Shift of Destiny

by Carol Van Natta

  Tinsel’s magical frosty air conditioning offered welcome comfort, especially after the pleasurable exertion of making love. His poor mate needed the cool air just as badly—female Panthera leo atroxes were designed for the Ice Age, too.

  He’d been terrified he’d screw up her change, and made Shiloh and his husband, who turned out to be a jaguar demigod from South America, stay on call until he was sure she’d made the transition and would thrive. Her beast was the noblest creature he’d ever seen, and she took to four-footed movements with amazing speed and grace.

  “Alaska.” He heard the yawn in her word.

  He shook his head. “Too political. Wolves and bears are constantly fighting over dwindling resources, they victimize the caribou shifter clans, and they all think they’re too good for the native humans. And if the oil rigs come back, it’ll stink on ice.”

  She snorted. “You’re a punny man.” She intertwined her fingers with his. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Michigan Upper Peninsula. Introduce me to your foster parents, so they see I’m not a monster and quit worrying so much.”

  “It was just the one email. I think they were afraid I’d joined a cult or something. I couldn’t very well tell them we’re staying in Kotoyeesinay because the elves granted me sanctuary so I can learn magic, and get better at turning into a prehistoric beast who could catch and eat a moose for breakfast.” She sighed. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your parents?”

  “Fifteen years. I miss them, but in shifter years, that’s like last week. I doubt anything has changed in the cold war between the cougars and the wolves, and two Pantheras in their midst would be like throwing a lighted match on gasoline.”

  She was quiet for a long while.

  “Maybe,” she said thoughtfully, “we should quit trying to fly against the wind, and just go where our luck blows us, as long as it’s someplace north. I don’t think I could stand anywhere warmer, now that I can get furry. Iolo’s remodeling is done, and Tinsel is losing money for this room because she won’t let us pay her.” She rolled onto her side and rested her head on his shoulder. “If we come back by winter, maybe we could find our own place, farther away from the other shifters, so we don’t make them so nervous. Maybe even build a house, if we trade our finding magic for someone’s conjuring magic.” She chuckled. “With what Iolo overpaid us, we could build a mansion. He really has no sense of money.”

  It was his turn to be quiet. “I’d like that. I’ve been traveling so long that I never even imagined owning a house and land.”

  “Me, either. I used to think I was born without the nesting gene that most women seem to have.” She kissed his chest. “Turns out, I just needed to find the right someone to nest with.” She put her hand on his chest. “But I still want to go north. We could just drive there and see what there is to see.”

  “You’re okay with that? I thought women liked itineraries and stuff.”

  “I’m part Romani. Apparently traveling is in my blood, if my grandfather’s journal is anything to go by. The open road called to him.”

  He pulled her closer. “I love you.” He sent the depth of emotion behind his words over their mating bond. He didn’t say it often enough.

  “You don’t have to say it, love.” She draped her leg over his and patted her hand over his heart. “I feel it.”

  Chance stretched out his new, stronger magic to turn off the bedside lamp, leaving them bathed in moonlight from the skylight. He was learning his magic just as Moira was learning hers. He took a long moment to savor the luck that had brought him his destiny. His Moira.

  The painted canopy of stars reminded him of his childhood home, where the nearest city lights were hundreds of miles away. “How about the Northwest Territories in Canada?” Big, and far enough away from the Yukon to keep his parents safe. Arctic air, trees, mountains, good hunting. He’d enjoy introducing his mate to the simple animal joys of chasing snowshoe rabbits and hunting by moonlight.

  A subtle wave of confluence magic washed over him.

  “Fort LeBlanc,” she said sleepily.

  “What?” He turned to look at her, but her eyes were closed.

  “We have to help the dire wolves.”

  Thank you for reading Shift of Destiny, the second story in the Ice Age Shifters series. If you liked it, please post a quick review, so other readers can enjoy it, too.

  There are more stories in the Ice Age Shifters series. Sign up for my newsletter at http://bit.ly/CVN-news so you won’t miss finding out about new books.

  Thanks to my brave and honest beta readers and typo hunters, my professional editor Shelley Holloway, my talented cover designer Amanda Kelsey, and my equally talented illustrator Sam Salas.

  Book 3 in the series is Heart of a Dire Wolf. See the end of this book for a free excerpt.

  Also by Carol Van Natta

  Paranormal Romance

  Shifter Mate Magic (Ice Age Shifters #1)

  Shift of Destiny (Ice Age Shifters #2)

  Heart of a Dire Wolf (Ice Age Shifters #3)

  Dire Wolf Wanted (Ice Age Shifters #4)

  In Graves Below (Magic, NM)

  .

  Space Opera - Central Galactic Concordance Series

  Last Ship Off Polaris-G (Novella)

  Overload Flux (Book 1)

  Minder Rising (Book 2)

  Zero Flux (Novella)

  Pico’s Crush (Book 3)

  Pet Trade (Novella)

  Jumper’s Hope (Book 4)

  Spark Transform (Book 5)

  Central Galactic Concordance Collection Books 1-3

  Retro Science Fiction Comedy

  Hooray for Holopticon

  Free Excerpt from Heart of a Dire Wolf (Ice Age Shifters Book 3)

  Location Unknown ~ Autumn ~ Present Day

  Skyla Chekal wrinkled her nose when she got a whiff of herself as she rolled over on the thin pad to face the cell bars. Despite the forceful ventilation system, despite periodic hose-downs, and despite the heavy-duty suppression spells and magical dampeners, prison stank.

  She was definitely adding to the stench. The shapeless gray sweatpants and loose T-shirt issued to her clung to her in uncomfortable places. She desperately needed a thirty-minute hot shower to wash off the pervasive odors of fear, rage, despair, and confinement stress. She was lucky. Unlike most shifters, she could tolerate small, enclosed spaces for long periods. She’d have never completed her doctorate without being able to practically live in classrooms and libraries, some a lot smaller than her thirteen-by-nineteen-foot holding cell.

  Every high-pitched whine of a miserable fairy or keening shifter increasingly grated on her nerves. The magical sound dampeners had obviously been designed and cast by wizards with normal human hearing. It apparently hadn’t occurred to them that shifters and other magical creatures had a wider range.

  None of the unwilling guests she’d talked to in the underground complex had any idea where in the world they all were, and she’d lost track of time. She didn’t know if it had been four weeks or five since she and her older sister Rayne had been ambushed in a Los Angeles alley.

  It had been only chance that she and Rayne were together at all. Rayne’s job as an investigator took her away from her Los Angeles apartment more often than not, and Skyla lived in Santa Barbara while she finished her doctorate. She’d driven to L.A. for a dinner with Rayne to celebrate the submittal of her dissertation just that morning.

  Getting her doctorate was the first big milestone on her plan for a teaching career mixed with research. If she lived through this, she hoped the university would grant her an extension for missing her dissertation defense appointment. Not every student could say they’d been kidnapped to be sold into magical slavery.

  She’d only glimpsed Rayne a few times since awakening in the sterile exam room and being shoved in a cell, and she worried about how her active, outdoorsy, do-it-now sister was handling being caged. Their jailers did everything possible to keep their magi
cal prisoners off balance and under control, including shuffling cell assignments, and unpredictable schedules for feeding time and lights out. The trips to the auction block, where shifters were poked, prodded, bullied, and sometimes bloodied by prospective buyers, seemed equally random.

  In the semi-darkness, Skyla inched herself as close as she dared to the dangerous bars. Their magical punch could knock her out for hours, but she’d discovered that very power created a neutral zone for some of the suppression spells. Knowledge had power of its own. The more she knew about the magical protections, the mix of human and non-human guards who had defensive spells and weapons galore, and what kinds of shifters were in the holding cells, the better chance she had to reunite with her sister and escape. Skyla wasn’t fearless or a natural leader like Rayne, so even if she could figure out how to escape her cell, she couldn’t leave without her sister.

  And, if the moon goddess cared anything for the lives of individual shifters, Skyla also wasn’t leaving without her mate.

  At least, she thought that singular, toe-curling, breathtaking scent had to be that of her mate. It was just like her mated friends described—the most attention-getting, enticing scent in the world, that made her want to roll in it, until it saturated every cell in her body. That made her want to jump his bones before even finding out his name. That made her ready to embrace whatever species he was.

  Because, of course, the best possible time to run across one’s true mate was as a prisoner, under constant threat of death or worse, and looking—and smelling—like something a buzzard stole from a lizard.

  She’d moved her sleeping pad close to the deadly bars just to catch occasional whiffs of that scent. She was pretty sure her mate was male, because while she liked women, she’d never desired sex with them. She wished she knew what he looked like, or at least knew his name, but she’d take what she could get. She was fortunate; some shifters went centuries, or even a lifetime, without ever finding a mate. Her well-hidden inner beast stopped its near-constant howling whenever she smelled his scent, and she even managed a few hours of sleep when the overhead lights were out.

  From the far back corner of her cell, she heard the low-pitched growl of her latest roommate. The guards who’d shoved her into the new cell warned her that, despite his pronounced palsy, he was feral—human-shaped but with the mind of his beast—and dangerous.

  She had the impression he’d been captive for a long time. Apparently, no one had wanted to buy a shifter who couldn’t talk, shook like he was having a seizure, and couldn’t be forced to shift into his animal shape. Bad dreams visited Lerro often, and the guards kept him drugged to the eyeballs and magically compelled just to get him to and from the auction block without a knock-down, drag-out fight.

  To honor Lerro’s bravery and stubborn defiance, she’d been sharing what little magic she could spare to help his own shifter strength counteract the drugs and fight off the compulsion spells. She sent him a thread now, too low-level to trip the multiple magical alarms, but enough to help him relax into dreamlessness. She wished Rayne was there to help. She’d know what to do.

  Skyla stayed still for as long as she could bear it, using her magical senses to investigate the set of spells that controlled the cell doors. She’d never met another shifter with as much free magic as she had, and she hid it well, so the slave traders’ intake staff hadn’t noticed her talent. She’d worked out the rest of the spells in place in the prison area and knew how to unravel them quickly, but the door spells were cleverly linked to the central monitoring room and the identity charms and weapons the staff carried. She needed one of each to be sure she could break them all, and sadly, the guards weren’t cooperating by carelessly leaving them behind for her to study.

  She finally sat up, frustrated from wanting to be enveloped by the man who owned that scent, and her human form aching from the cold that radiated from the concrete floor. She considered shifting, but as stressed as she was, she couldn’t be sure her illusion would hold for any length of time. Her true beast could tolerate being far colder. Since being captured, she’d only shifted once using her illusion, and briefly, to avoid a cattle prod. The auctioneers thought they were selling a shy, skittish South American maned wolf.

  She and Rayne had improved the illusion spell over the years, to where it was almost built into the marrow of their bones, but it hadn’t been designed to be undetectable to prying wizards. Remedying that was high on her project list, right after breaking out with her mate and her sister and getting as far away as possible. Visualizing her goals helped keep paralyzing fear and spiraling worry at bay.

  The harsh overhead lights hummed and blinked on. She stood and stretched, then crossed to the small plastic sink and cold metal toilet. She used the toilet, then drank from the sink and rinsed off her face. She finger-combed her filthy hair, which felt like a bird’s nest.

  It hadn’t taken her long to figure out the auctioneers weren’t selling shifters for their beauty; they sold them for their inherent strength. Humans with shifter-mate potential got showers, soap, and new clothes to make them attractive to shifter groups who were too incompetent or corrupt to find mates on their own. Shifters, if they were unbearably stinky, got sprayed down with industrial hoses. She knew that better than most. Before she’d been separated from her sister, she’d tweaked their illusion spells to make them both smell subtly of decay and rot. She’d been hosed down eight times since her arrival, after would-be buyers complained.

  So far, she and Rayne had managed to keep their secrets, but every new day increased the likelihood that some asshole wizard would take a closer look.

  She rolled up her thin sleeping pad and stowed it on the narrow ledge at the back of the cell, per the rules. She approached her roommate and extended her toe cautiously to nudge his outstretched foot. “Lerro.”

  He gave a half-snort and turned his head. A shudder racked his torso.

  She nudged harder. “Rise and shine.”

  Lerro sat up in a blur of motion, snarling through unnaturally elongated teeth and striking out with fists and feet. Expecting it, Skyla jumped out of the way. She hadn’t been fast enough the first time. Her jaw had hurt for hours.

  He’d growled and glared at her every day since, but she refused to treat him like an animal. “You just aren’t a morning person, are you?” She pointed toward the cell door. “Unless you want to miss feeding time at the zoo, get up.” The guards only offered meals to awake, human-shaped, compliant prisoners.

  Lerro hissed at her, but the effect was ruined when he yawned. He clumsily rolled up his pad and put it on the ledge.

  She watched as he stumbled toward the sink. He seemed to be moving better than he had been before lights-out, after another failed trip to the auction block. She belatedly wondered if she was doing him any favors by helping him with her magic. If he seemed more alert and less damaged, someone might take a chance and buy him.

  She turned away to give him the illusion of privacy, even though shifter senses left little to the imagination. Every shifter was always aware of the private business and intimacies of others, whether they wanted to be or not.

  A phantom magical sensation alerted her to the proximity of her sister. Relief flooded her, because it had been much fainter for the last week, like when Rayne had been in Kenya last year. When they’d been young and untamed, their parents had traded with a golden elf in Wyoming for a magical locator link between all four of them. Her mother was dead, and their father had vanished off the face of the Earth two years ago, but the link still worked between her and Rayne.

  When she heard the chains of the shackles, she moved close to the bars. The shadow spells that blocked prisoners from seeing into the nearby cells didn’t block their view of the wide corridor.

  Shock froze her at her first glimpse of Rayne, who was surrounded by four guards and trailed by a fifth. Her sister looked like a feral version of herself, with unkempt frizzy hair, a bloody nose, and torn sweats with visible bloody whip welts un
derneath. Nothing sane remained in her half-shifted, solid brown eyes.

  Skyla whimpered. “Rayne…” Only the painful warning tingle stopped her from reaching through the bars.

  A husky guard accidentally stepped on the trailing chain of Rayne’s ankle shackles, causing her to stumble.

  A dark-skinned, black-haired guard thumped her hard on the hip with a metal nightstick. “Bad dawg!”

  In a flash, Rayne crouched and grabbed the nightstick with both hands, then used it to ram the guard’s belly. He folded and collapsed, but two other guards attacked in practiced unison, each going for Rayne’s knees with their batons. Rayne dodged by jumping, as if the heavy shackles weighed nothing.

  The trailing guard, a sadistic creature with tusks, horns, and an armored hide, hurled a sparkling magical fireball into Rayne’s back. Magical shockwaves sparked against the cell bars up and down the corridor. Rayne grunted and fell to her knees. She bared her elongated teeth and growled a bone-chilling threat. Shifters up and down the cell block howled.

  Skyla clenched her fists. “Rayne, stay down!” She couldn’t use magic to help, or she’d set off the alarms.

  Rayne sprang to her feet and grabbed the heads of the two human guards, then rammed them together and slammed them to the floor.

  Caged shifters cheered when Rayne bent a metal nightstick and used it to hook the arm of the hated, thick-hided guard. The fireball the guard had been about to cast skittered across her own armored skin like lightning, leaving a chaotic pattern of scorch marks on her arm and chest. The guard roared louder than a freight train. More guards appeared to wade into the fray.

  In the end, it took eight fully-armed guards to subdue one maddened shifter who had finally lost herself to mindless instinct.