by Selena Scott
But she was not going to die today. Valentina was a fighter. She was a survivor. She’d endured injuries at least as bad as this one and she was waking up tomorrow morning. So help her God.
Spotting a thatch of thick bushes, she ducked around one side and held her breath. She couldn’t hear the hunters anymore. God, let them be gone. Let them be lost or bored or just too slow. All she needed was a fighting chance.
She pulled out the long, thin flute that Matt, the scientist, had given her a year and a half ago. Since then, she’d only used it a few times to practice creating gates. She desperately tried to remember how to do it.
It took all her breath and more concentration than her brain could allow for, but she thought she was doing it. She thought she was opening a gate.
But then the flute fell from her hands, and there was not enough air left in the world or blood left in her body. She fought the sleep as hard as she could but she was so small and sleep was so large.
Moments later, her knives were in her hands as she fought the hunters who’d grabbed her shoulders, touched her face. But when her eyes came open, it was calm green eyes she saw. A silvery scar.
And then she didn’t see anything more.
***
Kain sighed as he took the long way through the woods to get back to his cabin. That had been a very, very, epically bad date. One for the record books. He’d thought Shauna was so sweet the first time they’d gone out a couple of weeks ago. And she’d been fun in the sack. Definitely zealous. But then dinner tonight. Yikes.
She was… boring, Kain realized with a little bit of a wince. That was not something that he liked to say about a woman, whom he felt deserved every bit of respect he had to offer. But hour three into her one-woman show, with not a question asked to him, Kain realized that she’d NEVER asked him a question about himself.
He knew he could be closed off. Being a shifter would kind of do that to you in this day and age. To the rest of the world, shifters were extinct. Most of them had been lured away into Herta by now. It wasn’t wise to advertise.
So the Ketos had kept that little secret to themselves for years. And he’d never give up that piece of information to someone like Shauna. But that didn’t mean that Kain didn’t want to chat about his favorite movies or show off pictures of his niece or chime in about what kind of puppy she should buy. He’d gotten the distinct impression that the only person Shauna had been interested in at that table had been herself.
And that made one of them.
He scraped a hand over his messy blond hair and trudged up the mountain. Since when had he started caring about stuff like this? Used to be any woman warm and willing was right for Kain. Since when had he started getting choosy? It was freaking him out.
Kain sniffed the air. There wasn’t anyone for miles. He could strip down and shift and he’d be home in less than five minutes. Yeah. That’s what he needed, he needed his bear. He’d be back for his clothes tomorrow.
He was just unbuttoning his blue button-down when a faint scent filtered through the night air to him. He turned a 180, sniffed again.
That smelled like faint mint and fresh earth.
Valentina.
Kain took a few running steps in that direction and the scent got vaguely stronger. And then he was sprinting. Because he didn’t just smell Valentina. He smelled blood.
Three minutes later and her scent was swamping him. He skidded into a clearing and looked wildly around. Where was she? Nowhere. And no sign of her. But her scent was strong enough that she should have been right beside him.
Kain froze when he saw the trees next to him were lit from the side with a faint, gold light. Exactly the same kind of light that lit up a portal when a shifter was near. He whipped around and there it was. A poorly-opened portal on the ground, just big enough to crawl through. He got down and looked through.
His heart chugged in his chest. “Fuck,” he whispered as he flung himself through the gate and over her inert body. She was covered from the waist down in blood. Her canvas pants and brown tunic were stuck to her body with the wetness of it. She looked deathly pale.
He desperately wanted to shout her name but he caught the scent of hunters. Two, no, three of them a quarter of a mile away. He had to get her out of here and fast.
Kain watched her eyes flutter—thank God—as he lifted her from Herta and into Earth. She reached for her knives reflexively but they fell as fast as her eyelids did. He didn’t want to waste a second but he had to close the portal behind him, otherwise the hunters could follow him through. He took valuable seconds, got ahold of his breath and used the tool to blow the gate closed from each edge. There.
And then he didn’t bother removing his date-night clothes. He didn’t give a fuck. He shifted faster than he’d ever shifted before, carefully hefted her over his back and strode off into the night.
CHAPTER THREE
It was official. Valentina really, really wanted her old life back. One where long thin needles didn’t jab her skin and women in silly pale pajamas weren’t making strange machines beep and putting cold metal against her skin.
And she especially wanted the version of her life where John Alec wasn’t hollow-eyed and checking on her every four seconds to make sure she was still alive.
Because she was alive, damn it! She had a nasty set of cuts on her leg and down her side from a hunter’s bone sword, but she’d gotten away.
Well, she frowned and played with the end of her braid, she’d almost gotten away. She’d gotten mostly away. And Kain had done the rest.
Kain Keto, who she’d hoped to never see again, who she kind of hated, had saved her life. He’d plunged into Herta and pulled her out. She’d been told he’d carried her five miles back to Ansel’s house where the rest of the family had jumped into action to get her ass to the hospital.
She would definitely be dead without Kain Keto.
So, yeah. She really wanted her old life back.
When she couldn’t have taken another second indoors before she throat punched one of these hovering ladies who called themselves ‘nurses’, she’d been told it was time to go home.
John Alec and Milla had been there ready to take her away from the hospital, thank God.
She had to admit that she’d really liked the car ride. And parts of Earth were just as beautiful as Herta. The rolling green mountains, the sun against the trees, the sky so blue it hurt.
But for every beautiful thing there was a discombobulating and ugly thing. Office buildings. Stoplights. Highways. Huge images in the sky that Milla called ‘billboards’.
Earth was complicated and busy. And Valentina desperately wished that ‘going home’ meant going back to Herta. But she knew, without a doubt in her heart, that John Alec wasn’t letting her go back until she was 100% healed. More than that, even. She was going to have to be in better shape than she was before to get his blessing to return home alone.
“Is this your home?” Valentina asked as Milla helped her out of the car and steadied her at the shoulders. She liked the look of the small cabin, shaded under heritage pines with a newly planted vegetable garden in the front and ivy creeping up one side. But it sent a cold pang through her chest that she didn’t even know where her brother lived. For the hundredth time Valentina realized just how far apart she was from him in Herta.
“No,” Milla replied, trying not to worry about her sister-in-law, who’d lost weight since the last time she’d seen her. Besides the hospital stay, the girl didn’t look good. She looked tired and fragile. And Valentina never looked fragile. “This is Kain’s house.”
“What?” Valentina swiveled up and fixed her light brown eyes on Milla’s face. “Why are we here, then?”
“John and I don’t have a guest room,” Milla responded, helping Valentina up the stairs one by one. “Kain said we could stay here instead.”
“Oh.” She had no idea what to think about that. And she didn’t have long to dwell on it because the door screen door swung
open and there was Kain.
Standing tall in a T-shirt the same calm green as his eyes and a pair of pants that, even to her inexperienced eye, fit him very well.
“Hey there, sunshine.”
She glowered at him. He was doing that thing where he gave her a compliment but she couldn’t help but feel he was making fun of her.
She tried not to like his house, on principle, but couldn’t help but be softened by the countless family pictures everywhere. She liked that the walls were the same dark wood as the outside of the cabin. And she liked the big windows thrown open. It smelled the same inside as it did outside.
She especially liked the sight of the big steaming cup of tea on one of the small tables.
She felt a touch dizzy from the walk from the car and she was barely thinking straight. “I want that.”
She pointed at the tea and started lowering herself onto the couch before Milla could get her all the way to the guest bedroom.
“My tea? Yeah. Okay.” Kain glanced at Milla, who shrugged.
“Tea is a delicacy on Herta,” John Alec explained, worried eyes on his sister. “But it’s always been Valentina’s favorite.”
Kain moved his tea from the table and into her thin, trembling hands. He only hesitated for a moment before sitting next to her on the couch. He’d carried her through the woods on his back, for God’s sake. He could sit next to the woman on the couch.
“What’s that taste?” she asked in delight, sipping the tea and then bringing her lips into her mouth like she couldn’t get enough of the flavor.
“Uh. Apple cinnamon.” Kain’s eyes were having trouble looking away from her mouth drinking that tea.
“I’ve had apple but never cinnamon before. It’s very warm.”
Fatigue hit her then. She was lowering her head to the pillow beside her and barely noticed when the tea was pulled from her hands.
***
When she woke up, the light had changed in the cabin. It was fully dark outside and just a small light burned on the side table. Valentina’s mouth felt like it was filled with sand. She tried to adjust herself on the couch and winced when the movement pulled at her stitches.
“Careful,” a low voice said from her right. Kain was sitting in an armchair with his feet propped up on the coffee table. He had big feet, she noticed. John Alec was in the armchair next to Kain but he was dead to the world, his head tipped back and a light snoring sounding in the room.
Kain handed her a cup of cool water that was sitting on the side table and she gratefully sipped it.
“Tea?” she asked him sleepily. She didn’t care if she was being greedy. She felt small and strange and just wanted a little comfort.
A smile played at his lips as he stood. “Sure.”
He was back a few minutes later with the same apple cinnamon blend steaming away in a little chipped mug.
“Is it late?” she asked after a few minutes passed in silence. If she could see the moon, she’d know exactly what time it was, but it was useless indoors.
“Middle of the night.”
“Why are you awake?”
“You’ve been sleeping on my bed.”
“Oh,” she furrowed her brow and looked down at the couch. “You sleep on this lumpy thing?”
He grinned at her befuddled expression, her blunt assessment. “Not usually. But Milla and Alec are in on my bed. Well,” he looked sideways at sleeping Alec. “Half of them are. And you’re supposed to be in the guest bedroom. So I get the couch for a little while.”
She sat up and winced again, didn’t notice the way his sharp eyes followed the movement. “Can I see the guest bedroom?”
“Sure,” he said in that easy way of his.
She wondered if there was anything she could ask him for that he wouldn’t agree to. She tossed the blanket off her and stared in befuddlement down at her clothes. She remembered changing into these strange garments at the hospital but they hadn’t looked quite so ridiculous in the daylight. In the dim room they looked like she was wearing a cloud on each leg.
When she looked up, Kain was bending down at the edge of the couch. Carefully, so carefully, he slid his hands under her little body. God, she didn’t weigh anything and it tugged at his heart.
“I can walk,” she insisted.
“It’s the middle of the night,” was his answer, which seemed to make sense to him because he rose with her and stepped back like the matter was settled.
He carried her the few steps to a half-open door that he kicked open the rest of the way. Her first impression was that there were yet more clouds. White curtains billowed in a light breeze at the two small windows, and a humongous bed, bigger than she’d ever seen before in her life, was made with about a hundred white pillows and a white comforter.
Kain set her gently on the edge of the bed with her feet hanging off and then started plucking pillows off two by two, tossing them in the corner.
“Sorry. My sisters made this bed for you this morning when it was decided that you’d stay here but I didn’t know they had an insidious plan to smother you under all these throw pillows. There. That’s better.”
And it did, actually, look better with just two pillows at the head of the bed. A little less intimidating. Kain surveyed the room, scratching his nose and seeming to realize that they were alone together in a darkened room.
“Ah. Your tea? You want your tea? Crap. I should have asked if you had to go to the bathroom first. I can take you.”
“No.” Her answer was resolute and final and deeply relieved both of them. “Just the tea.”
He was back in a flash and she was laying on her back over top of the covers.
“You’re hot?”
“No.” Actually she was freezing cold. Something about the combination of waking up in the middle of the night and all the trauma she’d been through over the last few days.
“You wanna get under the comforter?”
“The what?”
Kain looked like he was desperately trying not to smile. He failed. “The big fluffy thing underneath you. It’s a blanket.”
Valentina surveyed the gigantic puffy blanket with a critical eye. “Oh, for God’s sake! Who needs that much blankets?”
“Don’t knock it ’til you try it.” Kain carefully pulled the covers out from under her and pulled them up to her chin. She looked so little under there it broke his heart. “Here, Milla left these for you to take when you woke up. And, yeah, it’s time for these ones, too. These can wait until morning. Do you want something to eat with them? It says that you can take it on an empty stomach if you’re not hungry.”
She eyed the strange colored capsules in Kain’s hand. “What are you trying to give me?”
He had to laugh at the expression on her face. “Your medicine. Your prescribed medicine. I’m not attempting to poison her royal highness.”
She arched a brow. “I feel like a royal highness in this godawful bed. Don’t Earthlings have any modesty?”
“No, we don’t. We also take the medicine our doctors prescribe after we have surgery.” He jiggled the pills in his hand and when she still stared at him skeptically, he sighed. “Val, if I’d wanted to harm you, I wouldn’t have carried you five miles through the woods on my back.”
Something seemed to break in her expression and Kain almost regretted saying it. But then she was glaring up at him defiantly and swallowing down the pills.
That done and taken care of, Kain left her there, snuggled in bed and her eyes already drowsy. When he wandered back out to the couch and sat down heavily, he noticed John Alec’s eyes were open.
“Is she alright?”
“Yeah,” Kain kicked his shoes off and fluffed the pillow that Valentina had been sleeping on earlier. “She woke up and I moved her to the guest bed. She took all her meds.”
John Alec leaned forward onto his knees and glanced at her closed door. He raked a hand over his short hair. When he spoke his voice was quieter and rawer than Kain had ever hea
rd it before. “Something’s wrong with her.”
Kain blinked and pulled his T-shirt over his head, tossing it aside. “Yeah, dude. She got attacked by Hertian hunters and stabbed in two places.”
“No,” Alec shook his head. “I mean even more than that. The Valentina I grew up with could have taken three hunters with her hands tied behind her back.”
“Maybe they just got the drop on her.”
“That’s just it. You can’t get the drop on Valentina. Trust me, I’ve been trying for about 30 years.”
“I don’t know, man, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her. I’ve seen her in action a bunch over the last year and half. She looks pretty good from where I’m sitting.”
Alec leaned back in the chair and gave his hair one more tug. “That’s all child’s play. She could rob a band of slave movers in her sleep. I’ve been noticing that she’s been going through the motions more than anything. You don’t understand. Valentina, when she’s really on, there’s nothing like it. She can jump from one tree top to another. Two backflips without landing. She could literally fight me with her eyes closed and win.”
Kain’s eyebrows went up. He’d fought John Alec a lot over the years, running through all sorts of combat training. And he’d yet to win. Once. If Valentina really was that good, then maybe she had been holding back.
Alec kept going. “She’s lost so much weight. And she’s unhappy. I don’t know. I just don’t know.” He rose up. “She’s going to want to return to Herta the second that she gets well enough. But—”
“She can’t.” Kain shucked off his jeans and tossed them over the armchair. “After what she went through? There’s no way she’s just waltzing back there all by herself.”
Alec scoffed. “Try telling her that.”
A thought sifted down over Kain. “Why was she alone? Where the fuck was Williams the douche?”
“She didn’t say when she told me what happened. She just said she was alone when they found her. All three at once. They’d gotten the swipe to her abdomen before she’d even known they were there.”
