by Sara M Zerig
He may not have been much of a father, but if not for Lee’s intervention, Seth would still be under the thumb of his manipulative, power-crazed mother. Seth could not sense his mother any more than he could sense Lee; fortunately, Char could not sense him either. Seth supposed he could track her down if necessary. Lee had once told Seth that Char had married a human and settled into Earthen life in Colorado under the name Charlotte Bradley. But Lee had shared that so Seth could avoid her, not find her. Seth had followed his father’s advice, sticking with James’ band and staying away from Char.
All in all, Seth led a good life. He was a trusted member in James’ band of realmless. He was in good health and had steady work. He was generally happy.
But Lee had never been happy. An empty shell of a shifter, he had been going through the motions of daily life with no real purpose. He had never mated. He hadn’t even a single friend close enough with whom he could confide that he was a father. Seth was probably the closest thing to a friend Lee had, and they went months between visits. The life that had just ended for Lee, in truth, was no life at all.
Seth sat back on the bed feeling hollow and sad. But he didn’t cry. Seth never cried.
Dane took in the cave that was too small to be called a home, even for one. The bed was unmade. The space reeked of alcohol.
“How long has he been gone?” Dane asked Colton.
“No one is close enough to him to know for sure, but no one has seen him since the announcement.”
Word came from other vendors in the marketplace that Lee hadn’t shown up to peddle his water skins. He wasn’t the only vendor who was inconsistent in his trade, but the timing was suspicious. Dane was reluctant to jump to conclusions. Colton was not.
“No blood relatives,” Colton summed up. “No mate.”
That was probably the most damning evidence of all to the average shifter’s way of thinking. To be so advanced in years and still not have found a mate could drive a shifter mad. At Lee’s age, he should have long since been mated with pups of his own. But then, so should Dane. He also lived alone but in a larger, cleaner cave. If he had left the dwelling for a day or two during this time, would the others have thought him guilty of the crime?
“I heard from Wisp.” Colton picked up the mattress while Dane went through the few items on the table. “They have found Chloe’s home, but she was not there. The home had a realmless spell around it. They do not know when it was cast, though.”
Colton extended a claw and cut along the seam of the mattress as Dane picked up a pouch and rummaged inside. “Better to assume the realmless is nearby.”
Realmless weren’t worthy adversaries, but Dane wouldn’t underestimate anyone so brazen as to steal a pureblood infant. He certainly wouldn’t take any chances with his own child if he’d had one. Dane pulled a small, cropped photograph of a young female and a folded paper from the pouch: a funeral program.
“Who is that?”
“Julie,” Dane answered, reading the program. “Died last year.”
It wasn’t possible to tell from a picture if she was realmless. He wasn’t sure if they would be able to tell from a body that had been buried a year ago either, even if Dane were so inclined to dig her up. And he wasn’t.
Dane read through the brief program. There was little to it, but there was an address to the Earthen church where the service was held. It was better than nothing.
Chloe stirred in the covers, feeling the warmth of Ritt’s body beside her. She sorted through the events of the night before in her mind. Her hand flew to her neck, where he had marked her, but it wasn’t sore. Ritt was smiling down at her.
“Thought you’d dreamt it?”
Dressed only in cargo shorts, Ritt smelled of fresh soap, and his hair was damp. She traced a finger down his smooth, bare chest to his abdomen, noticing two faint but long scars across his ribs for the first time. Chloe looked up at him with the question in her eyes.
“Fight.”
“With?”
“Family.”
“Your family did this?”
“Shifters fight. We can’t help it. We fight to blow off steam, fight to settle arguments, fight to make a point. We heal up much better than humans, though. These wounds on a human would have needed stitches, but mine healed without stitches over a couple of weeks.”
Chloe thought of Kimi and wondered how long it had taken her to heal as a child. She wondered what happened to the man who had attacked her. Was Kimi also prone to violence, as the other shifters were? Even after what had happened to her? Chloe pushed the memory of the vision out of her mind with a shudder.
“We fight and even hurt each other, sometimes, but not our mates, Chloe. We could never hurt our mates.”
“Do female shifters fight too?”
“They’re aggressive but not as quick to fight as the males. Last year, one of Nathan’s sons tore into another shifter just for looking at the same she-cat he wanted.”
“His mate?”
“No, but I think from a distance he thought she could be.”
“Did you ever think you had found your mate?”
“No. There have been girls I liked a lot, but I never thought they were my mate.”
Chloe dropped her eyes and pretended to look over the scars again. It bugged her that he said a lot. And it bugged her that that bugged her.
“No one like you.” Ritt’s voice trailed off, and Chloe realized something was wrong.
“What?”
He nodded toward the door to the adjoining bathroom. “Shower’s in there if you want one before breakfast.”
She studied him a moment. He was worried about something, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. She picked up her overnight bag from the floor and carried it into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Chloe leaned in toward the mirror, inspecting the bite mark at the base of her neck. It was barely discernable, four pinkish puncture marks that she had to squint at to make out. Turning on the shower, she brushed her teeth as the steam filled the room.
She wondered if Ritt was unsure how others would react to the marking but then dismissed that thought. For his kind, the marking was expected. Even his mother, who immediately disliked her, had expected it.
Stepping into the hot water, she lathered herself up with the soap and shampoo from the shower shelf. Did he think she’d have second thoughts in the morning? Was that what he was worried about?
She examined her own feelings, post-marking. She felt the same: still head over heels in love with Ritt. No more so, which probably wasn’t possible, and no less. She turned off the water and dried herself off.
The steam subsided some, and Chloe took in her reflection again. She didn’t look different. She didn’t feel different. Was that the problem? Ritt had said that the marking intensified the bond between mates. But that was between shifters. Would it be the same between a shifter and a human? Was there something he was expecting that hadn’t happened?
“Chloe?”
Chloe snapped out of her musings and opened the door to Ritt. His eyes traveled the length of her. The worry she had sensed before was gone.
Ritt reached out and ripped the towel away, dropping it to the floor as his eyes swept over her again. He stalked forward. “Mine.”
The single word sent a jolt of anticipation through her. She stepped back coyly as he advanced. Her backside bumped into the bathroom counter.
“Where are you going?” he teased, taking hold of her hips and lowering his mouth to hers.
It is different, she thought as he kissed her. The desire was somehow greater, her body’s response to his touch more intense. Ritt’s mouth moved to her neck, brushing against the bite. An embarrassingly loud moan escaped her, and he smiled against her shoulder.
As his hands and mouth roamed her flesh, Chloe realized it wasn’t just her. Ritt’s panting was more pronounced, his grip on her just shy of bruising, teeth grazing her skin with every kiss … Stairwell-Ritt x2. Her hands t
raveled the expanse of his smooth chest, down his abs, to the waistband of his cargo shorts.
Her breath hitched as he gazed back at her with tawny eyes, more golden than mocha. “Your eyes …”
“I don’t have to hide them from you now,” he said roughly. “There are no secrets between us anymore.”
There was a twinge of guilt somewhere inside her, but her hands had a mind of their own, unfastening his shorts. A fever spiked within Chloe, sweat beading at her forehead. The heat was too much.
“It’s too hot in here,” Chloe protested.
“It isn’t the steam,” he said through ragged breaths. “It’s the marking.”
“No, it’s too hot,” she argued.
Ritt froze. “You want me to stop?”
Chloe hopped up to the counter to wrap her legs around his waist, and Ritt sucked in sharply. “That’s what I thought.”
Chapter Thirteen
Everyone but Chloe and Ritt had already eaten, so it was just the two of them in the dining room. The scent of steak and eggs filled the air, but Chloe opted for a lighter fare of a bagel with fresh fruit and a tall glass of water. She was still warm from the heat of her post-shower interlude with Ritt.
Ritt was back in his tan cargo shorts and had added a heather gray T-shirt. Chloe dressed in white capris and a coral tank top with a feminine, lettuce-edge hem, leaving her hair down about her shoulders. She left her purse in the room but grabbed her cell phone, hoping to find a charger. Ritt had told her that ten people lived here, including his mother. Surely, one of them would have a charger that fit her phone.
“Where are Nathan’s sons now?” Chloe asked.
“They’re visiting another werecat family in New Mexico this week. One of Nathan’s sons may have met his mate there.” Ritt shook his head to himself. “I wish they were here for you to meet them, though. They’re like brothers to me.”
“The brothers you fight with?” At his nod, she asked, “How many people are in this family? I mean, the shifter extended family?”
“There are less than thirty of us. But there are a few hundred shifter families. We all keep in touch.”
“Why don’t you just live here too?”
Ritt gave her a wry look. “And be a grown male living with his mom?”
“Isn’t that better than throwing away your money on rent when you spend your free time here anyway?” Chloe suggested.
“No, it isn’t.”
Chloe shook her head at him. “What’s your apartment like? Will you take me there?”
“Oh, I’ll take you there,” he promised huskily. He lowered his voice conspiratorially then, although no one else was in the room with them. “It looks a lot like this place.”
“Really?” Chloe whispered back.
“Nathan’s mate, Kyla, offered to decorate it for me. There isn’t much, but what I do have is all black and white.”
Kimi breezed into the room, dressed in a yellow sleeveless top and blue denim jeggings cropped below the knee. Her dark locks were swept to one side, cascading over her shoulder; Chloe was once again struck by how young she was, to be Ritt’s mother. Kimi picked up the empty plates, and Ritt stood. “Mom, I got it.”
“No, the elders want to speak with you both.”
Kimi was worried over something, Chloe noted, much like Ritt had been earlier in the morning. Kent, Nathan, and Joseph emerged from the kitchen and took chairs across from Chloe as Kimi carried the plates away.
Nathan spoke first. “We have invited our brethren to come meet with you. We think they may know more about Chloe.”
“Brethren?” Ritt asked.
Kent answered him, “You know the stories we tell the children of another world, where giant shifters are the common people and are free to shift as they please?”
“The shifter’s paradise,” Ritt supplied.
“These stories are no fairy tales,” Kent said. “The Shifter Realm is as real as our own world.”
Ritt said something under his breath that sounded a lot like I knew it.
Kent turned his attention to Chloe. “There are other worlds as well, where the people look much like us in our human form but are not human.”
The elder watched Chloe expectantly. She recalled Kimi’s taunt that she may not be human. “You mean … aliens?”
Kent gave a half-shrug, half-nod in answer.
“And you think …” Chloe couldn’t finish the thought. Ritt leaned in close to say something comforting in her ear, but she couldn’t hear it.
“We suspect you come from one of these other realms,” Nathan jumped in. “We are akin to people of the Shifter Realm whom we can communicate with when necessary. We have asked them to come meet you. They can confirm.”
A random, grade school memory rushed forward. It was the dead of winter, and she was out on a bitterly cold playground at recess. Someone had called her name, and Chloe looked up in time to take a frigid rubber ball smack in the middle of her already frozen face. She had toppled back on the blacktop, head smacking the pavement, wind knocked from her lungs, her brain stunned. Yeah. This felt a lot like that.
“Chloe?” Ritt’s voice echoed in her head as though he was miles away.
She shook off the memory. It must have been the shock that had her linking the two.
“Are you OK?”
“Yeah,” she said automatically, lips moving numbly. “Well no, not really …”
“Whatever it is, we face it together,” Ritt told her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Chloe leaned into his side, dimly aware of the conversation continuing without her. Kent was elaborating on the Shifter Realm. Ritt brought the conversation back to the more pressing matter. “When will we hear from these other shifters?”
Kent answered, “Soon.”
Dane and Colton had retrieved Lee’s body from a small French town in the Earthen Realm. They had found him atop Julie’s grave, throat slashed by his own claw. Dane estimated Lee’s death was mere hours before they had arrived. It was early morning, and the remote countryside cemetery was deserted, allowing them to remove him unnoticed.
Ordinarily, Dane would bring the corpse to the family to make arrangements for a ceremony. But Lee had no family, so they deposited his remains directly with the caretakers at the canyon reserved for their dwelling’s dead. The moment they did, word spread like wildfire throughout the community. Neither he nor Colton offered any comment as to a possible connection to the abduction of the St. Cyr witch, but the conclusion was drawn anyway.
To Colton’s mind, the matter was solved. Dane was less sure. They agreed that they should convey what they did know to the St. Cyrs. When they returned to Colton’s den to compose that message, they found Colton’s mate, Stevie, waiting there.
About six inches shorter than Colton, Stevie had the thick build that was typical of shifter females. She was clothed in a delicate gauzy dress with feminine details. Long blonde and black ringlets fell to her waist.
“Word has come from our Earthen brethren,” she told them. “They have found Chloe St. Cyr.”
“How?” Dane probed. “They weren’t looking.”
“She came to them.” Colton moved around her, toward the correspondence box, when Stevie stopped him. “Not yet. It's complicated.”
It had only been an hour since breakfast, but the people from the other world were here. Here—waiting for Chloe. Chloe, Ritt, and Kimi followed Nathan through the house. This time, she felt more apprehension than excitement. Nix that. There was no excitement.
They moved across the backyard and started down a hillside. The hill led to a man-made pond, where Joseph and Kent stood, speaking with … Chloe stopped mid-step, and Kimi nearly collided into her.
Before Joseph and Kent were two oversized ghosts. The air around the unreal-looking men was almost watery, wavering. They wore loose fitting, linen-like pants and nothing else. Their chests and feet were bare, and those feet, not fully flesh, did not quite meet the ground. Nathan walked on to join
the others while Ritt and Kimi stayed with Chloe.
“Chloe?” Ritt prodded.
Chloe tried to form a coherent sentence. “It’s … they’re …” was all she could get out.
“I’m not leaving your side,” Ritt assured her, taking hold of her hand. Chloe looked from her hand in his to the giant apparitions.
“I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I … want to know.”
“Chloe, we need to know.”
Did they? What if this was all a big mistake? So she had an unwieldy psychic-ish ability and weird eyes. How did that translate to being an alien? Those ghosts looked nothing like her. Was she about to learn something she shouldn’t know? Something she couldn’t un-know?
“Ritt,” Kent called out, waving them down. Ritt walked forward, tugging Chloe along with him gently. As they moved down the hill, Chloe was gripped with a certainty that everything was about to change for them.
“Brothers,” Nathan greeted the mirage-like men respectfully. “This is Kimi, her son, Ritt, and Ritt’s mate, Chloe.”
Chloe stood stock-still before the translucent image of overgrown men. Both specters had distinct noses, thick jaws, and jutting chins, although no one feature looked particularly disproportionate to the other. They both carried an unreal amount of muscle mass.
The shorter of the two was at least seven feet tall. Thick waves of sandy blond hair fell past his shoulders; big brown, puppy-dog eyes shone kindly. The taller man was older and much rougher. His broad nose looked to have been broken a few times. A jagged scar ran down one side of his jaw, and more scars adorned his huge shoulders and arms. If shifters healed better than humans, these scars were once gaping wounds. His hair was only a few inches long and a shade darker than his counterpart’s, with silver strands throughout. His harsh gaze swept over each of them before settling back on Kimi.
“Wolves,” Ritt breathed.
