by Diana Seere
“It’s weak. The serum has not been tested on shifters yet, but laboratory animal testing shows promise.”
“Why would someone steal that? Only a shifter would care.”
Asher let out a long sigh that turned into a grunt. He opened his mouth, shut it, then opened it again, putting Edward on high alert. “Clearly, the wrong human—or possibly a shifter—does care.”
For some unknown reason, Edward’s thoughts jumped to Molly again, then his eyes narrowed as he studied Asher.
His brother was holding back.
“And you think someone wants to turn this into a weapon against shifters?” Edward hated the words as they passed across his tongue. “A fellow shifter?”
“We don’t know who it is. But God help us if it’s one of us.” Asher finished his drink, stood, and set his glass neatly on an end table.
Before Edward’s eyes, his brother shifted and slipped quietly out the door, shaking his clothes off as they formed a small pile of rags. Asher ran into the night, nothing but a bushy wolf’s tail and the skitter of broken twigs as he fled.
With great relief, Edward joined him.
God help us, indeed.
Molly walked off the elevator at the Platinum Club, turning to the right to get to the office suite she shared with Eva. The main club, with its cocktail lounge and bar, was to her left. Until two weeks ago, she’d worked a floor below, where she’d kept the clothes, shoes, and makeup for the waitstaff.
On her first day at the club several years ago, all she’d been told was to keep the small dressing room clean and the uniforms organized. Offering fashion advice and doing makeup hadn’t been part of the job description. After a month of crushing boredom, Molly had decided to try to make a few changes. She’d asked to move the rack of simple black cocktail dresses and menswear to an empty room in the floor below and build a few dressing rooms so the staff could change in more comfort and privacy.
Eva had agreed. A month after that, having seen the waitresses hobbling at the end of their shifts, Molly had asked if the club might consider paying for better shoes. Eva had given her a long, hard look—Molly could never tell what the intimidating woman was thinking, and she’d sweated through her camisole—but the next day, her wish was granted. And then some. Eva handed her a corporate credit card and told her to do it right—not just shoes but clothes, makeup, accessories, whatever she wanted.
Molly hadn’t believed her at first. But then, gradually, she realized Eva was a rare boss, and the Platinum Club a rare employer, and she’d gotten busy acquiring the best products she could find.
When Eva asked her two weeks ago to join her in management, Molly had felt a moment of regret about leaving her boutique but then had jumped at the offer. She’d do anything for Eva. Molly’s biological mother, never very reliable to begin with, had died suddenly when she was eleven, and the three foster families that followed were best forgotten.
Eva, however, had taken her in and given her more than anyone ever had in her life. Eva was brilliant, professional, responsible, and fair. If she asked Molly to wear a clown suit and dance the Macarena, Molly wouldn’t hesitate. Eva knew what she was doing. She wouldn’t let on what that was, but it would become clear eventually, as the slower, less-clever world caught on.
“Afternoon, boss,” Molly said as she strode into the quiet, well-lit office. Eva had made herself a lovely sanctuary just steps away from a loud, overflowing cocktail lounge. Today she sat in a crimson-red leather recliner with her back to the door, staring out the window at Boston. Something about her posture made Molly pause. “Is everything all right?”
Eva didn’t answer at first. Her hand was limp at her side, dangling over the arm of the chair, holding a cell phone. After a long silence, she spoke without moving her head. “I have a dilemma.”
Eager to help, Molly set down her bag and coffee on her desk and went over to her. “What can I do?”
“I’m not sure.” Slowly Eva pivoted her chair away from the window and looked up at Molly, uncharacteristic doubt pinching her features. “It’s… a little awkward.”
“Awkward?” Molly asked. She hadn’t thought Eva had ever been awkward in her life. “What about?”
Taking a deep breath, Eva got to her feet and marched over to the sofa, where she sat down and patted the cushion next to her.
Molly immediately walked over and sat at her side, dying to know what was going on.
“You’ve been at the Platinum for several years now,” Eva began. She stopped and chewed her lip while Molly waited. “You’ve worked with a lot of staff. In all that time, meeting so many people, you must have heard… rumors.”
I bet this is about the Romanians, Molly thought, feeling her pulse quicken. The Nagys weren’t strictly Romanian—some of them had American accents—but she couldn’t call them by their other name, not if she wanted to keep her job. Or her life, perhaps.
Her throat went dry, suddenly remembering that Eva’s last name was also Nagy. Until now, Molly had assumed it was a coincidence.
Or she’d hoped it was.
Molly took an unsteady breath. “Is this about the, ah, Nagys?”
Eva’s eyes sharpened. “What about them?”
Knowing she was walking on dangerous ground, Molly clasped her hands together and thought hard about what to say. What if she was talking about something else? Molly would look insane. “They have unusual qualities.” She held Eva’s gaze. “Very unusual.”
Eva closed her eyes and seemed to relax. A small smile quirked the corner of her mouth. “Yes. You’ve heard.”
Molly cleared her throat. “I’ve seen.”
In a flash, Eva’s tension returned. “When?” she demanded. “How?”
“Two years ago.” Molly would never forget it, not a single moment, until she died. It was a relief to finally be able to talk about it with someone. Although she didn’t want to talk to her boss, of course, given the circumstances at the time. “I was downstairs like usual, cleaning up, ironing, that sort of thing. It was late, but the club was still packed.”
Molly paused, trying to figure out how to explain she’d had sex with a club member during business hours in the boutique Eva had been kind enough to support.
“Tell me,” Eva said, her voice like steel.
“He surprised me. Tomas Nagy.” Molly felt her face burn red-hot. “Are you going to fire me?”
“Only if you don’t tell me everything.”
I’d rather scrub the urinals with my own toothbrush, Molly thought. But she rushed on to get it over with. “He let me know he was interested in having sex. I found him attractive and hard to resist. Impossible, as it turned out. As soon as it was, um, over, he picked up his clothes and walked out.”
“Without putting them on?”
“Correct,” Molly said. “I was kind of shocked.”
“I find that unlikely.”
“Well, I thought I should’ve been,” Molly said with a sniff, lifting her chin. Mostly she’d been afraid somebody would see him walking out of her boutique in his birthday suit, and she’d get in trouble. She had already been composing an excuse about him needing her fashion advice. At the time, he’d not only been a member at the Platinum but also some kind of manager at LupiNex, Gavin Stanton’s biotech firm in the top floors of the building. He’d left that job soon after. The rumor among the Platinum staff was that he’d been fired for sexual harassment. Just one more thing that made her try to forget she’d ever met him.
Which was, of course, totally impossible.
“And then what happened? What told you he had unusual abilities? I assume it wasn’t his lovemaking?” Eva asked.
“You’re right. That was mediocre.”
Eva’s lip quirked. “Such a shame. And such handsome men, too.” She shook her head. “Tell me the rest of it.”
“He dropped a sock. I ran after him with it. He’d just gotten into the elevator, but I know a trick to stop the doors from closing—you know that elevator is ancient�
��and so I hit both the up and down call buttons a few times, and sure enough, the doors opened.” Molly looked down at her hands. She’d twisted the folds of her skirt into a spiral, and she had to loosen her grip. Reliving the moment she’d seen Tomas sprout a tail and fall onto his paws—well, it always made her a little tense.
“How much did you see?”
Molly’s turn to narrow her eyes. So Eva knew. “All of it,” Molly said. “He was too busy doing the changing thing to stop me from staring at him. I held the door open until he was done, and then I just let it go.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
Molly shook her head, and Eva nodded approvingly.
“He visited me the next day,” Molly said, “begging me to keep it to myself.”
“Begging?” Eva’s eyes widened. “What a lovely image. Tomas isn’t known for his humility.”
“I kind of gathered that from the beginning, when he’d marched in and invited me to have sex with him.”
“Were there any other… incidents like that one?” Eva waved her hand in a way that might have been an apology. “Unfortunately, due to recent events, I need to know.”
“Not quite like that one,” Molly said slowly. “His brother.”
Eva flinched. “Oh, Molly. Gregor too?”
“Don’t worry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t sleep with him.” Although he’d tried, more than once, to get her in bed. Disgusted with Tomas, who must’ve told his brother what she’d seen, she didn’t want anything else to do with the Nagys.
“So what happened with Gregor?” Eva asked.
“I saw him start to change. He stopped it and told me I was imagining things, but after I’d seen his brother, I was kind of on the alert, you know?” Just like his brother, he’d visited her late one night with a bottle of expensive champagne and a box of chocolates. She’d decided then the Nagy brothers weren’t very creative.
Eva nodded. “I bet.”
“I don’t know why I wasn’t more shocked, but I wasn’t. It explained a few things I didn’t know needed explaining.” Molly shrugged. “I don’t know how else to put it. When you add in the rumors that fly around here sometimes… it made sense. The Nagys can turn into big cats. OK. Back to work. You made me sign a pile of nondisclosure agreements when you hired me, so…”
“Tomas and Gregor Nagy can turn into big cats,” Eva repeated, eyes locked on hers. “Actually, they can turn into mountain lions, which is a rather small cat in the scheme of things.”
Molly stifled an incredulous snort. Tomas as a mountain lion had been a hell of a lot bigger than any house cat. “Can they all do it?” There were other Nagy family members she’d seen at the club.
And there was Eva.
“Yes,” Eva said slowly. “Not all the same animal. It’s driven by recessive and dominant genes, not unlike eye color.”
Quite a bit more dramatic than eye color, Molly thought. She wondered about Eva’s animal, but liked her job too much to ask.
“How do you feel about that?” Eva asked.
“Well, I don’t know how, but I’d already suspected something was unusual about them. Something about the way they walk.”
“They do like to sneak up on you, don’t they?”
“The men do, anyway,” Molly said. “At least they bring chocolate.”
“The men in my father’s line have much more finesse,” Eva said. “The men you’ve met are distant cousins on my mother’s side. We share great-grandparents in the old country.”
So she was one of them! “Oh,” Molly said, looking down at her hands to prevent herself from studying Eva for signs of pointy ears and a tail. “Makes sense.”
“You seem to take this all remarkably calmly.” Eva smiled. “I’d expected you would. It’s quite convenient. I hadn’t expected to need to draw you in quite so soon, but like I said, something has happened. Something very, very serious, and I need your help.”
Molly sat up taller in her seat, feeling goose bumps rise on her arms. “I’ll do whatever I can.”
Eva put a hand on Molly’s knee and squeezed. “Wonderful,” she said. “Go home and pack a suitcase. We’re going to Montana.”
Chapter 4
Edward felt her in the vibration of the earth as her plane landed on the private strip near the ranch. He dropped to the ground just outside his cabin, palms flat against rough dirt, a small stone cutting into his palm, dry leaves shuffling under the weight of his prone body.
Molly.
She was here.
No. Impossible. He shouldn’t be able to feel her like this.
Derry, Sophia, Gavin, and Asher had impeccable senses of smell, able to sniff out truths mere humans could never discern. Edward possessed the same ability, but he had an innate gift that connected him to the earth.
He felt the world through vibration and hum, frequency and wavelength. Animals. Weather patterns and disturbances.
And now, apparently, people.
Or, at least, Molly.
No one knew.
In this he was silent, never sharing his truth.
Closing his eyes, he stretched his long, lean limbs into what looked like a yoga pose, belly down, palms and soles flat, face tipped up to the twilight sky. His wavy hair flopped over his forehead, tickling the eyebrows. One simple command to his own center, and he could shift.
He chose to remain human.
To think in words.
Why was Molly here? He sensed her excitement, a whiff in the form of touch. Nothing more. She was too far away for him to know.
He started, falling on his belly, curling into a howling ball as another vibration consumed him, making his skin scream and burn.
Nagy.
Vivien’s family had landed too. Her brothers Tomas and Gregor. Father Miklos and mother Florence.
All of them. He would face them all soon, ten years older, ten years alone.
A decade had not given him any new words to take away their pain.
Jumping to his feet, he began to pace, mouth going dry, body bursting with anticipation. The shifter families were gathering, power coalescing. When the four main families were together, some ancient force could be triggered, like a growing electromagnetic pulse that built and built, waiting for release. It crested, giving them all an undefinable, uncanny capacity for common thought, hearing each other within, as if they all became each other’s platonic One.
It was a power that mimicked but could not match the mysteries that were said to be rooted in the depths of the Novo Club.
The last time they’d held a required gathering, he had stared into an open casket at the face of his vanquished future.
Dropping back to the ground, he resumed the yoga-like pose, desperate to learn whatever he could from the push of earth and her messages.
“Yoga? Really? You’re so weird, Edward. Just shift and get it over with. Go for one of your long rambles. You look like one of those hipsters who wears man buns and grows beards and opens coffee shops in places where it rains three hundred days a year. Please tell me you haven’t taken up poetry slams as a hobby.”
He didn’t have to wonder who that was: his only sister.
“Are you here to make fun of me, or did you have another purpose for interrupting?” he asked.
“You’re Asher’s shadow. He won’t say a word about why we’ve been called.” Sophia got right in his face, forcing eye contact. “You’re the worst liar in the family, and I know he talks to you. Spill.”
“When Asher’s ready, he’ll tell you why we’re here.”
“No,” Sophia said.
“What?”
“When I torture you long enough, you’ll tell me.”
With a loud sigh, Edward got up, walking into his cabin, determined to shake her off. “Torture? We’re not children. You can’t force me into the pond and make me scream like you used to.”
“I can’t understand why you hate water so much.”
He gave her a hard look.
“Seriou
sly. Why?”
“Sophia, I am a cat.” A very big one, he thought, looking down at his size-fifteen feet.
“So?”
“Cats hate water.”
“And Derry’s a bear, and bears don’t mate for life, but look at him with Jessica. We can overcome our biological destiny. All it takes is a magic pussy.”
“You are so crude.”
“You brought up cats!”
“I brought up nothing.” He unbuttoned his flannel shirt, peeling out of it as the conversation made his face burn. He couldn’t talk about Molly, couldn’t discuss how he felt her in every pore. Sophia’s sexual innuendoes made him uncomfortable but, this time, for all the right reasons.
Molly was here.
He licked his lips, tasting her.
Her. His heart beat differently when he thought of her. Slower but harder, pumping every drop of blood throughout his body.
Sweat formed under his arms and down the groove of his spine, between the thick cords of muscle that came from hours spent roaming in mountain lion form. It was the middle of winter, yet he roasted inside his skin, fueled by a tangle of emotions that turned the furnace of his heart into a heat that made him feel as if his human form were covered with fur.
He damn near looked down to check and make sure he had arms and legs and not paws.
“That’s the problem!” Sophia moaned. “Tell me! I had to leave a wonderful time at the Plat, hooking up with these two guys from Greece. I should be in Athens now, licking olive juice off their nipples.”
He shuddered. “Crude,” he purred.
“You could use a little crudeness yourself, brother. How long’s it been? Re-virginized by now, right?”
He gave her a withering glare but didn’t quite meet her eyes. Talking about sex when the old grief from Vivien was swirling inside, mixing with the fresh lust for Molly, made him shut down.
“We’re here because there’s been a theft at one of Gavin’s labs. A shifter serum,” he said. “All four families from all the adult generations have been summoned. This is serious.”
“Hah! I knew I could get the truth out of you by talking about sex and making you change the subject.” Her gloating expression turned to horror as his words sank in. “Wait…what?”
