Hunger's Mate

by A. C. Arthur

  “I think he has a pretty good idea of how you feel about him,” Priya said, ushering them both into chairs in the room across from the medical facility.

  Jewel sat, leaning her elbows on her knees and covering her face with her hands. Tears wracked her entire body, exacerbating the pain that had already formed in her chest when she’d dreamt of the wounded cat. Only, that hadn’t been just a dream, had it? It had somehow been exactly what was happening because now Ezra lay on that table possibly bleeding to death.

  She wanted to scream!

  No, if Crowe did this she was going to slit his throat this time. She’d never thought killing was in her nature, but right here, right now, if he walked up to her and she had a knife in her hand, she’d do it. She’d slice him again, this time so deep he’d have no choice but to look at her while he died. Her temples throbbed with that thought and she rocked back and forth trying desperately to console herself.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Priya said, rubbing a hand up and down Jewel’s back. “He’s going to be okay, you’ll see.”

  “He has to be,” she said. “He just has to be. I can’t … I can’t go … not without him alive. I just can’t.”

  Jewel didn’t hear anything else that Priya said, all she knew was that things had just gotten worse. She’d sworn nothing could be as bad as how low she’d sunk with Larry. When she’d gotten away from him and had her father hidden safely, Jewel continued to believe, she’d had to in order to feel like she still had some semblance of control over the situation, but she didn’t. Not really. She never had.

  Priya had been right, running was the choice she made. But it hadn’t exactly been the right choice. She should have stood up to Larry, should have stood up for herself. But she hadn’t and now look what had happened. Dragging shaking fingers back over her hair and down her neck, she took long, deep breaths, letting them out slowly through her nose and feeling her body calm substantially. Blinking, she looked up, sitting back in the chair at the same time and wiping her face.

  “This is all my fault,” she said.

  “We don’t know what happened yet,” Priya told her.

  “Yes, we do. Where did they go, Priya? Tell me where they went tonight,” Jewel demanded.

  “They went to that lab,” Priya said, hurrying before Jewel could interject. “But that doesn’t mean anything, Jewel. They were just going in to find the information Crowe and the scientists had on the Genesis Project. They just wanted to find out how to stop them from creating another one of those things.”

  “And Ezra was hurt,” she said incredulously. “Didn’t I tell you if I stayed this would happen?”

  “Look, sweetie, I like you but you’re making yourself way too important in this scenario.”

  Taken aback by the other woman’s words, Jewel stood and sighed. “You’re right, I know you’re all concerned about the Genesis Project. You’re worried he’s going to make more of those things in his attempt to duplicate whatever it is the shifters have inside of them. I know all that. But Larry is pissed off at me for stealing his diamonds and those flash drives. He always said he would kill me. I wish—” Jewel’s words were interrupted.

  “Don’t you dare.” Priya stood, facing Jewel. “Don’t you dare say anything so stupid. You’re better than that, Jewel. I know you are.”

  She dropped her head once more. “I don’t know anymore. I’m just so confused and I want to do the right thing for everyone involved. I want to take care of my father and I want to … I want to…”

  “You want to stay and love Ezra,” Priya finished for her. “That’s not such a bad thing, you know. I haven’t known him or many of the shifters for that long, but I know Ezra is nothing like Crowe.”

  “I can’t stay here,” Jewel said suddenly. “This is not what I wanted. It’s never been what I wanted.” She ran out of the room before Priya could try and stop her, even though she had a feeling the other woman was finished trying to talk her off the ledge. Besides, words could only go so far, her mind was set, wasn’t it? She still needed to get out of here. The dream, Ezra being hurt, that was awful and she wanted him to live, to be healthy and strong and all that, but did she really want to stay and love him? Did she really want a relationship with another domineering man? Hadn’t she had enough of that?

  * * *

  Her head was spinning and Jewel didn’t stop running until she was standing beside the bed, in the private room where they’d placed her father, still close to the medical facility. When she’d come to see him earlier this evening he’d been asleep so she’d simply sat watching him, seeing the rise and fall of his chest. Knowing he was still living and breathing had brought her to a calming place before. She prayed it could do the same now.

  “You don’t ever get tired of running, do you, baby girl?” Thurgood asked, his voice cracking.

  She startled even though she knew he was here; she had come to see him, after all. But his eyes were closed and he looked as if he were sleeping, and still, he knew she was here.

  Jewel tried to catch her breath as she moved closer to his bed, sitting on the edge and taking his hand.

  “I don’t know what to do anymore,” she admitted. “I just don’t know which way to go. I mean, I have money now, or at least I have a way to get money. We could go and be gone forever. But I don’t think that’s going to stop Larry. And if we stay … where would we stay? What would we do? Perryville is gone and you can’t go back to that home. I just don’t know.”

  “Stop,” he told her, bringing his other hand across his body slowly until it rested on top of hers. His eyes opened slowly then, glassy orbs that seemed to pierce right through her.

  “Take a deep breath,” the instruction continued. “Once, then twice, then…”

  “Third time’s the charm,” she finished, a smile tugging at her mouth. “I’m not a little girl anymore, Daddy. This used to work when I was angry at some silly kid at school or when I couldn’t get my way, but now things are much more serious.”

  His head looked so small against the pile of white pillows it rested on, still it shook from side to side as she continued to talk.

  “Lives are at stake. People have died because I took those stupid diamonds. I just wanted some insurance, just wanted to make sure you’d be taken care of no matter what. But I should have known he’d come after me. He’d said it so many times. It didn’t even encompass the fact that I’d stolen from him. How could I have been so stupid?” she asked, shaking her own head now, holding it down finally, unable to even look at her father without feeling like a colossal failure.

  “Breathe,” Thurgood said again. “Just breathe.”

  Lips clasped tightly even though she wanted desperately to reiterate what she’d just told her father about this whole breathing thing, Jewel obliged, taking one deep breath, and then another. On the third as she inhaled it seemed as if her airway was clearer, fresh oxygen sifting through her lungs felt like water to quench a horrific thirst. Her shoulders landed slowly on the exhale, eyes opening smoothly, words, complaints, questions, indecision swirling away like a stream of invisible smoke from her partially opened lips.

  “Now,” her father continued, his voice still steady, as it always seemed to be. “Listen to your heart.”

  She was sure there was nothing to listen to, nothing was there except the incessant beating. But that was wrong. The beating had an echo, almost as if it were being mimicked. Warmth poured through her, reaching deep into the recesses of her mind, her heart, her soul, touching places she’d long since locked off. The pain from the past, all the unspeakable things Larry had done to her, the things she’d allowed him to do in exchange for his money, swirled in its own funnel, dissipating as she acknowledged and released them as parts of her life she could not change. She actually shivered at that point, even though she was far from being cold. To the contrary, she was basking in the warmth in this blanket of comfort and peace she’d never before been able to achieve—not even when she’d thought she
was content and safe at Perryville.

  “I don’t want to feel guilty anymore,” she said slowly. But as the words resonated in her mind, she sat up straighter, squared her shoulders just a little. “I’m sick of allowing the past to dictate my life. I’m not proud of all the things I’ve done, but I stand by my decisions. And to keep you safe and cared for I can’t say that I wouldn’t do it all over again.”

  She looked at her father then, taking her free hand to touch fingers over his weathered brow. He blinked, and even though she knew he couldn’t see, he heard every word she said, probably felt them as deep in his heart as she did in hers, and there was pride. In the nod he gave her and the strength with which he squeezed her hands, she knew he was in no way judging her. The way she’d feared someone else would.

  “The heart doesn’t lie,” Thurgood told her finally. “It will lead you to true happiness, if you just follow it. I know, Avis and I followed our hearts and it gave us you.”

  Jewel lay down beside her father then. She let her head rest on his shoulder and he rubbed a hand over her head the same way he used to when she was a little child, the way he did the night her mother had died. Her heart was so full at that moment and yet, that echoing rhythm continued, that sound that said she was not alone.

  * * *

  “You need to get some rest,” Dr. Sedro informed him. “I know we heal a lot faster than humans, but that bullet ripped through your shoulder pretty good.”

  Ezra ignored every word he said, sitting up on the side of the table that was too short for his length and too wobbly for his weight. If they thought this was safer than him getting up and joining Bas for the call he was about to make across the country, they were sorely mistaken.

  Did his shoulder hurt? Hell yeah, like a sonofabitch, but that wasn’t stopping him from getting up and doing whatever he could to stop what he thought might be about to happen. Inside his cat hissed at that thought, its instinct to make a more basic move, to find its mate and seek rest there. He’d thought about Jewel more times than he could count, from the moment that bullet seared through his thick black coat, to the second he’d shifted and his human body had crumpled to the ground.

  This was what he was offering her. He’d been asking her to admit to their attraction, to accept him since the day he’d met her and now he realized with a burning pain that reached all the way down to his toes, that he was asking her for so much more.

  When his bare feet hit the floor and the room tilted, he decided that thinking of the woman Jewel was and the parts of him that he could not change, wasn’t such a good idea when he needed every ounce of energy and good mojo he could get just to make it down the hall.

  “Not staying here,” was all he said to the doctor who had wisely stood back.

  His fingers clenched the sheet at his side as he was still naked but not about to let that stop him. The guard he’d been trained to be was focused and knew that pressing business needed to be handled.

  “Then at least stand still for ten minutes until I can get you something to put on. There are women in this facility that might not be ready for all you’re offering them tonight.”

  The remark was made jokingly, Ezra knew without a doubt. Omar Sedro had studied at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, while simultaneously training alongside Ezra and Eli in D.C. They’d known each other for years and had even spent a night drinking and celebrating when Omar had found his mate and decided to move to Sedona to be with her. Still, the ring of familiarity his words brought to Ezra was stark and clear and not at all lost on him.

  “Just hurry the hell up,” he snapped.

  In less than ten minutes the clothes arrived via another guard trainee and Ezra walked—with a much slower gait than he’d intended—down to the room where he knew Bas and the others would be about to make a call to the Assembly Leader. All eyes were on him the instant he stepped into the room. Bas’s face was grim as he sat at the head of the table, his mate by his side, rubbing her hand along his arm. Syfon and Paolo sat on either side of the table near their FL, the same way Ezra and Eli did back in D.C. This might be the first time that Ezra felt himself missing his hometown, his family. Dyson pushed a chair out next to him then continued to let his fingers run with lightning speed over the tablet on the table in front of him. Nobody said a word, which suited Ezra just fine, as he sat down.

  Seconds later the sound of a dial tone filled the room. There were two rings and then Rome spoke.

  “What did you find?” the Assembly Leader asked without preamble.

  Bas immediately launched into the events that had led them to Comastaz earlier this evening, ending with Ezra being shot and more intel on the Genesis Project being obtained.

  “So we have the research data but we don’t have the man behind the plot?” Rome asked, his voice tight, strained.

  Ezra knew this situation had been weighing on Rome. In the span of a year the Lethal Litigator had gone from being a renowned bachelor and the East Zone Faction Leader to a joined shifter that was now tasked with leading the entire legion of Stateside Shadow Shifters. He’d withstood a federal investigation into his business and personal life and walked into a war with the rogues. And his mate had learned that she was a Shadow Shifter. To say the man had a lot on his shoulders was a definite understatement.

  “We’ll get him,” Ezra assured his leader. “I will get that sorry bastard.”

  There was a pregnant pause at which time nobody in the room moved, everyone waiting for Rome to do what he did best.

  “If this Crowe person is creating hybrids, massive exposure is imminent,” Rome stated solemnly. “We need to shift our focus from prevention to containment. Get him, stop him, and get everyone connected to him. That’s a direct order.”

  And it was spoken with clarity and authority that had Bas nodding and expressing his approval.

  “There’s one more thing,” Ezra said, hating to bring more stressful news into the situation, but unable and unwilling to keep this quiet. If he were back in D.C. he would have immediately gone to his twin, who he was sure was blowing up his cell phone at this very moment. Unfortunately, Ezra had no idea where that phone was, a casualty of tonight’s events, he supposed. But he’d been shot, there was no way Eli hadn’t felt that, even thousands of miles away.

  “Talk,” Rome added, frustration steadily building in his tone.

  “There were some e-mails in the lab between the Dr. DiLaurent that was shot by the soldiers that snuck up on us and another DiLaurent in D.C.”

  “And?” Rome asked.

  “They were talking about a DNA sample that might be a match for the one they’d gotten from the shifter they’d caught. They need that sample to complete their next prototype. Something was wrong with ADAM. The notes say the hybrid as constructed was unstable. I could see it in that house before I broke its fucking neck. It couldn’t hold onto any one part of its genetic makeup. Couldn’t be wholly human or wholly cat, lingering somewhere in between. They need the DNA sample that has the ability to regenerate.” He paused then, hoping that Rome would follow what he was saying.

  “This specific DNA has traces of unpurified damiana, which combined with the DNA of its parents, has created a process of re-creating the drug in the host body.” Ezra swallowed before continuing once more. “If they get their hands on this DNA, the damiana effects will be the least of our worries.” Ezra finished with his hands planted flat on the table, his shoulder throbbing but his words clear.

  “How the hell did they get their hands on damiana from the Sierra Leone?” Bas asked. “And where are they keeping it? Because it wasn’t in the lab.”

  “If we can at least find their stash, that’s one less ingredient they’ll have,” Syfon spoke up.

  Ezra shook his head. “That has to happen on this end. On your end, Rome, you need to get to Nick and Ary and tell them that Shya might be in danger.”

  “What?” Rome asked, that single word sending an icy chill of silence through the room.

  Ezra
’s jaw clenched as he prepared to say words he hadn’t wanted to admit to himself. He’d hoped that Rome would pick them up as well, but realized the Leader was under a lot of stress at the moment. Still, Ezra couldn’t ignore that all the clues lined up: Shya’s mysterious illness was really an exacerbation of traits she already held—colic, a baby’s crankiness from teething, the magnified fever—all enhanced by the damiana. Dr. Papplin admitting to Nick and Ary that he’d sent Shya’s blood sample to a friend because he’d seen something strange when she was born, their final realization that Shya had been infected by the damiana that crazy-ass Sabar had injected her mother with in the Gungi, and now a new form of this drug being used to create a shifter hybrid. Although he hated the reality, the threat was imminent.

  “Shya’s DNA may be what they’re looking for. That may be why the DiLaurents were in contact with each other. Just tell them to keep her safe until I get back and can question this second DiLaurent myself.”

  “Fuck!” Rome yelled, and there was silence again.

  Roman Reynolds never yelled. Sure, he cursed and would cut anyone who tried to cross him off quickly at the knees. But he was a leader and he ruled with composure and finesse. Much like Bas, the Leader of the shifters possessed an eerie amount of control and tonight, or rather early this morning, it was being tested.

  “I want that goddammned man and I want his stash of this fuckin’ drug and I want this shit over with, now!” The Assembly Leader roared into the phone, the echo of his cat’s presence resonating through the phone connection.

  The next sound they heard was a dial tone, and then, her voice.

  “I know where Larry is keeping that drug,” Jewel said from where she stood in the open doorway.

  Chapter 25

  Washington, D.C.

  Lilah brushed her teeth for what felt like the millionth time. She spit in the sink, rinsed her mouth, and spit again. Then she switched off the water, lifting her head until she could see her face in the mirror. She paused, blinking once, then twice, then realizing she didn’t like what she saw.