by Aubrey Rose
SHIFTING FATES
Urban Fantasy Shifter Romance Book One
By
Aubrey Rose and Nadia Simonenko
What happens when a soldier falls in love with the shifter he’s been sent to kill?
In post-nuclear Manhattan, there are two kinds of survivors: humans and shifter.
Cage
After his older brother Ben was killed by shifters, Cage followed in Ben’s footsteps and joined the military. His job is simple: protect the surviving civilians in the wreckage of Manhattan and put down the dangerous shifter mutants prowling the streets. Bitter with revenge, he can’t wait for a chance to get even with the monsters who killed his brother.
Bindi
Half-wolf, half-human Bindi is one of Cage’s monsters. She lives underground, hiding away from military patrols and protecting the ragtag pack of shifter children who have come to depend on her. She’d do anything to get out of the city and get her pack to safety, but nobody gets in- or out – of this city.
On Christmas Eve, Cage catches Bindi – in human form – stealing extra rations for her pack. In a moment of pity he lets her go, but not without being struck by a sense that there’s something special about her. Something… different.
***A Shifter Romance Series that will pull at your heartstrings***
When he finally discovers her secret, Cage must decide what’s more important to him – finally avenging his brother, or saving the woman he’s come to love. And Bindi will learn a lesson about humanity… and about love.
Copyright © 2014 Aubrey Rose / Nadia Simonenko
All rights reserved.
First Edition: April 2014
ISBN: TBD
Chapter One
Bindi
It’s Christmas Eve and there are too many people in Times Square for my taste. They’re mostly humans, too.
Most nights, the streets in lower Manhattan empty out and the monsters come prowling: genetically mutated near-animals who scour the alleys for trash or food. They leave their deformed tracks in the radioactive ash coating the sidewalks of Lexington. They scavenge dumpsters. They lunge, territorial. They slouch toward nothing.
But tonight, the still-human survivors swarm the streets instead. Bright and sparkling, Times Square makes the world look almost like New York City before the war. At least, that’s how I remember it from when I was a little girl. The military has turned on the lights for an extra hour.
To celebrate. That’s what they said over the loudspeakers.
My right hand is on the knife inside my coat pocket as I move through the crowds of men and women, my small fingers clenched white around the handle. I have a doll for Kit stuffed into my hidden pouch along with the rations packages I’ve already stolen, and I’m having trouble keeping all of them balanced inside.
Another guard crosses the street. The huge store windows are empty now, and I press myself back, turning my face towards the window and pretending to fix the hood over my hair in the reflection of the glass as the sentry guard passes.
My long dark hair is wound tightly back into a braid, partially covered by the ragged burlap hood of my coat. I blink and cannot tear my gaze away from the bright irises of my eyes in the light.
Green and blue like the waves in the bay, my dad used to say. I tilt my head and I am squinting into the light but I don’t care. Tears fill my eyes and I smile. My eyes are shining green now, then blue in the harsh fluorescent light, and because of the brightness my pupils are nearly invisible in the reflection.
That is how I like to imagine myself—blind, with no eyes anymore, just color.
In the darkness where I live now, everyone’s pupils have taken over the color that their eyes used to be. Predators in the light are majestic, their eyes tawny as a lion’s, or bright green as a snake’s. But only grubs live underground, and those who prey on grubs. Sewer rats have black eyes. So do we.
My eyes are rimmed red from the tears, and I breathe out through a clenched jaw as the reflection of the sentry passes behind me. He glances at me, and I am certain that he notices that my arms are hooded, my outdated identification badge obscured. I choke on my fear as his gaze sweeps me over.
I know what he sees. Small female. A limp. A cane. No threat. Still, my thumb rubs circles of worry into the knife’s handle.
Then he is around the corner and gone, and I’m safe.
My other hand swings the metal rod that I use as a cane, and I dart another glance to the mirrored glass. I bend over farther to look like an older woman, hoping that my small stature will hide me in the crowd. I let my left foot drag slightly as though I, too, have the radiation sickness that makes all the men and women here weak in their limbs. But I’m not weak. No, I’m stronger than all of them.
I am one of the monsters.
The city blocks are lit harshly with bright fluorescent tubes that stretch out over my head, as though cautioning me not to look upward, toward the stars. Even with my head down, I am unused to the brightness, and when I squint I hope that the normal people around me don’t notice.
My breath is a white cloud in front of me as I cross the street and begin to limp alongside the food distribution line. There are more people here today than I’ve ever seen before, all hoping for extra rations at the end of the line. My eyes search for an easy target.
There is an old man twenty feet ahead of me, his bag already bulging. He must have been through the bread distribution once before, maybe twice. His nose is so close to the glass that his breath turns the surface of the window white and cloudy. Inside of the distribution centers, the frozen bags of food pulse forward on metal conveyor belts. Soldiers watch the packages, guns at their side.
As I pass by, my foot seems to catch on the sidewalk and I stumble sideways. My cane clatters on the sidewalk and I fake a fall against the old man, clutching his coat.
“Ah!” I cry out as if in pain while my hidden hand sweeps the knife out and slices into his bag. My fingers have already plucked out a small package of rations by the time the man helps me up.
“Are you alright, miss?” he asks. There is a note of genuine sympathy in his voice that gives me the smallest twinge of guilt.
“I’m fine,” I say, tucking the ration package safely and securely into the depths of my coat pocket while I use his arm to balance myself. “Just a crack in the sidewalk, that’s all.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m fine, really, I’m fine.” I hurry away and around the corner, hoping not to be recognized by any of the soldiers patrolling the food distribution. I’ve come here too many times, made too many small disturbances to not be noticed eventually. The others are waiting, though, and I cannot come back empty-handed.
Only two more blocks and I’ll be at one of the entrances. My feet begin to hurry of their own accord, and when I round the corner I am moving too fast to avoid the tall patrol guard coming around the other way.
“Ow!”
We crash into each other and I fall. Stupid, stupid! I have so much momentum that I can’t right myself without lunging out to catch the guard’s arm.
Big mistake. He catches my hip with his other hand and I feel the hidden pouch inside of my robe begin to shift upward. His hand is pressing against the fabric of the pouch, upending the contents. They’ll fall out, unless—
“This isn’t your day, huh?” he says. I lean into his hand, trying to balance the rations packages so that they don’t tumble from the pouch. I can’t lean any farther in; I’m nearly pressed against him at this point.
“Hey,” the guard says. I look up into his eyes
, light brown and concerned, and a shock runs through my chest. It hits me so hard that I can’t help but jerk my arm up to ward him off. My hand hits the pouch and it turns upside down.
Three rations packages go scattering on the icy sidewalk, along with the small doll I stole for Kit.
I’ve never done anything so clumsy. I am not clumsy. I have instincts that any human would kill for. And yet here I stand, utterly frozen, astounded at how badly I’ve messed this up. Kit’s face flashes in my mind: her bright red hair, how I thought the doll would match it perfectly.
Stupid. My fingers reach out for the packages, but they are already exposed. The guard grabs my arm.
The guard takes a step back, still holding my arm with one hand as he looks down at the packages. He is vulnerable, his body open.
There. It’s time. He knows. Break his arm first, take his gun, kill him, and run.
The thoughts run through my mind, a carefully planned scenario that I’ve never had to actually act out. My pulse quickens, my skin tight over my limbs. I’m ready to shift into my wolf form if I need to.
Looking up at him, though, I can’t bring myself to raise my arm, to snap his elbow. Instead I pull back and break his hold with a twist of my arm, leaping away from him and bending to snatch my cane up from the ground. I am crouched, ready to run, when I look up and see his eyes.
They’re light brown, flecked with gold, and even in the dim light they shimmer and glow. Something in them draws me close, makes me want to go back to him, to lean forward and see who he is, who he really is, under the soldier’s uniform. His face is mesmerizing, and I breathe quickly, trying to will myself into action. Kill or be killed. Kill or be killed. He’s huge, and I am losing the element of surprise with each second I wait.
Huge. Strong. His shoulders are broad and heavy, and I can’t keep my eyes from wandering over his defined muscles, can’t stop imagining how his hand would feel if it moved over my hips, my body. In this instant, I can feel my pulse hammering against the insides of my wrists, against my temples. I can feel my skin flush with a desire that I’ve never before known. It’s something so fierce and instinctive that it rattles me to the core.
He looks down at the rations packages on the ground, and then he kneels down on the sidewalk and picks up Kit’s doll. He hands it to me and starts to turn away.
I don’t know what I am thinking. I should kill him. I should have already killed him. I’m giving him too much time to think, to form a plan of attack. I need to be gone. Gone! Out of this light—
He reaches into his pocket, and I try to swallow but my throat is clenched tight. Every muscle of mine is vibrating with tension and, as much as I hate to admit it, repressed desire. My claws are beginning to emerge from my bones, twisting against my skin. I struggle to keep them retracted. Why? Why not kill him?
The guard pulls out a square of foil-wrapped chocolate and holds it out to me. I can smell it even through the cold air. My mind is suspicious. My stomach growls.
My fingers reach out and take the gift and as I take the chocolate my fingertips brush his hand.
Again I feel something pass between us. Without thinking about it, I am being pulled in by his eyes. There’s a softness in his face that belies his appearance, his soldier’s uniform, his gun. There’s a tenderness in his gaze that sweeps over me, evaluating, and as he watches me I know without a trace of doubt that he desires me, too. If I were human, I would be overjoyed. As it is, I’m terrified at the dizzy feeling that I get at his touch.
I breathe in to try and get some oxygen, to relieve the dizziness in my mind, but I can only smell him. Sweat and soap, a soldier’s scent. And more than that, a masculine musk of something secret, something hiding underneath his skin...
“I didn’t see nothing,” he says. His voice is low but not threatening, and something—instinct? desire?—tells me to hold still, not to attack. It makes no sense. He knows my face. But I don’t strike out at him with a killing blow. I wait.
He shakes his head slightly, his light hair reflecting the glow from above. I want to reach out and touch his face, touch his hair. But he is already pulling away.
“Merry Christmas.”
He walks away quickly and is already around the corner before I can speak. I don’t know what I would say to him, even if I hadn’t choked. Thank you, maybe? Glad I didn’t have to kill you?
No… I would’ve told him Merry Christmas.
Tomorrow is Christmas. I shovel the rations back into the pouch along with Kit’s doll and dart back down the alleyway. I lift the sewer grating and swing down into the darkness, my feet finding purchase on the damp ladder.
Above me I pull the grate back, and with a loud clang it settles into its grooves. As if by my signal, the lights go out overhead, and the city falls into the same darkness I know every day. I can see the stars now, pinpoints of light in the thin black slice of sky looming over the tops of the brownstones. The soldier is up there, somewhere, maybe watching the stars like I am.
If I were human… I shake my head. Silly to think like that. There’s nothing aboveground for me except food to steal and soldiers to hide from. I climb down slowly into the dark tunnel that will be my home forever, until I can escape this godforsaken city.
Tomorrow is Christmas. It’s also my birthday. A wry smile curves into my cheek.
I’ll celebrate being alive.
Chapter Two
Cage
It’s Christmas Eve and there are so many people lined up in Times Square tonight for food that I’ve resigned myself to a double shift. Even if the Major hasn’t called it in, it’s only a matter of time now. There must be seven hundred people in line tonight.
“Families in the left line, individuals in the right—single file, wait your turn,” a sergeant barks into a megaphone from an overseer tower high above the fray. The Major had me and the grunts out all morning figuring out how to set up the queues for tonight’s festivities. We ended up looting all the retractable belt-barriers from an abandoned, bombed-out theater on 42nd street. Between those and a few dozen assault rifles, the crowds are behaving great.
“Keep the lines moving. Get your Christmas bag and move along!” shouts the sergeant at nobody in particular. Way to spread the Christmas cheer, buddy.
I watch from my walkway perch as the grunts shove civvies through the line one after the next. They can’t be bothered to spare a second’s kindness to the poor saps trapped in this hell-hole of a city, not even on Christmas Eve. God, I hate this job sometimes… still better than being upstate, though.
“One bag per family unit. Keep the lines moving, people!”
I shake my head in disgust and climb down from my perch. The rickety, corrugated aluminum stairs creak and groan every step of the way.
None of these poor civvies deserve to be trapped here like this—their only crime was being in the city when the first bombs fell. God only knows how we missed it, but all it took was one small plane with a big-ass payload to glass the city.
No… that ain’t quite the word I’m looking for. Sure, the epicenter of the blast was totally leveled, but the big surprise was the fallout. As I hear it, ain’t nobody ever heard of a bomb like this one before—we’ve known about nuclear fallout since before I was born, but this stuff’s different.
It changes people. Some of them, at least. Makes them stronger, faster… more animal-like.
No… it straight-up makes them into animals—shifters, we call them, since they can change forms at will. They prowl the city streets at night, and they’re why the army’s here in the first place. It’s the army’s job—and my job—to keep the shifters contained in New York, and those poor, radioactive civvies are stuck along with the shifter scum.
Not like we can tell them apart until they change form, anyway, and if they do… well, it’s probably too late by then. That’s what they tell me about my brother Ben, at least.
Poor Ben. He got jumped by a shifter while on patrol one night and never saw it coming. T
hat’s why I’m here now. I enlisted the day my mother got the bad news, and if I ever see a shifter, I’ve got a bullet with the fucker’s name on it.
One of the grunts sidles up alongside me as I begin my patrol around the perimeter of the food lines. A plastic sign shaped like a giant lobster hangs like an oversized carcass above the entrance to our makeshift kitchen. It was there when my battalion moved in—the civvies say it used to be a restaurant. Kind of fitting, if you ask me.
Nothing gets in or out of our barricades around the city, and that includes food and supplies. Everything these civvies have comes from us since they can’t get it anywhere else.
“Evening to ya, Cage,” he greets me.
“Evening to you, soldier.” Officers aren’t supposed to fraternize with the grunts, but our company commander didn’t come for the festivities tonight and I ain’t nobody special.
“They keeping you busy? What’ve they got you up to tonight?”
“Just taking in the sights,” I answer, pointing at the enormous crowd pushing and shoving in anticipation of their holiday meal. He nods and grins.
“Yeah, some real lookers in the crowd tonight, let me tell you,” he drawls. “Check out that chick over there near the front—she’d be a real babe if it weren’t for the radiation.”
I hardly know what to say to something like that, so instead I say nothing. Knowing when to bite my tongue’s gotten me a long way in life—not many 22-year-old captains out there, let me tell you.
“Oh don’t tell me you ain’t been looking,” he says, nudging me with his elbow and digging his grave just a little deeper. “It’s Christmas Eve, Cage. Have a little fun already.”
I groan inwardly as we patrol and then scan the crowd to play along. The thing is, I haven’t been looking at all. I couldn’t care less about getting some radioactive ass, to tell the truth. I’m here to do my job, keep my head down, and sock enough cash away to leave this whole sorry place behind after my term’s up.
