A Lynx in Their Den [Shifting Desires 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Marla Monroe

  Creed couldn’t handle the pressure any longer and was just about to open up and talk to her when his cell phone rang. He cursed but relaxed when he saw that it was Locke. The big bear had already found something.

  “Hello?”

  “Creed? Find Shayne.” Creed fought not to look over at Serenity at the sound of worry in his Ruka’s voice.

  “You both need to see this.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The instant Creed walked out of the office, Serenity stuck the USB cord into the computer tower and started downloading all of her files and programs. Then she began reviewing her anonymous e-mail to see if her parents or one of her brothers had contacted her lately. Maybe they knew some reason why Rogue Hunters would be after her. If she’d been more active in the human’s world, Serenity might have thought it was possible that someone thought she’d done something, but she rarely left her home.

  No, something wasn’t right and she couldn’t stay holed up with Creed and Shayne for the rest of her life. Plus, something was up with them as well. Shayne had been a little more himself when he’d come downstairs earlier to take over her bodyguard duties from Locke, but she still felt that they weren’t as convinced that she was who they wanted as they’d been before finding out her lynx was going to be stubborn.

  She sighed. It was just as well. She needed to leave before someone got hurt. The memory of her two males fighting over her before still bothered her. Then there was the risk that someone could get hurt by the hunters trying to keep her safe. No, it was better for her to leave.

  She spotted an e-mail from Evil Eye, her youngest brother’s online name. He was the only one still living at home with their parents. The others had moved out to a different den. Being males and strong ones, they weren’t refused when they requested to break the den bonds and go off on their own.

  Serenity opened the e-mail after scanning it for spyware or viruses and finding none. It was nearly a week old. She hadn’t realized that she’d neglected to check for that long, but when she was in the middle of working on a project, time got away from her.

  Hey, tiger. I’m worried about you. Something’s going on here. The Rufus has been here talking with our parents a lot lately. They are never happy when he leaves. I’ve tried getting them to tell me what is going on, but they just say it’s nothing for me to worry about. Mom especially, is upset. She doesn’t leave the house much at all now, and Dad makes me promise to call often when I’m gone. Somehow, I’m afraid this has something to do with you.

  Serenity wondered why the Rufus would be visiting her parents. He’d never been one to just visit anyone unless he wanted something from them. What could they possibly have that he would want?

  He stopped me yesterday and asked me a lot of stupid questions about the family like where was our grandma from and had I heard from you since you’d run off. Why would he care about where our grandma came from? Hell, I don’t even know if he meant the one on Mom’s side or Dad’s. Just let me know that you are okay. I’m worried. If I don’t hear from you in a reasonable amount of time, I’m going to come looking for you. Something just isn’t right.

  She read through the last lines then reread the entire e-mail before destroying it by sending it through her secondary shredder software. She sent a quick e-mail back to him, telling him that she was fine and was going to be moving and would tell him where she settled once she got there. She prayed it reached him before he decided to come looking for her. That’s all she needed, her youngest brother showing up to demand to know what was going on.

  Serenity pulled her external drive from the tower then set up the program to transfer everything to her cloud storage before leaving a program to wipe some sensitive files off the hard drive in case someone went through her computer. It would leave the non-sensitive programs there and her browser history would remain intact. She had nothing to hide, only private files that belonged to the companies she did work for. She couldn’t in good consciousness leave them wide open.

  Once everything was finished and she had her external drive packed away in the computer backpack she’d also stuffed with clothes, her parent’s pictures, and her jewelry box, Serenity stood up and looked around the room. She hadn’t been there long enough to become attached to any of it.

  God! Has it only been two days?

  No, what she was going to miss was her mates, and the mistaken promise of belonging to a family again. No matter how much she told herself that with the mating bond being incomplete and so weak she would soon forget about them, Serenity knew that she would never forget them. True mates were a once in a lifetime experience. All others were potential mates that you could imprint on if there was mutual attraction.

  She fought back tears, slid her arms through the straps of her backpack, and picked up a bag she’d packed to get her through the coming days. Hunger pains hit her and she groaned. She’d grabbed a couple of sandwiches left over from lunch and eaten them before coming to the office. Why was she so freaking hungry?

  It was enough to drive off the tears but not enough to keep her from leaving. She walked over to the widows and located the alarm wire. After tracing it to the junction where it joined the one from the other window, Serenity quickly spliced it into that one as well. It would make the connection think the window was still closed when she opened it since the other window would still be closed. She wasn’t real sure it would work, but when nothing happened once she’d unlocked the window and shoved it up, she relaxed.

  Dropping the bag out the window she crawled through the open space then closed it behind her. It wouldn’t be locked, but with it closed, they wouldn’t realize she’d left that way for quite a while. Hopefully it would be long enough she would have time to reach town so she could buy a bus ticket out of there. She’d get off earlier than planned and buy another ticket to her destination.

  Guilt ate at her along with the empty gnawing in her stomach. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be. Hadn’t she suffered enough over the years? She thought about her best friend and knew she hadn’t nearly suffered what the others had. She felt ashamed and kept going. As much as she wanted to shift, she couldn’t carry the backpack and the bag in that form. She wasn’t as fast in her human form, but if she kept to the woods, she could travel much faster without detection. The fact that she’d made it that far without a hunter dropping her in her tracks gave her hope that she was going to make it.

  She would check in with her brother as soon as she stopped for the night. Her only worry at that moment was that there wouldn’t be a bus out of town before the next day. If that happened, she’d have to find somewhere to hold up other than a hotel. They’d find her in one of only three in the little community. One of those was a bed-and-breakfast and there was no way she could stay there. It was run by one of the families of wolf shifters in the area.

  Nearly an hour later, she strode into the drug store that sold bus tickets and asked when the next bus out was leaving. To her surprise, they had one leaving in fifteen minutes. It was getting diesel at the station and would be back soon. She bought a ticket to Seattle, Washington, pleased that it would be in the opposite direction she planned to go. While she waited for the bus to return, Serenity bought all the snacks she could stuff into her backpack and bag. As soon as the bus returned, she cl on board, refusing to give up her pack or bag. They would fit over head and under the seat. She couldn’t afford to be separated from either one if she was going to get off at a station somewhere along the way.

  After studying the map, she decided to ride until they reached Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. She’d change busses and eventually make her way to Carson City, Nevada. Her old roommate from college lived there now. She’d let her stay there for a few days until she got a place to live.

  With that thought, Serenity settled down to rest. Her stomach growled and cramped. She cursed under her breath and pulled out some peanut butter nabs to eat. Thankfully there was no one sitting next to her, so she was able to spread out, leavi
ng her backpack on the seat next to her. She wrapped the strap around her wrist and turned it so that the zippers were face down before leaning back in her seat and closing her eyes to rest. It was a long way to Coeur d’Alene.

  * * * *

  “What do you mean she’s gone?” Shayne snarled softly.

  Locke and Otto both stood their ground but did wince at Shayne’s glare in their direction.

  “We’ve searched everywhere but can’t find her. Creed said he left her in the office when he came upstairs with you to see what I’d found. After he left to meet with Mojave, I returned to the office to watch her, but she wasn’t there. Her computer is there, but she isn’t. I called Locke and we’ve searched the entire house without a sign of her. We wanted to tell you before we started outside,” Locke said.

  “She may have returned to her home for something. We’ll check there first,” Otto said.

  “Did you check to see if her things are still here?” Shayne asked already heading in that direction.

  “Yes. Her clothes are still where we unpacked them,” Lock said.

  Shayne didn’t stop until he’d reached their rooms and started looking around. Sure enough, her clothes seemed to still be in the same place, but something was different. He looked around, checked the closet and then the dresser again. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was different.

  “Find Quill and Zeth. Something is different, and they’ll know if something they brought over for her is missing. I wasn’t paying attention to what they brought back with them to know if something of hers is missing or not,” he told Locke.

  The other bear stepped off to the side to call the two bears. Shayne stared at Otto. The Russian bear’s emotions were all over the place from the vibes he was putting off, but nothing showed on his face.

  “We must find her before the Ursus has to be told she is missing,” Otto said.

  “I’m not looking forward to telling him either,” Shayne agreed. “But I’m going to have to call him if we don’t find her soon.”

  Locke walked back over. “They are on their way.”

  “No one could have come in and taken her. We would smell them, plus the alarm system should have gone off,” Otto pointed out.

  “It should have gone off if she left the house on her own as well. I checked and it hadn’t been inactivated except when I turned it off for Creed to leave. I reset it as soon as the garage door had closed,” Locke said.

  The sound of booted feet hurrying down the stairs snagged their attention. Qwill and Zeth both hurried into the room. Their faces showed that Locke had apprised them of the situation. Neither bear looked at Shayne. Instead they started looking around the room as well as the bathroom and closet.

  “Her laptop, the backpack it was in, and a few odds and ends are missing,” Zeth said.

  “She had a picture of her parents and a little cheap jewelry box that are gone as well,” Qwill added.

  “She took a change of clothes and a few of her toiletries, but left the majority of it, moving it around so that it looked like it was all still there,” Zeth explained.

  “I can smell her strongest in the bathroom, so that was probably the last place she was before she left the suite. It’s been a good four hours though since she was down here,” Quill told them.

  “Fuck! She can’t have been gone that long. I know she was in the office with Creed until about two hours ago. He’s been gone for an hour so we can assume she left just before or just after he did,” Shayne said.

  “We’re going to check her house,” Locke said.

  “We’ll take the back and surrounding woods,” Quill said. “Maybe we can pick up her scent to tell what direction she went.”

  Shayne ran his hands over his face before giving in to the need to roar. It echoed throughout the downstairs. The temptation to change and go hunting for her himself was strong, but Shayne knew it was his duty to talk to Creed and direct things. Locke would coordinate the search while he handled his brother.

  He walked over to the bed and picked up the pillow she’d slept on and held it to his nose. Her scent both comforted him and enraged him. She wasn’t there and if they didn’t find her soon, they could lose her forever. Why had she left? What had happened to cause her to change her mind about them? Had she overheard some of what they had found out?

  It wasn’t as if he could blame her for wanting nothing to do with any of it, but running away from them tore a piece of his soul away. Surely she didn’t think they would force her into anything. Hadn’t they already proved that when they hadn’t forced the mating issue? No, he didn’t think she’d overheard anything. She’d been acting odd since she and Creed had come up to breakfast. Everything had been fine up until then.

  The fact that she’d been unusually tired, hungry, and irritable would have made him think she had been carrying their cub, but she’d never smelled as if she had been in her breeding cycle. Of course they weren’t familiar with a cat’s cycle. Maybe they smelled different than bears or wolves.

  He stomped up the stairs to the main level. He wasn’t looking forward to calling Creed with the news that their mate was missing. While they had been upstairs learning more about her, she’d been sneaking away. He still couldn’t believe that she didn’t know more than what she’d told them, but Creed was convinced that she was as much in the dark as they had been.

  Locke had uncovered more about their mate than just her parent’s phone numbers. He’d found out that she was the only female decedent left of the royals who’d once been in charge of justice for all shifters before The Awakening, the revelation to humankind of the existence of shifters. That of itself wouldn’t have been such a big deal in the world they lived in today that didn’t care about royalty or ancestral importance if it hadn’t been for the prophecy made by the last advisor for the royal ruling family over all shifters. The last family had been wolf in nature, as had the advisor, a very old female wolf known for her prophecy. She had predicted The Awakening nearly a hundred years before it happened.

  Lock sighed. Did he believe the prophecy? Papa Bear had often said that it took people believing in them for them to come true. Without the power of their belief, they couldn’t come to fruition. Who was left in their modern world to believe in the prophecy enough to make it real?

  The Rufus of her den did. Did his son believe as well? Whether it came true or not, the fact remained that Serenity was their mate, and she was missing. As soon as he heard back from Locke and Otto, he would call Creed. Regardless of the future, they had to find her before the hunters did.

  * * * *

  Serenity woke with a blinding headache and what felt like a blow torch on her skin. When she jerked upright, it was to find that there was no one standing over her with one. In fact, there were only two other passengers anywhere near her, an older human female snoring three seats up and a middle aged human male at the very front talking with the bus driver about sports. Why did it feel as if someone had set fire to her skin? Just as suddenly, the feeling went away but was replaced by abdominal cramps so bad she wasn’t sure she could keep quiet. What was happening to her?

  She curled up on the seat and rocked back and forth in an effort to comfort herself. The pain nearly blinded her for what felt like hours but turned out to be about twenty minutes. She lay panting on the seat, too tired to move but her belly began grumbling for food once again. How could she go from being in excruciating pain one moment to being ravenously hungry the next?

  Serenity didn’t understand what was happening to her. She’d never felt this way before. Digging in her pack, she pulled out another pack of nabs and a candy bar. When she went into her heat cycle, she sometimes got overly hungry and her belly was uncomfortable until it passed. She would be horny as hell and no amount of self-pleasure came close to relieving the symptoms, but this was different. Not only was it so much more extreme, but she burned all over.

  The only thing she could think of was that having not finished the mating b
ond with Creed and Shayne, she’d somehow messed up her system’s natural rhythms. Whatever it was, she just had to get through the next few days and she’d be fine. It usually only lasted about five days and she’d started feeling odd the night before.

  Once she’d finished eating, Serenity tried to find a comfortable position, but the rough material of the bus seats bothered her skin. She tried pulling on a long-sleeve blouse to keep her skin away from the seats, but she got too hot and had to remove it. There wasn’t a position on earth that allowed her to relax for long. As a result, she was constantly shifting in her seat. Even the bus driver noticed and asked her what was wrong. She’d mumbled something about hemorrhoids and he shut up, concentrating on the road ahead and the football team the man sitting up front kept bringing up.

  After over an hour of misery, her body began to settle down again and exhausted she fell asleep once more only to be jarred awake after what felt like five minutes.

  “Hey, lady. This is Coeur d’Alene. We’re stopping here for dinner. Be back on the bus in two hours if you want to ride with me.” He loomed over her as he spoke, but as soon as he’d finished, the bus driver scooted sideways down the aisle, his overly wide hips too large to fit between the seats.

  Serenity checked the time on her cell and sighed. It was almost six. The bus would travel on to Seattle after this. She needed to find out how to get to Nevada next. She doubted there would be a bus back this way before the next day, but she wanted to know her options before locating a place to spend the night.

  The Greyhound bus station wasn’t huge, but it was better than the drug store back home. She walked over to the window but it was shut tight. There was a bus schedule taped to one side so she studied it, trying to make sense of some of the abbreviations. She finally admitted defeat at figuring it out. She would come back early in the morning when they opened.