Panahasi

by Lynn Hagen

  “Drake, you shouldn’t talk to him that way!” the blue-eyed beauty scolded his friend. “He looks like he could kill us and cut us into tiny pieces with a hand tied behind his back!”

  The whiskey-eyed man, Drake, raked his eyes over Panahasi before he waved a hand at the leader, as if dismissing him. “Nah, he just probably listened to some dumbass and is just as lost as we are. He’s no threat, Casey.”

  “I didn’t get us lost!”

  Panahasi rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was right in thinking that the two were one big-ass headache. He could sense that they both were wolf shifters. He just wondered why they hadn’t shifted instead of walking in their human forms down this dark, deserted road.

  It wasn’t safe out here. Too much was going on for these two to be alone like this. “Where are you trying to go?” he asked. Panahasi wasn’t sure why he cared, but for some strange reason, he did.

  “Nowhere, anywhere, and somewhere. You know the way?” Drake asked sarcastically.

  Panahasi could feel his blood pressure rising. “Nope, and good luck.” He was through with the pair. Let them find their way…wherever.

  “Wait!” Casey called out as he took a tentative step closer, sniffing the air. “Who are you?”

  “Panahasi.”

  “What the hell kind of name is that?” Drake snorted as he walked beside Casey, coming closer. As big as Panahasi was, the two approaching made him nervous. It was bizarre that he should feel this way about two puny-ass shifters.

  Casey sniffed the air once more as his eyes grew wider than when he first spotted Panahasi. Drake watched Casey and then slowly sniffed the air as well.

  Panahasi stood there immobile as he watched the shifters. This wasn’t going to be something he wanted to hear. He could just feel it in his bones.

  “Mine!” Casey shouted as he raced closer.

  “No, mine!” Drake yelled as he tackled Casey. “He’s my mate!”

  “No, he’s my mate, moron!” Casey shouted.

  Panahasi stared in disbelief as the two men rolled around, throwing punches at each other. He began to slowly back away as he swallowed.

  This couldn’t be happening!

  After thousands of years of yearning for a mate…

  Oh, hell no!

  Panahasi reached down and pulled the two apart, wondering what in the hell he was going to do now. The two shifters were glaring at each other as Panahasi took a deep breath, trying his best to rein in his agitation and speakcalmly. “Why are you treating each other in this manner?”

  “What manner?” Drake brushed himself off, pushing the long fall of dark hair from his face. The move was simple, but it stirred something deep inside Panahasi. He brushed the feeling away.

  “Physically fighting,” Panahasi answered as he looked between the two men. It wouldn’t do him any good to get his hopes up that Drake and Casey could possibly be his mates. He had traveled a dark and lonely road for so long that the thought not only intrigued him, but scared him as well. They would be in extreme danger from this moment forward if they proved to be his.

  “We do that all the time,” Casey replied as he took a step closer to Panahasi, his eyes shifting from human to wolf as he raked them over Panahasi. “Are we going home with you?”

  Panahasi ran his hand over his chin, scratching at the stubble. For the first time in thousands of years he felt at a loss of what to do. It wasn’t a feeling he welcomed either. He ignored Casey’s question, unsure of what to say. He opted to address the first part of the conversation. “What do you mean you do this all of the time? Why would you hit one another?”

  Drake shrugged casually, a slight sighing of the shoulders. “We’re best friends. That’s what we do.”

  Even if that were true… “If I so much as see a hand raised, I’ll put the both of you someplace that will keep you from the rest of the world for many centuries to come.” Namely my bedroom. Panahasi couldn’t believe what fate had done to him—if they were indeed his mates. Being one of the oldest creatures to inhabit this planet, he deserved…something better than two mates who apparently didn’t like each other.

  “Yeah, yeah. So are we going home with you or what?” Drake asked as he grabbed Casey’s hand, entwining their fingers together. Panahasi stared at their hands, watching how Drake pulled Casey closer to him. It was a very possessive and protective gesture. Now if that wasn’t the opposite of what he had just witnessed.

  Panahasi was about to answer Drake when the hairs all over his body stood on end. He narrowed his eyes as he looked around them, scanning the open field and forest beyond. There was a thick and dark presence close by, but he wasn’t sure who it was. His world was filled with many enemies. He knew waiting around to find out who it was would be sheer foolishness on his part. Mates or not, it wasn’t safe any longer.

  Tossing his arm out to his side, Panahasi opened a portal. “We must leave.”

  “What is that?” Casey asked as he stared at the swirling round black hole to their left.

  “Our way out of here.”

  “I don’t think so,” Drake said as he took a step back, pulling Casey along with him.

  A low rumble started in Panahasi’s chest and began to work its way up his throat. His enemies were near. He could feel them in his very bones and in the air all around him. Somehow, they had discovered that Panahasi had just possibly found his mates.

  He wasn’t sure how since he hadn’t claimed them yet, but the bastards were heading his way. There was a thick, dark oppression close by that threatened to suck the air right out of Panahasi’s lungs. Whatever or whoever was coming was someone Panahasi would rather not fight with two helpless shifters standing right next to him. “We must go.”

  “I told you, Panny, that I’m not going anywhere in that thing,” Drake protested as he crossed his slim arms over his chest, giving Panahasi a defiant glare. Now was not the time for Drake to test Panahasi’s patience.

  They were limited as hell right now.

  “It’s Panahasi.” He growled the correction. “We must leave now!”

  “Yeah,” Drake said as he took another step back, uncertainty in his whiskey-brown eyes. “That’s kind of a mouthful. I’ll stick to Panny.”

  Panahasi leapt, grabbing the two men as the oppressing feeling almost made him buckle to his knees. He grabbed one man in each arm and then dropped backward into the portal, closing it right behind him, making sure it was nonexistent once they were clear. The fall was quick, and he released the struggling men when he saw that he was back in his penthouse.

  “Do that again and I’ll kick your balls into your throat,” Drake said as he held his head and swayed slightly, looking a little green around the gills. Panahasi knew going through a portal wasn’t the best way to travel with neophytes, but he had been left with no choice.

  Panahasi immediately walked over to the bar on the far side of the living room, pouring himself a double. He hissed as he sucked the strong drink straight down and then turned back to the strangers he had just willingly brought into his home. “Okay, now, let’s act like the grown men that we are and find out who is who and…” He wasn’t even sure how to finish that sentence. Not when Drake was staring at the glass in Panahasi’s hand skeptically.

  “I think our mate has a drinking problem, Casey.” Drake clucked his tongue, crossed the room, and plucked the glass from Panahasi’s hand. “There will be no more of that, Panny.”

  Panahasi wasn’t sure if he should be pissed off or laugh. The petulant look Drake was giving him said the man was dead serious. Never in his life had Panahasi been put in his place so quickly.

  The new situation intrigued him. He had never wanted meek mates. They didn’t interest him. He was a warrior leader. Having a warrior mate only made sense to him. But these two baffled his mind. They were shifters. Weaker. Frailer than a demon warrior. And yet, he may just be mated to them.

  He studied the shifter, wondering if Drake was always this forward. Panahasi was the leade
r of the demon warriors, the being in charge, not Drake. The sooner the shifter figured that out, the better they would get along. He may not desire weak mates, but no one was going to dominate over him either.

  “I don’t have a drinking problem,” he stated calmly as he reached for another glasson the shelf. “It is extremely difficult for a demon warrior to become inebriated.” And for Panahasi, one of the oldest creatures to walk the planet, it was damn near impossible. Which was a pity at the moment. He needed to take the edge off, but knew he would have to drink the entire shelf of whiskey in order to come remotely close to getting a buzz.

  These two were an unexpected discovery. Panahasi had thought he would walk the rest of his life on a lonely path. They claimed to be his mates, but Panahasi wasn’t a trusting man. He had seen too much, and fought too much evil. Deception was all around him. Although his aching heart wanted to believe the shifters, he wasn’t giving them his full trust until he knew for sure that they were his mates.

  “Then why do you drink?” Casey asked as he walked smoothly across the wood floor, stopping when he was standing beside Drake.

  “I like the taste.” He also liked the burn of the whiskey as it flowed easily down his throat. As odd as it seemed, the act of sipping on his favored liquor helped calm Panahasi. He had roamed the earth since time immemorial and had seen and done almost everything imaginable, and some things that were unimaginable. So the little reprieves that he had found he held on to.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Drake complained. “Why would you drink if it’s extremely difficult for you toget drunk?”

  Panahasi released a heavy sigh as he sat the tumbler on the bar. This was going to be one long night. He still had to figure out how his enemies had found him so quickly, and how they knew about Drake and Casey. Panahasi had only moments before learned of who the two shifters might be to him.

  It didn’t make any sense to Panahasi.

  “Where were you two headed?” Panahasi changed the subject, refusing to get into a debate over his whiskey. It was a losing battle. He wasn’t going to change. He was set in his ways and the two better get used to that. Besides, after so many millennia, it was hard to lay down any habit, especially a long-enjoyed one.

  Drake eyed him for a long moment, telling Panahasi without words that he knew the man had switched gears on them.

  “We weren’t really sure,” Casey answered as he walked back over to the sofa and sat down, curling his legs under him as if this were truly his home. “Drake and I decided to strike out on our own.” He waved a hand at Drake, and then settled it in his lap as he rested his head on his arm that was perched on the arm of the sofa.

  The man looked pretty damn comfortable in Panahasi’s home.

  “I never knew you were a part of Zeus’s pack.” He glanced at Drake, who was still eyeing him suspiciously. He’d visited Zeus’s pack on many different occasions, but had never seen either man before tonight. Panahasi was quite sure he would have remembered the two. They were gorgeous. There was no denying that fact. But Drake’s personality would have been something Panahasi would have noticed right away.

  It was prickly as hell.

  “Who?” Casey’s chestnut-brown brows dipped down between his blue eyes.

  “The alpha of the grey wolves,” Panahasi replied.

  “Never heard of him,” Drake said this time. “We don’t belong to a pack. Casey and I grew up in foster care. We stuck together since we knew each other were shifters, but we don’t havea pack.” Drake’s response was scalpel sharp. The man had a bur up his ass, and Panahasi wasn’t sure why. It was his home the two were invading, not the other way around.

  “But you were coming from the direction of the town.” Panahasi poured another drink, eyeing Drake right back, daring him to try and take the glass. Drake shrugged at him, but his eyes kept raking over Panahasi in disapproval.

  So be it.

  “We skirted around the town,” Casey said, “but never went directly through it. We knew it was pack-run, so we wanted to steer clear of any incidents.”

  “I assumed you two were mates,” Panahasi said as he mulled over Casey’s words. If they had just stuck together in foster care because of their shifter status, maybe his assumptions were wrong. They did say that both men were his mates. That meant they were each other’s mate. He was getting a damn headache trying to figure them out. “Are you not?”

  Before either could answer, Panahasi dropped his glass, the tumbler hitting the floor and shattering as he spun around and felt his demon close to emerging. When he saw it was Phoenyx who stood in his living room, he relaxed, marginally. Even though it was one of his warriors, the two shifters had brought out his protective instincts with the knowledge that they could possibly be his mates.

  According to Drake and Casey they were. Panahasi would need to claim them both before he knew for certain. Demon warriors didn’t know their mate on sight. They had to have sex with them before a bond formed. It made the warriors slutty as hell, but Panahasi had steered clear of sex as much as possible. He was a man after all and did have needs, but those needs were few and far between.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t want to find his mates—although finding out that he possibly had two of them was mind-blowing—but he didn’t like having complete strangers in his penthouse. Call him paranoid, but Panahasi had plenty of enemies who would stop at nothing to bring him down, even send in two very gorgeous shifters to gain his trust.

  “I didn’t meanto interrupt,” Phoenyx said as he glanced between Drake and Casey, his eyes holding nothing but interest. It was to be expected. The leader never had unknown men in his home, none that any of the warriors had ever seen. Panahasi had kept his personal life just that, personal. That didn’t mean he was cold and inflexible with his warriors. Panahasi could never be impersonal with them. Not when they fought the war by his side to keep the city he loved safe. But he had things in his past, things in his present, that were not shareable. There were secrets locked inside of him for everyone’s protection.

  It made his walk through life lonelier, but he was who he was, and there was no grey area when it came to hiding the darkest of his secrets from those he cared about.

  “Is there something you wanted?” he asked the warrior imperturbably. He wasn’t going to give away that these two men just may be the center of his universe. Not yet. Not until Panahasi knew for sure that Drake and Casey were his mates. Things had happened so quickly on that back road that he hadn’t had time to think.

  Now that they were in his home, Panahasi wasn’t so sure about anything. For all he knew, they could be spies sent by his enemies, and he had willingly brought them here without thought.

  It was a mistake he would soon remedy if either proved to be anything other than what they claimed to be. He had his ways, and Panahasi would find out if they were lying. And if they were, they would find that crossing the demon warrior leader was lethal to their health.

  But even in thinking those thoughts, Panahasi felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness well up inside of him. It seemed the solitude of his life was catching up with him in the past few years. Maybe it was seeing his warriors mate. It was hard to look at a happy couple and not yearn for a mate of his own. Panahasi had always craved one. But lately, that craving was turning into a gnawing in the center of his gut.

  Just because he was lonely as hell didn’t mean he was going to screw the two shifters on the spot. He needed to find out if they were sent in by his enemies first.

  He was horny, not stupid. Although some might argue that the two went hand in hand. He glanced between Drake and Casey, and then gave his attention to Phoenyx.

  “It’s about Sexton,” Phoenyx replied.

  Sexton was the reporter for the Daily Demon, a newspaper that Panahasi thoroughly enjoyed reading when he had the chance. The reporter was currently in hiding because one very corrupt demon named Marino was after the chameleon shifter. Panahasi hadn’t forgotten about the shifter, or the
fact that Marino had threatened to kill the reporter’s brother if Sexton didn’t cooperate.

  Marino seemed to have a knack for kidnapping family members to get people to cooperate with him. It was a nasty little flaw that Panahasi would love to eradicate from Marino. Just killing the man would solve all his ills.

  Too bad no one knew where the bastard was.

  “What about him?” Panahasi asked as he eyed Drake and Casey once more. He couldn’t seem to not look at them. It was as if their very presence drew his attention away from everything around him.

  “He’s ready to go back to work, and it seems nothing I say will sway him.”

  “Did you remind him that Marino is still out there?”

  “Yes. And I also reminded him that Marino was probably waiting on him to come out of hiding, but he is arguing that he wants to check on his brother.” Phoenyx didn’t look too happy.

  “Go keep an eye on him. I’ll check on his brother,” Panahasi said.

  “Yeah,” Drake added. “We’ll make sure he’s okay.”

  “We?” Panahasi asked as he turned toward the dark-haired man. “There is no we.” If this man was truly his mate, there was no way in hell the guy was leaving the penthouse. It just wasn’t safe. He knew Drake didn’t grasp the concept of just how dangerous being mated to Panahasi truly was.

  There were beings out there that wouldn’t hesitate to kill Drake or Casey…or worse. Sometimes death wasn’t the biggest threat. He had seen things far worse in his lifetime and Panahasi wasn’t about to expose these men to that kind of fate.

  “Look, Panny,” Drake said as he sat down next to Casey. “I’m not letting you go warn some brother on your own. To me, this sounds like Sexton is in trouble. If you’re going to put yourself in danger, then so are we.”

  “We are?” Casey askedas he glanced from Drake to Panahasi. “I mean, we are.”

  “You are not running around Serenity City,” Panahasi stated vehemently. “Phoenyx will stay with you until I return.”