back.

  Chloe flushed. “Don’t you think he deserves to know?”

  “Deserves?” Kimi shot back incredulously. “He deserved a father who loved him and a mother who was more than a child. I’ve never lied to him, but I will not burden him with the sins of the despicable coward who spawned him.”

  Chloe blanched. She hated knowing something so personal that Ritt didn’t know, but she was not in Kimi’s shoes. The vision was sickening, but Chloe wasn’t the one who had to live it firsthand. She wasn’t the one who had to raise her rapist’s child, as a child. Who was Chloe to tell Kimi what she should do or whom she should tell?

  Ritt reappeared and pocketed his phone. “They’re on their way.”

  Chapter Nine

  By Chloe’s estimation, it was about twenty or thirty minutes from the time Ritt got the call before his family showed up. That was a looong time to be eyed distrustfully by Kimi from across the room. Chloe’s nausea from the vision had subsided, but a mild headache remained.

  The three men came through the door single file. Nathan was the most contemporary of the group, wearing his light brown hair a bit long and sporting designer jeans. Behind him, Joseph and Kent were more traditionally Western, in nondescript jeans and button-down shirts with pearly snaps. Although Kent and Joseph were both beginning to go gray, none of them looked old enough to be referred to as elder. Kent was, at most, in his late forties.

  As Ritt introduced her, Nathan’s and Joseph’s expressions registered concern. Kent came closer to scrutinize her eyes and then leaned back, his face impassive. “We should sit down.”

  They all filed in behind Kent, who led them through the house to the dining room. A wrought-iron pendant light was centered over a black-lacquer table for twelve with a white orchid centerpiece in a white vase. They were really committed to their monochromatic theme here, Chloe thought.

  The conversation began with small talk. Nathan filled Ritt in on what had happened around town while he had been gone. Chloe gathered that Nathan owned this sprawling ranch, where members of the extended family met regularly, as well as an auto shop and a diner in town. Joseph practiced holistic medicine. Kent was a retired history professor. It didn’t take long for the subject to change to her.

  Joseph posed the obligatory new couple question to Ritt. “How is it that you two met?”

  Ritt answered, “Chloe’s a part-time volunteer at the youth center I’ve been working at and a junior in college.”

  “And your family?” Kent directed the question to Chloe.

  “My adoptive parents raised me in Mountain Springs,” Chloe told him. “I have no siblings.”

  Ritt added, “She’s never met her birth parents.”

  Looks were exchanged between Nathan and Joseph. Kent watched Chloe closely in the uncomfortable silence that ensued. Kimi stood. “What is it?”

  “It’s nothing,” Nathan muttered.

  Joseph shook his head. “Kimi’s in this, too. She’s family.”

  Kent said nothing. Kimi’s heated gaze rested on Chloe. “Chloe and I have nothing to hide from each other, do we, Chloe?”

  Chloe remain
ed calm, her mind centered on why they were here. Ritt wanted to share something with her that he couldn’t, without approval from the three men sitting before them. These men were trying to determine if they could trust her. Chloe directed her response to Kent. “There are things about me that aren’t … normal. I don’t know where they came from.”

  Kent sat forward then. “What do you know?”

  Ritt moved a calming hand to her thigh under the table and gave her an encouraging nod. He was asking her to share with strangers what she hadn’t shared with her own family and Nikki. Somehow, though, it felt necessary now.

  It’s OK. You can tell them.

  The seldom-heard voice in her head was the nudge Chloe needed to start talking. She told them of her ability to sense people’s feelings and see bits of their past. She told them that no one knew but Ritt. She admitted that she had not been able to make sense of the little she got from being around Ritt, but that it was clear to her that he was also different from others.

  “Why do you care?” Nathan asked when she was finished.

  She felt a blush creep across her cheeks. “I’m his mate.”

  “Ha!” Kimi ridiculed. “You don’t even know what that means.”

  “You’re right. I don’t fully understand what that means for you,” Chloe acquiesced. “For me, it means I can trust him with the secret I’ve been afraid to tell anyone else all my life. It means I can tell all of you, because Ritt trusts you. It means—” She looked back to Ritt then. “It means I love you.”

  Ritt’s response was a cocky—or confident—grin. “I know. I love you too.”

  Chloe wanted to smack him and throw her arms around him at the same time. He knew? Of course, he did. Why would he bring her here, if he’d had any doubt? How was this all so easy for him?

  Kent addressed Ritt. “You are sure she will accept you, accept us, for what we are?”

  Ritt was unfazed by the question. “I am.”

  “Can you accept her for whatever she is?” Kent pressed.

  Whatever I am? The question wasn’t odd to Ritt. “She’s my mate.”