Mate Claimed su-4

by Jennifer Ashley

  What would it be like to have him say that to her every morning for the rest of her life? Heady.

  “Your room doesn’t match the house,” she said, to distract herself.

  “Mmm?”

  “Your room doesn’t fit. There’s too much space between it and the bathroom. It doesn’t match the footage in the hall.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Why squeeze yourself in here like this?”

  Eric shrugged, his body moving in a good way. “Diego and Cass need the biggest room, especially with a cub on the way. I like Jace in the front room, where he can come and go as he pleases. He’s restless. I don’t need much space.”

  “And these are false walls, aren’t they? You sleep in here to guard whatever’s behind them.”

  “I knew you were smart the moment I met you.” Eric drew a fingertip between her breasts, but Iona refused to let him divert her attention.

  “It’s not too hard to figure out,” she said. “What’s back there?”

  Eric swung himself out of bed. The sunlight fell on his naked body, bronzed from the strong Nevada sun.

  Regrettably, he pulled on jeans before he turned to the closet in the corner. He opened the door, revealing hanging shirts, pants, and a couple of jackets, then he reached up for a catch and pulled the whole closet away from the wall.

  Iona stared in astonishment as the closet moved aside to reveal a solidly beamed doorframe in whitewashed brick. The brick passage led to shadows, but Eric reached around the corner and flicked on a light switch.

  “Come on,” he said.

  Iona scrambled out of bed, pulled on her jeans and a shirt—one of Eric’s—and followed him.

  The lit passage ran five steps beyond the opening and ended in a stair going down. Eric flicked on another light, which illuminated the staircase and a door at the bottom. Everything was dry, dust-free, and very, very clean.

  “Careful,” Eric said, leading the way.

  Iona followed him on bare feet, the stone steps cool. The lights in the ceiling were nice canister spots, not bare bulbs, the walls finished and painted.

  At the bottom, Eric punched a code into an electronic pad on the wall, and the door—which had no knob—clicked open.

  “In the old days, we used elaborate locks that needed three keys in the right sequence,” Eric said. “Modern technology is so much faster.”

  He pushed the door all the way open and ushered her inside.

  Lights came on, flooding the large room Iona found inside. Correction—rooms.

  The floor opened out into an area as big as, or maybe bigger than, the house upstairs. A small kitchen had been tucked into a corner, and other doors led to more rooms. Most of the doors were ordinary hardwood six-panel doors, but one was a slab of steel with no lock or handle that she could see.

  The main area was a living room with comfortable furniture, a big flat-screen television, a computer workstation, and beyond a room divider, a pool table. A soft rug covered the ceramic tile floor.

  Iona looked around in astonishment. “But…where did all this come from?”

  Eric shrugged. “We pick it up here and there, over the years. Cassidy likes to remodel from time to time, and Jace likes gadgets.”

  “Without anyone knowing?”

  “We’re discreet.”

  Iona walked slowly through the main room, noting that the oversized couch and matching chair were made of finest leather, the rug cashmere, the television a high-end model that cost thousands. “What?” she asked, marveling. “No wet bar?”

  Eric didn’t laugh. “We mostly drink beer, and we only need a refrigerator for that.”

  She turned in a circle, taking it in. “Do all Shifters have this under their houses?”

  “Almost all. If a family is large enough to spill to several houses, they might have the underground area in only one house, where the whole pack or pride gathers. Cassidy likes to call this a man cave, but she’s got plenty of stuff down here too. Who do you think insisted on the pool table?”

  “But…” High-end penthouse suites in the best hotels on the Strip weren’t this nice. “Why do you live like you do upstairs, if you can have all this?”

  “Keeps the humans happy. If the dangerous Shifters live in near poverty, the humans think we’re under control.” Eric’s grin at her astonishment vanished. “These places are secret, Iona. Deadly secret. Only members of the pride or clan see them, no one else.”

  “Then why are you showing me?”

  Eric rested his warm hands on her shoulders. “I want you to see this, so you’ll understand exactly what we need from you.” He brushed his thumbs along her collarbone. “And because I’ve decided to trust you.”

  “Trust me with this?” Iona asked.

  “More than that. I’m going to trust you with this.” Eric took her hand and led her to the blank door at the end of the hall.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  As they passed one of the six-paneled doors, it opened, and Jace filled the doorway, half-asleep and alarmed at the same time.

  With his hair tousled, his green eyes, and his hastily pulled-on clothes, Iona marveled at how much he looked like Eric. At the same time he looked different from him; the shape of his face and set of his body had come from his mother’s Shifter family.

  She wondered how he’d gotten down here—Jace had been in the living room when she and Eric had exited the bathroom and gone to bed last night. She would have woken if he’d come through Eric’s room.

  “Dad?” Jace asked. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Showing Iona the vault,” Eric said calmly.

  Jace rubbed sleep from his eyes and bolted in front of him. “Are you crazy?”

  “She needs to see it.”

  “Yeah, but, you haven’t been thinking too straight lately. Cass know about this?”

  “She will.”

  Jace stepped in front of them again, putting his back to the steel door. “Only mates of the pride, Dad. Only mates. Or did you have a full sun ceremony without telling me?”

  “Jace.”

  Eric’s voice took on a note of patience, a patience so old that Iona for the first time was struck with how long Eric already had lived. He’d lost his parents and his mate, had raised his sister and then his son on his own, had fought covertly in a war to help humans escape atrocities, had made the decision to move his family here and let humans put Collars on them, had prevented humans from torturing his son by taking on that torture himself.

  The laid-back Eric, who lounged barefoot in his house or kissed Iona so sensually in the dark while he fed her chocolates, was a man of complexities and hurt so deep, she’d never understand it.

  “We need her to see this, Jace,” Eric said. “She needs to understand how to help us.”

  “Cass should be here, then.”

  “Cass needs to rest for her cub. Leave her be.”

  Father and son faced each other. Jace had the impatience of youth, Eric the calm of experience, but Iona sensed that otherwise, they were evenly matched. She wondered if Jace would ever decide it was time to take over from his father, and what he’d do then.

  She saw, in Eric’s eyes, that he knew that time would come. But not today.

  “Open it up for me, Son.”

  Jace sighed, took a small, round disk from his pocket, and touched it to a blank space in the door. The disk, Iona saw, had a Celtic knot design on it, but she couldn’t discern any place on the door the disk fit. To her, the door looked like an unbroken surface.

  A ponderous sound like gears grinding filled the little hall, and the door slowly slid back into the wall. Beyond it was, indeed, a vault.

  Eric led the way inside, flicking on lights as he went. The vault was long and narrow, taking up the rest of the space under the house and heading toward Nell’s side yard.

  The room was lined with shelves and niches, though, unlike in a bank, only one had a door with a lock. The rest of the shelves were open and held boxes
and small glass cases, with no organization that Iona could see.

  Eric gestured for Iona to look around. Jace waited unhappily at the entrance, arms folded, as Iona strolled through in curiosity.

  The collection looked like a jumble. Iona took one box off a shelf and found inside a clump of little plastic dolls with large eyes and tufts of long purple hair. She started to laugh. “Trolls. I used to play with these when I was little.”

  “Cass liked them,” Eric said.

  Iona put the box back, wondering why on earth they’d been stored in a vault.

  The next box she pulled out was lined with velvet and held about two dozen uncut diamonds.

  Iona nearly dropped the box. “Eric. Where did you get these?”

  “I forget. When was that, Jace?”

  “Eighteen eighty-two. From Africa. Grandfather traded for them—he never went there.”

  “Traded with who?” Iona asked.

  “Some lion Shifters,” Eric said. “They needed resources more than diamonds, and a safer place to live. My family helped them out, and they gave us a handful of stones.”

  Iona quickly set the box back into its niche. “What is all this?” she asked, waving at the shelves in general.

  Eric stood in the middle of the room, as nonchalant as ever. “Things our pride and clan have acquired over the years. Some have sentimental value, others more.”

  Iona browsed another niche and found an egg decorated with jewels and gold filigree set in a delicate gold holder. Holy crap. “Do the other Shifters know you have this down here?”

  Jace answered. “All Shifter families have a vault. Their pack’s or clan’s most prized possessions are stored there, kept secret from humans. Secret,” he repeated with a severe look at his father.

  “She needs to know exactly what her construction company needs to do for us,” Eric said. “I want her to understand why it’s necessary.”

  Iona looked around in still more wonder. “You’re saying Graham and his Shifters have this kind of stuff too.”

  “We all do,” Eric said. “Shifters live a long time. We watch the world change and see that the value of most things evaporates. But some things endure.”

  “And some of this,” Jace interrupted, “is from clan wars.”

  “Clan wars? You have clan wars?”

  Jace snorted with laughter at her amazement, and Eric answered. “We used to. After the Fae-Shifter war, when we found ourselves free of being fighting slaves for the Fae, our dominance fights began. Shifters being Shifters, we couldn’t help but battle it out to see who’d be in charge.”

  “Fights between species, and between clans,” Jace finished. “Bad fights, over which clan would dominate the others. We stole from each other, killed each other. In quieter times, we traded with each other, but there weren’t many of those.”

  “But…” Iona looked around, bewildered. “If you have loose diamonds hanging around in a box, why do you say Shifters were starving and dying in the wild? Why let humans put you into Shiftertowns?”

  “It’s complicated,” Jace said.

  “It is,” Eric broke in. “Jace is the clan historian and our keeper. He knows all the nuances. The simple explanation is—it’s hard to buy bread with an uncut diamond. If humans knew we had something like that, they wouldn’t stop until all Shifters were eliminated, and they had the diamonds.”

  “Not to mention the Fabergé egg,” Iona said.

  Eric nodded. “Not to mention the Fabergé egg.”

  “Given to you by Fabergé?” Iona asked, joking.

  “Yes,” Eric said, perfectly serious. “What you’re looking at are long-term solutions. We were starving and dying because we were fighting each other and turning feral, mates were scarce, cub birthrates were low. We came to Shiftertown to save ourselves. For now. We keep these things for what comes next.”

  Iona remembered what Cassidy had said to her the other day—that Shifters saw their stint in Shiftertown as a short blip in their history. They’d use their stay in Shiftertowns to right themselves, then they’d go on.

  “No wonder Graham is so cranky about having to move here,” Iona said. “That’s got to be tough, to require all his Shifters transport things like this, without the humans being the wiser.”

  “Exactly,” Eric said. “It’s why he doesn’t want to double up with my Shifters. We could share houses in a pinch, but never vaults. The secrets of each pack, pride, and clan need to remain hidden.”

  But members of families and clans could move in with each other, already knowing what the clan as a whole had stored, Iona realized.

  “That’s why no one wanted me to take the boxes all the way into the houses,” she said. “I thought one woman was going to claw me when I suggested helping her unpack. I thought she just didn’t like half Shifters.”

  “She was protecting her family secrets.” Eric gestured to the contents of the vault. “This is what I need you to understand.”

  To protect Shifters that weren’t even under his command, Eric was telling her, he was willing to trust Iona, to make her understand how to help them. He needed her. Hell, Graham needed her.

  “Is this why Graham wanted to mate-claim me?” she asked. “For my expertise on house construction?”

  “Probably part of it,” Eric said. “He wants to control you. Mostly, he’s a shithead who’s looking for any leverage over me he can get.”

  “Including whatever is causing your debilitating pain.”

  Eric’s humor left him. “Yes.”

  “We have to find out what it is and how to cure you,” Iona said.

  Eric came to her. “You’re an amazing woman, Iona.”

  He was amazing. Iona couldn’t help moving closer to his warmth, his heat and scent so right. “I’m practical. I don’t want Graham to beat you. And I don’t like to see you in pain.”

  “Good,” he said softly.

  Eric no longer looked ancient and wise as he studied her with hot green eyes. He looked hungry for her.

  Jace was no longer there. The smell of something delicious from the kitchen drifted down the stairs, and Iona’s stomach rumbled, her insatiable hunger raising its head again.

  Eric cupped the nape of her neck, his hand strong. Iona didn’t resist as he leaned down and kissed her, his mouth a place of heat. Iona sought him, needy, hungry, a growl in her throat. His kiss opened her, his hands stroking down her back, promising sin.

  “Eric!” Cassidy’s voice rang down to them.

  The word was steady, almost calm, but even Iona recognized the tone that said, Get up here now—something’s wrong.

  Eric had Iona out of the vault in two seconds, pulling the door securely behind him. He did nothing to lock it, but she heard the mechanism grate back into place.

  She saw how Jace had descended without her knowing about it, because there was a second door in the wall that led to another staircase, which spilled them out into Jace’s bedroom. Eric kept his hand firmly around Iona’s as he led her out of Jace’s bedroom and through the now empty kitchen.

  Graham stood on Eric’s back porch. He was accompanied by two Shifters Iona hadn’t seen before, all three carefully watched by Diego, Jace, and Cassidy, and by Shane, Brody, and Nell in the yard behind Graham.

  Graham’s glare was only for Eric. “Warden!” he bellowed as soon as Eric made it to the back door. “What the fuck have you done with my wolves?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Graham was furious, his eyes Shifter white, voice filled with rage.

  Eric kept calm, though everything in him came alert. He was aware of the exact placement of everyone around him, including Iona, standing unafraid by his side. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked.

  “My wolves. They started coming in last night and today, but about twenty of them are missing. Where are they?”

  Graham’s scent of panic overlaid his anger, his fear triggering Eric’s own uneasiness. “It’s a long drive from Elko, McNeil. Maybe some took it
slower than others.”

  “They all came together, asshole. In trucks and buses provided by the humans. Two hundred Shifters left my Shiftertown. One hundred and eighty arrived. Some of the missing are cubs. What the hell did you do with them?”

  Eric’s uneasiness increased. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure! When a couple of my wolves say they put their mates and cubs on the humans’ bus, but when the bus rolled into this Shiftertown, the mates and cubs were gone—that makes me sure. Bus arrived, they didn’t.”

  Iona broke in. “How could Eric possibly have had anything to do with that?”

  Eric understood why Graham was lashing out at him. Eric was the closest enemy, and Graham’s instinct to protect his people, especially cubs, was strong. He wasn’t bothered by Graham’s rage—what bothered him was the missing Shifters.

  “You’d do anything to weaken me,” Graham was snarling. “Did you make some kind of deal with Kellerman?”

  Eric made his voice hard to cut through Graham’s fury. “I wouldn’t kick your ass by abducting cubs, no matter how much you irritate me. Who is missing? Give me specifics, names and ages.”

  “Why? What do you know?”

  Eric thought about the line of buildings in the desert, surrounded by barbed wire—empty buildings—coupled with Jace’s report about the cages. “I’m not sure yet.”

  “I’ll kill you, Warden.”

  “This has nothing to do with me, idiot. We need to get those Shifters back.”

  “I might just kill you for the hell of it.”

  Graham could. He was enraged enough to take out Eric with one blow. Then Iona, Cassidy, and Jace would be on him, and Diego might just shoot him. Graham’s seconds would attack them, and so it would begin.

  “Don’t kill me until we find your wolves,” Eric said. “Give me a list of who we’re looking for, and I’ll get my trackers. The cubs are more important than our battle.”

  Graham stopped, and Eric watched him rearrange his ideas. “You do know something.”

  “There’s a place we found, out in the desert. My trackers and I could never get close enough to see what was going on. I’ll take you there.”