Heart's Sentinel

by PJ Schnyder

  She melted in the strength of his arms as he tasted the secrets of her mouth. For a few moments, she didn't want to be anywhere else.

  And then a low growl sounded in his throat and his kiss became hungrier. He kissed her harder until his teeth bruised her lips. His arms tightened around her and his fingers began to dig in as he pressed himself against her.

  Panic shot through her, and in a flash she could hear Van's voice crooning to her as his claws dug into her flesh.

  She almost fell when Adam released her. Fighting to catch her breath, she realized he had darted to the other side of the room, putting the counter between them. In the gloom of the living area, his eyes reflected the light back at her in an eerie glow.

  “That's why, Mackenzie.” He strangled his words, barely understandable, his cat closer to the surface than she had ever seen.

  She whimpered despite herself, torn between the desire he’d awakened in her and the horror of the memories.

  Cursing, he started to move.

  “I'm sorry.” He bit out the apology. “Stupid of me, I shouldn't have done it. I'm sorry.”

  Mackenzie pushed herself up to stand on her own. She moved slowly around the counter, watching him pace back and forth like a caged animal.

  “Don't be sorry.” Overwhelmed with too many emotions, thoughts, she didn't want him to regret it.

  “You didn't invite me,” he snapped. “I'm no better than the bastard who Changed you.”

  He stopped suddenly, running a hand roughly through his hair and laughing shakily. “I …when you talked about offering a kiss, I couldn't stand the idea of never having the chance again.”

  She remained motionless, watching him uncertainly.

  He turned to look at her with miserable eyes. “They're right, you know. You have me absolutely unhinged.”

  He rushed to her and started pushing her towards the trap door to the lower level before she could flinch.

  “You need to go,” he said, the words tumbling out in a rush. “You need to go to Chryssa's place. You'll be safe there. I can concentrate on protecting the perimeter of their place. You won't have to worry about me on top of knowing the bastard is out there.”

  She dug in her heels. “Wait, what? No. Uh, uh.”

  “Kitten, you go down there, or I pick you up and drop you down .” Oh, and he meant it.

  She turned in his hands to face him. Rather than have her in his arms, he backed away from her.

  “Okay, I freaked.” She admitted it, advancing on him. “You're right, I wasn't prepared for how scared I would get. But what? I don't get time to work through it? You're going to dump me someplace else?”

  “You don't understand.” His face contorted with the strength of his emotions.

  “So explain it to me,” she snarled right back. “I'm not a child, Adam. Explain it to me so I understand, so I can make an informed decision.”

  “From the minute you walked into the school, I wanted you.” His control slipped the leash barely restraining him and he yelled at her. “You looked at me, and my cat wanted you right then and there. But you're damaged, Mackenzie.”

  “So.” Was it possible to hurt like this? “You don't want damaged goods?”

  “That's not it.” He ground out the words.

  She only blinked at him in bewilderment.

  He began pacing again, agitated and upset. “You don't know. You're too new. You don't know what being a shapeshifter is, what kind of monster I can become.”

  “You're not a monster. Believe me, I'd know.”

  “I can be a monster!” Adam shouted back, too desperate to make her understand to worry about the others overhearing. “I've done it before, Mackenzie. I've ripped a man to shreds for hurting what was mine to protect. I tore him to pieces for hurting her, right before her eyes. I covered her in his blood!”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her knees give way as she sat abruptly back on her heels. She muttered vaguely, “Ripped to shreds…”

  Coming to a halt he stood there, watching her caught in memories, giving her the truth hiding underneath the joking façade. “She was only a child, a human child.” He laughed bitterly, and the sound held no joy. “I only had a year on her, a child myself. We played as friends in town and attended school together. A human male worked with the construction crews. He smelled bad.”

  "A male, smelled bad?” Still too new to immediately understand what scent could tell her about people, she didn’t grasp it right away.

  Adam gave her a bleak look. “The male started hanging around the school. None of us told the teachers or the Sentinels because he said he was a friend of her family's. Then one day he appeared at the playground, rushing her away from the school saying her parents had sent him for her, there had been an accident.”

  She uttered a painful, choked sound.

  “I followed them, worried for her, but he didn't take her home. He took her to his rooms in the temporary housing. He took her in there and wouldn't let her out, molested her.” His voice hardened. “I heard it, smelled it. I crashed through the window and stopped him from hurting her more.”

  He met her gaze directly as he made himself tell her. “I used my claws to tear him apart until there were only pieces left to pick up.”

  He wasn't going to hold back on the evil of it. He waited for her to look at him with the same fear she had when she thought of Van, the same terror directed at him so long ago.

  Instead, Mackenzie's dark eyes focused on him with a clear gaze, shooting straight through him with sadness, but no fear, no terror.

  “You were protecting someone, weren't you?”

  “I traumatized her.” His breath came in ragged gasps, his cat coming to the fore because of the self-loathing he'd held so close. “I committed an evil in front of her, and it couldn't be undone. Those were the words her father threw in my face right before he took her back to the city, to keep her safe from the beast. He took her to keep her safe from me.”

  Her gaze held steady, her voice full of conviction. “Your intentions weren't evil, Adam.”

  “The result ended the same.”

  She wouldn't accept his judgment. “But, I could be every bit as violent, couldn't I?”

  “No.” His denial sounded absolute.

  “I could.” She insisted, her face earnest. “Without you to teach me, I could. What if I had stayed back in the city with my family? What might I have done to my little brother and sister? What damage could I have done without a guardian to protect me from myself?”

  “You don't know,” he growled, watching her set her jaw in a stubborn expression, only making her that much more endearing. Despite himself, he felt his rage melting away.

  “I do.” Her voice darkened. “I've been right there, up close and personal, with the kind of monster a shapeshifter can be. You ripped apart an attacker in front of her, but Van ripped into me.”

  He couldn't respond. The earnest look on her beautiful face held him as she continued to break through all the facades he had erected.

  “Monsters come in many forms,” she whispered, her eyes bright with tears. “Human or shapeshifter, man or woman. You're not one of them.”

  “You don't know yet.” He fought it, but her words soothed him. “You don't know me well enough yet.”

  “I've gotten a pretty good idea.” She took a breath and tipped her head to one side, her expression clear of doubt. “And, I've got faith.”

  He dragged a hand over his face, his anger completely drained away. His inner cat had calmed, amused with Mackenzie's assessment, and the beast made up as much of Adam as the man. He couldn't maintain any kind of anger or rage, even if he tried to use it as a wall to keep her from getting too close. It would be more truthful to say he had been trying to use it that way.

  “It's too soon for you and you're still too new.” He tried to draw the line one more time.

  “Are we going to go through the whole kid thing again?” More than exasperated, she sounded appall
ed.

  “No.” He fought not to let the chuckle out. “I give on that point.”

  “Then what's the new one?”

  He grinned in spite of himself. “You're still too new to understand what it means to tangle with an adult male cat like me.”

  One eyebrow rose, those plump lips compressed and her look spoke louder than any words.

  “An adult male like me, as dominant as me, could tumble you before you even realized it.” He made it a matter of fact. “I don't share, and I don't give a lot of time for decisions. You tangle with me and it’s a serious game. Remember, Kitten, we shapeshifters feel in extremes. Everything you experience with me is going to be much more intense than any of those human boys you might have traded kisses with back in the city.”

  “Whatever happened to going on a few easy dates and seeing where things take a person?” she muttered, blowing out a breath and lifting a stray lock of hair off her forehead.

  “Should have accepted Liam or Cal then.” He deliberately reminded her of earlier in the evening. “Easy is not the way it works with adult males.”

  “The few shapeshifters I met in the city, studying at the universities, were casual in their relationships.” She said it slowly, not to argue with him but inviting more information.

  “They were younger, not kids, but juveniles.” He dismissed them with a sharp cut of his hand. “Once a shapeshifter grows into her majority, what she is looking for in a relationship changes, too.”

  “I take it growing into majority isn't set at the age of two decades the way it is with humans?” she asked curiously, her head tilting to the other side.

  He shook his head, scowling at the way the ambient light played across the sweet curves of her face at that angle. He couldn't ignore her and his rage wasn't there to protect him from her. “Majority can take a cat close to the third decade depending on how dominant the cat.” He worked his jaw in frustration. “Look, the bottom line is you don't want this with me, Kitten. You want to go and play with a few of the juveniles first. Ease into being what you are.”

  His cat snarled in his mind at the thought of her with others.

  At the same time, she snarled audibly. “Always so eager to pass me off to someone else.”

  “No!” Before he knew it, Adam fell on his knees in front of her, gripping her upper arms and shaking her slightly. “I … want you too much,” He looked into those dark chocolate eyes and gave her the real truth, the root of it all. “When I take you, Kitten, there won't be anyone else. There won't be any walking away.”

  He brushed his kiss across her forehead because her sweet lips were too dangerous. He rested his forehead against hers and listened to the galloping rhythm of her heartbeat in response to his proximity. When he spoke again, his voice strained with the emotion. “You choose me and there won't be any other choices. There won't be any half way.”

  She took in a breath and spoke, slow and deliberate. “Adam, I…”

  And then her cell phone rang.

  Startled, she fell back as she scrambled for the slim phone unit in her pocket. He let her go, giving her space and giving himself a chance to rein in the intensity.

  “Hello?”

  “Mac?” The voice on the other end of the connection sounded feminine. With the advantage of his shapeshifter hearing, Adam could hear the other girl perfectly fine. He started to rise so he could walk to the other side of the room and give Mackenzie some privacy, but then the speaker continued. “Mac, you've got to help me. I'm so afraid.”

  His attention sharpened as she sat up. “What is it, Stephie? What's wrong?”

  “It…it's Van.” Stephie sobbed the stalker's name. The words tumbled out in a rushing flood. “He…I…we went on a date. I know you said he was bad news. Just figured you had to be exaggerating. I thought it’d be okay since you'd left. I didn't think you were interested in him anymore. But then he…”

  “Stephie.” Utterly calm, she asked the important question. “Stephie, did he hurt you?”

  A hesitation and then more sobs before Stephie finally blurted her answer. “Y-yes. Oh Mac, help me! He hurt me and hurt me, and then when I woke up, everything was all wrong. He won't let me go home. He said if I went home, the police would find me and throw me out of the city.”

  “Shhh.” She did her best to soothe her friend over the call. It proved more than effective. Stephie's sobbing quieted and her breathing evened out. “It's going to be okay.”

  He watched her, wondering if she even knew what she did and knowing she probably didn't. His Mackenzie would be dominant enough she needed special training.

  Addressing the matter at hand, he motioned to get her attention. “Have her come here. I'll talk to Marcus.”

  Nodding, she gave her friend a calm set of instructions to make her way to the train station and promised to wait for her.

  “He's been gone for days.” Stephie hiccupped, no longer hysterical. “I don't know where he is or when he'll be back. He could be anywhere. He could come back any time.”

  Adam saw the sad smile Mackenzie directed at him. “We've got a good idea of where he is, Stephie. You have time. Get to the train station.”

  Chapter 8

  Mackenzie stood waiting on the porch of a small ranch house a mile from Adam's home. Tucked under a few trees, the quiet house looked out onto a small meadow. He prowled along the perimeter of the porch in human form and, watching the smooth play of his muscles under the skin of his arms, she wondered what he looked like as a jaguar.

  “You should be inside the house.” Unhappy, he stood on alert, his eyes scanning the trees around the meadow.

  “Marcus said we were still deep inside River Gap territory,” she responded, unruffled by his bad mood. Her encounter with the pride alpha had been brief but interesting. She got the impression Marcus had been mildly amused by her for the trouble she’d brought into his territory, rather than the annoyance she expected.

  “It's still safer for you to be inside.” Adam shot her a frustrated glance before resuming his prowling.

  She stood her ground. “You have two others securing the perimeter and you wouldn't let Stephie go to your home. I'll wait for her here.”

  “You're lucky Marcus backed you when you refused to go to Chryssa's.” He had no anger left in his posture, but he still projected unhappiness, obvious in the twist of his mouth, the set of his jaw. “It would have been even safer for you there.”

  “She is out on a two day hike with a set of students.” She paused. “And I'd feel more comfortable with you, instead of locked up in a strange house alone.”

  I didn't want to be alone.

  “I'd have been patrolling the perimeter.” He stopped, turning toward her. His eyes held worry, as if he'd hurt her and hadn't meant to.

  “This solution is better.” He'd picked up how upset the idea of being alone made her, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it. “Marcus is going to get Stephie, and we're waiting here. What is this house, anyway?”

  He turned to scan the forest as he spoke. "There are a few small houses and cabins throughout the River Gap Pride's land. They sit in the buffer zones between individual territories as meeting places or for guests.”

  “Guests don't stay in your homes?”

  He shook his head. “Big cats are territorial by nature. Few, if any, are welcomed inside the actual lair. The Sentinels and Enforcers are tightly knit, but even we don't stay in each other's lairs for extended periods of time.”

  “Why?”

  “Too dominant.” He crossed his arms across his chest, the definition in his shoulders and biceps rippling with the movement. “We've got better control than others, but we are all more dominant, more aggressive. We can't help challenging each other, given too much time together and on a personal territory.”

  “Why me?” He had deliberately avoided mentioning her, so she asked, point blank.

  “You?” His usually animated voice turned bland.

  “You brought me into your
home.” She said it quietly, as if it were a secret.

  He fell silent. She could see tension across his broad shoulders, and her interest perked as she noticed a dusky red flush rising up the back of his neck. His scent wafted toward her on the breeze and she could smell his spicy musk more strongly, tinged with something else. Embarrassment?

  “Mac!” Her head snapped in the direction of Stephie's voice. Adam had to have known she’d been coming.

  Stephie ran across the meadow, heedless of the danger Adam guarded against. Built a touch slimmer than Mackenzie, with narrower shoulders and hips, her pale skin shone white and delicate as egg shells. Streaks of blond highlighted her soft brown hair, setting off her green eyes.

  Watching her approach, an irrational worry struck Mackenzie. With Stephie there, Adam couldn't help but make the same comparison people always made. Shaking off the shallow concern, she started toward Stephie but before she reached the steps off the porch, Adam put an arm to stop her.

  “Let her come to you.” His amber eyes had lightened to gold, his voice contorted as the cat surfaced. “That's as much as I can do now. Don't test me.”

  She studied him, so tense the muscles along the side of his neck stood out as taut twin cords. Stepping back, she let him stand in front of her, waiting for Stephie to come to her.

  Marcus appeared at the edge of the clearing, following more slowly. His face frozen in a blank mask instead of the dynamic countenance he'd had earlier.

  “Mac! Oh Mac!” Stephie sobbed, finally having crossed the meadow. She rushed up to the front of the porch and stumbled across the steps.

  The stumble saved her. The low growl had built into a very loud, very aggressive warning from Adam. Mackenzie realized if Stephie had rushed her, he might have snapped.

  “Stephie, are you okay? Stay where you are.” Mac pushed past him to help her friend stand, hoping it would give him time to rein in the dangerous aggression coming off him in waves.

  Stephie fastened on Mackenzie with tear-bright eyes. “You're here. You're really here.”

  She threw her arms around Mackenzie and burst into a torrent of tears and wailing. Mackenzie winced, the sound piercing her sensitive shapeshifter ears. Adam gripped her shoulder and pulled her backwards out of Stephie's arms, causing Stephie to fall to her knees again with a yelp. She looked up at Adam with a slack mouth and eyes wide in shock.