by A. C. Arthur
“Brayden,” she whispered my name.
I looked into her eyes and knew the question we both already knew the answer to. The fact that she was about to ask it made me feel a lot better because it meant she’d been sure to say this to her previous lovers, sure to act as human as she possibly could while within their world.
“Sexually transmitted diseases are not something shifters have to worry about,” I reminded her.
She nodded and jerked her hips back a fraction, releasing the slight touch of my erection to my displeasure.
“Right,” she said. “You’re absolutely right.”
Lidia moved her hips again, slamming herself down onto my length in one quick motion. I couldn’t help it, I gasped, the rush of pleasure shooting from my groin to my toes was intense and for a second I thought I might actually black out.
Then she began to move and I moved with her until we were both lost, until there was nothing but our bodies, our connection, the two of us.
CHAPTER 11
Lidia
I dreamed of Brayden’s lips on mine, his hands on my body, his delicious length inside me. I relived the scent of his arousal, the scent of my own, and the combination that signaled our companheiro calor. I sank slowly but surely into that space, the one where I was his and he was mine and I enjoyed it. I had everything—my companheiro, my education, the future of becoming a teacher and touching many lives. I had it all.
And then he appeared.
Right there in the center of having it all, he walked into the scene as if I’d invited him, or at the very least left the door open for his entrance. I should have known he would come, should have suspected that happiness was too good to be true.
His hair was long, twisted in dreads hanging down his back, draped over both his shoulders. His pants were loose fitting over muscled thighs, his arms and chest bare but for the dark-colored vest he wore. His boots crunched against the ground that had turned from city concrete to jungle grass and vine. His eyes glittered as they met mine, a slow smile forming on his dark-skinned face.
It was my uncle, Sabar, and he was here for me.
“You know what I want,” he said when he was close enough for me to hear.
I looked for Brayden, looked for the person that had been closest to me all my life, the one who had been there when I’d had the first nightmare about my family. He’d held me then, telling me that I wasn’t like them, making me feel like there was something else, something bigger and better that I could be a part of instead. Now he was gone.
“They cannot help protect you now that you have grown up and are able to choose for yourself,” Sabar continued, the heavy accent of his voice almost distorting the words.
“You will come with me because you know it is where you belong, Lidia. You know this is what you want,” he insisted.
I took a step back, my booted feet moving over asphalt. I looked down then because I almost tripped over the sidewalk. But he reached out to me then and grabbed me, kept me from falling.
“You do not want to be a part of the Shadow Shifters, you want to be free. I can smell it in your blood, see it in your cat’s eyes. You want to be free like me and like all the others I have rescued.”
His arms were strong around me, holding me still, keeping me from running if that was my plan. But I wasn’t afraid, I hadn’t decided that running would be the answer. And he didn’t look like he was going to give me time to make that decision.
Behind him the trees shifted, bending with the wind as a helicopter approached. Leaves flew through the air, vines and other debris slapping painfully against my face.
“Come with me, I will let you be free!” Sabar yelled over the roar of the helicopter.
I opened my mouth to speak but something flew inside, choking me. I coughed and tried to dislodge it from my throat until tears pricked my eyes, but it didn’t budge. Sabar laughed then, still holding me in his arms and staring right into my eyes. “You can only be free with me, Lidia. You can only be who you want to be with me!”
I coughed more, choked until my throat felt raw, cried because the pain in my chest was hot and throbbing. And then I woke up.
And Brayden’s arms were already wrapped around me. I was sitting in his lap and he was rocking me back and forth, whispering into my ear.
“I got you, baby. You’re safe right here with me.” He kissed my ear, my cheek, and continued to rock. “I won’t let Sabar touch you, not ever, baby. Stay with me, Lidia, my companheiro, stay with me.”
He knew what I’d dreamed, knew the fear that pulsed in my blood with every breath I took. Nobody else knew that but Brayden.
I buried my head in his bare chest, let the warmth of his arms encircle me, cocoon me. This was what was missing with Daniel and with any other guy I’d been with. I never truly felt safe, like all my faults and some that weren’t even mine, were completely accepted and understood. There was no comfort in that I could be myself totally and not have someone looking at me like I really didn’t belong. For as much as I wanted to blend in with the humans, to take a step away from the tribe that had somewhat embraced me and simultaneously turned their back on me, I would never be a real human.
Brayden knew that and had tried to tell me so.
“I am not like him,” I whispered against his chest, my palms loving the feel of his bare skin beneath them. “I don’t want the freedom he offers.”
I could admit that to Brayden because I knew he believed me without any doubts at all.
“You are not like him at all. In fact,” Brayden said, brushing hair out of my face. “You’re much stronger than he is. You’re a fantastic fighter and you’re smart, you know things about the human race that Sabar will never allow himself to see. He can’t touch you as long as you don’t allow it.”
I nodded, knowing Brayden’s words to be true and loving him more now in this moment for saying them.
“I dreamed of him every night this summer. I’d wake up sweating and breathing like I’d just run a marathon because I’d been trying to get away from him,” I admitted.
“And I wasn’t there,” Brayden replied. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
I shook my head. “You used to call me at night to wake me up and you’d tell me it was alright to go back to sleep because I was on the right side and I wasn’t like Sabar. You didn’t even call.”
“No,” he admitted. “I didn’t.”
There was silence and I knew I’d made Brayden feel bad even though that hadn’t been my intention. By mid-July I’d all but stopped cursing him for not being my crutch. I still missed him and the comfort terribly, but I’d figured eventually he’d move on and so would I. But was that what I really wanted?
“It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t need it. I should be able to get through it on my own. I know he can’t touch me if I don’t allow him to.”
“Nobody can touch you,” he said. “You’re a fighter, Lidia.”
“I’m an outcast,” I admitted. The words were exactly what I’d felt all my life. I wasn’t on either side, never had been really, and now everyone would know.
“No,” Brayden insisted, reaching down to grab my chin. He pushed until I was sitting up, looking at him through eyes that were becoming blurry. Dammit!
I did not cry about this, not about my situation or the things I could not change. It was a pointless and weak emotion that I’d never wanted to have. Ever.
“You are not an outsider. You are one of us and a very valuable part of our team.”
He was talking about Team Sanchez, which consisted of his brothers and me as the lone female shifter. We’d given ourselves this name when we were in Africa and had faced a group of Croesteriia shifters. There were a dozen of them, coming at us from all angles as we hadn’t really been paying much attention, just exploring the jungle there. It had been a miraculous victory, one that I still wondered about. But Brayden had said they’d faltered because no one could defeat Team Sanchez. He’d included me then just as he wa
s including me now. I just didn’t believe it.
“I’m not a part of your family,” I said slowly. “I’m the kid your parents felt sorry for and took along with them so the tribe wouldn’t totally cast me out.”
Brayden frowned. His dark hair was rumpled, his cheeks lightly dusted with the morning’s growth.
“My mom would shake you if she heard you say that,” he told me.
I almost smiled. Marta Sanchez was a force to be reckoned with, there was no doubt. Even with her short stature—five feet even—she packed a powerful punch in human form and when completed shifted she was as vicious and deadly as any of the rest of them.
“But she’d know I was speaking the truth. They didn’t even want you to come with me out here, Brayden. They knew all along I was a crapshoot. Now that I’m an adult I can be responsible for myself so they willingly let me go.”
“That’s not true,” he argued.
“It is true, Brayden, and you know it.” I sighed, touching a hand to his wrist. “You can’t protect me from everything and everyone. I know how people feel about me. I’m not stupid.”
“You are stupid,” Brayden replied in a tone I didn’t appreciate. “You’re stupid if you believe for one moment that I was going to let my parents tell me not to come with you or that I would ever walk away from you because of the mistakes made by your family. I’m never going to walk away from you, Lidia. I’m never going to leave you, so you might as well get used to that fact.”
I tried to turn my head away because his words were so intense, so honest they made my chest hurt. Those tears that had been shimmering at the brim of my eyes were going to fall. I could tell because my vision became blurry, my bottom lip shaking like I was a damned ninny.
Brayden cupped my face then, holding me still because he no doubt knew what I’d planned to do.
“I told you before, Lidia, you are a part of me. An integral part that if torn away would leave me for dead. You are my soul, my heart, my air.”
My mouth opened as I gasped, tears spilling from my eyes onto his hands. He lowered his forehead to mine and I blinked, trying desperately to clear the lump stuck in my throat that prevented me from speaking.
“You are a part of me,” he whispered once more. “Do you understand?”
I nodded because there was nothing else I could do. I knew exactly what he was saying and believed it because it was the same way I felt about him, the same fierce connection that I’d known would never be severed.
“You are a part of me,” I finally managed before his lips touched mine.
CHAPTER 12
Brayden
I wouldn’t leave her.
They weren’t just words I’d whispered to calm her in the aftermath of the worst nightmares I’d ever seen her have. It wasn’t a lie. I would walk away from the life I’d always wanted for her, because without Lidia I didn’t want to live.
I didn’t want to breathe or to even wonder what the next day would bring. I’d heard that finding a companheiro was an amazing and life-changing feat for a shifter, but I had no idea it would be this way. Maybe because I figured I’d always known that Lidia was my companheiro. It had been so easy with her, ever since the beginning, so natural. Our lives would be simple, fully entrenched in the Assembly and our future would be secure as shifters. I’d never thought about our future as a couple.
“Looks like you’re pretty deep in thought there.”
The male voice coming from a room I thought I was in alone was more than a little unnerving. But I didn’t jump, barely even flinched as I looked right up into the stony eyes of Jace Maybon, Pacific Faction Leader and owner of this house—who was supposed to be out of the country.
I stood immediately, tucking my shoulders back and keeping eye contact with the leader. The fact that I was definitely trespassing in his house was a problem and reason enough for him to kill me where I stood. But I’d at least face him with the pride and strength of a soldier and a man.
“I’m Brayden Sanchez, Leader Maybon. My brothers and I are in the upcoming class of finalists,” I said, extending my hand to him.
I’d been sitting in his living room, staring out the patio doors to the ocean that Lidia loved so much while she’d been in the shower. Giving her space had seemed like a good idea and now I was even more grateful that I had. Having Jace catch us coming out of the shower would have been more embarrassing than this already was.
Jace removed a hand from his pants pocket, gripping mine as he continued to stare solidly at me.
“Why are you here instead of on the East Coast training with Rome?”
“We had a problem and had to get away soon,” I began, then proceeded to run down the events that had taken place.
“Why didn’t you call me when it happened? Why didn’t you report the exposure immediately?”
Good questions, I thought, and probably the course of action I should have taken. But I hadn’t and the reason for that fear was burning a hole in the center of my chest right at this moment.
“She’s not a rogue,” I told Jace. “Lidia Morales is not like her uncle Sabar. What happened in Pacifica had nothing to do with rogues,” I said emphatically. It was what Lidia believed and what I had been too good of a brother to mention, and what I knew the Faction Leader was thinking as he continued to study me.
“She’s your companheiro,” he said slowly, matter-of-factly.
I nodded. “Yes, she is.”
“And you want to protect her. You want to keep her from being judged and convicted based solely on a set of circumstances she had no control over.”
He was absolutely right but something about his tone kept me quiet.
Jace moved to the bar on the other side of the room. I watched him retrieve a glass from a shelf on the wall behind him, then reach into the refrigerator to pull out a bottle of water. After opening it he poured it into a glass and took a couple of swallows before flattening his palms on the bar’s surface and leveling me with another gaze.
I still stood at attention in the spot where he’d left me, still looked up to him as the leader he was, but for the life of me couldn’t figure out how this was going to play out.
“The first thing you should have learned about being a Stateside Shadow Shifter was that we have integrity. That in addition to being loyal to our race we’re also very aware that we live in a different time and place than the Elders who previously dictated our laws. We honor and protect our women, similar to the way you’re standing here ready to fight me, a Faction Leader, to the death if I even think about coming down on Lidia Morales. We do that with pride and with dignity, we do not hide and hope for the best. You should have contacted me immediately as this all went down in my zone, which means I have to answer to the other FLs and the Assembly for this situation.”
All I could do was nod at the validity of his words. I’d messed up. In all that I thought I was so ready to become a shifter guard, I’d probably just flunked one of the most basic of tests. But I wouldn’t apologize for what I’d done. In fact, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
I was the only one there watching as they attacked us and I’d dispatched the humans as best I could without too much bloodshed. Only I saw the fear on Lidia’s face when she looked down at the one I’d killed and felt not one inch of remorse, or when Kyra jumped out the window and Lidia had wanted to breathe a sigh of relief but couldn’t because it might mean she was truly connected to Sabar Travers.
I hated that look on her face, hated how it made me feel and how the conflict in her still raged. So my gut instinct was to run and to think of the rest later. It was what I believed was the best plan, no matter what the FL thought.
“You’re right,” was what I managed to say as the only concession I planned to make in this regard. “And my plan was always to tell you and the Assembly what happened. Just not this soon.”
Jace was quiet as he took another sip of water. When the glass and the bottle were empty he leaned his head to one direction an
d then the next, soliciting a loud cracking of bones with the motion.
“You were also right,” Jace added finally. “Lidia Morales is not a rogue. However, the humans that broke into your apartment were sent there by one.”
I took a step toward him then.
“What are you talking about?”
“Sabar is actively recruiting. He’s hitting high schools and college campuses in an effort to get his recruits before they’ve had a chance to take the finals and become full-fledged guards. He singled you out.”
“Why me?” I asked.
“Because of me,” Lidia answered from behind.
She had apparently finished with her shower, her hair in a damp ponytail, her white shorts barely passing her upper thighs, and her light blue T-shirt hugging the rounds of her breasts.
“He thought if he could recruit Brayden, I’d follow because Brayden and I are companheiros.”
It was the first time I’d heard her admit it, the first time she’d actually said the word that bonded us as surely as the feelings we’d both finally admitted to.
“Smart and pretty,” Jace said, coming from around the bar, passing me until he stood directly in front of Lidia. “You’re not what I imagined when I heard about you.”
“I’m not what everyone in the tribe would like to believe I am,” she said, her chin up, voice just a notch away from being fully offended.
She’d struggled with this all her life, tried her damnedest to be the female she wanted to be instead of the one they all thought she would eventually become. I watched her train while simultaneously embracing all that she could about the human world, taking the human tutoring much more seriously than Caleb or I ever had. In that way Lidia was a lot like Aidan, as they’d both wanted desperately to get away from the shifter world as they became adults. Unlike Aidan, whose rebellion was rooted in his own conflicts, Lidia had carried on her shoulders the conflicts of an uncle she’d barely known.
