by Selena Scott
“Griff,” she tore her lips from his and tried to speak as his mouth kissed down her neck.
“What is it, baby?”
She thrilled, as she always did, at the earthly endearment he used for her. At first she’d been insulted, thought he was calling her infantile. But she’d grown to love it, just as she’d grown to love everything about Griff.
“You do too much for me. The soap. You know he’ll kill you if he finds out you’ve been taken care of in any way.”
She couldn’t bring herself to say the man’s name. As far as she was concerned, he’d stopped being her father many years ago. And he’d become dead to her the day he’d imprisoned a teenage boy. Used the boy’s daily public humiliation as an intimidation tactic.
“Alayna.” Griff rose up over her. He was both strong and shaky, a result of a young shifter’s body on Herta. The nature of this world was meant to enslave a person like Griff. A shifter. Most shifters who got lured to Herta from Earth didn’t last more than a day before their minds bended to Herta, before they searched for a master and became nothing but a shell of themselves, slaves in both their human and animal forms. But Griff had held out. He’d held out for almost an entire year. He wouldn’t shift and his mind just wouldn’t break.
It had angered Alayna’s father to no end. He’d taken Griff’s resilience as defiance and had taken to chaining Griff, every day, in the public square of the main city. Hertians came from far and wide to jeer at and ridicule the shifter who wouldn’t shift. Who wouldn’t succumb. And every night, they’d throw him back in his cold cell. And every night, Alayna came to him.
She could see his face grow very serious in the dim light of the cell. There was one small window at the very top that let the moonlight in. “Alayna, what I do for you is nothing in the face of what you do for me. Please, stop coming to me.”
Every night he asked her this. To stop risking her life to sneak into his cell. Because they both knew what would happen if she were ever caught.
But she couldn’t stay away. And he couldn’t turn her away. She was everything warm and bright and soothing in his dark, horrible world.
She lifted her lips to him and kissed him sweetly, once, twice, and a third time. “Don’t say stupid things. You know I’m never going to stop, Griff. You’re my heart. The only thing good in my life.”
He made a noise, deep in his throat. “You are my life. This is the only thing that’s real. Everything else is just noise until I get to see you.”
She scoffed. Only Griff could refer to being publicly humiliated and beaten daily as ‘noise’. She slipped her cool hands under the rags he was made to wear, traced them over his back. He shivered against her, gritting his teeth when she touched him. She swore she could feel the pain of that day leaving his body under her touch, like water from a glass on a hot day.
They were magic together. This was what she knew the best. They were magic together. He was stunned and gorgeously swept away under her touch and when their lips met again, there was urgency. But still everything was so soft. He lifted her skirt and his tongue mimicked what his body was doing to her. Pushing in and staying in. Like he wanted to drown in her. Like she was the only thing that could save him.
CHAPTER ONE
Earth, Present Day
Griff came in from the back door, stomping rain off his boots and brushing it from his hair. His body ached, as it sometimes did when he’d shifted into a new kind of animal. He’d never been an owl before. But this afternoon, he’d shifted into a crisp, white Arctic owl, so he could communicate with the older woman who came in the door after him.
She’d been much chattier than he’d expected.
His head hurt a little, too.
But he wasn’t going to complain. This was his job. His duty. He and his family–of sorts–were fighting a war. A war to free as many shifters as they could. And that meant crossing through portals from Earth to Herta, fighting their asses off, and returning with as many shifters as possible.
Griff didn’t mind fighting his ass off. In fact, he relished any opportunity he could get. The problem wasn’t the fighting. It was Herta. Ever since his sister, Ruby, and her boyfriend, Ansel, had rescued Griff from Herta, he’d never been able to go back. The rest of them could at least hack it in Herta for a few days, even though it was painful for all shifters. But Griff? No. A single foot into Herta and he was down for the count. Crippled by pain. It was like getting hit with a truck made of lightning. And poison.
So he did what he could Earthside. He welcomed each newly-freed shifter. Shifted into whatever their animal was, communicated, explained everything, helped them locate their long-lost friends and relatives. It was a good job to have in this war. One he was proud of. But it didn’t change the chronic, pounding panic he felt to get back into Herta.
When he’d been rescued back to Earth, he’d had to leave someone behind. And he knew that no matter how much pain entering Herta caused him, he’d never stop trying to get to her.
Griff led the older woman through the back hallway of Ruby and Ansel’s house. He knew what he would find when he entered the living room. And sure enough, there they were, his whole hodgepodge of a family. There was Ruby on Ansel’s lap in front of the fireplace. Milla and Inka, twins and sisters of Ansel, sat side by side on the floor, identical and gorgeous. Milla had a sly, calculating look on her face and Inka had her typical look of wonder. Milla’s husband, John Alec, a Hertian-born warrior, stood behind Milla, his arms crossed and a look of surveillance on his face. Inka’s husband, Matt, stood behind Inka, bobbling their baby girl, Carmen, in the air.
And then there were Kain and Valentina. Kain was the youngest in the Keto family. And he’d almost been killed in Herta tonight. Cut through the heart by a hatchet. Even with his prodigious shifter healing skills, he would have been lost. Griff didn’t know the whole story yet, but it was something about another shifter, one of them had healed him. One of the shifters that Kain and Valentina had rescued from Herta tonight.
Griff didn’t care what the story was. He was just glad for the outcome. His quiet eyes found Kain’s across the room, searching for any sign of pain. He let out a sigh of relief when his quasi-brother quirked an eyebrow at him, pursed out his lips as if to say, no worries dude, wasn’t a big deal.
Valentina, Kain’s girl and John Alec’s little sister, rested her head and hand on Kain’s chest in a rare show of affection. She was reserved, and at first, Griff had wondered if she’d been the right match for his effervescent, kind-hearted friend. But no one could mistake the love in her eyes right now. And Griff felt an involuntary pang of remorse for what he’d had to leave behind in Herta. He knew what it felt like to have your woman curl into you like that. What it felt like to look down into her eyes and see love shining back at you.
“This is Vera,” Griff said in that low voice of his. Everyone in the room quieted, turning to him. “She’s the owl.” He referenced the other shifters they’d also rescued that night. “The hare and the panther, a teenage boy and girl, are sleeping in their rooms. The fox won’t shift yet.” His brow furrowed. She wouldn’t speak to him when he’d shifted as a fox either. He wondered, as they all did, about the young woman who could bring a dead man back to life with just her fingers over his chest.
“Hi, Vera,” Ruby rose up, made room in front of the fire.
The older woman sat down, her hands clasped. “I’m sorry. I’m a little loopy. Never thought I’d see Earth again.”
So many shifters were utterly lost after the spell of Herta was broken. They’d spent God knows how long completely enslaved, mind and body. And then here they were, smack dab in the middle of New York State, expected to know how to pick up where their lives on Earth had left off when they’d been lured to Herta.
Vera leaned forward; she worried her hands together before smoothing her hair. “I’m leaving in the morning. I’ve got family in Evanston. Or, I used to.” She broke off for a moment. The pain of having been ripped from her life t
raced over her face. Griff had told her his story. He told all the shifters his story, so they’d know that he’d been through it, too. But he wished he had more to offer Vera in that moment. More than just sympathy.
“But I didn’t want to leave yet. I wanted to talk to the ones who saved me.” She nodded her head at Valentina and Kain. “I’ve heard of you people. The ones who are ferrying shifter slaves out of Herta. You do this often?”
Valentina nodded, leaning forward off of her man. “As often as we can. We go back and forth, fighting the hunters and freeing shifters.”
Vera covered her mouth with her hand for a second, as if she couldn’t imagine going back into Herta. Ever. “Did you see the fires then? How far they spread?”
Valentina’s eyes went to John Alec’s. They had grown up on Herta together and despite its many flaws, the complete destruction of it still caused them both pain.
“We saw that it spread over the mountains. To the east. But we stayed at the edge.”
Vera nodded. “Well, it extends much further than that. I was enslaved near the Hundred Lakes.”
“That far?” John Alec burst out. He knew that there were fifty miles between where they’d rescued Vera and the Hundred Lakes. That was a huge swath of land that had been burned.
“The fires go much further than that. Shifters and humans alike had been fleeing past our farm for days before we finally caught the scent of the smoke.”
“How far is the damage?” Valentina asked, her voice clipped and horrified.
Vera ducked her head, smoothed her flyaway hair again. “To the shore. To the ocean.”
Griff’s eyes snapped over to her. His gut had turned to knives of ice. If the fire had burned all the way to the ocean then that meant…
“The main city?” he implored.
She shook her head, unable to meet any eyes at the tragic news she had to give. “The main city is gone. When my owners fled without me, I flew free. I flew over. It’s gone.”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Griff asked. His voice was too tight to tremble, but he knew his heart hadn’t beaten since she’d started talking. It merely vibrated in his chest.
“Wiped from the map,” she whispered. “A wasteland now. There was a fight. A shifter revolt in the main city. The Emperor had amassed a huge army. They turned on him and his family. Killed them. Set the city on fire. But it spread. Those who could, fled. But the rest…”
Griff stood and shrank back into the shadows of the room, a panicked look on his face. He didn’t wait to hear more. He disappeared out through the back door of the house and into the night. He had to get away fast or else one of them would come for him to see what was wrong. Ansel or Ruby most likely. He had to get away.
But Vera’s words washed over him again and his knees buckled as he tried to walk past the guesthouse where the shifters were staying. The Emperor was dead. The Emperor’s family was dead. Which meant the Emperor’s daughter was dead.
The ground rushed up to meet him and the night air clawed at him as his body forced him to take a breath.
Dead. Wasteland. Revolt. Dead.
Griff tried to hold back his scream but didn’t completely manage it. His fists slammed into the ground.
“Alayna,” he whispered into the night as grief shook him like a dog with a rabbit in its jaws. “Alayna.”
He didn’t notice the little fox in the window of the guesthouse. Watching him.
***
Griff didn’t bother sleeping. He lay naked and panting in the woods, sticks at his back and the stars peeking at him through the tall forest of the Catskills. He was exhausted. His body begged for sleep. But he couldn’t.
He’d been shifted for a week straight. His longest stretch ever. First he’d been a hawk.
Just minutes after he’d gotten the news, he’d stumbled into the yard, doubled over in pain so bright he thought it must be killing him. And then he shifted and flung his way into the night. When his wings had begun to shake, and he knew he had to land, he’d become a snake. Large and ominous, he’d had dead eyes and a flickering tongue. And when the endless slithering whisper of his own body had become too much for him, he’d been a deer. Then a panther, and lastly, a wolf.
He’d eaten. But only because the animal inside of him refused to starve in the face of food. He’d fallen into a trance of sorts. But he didn’t think he’d slept in seven sunrises. And now, it was night again.
And he was human. He was now too exhausted to maintain his shift. His body would have trembled, with the chill night air or the fatigue, but his grief was like a lead blanket over him. Holding him down.
Alayna was dead.
That’s what the shifter they’d rescued from Herta last week had said. The Emperor and his family had been killed in a shifter revolt. The Emperor’s daughter. Dead. The words were foreign and stiff even in his head. They’d been on a torturous loop for the whole week. Dead.
Griff’s gorgeous, pouty, regal, sweet, soothing, snappy, flirty little princess was gone. And he’d done nothing to stop it.
He’d tried. So many times over the years he’d tried. He’d tried to go through the portals with his family, he’d tried to rescue shifters. He’d tried so hard. But after his year in Herta, it was like his body had given out in terms of resistance. Every time he’d gone back through a portal, he’d almost immediately succumbed. His family always barely had time to get him back through.
And he couldn’t ask one of his family to rescue her without him being there. She was in the most dangerous part of Herta, the main city, and guarded by the most dangerous man in Herta, the Emperor. He wasn’t the actual monarch, but he was a thug who called himself so. The man had captured and tortured Griff for a year. He knew for himself that he was a sociopath. Griff couldn’t bring himself to ask someone he loved to do that for him. To go into that lion’s den. So he’d just worked on his shifting skills, and tried like hell to resist Herta every time he went through. And every time he’d failed.
Now, Alayna was dead. He’d told her he would be back to rescue her. She’d waited for him for eight years and then she’d died.
His body begged him to sleep. To close his eyes and let go. But he couldn’t. He wasn’t breathing. He knew he wasn’t breathing.
He wasn’t sure how long he lay there before something large and dark blocked the stars from view. Griff knew who it was. But he didn’t move or acknowledge them.
He also didn’t fight when one of the men who’d come for him shifted into a human. “Griff. Griff, can you stand?” It was Ansel, his soon-to-be brother-in-law crouching over him.
Griff didn’t bother replying. Ansel hauled Griff up and tossed him over the back of the golden grizzly bear that sat in the clearing with them. Kain. A small, rustling sound behind him told Griff that Ansel had shifted back into his grizzly form and they ambled down the mountain.
His brothers in spirit, if not blood, carried him down the mountain, and Griff knew no more.
***
When he woke up some time later, the sun was setting. He must have slept through a night and then the whole following day. He was in his own bed, in the house he’d shared with Ruby when they’d first moved to Green Mills after their parents had died. She lived across the mountain with Ansel now, but Griff still slept in his childhood bedroom. Though he’d upgraded the twin bed to a queen-sized. Which he was grateful for right now, considering the full-grown man who was spread out on the bed beside him.
Kain. Griff rolled over and eyed his friend. Kain stared right back, one hand propped behind his head and a serious look on his handsome face. Kain broke their stare to roll off the bed and out to the kitchen. He came back with a gallon of store-bought spring water. He handed it over to Griff who gulped half of it in one go.
Kain sat down in the armchair in the corner of the room and propped his feet on the end of the bed. Griff knew how badly Kain wanted to know what the hell was wrong with him, but he couldn’t say it. The pain was too bright. It choked him.
“Inka had the baby,” Kain said, his hands crossed over his stomach.
Some emotion that Griff had absolutely no idea how to name momentarily pierced his grief, but only for a second.
Griff was lucky that Ruby was about to marry into the Keto family. The Ketos and their partners made a huge, loud, loving family like Griff had never experienced. Even when his parents were still alive, Griff had never known love this absolute.
They were just good people. Hell, before they’d even known him, Milla and Ansel had come with Ruby to Herta, a place designed to enslave and torture shifters like them, and rescued him. It had been Milla and Ansel who’d dragged him out of the main square that day. Who’d dragged him away from Alayna.
Pain almost gutted him.
He’d come to terms with having to leave. Herta would have killed him had he stayed much longer. And she was so heavily guarded that they would never have been able to free her without a carefully orchestrated plan. But he’d never forgive himself for not getting back to her. She’d needed him and he’d failed her. He’d never forgive himself.
“Boy or girl?” he heard himself asking.
“Boy. Mateo. Apparently that’s what Matt’s family used to call him when he’d visit them in Spain.”
Griff couldn’t speak. The grief was doing that lead blanket thing again.
“Carmen is shocked to have a sibling, I think. You should have seen her staring at him in the hospital.” Kain recrossed his feet the other way. “Let’s see. What else happened since you went MIA a week ago? Oh. The shifters we rescued. Well, you met Vera, the owl. Her family came and got her three days ago. Shocked as hell and tears of joy the whole time. They thought for sure she was dead. She’d been gone for ten years. God, can you imagine that? A slave in Herta for ten years.”
Kain shook his head and sighed a deep, weary sigh. The reality of Herta was too much for all of them at times.
