Large, one hundred year old trees loom like gnarled guards along the pathway as I sprint past. I slow to a jog, lungs burning, and chance a glance behind me.
Nothing but the deep soft black of the most silent part of the night unrolls before my gaze. I hunch over, settling my palms on the tops of my lower thighs, gasping.
I look up. The whisper of the Big Sioux River falls over quartzite boulders, haphazardly arresting and simultaneously pushing the water's progress as the only sound.
Except a low growl.
A strip of ghostly grayish-white fur, shakes and whips from my peripheral vision.
I yelp, hand to heart, and hunt where I saw that streak of gray lightning.
A large feline prowls closer.
I know my animals. Biology major, remember.
Snow Leopard.
In the middle of South Dakota. Home of the Black Hills—not Central Asia.
I feel ridiculous. I ask anyway, “Arden?” I whisper his name.
Muscled fur ripples its way toward me. Large, luminescent eyes stare unblinkingly into my own.
The big cat stands on its hind legs and the fur of its body begins to scatter like fine pine needles of gray speckled silk, floating on a continuous breeze that ebbs and flows over the plains.
The cat's muzzle widens into cheekbones, the eyes rounding as the fur sloughs away like water.
The hind legs become the heavily muscled ones of a man.
A very, very well-endowed man. The V of his hips cradle everything that makes him male, widening to a broad chest of sculpted muscles.
My throbbing female parts come to horrible life and I groan again, clenching my thighs together.
To my shame I notice his face last. The final vestiges of feline melt into the human features of the new Arden.
I sit down on the sidewalk, looking up at my naked friend, who've I've never had a lustful thought about.
Until now.
I look away at the terrific view I just gave myself. Oh my God, if I'm a Lycan, I need to be spayed.
“So you're a cat?” I finally ask.
“Cat, Talyn? Really?”
I give a tired smile, and put my head in my hands. “This may be too much revelation for me at one time.”
“I can be anything. Nothing prehistoric. That's a special Mutable.”
“Huh, that's great,” I say in a dreamy voice. I rock back on my elbows, uncaring of the hard and pebbled surface of the asphalt walkway. My arms drop as I fall backward. I stare up at the black sky, only slightly obscured by the light pollution of the city. I blink slowly, my limbs feeling tingly and numb.
“Talyn?” Arden asks from somewhere far away. “Don't you faint on me.”
“Why not?” I ask in a slur. “You can make yourself a dragon and fly away. I'm not that heavy to lift, surely.”
“You're not making sense, Tal.”
That gets my focus all sharpened up again. “I'm not making sense?” I laugh, sitting up and flailing my arm wildly. “I thought I had a wolf problem. I thought I had a stalker problem. No. That's not it. I have a problem with a lot of things. My best friend lied to me. He's actually a shapeshifter who can take any shape, and he's hanging around me like a groupie because why?”
Arden stands before me naked as the day he was born, or from when he was birthed from a litter.
I give a hysterical giggle and slap my hands over my mouth. There's no amount of psych training that can help me here.
He puts his hands on his hips. Mighty distracting. I blink rapidly, trying to displace the image. Still there.
“Because a Mutable can sense his perfect mate. She does not need to be mature, or in heat for a Mutable to understand her rightness for him.”
I scramble to my feet. “You mean to tell me you befriended me twenty years ago because you knew I was ʻthe oneʼ?” I half-scream as my fingers airquote the words.
“That's dumbing the concepts down in a way I'm uncomfortable with, but essentially, you have the crux of it.”
I swallow my fear, uncertainty and just the pure surreal quality to Arden's admission, the situation—my lack of sleep. It's a combination that's making me giddy.
“I—I've got this Lycan guy too.”
“I can take care of the Changer.”
Take care of.
I shy away from the implication of that comment and dig for more information. “But from what he says—if he's not lying too—” Arden's eyes tighten but I go on, “I'm supposed to be a werewolf.” I splay my fingers against my chest.
“He probably hasn't figured out what you really are. Only certain females are acceptable mates for a Mutable. I did what I could to mask your scent as much as possible but when you began to degrade and go into heat...” he spreads his hands. “My talons were tied. You were bound to be found.” A small smile ghosts his lips.
Talons were tied. “Not funny,” I seethe, “what am I?”
“You have royal blood. Shapeshifters who possess royal blood generally can mate with a Mutable.”
I bark out a laugh. “So if I was a dolphin you could just fish me up?”
Arden smile grows, and I try for eye contact, though I'm ashamed at how difficult it is for me not to peek at his package, especially given the state I'm in.
I suppose that means I'm not tired enough. If I was truly weary and shocky over tonight's great happenings, I wouldn't be contemplating his assets.
“You are Lanarre—Lycan royalty. You can mate with a Mutable, or a Lycan, of course. But it would be a waste to have you with anyone other than a Mutable.”
“Right,” I say with sarcasm, “because you are a Mutable.”
Unbelievable.
“Correct,” he replies so neutrally I laugh again.
Arden frowns.
“You're as bad as that Merck guy. You two can't see the forest for the trees. I'm a person! Not some brood mare to birth everyone kids. Besides, I can't have kids.”
“True, you can't have children with a human male.”
His words drop like a lead weight in my brain. My eyes lock with his. “What do you mean? And don't you dare yank my chain on this Arden. I don't care if you're naked right now. Or that you can change into a donkey, hippo or whatever—don't play me over my infertility.” I bite my lip to keep it from trembling. I can't even admit to myself how deeply sad I am that I'll never have children.
I'm fully aware it's a horrible world to bring children into.
Even with all I know of humanity, I still want to have children.
Arden walks slowly toward me, and to my credit, I don't look down.
He cups my face and I breathe in his scent, going liquid in all the most dangerous places. “How come I feel this way?” I ask softly, dizzy over his effect on me.
“Because of what you really are, Talyn. And what you could be with me.”
He leans down, his mouth hovering over the edge of mine and my lips part for him.
His tongue licks a hot wet line against my bottom lip and I groan at the tactile sensation. “I would never lie to you about your chances of being a mother, Tal.”
“But you'd lie to her about everything else, right Masker?”
Arden shoves me behind him.
Merck stands twenty feet away.
I don't think there's anything I can do to stop the violence this time.
4
Merck
That fucking Masker is strutting around naked, his hands on my change.
I listen to his comment about her ability to bear children. The goat. He's using words to soften her to his position. Not having that. “But you'd lie to her about everything else, right Masker?”
He tosses Talyn behind himself as though I'm a physical threat to her. A female. It's insulting on principle.
The only one who is a threat to anyone here is me threatening him.
“A lie of necessity, Merck.”
“No lies are necessary, Masker. I've not lied to Talyn since I made her acquaintance. However, you
've known her two decades, and just now revealed your true self. Why don't you tell her why you chose now. Let's see what Talyn thinks of that.”
Talyn doesn't hide behind Arden.
She steps forward and her pungent sex hits me between the eyes. It's all I can do to not fall to my knees and worship her with my mouth. My dick. My everything.
Get a grip, Merck.
I stand stoically, a half-century of training and fortitude pull me through the moment. It feels a little like being torn through a knothole without grease.
But Talyn's scent is a heady thing. Royal blood is a fine wine, when partaken too much of—gets a Changer more than drunk, but obliterated. I've heard the stories and they're not pretty. And having just put two and two together—I realize why she was always so magnetic.
It's up to me to resist her, yet change her.
“Arden doesn't speak for me... Merck,” Talyn says and my name sounds funny from her lips.
“I don't know what's happening. But it sounds like the same thing that happened to Enforcer Adrienne is happening to me.”
“You don't need a Changer,” Arden says from behind her.
He smirks.
I give him my deadliest glance.
She quickly looks between the two of us. No doubt gauging the escalating violence. “No. Just stop this. I want to go home. I will not run from this. I will face whatever this means for me head-on but I want more details. Is there any way I can get home, Arden gets clothes on and you stay human so we can discuss this like rational people?”
“We're not exactly human, Tal,” the Masker comments.
I roll my eyes. Arden is supposed to be some kind of scientist? He seems slow to me.
“It's not safe for you to be out here in your condition,” I begin in a steady voice, inching closer.
Arden's brow lowers, his face going hard.
“No closer, Lycan.”
Talyn whips her arms out between us. “Stop. I don't want any male posturing.” Her eyes meet mine, the normal soft gray now the pewter of a coming storm. “I'm already up to here with that.” She makes a slicing gesture across her throat. “And you guys might not be fully human, but you're male. So that counts, never seen it not. If I didn't know better, I'd say you mimic regular human men pretty damn well.”
“That's insulting,” I say.
“If the paw fits,” she quips, lifting a shoulder. Her eyes gouge me. “And what do you mean by ʻmy conditionʼ? You make it sound like I have terminal cancer.”
She's not far off base. Not the cancer part, of course—but she's terminal.
“What?” Her dark brown eyebrow arches.
I'm silent.
“You're not answering me,” she notes, a slight waver in her voice.
“Tal,” Arden moves to the front of her and I snort. His nakedness is no big thing in the shifter culture but it's not going to do shit for his chances with Talyn.
Sure enough her eyes go round and she backs up a step. “Okay, I really can't have this discussion with you dangling.”
I cover my mouth with a fist, trying not to laugh at his expense. Because, it's just a hunch but I don't think Talyn will appreciate that either.
What started as a complicated change just got elevated to near-impossible.
My nose twitches as the fine hairs on my body rise in response to scent-recognition. I call out to Arden, “Shifters—coming fast.”
Arden's face instantly changes. His snout elongates into the one I hold in part-Lycan form—woflen.
His nostrils flare and he grips Talyn by the shoulders.
“Lycan, hold them off, I'll take Talyn home.”
Smooth. Real smooth.
“How you going to do that, Masker? You going to run through downtown Sioux Falls with you dick hanging in the wind?”
Arden smiles but then it vanishes into a grimace of pain.
“Get on, Talyn.”
“What—no!” she yells then turns her wide eyes to mine. “What is this, a trick?”
“Do you think I'd work with the competition unless it was to safeguard you?”
The shifters are close.
I can't stall any longer. “Go with him, I'll be there momentarily. We'll discuss shit.”
She crosses her arms. “Oh that's eloquent. Yeah. Pfft.”
I heave a harsh sigh as Arden becomes a stallion behind her.
That's when I know I've made the biggest mistake of my career. Arden's not another Lycan who can scent-mask. He's more than a Masker.
He's a Mutable.
And I just handed him over the prize.
Arden's animal kneels and Talyn hops on, like I told her to, I remind myself. Her fingers thread tightly into the mane of the horse Arden's shifted into.
He races away and a bare minute of time later, the shifters appear.
It almost makes me wish I'd taken Adrienne and her two vamps up on their offer to accompany me here. But I'd convinced them—and myself—that Talyn would react better if there weren't so many supernaturals around.
She seemed overwhelmed. Now the tables have turned.
Shifters of every brand surround me.
Five against one are shit odds.
The life of a Changer.
5
Talyn
My grandparents owned a farm out north of Brookings, South Dakota when I was a child.
Babbling brook, a prairie filled with wheat without end, and a sky stuffed full of cotton ball clouds in a sea of blue deep enough to taste.
And horses. There'd been horses.
You never forget how to ride a horse.
Even now—knowing this horse is actually Arden, doesn't faze my body.
It remembers.
My thighs clench around the heaving flanks of an inky stallion, so dark a black that it blends with the night.
My unbound hair streams behind me like sideways water and I part my lips to taste the smells—the freedom of the ride.
It's not like the Talyn Phisher of last week to just—be.
I usually have to be in total control of everything. But so much has changed in the last twenty-four hours I can't keep a hold of anything that was known.
Now everything that was—falls under before.
Before Blue Eyes showed.
Before Enforcer Adrienne told me the Lycan's job was to fuck me into werewolfdom.
I suck in a sob—yes, let's fuck it out for pity's sake.
My grip tightens as my mount charges up the last existing cobblestone street in the downtown area I call home.
And then there is the before of Arden. A million moments glued together of shared memories, events—and the sheer quantity of companionship. That history rolls into my consciousness like a fog that clings to the rocky shores of my mind. While the truth crashes against my defenses like unrelenting waves.
Arden's hooves are a disaster of noise against the thick quartzite pavers.
My eyes search the gloom. Eyes that will soon be werewolf, if Merck has anything to do with it.
Or Arden.
Hot tears burn the back of my eyelids, blurring my vision to searing blindness.
Arden slows to a walk and I lay down on his sweaty back, my arms flat against his sides, and the motion of his body lulls me.
My eyes clear, taking in the deep crevices of the cobblestones in my own alley as they follow the blocked pattern I've driven over a thousand times as I realize my home is within kissing distance.
Arden steps into the driveway and there I sit. A woman bareback on a horse.
I arch backward as Arden kneels and manage a clumsy sliding dismount.
My grandpa would have clucked for an hour if he'd seen that.
But they've been gone for years. There's no one to witness my lack of finesse.
I touch Arden's neck out of habit and jerk back when it's not the velvet of the horse I just enjoyed.
But the skin of a man.
“Talyn.”
I turn and there Arden is. Naked. Again. S
weat coats his body. Every bit. Every hard inch.
I look down. Yup. That's hard too.
I spin in the opposite direction, my female bits throbbing like an aching tooth. “Let's get inside—wow. I can't have a naked guy standing in my driveway.”
“Yes—what will the neighbors think?” His lips quirk and I swing back around and punch him in the arm.
“Jerk.”
I stalk around him and walk to the gate leading to the back yard. I open it and walk through. Using the narrow concrete walkway I stride to the back yard and my ruined patio doors.
I stop in my tracks for a handful of seconds. Taking in the sight of the boarded up french doors covered with recycled plywood.
Still, to see my house marked my the violence of the evening makes me want to cry. Again. I probably have Enforcer Adrienne to thank for the repair. And maybe her carpenter vampires, I think with grumpy thanks, stuffing my volatile emotions back where they belong.
I move to the back door and depress my thumb to the pulse lock.
A green light flashes and I turn the crystal knob, walking inside with Arden on my heels.
“What if I'd fallen off your back!” I toss behind me as I traverse the turned over furniture and lamps in my living room, thankfully noting there's no glass.
Somehow I don't think supernatural battle clean-up is part of the Final Enforcement's job description. However, Adrienne left me to my own devices against Merck. Shouldn't she have like—I don't know, mediated the entire “transition” thing? Or maybe her only job is to nail the criminals?
What can I expect, she's a hybrid herself. Not the same flavor but part-supernatural.
“I remember the stories about your grandparentsʼ farm,” he says with mild smugness.
I rotate slowly and look at Arden.
His mouth is twisted in a vaguely satisfied tilt of lips.
“So you figured even though I hadn't ridden a horse in twenty years I'd just—what—fumble around somehow?”
Arden nods happily. His stomach muscles clench and release with the movement and I feel my eyes dip.
His mouth isn't the only thing that's happy.
“Can't you,” I point at his crotch. “Now that you're not a horse and you're back to being a guy—do something with that?”
Lycan Alpha Claim (#2) Page 3
