One True Mate 3: Shifter's Echo

by Lisa Ladew

  He looked down at Mac and shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to even go there.”

  Mac kept eating. “I knew you’d say that. That’s why I told her I wouldn’t sign the waiver.”

  Crew nodded. Good. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

  Crew only had a moment to wonder if Mac’s sudden strange expression indicated sadness before Mac twisted his face into a mask and spoke harshly. “Ten minutes, then we’re out. Haul ass.”

  Crew nodded. He would be ready in five.

  Chapter 5

  Dahlia pulled her coat tighter around her and watched the other people on the street from behind her hair, noting each time one of them looked at her with surprise. Everyone who noticed her so far looked at her like she was crazy. Or maybe dangerous. She didn’t understand it. Her fake-fur-lined tan suede jacket, jeans, and boots looked similar to what everyone else was wearing. The people looked entirely normal, so she shouldn’t stand out. But she was.

  The smell of searing meat reached her and she took a deep breath, her mouth watering instantly. She was starved. She hadn’t eaten dinner before leaving work and she’d been through a lot since then. The smell was coming from a restaurant to her right, across the road. There were no sidewalks, only muddy, snowy trails in front of the buildings. She gazed inside at the diners she could see through the window, wondering what she was going to do. For the first time, her situation hit her fully, causing her mind to stutter in fear. Strange world. No I.D. No money. She knew no one and was already somehow calling attention to herself for being an outsider. If she ended up in jail, at least she wouldn’t freeze to death. Maybe it would have been better if she would have actually died when she was supposed to?

  Dahlia shook her head. She wanted to live. But maybe if she would have shown back up in her real world she could have lived happily there without ever visiting another world in her dreams. You know, like a normal person.

  A dark image filled her mind. Nighttime. A man stood behind her, holding her by the throat. He did something violent to her and she felt a cold pressure across her windpipe. The strength flooded out of her body and she sagged against him. He laid her down almost gently and she felt a quiet satisfaction from him. Then he was gone, almost like he had never been there. But her throat felt wet and warm and she could barely move. A dark shape loomed above her. Her eyesight was fading but she could tell it was her wolf. “Crew,” she whispered, feeling a smile touch her lips and love fill her heart. Then blackness folded over her like a blanket.

  Her heartbeat thudded inside her, dull, like she was sick of being scared of this vision of her own death in her real world. It was coming closer every day, she could feel it, but at least when she wasn’t in that world she didn’t have to be afraid of it. She stopped walking and her left hand floated up in front of her, the fingers flexing open and closed. A thought squirmed through her mind and she tried to catch it. She was supposed to be here. Had to be here if she was going to live through that death in the other world.

  Dahlia pressed her hands to her temples and her knees bent, sinking her to a crouching position. She tried to stay off the muddy ground, but she was swaying and it was so hard to care. Her mind felt like it was bending, maybe breaking. She’d died. She lived. She was going to die, but she could still live. It didn’t make any sense and it was making her crazy.

  The sound of a door to one of the buildings around her opening caught her attention. Noise of laughing and talking and dishes knocking together spilled out into the street. Get it together, Dahl, you can’t have a breakdown. Not here. Not now. She stood.

  The door closed again. Dahlia hoped no one would notice her.

  “Oy, chippie, what the hell you doin’ over there?” a male voice with a strange accent called. Male laughter sounded.

  No such luck. Dahlia began to walk again, quickly, like she had somewhere to be. From the corner of her eye, she could see what looked like a group of four males across the street. They matched her direction and pace. Shit. Maybe she should double back and head into the restaurant they had just left. Or maybe it was a coincidence and they weren’t interested in her.

  Ahead of her, she could hear a low murmur, like from a crowd. She walked on her tiptoes for a few steps to try to see over the slight hill ahead. A building, like a school gymnasium was there, with hundreds of people in two lines snaking out from it. A rock concert? A Black Friday sale?

  She put her head down and kept walking. People meant safety in numbers.

  Then the group of men across the street began to cross towards her. Her heart leapt into her throat and she quickened her pace. They broke into an easy run, laughing. She heard something in that laughter that drove icicles of cold fear through her middle.

  One of the men caught her elbow in an iron grip and pulled her around to face him. He was tall and strong-looking, with a scar bisecting his right eyebrow, the planes of his face unforgiving. “You don’t need to head to the rut, chippie, we’ll take care of you right here.”

  His accent threw her, throaty like German, but the r in rut and right were both trilled. Dahlia’s eyes almost rolled back in her head when she realized she was dissecting his accent instead of attempting to run away. She tried to yank her elbow out of his grip but her strength was no match for his. “Let me go,” she said, her voice way too quiet.

  The man pulled her closer. “First, I want to see what you are. I’ve never seen a female walk alone in Tranquility before. You must have some big balls.”

  His friends laughed at that, making him smile. She’d seen smiles like that before in mental institutions. He pulled her closer and smelled her hair, then pushed her away slightly, then shook her. “You smell like nothing.” His eyebrows drew down. “What are you?”

  Dahlia ignored the question that made no sense and tried to pull away again, then opened her mouth to scream. He slapped his free hand over it and one of his friends moved behind her, taking over the job of covering her mouth.

  Dahlia struggled. Was she about to die again?

  “What does she smell like to you?” the meathead who was doing most of the talking asked his buddy who had ahold of her from behind.

  “Nothing. I get nothing,” the second meathead said, his fingers grinding on her mouth.

  Dahlia’s fright spilled up and over her decorum and she went wild, twisting her head back and forth. When she got her mouth free, she screamed as loud as she could while lifting her legs to push against the man behind her, catching the first guy right in the gut with her boots. Too high! She tried again, aiming for his crotch this time, but he’d doubled over and her knee hit his face, causing a satisfying crunching sound.

  Meathead number one stood, his arm still laced around his gut, his face pained. “You’re gonna pay for that, chippie. Pay in flesh,” he said, causing Dahlia to lose her nerve for a moment, her eyes going wide. She tried to scream again. Someone had to hear her, there had to be a cop around. Meathead number one grabbed at her hair and pulled her head back to bare her throat. She groaned in pain.

  Scuffling sounded next to her and meathead number one looked that way, losing his grip on her hair, his eyes growing shrewd. Dahlia whipped her head towards the noise as meathead number two’s grip also slackened a bit. Not enough that she could get away, but enough that she could see help had arrived. Thank God.

  Her chest heaved as meathead number two let her go completely, pushing her away from him. She almost fell, but scrambled for balance. Two men had put meathead number one and two’s friends on the ground with some well-timed punches and now they were advancing on the two who were left, lips curled back, expressions grim. Dahlia backed away, not wanting to be anywhere near the fight she saw coming.

  Were they police? They wore no badges or guns. Only dark pants and boots, one in a light jacket and the other in a black pullover with orange trim. Even as Dahlia’s blood thundered in her ears and her thoughts zoomed by in overdrive, she couldn’t help but notice how handsome they both were, especia
lly the one in the pullover. He looked over six feet tall, with a trim waist and shoulders so broad she knew that sweatshirt hid a body to die for. His hair was dark and cut short enough that it almost looked like a military style. His amber eyes held an intensity she’d never seen before, like he hid secrets upon secrets behind them.

  Meathead number one crouched and something like a snarl erupted from his throat. Dahlia gasped as his face changed shape and his teeth seemed to grow longer. He threw a look to his only friend who was still standing that seemed to say come on, let’s do this. Too bad for him, his friend backed away instead, then turned tail and ran.

  Her savior with the intense eyes closed in on meathead number one, his voice coming out in a growl. “Do it asshole, but if I have to shift, I’m going to kill you, instead of just teaching you a lesson about keeping your filthy hands to yourself.”

  Dahlia swallowed hard, her hands flying to her throat. Shift? Kill?

  The other savior zeroed in on her, flanking meathead number one to get to her. “Where are your friends?” he asked in a low voice, looking around.

  Dahlia looked around too, as if some might appear for her to claim. “Friends?” Her eyes made their own way back to his friend.

  “Your pack, your clutch, your clan, whatever. Who are you out with?” he asked in an insistent voice, like it would be suicide for her to be alone. She was learning things about this world the hard way.

  Next to them, meathead number one had straightened, his teeth normal size again. He held his hands up and backed away from the man she couldn’t take her eyes off of.

  “They’re up there,” she said, pointing to the lines snaking out from the building a football field away.

  “Go then. I’ll watch you till you’re safe. Unless you want to see this guy lose his arms.”

  Dahlia gulped. She most definitely did not want to see that. She turned on her heel and took off, walking at first, then almost-jogging.

  When she heard a man’s scream behind her, she began to sprint.

  Chapter 6

  Dahlia stood in the very back of the line, her head down, trying to look as small and unobtrusive as possible, hoping she seemed like she was with the group in front of her. It consisted of five females, all dressed in tight skirts, knee-high boots or strappy high heels, and low cut tops under dark jackets, all five with hair that looked straight out of a music video from the 80s. Full on hair band groupies. She watched them out of the corner of her eye as a group filed in the line behind her, three males and two females who had an awkward air like they didn’t know each other well. She stepped back slightly, hoping now she could look like she belonged to either group.

  She lifted her head and took a deep breath, then stared down the hill, but the spot where she’d almost been─what? Groped? Raped? Killed?─stood empty. No meatheads. No good samaritans. Warriors.

  She clawed for her notebook and began to write in it, thinking she would record the entire experience, but not surprised at the words that ended up on the page.

  I would guess him at six foot, two inches, maybe taller. His hands were strong, incredibly masculine, with thick veins wrapping around to his fingers. His mouth was sexy as hell, his bottom lip twice as thick as his top lip, and his face was perfectly symmetrical, his expression intense. The scruff on his chin and cheeks made me want to bite him. Hard maybe. But what did he mean by ‘if I have to shift I’m going to kill you’?

  Dahlia’s pen faltered as she mused and her body lit up from the inside at the memory of his intensity. What would he look like during sex? She bit her lip and tried not to go there. Could he possibly be a werewolf? Did they exist in this world? In her real world, werewolves didn’t exist outside of stories, but four years ago, something had happened in her dream world that had changed her idea of reality more than she’d ever imagined possible.

  A website called wikireveal had insisted that a werewolf had been captured by the government who was holding it in a cell and torturing it to make it shift into its wolf form so they could study it. The story had been accompanied by a research video so compelling, the internet had made it go viral. The news outlets picked up the story, and soon protesters began marching on government institutions, demanding they show the werewolf. The government had staunchly insisted they had no such animal and the video was a clever fake.

  Until a military convoy, heading into Area 51, a flight testing facility in Nevada run by the Air Force, had found everyone on the base slaughtered. Rumors had flown fast and furious for weeks, until the president of the United States had called an emergency State of the Union address and admitted everything.

  Dahlia would never forget that moment. Everyone in the country, probably the world, watched as the president admitted the government had captured a werewolf and held him in a secret underground facility called Operation Arma. The voice of the quiet, eloquent speaker, who was nearing the end of his last term in office, shook as he relayed the details. He then showed video of the underground base that had sent Dahlia, and probably everyone in the world, into a panic. The place looked like a horror movie. Blood sprayed the walls. The camera panned onto the dozens of bodies clad in military uniforms, but Dahlia had looked away each time it did, not wanting to see the carnage. Bullet casings literally littered the floor, blaring the evidence that the soldiers had sprayed bullets like in a gangster film. And still not one of them had lived. At the cell where the werewolf had been held, the steel bars had been wrenched apart with strength greater than any ten regular men could have displayed.

  The camera room had been destroyed, any video of the incident taken. The president had said he had not known about the werewolf until after the slaughter. As soon as he knew, he made the decision to share the news with the American people, not wanting to induce panic, but rather wanting to inform them.

  His voice had been grim as he relayed the facts. The team investigating the underground tunnels had determined a rogue group had infiltrated the base with the purpose of rescuing the werewolf. Probably a group of werewolves, and there was a good chance they couldn’t be harmed by bullet wounds. Everyone needed to keep a calm head, but understand why martial law was being declared. The president signed a bill into law that day making being a werewolf illegal, and authorizing the use of military force against anyone who ‘showed signs of being a werewolf.’

  The next day, the stock market had crashed, all planes stopped flying, police and rescue workers had gone insanely understaffed, and the country had bedded down, afraid to go even to the grocery store.

  Dahlia could remember those tense months like they were yesterday. She’d just turned twenty and had moved out of her aunt and uncle’s house the year before, going to school at night and working at the ASPCA during the day. Fern had moved into her place so neither of them would have to be alone, and they had even slept in the same bed, terrified of werewolves but at the same time strangely fascinated by them.

  Nothing more had happened. Over time, the panic faded. A new movement began, saying the government had faked werewolfgate in order to put martial law into effect. The then ex-president received more death threats than he ever did when he’d been president. Protestors marched on Washington, and eventually the entire world decided the whole thing had been a hoax. After two years, things had died down. Now, four years later, people barely seemed to remember it.

  Not Dahlia, though. She believed it with her whole heart, thinking the werewolves had just been saving one of their own, wanting only to live a quiet life away from the prying of human eyes. Maybe she even knew one. She and Fern often spent hours in coffee shops and bars playing spot the werewolf.

  In her real world, none of that had happened. Dahlia often found herself frustrated at the disparity between the worlds, having a hard time making the switch from frantic the-sky-is-falling-we’re-all-going-to-die life over to business-as-usual, nothing-to-see-here life.

  And here she was again. How would she ever go about her regular life in her first world knowing that wh
en she slept, she might slip back into this crazy place?

  “Go!” someone behind her grunted and shoved at Dahlia.

  She whipped her head up, sick to realize the line had moved several feet and she’d been ruminating. She jogged to catch up with the ones in front of her, then shoved her notebook back in her jacket pocket.

  No sense making herself look more out of place than she already did by scribbling in her notebook like a crazy person.

  ***

  “Where’d she go?” Crew asked, wiping his knuckles on his dark jeans and hoping the blood wouldn’t show.

  Mac looked up the hill. “I saw her get in line.”

  “For the rut?” A tingling excitement filled Crew. She’d been gorgeous. Foolhardy, but a more gorgeous female than he’d ever seen. He called her image into his mind again, caressing each feature in his memory. Short and petite, with long brown hair that flew every which way when she moved and big, wild eyes. She’d looked almost haunted and for some reason that attracted him in a way he couldn’t describe. He wanted badly to see her again.

  Mac frowned. “Did you see…?”

  “See what?”

  “As we were running over, the males in blue uniforms right over there?” He pointed to the street corner a few feet away. “They were shimmery, like I could see the trees through them, but they were running this way─” He got a look at Crew’s face and stopped. “Never mind. I must be seeing things.” He shook his head and changed the subject. “I couldn’t tell what she was.”

  “What?”

  Mac waved a hand in front of him. “Her scent. She didn’t have one. She didn’t smell like anything to me. What about you?”

  Crew grimaced.