Shifter

by Angela Knight, Lora Leigh, Alyssa Day

  Mike was waiting for her directly across the small road, arms crossed over his chest, his expression causing her chest to clench with a spurt of familiar panic. He was angry. Mike wasn’t always rational when he was angry. He didn’t care if he caused a public spectacle of himself or her, and he rarely listened to reason. She almost turned and walked back into the mall.

  Instead, she glanced at her watch then back at Mike, a silent declaration that she wasn’t walking over there. At least this close to the doors, there was a handy escape route if one of those Council soldiers was lurking around the mall.

  She looked around just to be certain and saw no one suspicious. The parking lot was busy, the traffic fairly thick.

  She watched Mike curse before he moved across the street, his shoulders thrown back, his expression pugnacious.

  “We couldn’t do this in the shade?” He sneered. “You always have to be difficult, don’t you, Natalie? Big-time Breed teacher has to call all the shots.”

  “I can go back inside, and we can forget this,” she retorted. “Saban’s waiting just inside the doors, Mike. Make this fast.”

  “I want you to come home. Dammit, you have no business here. You’re my wife.”

  A sharp, amazed laugh left her throat. “Drop it, Mike. We both know this has nothing to do with you wanting me back and everything with losing control of me. I’m not your wife. I’ll never be your wife again, and if you don’t get that through your thick skull, then you’re going to end up dead.”

  “Siccing that rabid animal of yours on me, Nat?” Disgust filled his voice. “How can you let that thing touch you?”

  Natalie wanted to roll her eyes but knew it would only make this little fight run longer.

  “Mike, I agreed to meet you so you’ll see this isn’t happening with me.” She tried to keep her tone soft, gentle. Sometimes it worked. “Our marriage was over the first year; I just didn’t want to admit it. Now, let it go, and go back to Tennessee. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

  His lips flattened, his face flushing with anger.

  “Don’t you see what those Breeds have done to you, Natalie?” He pushed his fingers through his hair as fury flashed in his eyes. “They’ve done something to you. They drugged you.” He reached for her, his teeth clenching violently as she jumped back. “Look at you, you can’t even stand to be touched by anyone but that bastard fucking you.”

  “Stop this, Mike. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and it’s not a discussion we’re going to have. You need to leave. I didn’t want you before I came here, and I don’t want you now.”

  His nostrils flared, a telling sign. Only at his most furious had Natalie ever seen that. Those were the times he had wrapped his hand around her neck and pounded the wall beside her head. When he had smashed furniture and spent hours accusing her of screwing every man they both knew.

  “You’re my wife.” He advanced a step, and in his eyes Natalie saw something she had never seen before. A fury so violent she knew Mike would never keep his control.

  Had he truly been working his way up to this over the years? How had she not seen it, not suspected that he would retaliate like this the moment he knew he was no longer a part of her life? Forget the divorce, the bimbo; he had still controlled her. She hadn’t dated, she hadn’t sought out friends, because she knew Mike, and she knew he wouldn’t have tolerated it.

  And she hadn’t even suspected she knew until now.

  She stepped back warily toward the doors now, wishing she hadn’t slipped away from Saban, that she had just fought it out with him, made him at least let her try. She would have been safe. Or safely in her bed screaming in pleasure as Saban argued his side. Either one would have been preferable to this.

  “They drugged you, Natalie. The doctors that talked to me after you left told me all about it. This drug their bodies make. It makes you addicted, dependent.”

  Oh God. Oh God. She looked around frantically, knowing what was going on, certain Mike had set her up.

  She turned to push through the entrance doors into the mall, to run, to escape back to Saban.

  “You fucking bitch, you’re not running back to him.”

  Natalie almost screamed as his hand locked over her upper arm, pulling her back as she scrambled to grab the handle to the door, to get away from him.

  The pain, though not as severe at first, became mind-numbing as he dragged her back. She felt his arm lock around her waist, his chest against her back as she clawed at his flesh, guttural whimpers leaving her lips as she tried to scream for Saban.

  She heard screams, but they couldn’t be her own. A haze of pain covered her eyes, filled her brain, and with it came terror.

  Mike was cursing, raging. She could hear tires squealing and she knew, oh God, she knew he was taking her away. Taking her away from Saban and the dreams she hadn’t known she had.

  “You bastard!” Fury, rich with terror and mixed with adrenaline, spiked through her mind.

  Her hands curled back, her nails clawing back at Mike’s face as she tried to tangle her feet with his legs, throwing him off balance.

  They hit the street as horns blared and a siren began to scream through the air. As she rolled to her stomach, she felt hands grab her ankles, pulling at them, trying to drag her back as she kicked, screaming, trying to roll, fighting for release.

  There were too many voices. Too many hands touching her, and a second later she froze in a terror so thick, so horrible it nearly stopped her heart.

  A feline roar of rage split through the chaos of sound as she heard the rapid, staccato bursts of stunners and bullets ripping around her.

  One last kick, and she was free of the manacles at her feet. Crawling to her knees, she lifted her head, fighting to see. There were people everywhere. Black uniforms surrounded her. Someone was screaming from behind the barrier of enforcers, and she swore it sounded like Mike’s screams.

  “Saban! Oh God, Saban!”

  “Stay the hell where you are!” The growling roar from her right had her twisting, searching for him, her mind still dazed, the pain of Mike’s touch still ripping through her senses.

  But he was there. Through the blur of tears and pain, she saw him, then she felt him, one arm curling around her and pulling her into the mall as the gunfire behind them suddenly ceased.

  His eyes were blazing into hers, filled with rage, his expression twisted with it. “If you wanted him that fucking bad, I would have readily released you,” he snarled. “Now keep your goddamned ass here, and I’ll see if I can save the son of a bitch for you.” He turned around, stood aside for the two female Breed Enforcers who crowded into the small area. “Watch her and keep her here if it means shackling her to the fucking door.”

  Shock froze her, parted her lips on a cry, and left her staring at his retreating back as he left her sitting there between the street entrance and the mall entrance.

  She curled her arms around her waist, and as she fought the pain and the need for his touch, she laid her head against her knees and let the tears fall.

  She knew what she had done. Without meaning to, certainly without desiring to, she had betrayed her mate.

  THIRTEEN

  Saban stared at the mess four Council soldiers made as they bled out on the asphalt of the street outside the black panel van they had been attempting to get Natalie into.

  The scientist was still alive, a little bit wounded, but he was breathing, and the EMTs seemed certain he would keep living. If it weren’t for the information they needed from him, Saban would have finished the job and put a bullet in his head.

  Mike Claxton was sitting on the ground, his head in his hands, a bandage wrapped around one arm and another binding his ankle.

  The bastard had been damned lucky. The fact that Natalie had managed to trip both of them had saved his life, taking him out of the line of fire when he, Jonas, and the other Breeds swarmed out of the mall into the parking lot.

  Saban braced his hands o
n his hips and stared at the man and wanted to howl in rage. He could smell the weakness, both physically and mentally, that poured from Mike Claxton. He wasn’t a fitting mate for Natalie; hell, he hadn’t even managed to be a fitting husband to her, and yet she had run to him.

  He couldn’t even find it in him to excuse her, to find a way to understand it. It simply came down to the fact that Claxton had meant more to her than her own life, than Saban’s life, had. And that broke his heart.

  Shaking his head, he moved to the man, then hunched in front of him, his elbows resting on his knees, as he stared at Claxton’s bent head.

  Mike’s head lifted. Miserable, damp blue eyes met Saban’s.

  “You set this up.” They knew that. He had arranged with the scientist and the soldiers to take her.

  Claxton sniffed back his tears. “They have a cure for her. Whatever you did to her, it made her leave me, divorce me. She loves me, Breed. Not you.”

  The pain of that was like an open, gaping wound inside Saban’s soul.

  “I didn’t meet her until the day you came to the house to find me there,” he told Claxton, striving for patience. “Until that day, Natalie had never so much as breathed air that I had passed through. How could I have harmed her or damaged your marriage?”

  Claxton shook his head. “They saw you.”

  “Did they have pictures? Video?”

  The other man continued to shake his head.

  “The Council records everything, Claxton. Every investigation, every move they make, one way or the other, is recorded. If they had no proof, then it didn’t happen.”

  “You drugged her,” he bit out, his voice rising as he glared at Saban. “She divorced me.”

  “You cheated on her with her assistant teacher,” Saban said cruelly. “You broke trust with her. You betrayed her. You refused to allow her to make her own decisions, to be herself, because you were too frightened she would learn the truth. And when she did, you blamed her.”

  Saban had had the investigation done. His sister, Chimera, had sent the information via the eLink, carefully organized, brutally concise, days before.

  “She would have forgiven me.” Claxton swallowed tightly, but his demeanor shifted slightly, lost the aggression and became pathetic rather than furious. “Eventually, she would have forgiven me.”

  Saban shook his head. “Would you ever forgive her?”

  The other man blinked back tears and looked down, shaking his head.

  “You nearly died here today, Claxton.” Saban stared at the Council soldiers who had lost their lives instead. “But what would have happened to Natalie is beyond your worst nightmares. They would have cut her, studied her, and dissected her…while she lived. The horror she would have endured would have been more agony than you could ever imagine.”

  He shook his head desperately. “They have a cure. You did something to her. She can’t even bear my touch.”

  “Nothing is wrong with her,” Saban snarled, flashing his canines. “She was my woman, my lover. Why would she want the touch of one who had betrayed her? One who had fucked her assistant in her own bed? Why would she wish for your touch?”

  Claxton flinched at each question, hunching his shoulders against the truth Saban laid at his feet.

  “You didn’t just break the law today in your attempt to aid in her kidnapping, but you broke Breed law, Claxton.” He gave that a second to sink in, and as Mike’s face paled, he went on. “Attempting to kidnap the woman of a Breed is punishable by death. Your trial would be a Breed tribunal, not a jury of your peers. You don’t even have to be there.” He leaned forward. “Justice would be horrifying. Death by the most excruciating pain we could devise. The Council taught us how to cause pain, my friend. Pain like you cannot even imagine.”

  Claxton’s face was white now.

  “I wanted to save her.”

  “You wanted to fucking own her,” Saban snarled. “Now, here is what you are going to do. You are going to your hotel, you will pack, and you will leave before night falls. If at any time you are found to be in Buffalo Gap or if you attempt to contact Natalie without her permission, then Breed law will come down on you.”

  Surprise reflected on Claxton’s face. “You’re going to let me go?”

  “I have never killed over a woman, Claxton.” Saban let a growl enter his voice for effect. “But over Natalie, I will rip your guts from your navel and strangle you with them. Do you understand me?”

  Claxton nodded slowly. Saban held his gaze, staring back at him, letting him see the savagery, the need for blood rising inside him.

  “Why are you letting me go?” Claxton asked timidly, almost hopefully.

  “You heaped enough guilt on her head during your marriage.” Saban rose to his feet and stared down at him coldly. “I won’t let you guilt her with your death.”

  The hope left his eyes. Claxton nodded again then dragged himself to his feet and stared at the dead soldiers now being bagged, the disabled van that would have taken Natalie away.

  “I was trying to help her,” he finally said roughly. “I thought…I thought she was in danger.”

  “As long as I live she will be safe,” Saban snapped. “Can we say the same for you?” Saban looked at the bloody scene again and then back to Mike.

  Mike didn’t say another word. He limped across the street to his car and dragged himself slowly inside it. The bloody battle, the knowledge that his death had been so close, and that Saban would do more than kill him, did what nothing else could have. Right now, in shock, Claxton had taken in the truth of what had happened. He had nearly destroyed Natalie rather than saving her, and whether he had known it before or not, right now, he knew this was his last chance to live.

  “We weren’t trained to have mercy, Brother.”

  Saban turned to meet eyes identical to his own in a face so delicate, so sweetly curved that at times he couldn’t believe she was one of the highly trained, merciless Breed Enforcers the Bureau of Breed Affairs prized so highly.

  Long, black hair was braided into a thick plait and fell to the middle of her back, while her slender, doelike body radiated confidence and strength.

  “We weren’t trained to have it, yet we do.” He shrugged carelessly.

  “I’ll keep an eye on him for a while. Make sure he gets home safe. We’d hate for him to have an accident between here and there.” Her smile was cold, hard, her eyes like chips of green ice.

  “I gave him his life; take it at your own risk, Chimera,” he warned her.

  “You’re going to spoil her,” she stated.

  Saban shrugged again.

  No, he wasn’t spoiling her, he was letting her go. She would keep the job; that had nothing to do with him. Whether she stayed, left, or allowed Claxton back into her life was her choice.

  “Tell Jonas to have Natalie escorted home and assign her a new bodyguard,” he told his sister as he fought the pain building in his chest. “I’ll follow up with the scientist we captured and see to his transport to Sanctuary.”

  He had to force the words past his lips.

  “And if he sends a male with her?” Chimera asked.

  Saban just shook his head and moved away from her, knowing she would do exactly as he asked. She had never failed him, not once, not before their escape, not after. And if, as she asked, Jonas sent another male to guard his mate?

  God, such pain shouldn’t be possible without an open wound. How could his heart still beat in his chest when it felt as though it were ripped from his body?

  Love. God, he had waited for this, dreamed of it, from the moment he had learned that Breeds mated, that their one and only would be their natural one and only, he had waited and he had hoped.

  And this was what he had hoped for? A woman who, though she may care for him, loved another.

  He had to force himself not to look back at the mall, to the doors where he had left her. He had to force himself to the van where the scientist was confined, restrained and awaiting transpor
t.

  Saban stepped to the opened back doors and smiled. A slow, cold smile that showed his canines and bore little resemblance to a civilized being. He didn’t feel so civilized right now.

  “Well now, Dr. Amburg.” He greeted the aging scientist with a growl. “How nice to see you here today. I trust you’re doing well?”

  Beldon Amburg. He had tortured, murdered, experimented on, and destroyed more lives than Saban could count. His file was extensive; the proof of the atrocities committed at the lab he headed was stored in boxes rather than files.

  “You’ve forgotten who your masters are, animal,” Amburg sneered. “One day, you’ll bow before us again, and we’ll know no mercy.”

  “Oh, you knew mercy before?” Saban widened his eyes in surprise. “Well now, you’ll have to jus’ tell me ’bout dat lil’ thing,” he announced sarcastically as he stepped into the van and wrapped his fingers brutally around the thin neck of the scientist known as Bloody Amburg. “Right this way, Doctor. We have a nice little cell just waiting for you.”

  The scientist gasped for air, but he put up little struggle. Saban dragged him from the bullet-ridden van to the secured security van that pulled up alongside it.

  The back doors opened, revealing two Breeds, weapons held ready. The restraints locked into the floor of the van were lifted by a third Breed. And that one, Saban knew, would never leave Amburg alive if he had the chance. Mercury had more reason than most to see this particular scientist dead.

  “Mercury, ride up front.” Saban pulled his captive in and took the ends of the restraints himself. Snapping them on, he felt the Breed behind him move to the side.

  “I’ll let him live.” The voice was a demon’s growl, causing Amburg to collapse onto the wide metal seat bolted to the wall behind him.

  “I’m just going to make sure.” Saban shook his head. “Ride up front. I’ll ride back here with Lawe and Rule.”

  He took his seat, another metal bench facing Amburg.

  Mercury snarled but moved from the van, allowing the other two Breeds to jump inside before securing the doors.