by Amelia Jade
Not wanting to find out, Peyton broke into a run without any warning, rushing over the ground, praying that her feet wouldn’t betray her as she darted ahead for her building.
There was a noise from behind her and she heard the person closing.
“Peyton,” the voice called.
It was Kiefer.
Relief rushed through her. At least she wasn’t going to be in trouble. Embarrassed and in an awkward situation perhaps. But not in trouble. Kiefer, after all, was the one who had sprung her loose from her prison.
“Peyton, wait!”
She slowed her headlong dash as he caught up to her. There was no use in trying to outrun him anyway. If Kiefer decided that he wished to catch up with her, then he was going to catch up with her. He was just too fast.
The big shifter came bounding up, slowing to a halt as he got near.
“Can you stop scaring me?” she snapped before he could speak, his open mouth closing with an audible click. “You seriously need to find a better way to interact with women if each time you come upon them you intend on scaring them half to death.”
Kiefer didn’t reply, looking around, bewildered.
Peyton sighed. “Sorry.”
“Hi,” she added, slightly winded from her attempted escape.
“Hey,” he said awkwardly. “Listen,” he said, still in that same uneasy tone. “I, ah, I just wanted to apologize.”
“It’s okay,” she said, trying to wave him off, not wanting to talk about it.
“No, seriously.” He paused and a sly look came over his face. “I think this whole evening started off on the wrong foot.”
Peyton couldn’t help herself. She laughed despite herself, the noise sounding overly loud in the silence of the night, but she didn’t care. It had been a well-made joke.
“On the wrong foot you say? Funny, I hadn’t realized.”
Kiefer allowed a smile to cross his face. “I’m serious though. I’ve done nothing but say or do the wrong thing to you, and I’m sorry. I’m not usually this…” he fumbled for a word.
“Clumsy? Inelegant? Klutzy?” she supplied, opening her mouth to go on, but Kiefer held up his hands in surrender.
“Yes, all of the above and more,” he acknowledged. “It was insensitive of me to say what I did, and I’m sorry. I didn’t want to end on that note, which is why I chased after you. But I didn’t want to call your name, since I’m sure you’re not supposed to be out here alone. So I tried to get closer before I did.” He sighed, his head drooping. “I suppose that was yet another mistake on my part. I should have just called your name and hoped for the best.”
Peyton found herself laughing at his helplessness, the humor helping wash the last of the fear from her, leaving her with only the gentle ease and comfort that she’d felt when they were walking to the officers’ hall.
“Would you care to escort me home then?” she asked, holding out an arm.
She had no idea why she was giving him a second chance, but something told her it was the right course of action, something that needed to happen.
Not that she intended on letting it go any farther than him taking her arm, and perhaps a hug. As long as he didn’t ask any more prying questions that she couldn’t answer, things would be okay.
“So, you train the recruits,” she said conversationally, hoping to keep the topic focused on him.
“As much as anyone can train those bumbling idiots,” he muttered, but she sensed the hidden pride in his words.
“How long does the training take?”
“Basic training is nine months,” he responded instantly, clearly going off rote memory. “But, once you’re in the Green Bearets, we’re constantly doing training of one kind or another. Always want to keep ourselves well-versed in all forms of combat, shifter and human.” He paused, and this time the pride flowed through his words without any attempt at concealment. “It’s what makes the Green Bearets the best shifter group out there.”
“The best?” she teased.
“The best.”
His reply was devoid of humor. He was simply making a statement. Peyton decided not to push it on the subject, nor did she feel any inclination toward asking him how they had come to know such a thing. She doubted it was an answer that had a happy ending. After all, if there was one thing she’d picked up while being around all these shifters, it was that death was not viewed with the same gravity as it was with humans.
The guest quarters building—she wasn’t sure if it had an official name at all—loomed up in front of them.
“Well, this is my stop,” she said lamely.
“Indeed.” Kiefer didn’t seem to have anything suave to say just then either.
That made her feel a little bit better at least.
“I’d invite you to escort me to my room, but I don’t want to risk you destroying anymore doors,” she teased.
“Never, ever, ever going to live that down,” Kiefer muttered, dropping his head and giving it a shake.
“Probably not,” she assured him.
Without warning Kiefer enveloped her in a huge, ah, bear hug—Peyton hated herself for the pun, it must have been so overused—but she didn’t stop him. Her arms wrapped as far around the thick, corded muscles of his back as she could reach, pulling him tight.
“Thank you for the jailbreak though. It was nice to get out without someone looking over my shoulder.”
“Anytime. Just get to the roof and send out my signal.”
Peyton rubbed a hand up and down his back as she laughed softly at the reference.
“I’ll do just that. I’ll hold up an image of an unbroken door. You had better come running.”
Kiefer sighed miserably.
“Goodnight, Kiefer Hartmann,” she said, disengaging from him.
“Goodnight, Peyton Raine,” he replied, his voice low.
She gave his amber-brown eyes one last, long, lingering look as she backed away toward the stairs behind her, before turning and doing her best not to flee inside, nor to let the giddy tension in her manifest itself in any sort of skipping step. She was going to stay composed.
At least until he was out of sight. Then she would allow herself to swoon. But only then.
Chapter Six
Kiefer
His brain ran back to the night before, and he thought for a moment he was going to swoon with giddiness.
That wouldn’t happen of course. He was a lieutenant in the Green Bearets. He did not swoon.
Oh fuck it.
A blissful grin creased his face as he walked through the hallways of the Headquarters building, his steps like walking on clouds. Meanwhile, memories of Peyton and the way her arm felt on his rushed through his body. Blood followed those as his heart beat extra hard in response to the mild euphoria he was experiencing.
“Everything okay, Kief?”
He started at the unexpected voice as another figure, slightly taller and perhaps a bit broader in the shoulders, came up alongside him.
“Captain!”
He came to attention.
“Yah, yah, looking parade-ground pretty I see,” Captain Luther Klein snorted as he came up and punched him in the shoulder.
“Of course, sir,” Kiefer replied, his swooning grin become one of laughter. “Would you expect anything less from me?”
Captain Klein turned his head to regard Kiefer as they walked, and instead of responding he simply raised his eyebrows.
“Ouch,” Kiefer said, clutching a hand to his heart. “Speared me good, sir.”
Luther laughed and clapped a hand on his back. “Good to see you, Kiefer.”
“You too, sir. How are things on the front lines?”
“Honestly,” Luther said, his face screwing up in confusion. “Quiet. Almost too quiet.”
“No sign of the missing Fenris Wards?”
“None. Not a lick. I figured after they fled the human military cordon that they would come after us. Try to sweep over us in one big wave before we could get
organized to meet them, ya know?”
Kiefer nodded. Most of the Green Bearet high command had expected that. In fact, most of the Guardians—the unified shifter military group, the Cadian equivalent to the Fenrisian Wards—command group had expected the same. So for them not to have done anything was…weird.
“And we’re positive that the humans didn’t catch them?”
“Positive. They’ve confirmed that much, though they don’t seem to be overly helpful beyond that.”
Kiefer made a noncommittal noise as he considered that. The humans had intervened in the shifter war after it had come to light that Fenris had tried to blow up a hydro dam north of the human city of Cloud Lake, in an effort to wipe out the Green Bearets in the area. The act would have seen thousands of humans perish to get rid of several hundred shifters.
The Green Bearets had saved the day, but it had been a close thing. The dam had partially collapsed, but not enough to threaten the town. Instead the resulting surge of water had wiped out the only road in and out of Cadia. As a result, the strain placed upon the ten thousand or so residents had been great.
Shifters, after all, ate a lot.
But the shifters had banded together, and with the enormous resources of the dragons behind them, helicopter convoys in and out of Cadia had become a regular sight. It wasn’t something any of the shifters—especially the flighted ones—wanted, but it kept the stronghold supplied, and that was key. In another three to six months the road would be repaired and supplies could flow normally, but until then, they would just have to put up with it.
“So what brings you back to Base Camp?” he asked when Luther didn’t say anything more.
“Leave, believe it or not,” he said.
“You got leave, during this?”
Kiefer was surprised, especially considering how involved Luther was in the running of the Green Bearets in Cloud Lake.
“Well, I didn’t,” Luther said, tiptoeing around the answer.
“Of course not. You would have never even asked. I got us leave,” a female voice said, coming up on the far side of Luther.
“Hey Allix,” Kiefer said, nodding to Luther’s mate.
“Afternoon, sir,” she replied.
“I don’t recall granting you leave,” he said slowly.
Allix, after all, was currently going through the Green Bearet recruit training program. She was in his company. Which was supposed to be in the middle of calisthenics, if the clock on the wall was correct.
“Colonel Richter signed off on it this morning, sir,” she said, handing over a piece of paper.
“A recruit getting time off,” Kiefer muttered. “They’re getting softer and softer every day now.”
Luther snorted, but Kiefer wisely ignored it.
“Well, this looks perfectly legitimate,” he said, folding it back up. “Which must mean it’s completely forged.”
Allix rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything.
“So what’s the occasion that got you leave?”
Luther opened his mouth, but Allix spoke first.
“We’re getting married.”
“What?!” he exclaimed, turning to face the pair as they all came to a halt. “Really?”
Allix nodded happily. “Yes, I convinced him to go through with it.”
Luther shook his head. “You did not convince me to go through with it,” he said, stressing the words. “You just convinced me to ask you before I was fully ready.”
“You’d never have been ready if I hadn’t forced the issue,” she replied with a disdainful sniff.
The look Luther gave Kiefer was quite clear.
Help me.
He just shook his head and clapped his boss on the shoulder. “I’m so happy for you two,” he said, letting the formality of the military drop for just a moment.
“Thanks, Kief,” Luther rumbled while Allix just beamed.
“Damn.”
The voice came from off to one side, and as one the trio turned to face them.
“Something wrong, Aksel?”
“Of course not, Captain,” Lieutenant Aksel Muller replied. “I was just thinking.”
“Thinking what?” Kiefer asked.
“Marriage is a human tradition,” he said thoughtfully. “One that you two are now engaging in.”
“Uh-huh,” Luther said, “get to the point.”
“Well, if you two are getting married, that means that Nina is going to expect us to get married.”
There was a long pause, and then Kiefer, Luther, and Allix all broke into uproarious laughter at the same time. Aksel just stood there, contemplating his upcoming future with Nina, his mate, and by the sound of it, soon-to-be-wife.
“Oh come on, Aksel, it’s not that bad,” Allix chided.
The big, youthful-faced shifter broke into a grin. “I know. After all, there is the wedding night,” he said thoughtfully.
Luther turned his eyes on Allix, who promptly blushed.
“Right,” the captain rumbled. “I’d forgotten about that part.”
“Knock it off,” Allix said. “Let’s go see the colonel, shall we?”
“Of course.” Luther turned to go, leaving Kiefer alone with Aksel.
The pair fell in step as they walked through the building.
“How goes your project?” he asked, breaking Aksel out of his reverie.
“Nowhere,” the other man said angrily. “Haven’t been able to turn up a single thing on them.”
Kiefer frowned. “And Nina couldn’t remember anything about them? Not a name, organization, nothing?”
Aksel shook his head. “No, they were professional though, whoever they were. Threatened her into silence, said all the right things, then disappeared with their copy of the data.”
“Damn,” Kiefer swore.
Nina had been working for the city as an archivist when she first met Aksel. He didn’t know it at the time, but she’d had access to a file that had information about a mineshaft that ran deep under the mountains east of Cloud Lake, all the way into Cadia itself. When she’d found the original map while working to digitize many of the town’s records, word of it had reached someone high up in the human government.
They had sent agents to threaten Nina and her entire large family with imprisonment or worse if she spoke a word of it to anyone. Her entire family was in protective custody in Cloud Lake now, and no attempts had been made on their lives to the best of Kiefer’s knowledge. But Aksel had been detached to work on tracking down the humans who had wanted to keep such information secret, to find out what their reasoning was.
Something about it all just didn’t add up.
“Have you heard the latest rumblings?” Aksel asked, changing the topic.
“Yes, and I hope they stay that way, as rumor.”
“Agreed,” Aksel practically snarled. “I can’t believe they would consider downsizing us when the war clearly isn’t over. Just because the Fenris Wards fled ahead of the cordon doesn’t mean that they’ve given up on attacking us. A thousand of them could wipe out our Cloud Lake outpost with ease, among other things.”
“No kidding,” Kiefer agreed, once again wondering what went through the heads of the higher-ups. “But I doubt King Daxxton will let it happen.”
“Probably not,” Aksel said, in agreement to the reference to the King of Cadia, the dragon who ruled over them all. “But he’s not a dictator; he has to work with the Council, even if he can generally overrule them. If he needs to get something else out of them, he may have to cave.”
“I hope not,” Kiefer said. “We still have no idea what set off the entire war. There had been peace between us for nearly two hundred years. Why attack now? Until we figure that out, nobody is safe.”
Not even Peyton.
Once more his mind was taken away as the image of her appeared. Tall, thick black hair, pert little nose, and skin so pale he could see her veins through it with ease. He couldn’t wait until he saw her again.
They hadn�
�t planned out anything, but Kiefer thought he had an idea on how to get around that little tidbit.
Chapter Seven
Peyton
She stood up straight, arms raised above her head as she stretched, glancing at the digital alarm clock next to her bed.
It was time.
Peyton grabbed her zip-up sweatshirt, yet another gift to her by some of the female shifters after her rescue, and headed for the roof.
The first thing she noticed was that the door had been replaced. The previous nights, when she’d gone up at night, it had simply lain as it was the first night. But no longer. The door was replaced, all the debris that had been inside the top of the stairwell was gone, and it looked proper once more.
“Well, about time one of his men screwed up,” she laughed, reaching for the handle.
This had quickly become an enjoyable little ritual for her. Each of the past three nights, she’d gone up at the same time, to look at the stars and to relax. Every night, without fail, Kiefer had walked by during his rounds and stopped for several minutes to talk to her. It had been small talk only—nothing intimate or powerful—but Peyton had found herself strangely comfortable with it, and began looking forward to her midnight meetings.
She grabbed the cool metal knob and twisted, pushing her way out onto the roof.
“What the—” her voice died as she took in the sight in front of her.
The first thing she saw were the candles. Dozens of them, spread out across the roof. There were bright ones and soft ones, some that flickered heavily in the soft breeze, and others in jars that were mostly unaffected. Wax of red and white, greens, blues, and more were all over the place.
A quick glance had made them seem random, but as she took it in, Peyton realized that they actually formed a corridor from her across the roof…
To where Kiefer sat in a circle opening.
“Hi,” he called to her softly.
“Hello,” she replied, walking over to him, trying not to let herself blush.
Of course that meant she failed miserably, but she hoped he wouldn’t notice in the dim light. At a gesture she sat down amidst the pillows that were piled up across from him. Making herself comfortable, she stayed still while Kiefer opened a box next to him and began to extract its contents, which included a low-slung table perhaps two feet across, followed by a tablecloth, and then cutlery.
