by Marla Monroe
Since their secrets had been revealed out of resentment by someone in the armed forces seventy years earlier, the whole world knew of their existence now. When anyone felt that odd feeling around someone, they automatically assumed they were shifters. In fact, the military had known about them for nearly one hundred years when science had begun to progress faster than the shifters realized the dangers of their blood and tissues being tested. Once it was discovered, the shifters worked a compromise with various governments to keep their secret safe.
As long as they didn’t go on killing sprees and promised to supply a percentage of their men to serve as soldiers in special units, the government would keep their secret and allow the public to continue living in the dark but side by side with them. Then someone got their feelings hurt, citing preferential treatment without knowing the entire situation, and their days of anonymity were over.
Using her list that had been tailor created for that store, Serenity started on the opposite end of the food side of the building and worked her way up and down aisles containing things she needed with a single-minded determination to get through the ordeal without arousing interest or losing her temper.
Her plan failed halfway through the school and office supply department.
“There she is. Told you she was still around.” The soft whiney voice of a male human reached her ears from somewhere ahead of her.
“What does she need that much printer paper for? Do they use it for toilet tissue? Hell, even the store brand is softer than that,” another male voice said.
“Who knows what they do. She’s kind of pretty for an animal. I’d do her in a minute,” the first guy said.
A snorting chuckle pinpointed their location for her as across the main aisle, looking in the sporting goods. Typical for a pair of non-sequiturs like them, she thought with a shake of her head.
“Yeah, a minute is all it would take for you, Jim.”
“Shut the fuck up, Mike. They got keen hearing. You want her to hear us?”
She had to bite her tongue not to laugh at that. They were almost shouting, she could hear them so well. Didn’t matter. They’d never have the balls to put anything they might think up into play. They weren’t the ones she had to worry about. It was the ones like the lone male standing near the back of the store on the same aisle watching her. He hadn’t said anything, and she didn’t watch him back. She’d picked up on his heartbeat and the scent of his arousal just after she’d honed in on the two idiots talking trash. That man she needed to be wary of and stay out of his way.
Even though she kept his scent and features in the back of her mind, she really didn’t think he’d try anything. His type were capable of it and had the balls to follow through, but normally they were only interested in running scenarios in their heads for the brief adrenaline high they got in psyching themselves up for something dangerous and challenging. It was a lot like having an erotic daydream about your favorite movie star or sports player.
She nearly chuckled out loud at the thought of some stranger having erotic thoughts about chasing her down, chaining her up, and raping her before killing her so he could mount her head as a trophy when she changed to her lynx. In lynx form, all tests came back to be normal for the animal they changed form to. No one would know he’d murdered a shifter—except another shifter who would be able to scent one of their kind.
Once in the grocery area, she relaxed some. There would be fewer men in this section intent on stalking her through the store. They’d be much too obvious among the fruit and vegetables. Now all she had to contend with were the nosey women and occasional child still young enough they paid attention to their inborn instincts that warned them of possible danger.
“Hi. How are you doing? We met a few weeks ago when my car wouldn’t start. Remember?” A tiny older woman with graying hair had stopped her cart near hers next to the bread.
“Oh, um. Yes. I remember. Did you get new battery cables?” she asked, remembering that the woman’s cables had been old and rotted with exposed wires.
“Yes, I did. Thank you so much for helping me that day. I was scared standing alone like that. Normally several of us come to the store together, but last week Jane and Clara were ill, so I came and did all our shopping. I just don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t stopped to help me,” she said. Doris. That was her name.
“I’m glad everything worked out for you. Do you have your emergency number with you in case something happens?” she asked.
“Yes. We all have two numbers we can call if we need help. I wanted to introduce you to my friends. They’re right over there by the peanut butter.” Doris pointed at two women who looked a little older than her reading labels off of jars.
“Oh, I…” She found herself pulled along by the old woman’s strong grip.
Unwilling to harm the woman by jerking away, Serenity allowed herself to be dragged toward the two women in a heated discussion over the merits of one brand over another.
“Girls, girls. Look who I ran into. It’s Serenity. She’s the woman who helped me when my car wouldn’t start,” Doris presented her like a prize-winning show cat, complete with arm flourish.
“Hello,” she managed to get out before the other two women descended on her, hugging her and squeezing her cheeks. She wasn’t able to stop the soft growl that erupted from her chest.
To her surprise, the women burst into laughter but stepped back, giving her some room.
“I told you not to crowd her. Shifters don’t like to be cornered. You’re lucky she recognizes us as helpless and not a danger to her. She could have attacked us all.” Doris didn’t seem the least worried about that possibility though since the other woman patted Serenity on the arm.
“We’re sorry,” the shorter of the two women said in a cracked voice.
“We’re just so excited to actually talk to an honest to God shape-shifter that we forgot Doris’s warnings,” the other woman said with a broad smile.
“Shh. Keep it down,” Doris admonished them again.
“I’m sorry I growled, but like Doris said, we don’t like to be touched by non, um, family or cornered by anyone.” She pasted on her brightest smile to soften her earlier threatening growl.
“That’s okay. You can’t help it. You’re so pretty!” the taller one whispered loudly.
“Um, thanks. It was great to meet you, but I’ve got to be going.” She kept the already faltering smile plastered on her face and started easing her cart away from the three women.
“Wait,” Doris said with a panicked expression on her face. “I was hoping to see you so I could tell you that there’s a new group in the area who are anti-shifter. They are circulating pamphlets and recruiting people into their hate group. You need to be very careful, honey. Here.”
Serenity took the folded up papers the older woman shoved in her hand but didn’t look at them. The woman obviously thought it safer to hand them to her on the sly, though she failed miserably at being stealthy. Serenity could appreciate the woman’s courage. No doubt she would enjoy thinking about her contribution by informing a shifter of the new threat when she sat on her rocking chair later.
“Thank you.” She didn’t get a chance to say anything more since Doris hurried her cackling group of chicks farther along the aisle.
Shaking her head, Serenity stuffed the folded papers into her back pocket and continued filling her cart with the items on her list. As she neared the check out stations, a scent teased at her nose. At first she couldn’t place it or why her cat woke up to take notice. Then the finicky feline purred and urged her to drop everything and locate the source of the mouthwatering aroma.
Fuck! They’re here. Or at least one of them is.
Her mates were somewhere in the building, and her cat was on the job, interested in pursuing them. What had changed since this morning when she’d first discovered their scents and visual intentions?
Mates. Mine.
“Yeah, well, not right now,” sh
e muttered under her breath.
Need.
“Rein it in, girl. You don’t need anything or anyone. Remember?”
Serenity rushed through checking out, throwing things on the belt, just barely saving the eggs from being broken and the fruit from becoming bruised. The clerk had eyed her warily as if she would jump over the counter and pounce on her. Maybe the poor girl wasn’t entirely wrong about that. If she hadn’t been very efficient in checking her out, Serenity might have done just that.
Why now? I’ve just gotten to the point that I don’t look over my shoulder and can afford anything I need.
It had been nearly eleven years since she’d escaped the den’s confines and rules. The first two of those years, Serenity had kept on the run, moving from one big city to the next to hide her scent beneath the choking fumes of humanity where her kind couldn’t track her among the stench found in the more industrial areas. She’d suffered the misery of foul air, reconditioned water, and processed food in order to remain free of the den’s influence and directives.
Then, once she’d felt that they would no longer be looking for her, Serenity had settled across the country in a small community where there was a college she could attend. It took her five years of working and going to school, but at the age of twenty-five, Serenity held a dual degree in computer programming and microelectronics. From there she worked her way up two different companies until she had enough money to branch out on her own using her ideas to fulfill her goals.
Total independence from all forms of power over me and a feeling of worth outside that of my uterus.
She had a thriving business and enough money to do pretty much anything she wanted. Her needs were simple and her wants few. She loved to read and loved listening to music. Her frequent runs around her property in her lynx form kept her other side happy. She didn’t need or want a mate, and certainly not two of them.
After settling the last bag in the cart so that she could still steer and see over the stack of bags, Serenity pushed through the automatic doors and rolled toward her SUV parked about eight cars down the aisle from the store. The SUV beeped when she pushed the button on the key fob in her hand, and the back hatch opened automatically for her.
The thin trickle of unease down her spine had her glancing around as she loaded her groceries into the back of her vehicle. Nothing stood out as unusual. There were no groups of men hanging around or even one or two who looked suspicious. The sky’s pale blue hue stretched from one mountain range to the next, uninterrupted by clouds or birds. And that was what had her cat pacing beneath her skin.
Serenity didn’t see or hear a single bird in the area when, normally, they were fighting for prime space on the cart returns and empty baskets to get first dibs on abandoned food wrappers that littered the ground.
Danger!
“No shit, Sherlock,” she ground out between clinched teeth. “Be of some real help and tell me which direction to watch.”
No such luck. All she could do was finish piling the bags into the back then haul ass home where she would be on her own territory and able to defend herself against an attack.
An impending attack.
Because she knew it was coming. The knowledge that something was coming churned in her gut like a good Evinrude motor through a crystal clear lake. The interesting thing about what was to come was that her cat knew it as true danger, whereas the mate claiming bears hadn’t been seen in that light. Well as far as Serenity was concerned, they both equaled threat to her way of life. She would avoid them both if at all possible. If not? Well then. The fight was on.
“Told you there were shifters ’round these parts,” a young, barely teenage male voice all but shouted.
“Shut up,” a second, much more controlled voice answered.
Cold, numbing fear iced her veins as Serenity fought to continue what she was doing without showing that she’d heard them. Had she been human, she wouldn’t have. It wasn’t that someone knew she was a shifter, and it wasn’t that she was afraid of those two per se. It was the sound of the man’s voice that had her fear factor climbing to the top. Quiet calm had filled those two words that would have barely reached the stupid kid’s ears. Only those experienced in hunting shifters for the enjoyment of killing something as lethal as their animal side but with the intelligence of the human side could manage that amount of calm confidence free of fear.
Fuck!
Hunt!
“No,” she mumbled more to herself than to the lynx pacing and snarling inside of her.
She needed more information. Knowledge was power, but first she needed to make sure they didn’t follow her home so that they knew the location of her den.
Protect the den—always.
It was her last stand of defense should all else fail. No, what she needed to do was lose them, regroup, and find out who was in town and why. The crumpled papers in her back pocket suddenly didn’t seem like such a joke any longer. She’d grown lax in watching for signs of hunters when none had ever shown up in her little garden patch of the world before. Now she was behind instead of ahead of the game.
Even though hunters technically didn’t exist in the new order of the world, they had never really gone away. They’d simply moved underground to pursue their prey. Instead of hunting only when they had a sanctioned kill order from a government judicial agency, they hunted off the radar and hid their kills, often disguising them as random violence among shifters that did occur on occasion.
Serenity reined in her speeding heart and forced her breathing to remain normal as she pushed the button on the hatch for it to automatically close while she rolled the cart over to the return rack as if there wasn’t a hunter somewhere nearby. He wasn’t east of her or she’d smell him, and he wasn’t north since that was open without anyone standing around. Her enemy would either be to the south or west. She could glance around behind her sunglasses as she opened the door and cl up into her SUV.
Almost. She almost made it to the driver’s door before her earlier threat trumped her escape plan.
Chapter Three
The instant Creed closed his hand over the sexy feline’s upper arm, he knew he’d screwed up. She turned so fast he nearly missed the fist plowing right for his throat. Thankfully, he could move just as fast and stepped back, throwing her momentum off as he pulled her around with him. Shayne caught her curled up hand in his before she ended up smashing it through the side window of her vehicle.
“Let go of me,” she hissed out just like the cat she was.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that, but I wanted to talk to you and didn’t think,” he admitted as he cautiously let her arm go.
“That’s what’s wrong with males. They don’t think before they speak or act.” She turned to walk around him as if she planned to leave after all of that.
“Whoa. Don’t just walk off,” he said, his voice grumbly to his own ears. “We need to talk.”
“Not in the middle of a parking lot, we don’t. There’s a hunter watching us, and I’d like to give him as little of me as possible to sharpen his scope skills with.” Again, she turned away from him and managed to get her door open before he twisted and grabbed the frame to keep her from closing it.
“Move over. I’ll drive, and my brother will bring our jeep to be sure we aren’t followed.” He attempted to scoot her over but she didn’t budge.
In fact, she buckled her seatbelt and started the engine, glaring at him with enough anger he would have sworn he saw flames in her eyes if she hadn’t had shades on.
“Don’t go straight home. Drive around and let us throw him off your trail,” he finally said in a half snarl.
“I’ve been taking care of myself without a male to hinder my efforts for years now. I think I can lose a hunter without your help. Move!” she demanded, grabbing the door in an effort to close it.
Creed stepped back as she slammed the door closed and nearly ran over his toes as she backed out of the slot and drove
off. He and Shayne hurried back to where they’d left the Jeep when they’d scented their mate nearby. Thank goodness no one had stolen the damn thing while they’d been following their noses and their dicks.
He had the Jeep in gear before Shayne even had his door closed. His brother cursed but didn’t growl at him. They had to keep up with their mate and keep her safe. That was all that was important now.
“It looks like we have a fight on our hands,” Shayne said with one hand clutching the oh shit bar and the other bracing on the dashboard.
He didn’t bother answering that redundant statement. He was too busy trying to catch up with the sassy feline. Hell, his jeans chafed at his aching dick.
“Maybe she’s upset about the trees. She could be funny about her yard like Aunt Stacey.” Shayne’s annoying tendency to go off on tangents when they were knee-deep in crap gave him the urge to reach out and touch his brother with a fist.
“Watch for tails, and shut the hell up, Shayne,” he finally said.
“So far nothing. I’m watching. Maybe that was just to throw us off so she could get away.”
“Brother Bear didn’t think so. She tasted of fear, raw fear. The scent was so thick up close to her that it coated my tongue with it. There was someone there all right. Hunter? I don’t know—yet,” Creed bit out.
“Besides,” his brother said staring over his shoulder. “She knows who we are and that we already know where she lives. No point in trying to get rid of us when we’ll just show up on her doorstep, clawing up her trees again.”
“She doesn’t care about the fucking trees, Shayne. She doesn’t want bears as mates. We’ll seduce her and prove to her that we can more than take care of her and our cubs. Then she’ll settle down,” he said, his voice deepening to a growl as a fresh surge of heat traveled from his balls to his shaft at the mere mention of sex.
“Still nothing following us. I don’t think they even attempted to follow us, Creed.”
