Shadow Shifters: Damaged Hearts, The Complete Series: Mine to Claim, Part of Me, and Hunger for You

by A. C. Arthur

  Her dark hair had been pulled back into a tight ponytail and she wore practically no makeup, so I might not have known it was her, except her scent was undeniable, wanton—strong and potent like mint. She was also dressed drastically different than I’d seen her before, tight black pants with a long-sleeved black shirt that hugged all her curves. It was a good thing my mind was on another set of women’s parts.

  “I wanted to give you another chance,” she said, taking a step so that she was now directly in front of me. She looked up at me with those big gray eyes that seemed to see too much.

  “No, thank you,” I said, taking a step back. Proximity made no difference, she smelled like a rogue, there was no mistaking. Aidan’s words had echoed in my head at the second knock on the door, to be followed by the scent. But I knew that Kyra was human, which meant she must have been with a rogue, in the sexual sense.

  I hadn’t figured out how that made me feel, nor had I anticipated she would follow me into the apartment.

  “Really, Brayden, this disinterested act is getting kind of old. I mean, you were the one panting after me just a few weeks ago, then all of a sudden you look the other way. I know it was because of her. But like I said, I’m willing to give you another chance. He’s willing to give you another chance.”

  All the while she’d been talking she’d come farther into the apartment until she was now standing in the middle of the living room floor, hands on her hips, head tilted slightly as she waited for an answer.

  “Who is giving me another chance?” I asked, remembering things Kyra had said to me in the past, trying to piece together her scent, her persistence, her entire being in my apartment at this moment.

  I grabbed her by the shoulders then, shaking her until the gold chandelier-like earrings wiggled at her ears.

  “I’m not going to ask for the truth again, Kyra. Tell me why you’re here, what you want.”

  She laughed then, letting her head fall back. “It’s not about me, it never was. Never is actually,” she added, attempting to shrug out of my grasp. “He’s always wanted you,” she insisted. “Of all of them, you were the strongest, the best.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, pulling my hands away from her as if she’d been a live flame. The scent was strong, but that wasn’t all; for the first time in all the weeks I’d known Kyra I noticed the tattoo, or rather the branding mark, just beneath her left ear. It was a paw print.

  “I’m not leaving,” she insisted. “Not without you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” I told her, hands clenching at my sides as the rogue stench grew more potent, fresher, closer.

  “Oh yes the hell you are,” Lidia said, coming out of the bedroom and giving Kyra the death stare I’d seen her administer only a few times before.

  Things were about to get live in here and despite how some human guys loved to see a chick fight, I knew better. Lidia Morales was not your normal chick and if I had to place a bet I’d put all my money, Aidan and Caleb’s money, and let’s just go ahead and add all the money in the humans’ Fort Knox that Lidia would come out on top. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind.

  “Oh great, her again. I tried to warn you, bitch!” she spat in Lidia’s direction. “Now you both go.”

  Instinct, the need to protect my mate at all costs overrode the desire to toss Kyra out on her ass and find the answers to my questions later. My temples pounded at the thought that I’d missed something, that I’d missed this all the time I’d been trying to figure out how to get Lidia to acknowledge our connection. For all the training I’d done all my life, when it had really come down to a test, I’d fucked up royally. My teeth clenched as I took a step closer to Lidia, those thoughts still prevalent in my mind.

  In the next seconds, three guys dressed in the same black garb as Kyra came rushing through the door, guns drawn, all shouting, “Get the hell on the floor!” “Get down now!” “Get the fuck down!”

  If I said this situation wasn’t going to end well before, glancing over at Lidia, I knew for certain it wasn’t now. The really bad thing was, there was absolutely nothing I or Lidia—even with all the training we’d received as shifter guards—could do to keep the next events from taking place.

  ***

  Lidia didn’t get down. I knew she wouldn’t. Kyra, on the other hand, didn’t know shit, and moved across the room quickly, pushing Lidia until she fell over the leather chair. “Didn’t you hear what they said, bitch? Sit your ugly ass down!”

  When Lidia stood again she looked remarkably different. Her hair was now loose, hanging down past her shoulders in wild strands and her eyes had shifted to gold.

  Things happened quickly after that, with me reaching out to grab the wrist of the first gun-toting idiot, cracking the bone almost instantly and watching as he cried out in agony. Another gun was quickly pointed in my direction and to his credit, fired almost instantly. I say almost because the assholes could never have anticipated my speed or the preparation I’d endured most of my life. While I leaned to the side the bullet whizzed past my shoulder and I lunged for the dumbass. I had him on the floor, the gun skidding across the room when I heard a female scream.

  For a second I thought maybe, but no, Lidia was just as good, if not better, at hand-to-hand combat as my brothers and I. In fact, there was an ongoing bet to settle that very dispute. So I knew it wasn’t her screaming. Still, I didn’t like the idea of her taking on two opponents while I was just about finished with this one.

  The cat in me was programmed to kill. My teeth had already grown sharp, the sounds coming from me no longer human, but pure animal. The dude beneath me tried to punch and kick his way free, but it was futile, my strength outweighed his easily.

  “You can come easily or we can drag you kicking and screaming. Whichever, as long as he gets what he wants,” he said, staring up at me as if he really thought I’d just go along to wherever with them.

  Instead I reared back and punched him once, blood splattering quickly from his nose. “No deal. You tell whoever ‘he’ is to go to hell!” was my reply as I hit him again, just for good measure, his head bobbing against the floor for a second or so before going still.

  A quick look toward the door and the first guy was still on his knees, crying like a bitch, staring down at his crooked wrist. In the living room Kyra lay on the floor holding a hand to the bleeding side of her face while Lidia went toe to toe with the guy I figured might actually be the ringleader.

  “All you had to do was let Kyra bring you in,” the guy was saying as he looked over his shoulder to me before moving closer to Lidia. “Now, I’m going to kill your bitch!”

  Being cocky, tossing out ridiculous threats, and looking away from his opponent, all big mistakes when dealing with a Shadow Shifter.

  Lidia whirled around, lifting her left leg into the air and letting her foot crack against the guy’s jaw the second he turned back to face her. He stumbled back then lifted his gun arm while spitting all sorts of expletives at her. I was across the room in seconds, my body shifting as it moved. In the blink of an eye I was the cat and the cat was mad as hell at the thought that its mate was in danger. Sharp-edged teeth sank into the human skull without warning or regret. A gunshot sounded seconds before the gun fell from his grip to the floor. The cat held firm until the human went still, then released its hold and instantly looked for her.

  She was standing across from where the human lay dead on the floor, her cat’s eyes looking down, and claws extended from her hands. Unlike the other female who was now screaming at the top of her lungs, Lidia was barely out of breath. Her hair was sticking up wildly as it framed her face, her body taut, ready to strike.

  “Go,” she told the cat. “Go, now.”

  The scrambling of furniture Lidia was pushing out of the way after the fight and the sound of sirens in the distance moved the cat toward the bedroom, but not before it roared, the command for its mate to follow so loud the windows actually shook.


  “I’m coming, I gotta take care of her, just go!”

  “No!” I yelled to her, the human part of me ripping free and refusing to leave her to kill Kyra. “We go together.”

  Lidia shook her head. “The exposure, we can’t,” she insisted.

  “Oh my god, you’re just like him. You’re all just like him!” Kyra shrieked when she’d finally been able to stand up from the floor. She was shaking as she stared at us, fear circling her like a hurricane. “I can’t do this anymore. I won’t,” she said before finally yelling, “What the hell are you?”

  Lidia made a move for her first, but I reached out and grabbed her arm to stop her. I was completely naked but didn’t give a damn, I wouldn’t have this death resting on Lidia’s shoulders, not when she was already against living out her destiny in the first place. “I’ll do it,” I told her and instantly turned back to Kyra, walking toward her.

  Kyra, who I never would have guessed had any guts in her gorgeously built body, shook her head vehemently, reaching into her back pocket for something. “Stay away from me,” she warned. “I’ve had enough of this, of him, of you! Of all of you! Just stay the hell away from me!” She yelled, her eyes wild with fear, lips trembling as she spoke.

  I didn’t pay much attention to what she was reaching for, or her words for that matter, because whatever she had was going to be futile against me. But the moment I went to lunge she fooled the shit out of me and ran for the window, throwing her body through it as if falling to her death was better than the instant kill I would have inflicted.

  “Oh my god, she jumped,” Lidia said from behind me. “She actually jumped.”

  The sirens were getting louder and I noticed the front door to my apartment was still open. I was on the top floor and for whatever reason the two remaining apartments up here hadn’t been rented out, so for the moment we were up here alone. “I gotta get some clothes then we have to leave.”

  Lidia nodded. “Right, we’ve gotta leave.”

  She hadn’t moved from the window, just stood there staring down at where Kyra had probably landed on the sidewalk.

  Seconds later we were heading down the fire exit stairs, slipping out into the parking lot that was quickly filling with people wondering what the hell was going on. Luckily for us, they were all pooling toward the front of the building where Kyra lay. Still, it was going to be hard trying to get to my truck.

  “We’re gonna have to stay here, at least until this dies down,” Lidia said.

  “No,” I said, looking around. “We can’t. It’s too dangerous.”

  Lidia grabbed my arm to get me to turn and look at her. “If we go running through those people we’re going to look guilty as hell. If we make it to your truck and pull off into the night, they’re going to take down the license plate and tell the cops the first chance they get. We need to just stand here and blend in until it’s safe to ease away.”

  “They’ll still know it was us because it was my apartment,” I rebutted, adrenaline flowing rapidly at the thought of her possibly being hurt.

  “Most of these apartments are student housing so they’re most likely going to look for a student. You’re not an enrolled student this semester and by the time they figure that out we’ll be long gone,” she insisted.

  We were wasting time standing here arguing so at this point her idea to blend in with the crowd seemed like the best option. I reached for her hand, clasping our fingers together. “Don’t leave my side,” I told her because after seeing a gun pointed at her head, I was liable to kill all the humans on this fuckin’ campus to keep her safe.

  I took the lead, holding her hand tightly as we walked right in the midst of the growing crowd out front of the building. As we passed through the parking lot there were clumps of people near my truck and making their way up here. Lidia had given me that “I told you so” look and I’d frowned. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Questions were rolling through my mind a mile a minute, all skidding to a halt behind the plan to keep Lidia safe.

  “We have to let somebody know about the exposure,” she whispered when I’d stopped and stood staring at the building, not at Kyra’s body lying in a pool of blood.

  I was thinking that getting us out of here was the priority and would have never guessed Lidia would be thinking about the Ètica or how badly we’d broken one of the staunchest laws of the Shadow Shifters.

  “As soon as they move the body the crowd will disperse, then we can walk back to the truck.”

  “Assuming they don’t connect you as the renter of that apartment to owning that Ford F-150 you’re trying to get us back to.”

  Her comments were really starting to irritate me, either that or the fact that she was right. For the next few moments, thankfully, we waited in silence, but for the whispers of those around us. Some people knew Kyra, others were just horrified that something like this had happened here. There was another whisper about some type of new gang in the area that caught my attention, but I filed that away for later. Now was about getting the hell out of here.

  “Come on,” I told her when a couple of uniformed cops had begun trying to push the crowd back. Four men in suits, most likely homicide detectives, had already gone into the building, so we probably had a good thirty or forty minutes to get out of Pacifica before they connected the dots back to me. Her hand was warm against mine as we walked as calmly as possible through the parking lot. Others were going back this way also, still guessing at what could have happened in the apartment, none of them even close to the truth.

  I didn’t let Lidia’s hand go until I had the seat belt fastened across her in the truck. Then I slammed the door and all but jumped over the vehicle itself to get to the driver’s side door. Once inside I started the engine and backed out as fast as I could without making the tires screech and drawing attention to us. For her part, Lidia remained quiet, staring out the window while I took us farther and farther away from the apartment complex.

  It was hours later when we finally stopped. We were on the highway so I didn’t want to stay here too long, but Lidia had been right, we needed to let someone know what had happened, someone who would know how to fix the exposure we’d created. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and called my big brother.

  “Hey? Is everything alright?” Aidan answered. It was late afternoon in Washington, D.C., so it was no wonder he sounded alarmed.

  “No. It’s not,” I told him immediately, reciting what had gone down in my apartment, still amazed at the events myself.

  “Shit!” had been Aidan’s first response. “You killed all of them?”

  “No. I killed one of them. One guy I left unconscious, the other I broke his wrist, and the girl killed herself.”

  “Damn, Brayden, what the hell is going on out there?”

  I wish I knew. Shaking my head, I told my brother all that I knew for sure. “I dated the girl a couple of times during the last few weeks, broke it off about two weeks ago, then she shows up tonight talking about I was who ‘he’ wanted. Before I could try to figure out who ‘he’ was, the guys stormed in and I figure she knows them because they’re all dressed in black. One of the guys mentioned me going with them, that Kyra was supposed to bring me to him. Now they’re dead and I still don’t know who ‘he’ is!”

  “Wait a minute, so this was about somebody wanting you? Wanting you to do what? For who?” Aidan asked.

  I frowned, looking over the dashboard to the open road. “That’s all I know right now. Nobody ever said a name. “

  Aidan let out a breath, cursed, then huffed again. “Okay, we’ll figure it out. Where are you now and where’s Lidia?”

  “We’re on the highway right now,” I told him.

  “Good, stay on the highway,” Aidan said and I heard some shuffling in the background. “Jace Maybon, the Pacific Faction Leader, is out of the country. I know because I was allowed to sit in on the conference call.”

  “They’re letting you in on conference calls with the lead
ership already?”

  “Only because of my face time with the rogues when I was in Virginia.”

  I nodded, almost having forgotten about Aidan’s exposure issues a few weeks ago. Not only had he killed a rogue in an alley, but his mate was a human, which equaled major exposure, which in retrospect made him the perfect person to call.

  “Head down the coast to L.A. Jace has a beach house in Malibu that should be empty.”

  “So after all I’ve done tonight you want me to break into an FL’s house as well? Are you crazy?”

  “No, I’m not crazy. He’s having some work done in a couple of the bedrooms so contractors will be there. All you have to do is tell them you’re Jace’s representative and that you’re going to stay to oversee the project.”

  “And what if they call him?” I had to ask even though this sounded like our perfect getaway.

  “They won’t be able to reach him, only his personal assistant can reach him and Jace said she’s a real bitch so nobody likes to deal with her. They won’t want to voluntarily call the woman just to confirm who you are.”

  It sounded like it might work and I had to think about getting Lidia somewhere safe for a while so I could figure out what Kyra and her dumb thugs had been trying to accomplish. “Alright, text me the address,” I told Aidan. “I’ll call you when we get there.”

  After hanging up the phone I was about to pull onto the road when I chanced a look at Lidia. She’d still been staring out the window and I touched a hand to her arm.

  “You alright?”

  She nodded, blinking rapidly, her eyes back to their normal light color, but not their normal luster. Something was on her mind. Hell, a lot of something was likely on both our minds.

  “Everything’s going to be okay, Aidan has a place for us to stay. We’ll head there and get some rest, then figure all this out in the morning.”

  She nodded. “Sure, we’ll break into the FL’s house and stay there while we’re thinking of how to get out of the exposure we just caused. You’re absolutely right, everything is going to be okay.”