Emerald City Shifters (Bundle)

by Kit Tunstall

  Finally, they reached the enclosure where the shifters were held captive. He was dismayed to see six of the eight cages now filled, meaning Stone had detected other shifters and managed to kidnap them. At least maybe they were liberating them before these shifters had to fight to the death.

  Luckily enough, Stone himself was in his lab, as Hale discovered when he slipped through the other opening, ensuring the building was secure while the others freed the shifters in cages.

  When he saw Stone standing at his microscope, a rumble of satisfaction issued from his throat. The sound alerted the scientist, who looked up just in time to see Hale looming over him. He grabbed hold of the other man, his hands wrapped tightly around his larynx so the human couldn’t scream. At least not audibly.

  Thoughts of revenge and inflicting pain ran through his mind, and he was torn between taking the time to draw out Stone’s death and the need to hurry before Calderon realized his island was under attack and fortified himself inside the mansion.

  He looked up at the sound of shuffling feet, wincing when he saw Alex step through the doorway. His friend looked rough, though they now knew he would probably heal quickly once the drugs completely left his system. In the meantime, he was in for a long few days, even without a gunshot as Hale had suffered from.

  “He’s mine,” said Alex with a growl, baring his teeth.

  Hale had no reason to argue with that, not really caring who ended Stone’s experiments, as long as it was a permanent solution. His only concern was Alex’s state of health. “Are you up for this?”

  Swaying slightly, Alex squared his shoulders in a determined fashion, and his gaze was predatory when it rested on the scientist, who whimpered and tried to pull himself free from Hale’s hold on his throat. “I’m up for it.”

  Taking his friend at his word, Hale dragged the scientist closer to Alex and thrust the other man at him.

  Stone spoke in an annoyingly high squeak. “You can’t do this. I’m just trying to advance science.”

  Hale didn’t hear his friend’s response as he slipped from the lab, moving rapidly, though he did hear Stone’s screams less than a minute later.

  So much for stealth. With a resigned sigh, he dropped the gun and slipped into his bear form before he began to run as fast as he could, narrowing in on the mansion, where he was certain he would find Calderon.

  His senses were alert, and he realized halfway to the house that Calderon wasn’t there. Rather, he could smell the man’s scent from a different direction, and he hurried that way, veering with little effort as he continued running full-tilt.

  Somehow, Calderon must have realized they were on the island. He must have had cameras or some sort of heat sensors. However he had detected them, he was close to escaping, and Hale couldn’t allow that to happen. Calderon stood near the water, barking orders at two security guards who were currently prepping a small sailboat. It seemed like an unlikely getaway vessel, which was perhaps why Calderon had chosen it.

  He increased his pace, pushing himself to his limits, as he ran and roared at Calderon simultaneously. He had a surge of satisfaction when the other man turned and looked at him with an expression of raw terror on his face. He chuckled in amusement, though it came out more of a grumbly growl in his bear form, when he saw the two guards suddenly take off in the boat, not waiting for their boss, and clearly not willing to put themselves between Calderon and one pissed off bear.

  With a bleat of terror, Calderon turned and ran toward the water, perhaps planning to swim to the boat, or just panicking and not having a plan. Either way, he barely made it a few feet into the water before Hale hooked his claws into Calderon’s jacket and dragged him back onto the shore. He shoved him forcefully down to the ground and planted one paw on him. It encompassed the man’s stomach and part of his chest, and though hhe struggled, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Hale let all the hatred he felt for the man swell in him, and he raked his claws down Calderon’s side, making the man scream. He was lightly disturbed by his own need to torture and inflict pain on the man, even though Calderon had done the same to him and his fellow shifters. He wasn’t certain he wanted to sink to that level, even if it meant Calderon received a taste of his own treatment toward others.

  In his bear form, his hearing was even better than it was in his human form, and he could hear the thump, thump, thump of helicopter blades before the vessel was in sight.

  Still keeping a firm hold on Calderon, he quickly shifted back to his human form as he waited for the helicopter to come into sight. He glared down at Calderon. “Are those your reinforcements?”

  Calderon shook his head. “Spare me.”

  He glared at him as he put his foot on the other man’s throat, keeping him pinned to the ground. “I should kill you right now.” He couldn’t even explain to himself why he was hesitating, other than he recalled the horror of how it felt to end a life. It was true that the people he’d been forced to kill over the last few months had been like him, and none of them had deserved to die. This man clearly deserved everything coming to him, but Hale was uncertain about being the one to give it to him.

  On the other hand, he couldn’t hand off the task to others, and his opportunity was rapidly dwindling when the helicopter came into sight, finding them with a searchlight. He cursed as he started to press his foot harder on Calderon’s throat, determined to end him before the helicopter could land. Hale needed to slip away and change form once he was out of sight, since Calderon had more people arriving on the island.

  He looked up in surprise when he saw bullhorn emerging from the helicopter as it got closer to the ground. The speaker said something in Spanish, which was a language Hale didn’t speak. He tried to infer the meaning, but even his enhanced sight couldn’t allow him to make out the speaker’s expression to help glean any clues to his intent.

  Calderon started struggling again, and Hale first assumed it was an attempt to escape so he could go to his people. It was only when the sharp tang of urine reached his nose that he realized the other man had pissed himself, clearly from fear. He hadn’t been that afraid even when Hale was in bear form, and curiosity made him hesitate. He lifted his foot slightly, which allowed the other man to draw in a full breath and rasp a few words.

  “Kill me now, before Javier can. It won’t be rapid if he gets hold of me.”

  He jerked in surprise at the sound of Calderon’s brother’s name, confused how Javier had found the location, but understanding his sudden fear. He chuckled at the idea. “Your brother will torture you and make you suffer for stealing from him, won’t he?”

  “Si,” said Calderon, his voice more accented than usual in his terror.

  “Excellent.” Hale bent down, not moving his foot until he had a hand wrapped around Calderon’s lapels, and another one around the back of his neck. He jerked the man to his feet and shoved him ahead of him as the helicopter touched down on the ground. He remained impassive when three Hispanic men jumped out of the helicopter, aiming machine guns at them. He held up the hand he’d been using to secure Calderon’s lapels in a gesture of semi-surrender. “You’ll have no fight from me.”

  A man around Calderon’s age slipped from the helicopter with surprising grace. He was dressed just as pretentiously as Luis, but he seemed to wear it better. Perhaps it was because he wasn’t plastered with his own urine. Hale snorted back a laugh at the thought. Now wasn’t the time to give in to his amusement.

  The man he presumed was Javier Calderon approached, straightening his jacket and flicking off an invisible speck of something as he neared them. “Hello, Luis,” he said in a cultured voice, sounding civilized and reasonable. “It’s been far too long, el hermano.”

  Hale was certain the polite exterior was a front, a façade behind which the head of the cartel held his deadly nature, but he had to make sure before surrendering Calderon. He looked at the other man, catching his gaze. “Are you here to make Luis suffer?”

  Javier nodded, a cold
smile touching his lips. “Suffer and die. Are you going to defend him?”

  Hale snorted. “Not likely.” With a forceful shove against the other man’s neck, he sent Luis flying in Javier’s direction. One of the guards intercepted him before he could fall or crash into his brother, forcing Luis to his knees.

  Hale was certain of Calderon’s fate, and he didn’t need to stay around to witness it. He turned and walked away, not really surprised when Javier didn’t try to call him back or question him further. Luis was the focus of his brother’s anger, and Javier likely couldn’t care less who Hale was as long as he didn’t stand in the way of punishing Luis for his betrayal.

  As soon as he was out of their sight, he transformed back to his bear form and broke into a run, heading for the rendezvous point where they had all come ashore. There might be some guards left alive, but the two main players in this setup were dead, or about to be, so the minions were unlikely to be able to rebuild their shifter-fighting empire somewhere else.

  He found the others waiting for him, and he met the gaze of a shifter who had been on the other team. “Did you destroy all the files?” he asked Caleb.

  Caleb nodded, jerking his head in the direction of a plume of smoke rising in the air, accompanied by the crackling of flames. “That building will burn to the ground, and the fire will likely spread to the house, though we found nothing in there that seemed to pertain to us or other shifters. I think it’s safe to say Stone was holding all the data in his laboratory.”

  Hale nodded. “That makes sense. Calderon was a criminal, not a scientist. He probably wouldn’t have understood most of the data anyway, so I’m sure Stone only imparted what he had to.”

  “He won’t be imparting anything to anyone anymore,” said Alex as he cracked his knuckles.

  Hale glanced at them, seeing the blood smeared across them, and certain it wasn’t Alex’s. He nodded his understanding, relieved to know Alex had been able to follow through with his intention, whereas Hale felt slightly weak for not being the one to end Calderon.

  Was it weak to be sick of killing, to not be able to imagine ending another life, no matter how richly deserved the death? He didn’t think so, but his bear was growling softly inside him, clearly discontent with the human side that had prompted him to make that decision. He made a soothing sound, knowing his bear would settle down. He was still getting reacquainted with that side of himself, having been cut off from his bear for so long for the last few months, and it felt like they were at odds with each other.

  It reminded him of how it had been going through puberty, when he first became aware of his bear side as another voice inside his head, his instincts suddenly having the ability to overwhelm his intellect. He was certain he and his bear would reconcile and find peace with each other, but it was part of the healing process. If he had killed Calderon, it would have simply prolonged that process, rather than hastened the reintegration.

  He tried to shove aside the thoughts as they moved into the water, swimming back to the boat as silently as possible in their human forms, just in case Javier had more people arriving on the island. The last thing they wanted to do was alert another Calderon to the existence of bear-shifters.

  If, for some reason, Luis decided to confide in his brother about what he’d been doing here, assuming he was still alive to do so, Hale was certain Javier would believe his brother was either mad or lying, but he wouldn’t put any stock in the idea of humans shifting into bears and vice versa. All the evidence to support the claim was destroyed, and the shifters were freed. They had little to worry about, and he was certain Luis Calderon would be nothing but an unpleasant memory by morning.

  Once they were back on the boat and headed toward Bear Island, he allowed Kade to pull him aside, expecting his friend to interrogate him about Calderon’s death, or Javier’s arrival. Instead, his words were total shock.

  “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I caught Maya calling Calderon before we left today. She’s been locked in a cell so I could keep her out of trouble, but she must have gotten the warning through, which was how they knew we were coming.”

  His bear roared in his head, angry at the idea of their mate betraying them, and for a blinding moment, he felt the bear’s rage as his own. They were united in their reaction. He shouldn’t have been surprised to find he couldn’t trust her, because he had learned rapidly as Calderon’s prisoner that he couldn’t trust anyone. To know his own mate had betrayed him that way was a new level of torment though, and he growled his anger, feeling his control start to slip as the bear tried to emerge.

  Balling his hands into fists, he breathed deeply until he had reined in the impulse to shift in the boat. There would probably be enough room on the deck, but he didn’t want to surrender to the impulse. He was trying to regain control of all of his emotions and become the more logical, centered man he had been before Stone’s people had taken him. He didn’t want to live at the mercy of his animal instincts, and he knew he had to regain control before he saw Maya again.

  He nodded at Kade, both as a thanks for the warning and to indicate he had regained control. His cousin moved away, and Hale moved to the railing of the boat, staring broodingly into the waters of the Strait below. Anger still thrummed in him, but he was making a conscious effort to react in a measured fashion, rather than with blinding rage.

  He couldn’t imagine circumstances in which it was okay for her to betray him, but perhaps she had felt some sort of motivation that he didn’t know about. Maybe Calderon had leverage over her, like her family. He didn’t know, and he was hoping he could keep his anger in check long enough to find out her reasons before he decided how to react.

  ***

  When the door to the sheriff’s office finally opened later that evening, she was still pacing, and she jerked to a halt at the sight of Hale entering the room rather than Kade. “Let me out of here.”

  He walked toward her, his muscles visibly clenched, and anger radiated from him. He held a ring of keys in his hand, but he made no move to open the door just yet. “Kade told me why you’re locked up.”

  “I called Calderon.”

  He scowled at her. “Why would you do that? What possible reason could you have for betraying us?”

  Her anger was rapidly rising, but she took a moment to regain control, trying not to let the frustration of having being locked in the cell all day unfairly make her unload on Hale when Kade was the one who had misinterpreted what she was doing. “I called Calderon—Javier Calderon—because I was trying to help. I hoped he would deal with Luis and his people, and you could get the shifters out before anyone discovered their presence. I tried to tell Kade that, but your cousin is a stubborn ass, who won’t listen to anyone. I hope you’re not just like him.”

  He hesitated for a long second, clearly debating about whether he believed her not. She tried not to let it irritate her that he hadn’t immediately embraced the truth of her words. They didn’t know each other as well as they would just yet, and he knew Kade better than she did. It would have been natural for him to trust his cousin over her, at least in her world. She wasn’t certain how the mate thing influenced his perceptions in his culture, and he’d certainly been through enough hell for the last few months to be suspicious of everyone.

  After what felt like an eternity, he slipped the key in the lock and opened the cell door a moment later. “I’m sorry. I should have listened to your side.”

  Relief swept through her, and she slipped out of the cell and threw herself into his arms. “It was Kade who should have listened, not you. I don’t blame you for being doubtful. I think you were wrong not to want to involve Javier from the start, and I did go around your decision on that, so feel free to be angry with me, but please know I didn’t betray you, and I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.” She cupped his face in her hands, staring intently into his eyes. “You’re my mate, and it’s my job to take care of you.”

  He laughed softly. “I think that’s my li
ne. I’m supposed to take care of you.”

  She rolled her eyes at his chauvinism. “Why don’t we just agree to take care of each other?”

  He looked doubtful, and she tried not to let it hurt, uncertain if he was doubting her or simply her ability to take care of him.

  “Are you positive you want to be my mate?”

  The uncertainty in his voice cut through her, and she released her hands from his face to wrap around his neck, holding him as tightly as she could. “I’m certain. I’m absolutely, positively sure I want to be with you. Don’t ever doubt that.”

  He had buried his head in her hair, which muffled his words. “I’m trying not to. I’m not going to be easy to live with. I have things to deal with, and a lot of pain ahead of me. I don’t want to hurt you in the process.”

  All she could do was hold him as tightly as she could while she pressed a kiss to his bare chest. “Let me take care of you. Trust me to do that, and trust me to know that I’m where I want to be.” She knew she was asking a lot from him, since he’d been through something that made it difficult to trust anyone. It was the only way she was going to make it with him though. He had to be able to trust her at least enough to bring his bad moments to her along with the good ones.

  His arms tightened fractionally, though it should have been impossible for him to get her any closer. “I do trust you. It’s myself I don’t trust. I don’t want to hurt you, either physically or emotionally.”

  “You trust me, and I trust you not to do that.”

  Some of the tension fled his body, and she snuggled closer at the sign of acceptance from him. She was certain it would be a rough road ahead, at least for a while, but she was determined to stay by his side and help her bear fight through the biggest battle of his life. He wouldn’t be healed overnight, and he was bound to doubt both himself and her, but all she could do was remain at his side and show him she was trustworthy, and they were both worth fighting for.