“What type of shifter are you?”
“Snow leopard.”
“I’m a grey wolf,” offered Gunnar.
“Lion-shifter, sweetheart,” Axel said.
“Who’s about to get his fucking arms ripped off,” Kai snarled.
They ignored him and she turned her eyes to Reaper. Reaper, who had been quiet since the others had arrived, raised his brows at her. His eyes twinkled, and although he’d been silent and not touching her other than their first hug, she related to him in a way that she hadn’t with the others. She smiled at him, and he returned it with the side of his mouth lifting a fraction.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said.
“Timber wolf,” he said, giving her a true smile.
She beamed back at him, happy that he trusted her, before she glanced at Hunter.
“Panther,” he said.
She glanced around the group and tried to picture each of them by their descriptions, but her memory failed her, and asked another question. “Do your eyes stay the same when you shift?”
They all nodded, even Jade, who had moved closer to her when she hadn’t realized it. She ignored the woman, relieved that she wouldn’t have to compete with the beautiful woman.
Several questions assailed her as she glanced around the kitchen table. Would the shift be to scale or would they grow? Would Reaper’s brown eyes would complement his fur, and would Hunter look as dangerous as she imagined, completely black with piercing green eyes? Xander could seduce any woman with his coral-blue eyes and his bright, white hair, and Gunner’s wise hazel eyes would stand out with his fur. As she looked at Axel, her heart jerked in her chest at the thought of the other lion-shifter, with the same light-brown eyes, ripping his own throat out, and determination washed over her. She wouldn’t allow any one of them to be hurt because of her.
“Does it hurt?” she whispered.
“No, it’s never hurt. When you first shift, it’s uncomfortable because your bones elongate and your mass grows, but it doesn’t hurt,” Hunter said.
“Would you like to see?” Axel asked.
Her gasp echoed through the quiet kitchen. As she stood there, stunned at Ax’s question, Kai had moved closer to her, lifted her in his arms, and sat back down behind the kitchen table with her secured in his lap. She relaxed as he wrapped his arms around her waist, and didn’t miss the look the shifters shared. She glanced back at Axel, and nodded slightly.
“If you want to show me, then yes, I would like to see,” she mumbled.
“Don’t scare her, Axel. Maybe a Reaper or Gunnar first,” Hunter said.
“Nah, she’s tough. Ready?” Ax asked Liv.
She nodded, and the table and chairs were moved against the counter, giving him room to shift. Her eyes bore into Axel’s, and he smiled at her, drawing another snarl from Kai.
“Close your eyes, love,” Kai said.
She glanced at him, confused, but when she spotted movement out of the corner of her eye, she realized why.
Axel had taken off his shirt and reached for the button of his jeans. Hands blocked her eyes the moment Ax started to lower his pants, but for a split second after he shucked his clothing, she was able to see his taut, muscular body. Kai snarled and turned her against his chest, and squeezed her closer to him.
The shift must’ve happened fast, because the moment she was able to see again, a lion stood in front of her. His gigantic tongue darted out and licked his lips, and without realizing her actions, she pushed herself off Kai’s lap and stood abruptly.
“Ax?” she asked.
The giant lion head bobbed up and down, and a burst of laughter erupted from her throat. She reached for the lion in front of her, but hesitated. She had met the shifters the day before, and for all she knew, they grew irritated when people wanted to touch them like a domesticated animal, like a dog.
“Can I…touch you?”
“No,” Kai growled.
“Oh, okay.” She jerked her hand back and stepped away from Ax. Her curiosity had gotten her into trouble before, and she shivered as embarrassment swamped her.
A booming roar had her covering her ears, and for the first time since she arrived at the mountain house, she felt fear knowing that she’d crossed the line. She shouldn’t have asked, as she realized her mistake too late. The lion, Ax, stalked toward her, and she stood frozen.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
Ax shoved his huge head against her stomach, and purred, loudly. When she stood frozen, her hands by her sides, he wrapped his paw around her legs and pulled her closer, bumping his head against her stomach again.
Jade appeared next to her, wrapping her small arm around her waist, and Kai snarled. The fox shifter leaned toward her ear.
“You can touch Ax; he wants you to. Kai was just being a jealous jackass,” Jade muttered.
As she looked down into Ax’s eyes, he bumped into her stomach again; her hand reached down tentatively, and brushed against his mane gently. He purred loudly, and she scratched him behind the ear, laughing as his head turned into her hand, silently begging for more. His fur was downy soft, and when she glanced down at his paws, she noted that they were close to the size of her head. He stepped back and she thought he was going to shift back, but he flipped over and exposed his stomach.
“Don’t even think about it,” Kai snarled.
She dropped to her knees and ran her fingers through his mane. “This is wicked.”
Loud laughter erupted, along with a more feminine giggle, and she smiled as she continued to touch Ax. Curiosity got the best of her, and when she reached for his paw, it curled over her hand. She laughed as she realized he held her hand. Her hand traveled up his arm, the hair there thinner, yet as soft as his mane. His purr felt wonderful, traveling through her body, and she moved closer to Ax.
She jumped when Hunter, in his panther form, nudged his nose against her arm. Her eyes widened as she took in his beautiful black coat, but his teeth had her attention for a long moment. She slid to sit on the floor, and he crawled closer to her, laying his large head on her lap. She could still see his piercing green eyes, and she reached out to touch the fur behind his ear. She ran her hand down the length of his spine, and she watched Hunter’s tail swish from side to side.
Hunter took her by surprise when he lifted his head from her lap, and when she looked down, he licked her across her cheek. She laughed as he did so, wiping the moisture from her cheek.
“Fucking shifters,” Kai mumbled.
Ax growled at Hunter for her attention, but Hunter ignored him and butted his head against hers. As she stroked both Ax and Hunter, reveling at the fact that they were actual shifters, Kai reached down and pulled her into his arms. Hunter and Ax roared at Kai, but he snarled back, and wrapped her up in his arms.
“They weren’t hurting her,” Jade said.
Without taking his eyes from Liv, he growled under his breath. “I…don’t…care.”
Not wanting to upset Kai, her hands cupped his cheeks, and she kissed him. She meant it to be a simple peck, but like all their kisses, it quickly grew out of control. She heard a roar behind her, and breaking the kiss, she turned to see Hunter and Ax swatting their big paws at each other. Smiling at their playfulness, she reached down and scratched both of their ears one more time.
“Thank you for showing me.”
Instead of staying in their animal forms, her eyes widened as Hunter shook before he shifted back into a very fit, very naked man. This time, Kai wasn’t fast enough, and Liv couldn’t help her gaze sweeping over his beautiful body, from head to toe. Ax followed suit, and before she could appreciate more than just his chest, Kai had her face pressed against his chest until they’d dressed. Only then did he release her.
Blushing at her rudeness when she stared at their naked bodies, she excused herself, kissing Kai’s cheek before she headed toward the living room. She was more than ready to get back to work and felt more determined than ever to sav
e them. As she walked out of the kitchen, she paused when she heard Reaper’s voice cut through the other loud voices.
“She is a special human.”
Murmurs erupted but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. She waited to see whether Kai would say anything to Reaper’s statement, but he stayed silent. Her heart dropped like lead in her chest. Despite her joy minutes before, she felt deflated as she forced herself to go back to work.
Chapter Thirteen
Kai
“How long has she been working?”
“Sixteen-hour days for the last three days. She doesn’t stop unless one of the shifters brings her food and makes her eat, and she collapses close to dawn when she’s too exhausted to go on.” He gave a wry chuckle. “Hunter and Ax shifted in front of her and ever since, she’s worked herself into a stupor to try to find this antidote.”
Kai scanned his living room, counting thirty new shifters and twelve vampires on top of the six shifters who had already arrived. All the assassins watched Liv as though they’d never seen a human before. Ghost stood next to him, and even his eyes were glued to the small woman writing like mad until the end of the page, and dismissing it as quickly as she wrote on it.
The pile was getting to be ridiculous—she hadn’t burned in a while because of how hard she was working—and it started to worry him. He knelt down in front of her and almost pulled her into his arms when she lifted her hand and cupped his cheek for a split second, before going back to her work. He smiled at her progress, knowing that she sensed him when he was near.
“How’s it going?” Ghost asked her.
“Close. I’m so close,” she mumbled back an answer.
Kai settled next to her, and that signaled to the others to grab a seat and relax. He would have to draw her gently from her work, but at the moment, he was content to stare at the beautiful woman who had stolen his heart.
The other day, he recognized his lie the moment it slipped out of his mouth. She could never and would never be temporary in his life. Her dedication in finding answers had made him skeptical at the beginning, because he believed that no human would put their lives in danger for someone or something unknown to them. But she never gave it another thought. Dedicating her time and energy into protecting him and his friends had broken through another wall he hadn’t even realized he’d built around his heart.
Although he’d been jealous by his friends touching her, he knew they would never harm her. They did it to get back at Kai for having no sense of humor, and he had to admit he didn’t when it came to Liv. Even before he turned, he looked at life as a serious undertaking, never taking joy in anything other than his job. But once Liv walked into his life, all of that changed.
He explained to the others about the mark, and what he and Reaper thought that meant. They were all excited for him and they reiterated their dedication to protecting her.
He scanned the new arrivals and smiled again at the concentration with which they watched his little human. She mesmerized him from the first moment, and he counted himself lucky that no other man or immortal had taken an interest in her before him. He knew he would never let her go.
“Standard Biotech asked the government to reissue the contract on Olivia’s life. The contract was extended to us, as well as other companies that have shifters and vamps on their payroll, so that complicates things. It’s a capture mission, but kill if necessary,” Ghost stated.
The growl and snarls that accompanied his announcement was deafening, but he kept his eyes on Liv to see how she would react. When he first told her about his part in the first contract on her life, she hadn’t displayed any fear, but her mind had worked on finding a solution for them to have once he carried out his mission.
But this reaction almost knocked him on his ass. Her eyes met his, and the smile she gave him stopped his heart. She rose and smiled at Ghost, before she launched herself in his arms, and hugged him tightly. Kai reacted on instinct, reached for her and pulled her back into his chest. He snarled at his boss, despite Ghost’s surprise at finding a human hugging him, and he snarled louder when his surprise turned into a smirk.
“Don’t touch her,” Kai demanded.
While he became distracted by the furious jealousy that spread through his body, his Liv did something surprising. She turned in his arms and kissed him breathless, in front of everyone. He deepened the kiss, holding her tight against his body and forgetting about the rest of the world, until Reaper’s voice brought them back to the present.
“Kai—maybe not the time, man.”
Liv pulled back and laughed. She ran to hug Reaper, and he caught her easily, giving her a squeeze, before he set her on her feet. At that moment, she turned back toward Kai, and she realized dozens more people were in the room, and pulled up short. Kai held his hand out for her, and crossed the room before she reached for him. He tucked her into his side.
“Liv, the one you hugged first is our boss, Ghost,” Kai introduced.
“Hello,” she greeted, before her eyes scanned the room.
“Well, the rest you’ll meet in time. Everyone, this is Olivia Jane Sabin. She’s been working on curing cancer by cell regeneration, and she’s the one who destroyed all of her research and theirs when she learned about the shifter’s death. She smuggled out the information so that we could have it, and then she came to find me. I’ve told her more about vampires than I have shifters, but I trust her with my life.”
Reaper, Hunter, Xander, Ax, Jade, and Gunnar all voiced their support at his statement. Liv beamed at them.
There were mumbles of hello, but Kai noticed that the vampires were fixated on where he held her against his side. When he raised his eyebrow, Thomas was the first to voice his question.
“The legends…is she?”
“I believe so. Even if they are not, she is mine. There’s one thing that I don’t understand.” Kai pulled down the collar of his shirt to reveal the mark that hadn’t disappeared.
“Recent?” Thomas asked.
Kai shook his head. “Three days. It’s darkened and it doesn’t hurt. It has other…effects.”
He heard Liv’s heart beat faster, and glanced down to see the appealing blush of her cheeks.
She gasped when Thomas appeared in front of her when the second before he was across the room. She glanced up and met Thomas’s gaze. Again, she surprised Kai when her hand shot out to shake the other vampire’s hand.
“It’s nice to meet you…”
“Thomas, and nice to meet you as well, little Liv—you as well.” Thomas dropped her hand and turned to Kai, examining the mark on his throat. When he touched it, there was no effect, either pain or pleasure, and his brows drew together at his confusion.
Thomas stepped back. “You may be right.”
Ghost interrupted their conversation when he directed another question toward Liv. “Why are you excited by the contract reissue?”
A smile bloomed on her face and she laughed, squeezing Kai before she turned back to Ghost and the rest of the assassins.
“Because they don’t have a backup to their work, and they don’t have other samples to test with. They don’t even have the video to examine the effects of the drug. They need me and the work I’ve completed over the last five years, plus their formula, plus their samples in order to recreate what they had. Even if they remember some of the formula, it will take them years—decades—to catch up to where they were. If they were to capture me—you are the only ones who know about my memory—so they’ll have to kill me, because I would never give them any information.”
Growls echoed throughout the room, but she smiled and went to her overflowing pile of papers and picked up an armful. The growls cut off as they watched her stumble toward the fireplace and throw the papers in. Kai helped her, and before long, the living room floor was clean, and around them stood stunned shifters and vampires.
“She’s a very strange human,” Isaac mumbled.
“Thank you,” she said.
Isaac laughed, as did others in the room, and the sounds stunned Kai, because he’d never seen the vampire laugh before, and he’d known him close to a century.
“That doesn’t solve the problem of others coming after her,” Ghost pointed out.
“Unless one of us betrays her, whomever they send won’t be able to get in the house without a code. We can build a lab in the basement, secure it with a code that only we know, and take turns guarding her as she works toward finding the antidote. She’ll need to test as soon as she finds a viable formula anyway,” Hunter explained.
“What happens if someone comes in without a code?” she asked.
“The house goes on lock-down. Reinforced steel will secure all the doors, so each room is essentially a panic room. Those who have codes they will be able to open the doors, and then we will hunt those who have broken into the house. Each room has an intercom, and I have a central hub that contains cameras everywhere in the house but the bedrooms and bathrooms. If another shifter or vampire were to break in, the doors wouldn’t hold them for long.”
“Do you have sensors on the outside?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said and he noticed that she sagged with relief, “but with our speed, they don’t always detect movement. Why?”
She shivered but shook her head. “Later,” she mumbled.
As they continued to discuss what to do about the contract, Kai watched her as she moved around the room and introduced herself. He tensed when she reached the vampires, but their normal coolness disappeared. They were warm and cordial to her, shaking her hand and speaking with her as if they were old friends.
“You have it bad.” Ghost clapped him on the shoulder.
“She’s my mate,” he said simply.
“I figured.”
After she’d met everyone in the room, and had taken the time to hug the shifters she had come to know, she sat and pulled a notebook in front of her, and began writing again. Kai motioned everyone to the media room before he dropped down beside her. She reached for him, and gave him another kiss.
Kai (A Dark Assassins Novel Book One) Page 11
