The Billionaire Shifter's Second Chance (Billionaire Shifters Club Book 3)

by Diana Seere

  “Nagy!” Webb shouted, holding the broken, jagged neck of a wine bottle in front of him as a weapon. Blood-red liquid and broken glass stained his legs and the carpet. He must’ve struck it against the marble tabletop of the drink cabinet. “Show me where it is!”

  He must be talking about the gun. She had to keep looking, find it first.

  The jaguar, ignoring Webb, shook its black head and lunged for Edward, who leapt into the air, escaping just in time.

  “It’s two against one,” Webb went on, his back to the largest bookcase. “You need another shifter at your side. Tell me and I’ll help you! We should work together!”

  Molly couldn’t find the gun. Could Tomas still have it somehow? No, it had to be under the other chair. She kicked it over and dug into the cushions.

  But a high-pitched cry of a cat in anguish interrupted her.

  Edward, oh Edward…

  To her relief and horror, she saw her beloved’s fangs embedded in Tomas’s shoulder. Flecks of blood dotted Edward’s muzzle.

  “You need me, Nagy!” Webb shouted, more loudly, more frantically. “For God’s sake! Show me!”

  Tomas twisted out from under Edward, blood dripping from his black fur onto pale carpet, and loped across the room. He leapt over a table, knocking a lamp onto the floor, and reached Webb’s side. The man and cat stared at one another for only a split second before Tomas turned, yellow eyes blazing, and vaulted onto the bookcase. His front paws clawed at a shelf, knocking a thick, heavy book to the floor. Then another. He roared, apparently frustrated, and swiped again. This time a third book, yellowed and larger than the others, toppled off the shelf and landed on its side, its cover flopping open.

  At that moment, Edward sprung into the air, claws extended, and landed on Tomas’s back. The two cats spiraled to the floor, their high-pitched cries deafening.

  The gun. She had to find the gun.

  There was another piercing screech, louder than any so far.

  Edward was bleeding, the blood on his golden fur not only that of Tomas’s but his own. She realized he had a large gash above his left shoulder.

  She began to rush over to him, but the wolf—Asher—got between her and the two fighting cats, growling softly.

  He wasn’t going to let her get closer. But why not? For God’s sake, what was her life worth without Edward? She’d gladly risk her life for him.

  Bitterly she realized that her body, even lifeless, was worth something to the Stantons and their enemies. She resented Asher anew for his interference, for assuming he knew best, for getting between his brothers and happiness.

  But then Edward’s voice, not quite human, echoed in her mind. Asher! Stop him!

  Asher paused at Molly’s side, his loyalties torn.

  “Help him!” Molly cried. “He’s your brother!”

  Asher seemed to agree that Edward did need him more than Molly, because he suddenly vaulted over a sofa and sank his teeth into Tomas’s neck before he could tear into Edward’s throat again. Tomas’s cry was followed by another crash as their struggling bodies knocked into a glass table.

  Molly continued searching the other side of the chair for the gun, the only thing in the room that would give her any power in this nightmare.

  But as her hands raked the floor fruitlessly, she saw Webb lifting a syringe to his arm, his red face shining with triumph, even joy.

  What had Webb said to Tomas? You need another shifter at your side.

  Oh my God. Webb was going to use the serum. The one LupiNex had developed from her blood. She saw now that the book Tomas had knocked over wasn’t a book filled with pages but a camouflaged box holding vials and syringes.

  “No!” she cried, lurching to her feet, running directly at Webb.

  But she was too slow. While she watched, Webb pushed the plunger all the way down, injected the serum into his arm, and lifted his wild-eyed gaze to the wolf and lions across the room. “Now I’ll be one of you,” he declared. A sneer twisted his face. “Better.”

  The giant cats and wolf continued to fight, unaware of what Webb had done. Only Molly saw what happened next. How Webb’s smirk drew back into an openmouthed scream. How the leather of his shoes split, revealing long hairy feet, gnarled and sinewy and tipped with black claws. How his shirt ripped as his chest expanded into a mountain of gray fur, and his legs, impossibly muscular, hairy, and bow-legged, burst out of his trousers.

  In horror, Molly backed away and crouched behind the knocked-over sofa, gasping for breath, her heart pounding in her chest so violently she thought it would explode. Webb was too distracted by his metamorphosis to have time for her—yet. It had only been a second or two, and not even Edward and Asher seemed to have noticed the monster in their midst.

  Because he was a monster. Not a lion, not a wolf, not a bear, but some horrible combination of all three… as well as other creatures. A rat’s tail as thick around as Molly’s arm swung in the air behind him. His maniacal laugh was a hyena’s, but his girth rivaled an elephant’s. Leathery black wings unfurled themselves at his shoulders, knocking more books off the shelves.

  Finally the other shifters noticed him. The natural shifters.

  The room went still, as if paused by remote control.

  Webb had done it. He’d taken the serum and become one of them—but not quite.

  Edward and Asher broke away from Tomas and loped over to Molly, putting their bodies between her and the monster.

  Run! Edward shouted in her mind.

  Webb’s beastly figure lumbered toward Tomas, leaving the path to the door free. Only dislodged furniture blocked her way now. But how could she leave Edward with this monster, this thing?

  Asher nipped at her heels, a low growl emphasizing his intent. He also wanted her to leave.

  With her gone, could they defend themselves better? And what could she do without a gun to creatures like these?

  In agony, she forced herself to leave Edward’s side. Her presence only increased his danger.

  But before she reached the door, it fell inward, not at the hinges but from all sides. And behind it was a massive bear—and then another one—two giant creatures much like one another. Somehow she recognized Derry and Sophia.

  “Thank God,” she whispered.

  Their roars were deafening. She slapped her hands over her ears and staggered backward.

  Webb swung around and saw the bears and Molly. A horrific cry ripped from his throat. It was like a roar, a scream, the song of hell. He lifted a sofa as if it were a loaf of bread and hurled it at the open doorway. It landed with a crash on its side, one end stuck in the doorway. Then he lifted a table and threw it on top of the sofa. And then a wing-back chair.

  The doorway was completely blocked. They were all stuck inside the room with the monster now.

  Edward’s nose filled with the scent of brimstone and rotting deer carcass, of dying skunk, like all the evil in the world turned to scent. The beast before them was not right.

  The beast before them had been created by someone who took Molly’s blood and made the man turn into that.

  “What in the hell are you?” Molly shrieked. The beast turned and gave her its full attention.

  No, Edward screamed with his full body, mind and soul.

  NO.

  Derry, Sophia, Asher, and Edward formed a protective wall between Molly and the beast, but Tomas was nowhere to be seen. Edward felt him, dizzy with split attention, the beast slashing at Derry, ripping into his shoulder as Derry roared, the sound shaking the joists in the small room.

  With a rush of gratitude, he noticed Sophia’s bear form turn, reach out a massive, clawed arm, and haul the sofa out of the doorway, creating a gap for Molly to escape.

  Run! Edward roared. Silently and with his lion’s voice.

  “Edward!” Molly screamed, his name indecipherable but her intent clear. Swinging around, he found Tomas at his back, lunging, just as the beast swooped in, one wing toppling a bookcase onto Asher, pinning him.
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br />   His fur was no match for Tomas’s claws, the heated burn of blood oozing from the slash almost a relief. As his skin tore, he twisted, tail hitting his rival hard across the back, the yowl of pain a sign. Jumping, he scaled a bookcase, paws confirming it was anchored to the wall, his body curling in as he perched high, taking a quick second to confirm the scene.

  Let it begin, he thought.

  But I will end it.

  He watched Molly search the room, her scent nothing but waves of panic, nauseating and overpowering. He closed his nostrils and stretched wide his mouth. She vibrated like a nerve in its death throes, her flailing making him leap down next to her as she bent flat to the ground on her belly and shoved her hand under a piece of furniture.

  And then he was midair, paws flailing, pulled to the ceiling like a fresh kitten in a litter, transported by its mother by the scruff. Two sets of front paws from his bear siblings pawed at him, too short for the beast, and as he struggled to get free, a hot blast of sick breath made him close his eyes.

  And open his mouth.

  The bite sank into the nose—where there should have been a nose, a snout, a beak, anything—on the abomination against nature. It howled, screaming human words, the assemblage of syllables a clusterfuck of noise that turned Edward’s ears down, his throat spasming, his claws digging in and using all his muscled might to tear his neck free from the beast’s grasp.

  Falling, he landed on his back, half stretched across a wing-back chair, the room an olfactory soup of blood, musk, fear and—

  No.

  Piss?

  The beast relieved itself on a velvet couch, unaware.

  “Oh my God!” Molly gasped, her disgust clear, but the tone did not match disgust. Instead, he heard triumph and watched as she pulled a metal stick from under an end table, eyes wide. Her fingers looped through the handle, and she pointed it around the room, unsure where to point the gun.

  White hot lightning ripped through his gut.

  The beast had six arms, two on the floor, two in the air, and two longer than the others. One hooked claw from a slash had broken off and was embedded in Edward’s belly.

  Asher! he thought, calling upon his brother, who was buried under the bookcase the beast had sent soaring. Sophia worked to free him as the beast toyed with Derry like he was a mouse, a toy, a nothing.

  We’re losing.

  Derry’s voice hit Edward between the eyes.

  Get her out now, Asher said to him, pleading.

  Ignoring the pain in his gut, he rushed to Molly’s side just as ink moved in a puddle of determined evil, wrapping itself about her ankles, Tomas’s jaws lifting up as he scaled her with his front paws, her screams the sound of Edward’s death.

  He would rather die than hear that.

  Ripping through the dark fur, he pulled Tomas away with jaw and paw, with all his might, with a ferocious yank and snarl that became a blood lust, a need to drain the blood out of this being who had caused his world so much sorrow, so much trouble, so much—

  Beast.

  “Rrrrrrrraaawwr!” The beast’s limbs dripped with bears and a wolf, his siblings fighting hard to bring Webb down, his superstrength frightening and yet worthy of awe. Mind racing, Edward acted on instinct, joining them in toppling him, forgetting Tomas for a moment, intent on protecting his pack.

  He realized his mistake within a microsecond, leaping onto the beast with claws extended, ensnared in muscle, fur, and feathers as he looked back to see Tomas lunge at Molly, then bite her leg, dragging her to the door.

  The beast took one enormous paw and lifted Asher high high high, crushing his bones and coat against the ceiling, Edward’s brother thrashing.

  Stop him! Sophia shouted, the sound a high-pitched frequency of despair.

  And then Asher dropped, a limp pool of fur, slamming to the ground like a beanbag.

  BANG!

  The gunshot shattered his eardrums like an axe against a glass window, the echo vibrating his bones. Molly shot someone. But who?

  Or, as he eyed the beast… what?

  Sophia sniffed and rushed to Asher, her pleas filling Edward’s ears, the voice so familiar.

  Like him as he touched Vivien’s dead body.

  Suddenly Derry was a noodle in the beast’s mouth, alive and writhing, clawing frantically to escape.

  And then, impossibly, the beast… shrank.

  Blood poured out of its mouth as Derry escaped, coming round to Edward, who leapt to Molly’s side, dragging her behind a chair as he looked back and forth between the battle his siblings raged for their very lives and the need to protect Molly. If he failed to help them, the beast would move on to Molly.

  It was an impossible situation.

  Unnatural.

  None of this would happen in the wild.

  This was purely man-made.

  Sophia looked up, paws out, as the beast began to strike, though its wings folded in with a sickening crunch, the ceiling stained with a sudden splatter of blood. Webb’s human face reappeared, eyes wild, expression contorted with pain, so much pain.

  He… devolved. Layer by layer, each of the parts of the animal that made up the beast dissolved into him but leaving vestigial traces.

  And blood. So much blood. Edward tasted it on his fangs, in the back of his throat, felt his own pump out of him through gouges and gashes.

  “Edward?” Molly said weakly, her skin ashen.

  Using its final strength, the beast struck out and bit down, hard, on Derry’s neck, but the effort was futile. Derry bit back, the beast’s howl the sound of nine species screaming into the abyss.

  And just like that, Mason Webb returned to his true form.

  But it was not human.

  Turned inside out and made of parts of different animals, the twitching, oozing mass of flesh and biological material made a final, heaving sigh and stopped.

  Stopped dead.

  “Tomas? Where is he? I shot him!” Molly cried, her hand on the gun, the trigger cocked, her hands shaking but determined.

  Sophia sniffed, bear eyes alert. She sniffed again, then shifted to human form, hands on Asher’s body, frantically inventorying his wounds.

  “It’s safe,” she said in gravel tones, her human voice kicking in. “He’s gone.”

  “Gone?” Molly gasped, her heartbeat slowing, her worry fading to a hummingbird’s pulse.

  “I smelled him depart,” Sophia gasped. “Heard a car peel out. Above us on the street.”

  Edward felt the life vibrating out of Molly as he shifted into human form.

  “Stop the blood flow!” he snapped, ripping a tapestry from the wall and tearing the strips, wrapping a large gash on her leg to keep the blood inside her.

  Molly’s blood.

  “ASHER!” Sophia screamed, fingers on the neck of the battered body of their elder brother. The grim angle of his head and the crooked legs, bones at angles like a child’s doll, made Edward’s heart hurt. “He has no pulse!”

  They had elongated lifespans, but shifters were not immortal.

  Oh, if only they were.

  “Derry!” Jess cried out from the hall, Manny at her side as the two appeared. Tiptoeing through the glass and splintered wood, the open tomes and destroyed fixtures, Jess surveyed the mess, the blood, the gore. “Where is Derry?”

  “Here, my darling,” answered a low voice, exhausted and in pain. “Here. I’m fine. See to Asher. Use your first aid to help him. Do whatever you can.”

  “See to—oh my God, no!” Her eyes went impossibly wide at the sight of the eldest Stanton, who must surely be dead.

  Dead.

  Edward could not bear it. Not Asher. Not after everything he had done to help save Molly.

  “Help Molly! Jess, please, help them both, but help her first,” Edward said, torn between his brother and his love, knowing they both required assistance and hating himself for choosing. His eyes met Manny’s, who was on the phone barking orders, getting shifter-approved medical assistance in place.


  But that required time.

  Time was a limited resource right now.

  “What am I supposed to do?” Jess shouted. “I’m not even in med school yet! I know first aid. I can apply a gauze bandage, not put bones back together and start hearts. Asher needs an AED and a surgeon!”

  Molly stared at Jess with a beatific smile. “Your aura.”

  Edward watched as gooseflesh rippled across Jess’s skin as Derry made his way to her, his naked body covered in hundreds of scratches, a deep paw print a dark red color across his back. Jess stared at Molly, mouth open, pupils the size of marbles.

  All of the shifters were human now, and Edward wanted to chase after Tomas, to find him, to kill him.

  But Asher.

  Molly.

  “Touch him, Jess,” Molly said weakly.

  Alarm filled Jess’s eyes as she realized how injured Molly was. “Touch… touch who?” she asked tentatively.

  “Both of them.”

  Jess gave Edward a helpless look, begging for answers he did not have.

  “Touch them both. Derry, then Asher. Do it, Jess,” Molly gasped, her breath coming in strange little huffs, her ribs and neck contracting oddly with each inhale. She rubbed her left palm furiously, hard, like polishing a stone. “Do it now. Save him.”

  “Save her!” Edward roared at Jess, urging, demanding, insisting.

  “Save them both!” Sophia wailed, cradling Asher’s broken body in her arms, rocking back and forth.

  “Asher first,” Molly said softly, so softly Edward couldn’t stand to hear it. “I’m not as bad. His aura has gone gray. Almost black. Do it now, Jess. Now.”

  “Touch—what? I don’t understand!” Jess cried out, just as Derry took her hand, giving her a bewildered look, tears streaming down his broad, blood-smeared face.

  “Yes,” Molly whispered. “Like that. Now you can do it. Your aura says you can do it.”

  “DO WHAT?” Jess screamed.

  “Save Asher. Bring him back to life,” Molly said matter-of-factly, just as she fainted away in Edward’s arms.

  Chapter 28

  Molly heard Edward’s voice in her mind. My love, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.