by Amelia Jade
“Yep, the one and only,” he replied, his brain thinking fast, trying to come up with something better than “I wanted to see you” as his reason for being there.
“I can see that now,” she said with a little smile, looking up at him. “I’m just surprised to see you here.”
He frowned. “You gave me your hotel room…I thought...” He looked down the hallway, at a loss for words. “Should I not be here?” he asked.
Shay giggled softly. “I just figured you would call ahead or something.”
Now he was thoroughly confused. “You don’t have a phone though…”
“You can call the hotel and have them connect to my room you know.”
Flames erupted across his face as he realized his mistake. The heat was so intense he was surprised his skin wasn’t just falling off in pieces, melting away from the burning embarrassment.
“Right,” he said at last. “I did not think of that. Clearly.”
He could see Shay trying not to laugh at him as he made a complete fool of himself.
“I, uh, I can go then,” he said, taking a half-step back toward the elevators. “I didn’t meant to intrude on you. I just thought... after last night and running out, that maybe we could...” he took a breath. “Yeah, sorry. This was inappropriate.” He turned to go.
What the hell was I thinking, coming here like this? Of course she wanted me to phone ahead. Then she could have told me she already had plans, instead of me making this awkward as all hell!
“Wait,” Shay called after him. “Justin?”
“Yeah?” he said, spinning back around.
“I’m going out to look for my father again, at another place.”
He saw something flash behind her eyes. Something troubling and almost fearful.
“Where?” he asked, stepping back to the doorway.
“Downtown,” she said slowly. “If you aren’t busy, maybe you could come with me?”
The way Shay phrased it let him know immediately that there was a twofold request there. One that she was willing to voice was her desire to see him again. He felt that matching burn inside of him. That initial ache when you meet someone knew, where all you want to do is spend every waking and sleeping second with them, talking to them, getting to know them and more.
It was the undercurrent of her tone that left him unsettled. Unless he missed his guess, she was asking him to come along so that she would feel safer. Justin was positive he hadn’t sensed anything like that the night before when he had last seen her. What had happened in that timeframe? It was also clear to him that she didn’t want to talk about it. Again, Justin wasn’t sure how he knew this, but he did, and he had to go with his gut on it. Shay would tell him when she was ready.
Inside, his bear recognized the basic thought behind all of this, and it started to growl its displeasure. Shay was scared. Must protect. The basic instinct to protect one that he cared about was a big part of him. If he was around, Shay would never need to fear.
“I can do that,” he said, looking deep into those greenish-blue eyes as he nodded solemnly, letting Shay know that he would be there for her in all ways. As a friend, companion, and if necessary, protector.
His bear growled a silent challenge to all comers, daring them to even look at Shay wrong.
“Where are we going?” he asked lightly, trying to change the subject.
“I want to go ask around here,” she said, handing him a photograph with a grateful smile. “Maybe he frequented a shop there or something. Someone has to recognize him.”
He took the picture, glancing down at it as Shay talked.
It took every bit of willpower in his body to not react to what he saw in the photo. He tried to play it off by pretending to study the picture deeply, but in reality, he was suddenly regretting agreeing to help her.
In the foreground were two people. One was a slightly above-average-height male with long hair down to his shoulders, and a big, bushy beard. He had a smile on his face and looked genuinely happy. There was another much cleaner-cut man standing next to him. The pair were giving the cameraman a thumbs up. Justin didn’t recognize either of them, or the building in the immediate background.
But behind that, farther down the street they were standing on, was a building he did recognize. A squat concrete building, much shorter than any of its neighbors. It was painted an off-white color. It was a building Justin knew it intimately. Every Sentinel was familiar with it.
After all, knowing the home base of your enemy was critical.
He was going into the lair of the beast.
“Is everything okay?” Shay asked, looking at him oddly.
“Yep,” he said tightly, knowing she would see right through that. He just hoped that, after he had given her a break by not asking what had her so afraid, that she would do the same to him now.
Shay’s eyes narrowed slightly, but then she relaxed as he stood his ground. “Okay,” she said, giving him a nod similar to the one he had given her just a few moments ago.
Secrets. Everyone has their secrets.
Justin hated that he had to keep so much from Shay, but he hadn’t been cleared to tell her yet by either Madison or Jared. Until one or both of them said he could tell her, he would have to keep her in the dark about his true purpose in King City. He was fairly sure that in the end she would be okay with the reasoning, but he still didn’t like it.
“At some point,” he said as they waited in the elevator a few minutes later, “I may have to take off. Like I did yesterday. I hope not, because I’m tired of feeling like I’m running away from you, but I need to warn you it might happen.”
Shay looked at him. “Just promise me something?” she asked, and he could see the humor in the look she was giving him.
“And what’s that?” he asked.
“Give me a hug before you go this time?”
He laughed. “I can certainly do that,” he assured her. Without thinking, he stepped closer, putting his arm around her as they both shared a happy moment.
Justin latched on to that moment as Shay tilted her head slightly to rest it against his shoulder. If he didn’t, he knew his nerves about being so close to the Agency headquarters would get the better of him.
Right then, Shay needed him to be strong. For her, he would always be strong.
He had to be.
Chapter Seven
Shay
Sunlight streamed down the boulevard as they walked along it. The east-west facing street was a tunnel of brightness as the rising sun cast its rays down upon it, forcing both of them to pull their sunglasses down across their face. The heat battered at them, and it wasn’t long before Shay regretted the dark-red shirt she had pulled on that morning. A white shirt would have been so much cooler.
Buildings rose up around them, modern-day megaliths that were designed to impress and awe. Around them humans surged and flowed along the paths, on their way to any of a thousand destinations to conduct business of one sort or another. She saw bicyclists in collared shirts, businessmen exiting fancy cars wearing expensive suits, and city workers covered in grime as they removed the previous days’ refuse from the streets. All of them blended together to create the vibrant atmosphere that was the core of any major city.
King City wasn’t the biggest place that Shay had ever visited. On tour as a driver, she had been to a number of the megacities around the world. But it wasn’t a small town either, sporting a population of well over a million people. It had the size to be called a city, and the bustle to go with it.
The press of bodies forced her and Justin to stay close. In the heart of the city center those around them were less impressed by his size than the more tourist-inclined area by the harbor. Because of that there was less of a space around them. Her arm brushed against his numerous times, and each time she shivered in delight from the heat that exploded across her skin.
It wasn’t until she saw his shoulders straighten when they touched that she realized he was profound
ly uncomfortable with something.
“Hey,” she said, reaching out and taking his hand without thinking, giving it a reassuring squeeze.
Justin stumbled as he came to a halt. He glanced down between them before slowly bending his arm. As his hand, and therefore her hand, came with it, a look of wonder passed over his face. Then his eyes moved from their fingers to her lips.
“Uh, hi,” he said, a lopsided grin settling on his mouth.
She saw him relax somewhat, though there was still an underlying tension to him that hadn’t been there before.
“Everything okay?” she asked, pulling him along as she resumed walking.
“Yeah,” he said just a bit too quickly.
Shay frowned. “Okay mister secret agent,” she teased. “If you won’t tell me what’s up, then tell me something else.”
A ghost of the smile returned to Justin’s face. “What would you like me to tell you?” he asked without hesitation.
“Who are you?” she asked as they resumed walking.
She could see the building in the background of her father’s picture, the first one he had ever sent her from King City. She knew that, because in the other pictures he had shaven his beard and cut his hair in a style similar to the other man in the photo. Clean-shaven and close-cropped hair. She kind of liked it; it made him look more professional. She had brought both pictures with her in the wild hope that someone might recognize him.
A snarl pulled at her lip as she pictured anyone trying to threaten her with Justin at her side.
Good luck.
“Who am I?” he said, repeating the question as he gathered his thoughts. “That’s a difficult question to answer.”
Shay said nothing. He hadn’t been trying to avoid the question, but instead elaborated on it, so that she could understand there were different angles to what he was going to say.
“I’m an orphan, for starters,” he said. “My family died when I was younger, leaving me to fend for myself without any support.”
“I’m sorry,” she said with heartfelt sorrow, unable to fathom how hard that must have been for him.
He smiled and squeezed her hand, much to Shay’s delight as it clued her in that they were still holding hands. It felt so natural that she was surprised that she had forgotten about it already.
“Thank you. It’s been hard, but these days I have my team, and they’re the closest thing to a family I’ve had since.” He laughed. “Hell, they may actually understand me even better.”
Shay shook her head. “What do you mean?”
“I’m a bit of an oddity,” he told her with a wink.
“Yeah, I knew that already,” she teased, her smile becoming a full grin as he laughed loudly.
“Touché,” he said, raising two fingers to his brow in a mock salute.
Shay stayed quiet though, eager to let him explain. This was the most she had gotten out of him about his personal life, and she wanted to learn more about what made the big shifter tick.
“The shifter gene is generally present in a child if one or both of the parents are shifters. Female shifters are rare, but male shifters born to human females happens most of the time,” he said, explaining shifter genetics to her. “The other option is a half-breed. Part shifter, part human.”
“Okay, I’m following you so far,” she said in response to his questioning glance.
“Both of my parents were blackbloods,” he explained. “Neither of them were full shifters, but they managed to conceive me, a full-blooded shifter out of it. That,” he said with a wry grin, “is a genetic oddity that I’ve never encountered before.”
“Wait. Blackblood?” she asked. “What’s that slang for?”
“Another way of saying half-breed,” he told her with a shrug. “I think it’s a little easier on the ears than half-breed.”
“I agree,” she said, her lip turning up at the other phrase. “Half-breed makes me think of animals, not intelligent beings.”
“Why thank you,” he said. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” she replied quickly, sticking her tongue out at him.
“Noted,” he laughed. “Anyway, as I was saying, my family were all human, despite having shifter blood in them. I’m not sure how well I would have been able to connect with them after my bear manifested.” He shrugged, his gaze focused on the sidewalk ahead of them. “I’m sure they would have loved me, and I them. But it’s such a life-altering event when your animal first manifests. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it weren’t for my family out in Genesis Valley. Being among my own kind, and able to be comfortable with going out in public while young was probably lifesaving.”
“What do you mean by that? Going out in public? Everyone knows shifters exist, even if we don’t know much about you.”
A sad smile crossed his face at her words, and a new, harsher tone entered his voice as he responded.
“The Outing, as it’s called, hasn’t exactly been beneficial for us. Most shifters consider it a mistake, you know.”
She stopped in her tracks, stunned by this revelation. “What? Really? How come? I’ve never heard of such a sentiment before.”
“We don’t exactly advertise it to humans,” he said coldly, though she could tell his ire wasn’t directed her, but her species as a whole.
Shay wasn’t naïve. She knew that there were many humans out there that would do despicable things to one another. Although she shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that they would do the same to shifters. Perhaps it was the fact that they all seemed so big and strong, impervious to the stupidity of humanity. Judging from the tone of his voice, however, that was not the case.
“How bad has it been?” she asked softly, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.
Justin looked away. “Worse than the witch trials during the medieval ages.”
Shay gasped in horror. “No, you can’t be serious. How can it be worse?”
He snorted. “Now that it’s been confirmed that we do exist, and our abilities revealed, governments and greedy men want to take what we have and give it to themselves. So they experiment on us, try to take our powers and make them transferable to humans.”
Words failed her as she took in what Justin was telling her, trying to understand how people could conduct such experiments on other human beings.
“That’s just in our country,” he said angrily. “In less civilized places in the world, we’re hunted because many consider us to be abnormalities in the face of their gods, as monsters and freaks to be feared, and thus eliminated.”
“That’s barbaric,” Shay stated firmly, feeling her rage growing. “Anyone who would do such a thing isn’t worth the skin on their back. There should be laws against doing that, if there aren’t already.”
He smiled sadly at her again. “There are, but when those in power agree with the general sentiment, then it’s unlikely that any will face punishment.”
Shay thought he looked like he was about to say more, but his expression suddenly changed.
“Why don’t we start looking for your father?” he suggested, pulling her after him into the closest store.
“Uh, okay?” she said, caught completely by surprise. “In a dry cleaner?” she asked after a moment, surveying the small shopfront.
Behind the counter, a short Asian woman was looking at them strangely while shaking her head. A rack of clothing covered in flimsy plastic bags made a loud clanking noise as it rotated behind her in an endless stream.
“Ticket?” the woman said in accented English, holding out her hand.
“No ticket,” Justin said, looking past her into the back of the shop.
“What is going on?” Shay said, pulling on his shoulder.
“No ticket? Need ticket!” the woman shouted, oblivious to the conversation going on between them. She pulled an empty hanger from the rack as it went by, barely even looking over her shoulder as she did. The woman brandished it like a weapon, fi
rst at Justin, then at Shay when the big shifter didn’t respond.
“Did you mean what you said?” Justin asked, taking her by the shoulders as he looked into her eyes.
“What are you talking about?!” she asked, shaking her head in frustration. “Did I mean what?”
“What you said, about the people who do things to my kind being worthless?”
Shay frowned in confusion. “What? I mean, yes, of course. But what does that have to do with dragging me in here?”
Behind her the rack continued to clank and chatter, each scrape of metal on metal ratcheting her nerves up another level, threatening to overload her.
Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
“I promise I’m going to tell you everything I can, as soon as I can.”
Her brain clicked to something Justin had said.
“You need to go, don’t you?”
The big shifter nodded, even as something flashed behind his eyes. Something dangerous that she had never seen before.
“I didn’t mean to get you involved,” he said, gritting his teeth.
“Ticket or leave!” the little lady behind the counter said, her voice rising.
“If they come in here, just pretend to argue with the lady,” Justin said.
Shay’s eyes narrowed. “If who come in—”
Her greenish-blue eyes flew open in astonished surprised as Justin dipped his head low and kissed her. Time seemed to slow as she felt warm lips pressed against hers, his hands slipping off her shoulders and around her back, one of them even making its way up to her neck to send a shiver down her spine.
Shay had a split-second decision to make. Did she fight him? Or did she accept it?
Just as she began to melt into him, her eyes closing with a flutter, ears tuning out the huff of the woman behind the counter and the clanking of the clothing rack, she knew it was over. Justin began to pull away, no matter how hard she grasped at his clothing, trying to pull him in close.
“I’ll call you,” he said, moving toward the counter where the little lady stood.
