by Seere, Diana
“Yes. Most shifters would. Most educated shifters,” Asher elaborated.
“Huh. I think I need some tutoring.”
“You’re the star student, Zach. Your fluency is unparalleled,” he grudgingly admitted.
“My raw ability is strong. But it’s no match for experience.” The look Zach gave him did not require more words.
“I think it most certainly is a match. If I had to choose between the two, to be quite blunt, I would choose ability. I cannot choose, however. All I can do is provide you with the benefit of my experience.” Asher’s jaw tightened as he restrained emotions he could not name.
“Which is extensive.”
“Yes.” And so is your innate understanding, Asher did not say. A preternatural feeling began to creep its way along his skin, starting at the base of his skull, radiating up and out.
He could not explain why, but impulse made him slide the third book on the stack on the other corner of the desk out from under the other, older tomes. Handing it to Zach, he urged. “Read these.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them. Start from the first page.” As the book moved from Asher’s hand to Zach’s, the man jolted. Ah, he felt it too.
A low bass. A hum. A frequency that called to him.
“Do the books do this to shifters, too?” Zach asked, giving Asher an intrigued look. “Like touching the earth?”
“No. They do not.”
Both men just stared at the volume.
“OK then,” Zach said, clearing his throat nervously. “Here we go.”
For the next half hour, Zach patiently read page after page, most of the words from potions or long genealogies connected to specific animal groups: ferrets, frogs, squirrels, otters.
Zach’s head popped up. “Otters?”
“If it has a spine, it’s a shifter.”
“No jellyfish?” Zach joked.
An extraordinary thrumming feeling rippled through Asher’s veins as the pages turned, even though the nonsense Zach read had nothing to do with Tomas’ evil, Samantha’s stunning beauty, or his own irresistible pull to her. The banality of the texts was its own haunting delight. Shifters had lived for centuries in simple, boring monotony. The texts proved it. Tales of small battles between neighboring shifter families, vying for land control and dominance. Old legends of marriage alliances between shifter groups, the linkage uniting subgroups and strengthening all. The potions. Spells from witchy shifters who used nature to gain power.
All of it seemed so quaint. Distant and yet palpable, but all vestiges of a way of life that had flourished. Succeeded.
Lasted.
The weight of maintaining that continuity bore hard into Asher’s shoulders, his conscience, his soul. And yet hearing Zach recite the mundane history of his people lightened him in ways he enjoyed.
“Here we go. Cats. Prophecies.” Zach’s hand faltered at the page. He paused.
So did Asher.
And then they both reached out with their left hands and touched a completely different book, one on the bottom of a large stack in the middle of the desk. Each shoved other books aside for the sake of access.
Their eyes locked.
Without spoken coordination, they both pulled the book out, Asher deferring uncharacteristically to Zach, who opened the cover and turned the page to the exact sheet of paper that Asher’s mind’s eye drove him to touch.
“In the universal year after the Mayans are proven wrong, the fox shall gain full power in a rising alliance with the king of the wolves,” Zach began.
The room spun. Asher’s heart pounded hard, his need for her on his tongue, in the pattern of his fingertips, his skin begging for her touch.
“Asher, I— This is freaking me out.”
“Keep reading.”
Zach swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing, a long, deep breath seeming to center him. “But do not be fooled, oh,” he continued, the words like a knife to Asher’s heart. “For only the pure wolf shall win. Should the fox join with the—” His words broke off suddenly. “The words just changed into Japanese! Ancient Japanese!”
“Can you read them?” Asher growled.
“Yes, but why in the hell would it—”
“In Japan, the female fox is honored for strength, intelligence, and the kitsune is a shifter. For God’s sake, Zachary, read the rest!” Asher’s need to find Sam, to understand this madness, was rapidly drowning out all reason.
“It… it doesn’t make sense.”
“You cannot read it?”
“No. I can. But the words themselves don’t make sense.”
“Just read it, dammit!” Asher bellowed.
“—wolf, both shall reign. If the wolf’s blood is infected with betrayal, the fox must kill him. She cannot alone. Tiny visions have eternal power.”
“Continue,” Asher urged.
“That’s it. The text just… ends. Abruptly.”
Snatching the book from him, Asher looked. Indeed, the last mark went horizontal, as if the writer were in a hurry.
Or worse.
The long, deep scratch of an old ink quill was savage enough to speak volumes.
“Fox?” Zach asked, voice deep and dark. “Japanese? I’ve never seen a page like that, Asher. I’ve been recording these old texts for a very long time now, and that—” He looked at the book with a healthy dose of fear and disgust. “Do you know any fox shifters?”
Fox.
In the universal year after the Mayans are proven wrong
The fox shall gain full power in a rising alliance with the king of the wolves.
But do not be fooled, oh—
For only the pure wolf shall win. Should the fox join with the wolf, both shall reign.
If the wolf’s blood is infected with betrayal, the fox must kill him.
She cannot alone.
Tiny visions have eternal power.
Fox. Betrayal. Pure. Tiny visions.
Closing his eyes, he tapped into the vibrations, finding her, feeling her heartbeat, seeing it in his mind. A work of beauty, her heart pumped, the four chambers a symphony. She felt him, he knew, her soft self opening like a lotus flower to him, welcoming his divinity into hers.
And then he saw her.
Saw enough to act. To feel.
To know.
“My God,” Asher rasped, his fingers curling so hard into the wooden mantel above the orange flame, the fire pulling him in, the color of Samantha’s long locks. “Samantha has done nothing but accuse me of withholding vital information from her. Of keeping her in the dark. Of lying to her. And yet all this time, she has been hiding the truth from me.”
Asher crossed the room in seconds, ripping the door open so hard one of the hinges snapped.
“Where are you going?” Zach asked.
Asher Stanton could not answer, speech robbed of him, not because of a shift.
Because he had only one word left.
Her.
* * *
More than a little buzzed from the generous splash of Kahlua in her coffee, Sam pushed the last flourless fudge brownie from the Stanton kitchens to Molly. To distract herself from the talk of fox auras, Sam had put on the blue dress, which was much too sexy for everyday wear. It was low cut, too short, and tight all over. But since a girl wasn’t locked up in a lab bunker every day, she’d decided to leave it on, just for the hell of it.
She’d indulged in a little brandy, too. When Molly had told her she could see a fox on her shoulder, Sam had been ridiculously excited. At last! She could claim some kinship with Asher that put her on the same level!
But it was impossible. Wishful thinking. Molly might be able to see amazing things, but Sam knew what she’d seen herself under the microscope: her blood did not contain the shifter traits she’d found in the Stantons or even the same mutations that linked Molly, Lilah, and Jess.
She’d said as much to Molly after ordering the pastry plate from the kitchens. But Molly kept looking at her—at her right shoulder, actually—wi
th a little confused frown on her face. It was a relief when the desserts had finally arrived to distract her.
“This is how I survive being holed up at the ranch,” Molly said, licking her fingers. “This. Right here. Oh. My. God.”
Sam poured the Kahlua into a shot glass and drank it straight. When her throat stopped burning, she leaned back in her chair and sighed. “I know, right? The cream puffs are good, and the tiramisu, of course, is divine, but there’s something about warm, home-baked brownies available twenty-four seven delivered in unlimited quantities for no charge that really makes me…” Sam trailed off, searching for the right word.
Molly sipped her tea, watching Sam eagerly. “Horny?”
“No!” Sam cried. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“Aw, you’re no fun. What were you going to say?”
Sam plucked a chocolate crumb from the plate and stuck it on her tongue. “Patient. For these brownies, I’m willing to be patient.”
“Foxes are patient,” Molly said.
“Will you please stop with the shifter talk?” Sam leaned over the table, pointing her cup for emphasis. “I’ve seen my blood. I’m not… one of them.”
“Then maybe you’re something else.”
Sam closed her eyes. She wanted to be something else, but wishful thinking wasn’t science. The first job of a scientist was to avoid fooling yourself. And you were the easiest one to fool. “I’m not a fox.” She rolled her eyes. “Even with the red hair.”
“I see it, Sam.” Molly stared at a point just behind Sam’s left ear. “It’s getting clearer, too. It wasn’t there before, and it was kind of fuzzy when I first got here, but now it’s bright as day.”
Sam held up the Kahlua bottle. “Thanks to the booze.”
“I’m not drinking that,” Molly said. “You are. But I don’t think it’s the alcohol that’s affecting the shadow. I think it’s something to do with Asher. You…” She trailed off, her blue eyes widening.
In spite of herself, Sam asked, “What?”
“Do you mind if I ask a very personal question?”
Sam blushed, suddenly afraid Molly was going to ask her if she thought werewolves were sexy. Because that was the most personal question she could imagine not wanting to answer. “What is it?” she asked slowly.
“Do you hear the Beat?” Molly asked eagerly.
Sam was struck by the memory of the unique thrum in her chest, the twin pounding that linked her to Asher’s soul in a wordless bond. “Yes,” she whispered. She was desperate to talk to somebody about it who would understand. “It’s… unbelievable.”
Sam set down her drink and put her hand on the side of her head. The ache was back, throbbing in time with her pulse. But was that the Beat or just confirmation that she had an infection requiring antibiotics?
“Believe it,” Molly said, blinking back tears. “It’s true then. He’s your One. I knew it, we all knew it, but this makes it official. Maybe you’ll turn into a fox when you mate. Lilah turned into a wolf when she—”
“Lilah has trace shifter genes in her DNA. I don’t.”
“Then explain the fox I see, Sam, because I see a fox and I’ve never been wrong yet.”
It couldn’t be related, but maybe Molly would leave her alone if she told her about that incident when she was a kid. “Fine,” Sam said. “When I was eleven, I was bitten by a fox. I was out camping with friends, and we got too close to a mother and her babies. I was just so curious, even then. I just wanted to touch one of them. They were so incredibly cute. Like puppies. And for some reason they didn’t seem afraid of me. One of them came over as if he wanted me to pet him.”
Molly put her hand over her mouth. “I feel a chill. This is your fate. This is something big, and not just about Asher.”
“I felt worse than a chill,” Sam said. “I had to get rabies shots. Those were awful. Seriously awful. Whatever you see, it’s just some kind of residue from that.”
Molly pointed at the invisible shadow only she could see. “It’s more than a ‘residue,’ it’s—”
A loud, sudden pounding at the door to the apartment made them both jump.
Then Asher’s voice boomed from the other side. “Open this door! Samantha Baird, you deceitful creature, you dare hide yourself from me?” More pounding. “Dr. Baird! Open this door immediately!”
Deceitful?
“Is that Asher?” Molly gasped, snatching up the last brownie before staring at the door.
“Deceitful?” Sam said in an incredulous voice. “GO AWAY!” she shouted in his direction.
The door flew open, one of the hinges breaking as a very angry, very properly dressed Asher Stanton stood there, his hands in fists, his jaw so tight it could crack concrete, and his eyes—those eyes—were shooting laser-filled daggers.
At her.
“I’m, uh, I’ll just— Oh my, is that Edward I hear calling for me?” Molly skedaddled.
“Deceitful?” Sam bellowed at him as he moved an inch for Molly to scoot by. “How dare you call me de—”
He closed the space between them so fast it was as if he floated, getting right in her face with a whiff of cologne and pure musk that made her throb in spite of herself. “You deceptive, sneaky, manipulative, ungrateful, lying wench!” The last word made her belly curl inward as she began to breathe hard, watching his face as it moved through different emotions with an intense flexibility she always assumed he lacked.
The marble-faced king was on fire, his heart on his sleeve, his livid reaction laid out.
For her.
Because of her.
“Wench! If I’m a wench, you’re a controlling, obstreperous, intractable prick!” She spat the last word out like a curse. His eyes widened, head tilting slightly to the right, her reaction surprising him. What the hell did he expect? That she would cower before the great Asher Stanton? That she would cry?
That she would submit?
“You lied to me!” His voice was a sonic boom, a supernova of fury, every nuclear bomb test, a mushroom cloud of outrage.
All his energy was focused on her.
“Lied to you about what?” she called back, her pulse taking over, blocking out the rest of the world.
She spent her entire life drawing and redrawing firm boundary lines around all the pieces of her life, her inner world filled with nothing but clear outlines around the different categories of experience.
Work. Men. School. Memory. Every waking second involved the obstacle course of emotion and reaction, of analysis and contemplation.
Asher Stanton blew every single precisely drawn line to smithereens, leaving an uncharted continent of Samantha with borders that were undefined.
And when something is undefined, it cannot be measured. Cannot be tracked.
Cannot be controlled.
He left her breathless. Gasping, pure emotion and light, all instinct and screaming need.
That was what Asher Stanton got when he looked straight at her and saw her naked, writhing soul.
And she saw his.
As his eyes narrowed and he took her in with a gut-wrenching silence that made her squirm, she felt her own tumult turn into a raging storm.
“Answer me, you brutish, vulgar, inconsiderate beast! You couch yourself in fancy airs and pretend your dignity comes from a place of decency, but you’re no better because you find rationale for your lies. Come out, come out, Asher Stanton and admit that you’re a frightened man who doesn’t have any answers. Just like everyone else,” she taunted.
The hand that reached for her came too swift to avoid it, his fingers twisting in her long hair, threaded with a mastery that made her gasp as he tugged, hard enough to stop her from running away.
Hard enough to make her wet, too.
Asher felt it. She could smell it on him, the sound of his breath making her ears send signals through her nerves, screaming and begging for him to touch her. To ravish her. To take that hand in her hair and have his filthy way with her, rutting and
bucking to wet, wild orgasms. She stared into those blue, steely eyes and took him on, full throttle, standing tall, breasts forward, aching for whatever this anger of his brought.
But what he said next was the last thing on earth she expected to hear as that sensual mouth opened, his lips curled in a sneer she wanted to kiss out of him.
“You, Samantha Baird, are a fox. And you’ve been lying to me all along.”
Chapter 10
He was split in two.
Not wolf and cat.
Not human and wolf.
He was rational and irrational.
And his irrational side wanted to bend Dr. Samantha Baird across the granite-topped dining table, roll her dress up over her hips, and take her from behind until she bit his hand hard enough to draw blood, the screams of her orgasms shattering his eardrums as she came and came and came, his cock deep inside her, making sure she knew damn well she was his.
His to fuck.
His to love.
His to tell all her secrets.
Just… his.
Shock made those lush lips part at his accusation, her eyes wide, pupils expanding, going deep and wide like the nectar of the split between her legs, pulling him in. His hand fisted in her hair. She liked it. He could tell. His cock was tight, so hard and eager to take her now and give her what she wanted. Smelling her need was an impossible dilemma, his fury at her deception his agenda.
But the body has its own plans, and soon it would take over.
Tugging lightly, he pulled her within inches of his face. “Tell me, Samantha,” he demanded, his hot breath bouncing off her porcelain skin. “Tell me about the prophecy.”
“The what?” she moaned, her words blurred by the unmistakable sound of woman on the verge of climax. What they’d done in the garage had been coarse, crude, an abominable approximation of sex that he’d broken off only because he’d felt the change inside him, this wretched cat coming out of him. She deserved to be deliciously cataloged, pleasured to the point of ecstatic release, to be unbound and unraveled by hands that could worship her as she should be. By a man who could appreciate her fully.
He was capable of exquisitely more.
