by Amelia Jade
“I’m nervous,” Erika said, slipping her hand into his as they exited the room and began walking down the double-wide corridor toward the staircases.
“Me too, but I don’t think we really have much to worry about. Andrew is a good man, fair and trustworthy. I may have to accept punishment for shifting within the city, but I suspect it won’t be much. Especially if no one complained.”
“I hope so.”
“It will be okay my love, my mate. We’ve made it through the hard part.”
She looked up at him, confusion wrought on her face. “What? How can you say that? Aren’t his parents or whoever going to be furious that you killed their son? Aren’t they going to come after you with a vengeance?”
Harden thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
Erika goggled at him. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to explain this one to me. It must be another little ‘quirk’ of shifter society that I don’t understand. They’re just going to let it slide?”
“No, I don’t think so.” He smiled mysteriously.
“You had better start making sense, mister, or you’re not going to be having any more of what happened this morning.”
Harden put on a distraught face, but he wasn’t worried. Erika had enjoyed herself just as much as he. They were too in love to hold out on each other. But still, he took pity on her. She didn’t know what he’d discovered the other night.
“I went in search of answers to my questions about living in Cloud Lake, but outside of Cadian jurisdiction, for the most part.”
“I thought you were going to go talk to Andrew about that?”
“I was.” And so he told her his story about the office being empty, and how he had gone out wandering into the streets of Cloud Lake.
“Wait, you came across the same people that rescued you from the Institute?”
He nodded quickly. “I know. What the hell are the odds of that?”
“Pretty minute,” she agreed thoughtfully. “You’re thinking that Andrew is going to set up something like that for us?”
“Something like that,” he said, dodging her playful swat.
“You’re holding out on me, mister,” she said with a pout.
Harden grinned. “Maybe a little. Come on my love,” he said, dragging her hand after his and descending the stairs.
There were more guards on duty this time he noticed. To his knowledge Andrew only had three available to him, so the others must be volunteers. Many of the bear shifters in town were members of the Green Bearets, the military arm of the bear shifters. It probably wasn’t hard to find volunteers.
The pair made their way into Andrew’s office, only pausing at the door long enough to knock and listen for the terse “enter” that swiftly followed. Andrew was sitting at his desk, nothing in front of him. He’d been waiting for them. The unimpressed look on his face gave Harden pause, and he wondered if perhaps something had come up, an unexpected change of plans.
“Sit,” Andrew said, gesturing for them to sit in the chairs facing his desk.
Harden guided Erika to a seat and made sure she was comfortable before he sat carefully, listening to the wood creak under him. It held steady though, and he tried to affect an air of relaxation that he didn’t truly feel. The gryphon shifter was making him nervous. Things were supposed to go smoothly, he’d been assured of it.
Behind them he heard footsteps. Gray entered the room, nodding first at Andrew and then in Harden and Erika’s direction. He took up a post at the door, hands clasped in front of him.
“What’s going on?” Erika asked, sensing the tension in the room, though it wasn’t exactly a miraculous feat. The small four-sided space practically seethed with it.
Andrew leaned forward on his desk and steepled his fingers together in front of him like the roof of a house. “This whole debacle has made my life tough,” he said without preamble. “You’ve made me enemies. Enemies who won’t rest now. Angelo was well connected. His brother Al is going to make things incredibly difficult for me now, and will likely mount a campaign to come for my job.”
Harden opened his mouth to apologize, but Andrew kept speaking.
“Don’t,” he said. “I have no regrets about what I did. I just needed someone new to complain to. Gray is sick and tired of listening to me.”
The bear shifter standing guard smiled thinly.
“Besides, it will be some time before they mount an attack on me. I will hopefully have a chance to mount a defense and solidify my position here.” He snorted. “They screwed the pooch by making this position out to be a powerless one of exile. So they’ll have to undermine that lingering viewpoint back home before they come after me.”
“Either way, we’re sorry that you’re going to catch flak for it,” Erika said from at his side, speaking before he could gather his thoughts.
“That’s appreciated, but not the reason we’re having this meeting, now is it?”
Harden shook his head, giving Erika’s hand a silencing squeeze as she started to speak again. He hated to cut her off, but she didn’t know everything just yet. For that matter, neither did Andrew.
“No, it’s not,” he said into the quiet that filled the room. “We need to decide what to do about us.” He tilted his head in Erika’s direction to indicate the both of them.
“Precisely. You’ve caused quite an incident back home. Or will, I suppose, once word reaches them. The phone line back home has mysteriously gone down,” he said with a careless shrug. “Shame. It really is quite temperamental. I’m sure it’ll be fixed in a day or three.”
Harden smiled. Andrew was on their side. The confirmation that he’d delayed word of Angelo’s demise getting back to Cadia itself was all the proof he needed. The odds were fairly good that he would support them, but Harden wasn’t willing to count on anything until he had proof.
“So now, the question remains, what do we do about you?”
“We disappear,” Harden said.
Andrew’s forehead wrinkled in surprise. “Well, that would be convenient. But the two of you are currently subsisting on Cadian funds and mercy, to put it bluntly. What, exactly, is your plan?”
Harden turned in his seat to look at Gray. “Did you make that call like I asked?”
“I did.”
The gryphon shifter looked at his personal guard. “You made a call? Without informing me?”
“Not to Cadia sir,” Gray said, then looked back at Harden.
The wolf shifter nodded his okay, and the bear shifter opened the door, made a gesture, and then held it open as someone else walked into the office. Andrew immediately shook his head, containing his laughter to a few bounces of his shoulders.
“I should have known you would come meddle in the middle of this,” he said, reaching across the table to shake the hand of the giant who had just walked in.
“What’s going on?” Erika asked in confusion, looking around the room.
“Erika,” Harden said. “Meet Maximus Koche. Maximus, meet Erika. My mate.”
“A pleasure,” the walking tank rumbled, taking her hand, his grip dwarfing it. “I have heard much about you. Almost all of it good.”
Erika gave Harden a mock glare for not speaking all good, and the entire room laughed, much of the tension rushing out as they did.
“So why are you here, Maximus?” Andrew asked, leaning back.
“They’re coming with me.”
“Who will shelter and feed them?”
“We will. My brothers and I.” He shrugged. “I seem to be making a habit of rescuing Harden from sticky situations. Wouldn’t want to let him down this time.”
The others shared a laugh at his expense.
“Don’t commit to that just yet,” he said as the noise died down.
Maximus gave him a quizzical glance.
“I need to modify my agreement.”
The huge shifter, his joker tattoo sticking out from under his right sleeve, rega
rded Harden for several long moments, then he seemed to nod in understanding. “The others.”
“The others,” he confirmed.
“Ummm, hello,” Erika said from next to him. “What others? What agreement?”
Maximus smiled. “I told Harden here that you would come and live with us for a bit, before we could secure you the funds and property to build your own place, with us, on the outskirts of town.”
“You did?” Erika asked, shocked. “That’s unbelievably generous of you.”
The eldest Koche brother smiled. “My brothers and I have been rather lucky, and we are not in need of all of our wealth. We’re not in the habit of giving it away, but this appears to be a worthy cause. If you were back in his homeland, Harden here would shower you with gifts, spoil you, and build you whatever house you wanted. That was cruelly taken from him, despite desperate efforts on his behalf to get it back. This is the least we can do.”
Erika swallowed, and he wrapped an arm around his mate as her emotions got the better of her, robbing her of even a witty comeback.
“Only if the others can come,” Harden said. “Otherwise, thank you for your offer, but I must politely decline.”
Maximus shook his head, chiding him. “You do not truly think I, of all people, would ask you to leave one of your brothers behind?” He nodded. “Of course they are welcome with us.” The shifter turned to regard Andrew. “Make it so. Once they are healthy, bring them to Cloud Lake. We will take care of them and ensure that they don’t garner notice.”
“I’m not sure I can prevent people from finding him or you eventually,” Andrew said. “They might come after you.”
Harden watched Maximus grin, a feral, wicked thing. “Let them try. I’ll remind them of what I did to the last people that threatened my family. I’m sure they can read about the Institute in a history book somewhere.”
“I like him,” Erika said after a second, recovered enough to drop the one-liner.
That’s my girl.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Erika
“What’s this?”
Harden set a large rectangular sheet of thick paper down in front of her, then added several pencils to it.
“Draw,” was all he said, settling down into one of the thick wooden chairs that surrounded the light-stained solid maple dinner table in Maximus Koche’s home.
She still couldn’t believe they were there. It had been a month and a half now of getting settled in, living in the guest room, and adjusting to life as a mated woman. She’d had help. Haley, Maximus’s mate, was roughly the same distance into her pregnancy, and the two of them had hit it off immediately.
Harden was fitting in well, despite being the only wolf shifter, and just the day before they’d received word that Gray was on his way to Cadia to escort the remaining members of Harden’s little family out to them. Shortly they would join them, and his family would truly be reunited at last. Erika looked forward to meeting them. She’d learned their names and endeavored to memorize them.
Dillon Stanton.
Bryce Carter.
Owen Judge.
Flint Kieremeyer.
Almost all that remained of Kronum. She couldn’t imagine how Harden would feel once they were all back together, but she was almost as excited to see him when they arrived as she was with the transformation that had taken place within him over the past six weeks. Or the transformation within her.
Erika was definitely pregnant now. Just into her third trimester, she was truly beginning to show, the swell of her stomach visible through all the clothes that Haley had helped her procure. She loved it, and the knowledge that she would soon be bringing a little bundle of joy into the world filled her with an inexplicable joy, something she knew she’d never be able to communicate to someone who hadn’t been through the process. It was just…one of those things.
Oh there were other moments, times she hated it. Her body ached, she farted like a madwoman any time she sat wrong, and the cravings she had sometimes made her question her own sanity. But even with those, she wouldn’t change a thing. Not with the near-permanent smile that had been plastered on Harden’s face the first time he’d put his head to her stomach and heard the little infant’s heartbeat. Erika hadn’t thought that possible, but then again, shifters were a little different than humans.
All of that brought her back to the paper in front of her however, the mystery thing she was supposed to draw.
“What, exactly, am I drawing?”
He smiled and produced a large photo, perhaps sixteen inches by twenty. It was color, and as her eyes focused on it she realized it was a landscape of beautiful greenery.
“And this is?” she asked, slightly exasperated and very intrigued.
“The future site of our new home,” he said, sliding into the chair next to her. “I closed the deal this morning.”
Erika’s jaw dropped open and she did something she never did in public. She squealed with joy, throwing her arms around him and plastering Harden with kisses. “You got it?”
“I got it,” he confirmed. “We take possession in two weeks.” He frowned. “So that only leaves me two or so months to build the house and the nursery, but I think we can get the bare bones of it done in time, enough to make it livable and comfortable for you and the babe.”
She squeezed him hard again. Speaking quietly now, as her lips were right next to his ears, she said, “That still doesn’t explain the paper.”
He shrugged. “I got us the property. You design us the house,” he said bluntly. “Contrary to what you may think, just because I’m a werewolf doesn’t mean I want to live in a den underground. I mean, the basement, all of the basement is mine to decorate as I wish. But we’re going to live somewhere nice,” he said firmly.
“So I get the other three floors?”
“Three?” he gulped.
Erika smiled wickedly. “You did say that I get to design the house.”
“Damn.”
Man, she’s destroying you on these one-liners. You need to step up your game.
Harden politely told his inner voice to shut up.
Chapter Thirty
Harden
“Okay boys, time to do some demolition.”
The assembled shifters grinned and began yanking on the ripcords, chainsaws firing up in a stutter of loud roars that assaulted his hearing until he slipped the coverings over his ears, drowning the worst of it out.
With a grin over his shoulder at Erika, he hoisted his own saw, bringing it to life with a swift sure pull. Then he spread out, and began to hunt down anything he could take down alone. The Koche brothers had joined him, eager to help with clearing a spot for the house he intended to build.
Harden had told them that he would be okay, but they had insisted. Said it wasn’t work, but fun. Besides, it’s not like they had jobs, they’d told him. Still, he’d felt guilty. Not only were they bankrolling him, providing funds for whatever project he wanted to build—and Erika had some wild ideas—but they had also secured permission for him to start two days after closing the deal. Time was of the essence with Erika chugging along through her pregnancy, and he intended to work around the clock until he had a place worthy of her.
The tree he was working on, a fifteen-foot sapling, toppled over as he sliced through it with near contemptuous ease. Glancing over his shoulder once more, he saw Erika and some of the other women, including her friend Kelly, who had come out to visit at last. He grinned. They hadn’t told Kelly that in a few more days Gray would be coming by.
Both he and Erika had seen the way Gray looked at her, and for over a month and a half now had been trying to get the two of them into the same room. But somehow Kelly managed to sneak out at the last second. Not this time though. This time they had her.
Glancing around to ensure he was clear, he toppled a larger tree, perhaps twenty-five feet or so in height. The six of them had fanned out in an arc, slowly working their way apart from each other. The area he wan
ted cleared was marked with a bright yellow rope. It wasn’t overly large; he wanted to keep as much of the forest intact as possible.
The house itself was to be set back from the road, keeping a thick line of forest between the house and it, to better ensure their privacy. The land itself was around twenty acres—a seemingly insane amount for just him and Erika, but he knew that his wolf would enjoy running wild through it. The property was mostly flat with soft undulating hills covered by trees and other brush. A river, or a large stream more accurately, ran through the back third of the property, just behind where the house would go.
He couldn’t wait to wake up in the morning and enjoy the sound of burbling water drifting through the large bank of windows he planned to install all along that side of the house. It was going to be heaven.
A waving hand caught his attention and he killed the saw, looking around as the others did the same. There were only two large trees left now. He’d planned the location as best as he could, but there was no way he could avoid cutting them all down. Limiting it to two large ones was a price he could pay. The lumber from them would go to building one of the future houses, once it was cut and dry. Just like much of the wood he would use to build his house came from trees felled when the Koche brothers built their houses. It was a good tradition to continue.
“What’s up?” he called over to Erika, wondering why she’d been waving at him.
“Lunch time!”
He frowned. They’d only been at it for perhaps half an hour. True, much of it was done. Six chainsaws go through forest rather quickly. But he’d hoped to get it all done before lunch.
Saying no to Erika wasn’t an option he was willing to take at the moment, however, so instead of arguing he just shrugged, walked over to the circle of the others, and plopped his saw down next to theirs.
“We didn’t bring any lunch,” he said suddenly, realizing that a midday meal hadn’t been on his planning.
“I know,” Erika said dryly.
She put two fingers to her lips and whistled. The bush rustled and suddenly other women emerged, all carrying picnic baskets with red and white checkered cloths covering them. One of them had two and passed it off to Erika, who crooked a finger at him.
