by A. C. Arthur
Aidan never even looked at Brayden, he kept staring at me. “I don’t think it’s going to be that simple,” he said.
“It has to be,” Brayden insisted. “After your issues in Virginia and mine and Lidia’s in Pacifica, we’re batting two for three. We cannot afford to have the FL on our asses about another exposure issue. He’s going to kick all of us out of the training.”
“I don’t give a shit about any training or the FL’s opinion of me!” I yelled. “That’s your shit to deal with, not mine.”
Brayden stepped closer to me. “We’re family, bro. We’re a team. We always have been. The Assembly has been waiting for us to get through the training so we could use everything we’ve learned and seen over the years to join forces with them. Letting them down is not an option!”
I moved in closer so that Brayden and I were now nose to nose. “Those are your fuckin’ options! I walk my own path, I do my own thing. Always have and always will.”
“To hell with the people who care about you,” Brayden continued. “To hell with Mom and Dad.”
I shook my head. “This doesn’t involve them! My choices are not their burdens.”
“But your disappointing acts might just be the death of them, at least for Mom.”
Brayden’s voice had grown a little quieter then and I was immediately concerned. I looked to Aidan who was now frowning at Brayden.
“What’s he talking about?” I asked, not liking the scent I was picking up from these two.
“Mom’s sick,” Aidan told me frankly. “Nick’s mate has gone down to Florida to take a look at her, but we’re not sure what it is.”
So many thoughts rolled through my mind in the last ten seconds, my stomach twisted and I actually thought I might hurl.
“What do you mean we’re not sure what it is? Has she been to a hospital?”
“Ary is with her now,” Brayden said.
“Who the hell is Ary and why is she not at a hospital?” I yelled.
Aidan grabbed my arm this time, clenched his fingers with enough force that my mind focused on that instead of the rage that was about to break through.
“Ary is Lead Enforcer Nick Delgado’s mate. She’s also a curandero and will find out what is going on with Mom,” he said slowly, solemnly.
“She’s a tribe healer, not a doctor,” I told him, shaking my head.
“Would you rather she go to a human hospital and find out that her problem is shifter related?” Brayden asked. “You always act first and think about the consequences, the questions, and repercussions later. It’s time to grow up, Caleb. To be who it is you were meant to be and to stop blaming everybody for the crappy way you choose to live your life.”
I glared at him, ready to take a shot at his annoying ass, but Aidan held strong to my arm.
“We’ll find your female, get this mess sorted out, and then you can go see Mom. She’ll like having you there since you were always her favorite,” Aidan added with a smirk.
They’d always teased that I was Marta’s favorite because she let me have seconds and thirds way more frequently than she did them and when there was an argument between the three of us, Marta always came to bat for me. Hell! She couldn’t be sick, she couldn’t be gone … ever.
My teeth and my fingers clenched and I shook my head to clear some of the dark fog that had been clouding my mind, egging the rage on like fuel to an already burgeoning fire.
“What’s her name? Where does she live?” Brayden asked.
“No,” I told them. “She wouldn’t go back to her place.”
I was just about to try and think of another place she might go when we all heard a chiming sound.
Aidan looked down at his waist where his cell phone was stored. “It’s not mine,” he said, looking over at Brayden.
“That girly sounding alert is definitely not mine. Must be his,” Brayden said, nodding in my direction.
I smirked and replied, “Wrong.”
Moving through the living room to my bedroom I found Zoe’s purse laying on one of the chairs across from the bed. Beneath the purse was her cell phone and the screen was alight with a newly received text message.
Caleb, if you are alive, please call me on Hanna’s phone. Please.
The first thing I did was sigh with relief. Zoe was okay and she didn’t hate me. She actually wanted to talk to me. Waves of tension rolled off my shoulders as I gripped the phone tightly in my hand.
Finally, because I heard new voices coming from the living room, I yelled out.
“I found her!”
CHAPTER 14
Zoe
“Are you out of every bit of your mind?” Hanna screeched, snatching her cell phone from my hand. “Did you just call the bastard stalker that seduced you into his bed and then left you while somebody tried to break in to his apartment?”
To say Hanna was a bit upset at the events of the night was an understatement. Not that I wasn’t still shaking, even after the shower and the Band-Aids on my knees and scrapes on my hands. Because I was, but I hadn’t exactly told her everything. Which, from the way she was ranting and raving might have turned out to be a good thing.
I was sitting on her couch, fluffy shag pillows propped up behind me with a cup of smoking hot tea on the coffee table in front of me. Hanna actually thought a shot of scotch was the cure to everything, but since I wasn’t a drinker, she’d restrained herself enough to make me tea instead. Now, she was pacing back and forth across her zebra-print rug, which made her look all kinds of crazy since the leggings and tank top she slept in were of a leopard print. I was feeling a little too close to the jungle right now, especially considering what I’d just seen in Caleb’s apartment.
“I just want to know that he’s alright,” I replied finally.
“Oh he’s alright, he got the hell out of there before anything bad happened, which I cannot say for you.” The last was said as she pointed the phone to my now-exposed knees since she’d given me a pair of shorts and a T-shirt of her own to wear. Her eyes also went to the bandage I reapplied to my ankle on my own this time. I hadn’t told her how that really happened either.
It’s funny how Hanna was the first person I’d thought of to run to in this situation, but she was the last person I trusted with the truth. She had this thing about overreacting, which I’d seen early on in our relationship. That might also explain why I never told her about my past either. But I had told Caleb. On the first night I’d actually spent any serious time with him, I’d confessed about my family and I’d had sex with him. What did that mean?
“Could you sit down, please? You’re making me dizzy,” I said instead of going back and forth with her about the situation.
“Oh, I’ll sit down alright,” she huffed, coming around the coffee table and dropping herself onto the couch right beside me. “I’ll sit right here and wait for you to tell me why you went to his place anyway. Every time he’s been in the bar he’s sat in the back looking all creepy, just staring at people and eating his food.”
“That’s not a crime,” I pointed out as I reached for the cup of tea.
“No, it’s not, but hanging around in dark parking lots at three in the morning sure is. Showing up when somebody’s trying to buy their groceries and trying to get a free feel is.”
“Actually, it’s not unless I perceive those actions as dangerous.”
That probably wasn’t the right thing to say because Hanna’s eyes almost bulged right out of her face. Her lips, which were usually painted and highly glossed with some of her fabulous MAC gloss, were bare and pressed together into a tight line. That confirmed she wasn’t happy with what I’d just said.
“Look, Hanna, I see your point and I get that from the other side of the fence this all looks pretty bad. But there was something, I don’t know, like a force in the air that just kept pulling us together. No matter how many times I pushed him away, he just kept coming back.”
“That,” she said, poking a finger into my arm, “is not
the force, honey. That’s crazy stalker crap and I knew I should have called the police the first time.”
She turned in the chair then so that her whole body was facing me and took the cup of tea out of my hands. Her fingers laced with mine and she looked at me with what I presumed was her very serious face.
“You can tell me, Zoe, I won’t judge. Did he rape you? Is that what all this ‘someone broke in and he left’ drama is all about? Did that asshole make you do things you didn’t want to?”
I’d begun shaking my head at the moment she said she wouldn’t judge because that’s all Hanna Etheridge ever did. The words that followed were just as bad and just as out of line. I slipped my hands from hers, wondering if this wasn’t the wrong place to come after all.
“Because, see, I knew something was off about his ass,” Hanna continued. “That’s why when Dex came into the bar looking for you after I could have sworn the two of you left together, I got worried. Then when I went out into the parking lot and your car was still there, I was like ‘oh no.’”
Her eyes widened and she’d even made an O with her mouth. How’s that for dramatic?
“I told Dex that bastard probably had you. I told him how he’d been on your back for a couple of weeks now.”
“You did what?” I asked, no longer entertained by her skillful or tacky—couldn’t figure out which—acting skills.
“I told Dex you were with that Caleb person.”
“No,” I whispered, too many scenarios going through my head and none of them quite making any sense. “You did not tell him that.”
She nodded. “Oh, yes I did. I told him about that time I saw him all up on you at the grocery store too. And he was plenty pissed. Said he knew where that half-breed lived and he was going to make him and his kind pay. I didn’t know he was biracial or anything. I just thought he was Latino. But Dex and his boys tore out of that place so fast I figured he’d have you home before sunrise.”
I scooted away from her as she spoke. “Caleb was born in Brazil,” I said slowly. “He’s not a … how did Dex know where he lived?”
“Girl, stop with all this, we need to call the police and—”
Her words were interrupted by the ringing of her cell phone. Both of us paused then, staring down at her hand as the phone rang and vibrated again.
“I don’t know this number,” Hanna said.
I leaned in a little. “I do.”
I snatched it out of her hand before she could do whatever her silly mind was thinking and I answered it.
“Hello? Caleb?”
“Zoe.”
I sighed at the sound of my name in his voice. If I were alone I might have closed my eyes and given thanks, but under Hanna’s scrutiny, I thought I better not. Clearing my throat I asked, “Are you alright?”
“I am. Are you?”
“Yes, um, I think so. I don’t really know what happened.”
“Tell me where you are. I’m coming to you.”
His words sounded so urgent, so do-or-die, sort of how I felt when I’d texted him. In the next instant I rattled off Hanna’s address and Caleb hung up, repeating again, “I’m coming to you.”
Hanna was not happy. She’d snatched her phone back, mumbling about me and my poor choice of men and about being ready for his ass when he got here because if he tried something—she’d gone into the bedroom with the rest of her rant and I was glad. Her constant chatter was getting on my nerves, or was it what she was actually saying that was getting on my nerves? No, that was making me think. Something about what Hanna had said and what I’d heard Dex and Caleb say before had my thoughts churning.
I was certain I hadn’t seen what I thought I’d seen tonight. There were not two animals fighting in Caleb’s apartment. Instead it was Dex and Caleb fighting. The darkness must have distorted their bodies, seeing as both of them were extremely muscular and had this dark exotic look about them. Now I wished I’d stayed, I wished I’d tried to break the fight up instead of freaking out and running away. I wished I could rewind time a bit, just to be sure, just to know …
***
There were three of them, each one fine as hell and built like fighters. Each one standing on Hanna’s zebra-print rug looking more menacing, more alluring than any jungle animal I’d ever seen.
“I’m Aidan and these are my brothers, Brayden and Caleb, whom you’ve already met,” the first one said.
And I had to be dreaming, I thought as I continued to stare from one to the other.
“I’m Hanna and he’s a stalking rapist. Shall I call the police now?”
All eyes flew to the doorway where Hanna stood. She’d changed into black silky leggings that shimmered a bit when she moved and a red top that left a couple inches of her midriff and her arms bare. She’d lifted her braids into a high ponytail and wore big hoop gold earrings. Normally, it wasn’t an outfit I would criticize, except that it was barely five o’clock in the morning and she looked as if she were ready for a night of partying.
“No police,” the guy in the middle, Brayden, I think, said. He had the more serious look, his brow knotted like he was ready to kick some ass at a moment’s notice.
“I’m just here for Zoe,” Caleb said in a softer tone as he moved toward the chair where I’d sat after opening the door for them. “Are you alright?” he asked again, this time reaching a hand out to touch my chin.
The moment the connection was made heat soared through my body and Caleb pulled back as if I’d burned him with it.
“I’m okay,” I replied stiffly. “What happened?”
“We should leave,” Brayden insisted. He seemed impatient and a little edgy.
“All of us,” he continued and Caleb shot him a searing look.
“Was Dex there?” I continued as if I didn’t hear anyone but Caleb. The way the other two were standing there I felt like they were bodyguards of some type, that or possibly undercover cops. They were staring so seriously, looking ready to pounce should there be a need. My heart thumped in my chest, but I refused to show any of that to them. I wanted the truth from Caleb. I needed to know if he’d in fact left me behind while someone broke in, or stayed and fought or whatever the hell had happened in his house. I had a very bad feeling about what was going on.
“What did you see?” Aidan asked me.
At least that’s the one I thought was speaking. His voice seemed deeper, his accent softer than the other guy. Neither of them was as pronounced as Caleb’s, which I remembered explicitly from when we were in bed together.
“Caleb?” I said his name and it was all I could do to keep my gaze on him.
He’d looked down at his hands, then lifted one to set on top of where mine lay on my thigh. Time seemed to stand still in those moments and I didn’t know whether to scream with impatience or cry with the emotion welling in my chest.
When his head lifted slowly, I had no idea what he was going to tell me or how his reply would make me feel. I just didn’t know how all that had happened in the past twenty-four hours fit into my life, into the life I’d thought I’d made for myself.
“You would never understand,” he began.
His voice was so low I barely heard him and then there was a loud noise behind me followed immediately by Hanna clapping and saying, “There they are, boys, handle your business!”
Everything from that moment on was a blur as the two guys I’d always seen with Dex kicked in Hanna’s door and immediately lunged for the two guys that had been standing on the other side of the coffee table. Caleb had hesitated a moment only to turn to me and say, “I’m sorry.”
The next thing I knew furniture was breaking, fists were flying, and memories came crashing into my mind like a movie on rewind. My chest tightened with the familiar anxiety, my fingers clenching and unclenching with the need to do something but not knowing what. Eventually my arm was grabbed by Hanna and I yanked away from her.
“What did you do?” I asked her as we stood near the now-broken door. “What the
hell did you do to him?”
She shook her head, those big earrings slapping against her rouged cheeks. “So naïve, Zoe. You’ve always been so naïve. That guy was lying to you from the start. He’s all mixed up in this gang crap and Dex and his buddies are undercovers. They’re the good guys.”
No sooner had she said that than one of Dex’s friends reached out, grabbing her by the neck and pulling her away from me. I screamed her name and was about to run toward her when I was lifted from the floor. I saw Hanna’s large expressive eyes highlighted by that silver-and-black shadow she loved so much, grow bigger, her mouth opening but no sound coming out.
And then I didn’t see anything else.
CHAPTER 15
Caleb
One month later
“Maybe it’s for the best,” Gil Sanchez said from behind me.
I’d been standing on the back porch of the Sanchez family home in Key West, Florida, staring out to the Atlantic, watching as the sun lowered to kiss the cap of waves.
“She wasn’t from our world,” he continued.
I listened because that’s what a respectful son did—even if the blood running through my veins was different from his. Still, none of his words mattered, none of what he said would change the way things were, the way I knew all along they would turn out to be.
I’d left D.C. the evening after the fight with Dex’s rogue friends. There were no dead bodies this time as we hadn’t shifted and the two rogues, well, they knew when they’d been beaten enough. Especially after the one had choked Hanna until she was unconscious. We’d lost them even though X and a few other shifter guards had arrived. Dex’s body had already been in the back of X’s truck, ready to be destroyed.
And Zoe, I’d carried her down to my truck myself, her body so still in my arms it appeared lifeless. Aidan drove and I continued to hold her, all the way to the hospital.
