by Diana Seere
Gavin stared at him a moment before looking down at the bar where his fingers were white, gripping the edge. “You’re right,” he finally said.
Heart racing with pride—Zach had gotten Gavin to back down, which was almost impossible!—Sophia picked up the glass Gavin had just poured.
It was orange juice, undoubtedly for his beloved, the pregnant Lilah.
“Zach and I will each have a Bloody Mary,” she told Gavin, realizing she was too wired for coffee and it was too early for whiskey, even for her. She carried the juice over to Lilah, who was curled up on the sofa next to Molly, Edward’s sweet fiancée. Lilah’s impossibly round belly took up an entire seat.
“No sign of Asher,” Lilah said. “Did you see him in the hallway?” Like many pregnant women in their third trimester, Lilah’s face had a glowing affect, round and cheery. Sophia had never been one to like children, but she’d been gripped by a curious maternal sense after Gavin had privately told her of Lilah’s pregnancy, as if a locked door had been merely turned open, waiting for Sophia to poke her nose in and check out the scene.
Edward’s fiancée, Molly, had known Lilah was pregnant before the rest of them, but she’d erred in assuming it was one baby. The twins had been a wonderful detail. Add in the fact that Gavin and Lilah had chosen not to learn the sex of the twins, and the entire baby production was just too much for Sophia. Too cute. Too perfect.
Or maybe she was a little too envious. She wasn’t even close to having a case of Baby Fever, but she was surprised by the warm, fuzzy feeling she had every time she looked at Lilah’s beautiful, growing form.
Sophia handed Lilah the glass of juice, shaking off her thoughts. “No, we didn’t have the pleasure.” She was still flushed with pride—all right, sexual arousal—from Zach’s takedown of Gavin. “Sorry about… ah… earlier.”
Molly giggled, glancing at Zach with a twinkle in her eye.
Sophia wasn’t surprised by Molly’s knowing reaction, having already assumed Lilah would tell Molly about what she’d seen. Lilah and Molly had become friends while working at the Platinum Club and had recently discovered they were half sisters. And since they were both married or engaged to Stanton men, they were now inseparable. Both women, and Lilah’s full sister, Jess, had turned out to be related to one another.
Oddly enough, it was the shifter serum that Gavin’s biotech company—and Zach and Sam—had been working on that led to the discovery.
“No, no,” Lilah said. “It was totally my fault. I tried to get Gavin to leave you alone, but…”
“A fruitless quest,” Sophia said. “My brothers are hopeless.”
“Even Edward?” Molly asked playfully.
Sophia grinned at her. “I’m afraid so. Would you like to change your mind about marrying him?”
During the recent crisis with Tomas, Molly had discovered a special, mysterious gift for healing. All three of the human women—Lilah, Jess, and Molly—had turned out to have surprising qualities that were somehow related to a distant ancestor. Sam, studying their blood at LupiNex, had believed it was a shifter great-great-great-grandfather or even further back than that.
Unlike Zach, their abilities were in their blood, part of their DNA.
Zach’s abilities were wholly manufactured in a lab.
“It’s too late to change my mind,” Molly said. “We already set a date. I’m stuck with him.”
Lilah rubbed her belly. “I know what you mean. In for a penny, in for a pound.”
“Speaking of pounds,” Sophia said, looking at Lilah’s midsection, “I bought your little ones a present in London a few weeks ago. Don’t let me forget to give it to you.”
“Ooh, what is it? Toys or clothes?” Molly asked.
Sophia leaned closer. “The cutest little rompers. You know how all the baby things in America are either pink or blue? Well, these are the loveliest, happiest shade of yellow—”
Asher’s booming voice interrupted their cheerful mommy talk.
“What is he doing here?”
Sophia rolled her eyes. “Here we go,” she muttered.
“Don’t worry,” Molly said. “Edward has Zach’s back.”
Indeed, at the bar, Edward stood in front of Zach, facing Asher with a grim, determined expression. “I invited him.”
“I did not,” Asher said. “Mr. Hayden, you’ll be more comfortable waiting in your own room. Ariana will escort you there. She waits on the other side of the door.”
Edward’s voice was polite but firm. “He should be here. Gavin agrees.”
“I do,” Gavin said.
“What you or Gavin think is irrelevant,” Asher said.
“Listen, Asher—” Sophia cut herself off when Zach shot her a quelling glance.
“I’m here,” Zach said, stepping out from behind Edward, “and I’m staying. I can promise you, I don’t want to be here any more than you do, Asher. But what’s done is done. What’s been done to me has been done. Now I exist, whatever I am, like it or not—and I don’t. So give it up and start your meeting. I’m not going anywhere.”
While Zach’s commanding attitude was sexy as hell, his words stung Sophia. He didn’t want to be here? And he loathed his own existence, whatever it was? Given what they’d shared, she couldn’t help but feel insulted. She expected the pleasures of her company to inspire a little more gratitude and joy than that.
“While you’ve been careful to teach us this family is not a democracy,” Gavin said, “neither is it a dictatorship. Your wishes are not infallible, brother. In this matter, you must yield.”
“Don’t tell me what I must do.” Asher walked slowly across the room and sat in the large, solitary leather armchair near the fire, a chair they had subconsciously left empty for their eldest brother. Balancing an ankle on the opposite knee, he let out a sigh and said, “But we don’t have time for this. I’ve just received news I must share with all of you. Tomas is in Rome.”
Sophia watched Zach for any reaction to hearing Tomas’ name. Like Zach, Tomas had worked at LupiNex, although at a higher level. How much did Zach know about what had happened? How much had Gavin told him?
“What does he want in Rome?” Gavin asked.
“How did we let him escape Budapest?” Sophia added. “I thought we had him surrounded. Unable to travel more than a mile or two from that hotel.”
“Sophia, that is an excellent question,” Asher said.
She frowned at him, suspicious. “It is?”
“‘We let him escape’ is correct,” Asher said. “When it became obvious that he was preparing to flee, we decided to let him succeed—or let him think he had.”
“Why?” Sophia asked.
Gavin was less patient. Jaw tight, he approached Asher with his fists clenched at his sides. “You choose this time to play with the man? When my wife is on the eve of giving birth to our children?”
Asher’s voice grew quiet. “I assure you, Lilah’s condition is never far from my mind. This was not a time of my choosing.”
Sophia wrapped her arms around herself, feeling Asher’s unhealed grief as if it were a cold mist shrouding the room. “We aren’t blaming you, Asher. Tomas is an evil we all have to deal with. We all have a duty to destroy him before he can do more damage. Thank you for taking the majority of the burden upon yourself.”
Gavin took a step back, unclenching his fists. “She’s right,” he said softly.
“Well said,” Edward added.
Even Asher nodded, appeased.
But Zach, eyes wild with anger and incomprehension, clearly wasn’t having any of it. He opened his mouth, pure challenge pouring out.
“One of you is going to explain—now—what the fuck you’re all talking about.”
Chapter 8
There were more covert glances in this room than in any Agatha Christie mystery Zach’s mother used to read. What the hell?
“Asher.” Edward’s voice was low and gravid, without question. If anyone was going to tell Zach what was going o
n, it had to be the asshole. Fine. An asshole explaining all this was better than no one.
Asher just stared at Zach without comment. Frustration rose like mercury in Zach’s veins, heating him more.
“I know who Tomas Nagy is. He was my old boss at LupiNex. What the hell does he have to do with this? With me?” A sudden, cold dread made him feel three thousand pounds heavy, fear shedding off him like a dog’s winter coat, heat and change making him show his central self more and more.
Then again, Sophia was revealing her true self too.
True motivations.
“Has it ever occurred to you that I am being held against my will?” he persisted, trying to get someone—anyone—to give him information.
Sophia’s eyebrows quirked down, eyes darting around the room as if anxious suddenly. Then her chin tipped up in defiance, shoulders squared. He watched it all, wondering how to decipher it.
And caring less and less by the minute.
Or at least pretending not to care.
Not a single person bothered to answer his question.
“SPEAK!” he bellowed, enough to make Asher roll his eyes and sigh through his nose, mouth tight, eyelids hooded. The look was carefully crafted to appear blasé. Bored.
Zach had a new ability, though. He could sense the man’s inner state. And Asher Stanton might look like a stone statue on the outside, but inside, emotional universes swirled.
To everyone’s surprise, Lilah Stanton unfurled herself, Sophia leaning over to help her stand. Lilah’s enormous, bulging belly made her back sway as she stood and walked to him, her face twisted with a guilty kindness. She wore a long, diaphanous maternity dress with a simple gathering under her breasts, the fabric like gauze, in layers of earth tones. Adobe red, moss green, and sand beige swirled about her like a work of art shaped by a ceramics sculptor, the colors highlighting the lives that would soon enter the world.
Gavin Stanton watched Zach watching Lilah. His frown deepened.
Zach didn’t care. And yet, why would Lilah Stanton be the one to speak?
“Tomas Nagy took the serum that was in you and changed it. Then one of the men working for him injected himself with it.” Lilah’s hand, so soft and feminine, rested on Zach’s bare forearm. It felt like being touched by his mother when he was a little boy and ill.
“There are more people… like me? The LupiNex serum is being tested on other humans? How? That can’t be ethical.”
Lilah gave Zach a look of— Oh shit.
Pity.
“It’s not like that,” she started to explain. As she watched him with compassion and empathy, he picked up a subtext, his senses scrambled as they fought to find the truth of what he could feel in the air. His nostrils widened, smelling her pregnancy. Not Lilah’s body fluids but the pregnancy itself. As he observed her, a glow radiated to him. Not because she was so ripe, but because he saw it, eyes going through that odd depth perception shift until a strange sensation struck him behind one ear as his jaw clenched.
“You’re human,” Zach said to Lilah. “But you’re also a shifter.” He stepped toward her, hands loose at his sides. “You’re both, but neither. What are you? Are you like me? Did you take the serum too?” His eyes lowered to her belly, a shot of fear making its way up his back. What were these people doing?
And what did they plan to do with him? With Lilah Stanton?
With her babies?
Gavin Stanton moved between them, using his body as a wall. “How do you know that?”
“Know what?”
“That Lilah is both human and shifter.”
Zach sniffed. Looked at her. Felt the truth, the way you feel air itself. “I just know. Don’t you?”
Gavin’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “My wife is my business. Mine. Not yours.” One of Gavin’s arms wrapped around Lilah’s waist as he stepped back, curling it behind her.
“Oh, for God’s sake, I’m not a threat to her!” Zach called out. “I’m worried about her! Her and the babies. What are you people doing here? From my perspective, you’re experimenting on innocent people like me, like her.” He pointed to Lilah, moving closer to her, the image of the babies being used for some evil DNA experiment too much. It was all too much.
The room began to swim, his vision distorting, his skin turning to fire as hair turned to fur.
“No, Zach, you have the wrong impression,” Sophia protested, trying to explain. “It’s not like that—”
“Like those babies. Don’t you dare hurt those babies,” he growled, his voice crackling like the crunch of dead acorns on an autumn path, like running on rocks with boots.
Like he was about to shift.
“Zach. Zach!” Sophia grabbed his arm and yanked, hard.
He did not move.
“Zach, Lilah is a human who became a shifter, but through love. Not the serum. Not the serum. No one injected her or experimented on her. No one!” She grabbed his face with both palms, stood on tiptoe, and forced him to make eye contact. Her upper lashes curled against the bones of her eye sockets, touching the lower edge of her thick eyebrows, her mouth severe.
With tiny shreds of human thought remaining, he clung to the fact that the last time he’d started to shift, lust had driven him.
This shift was not triggered by lust.
It was triggered by protectiveness. By defending those who needed defense.
By making sure that Lilah and her babies were safe.
“How… do… I… know… this… is… true?” he said, words halting, Sophia trying to force him to breathe a pattern with her. The arms of his shirt felt like sausage casing, the rolled cuffs cutting off blood supply, his pants impossibly tight as his muscles swelled.
Believe me, Sophia said in his head.
I want to, he said back. Oh, how I want to.
“Do you trust me, Zach?” Lilah asked, giving him a look of such beseeching understanding that the switch inside him flipped as if someone slammed a circuit breaker to the off position, sending his white-hot fury into a dark, cold hole.
“Are you here of your own free will?” he asked, flexing his hands, looking around Gavin to maintain eye contact with her.
Gavin made a strangled sound of disbelief.
“Yes,” she said, stepping around her husband, then wincing slightly, one hand curling under her belly, the other rubbing the top. Her breathing picked up, a hitched breath turned from one she made through her mouth to her nose.
The room went still.
Seconds passed, Zach’s scalp tingling, his ears too sharp for his own good. He heard the babies—heard them—move lower, down Lilah’s body, their journey to this world a few inches closer.
“Lilah,” Gavin said in a husky, fear-filled voice. “You need to go back to our cabin. Sam needs to give you the serum.”
Zach’s eyes flew open, and he flew across the room, separating Lilah from her husband. “Serum? Serum? You said—”
The crack against his jaw as Gavin punched him felt like part of another man’s body.
In every way imaginable, it was.
But the arm that cocked back, shoulder engaging in perfect form, thighs tightening for the lunge, was all Zach’s as he punched with an uppercut that sent Gavin Stanton flying across the room, over the back of a sofa, and directly into a wingback chair that promptly tipped over, leaving Gavin’s lower legs dangling in the air like a puppet’s.
“GAVIN!” Lilah screamed, gingerly moving to her husband as Zach rubbed his jaw, his own skin like putty, his body purely human.
As were all his emotions, ranging from horror to marvel to pride to—
Oh fuck.
The room was suddenly filled with animals. A mountain lion. A bear. Three wolves.
And Edward’s fiancée, Molly, peering intently at him from across the room, right next to the chair where Gavin had fallen, in her hand a glass of wine that had clearly splashed on her during the melee, a long stripe of burgundy marring her lovely white top.
Step by st
ep she walked toward him, the mountain lion at her side, looking at Zach through slitted eyes. His own shift was there, so close, so close, and yet instinct told him to try.
Try hard to stay human.
Sophia moved to his left, next to him, her thick, scratchy fur grazing against a bare spot on his ankle. The weight of her felt like a boulder pressing against him. Her heartbeat rang through him, a gong without end.
The wolves just watched him, Lilah’s heavy belly standing out. Unable to tell the difference between the two male wolves, Zach just viewed Gavin and Asher as twin threats.
One wrong move, and he was dead.
Or they were, if he shifted. A part of him knew that. Felt it to his core.
But he had no desire to test it.
Molly reached out one hand, making the mountain lion (who must, Zach realized, be Edward) growl a sound of warning.
She touched Zach anyhow.
And relaxed.
“You’re nothing like Mason Webb. Not one bit. You’re so pure. In fact, you’re—”
As her eyes rolled up and her body went limp, Zach reached for her, helpless.
And outnumbered.
Zach tried to catch Molly before her unconscious body hit the floor, but Edward snapped at him first, the lion’s teeth grazing the skin over his jugular. As Zach recoiled, Edward returned to human form in a flash and caught Molly himself, his naked human body startling.
“What did you do to her?” Edward demanded, stroking Molly’s cheeks, giving Zach an incriminating look.
“Nothing!” Zach cried.
“You must’ve done something. Look at her!”
Around the room, each of the animals returned to their human form. Torn or discarded clothes littered the floor at their feet, though no one made an effort to retrieve them.
Zach was surrounded by naked humans. Grown men, a hugely pregnant woman, Sophia.
It should’ve been comical, but he’d never been so intimidated in his life.
