Shift of Destiny

by Carol Van Natta

Moira’s heart flushed with joy, but her brain knew they had some issues to deal with first. Starting with Lawrence Witzer. And her magic. And the fact that she was apparently a magnet to lazy-ass shifters who bought fertile females on shady Internet auction sites. Chantal peeled off to go handle an incident with some of the captives.

  As soon as she got close enough, Moira took hold of Chance’s outstretched hand. “We need to talk.” She laughed when she realized they’d spoken simultaneously.

  Chance snagged Shiloh as he walked by. “We need some privacy. Any place we can go?”

  Shiloh smirked. “Should it have a sturdy horizontal surface?” He laughed at Chance’s low growl. “The library has a room.” He pointed to the gym’s double doors. “Go right, past the intersection. First door to your left, then through the blue door marked ‘Shhhh.’” He waggled his eyebrows. “You can play naughty librarian.”

  Chance growled again, but Moira just laughed. Shiloh was clearly incorrigible.

  They found the room without trouble. It had six separate study desks with laptop computers and headphones. Chance rolled out chairs for both of them, but sat close enough that their knees wove together.

  She let herself marvel at his hazel-but-sometimes-amber eyes while she gathered her thoughts and her courage.

  “I let Witzer ruin my life for three years because I thought my only talent was running. Then I broke down in Kotoyeesinay and met you, and you showed me my magic, and yours, and ours together, and now I don’t want to run any more. I want to stand and fight. I want my life back because I have plans for it.” She took his big, work-roughened hands in both of hers. “Plans that include you, if you’ll have me. I love you, Chance McKennie.”

  He shook his head. “I need to tell you about shifters. Our pheromones are like an aphrodisiac to people with mate… some people.” His thumb stroked hers. “I’m highly attracted to you, so my body might be putting your hormones in the driver’s seat.”

  “Chantal told me about mates. I want you, sure, but that’s only part of the package. You’re smart, you’re protective without being a jerk about it, and you could have any woman you want, and still you chose me.” She smiled. “Besides, the big, blond, furry side of you is way beyond cool.”

  His head tilted quizzically. “You’re not afraid of me.”

  “No.” She studied his troubled face, trying to guess what he was thinking. “Should I be? I know we don’t know each other very well yet, but you’ve shown me nothing but kindness and caring.”

  “My beast scares everyone. Even my parents. I had to leave to protect them, because her cougar pride and his wolf pack hated me.” He said it like he was confessing to a dark, shameful secret. Her heart broke that people had hurt him so badly by rejecting the animal that shared his soul.

  “Pffft,” she said, waving dismissively. “That’s because they’ve never seen a Panthera leo atrox in the flesh.” She gave him a fierce smile. “Have you seen yourself? You’re magnificent.”

  He blinked. “A what?”

  “American lion. Ice-Age megafauna. Apex predator. Went extinct about eleven thousand years ago.” She lifted one shoulder. “It took me a moment to recognize what you are. I helped excavate a skeleton in Florida for a guy looking to make a private sale. He got a graduate student to create an artist’s interpretation of it, and the only thing she got wrong was your coloring and the thick muscles around your neck.” Intuition, or maybe her magic, bubbled up. “I’ll bet every mammal alive today has a genetic memory of being hunted by P. atrox. Ordinary shifters probably have a similar instinctive reaction to Ice Age shifters. You were all bigger and badder.”

  He pulled her out of her chair and into his lap, inhaling deeply as his arms encircled her. “I want to mate with you so bad I’m shaking.” He kissed her with surprising tenderness. “But you have to understand, it’s for life. We’ll share a mental connection. I’ll never cheat, because no other female will interest me.” He brushed the bruised side of her face with his thumb. “You’re human, so it’s not the same. You can leave. You would, if you thought you were protecting me.”

  She bristled at the sadness in his tone, like he was giving up so she couldn’t reject him like others had. “Two days ago, yeah, I would have left, because it’s what worked before. Witzer is obsessed and ruthless, and I couldn’t afford to make myself or anyone else vulnerable because I cared about them.” She pulled back to make him look at her. “All it took was one kiss with you, and I knew I wouldn’t leave, even if I should. I think that’s why ‘shifter-mate potential’ is so valuable. Not just because I’m fertile with shifters, but because I can form the true-mate bond.”

  Even the thought of leaving his arms at that moment was enough to make tears threaten. “But I’ll still be a magnet for the baby-factory auctions, and you’ll outlive me by centuries, if what Pruhon said is true.” She took a deep breath and let it out with a rush. “So here’s the only solution I can come up with. Change me. Transform me into a bad-ass, Ice-Age shifter so I can mate with you for a very long life together, and kill anyone or anything that tries to get between me and my mate and our children. Cubs. Whatever.” She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Your call.”

  It was hard not to fidget while she waited for his response. Despite her best intentions, insidious doubts began to creep in. Maybe she just wanted it to be the best thing for both of them, instead of knowing it to be true. Maybe he wasn’t ready to change his independent lifestyle or share all of himself with someone else. Maybe he was as scared of her magic as she sometimes was. She couldn’t do anything to stop the tear that fell.

  His hold tightened on her. “Moira.” He kissed her forehead and rocked her. “Claiming you will mingle our scents and take you off the baby-factory list. But you’re right, I’ll live longer than you if you stay human. I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but I’m not giving you up.”

  She let herself be comforted in the soul-warming strength of the man who loved her, even if he hadn’t said it. It had been a long damn night, and she hurt all over, except where he was holding her. She snorted with amusement through her tears. “Sorry about your shirt. Again.”

  “I told you, you can always cry with me.” He stroked her hair. “You can be a bad-ass Panthera leo atrox shifter with everyone else.”

  Hope flooded through her and she pulled back to look at him, surprised to see his face was wet with tears, too. “You want this? You want me?”

  He smiled and palmed her face. “How could I not?” He kissed her softly, but with the promise of so much more. “You’re perfect.”

  Her hormones woke up in a flash, and she kissed him with passion, nibbling at his lips, loving the feel of his soft beard against her face.

  He groaned and kissed her like he was starving. She loved how he teased her tongue with his, rather than trying to find out if she still had her tonsils. Her nipples hardened and competed with her core in demanding attention.

  He tensed and pulled back. “Someone’s coming.”

  She reluctantly slid off his lap and stood to face the door as it opened.

  Shiloh grinned at them both. “We found Witzer.”

  Chance felt the tension in Moira as they stared through the one-way glass of the interrogation room in the sheriff’s office. He slipped behind her and pulled her back to lean against him. She relaxed a little and voiced a small sigh.

  The dripping wet, bedraggled man wearing a rubber-ducky inflatable life preserver around his waist didn’t look like a monster. But neither had Pruhon. And Chance himself could be an eight-hundred-pound terror. No, a Panthera leo atrox. He liked having an identity.

  Shiloh stepped up beside them wearing a shit-eating grin, in sharp contrast to the patient neutrality he’d displayed for Witzer while in the small room.

  “What did he tell you?” asked Moira warily.

  “That he’s suing us all, either before or after he sends the state police to arrest everyone in the town for theft, kidnapping, assault, and more
theft. The theft really bothers him.” Shiloh chuckled. “For all that he thinks he knows about the magical world, he doesn’t believe half of what happened tonight.”

  Chance tightened his arms around his mate’s waist. “Where did you find him?”

  “In the outdoor dry sauna next door to Tinsel’s. His plan was to break in, shoot Moira with a wolf tranquilizer, carry her to his limo, and head to the helicopter.” Shiloh smirked. “His first mistake was hiding in Tinsel’s sleigh when Shepherd came to the door.”

  “What does Tinsel’s sleigh have...” Moira hesitated, then let her breath out. “Oh, her sleigh that actually flies.”

  “Yup,” agreed Shiloh. “It shot off into the night at eighty miles an hour and did about fifteen minutes of barrel rolls before dumping him into the swimming pool. Luckily for him, some kids were already in the pool, even though they weren’t supposed to be, because he can’t swim. Young Casey saved him by teleporting the life preserver on him and casting a spell so it lifted him six feet above the water. Casey couldn’t figure out how to get him down, though, and the kids thought they’d get in trouble, so they hid him in the sauna, figuring the spell would eventually wear off.”

  Moira shook with laughter. “Then what?”

  “Tinsel heard him shouting, and called us.” Shiloh snorted. “He thinks the sleigh was picked up by a helicopter, and that he was held up by some sort of crane over the pool. He won’t let us take the preserver off because it’s evidence. He doesn’t trust, and I quote, ‘the dumb-as-a-rock sheriff of a nothing-burger town’ to handle it properly.”

  Chance shook his head. “So what are you going to do with him?”

  Shiloh shrugged. “The usual, probably. Wipe his memory and send him on his way, along with his sons.”

  Moira pulled out of his arms to face Shiloh. “You can’t do that.”

  Shiloh raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

  Moira waved toward the man sitting in the interrogation room grinding his teeth and drumming his fingers on the table. “He’s a very rich, powerful man with dozens of public companies and even more shady deals with very dangerous people. If he’s suddenly missing days from his memory, he’ll hire people to track down what happened to him, and they’ll find you.” She started to shove her hands in her pockets, but grabbed Chance’s hand instead. “All of you here are amazing, and powerful in your own right, but they’ll keep coming because Witzer won’t let it go. He’s been obsessed with me for three years, chasing me for all over the continent for my magic. Think what he’d do to a whole town full of psychics, not to mention elves and shifters.”

  Shiloh’s eyes narrowed in thought. “I wish the sheriff was here. I think I need to call the town council.”

  “I know you all don’t know me from Eve, but I know how to derail him for good.”

  Chance felt the subtle flare of her magic, and he smiled. Her luck was about to tilt the universe in her favor, just like his own luck had brought them together. He squeezed her hand and smiled. She moved closer and leaned against his chest. “But first, could I go home with my mate-to-be and get cleaned up? I don’t want to meet the council looking like a train wreck.”

  14

  Chance was in heaven and hell. He and his mate were safe behind powerful wards, and comfortably cozy in Tinsel’s castle’s Lost Princess room, and she was in the shower. Through the steam, she smelled divine. His body thrummed with the need to join with Moira. But as much as he wanted to consummate their mating, they hadn’t talked about having children, or at least so soon.

  He’d insisted she use the bathroom first, then ran out to his truck get his own backpack with an extra set of clothes, and more importantly, condoms.

  He was just putting his socks with his boots when she stepped out of the bathroom, gloriously and proudly naked, with a sultry gleam in her eye as she took in the fact that his jeans outlined his erection. His beast surged, and he panicked. He grabbed the towel from her hair and wrapped it around her and frantically thought human thoughts. The alarm code for Turn of the Cards. Stacking furniture in the extra bedroom. Breaking the bedpost when she’d given him the best oral sex he’d ever had. Dammit.

  He scooped her into his arms and carried her to the wide canopy bed that looked like it had belonged in a fantasy dream sequence. He laid her out on the bed, then stepped back.

  She rolled to her side and raised herself up on one elbow. “Chance, talk to me.”

  “I’m not in control right now. I don’t want to hurt you. I have condoms.” He rocked from one foot to the other, knowing he was sounding like a goofball again.

  “I’ve seen your beautiful amber eyes before, and God, I hope I get to feel that tongue again. I have a birth control implant. The only way you’ll hurt me is if you don’t make love with me.”

  She pulled the towel off and cupped her breast with its stiffened nipple. Her words penetrated his desire-addled brain. Implant meant yes sex, no baby. He stripped, with no idea where his clothes went.

  He crawled onto the bed and stalked his mate on hands and knees. She smiled and opened her legs in blatant invitation. “I’ve been dreaming of this.” Her hands shaped the muscles of his arms and shoulders.

  He swooped in for a kiss, remembering at the last second to avoid bumping her sore nose. He felt fleeting satisfaction of having killed the wolf that had done it, but rational thoughts dissolved when he tasted her. He kissed and licked his way to her beautiful breasts with their dark, tight nipples that delighted his tongue. Her moans of pleasure made his erection pulse in counter-rhythm. He continued his journey downward, noting each bruise he found and wishing he had magic to heal them with a kiss.

  Her stomach was quivering by the time he got to the juncture of her splayed legs. He greedily licked the moisture he found there, then set about drawing more from her.

  He borrowed a touch of his beast to lengthen and add texture to his tongue, then penetrated her core, enjoying the feel of her soft tissues clenching around him. He buried his nose in her pubic hair and filled his lungs with her scent. He was totally addicted to it. He was sure he’d need a fix at least once a day for the rest of his life.

  He withdrew and entered her with his fingers, while his tongue found and caressed her swollen clit. Her inarticulate cries were almost continuous now as the tension in her clit increased. He scissored his fingers inside her, needing her to be ready, because his dick was so hard he could use it to pound nails.

  “Make me come, Chance,” she breathed. “Then make me yours.”

  He couldn’t deny his mate.

  Moira balanced on the edge of bliss, wanting both to savor the moment and succumb to the pleasure. But she needed him inside her, needed him to come inside her, needed to wrap her body and her magic around him.

  He must have heard her plea, because his tongue unerringly found the perfect spot. He purred, and she was gone. Sharp pleasure made her whole body spasm, drawing noisy gasps from her throat. Another flick of his tongue sent a second wave crashing through her, arching her back in response.

  He slid up her damp body, like he was marking himself with her sweat. She smiled at the intent look on his face and kissed him. “I love you.” She reached between them and found his penis, moist at the tip and straining underneath. She raised her hips and guided him to her entrance.

  His eyes turned fully amber as he sank slowly into her, their shared juices making the way slick and easy. His erection jerked in her, and her muscles clenched him in return.

  “Give us what we both need, Chance. Make us one.”

  He growled and began thrusting, slowly and deliberately, kissing whatever his mouth could get to. She stroked his back and muscular butt with teasing fingertips, needing the weight of him on top of her and inside her to keep her from flying away.

  His thrusts sped up, and she raised her legs to wrap around his. He began a sexy purr that sent a thrill through her. His lip curled away to reveal pointed teeth. She had a moment’s trepidation about being bitten, but he sho
ok his head rapidly, and the pointed teeth were gone.

  The rubbing of his fiery red pubic hair against her clit was building another orgasm in her. She clutched his ass and urged him faster and deeper. His thrusts became erratic, and his purr turned into a growl. She slid her hand between them to feel the strength of him as he entered her, then moved to circle her clit with her fingertip. “Now, Chance.”

  He snarled as the first shock of bliss washed over her. His body stiffened. Powerful jerks of his penis inside her were followed by a warmth that began deep inside her and spread to her pelvis and up through her torso. Something in her reached for him and found two spirits, intertwined, opening to let her weave herself between them, becoming a solid single strand. The unearthly beauty of the shining cord that was their mate bond brought tears to her eyes.

  Now, we are one, thought Chance. You can’t smell it yet, but my beast mingled our scents to make a new one that we share.

  Good. I am yours and you are mine.

  She would have been content to drift there for hours, crooning to the big cat inside him and letting her magic dance over his human skin, as he wrapped her in the silk comforter and nuzzled her neck, purring. Unfortunately, the real world, in the form of both her and Chance’s cellphones ringing out simultaneously, demanded attention.

  She found hers first and answered, putting it on speaker.

  “Did I call at a good time?” Shiloh asked, then laughed at Chance’s growl. “The council wants to hear Moira’s plan for Witzer and company. They’ll meet you for breakfast at the Blue Fairy in an hour.”

  Chance frowned, and she felt his protectiveness surge.

  “We’ll be there,” she said firmly, then ended the call. She palmed the scowling face of her true mate—she loved saying that—and brushed his cheek with her thumb. “If we don’t deal with this now, we’ll always be a target. Trust me, life on the run is the pits.”

  “I know. I got a sense of your plan from your mind, and it’s clever.” He kissed her palm. “Like you.” He sighed. “I just don’t like the risk to the woman I love.”