by Eva Chase
Follow the crystal. The damned thing was literally a map.
CHAPTER 17
Ren
“ARE you sure that’s the right place?” West said, frowning at my phone. I’d set it in the middle of the table between the five of us with the map app open.
“Look at it,” I said, motioning between it and the crystal slab. “They’re practically identical. I poured over the entire country, and that’s the only place that’s even close.”
Aaron eased the phone a little closer to him to study it. “Sunridge, Wyoming. Do you have any idea why your mother would have wanted you to go there?”
“Or why there’d be a lovely picture of it imprinted on a crystal in the first place?” Marco remarked.
I shook my head. The muscles in my shoulder stung at the movement. I’d kept healing as I slept last night, but ruddy marks still streaked my arm, chest, and abdomen where the wolf had sliced me up. The pain hadn’t completely eased either.
“I’ve never heard of it,” I said. “Mom never mentioned it. But why would she send me to find the crystal if she didn’t want me to go to the place it shows?”
“We can make the drive,” Nate said. “Even stopping for the night, we’d get there tomorrow. We can figure out the rest once we see what’s there.”
“As much as I enjoy a good adventure,” Marco said, “I’m feeling weary of surprises at the moment. I say we don’t leave until wolf boy’s people are finished their patrol.”
He glanced at West, who gave him a short nod. “They’re still surveying the area around the village for any further signs of rogue activity. I expect them to report back within the next couple hours.”
“So we’re sticking around here until then?” I said. “In that case, I want to get in some more defense training.”
Aaron’s eyebrows rose slightly. “You’re still recovering. You shouldn’t strain your body too much.”
I pushed back my chair. “I’m not saying we go all out. But I need to be able to handle myself better in a fight. These guys are obviously still after me. That attack won’t be the last one. I want to know I can get through the next time on more than just luck.”
“Ren,” Nate started, but West glowered at him.
“She wants to train. She says she can handle it. Is she a dragon or not?”
Good question. My gaze darted to the ceiling. Kylie was lying in one of the bedrooms upstairs, resting from injuries she didn’t have the supernatural ability to quickly heal. It wasn’t just my own life at stake.
“I guess I’ll just fight West if none of the rest of you wants to come,” I said. West narrowed his eyes at me when I shot him a challenging smile.
In the end, all five of us tramped back into the clearing where we’d practiced yesterday morning. A few of the villagers trailed after us, but to my relief West spoke to them and they drifted away. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, jitters running through my muscles.
I was way too wound up. That hadn’t helped me any yesterday. Thinking back to my little interlude with Aaron—the part before I’d gotten distracted by his hands and his lips—I inhaled slowly and felt my lungs expand. In and out. Steady and even. I’d spent so much time hiding myself away, not even knowing why, but now it was safe for me to let my dragon out. Now I needed to.
Those rogue shifters who’d attacked me last night, they hadn’t cared that I couldn’t fully access my powers yet. They’d seen me as a threat anyway. Anger stirred in my chest at the thought, along with a shudder of energy like the flap of powerful wings. I could be that threat. I had it in me—I knew I did.
“When you’re attacked by someone stronger than you, there’s no shame in taking every advantage you can get,” Aaron said. He pointed to his own body. “We all have weak spots where one quick hit can do a lot of damage. Eyes. Throat. Groin. If you can get a strike in any of those places, go for it.”
“But maybe not while you’re sparring with us,” Marco piped up. “I’d personally like to keep the family jewels unsmashed.”
Nate rolled his eyes at the jaguar shifter. “Not helpful, Marco.” He glanced at Aaron. “Maybe we could find her a weapon she can get comfortable with, for the time being.”
“And break shifter law?” West shook his head. “Are you out of your mind? I thought the whole point of bringing her back into the fold was to settle everyone down, not rile them up even more.”
“There’s a law against us using weapons?” I said.
Aaron nodded. “The kin-groups decided together that no shifter should attack another with anything but their own strength. Our strength we inherit and earn; winning that kind of fight is a fair measure of victory. It also means most of the time no one has to die over a scuffle.”
“But she can’t use all of her strength yet,” Nate said. “If there’s ever been a time to make an exception—”
“No,” I said quickly. I didn’t want any more exceptions made for me. “I’ve got to learn to do this the shifter way. Come on. Who’s going to try me?”
Marco stepped forward with his crooked grin. I waved a finger at him. “No funny business this time.”
“I don’t know if I’d have called what we were getting up to yesterday funny,” he drawled. Amusement and heat mixed in his gaze. The memory of our kiss stirred the embers of desire inside me. I swallowed and raised my hands defensively.
That desire had worked in my favor yesterday. If there was some way I could combine that with Aaron’s clear-headedness and my anger at last night’s attackers...
Marco came at me with a quick feint and a swing of his fist. I dodged to the side and managed to land a kick to his knee. “Oh, you’re not getting away with that,” he said, his indigo eyes gleaming, and caught me around the waist. I managed to yank out of his arms, spinning around, my heart beating faster.
As he circled me, I reached back to last night’s assault. The searing of the rogue wolf’s teeth and claws slashing into my flesh. They couldn’t have sliced into scales. I could have towered over him, set him aflame.
Next time I would. Next time.
I held onto that thought, whipping a fist toward Marco and darting out of his reach. Tension started to tighten my chest, but I breathed into it, willing it to release. I wasn’t going to force my dragon. I was going to let it come over me naturally. Because it was who I was. Because those beasts had threatened me and the people I cared about, and I was not going to let that stand.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Aaron motion to Nate. “Let’s mix things up a bit.” Nate shucked off his clothes in a couple of smooth movements. Before I’d quite processed what was happening, he was loping toward me in bear form. Marco veered to the side, chuckling under his breath.
Nate bared his teeth at me, but his grizzly face managed to look apologetic at the same time. “It’s fine,” I said to him. “Come and get me.”
He bounded closer and loomed over me on his rear legs. One enormous paw swung at my head.
I ducked under it, my pulse racing through my veins. The gleam of claws and the massive animalistic presence brought back more flashes of last night. And more of last night’s terror. The sealed cuts on my arms and torso prickled.
I was stronger than that. I was. I threw myself at Nate’s furred legs, trying to tip him off-balance. He swayed and dropped down over me, but I rolled to the side just in time. My feet seemed to bite into the ground as I shoved myself upright. Power coiled through my thighs. An ashen taste crept up my throat.
Yes. He lunged at me, and I leapt to the side, faster than before. My haunches were bunching and expanding, unused muscles unfurling their strength. The armor of scales tingled over my skin from knees to waist. An itch formed in the middle of my back where my wings should form.
Let it come. Let it come. But as the sensation swept higher, my lungs expanding, a jolt of panic shot through me.
What was I doing? I couldn’t control it, couldn’t feel where it would stop.
I’d lost so goddamn
much. I couldn’t lose myself too.
The thoughts didn’t make much sense, but they jarred against my shift. I stumbled and fell to my knees. Knees that were pale and human, peeking through the tears in my sweatpants.
I had started to shift. My pants were hanging right off me where my legs had swelled to closer to dragon size. I grasped the tatters, peering at the skin beneath as if I could will the scales to return.
I’d gotten closer. So close I could still taste the fire in the back of my mouth.
“You know, Sparks, I’m starting to think you want this to work less than anyone,” West said from the edge of the clearing. My head jerked up, my cheeks flaming.
Nate growled, shifting back into human form as he strode toward West. “Could you shut up for once?” he snapped. “I’d like to see how well you handled the shift if you’d gone sixteen years without the chance to try.”
“Nate,” Aaron said, and the bigger guy halted. The eagle-shifter turned to West. “I agree with him, though. If you’re going to just stand there griping, we don’t need you here.”
West scowled. The tension in the air wrenched at me. This was my fault too, the clashing between the alphas. Because I couldn’t do the thing I’d been born to do. Damn it!
Marco cocked his head. “Company arriving,” he said. “Come here, princess.”
He offered his hand to help me up. I clutched at my ruined pants, holding the larger scraps of fabric over my crotch. Marco smirked, leaning in for a second as I stood. “Nothing I won’t see soon enough.” His sly voice sent a shiver of anticipation through me despite my churning emotions.
A squad of shifters appeared at the edge of the clearing. West’s people—I was learning to read the signs. Canine shifters tended toward the lean and lanky, cool and wary. The red-headed one who looked like she was barely twenty-one herself I’d bet was a fox.
West stalked over to meet them. “Report?” he said.
“No sign of the rogues in a twenty-mile radius,” the man at the fore of the group said. “We didn’t even scent them. However they got here, they’re gone now.”
“Not too far gone, I’m sure,” West muttered. He turned back toward the rest of us. “If we’re going, we should get out of here while we know the immediate area is clear. Less chance that they’ll be watching closely enough to see where we’re headed. I want to hear the details, and then I’ll be ready to go. Sparks, get some new pants in the meantime.”
My bag packed and my legs re-covered by pants I hadn’t mangled, I went in to see Kylie alone.
She was sitting up on the bed, her back propped against a pillow, skimming her thumb over her phone’s screen. Thick bandages lay across her neck and her right arm, and those were only the ones I could see. A purple bruise marked her forehead. Our shifter hosts had washed the blood from her hair, but the pink tufts still lay more limply than usual. But she smiled when she saw me and set down the phone.
“Time to go?” she said.
“Yeah.” I hesitated. “I don’t want to just leave you here with a bunch of strangers, but we don’t know if the rogues will attack again when we’re—”
“Oh, Ren.” She held out her arms, beckoning me over. I walked into her embrace. I hugged her carefully, worried about her injuries, but she squeezed me with all her strength. “Don’t worry about me. These people are looking after me just fine. You’ve got your stuff to do. I’ll hang out a while longer, and Aaron said it should be okay for me to go back to the city by the time I’m all fixed up. You just have to promise you’ll come visit me even if you get all busy with shifter queen business, you hear?”
A pained smile tugged at my lips. “Of course. You’re still my best friend.”
“That’s right. Besties for life.” She let go of me to raise her hand, and we tapped knuckles. “Don’t get too distracted by all those yummy men either, okay? But you’d better indulge at least a little.”
A blush tickled up the back of my neck. “I think I’ve already got that covered.”
“Oh ho! Something else I’m going to need to hear all about.” She gave my arm one last pat and waved me off. “Focus on finding your mom. I want to hear all about the end of that mystery too.”
“I hope it’s a good one,” I said with total honesty. What was waiting for us in Sunridge, Wyoming? Another clue to another branch of this weird scavenger hunt Mom had sent us on, or some actual answers this time?
Was Mom waiting there? I didn’t know what I’d say if I finally saw her again, but God, I wanted to so badly.
“Go,” Kylie said, outright shooing me now. “Don’t let me hold you back.”
The guys were standing around the eight-seater SUV West had commandeered, as I guessed you could do when you were an alpha. The idea was that we could sleep in it overnight rather than going through the hassle of finding a hotel. And I suspected the guys liked having the extra space rather than being squashed into a regular car.
I tossed my bag in the trunk, and Nate yanked the hatch shut. Without any debate—or maybe I’d missed one—West climbed into the driver’s seat. Aaron got in beside him. He’d been studying the maps.
As Marco nabbed a spot in the middle row, Nate closed his solid, warm hand around mine. It was funny: Even though I’d seen him in his animal form more often than any of the other guys, and even though that form was the most menacing of the four, his presence wasn’t anything but comforting. Well, and maybe a little exciting. My gaze lingered on the muscles that filled out his thin tee, and a headier warmth pooled low in my belly.
He tugged me with him toward the backseat, and I came without argument. When we sat down on the soft leather, he wrapped his arm around me and tipped me against his brawny torso. I breathed in the musky, peppery smell of him. So fucking delicious. There were a lot of things screwed up about the situation I’d found myself in, but having these four guys by my side... at least, the three of them who definitely wanted to be there... might make up for the rest.
The car’s engine rumbled. Its vibration hummed faintly through the seats as West turned us toward the road out of town. I let my head lean against Nate’s broad shoulder.
I didn’t want to think right now—not about Kylie’s injuries or having to leave her behind, not about the rogues who’d tracked me down to kill me just two days after I’d found out who I really was, not about the quest my mother had sent me on. Drowning in Nate’s scent and the feel of his body sounded like heaven. If I lifted my face just a couple inches, I could have pressed my lips to the base of his collarbone just above the neck of his shirt and tasted him too.
But I held myself back. The other guys were right there. Obviously they had to know I felt this connection to all of them, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of PDAs. And anyway, I wasn’t sure I deserved to indulge after yet another failure this morning.
Nate’s hand rubbed up and down my arm. “You’re tense,” he murmured. “Is there anything you want to talk about?”
“No,” I said automatically, but maybe there was. “I just—I hate that I seem to have that block when it comes to shifting. If I could have shifted last night, I’d have destroyed those rogue shifters.”
He smiled. “You absolutely would have, Ren. But you don’t have to worry about that. You’ve got all of us. We’re not going to let anyone get that close to you again. We should have been more careful to begin with—I didn’t realize they’d be brazen enough to attack you that close to a kin settlement.”
Shit, he’d better not be feeling guilty. “It’s not your fault,” I said. “And I know you all want to protect me. But I want to be able to defend myself, like I should be able to.”
“And you will.” He brushed his lips against the top of my head. The contact sent a tingle over my scalp. “You’re comparing yourself to the four of us, and we’ve had decades to grow into our powers. I’m impressed by how quickly you’re discovering yourself.”
“Oh.” He sounded like he meant it. Was I being too hard on myself? I found it difficult to
believe, but the knot of guilt inside me loosened just a little.
I nestled closer to him. He lifted my legs onto his lap so I was completely cuddled against him. My great teddy bear of a man. His other hand kept up its caresses up and down my arm—and reached a little farther to graze the side of my breast. I swallowed a gasp, arching into the contact instinctively. Correction, my great hot bear of a man.
Nate ducked his head to nip my earlobe. My heart skipped giddily. “I think you deserve a reward for all your hard work,” he said under his breath, a playful note slipping into his voice.
“What do you have in mind?” I whispered back.
“You seem to be enjoying this.” He traced his fingertips over the curve of my breast again, catching the peak this time. I clamped my mouth shut against a whimper.
“The other guys...”
“Won’t mind at all. We belong to you, Ren. Whatever you need. Whatever you want.”
His answer brought back Kylie’s comment in the subway tunnel, about being with the guys at the same time. Nate kissed the side of my neck with a teasing swipe of tongue, and suddenly I was wondering what it would be like to have one of my other alpha’s hands on me at the same time. Stirring up even more of these heady sensations. Driving me wild.
The thought dampened my panties. Nate cupped my breast, his thumb easing back and forth over my hardened nipple. Shivers of pleasure raced through me. There wasn’t anything in the world I wanted more in that moment than to keep feeling what I was feeling right now. One last hesitation held me from completely giving in.
“I don’t think I’m ready yet. I mean, to—”
“Ren,” Nate murmured. My name in his low, longing baritone sent a flush over my skin. “You don’t need to do anything. Let me just do this for you.”
