by Selena Scott
“What about tracking device?” Anton’s voice was almost as hard as his expression. But his eyes were pained.
“Oh. The blinker? I took it right out as soon as I got to the woods.”
Emin watched as her hand floated to her side, as if to cover a wound, an injury.
“And then you stayed in the woods by the testing site?” Danil asked, squinting his eyes to understand.
“I knew it was abandoned. And it was the only place I knew in the whole world. I didn’t - don’t - know how to get back to my mother. So I stayed close. And then Emin came and found me.” She turned to him and smiled. Her white teeth glinted in the evening light and her green eyes changed shape with the smile. He was horrified to feel his heart flop over from one side to the other.
“Were you the only shifter in the lab?” Dora asked.
“Yes,” Glory replied. “But I could smell that there had been others. A bear. The one that attacked you. They made him there. And there was the fear of many, many animals on the air. I could smell that they had tortured lots of regular animals there, too.”
The words sank down over the group. The truth of it. They’d known that Navuka, the very group that the Malashoviks had fled Belarus to escape, was in the Spokane area. But the reality of Glory’s words was like a hot, heavy blanket over everyone. Anton’s family tried hard not to look at him. He wouldn’t like that. But they all knew how much Glory’s words must be affecting him.
Glory, perhaps unaware of the building tension, turned to him, taking his hand in hers. “Tell me what they did to you. Anton, right? Tell me what Navuka did to you and how you got away.”
Just like that. So simple. Anton’s heart raced as he looked into this pretty woman’s eyes. No one had ever asked him so simply. His family tiptoed around his past with all the pain, and regret, and guilt that their hearts could hold. He knew that each of his family members felt responsible in one way or another, for the day he’d been captured in Belarus. For the year that he’d been held hostage by Navuka, tortured and changed. Even now, he could feel that experience putting him on the outside of everybody. Separating him from even his brothers.
But now, here was this lovely woman who had felt it all, too. And she shared it so easily. She’d taken her pain and stepped right into the group with it. And now she was looking back at him, holding out her hand and inviting him in. Anton took a deep breath. He wanted to.
For the first time in a decade, since it happened, Anton wanted to tell his family about it. But there was one set of eyes that he could feel on him. A midnight-blue pair of eyes, half hidden beneath a sweep of dirty blonde hair. AJ. He could never tell this story in front of AJ. She already knew how fucked up he was. Because there was no hiding it. But he didn’t particularly need her having all the proof.
“I will tell you sometime, little cat,” Anton said, giving Glory just the smallest of smiles.
“Can I interview you?” Dora asked, leaning forward in her seat like she couldn’t possibly stay there.
“Dora!” Danil groaned, affectionately glaring at his overzealous wife.
“What?!” She turned back to Glory. “I’m a reporter. An investigative reporter. And I’ve been writing an article on Navuka for more than a year. It’s almost done. I want to blow the story wide. And I just think that your perspective could really help the story a little.”
“I don’t understand any of that,” Glory said, smiling. “But I love helping. If you need my help, I’ll always help.”
The spell that had been cast over the room was officially broken. The family rose, getting the dining room ready for dinner. All of them noticed that for the first time in living memory, Anton wasn’t slipping out the back door the first second he could. He was lingering. Not talking, because that wasn’t his style. But he was there. In the room with his family in a way he hadn’t been in years.
CHAPTER SIX
Glory insisted on going home with Emin that night. In her mind, Emin’s home was her home. Already.
He didn’t have it in him to argue, but in a lot of ways, it would have been much easier if she’d just stayed at his mother’s house. He knew he needed distance from her, for his own sanity.
But he thought about everything she’d been through. The literal loss of her mother. The torture at the hands of bad people. The six months alone and scared in a foreign place. No one to talk to. No one to trust. He thought about the way she’d opened up Anton that night. And he couldn’t deny her.
Which is how he found himself sleeping on the floor for the second night in a row, staring at the ceiling. Trying hard not to get hard just from the sound of her even breaths across the room.
She rolled. And then rolled again in her sleep. He could hear the whisper of the sheets over her skin. He could hear the steady beat of her heart, knew that she was sleeping. But he could hear something else, too, a gasping moan.
He sat up straight. She was dreaming.
She moaned again, whispering a word. Was that… ? Did she just say his name?
He was in hell.
***
Glory was in a splash of sunlight, as warm as soft fire. Green spring leaves filled her vision, above her and below her. She was alive and electric, feelings washing over her like the waters of a river.
She’d never felt this way before. Everything was a new, tumbling sensation but she didn’t have it in her to be scared. All she could feel was exhilarated. She wasn’t alone.
There was a golden hand on her belly when she looked down. And another on her thigh, gently pulling her legs apart. She knew whose they were.
“Emin,” she breathed as she turned to him, her mouth parted for his. And he took the invitation. His mouth closed over hers.
Glory let loose a wild noise that she didn’t even know she could make. It was all too much. Clinging to him was the only answer. The only thing she could do. But he was peeling her away, laying her back and rearing up over her.
He was naked, she realized, the way he looked right after she’d seen him shift. Glory bit her lip, her mouth watering with desire for him. She’d finally get to touch all that muscle. The golden dip and shadow of his strength.
She reached her hands out to him but he caught them in mid-air.
“No,” he growled, as grouchy as usual. “Now it is time for me to touch you.”
His words sent a charging thrill through her system and she let him pin her hands back. His hands came down over her body and he seemed to be touching her everywhere at once. Her feet, her elbows, her wrists, the backs of her knees. Nothing was safe from the path of his calloused hands.
Glory arched up off the ground and he reared up over her, his face blocking out the sun for her.
She felt a tremendous, pushing pressure between her legs and she wanted to scream, with pleasure, with confusion, with life.
“Emin!” she shouted his name again, because she had to. Because there was no other word that would properly convey what she was feeling in this moment. Everything was him.
“Glory!” he growled, gripping her by the shoulders and shaking. “Glory, wake up!”
Glory’s eyes flew open and she blinked at the dark cabin around her. It was night, and there was a damp chill in the air in the wake of a fire that had burned out in the hearth.
She was in Emin’s bed, the sheets twisted around her legs. A sheen of heated sweat covered her from head to toe. One of her hands gripped the twisted sheet like she’d been holding on for dear life. The other hand was on the back of Emin’s neck, tangled in his hair.
Emin. He was here. Leaning over her. Shaking her awake.
“You were-” she broke off. Unable to figure out what had just happened.
“I was laying on floor,” he told her. “You were having dream.”
“Yes.” She couldn’t move except to press her legs together against the pressure that had grown there. She’d never felt a feeling like that before. Like she was racing as fast as she could toward a destination she’d never been
. Her heart beat like it did right before she jumped from a height. But there wasn’t a height to jump from. She was lying in a bed, with one hand on Emin.
She lifted her other hand to him now, laid it on his cheek. He winced.
“Yes, I was dreaming,” she said again. “And you were there. You were touching me. You were making me feel - you were making my body-” She couldn’t finish. How could she find the word for that? “Shimmer.”
“I don’t know this word,” he growled and in the dark, she could swear that he was staring at her mouth, not her eyes. His breath was heavy and gravelly as he leaned over her, one hand planted on either side of her head. She could feel the significant heat that his body was kicking off.
“It’s what the stars do when they first come out at night. Or,” she wracked her brain, “what happens to air that touches right to a fire. It’s halfway between sparkle and…”
“Tremble,” he finished, understanding now. His voice was so low and his head had dropped down toward hers. Glory wanted nothing more than to strain up, clasp their mouths together. But she was afraid of moving. Afraid of breaking the spell that was spinning out between them right now.
“Yes,” she whispered. “You made me sparkle and tremble and shimmer.”
“How did I do this?” he asked, his hair a dark, wavy frame around his face.
“With your hands,” she replied instantly, no chagrin or embarrassment in her voice. “You put them on me. You touched my skin. Made me electric.”
He said nothing, just vibrated over top of her like the first tense moments before a storm breaks.
“Why is this happening?” she asked him quietly. “What is this?” Her voice broke just a little, both from the intensity of the arousal she’d just felt, but also from the overwhelming wave of confusion that was washing over her. She’d always been able to ask any question she wanted in the past. Her mother had been there to answer anything she’d ever thought to ask. But not anymore. And now she was learning that there were some things that she shouldn’t ask or say out loud. The world was turning out to be so much more confusing than she’d ever thought it could be.
Emin made a small, soothing noise in his throat and it almost made Glory feel worse. Because she wanted him to gather her in, soothe her. And she knew that he wouldn’t. Knew from the moment that she’d opened her eyes, that he was intent on keeping a distance between them. She had no idea why, but she could feel it.
His hands tightened infinitesimally on her shoulders. And then he was standing, pulling away from her. She could see his dark silhouette, silver in the moonlight.
“We shift now,” he said, his voice gruff. “Come.”
And with that he was walking out to the front porch. Glory scrambled up. By the time she made it out to him, he was already in his bear form, standing on his back two legs, scenting the air.
She tugged off her shirt and followed suit, the shift to her tiger form a welcome distraction from the buzzing, tugging electricity under her skin. Her muscles stretched and bunched as she galloped along beside him. The two of them set off through the woods together, keeping easy pace and following the moon through the leaves.
He brought the two of them up the mountain, to a place that Glory hadn’t explored yet. It was a craggy cliff decorated with scrappy pines and mountain grass. Glory could smell a hawk in a tree, eyeing them warily. The air held its breath, dry and tense.
Emin’s bear walked right out onto the edge of the cliff. He shifted gracefully, sitting and letting his legs dangle down over the edge. Glory followed suit and sat next to him, both of them comfortable with their nakedness in a way they hadn’t yet been. There was nothing sexual about it now. They were just two creatures staring out at the night. At the valley spread out before them. The crimson trees below were turned a romantic, bloody red in the night. Bats swooped after one another in an endless dance.
Glory looked down at their feet, dangling into darkness. How different they looked from one another. Her slim, pale feet were like two dolphins in the water. His long, wide toes were golden and dusted with hair. Much like his face, his shoulders, and hands, his feet just looked… confident.
She looked up and absorbed the view. Funny that it could look so similar to where she’d been born and still so different. She’d never been here before. Her mother wasn’t out there. Her mother was back home. Wherever that was.
“You are lonely for your mother,” Emin said, finally. “The world is confusing for you. I know this.” He tracked a frustrated hand through her hair. “I will try to make it less confusing.”
“What do you mean?” her voice was small even to her own ears.
“My family will be your family,” he said simply. “You will eat with us and be with us. We will help you find your mother. And in the meantime, we will be like family.”
Glory considered that. The thought of having Emin’s family as her own warmed her, almost enough to ease the ache of the ice in her stomach when she thought of her mother. But something about treating Emin that way didn’t stick right with her. She didn’t want Emin as her family.
“You will be my family, too?”
“Yes,” he answered after a beat, one of his feet swinging back and forth in the darkness.
“You won’t be my mate?”
He paused even longer this time. “You aren’t ready for mate.”
“Oh.” She looked out at the view again and thought she’d detected just the barest hint of the sunrise at the edge of the sky. She didn’t know if she was ready for a mate or not. She just knew that she wanted Emin to do to her in real life what he’d just done in her dream. And she was pretty sure that mates did that kind of thing with each other. Well, she’d have to think about it. “If I am part of the family, then can I have the last name? I’ve never had a last name before.”
He said nothing for a long time. “If you wish.”
“Glory Malashovik,” she said, and her voice winged out over the valley. She didn’t know that it also arrowed directly into Emin’s chest.
She rose and shifted easily, yawning big in her tiger form. She trotted off the way they came. He waited for a moment. Just one more moment, feeling like his feet weren’t the only things swinging into the dark.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next week was filled with land mines for Emin and happiness for Glory.
“Can you help me with the clasp on my, what do you call this thing?” she’d asked him one morning as she got dressed for the day in clothes that Dora had helped her pick out.
“Bra,” Emin had hissed grumpily. “It is called bra.” He’d strapped her into it, firmly realizing how much less fun it was to put them on than it was to take them off.
She’d needed help braiding her hair, reaching salt on the top shelf, even tying her shoes. She was a fast learner, but there was a hell of a lot for her to learn. And somehow Emin was the one who was teaching it all.
He found her incredibly alluring. And fascinating. And so frustrating he wanted to scream. How did one being have so much child and so much woman all at once? How was she so much tiger and so much human? She was a perfect split of two things, always. And it maddened him how well the combinations worked.
Unlike other women that he’d been close to, except AJ and Dora, there were no games. Glory never calculated. She simply felt and reacted.
“Can I watch you paint?” she’d asked him another afternoon, her hands on his shoulders as she leaned over him, her breasts pressed into his back.
“No,” he’d growled and then cursed at himself as he saw her face fall. “Fine. But you cannot touch. You must stay over there.”
He’d painted like a madman since she’d come into his life. He was always a hard worker. He’d firmly believed in working on his art every day, no matter if he felt like it or not. But these days he was downright inspired.
It irritated him.
The compulsion, the desire, the need he felt to put his brush to the canvas was completely due to Glory. She�
��d injected fire into his work, and even he, with his critical eye, could see that he was painting a series that was special, different from his other work. When Maxim had come over a few days before and pointed out that most of his new paintings were all done in the red golds of Glory’s hair, Emin had stubbornly switched to blues.
So it was a blue that she watched him mix with his palette knife, gruffly mixing colors with a confidence that she admired. She had a hundred questions that she wanted to ask but she kept it buttoned, as AJ would say, so she didn’t break his concentration.
Emin liked silence, she’d noticed. And he liked to watch. His family most of all. Glory was fairly sure that he knew much more about them than they even knew. But he didn’t particularly like to be watched himself. Anytime he caught her watching him, she was met with a scowl.
She liked his scowl. She couldn’t say why, in particular. But she did. Same as how she liked his smell after he’d been outside and sweating. He came in and smelled like a man. Sharp and sweaty. The cat in her wanted to roll in the smell, in perfect feline ecstasy, but she knew he wouldn’t like that either.
She watched his hand, so sure, guide the brush across the canvas, leaving a blue green line behind. Just a single, streaking line and Glory already knew that he was painting trees. He was just so good. He managed to catch the essence of it without the exact, constricting form of it.
“Those are different than the trees here,” she said quietly, not wanting to disturb, but needing to speak all the same.
He nodded. “Da. This is Belarusian forest.”
“Where you’re from?”
“Da.”
She chewed on her lip for a second. Trying to swallow down the words.
“Ask your question, Glory,” he said, not looking up from his work.
She let out a surprised little laugh. “How did you know I had a question?”
He looked back at her now, his eyes dark under his brow, his hair curling behind his ears. “You always have question. You are bubbly. Like little river.”
