Unearthed

by Sara M Zerig

  First to introduce himself, the younger man said, “I am Colton, and this is Dane, my uncle.”

  The two apparitions stepped closer, transforming into actual flesh, their feet meeting the earth. Colton stepped before Chloe. Ritt wrapped an arm about her shoulders, and she held her breath as Colton examined her face.

  “We know who you are,” Colton confirmed.

  Chloe made a conscious effort to breathe. “You do?”

  “Yes. Your parents are allies of ours. They hail from the Coven Realm. They have been searching for you.”

  No one said anything for a few moments, and Chloe realized it was because they were all waiting for her to say something. But she was still stuck on parents.

  “Can you bring them here?” Ritt inquired.

  Colton exchanged a sideways look with his uncle. “We can, but you don’t want us to.”

  Ritt stiffened. “Why not?”

  “There is no accord between the Coven and Earthen Realms. There is no law here to keep them from taking your mate from you,” Colton explained, inspiring a look from Dane that said he wished his nephew would let him do the talking.

  Chloe found her voice. “Would they do that? My own parents?”

  “Your parents are noble people,” Dane reassured her in a gruff but well-meaning sort of way. “But they have thought you dead for twenty years. They want you home.”

  Dead? Why would they think that? How did this happen? Chloe’s mind was racing to sort through too much—or too little—information.

  Kent joined in, “Can you help them?”

  “Yes,” Dane answered. “Ritt is our brother. They can stay in our realm, under our protection, until we can come to an arrangement with Chloe’s parents.”

  Chloe chewed at her lower lip, glancing about. Was she really prepared to run away with these gigantic strangers? How would they get to this other realm? What then? “How can you be sure my birth parents won’t take me from your realm?”

  “We have wards that protect our realm,” Colton told her proudly. “Not even your parents can pass through them if they mean to break our law, and your mating to Ritt is protected under our law.”

  “But they can visit,” Dane elaborated. “You can meet them in our realm, without fear of being taken from your mate.”

  Chloe looked to Ritt, Ritt looked to Kent, and Kent simply nodded. The elder seemed to think they could trust these mammoth-shifters from another world, and that was enough for Ritt. Which, to Chloe, was insane.

  It will be all right. The voice was back, but even that wasn’t enough to set her at ease.

  “What about Nikki? My parents?”

  “We will send word to your parents,” Colton promised.

  “She means her adoptive parents,” Ritt explained, his eyes on Chloe’s. He lifted a hand to the side of her face, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. He was willing her to be calm, she knew, but she wasn’t sure if she could manage that.

  Ritt spoke softly, “Chloe, your birth parents are coming for you. That must be what we felt the other night at the club.”

  “I can’t just leave.”

  “But you will,” Ritt went on calmly, “either now with these shifters or soon with your parents.”

  He’s right. You must go now.

  I knew it, she mentally replied to the voice. I knew when we walked down that hill that everything was going to change. But Ritt was right. As much as Chloe would have loved just to drive back to the Springs and pretend all this never happened, burying her head in the sand wouldn’t change things.

  “The three of you are welcome to stay in our realm for as long as necessary,” Dane said, his eyes on Kimi.

  Chloe turned back as the words the three of you sank in for Kimi. She must have been engrossed in what this meant for Ritt up to this point. Her head swiveled to Dane as if she was seeing him for the first time. “I don’t need protection.”

  Kent spoke up, “If you want to be sure of seeing Ritt again, Kimi, this is the best way.”

  “You don’t have to go,” Ritt told his mother, “but I have to.”

  Kimi blanched at the statement. “Oh.”

  The hollow sound of that ‘Oh’ hit Chloe right in the gut, reminding her she wasn’t the only one with problems. Ritt was all the family Kimi had and probably the reason she got out of bed every day for the past twenty-nine years. She didn’t want to take Ritt from Kimi any more than she wanted her birthparents, whoever they were, to take her from Ritt.

  Kimi lifted her chin. “Of course, I’ll go. I’ll just have to take care of some things first.”

  “No.” Dane’s tone turned authoritative, and Chloe instinctively took one step back into Ritt. Ritt held her tight, he and Kimi remaining equally stoic. “You must all come now.”

  Dane advanced, and Kimi looked to Kent. The elder conveyed with a simple nod that Kimi should go, just as he had to Ritt. Chloe didn’t know how Kimi wasn’t terrified of the beast of a man who took hold of her hand, but she wasn’t. Colton held one hand out to Chloe and the other to Ritt. As Chloe’s hand touched Colton’s, a bright light surrounded her, obscuring her view of the world around them.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chloe blinked against the sunlight. The air was miserably hot, still and almost sweet on her tongue. Red dirt and crushed rock covered the land as far as she could see. There was nothing green in sight, unless she counted the sparse smattering of trees well in the distance. Those could be green. A massive, red rocked structure with ivory veins throughout curved before them, reaching high into a deep blue sky.

  “I don’t see …” She turned in a full circle, twice, looking for any evidence of the world they had left behind.

  “There’s nothing to see,” Ritt affirmed, slipping his hand over hers. “It’s gone.”

  “It is cooler inside the dwelling,” Dane announced.

  It was only a few steps into the wide walkway carved into the rock, and Chloe was grateful for the relief its shade provided. The passageway stretched on for at least a mile, indicating the wall they were crossing through was that thick. Tall torches lit the interior once they were far enough in to lose daylight, but the light came from glowing crystals, rather than open flame.

  Ritt dropped his head to her ear, saying, “I’ve heard stories about this place since I was a kid.”

  “You aren’t scared?”

  “I guess some part of me always believed it was real,” Ritt told her, giving her hand a gentle squeeze.

  “Was it this hot in the stories? It has to be over a hundred degrees out there.”

  “Shifters like the heat,” he told her. “We do fine in cold and snow, too, but we prefer the warmer climates.”

  “Really? Even all covered in fur?” The idea of it was suffocating to Chloe. Ritt gave an easy shrug in reply.

  Chloe looked all about the walkway as they went, but there was nothing new to see. All rock walls and glowing crystals. Colton walked beside them. Dane and Kimi were side by side just in front of them. As they walked on, the nervousness Chloe had originally felt dissipated, and a calm took over.

  She should be full on straight-jacket-ready, but there was a strange comfort in what she had learned so far. There was a reason behind the odd traits she had wrestled with understanding all her life. There were other worlds beyond the “normal” one she tried too hard to fit into. Somewhere, there were other people just like her. It was validating, in a way.

  And then there was Ritt, her tenacious mate. Her fearless man-cat. She glanced up to find him watching her, no doubt reading her like a book again. He gave her hand another squeeze, and Chloe leaned into his side. Her rock.

  The bubbly sound of Kimi’s laughter echoed around them. She and Dane were still holding hands. Dane spoke quietly, and Kimi clung to his every word.

  Seeing Kimi so comfortable with Dane was disconcerting. Was Dane Kimi’s mate? Could it happen this fast? Ritt had said that shifters instantly know when they’ve met their mate. But this was Kimi
.

  Ritt also picked up on the connection, Chloe sensed. She slipped her hand from his as he lengthened his strides to trail closely behind his mother. Chloe slowed her own pace, hoping Colton would slow with her. He did. “Colton?”

  Colton addressed her unspoken concern. “Do not worry for your mate’s mother, Chloe. Be happy for her; I am happy for my uncle. Honestly, we all thought the old wolf would never find a mate.”

  “He’s not that old,” Chloe said softly.

  “How old would you say he is?” he lured.

  “Early forties?”

  “Add two hundred years to that, and you’re close.”

  That set Chloe back a moment. Colton kept walking, and she scrambled a few steps to catch up. “How long do shifters live?”

  “That is up to fate, but magic people have lived to their fourth century before dying naturally.”

  She eyed Colton’s back, then Kimi’s. Would Kimi and Ritt live that long too? Ritt said they didn’t know. Chloe put a mental pin in that question. They went on a bit farther when she whispered to Colton, “You have to tell him to be patient. She’s been hurt.”

  He spoke quietly in return. “When a shifter meets their mate, Chloe, no past heartbreak matters.”

  Ritt was intently listening to Dane and his mother. Chloe didn’t know if his cat hearing allowed him to track two conversations at once. In the barest of whispers she hoped Colton could hear, she said, “No, I mean really, badly hurt.”

  Colton paused and gave her his full attention. Daylight was visible at the end of the tunnel, and her time for this conversation was short. “Just tell him to … go slowly.”

  Ritt circled back and slipped an arm about Chloe’s waist. “Go slowly?”

  Chloe saw from his expression that those two words were all Ritt had picked up. She nodded toward the daylight ahead. “I’m not in a hurry to be back in the sun.”

  It was a true statement but intentionally misleading, and Chloe felt no small amount of guilt for it. It was worse, somehow, than the outright lie she had told him after she received Kimi’s vision. Maybe it was due to the marking; everything was more intense since then. Or maybe it was because she had just shared more with a stranger than she had shared with Ritt about Ritt’s own mother.

  Colton cocked his head to the side, distracted. “I don’t know how you and your mother have managed to hide your shifting for so long, brother. Here you can shift as often as you like.”

  Inside the dwelling walls, there was plenty of shade. Although mostly smooth on the exterior, the inside of the ring sported ledges of walkways all the way up the wall. A sheet of red stone at least ten feet high and fifty feet wide jutted out from the lower dwelling wall. It looked to be a natural stage, although no one was performing on it now.

  The enclave bustled with hundreds of people, as well as oversized wolves and cats. The people who passed closest to them stared. She, Ritt, and Kimi stood out both in size and dress. The men were all roughly the same size as Colton and Dane and were bare chested, wearing similar linen pants. The shifter women—or were they just “females”—were also much larger than human women, with long, powerful legs, dressed in short, gauzy dresses.

  One such female, dressed in a white mini dress that left little to the imagination, came forward to greet them. Colton grabbed her by the waist and kissed her. She said something quietly to him in another language.

  “Ritt, Chloe, this is my mate, Stevie.”

  Stevie nodded in their direction. She was an Amazonian beauty queen, with high cheekbones, full pink lips, and dark eyes as kind as Colton’s. She tossed her black and gold mane of ringlets as she spoke to Colton again, and Chloe noticed a thick scar at the base of Stevie’s neck just above the collarbone. Chloe averted her eyes, not wanting to stare.

  “Ritt’s mother will be staying with us as well.” Colton leaned forward and whispered something in Stevie’s ear then, causing Stevie’s eyes to flare in disbelief.

  “They were just right here,” Ritt muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

  Colton scanned the area and spotted them. “There they are.”

  Chloe took in the vibrant marketplace. It was like a farmer’s market on steroids. People all over were working at looms or sorting vegetables or drying meats. She estimated it would take hours to get through it all at the leisurely pace Dane and Kimi were going.

  A tour either earlier or later in the day, when the sun was low, would be preferable to Chloe. It may have been cooler inside the ring than out, but it still had to be in the nineties. She was only wearing jean capris and a tank top but was overdressed for this kind of heat.

  “Hungry? Tired?” Stevie asked, concentrating to get the words right.

  Chloe glanced at Ritt, but he was visually tracking his mother. Stevie looked to Colton, seeking validation. Colton assured her, “That was right.”

  Chloe realized Stevie was attempting to speak their language. “I’m sorry. We understand you. We’re just … in shock, I guess.”

  Stevie looked relieved then empathetic. “Yes. Shocking.”

  “I will bring Dane and your mother back,” Colton announced, asking Stevie, “You’ll show them to our home?”

  Stevie said something affirmative sounding in her own language. It was as though she could understand English just fine but was still learning to speak it. All about them, people of the marketplace spoke in their native tongue—a language unlike any Chloe had heard before, with a terse, stunted accent. Wolves and wildcats weaved through the crowd as seamlessly as the people did, eyeing her and Ritt as they passed by. They were the strangers here.

  Dane had led Kimi away from the others strategically. He needed to send word to the other elders, but he also wanted Kimi all to himself. Precious time was ticking away the second Chloe St. Cyr’s foot touched the red land of the Shifter Realm, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t soak up every moment along the way with his mate.

  If Kimi didn’t know yet they were mates, she felt something. She held his hand and leaned into him here and there as they walked together. She listened intently to everything he told her about his dwelling. He could not fathom that what she was feeling was nearly as intense as what he was feeling, though.

  After all this time, it turned out that an Earthen shifter was his mate. He had traveled to that realm several times, but he only ever met with elders. He was lucky to have found her at all.

  Dane searched the faces in the marketplace, causing Kimi to ask, “Looking for someone?”

  “Kale, of the Fourth Dwelling. He is a witness for the realm. He will be here today.”

  “As a witness? To what?” Kimi prompted.

  “The death of a shifter.” His mate looked ready to hear more, but Dane wasn’t going to tell it. Not now.

  “Dane,” Colton called, catching up to them.

  Kimi stepped away as if to give them privacy that was unnecessary. Dane kept hold of her hand, and she brightened. She did not want to leave his side any more than he wanted to leave hers. Colton switched his speech so that Kimi would not understand.

  “You heard?”

  “I heard. I don’t think she or her son did, though.” Dane confirmed in the same language, avoiding the use of names Kimi would recognize.

  “He did not hear, and his mate did not want him to, either.”

  That was odd. Shifter mates should have no secrets from each other, ever. Maybe Chloe did not know this, because she was raised human. Kent had told them that their mating was new.

  Technically, a cat’s hearing was better than a wolf’s, and Dane had heard her, even while talking to Kimi. But Dane had intentionally tuned into the conversation behind him, whereas Kimi and Ritt had been focused on him.

  The idea of going slowly was ridiculous. Hadn’t it taken him over two centuries to find her? Wasn’t that slow enough? The words really, badly hurt raised his hackles, though. Eventually, he would find out who had hurt her and how, and then he’d demolish whoever that was. For now, Dane was
determined to exercise some patience for his mate. Some.

  The sight of Kale walking toward them stalled the conversation. Kale’s light brown eyes nearly matched the caramel hair that fell to his broad shoulders. He was on the leaner side, for a Shifter Realm shifter, but as tall as the rest of them. As expected, the witness looked to be here on a mission. And if he wasn’t, Dane thought, he would be soon.

  “Dane, Colton,” Kale greeted each in turn, speaking so that Kimi would understand him. “Visitors?”

  Dane also switched his speech. “This is Kimi, from the Earthen Realm.”

  Although Earthen people aren’t permitted to transfer into the Shifter Realm, Kale gave no reaction to that. Having been a witness of rituals and events all throughout the realm for decades, Dane knew there was little Kale hadn’t seen. Instead, the witness inclined his head in a silent invitation for details.

  Dane pointed to the pathway where Stevie led Chloe and Ritt up the dwelling wall, turning curious heads along the way. Kale focused his attention there. “With Stevie? More Earthen visitors?”

  “One Earthen, one Coven,” Dane clarified. “The Earthen shifter is Kimi’s son, Ritt. And the witch beside him is Chloe St. Cyr.”

  Kale’s head snapped back then, and Dane suppressed a smile. It was nearly impossible to catch this shifter off guard. “Why is she here?”

  “Because she is Ritt’s mate, and the elders of his family asked for our help.”

  “Do the St. Cyrs know she is here?”

  “Not yet. We could use your help, as witness, to spread word to the other elders.”

  “Has he marked her?”

  Dane nodded. “Earthen marking.”

  Kale transferred away without another word, his physical form turning translucent for just a second before he was gone.

  “Where did he go?” Kimi asked.

  “He is confirming that Chloe is Ritt’s mate. It helps that Ritt marked her, but Kale needs to be close to tell. We don’t scent markings from the Earthen Realm as well as we do among our own kind.”

  The three of them watched as Kale materialized on the inside wall just as Stevie, Chloe, and Ritt turned in to Colton and Stevie’s cave.