by Amelia Jade
The circle of shifters began to press in around her.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Gabriel
Anger warred with sadness. Betrayal with heartbreak.
How could Stephanie have done such a thing to his kind? He wondered where she’d gotten the names of all the shifters. She hadn’t even met most of them.
It must have been during her time spent with Allix. Allix probably thought Stephanie was the one for me, and told her all about it, to try and prepare her.
He ignored her pleas as the shifters closed in on her. They wouldn’t hurt her. Not with the humans around, and not without his say so. This was his to deal with, if he so chose.
“Bring her here,” he muttered unhappily.
It would be easiest if he just got rid of her now, cast her out, told her never to come back. The pain would hurt for a long time, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever allow himself to love again. But he needed to know why. The itching curiosity, as to why she’d done such a thing, was tearing away at his mind.
The crowd parted, allowing her to close to where he lay on the ground, unable to move as his body began the slow process of knitting itself back together. Never before had he felt this helpless, either. That, combined with this revelation of Stephanie’s having published a horrifically skewed article on them, was almost more than he could handle.
“Gabriel, I—”
He shook his head violently, forcing her into silence.
“Why?” he asked, his voice devoid of emotion. “What the hell did we ever do to you?”
To his surprise, she didn’t break and confess, and immediately beg for his forgiveness now that he’d given her leave to speak. Instead, she seemed to almost get…angry? Hurt? What the hell was going on?
“I could ask you the same thing,” she replied, with a calm that belied the emotions he knew to be running through both of them at the moment.
“Huh?” He was completely confused.
“I heard you with Luther,” she said, fresh tears welling up in her eyes. “You called me a mistake. I heard you say it to him!” She stabbed at her eyes with her sleeves, trying to keep them clean.
Gabriel stared open-mouthed.
“Is that how you think I meant it? That us mating was something I viewed as a mistake?”
“I fucking heard you say it, Gabriel Korver! Don’t try to tell me I didn’t!”
His voice picked up fury as he spoke, anger and disbelief infusing with the pain of it all. “Did you hear what I said after that?” he roared.
“I didn’t need to! I know what it means when someone calls me a mistake. It means they didn’t want to do what they’d done. That you never wanted to sleep with me in the first place!”
His face was going red by now as he bellowed back at her. “No, you stubborn woman! I was telling Luther that my mistake was spending so much intimate time with you at once! That I’d never been with someone I’d cared for so much, and that doing so had set off my bear. My feelings for you overwhelmed my bear. That’s why I lost control. That’s why I was covered in blood, because I ran in the forest trying to calm myself down, because you get me so damn riled up!”
Stephanie was shaking now, her head twisting back and forth. “No…no that…”
“IT IS TRUE. Do you know how I know it’s true?” he shouted. “Because I fucking love you.” He paused for a breath, lowering his voice. “I love you, Stephanie Holmes. It’s crazy, and stupid, and far too soon. But dammit, that’s how I feel.” He stopped. “How I felt, at least. Until you went to the news. Betrayed me and my men. My friends…my family.” His eyes narrowed to slits. “How could you?”
She was crying nonstop by that point. Part of him felt happy to see her so distraught. But most of him hated what he’d done, hated to see her like that. All he wanted to do was scoop her up, cradle her close to him. Tell her that it was okay, that it would be all right. Gabriel wanted to give her the world, but he couldn’t. Not just then.
To her credit though, Stephanie had always been a strong one, and he saw that strength shine through once more as she got herself under control, enough at least to speak.
“I wrote up a story, yes. It was made to look bad, true. I don’t deny that. I sent it to my boss. It was going to catapult me into a full-time position. It would get me money enough to live on, and finally some respect around the office.” She smiled ironically. “But then, earlier today, I realized that maybe I had made a mistake. That I cared about you, and perhaps I’d misread you. I don’t know, I was confused.”
He didn’t rub the fact that she was right into her face. She had misunderstood, and she knew that. All he said was, “You should have asked me.”
“I know,” she said through the tears, sniffling. “I know.”
Then her eyes blazed with anger. “But I went back there. I spent the last of my money on a rental car, broke all sorts of rules about speed limits and safe driving to go back to Morgantown, to get my boss to physically erase the story, and then I quit. I drove like a wild woman back here. I beat up some poor teenage boy who was coming to record this fight to put it on the internet and stole his ATV, just to try and get here to tell you something before you got into a fight.”
“And what was that?” he asked softly. “What did you need to tell me so badly?”
She didn’t hesitate. “That I love you, Gabriel Korver. I wrote that story,” she said, directing her words to everyone now. “I wrote it under a misguided and incorrect assumption, but that doesn’t change the fact that I wrote it. But I swear to you,” she said, the flames in her eyes brighter than ever before, a brilliant blue-white fury that he’d never seen before. “I swear, I never gave out any names. Never once. Those were in my head, and in my head only. So I don’t know where the humans got them from, but that part at least was not me. The rest is my fault, and punish me as you will. But I did not give out the names.”
Despite everything that had just happened, Gabriel actually found himself believing her.
You must be a fucking idiot. This woman clearly didn’t care about you much, and she went to the newspapers with barely a thought to the consequences of her actions.
He frowned. She’d done that, but she thought she’d heard him say he didn’t care about her, that he should never have mated with her in the first place.
“I don’t know,” he said, speaking at last. “I need a bit more time.”
He rolled his head to the other side, to the shifters who stood there. “Ava, Andrew, start organizing the surrender of Fenris. Kill anyone who resists or tries to harm those who surrender. Get the dragons to work with you as well.” The pair nodded and hurried off. “Ethan,” he said, calling out to the nearest Green Bearet he recognized.
“Yes sir?” the young lieutenant said.
Ethan wasn’t his favorite shifter, but he’d have to do. “Start organizing the retrieval of the bodies. Take them back to Cadia. We’ll have a proper ceremony for our dead.”
“Of course, Captain,” the shifter said and turned, starting to bark out orders as Gabriel lay back onto the ground.
“I’m so sorry, Gabriel,” Stephanie said, speaking before he’d addressed her again.
“I’m sure you are,” he replied, trying to see through his own grief at her betrayal.
“I am.”
He turned his head at the ice in her words.
“But you need to stop wallowing in your grief.”
“Excuse me?” he asked dangerously.
“Five of your men were just taken captive by the humans. They’re likely heading back to their base north of here as we speak. Once they get there, who knows where they’ll take them.”
“I’m not exactly in a position to do anything about that,” he said, gesturing at his healing but still-weakened body. He would be fine in time, but it would be a day or two at least before he was back to normal. The gryphon had really done a number on him.
Stephanie took a breath in and seemed to steel herself before she spoke again.
“I have a plan, but you’re not going to like it.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Stephanie
She was right.
He didn’t like it.
At all.
“ARE YOU INSANE?” Gabriel roared as he tried to sit up, then fell back into a prone position, his face contorting in pain.
Her heart ached to see him like that, in such a weakened, vulnerable state. The big, powerful shifter of hers, laid to waste as he tried in vain to protect someone who moments earlier had been as close to a mortal enemy as one could get. He deserved so much better than that. Unfortunately, what he deserved and what he was dealing with were two different things.
Which is why it was on her shoulders to do what needed to be done right now.
“Gabriel, take a breath, and think,” she said as calmly as she could muster, her own emotions close to boiling over as well.
“I am thinking. I have thought it over. The answer is no. Absolutely not. Not even that, hell no!” he said vehemently.
“You’re not thinking this over clearly then,” she said, crossing her arms and making it clear she wasn’t backing down.
Anger raged within his eyes and across his face, before abruptly fading as his weakened state caught up to him once more.
“Stephanie,” he said in a much more restrained voice, “you can’t do this. You can’t ask me to help you do this.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything, Gabriel Korver,” she said. “I’m telling you what’s going to happen.”
“You haven’t thought this through. You could die,” he said lamely.
She snorted. “Listen, we may be going through some shit. I have a lot of apologies to offer, and I need to make it right. Well, this is one of the things I have to do to make it right. You know it just as well as I do.”
“You, woman, are the most stubborn person I think I’ve ever met.”
“No I’m not,” she said. “I just don’t automatically do as you want, and that pisses you off and is also what makes you love me.”
Gabriel just stared at her for nearly half a minute after she spoke.
“Lord help me, she’s right,” he muttered to himself, a ghost of a smile playing across his lips. “She’s right.” His eyebrows pushed together. “But that’s not the only reason I love you, you know.”
“It’s not?”
He gave her a strange look. “It would be pretty ridiculous if that were the only reason I loved you, you know.” His eyes glanced away. “I’m still mad about what you did. That’s not just going to go away. But neither are my feelings for you. So, if you’ll let me, we’ll work them out.”
Stephanie wanted to sink to the ground with relief at his words, as she realized that she hadn’t lost him, that there was still a chance they could fix things between them. Her eyes became water, but she rapidly blinked away the tears before they could fall. Now was not the time. Now was the time to press her case.
“Of course I want to work this out, Gabriel.” She paused. “But for now, I need to go rescue your friends.”
“Seriously?” he asked. “I tell you how I feel, and this is the first thing you say in response?”
“I love you, Gabriel Korver. But right now you’re being dumb. Your friends are in trouble. None of your shifters can go after them. They’ll know it was you, and they’ll come after you. So I go, as the human who betrayed you. The human who will set them free.”
He was shaking his head.
“Gabriel, it has to be this way. You can’t come with me, so I need to go without you.”
“I know,” he said, causing her to sway backward in confusion. “But that doesn’t mean you need to go alone.”
What the hell was he talking about?
“We’ll go with you,” a soft alto said from behind her.
Stephanie spun to see five women of varying heights and sizes, but all definitely human, and not shifter.
“Who are—Allix?” She asked, realizing mid-sentence that she recognized one of the women.
Allix wasn’t a human though. Allix was Luther’s mate. A human Turned to a shifter. Which must mean…
“You’re their mates,” she said softly.
The assembled group of women nodded.
“You’re all shifters?”
“Yes,” one of them said, a very tall woman with hair the color of the black skies above them. “Lieutenant Kiefer is my mate.”
“Colonel Garrin is mine,” said an almost equally tall strawberry-blonde.
“Lieutenant Aksel is my mate,” said a light blonde woman of medium height.
“Major Jarvis and I are a thing.” This came from a brunette almost the same height as the blonde.
“Which leaves Captain Luther as mine,” Allix said with a smile, “though you already knew that.”
“I…” words failed Stephanie.
“They won’t see us coming,” Allix said. Then she turned her eyes on Gabriel. “Stephanie is right. Stop being stupid about this and do what needs to be done. We’ll be here for her the whole time.”
There was a helpless snarl that cut off halfway through. Stephanie turned to see Gabriel’s face changing as his bear pushed through, its long teeth gleaming menacingly.
“Go on,” the strawberry blonde urged. “There’s nothing more you can do now.”
Allix stepped forward and gave her a primer of what to expect, and how to trap the bear that would apparently manifest itself in her head.
“I’ll remember all this?” she asked skeptically.
“In time, yes.”
“So now what, I just go stick my neck out for him?”
The group nodded.
“Well this seems stupid,” she said, but bent down to where Gabriel lay, unable to rise due to his injuries. “P.S., you had better be on your feet when I get back from all this, mister.”
The bear head on top of the human body just growled at her.
“Fine, fine. Just a nip,” she said, and stuck her neck out toward the waiting jaws.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Stephanie
Teeth bit into her skin, and she screamed in pain as they punctured deep.
“Holy fuck that hurts!” she yelped. “Ahhh!!!”
The teeth slipped from the wounds and moments later Gabriel’s head was back on his shoulders. Blazing agony spread from the wound, and she fell to the ground, clutching at it with her hands.
“Make it stop!” she said, her voice a high-pitched shriek that carried through the massed ranks of shifters, causing many of them to stop what they were doing and watch.
Her skin began to itch around the bite.
“So itchy,” she gasped through the haze of stars that had blinded her when Gabriel had sunk his teeth in deep.
She was on her side, hands clasped over neck, even as blood flowed through her fingers, the sticky substance warming her skin against the cold.
But there was another warmth seeping through her, one that was quickly turning from pleasant to unbearable. Opening her eyes, she focused on the women.
“What now?” she hissed, barely able to form words as the heat cut into the oxygen in her blood.
To her horror, the women were staring at her aghast and unmoving. None of them said a thing, totally enraptured by her.
“WHAT NOW?” she screamed.
Allix shook herself, the first to respond. “Now you’re supposed to pass out,” she said weakly. “We all passed out. Had to fight things in our head. Why aren’t you passing out?” she looked beyond Stephanie. “Why isn’t she passing out?”
Gabriel’s voice rumbled over them. “I don’t know.”
“So hot,” she whispered as her skin began to burn. “Water.” Her mouth was drying up in seconds, becoming parched, her lips chapped.
As if in response to her demands, the skies finally opened up. The rain came down in a sleet, washing across them all, soaking them to the bone in seconds. Stephanie managed to roll partway onto her back.
The strawberry-blonde, seeing what she was going for, sunk to her knees next to Stephanie and helped roll her onto her back. Then she raised her hands to the sky and cupped them. In moments she brought them to Stephanie’s mouth, and slowly slid water inside.
Unable to speak, she just nodded her appreciation at the other woman.
“I’m Mia,” she said. “I have no idea what’s going on.”
The nonchalance of her reply almost had Stephanie breaking out into laughter, but the heat within her body intensified again. More women came next to her, all holding their hands to the sky and then pouring the water into her mouth. It was absorbed almost as soon as it touched the insides of her, barely leaving anything for Stephanie to try and swallow.
But as the last of the shifter-Turned women shook off their shock and came to her side, the flow of water at last began to outpace the searing heat that scorched it from her body. Stephanie could see the steam rising from her skin as the rain tried to cool her off, and simply evaporated upon contact.
The ground below her grew wet and mucky as the rain pooled, the sleeting columns of water from the sky showing no signs of letting up.
“The mud!” one of the women shouted. Together they began to mix the shiver-inducing water into the dirt around them, and then pack that against her skin.
Immediately Stephanie felt relief as her skin cooled, but then the mud began to dry out and crack as the water was absorbed into it. Frantically, each woman took responsibility for part of her body, and simply worked back and forth along it, spreading fresh mud, then discarding it as it dried out, and replacing it.
Stephanie could do nothing but lie back, stretching her limbs out wide and trying to sink deep into the earth, in the hopes that its cool embrace might help. One of the women, she couldn’t see who through the pain, the dryness of her eyes, and the rain, kept dripping water into her mouth.
“She’s not cooling off!” one of them shouted. “Shouldn’t she be cooling off by now?”
“She should also be passed out!” one of them replied. “Keep working!”
They were losing the fight, she realized. Stephanie was dying. Her body was draining itself of water faster than it could be replaced, and she wasn’t going to make it. Maybe Gabriel had been right. Maybe this was a stupid idea on her part. She should have just relaxed and let others handle this.
