by Selena Scott
The cool hands held both his shoulders and he felt like the touch was the only thing grounding him. Like he might spiral off into nothing if she stopped touching him.
When he finished the water, a small piece of fruit was pressed into his hand. An apple slice. He swallowed it down immediately. And then a handful of nuts. Those were gone in seconds. And then more water.
Finally, finally, he had enough energy to look up, and the wooden cup clattered across the floor as his hands went limp.
“Shhh!” reprimanded the most gorgeous girl he’d ever seen in his life. She wore a huge, billowy dress of a royal blue and had silver rings on her fingers. Her hair was braided into a thick, strawberry-gold crown on top of her head and the style sharpened her cheekbones. She scrambled after the cup and righted it. “We have to be very quiet.”
He would have said something except the haziness was coming back and her dark brown eyes had just swallowed him whole. English wasn’t on the table at that particular second.
“What’s your name, boy?”
He cleared his throat. “Griff. Griff Sayers. What’s yours?”
“Alayna.” She leaned forward and brushed his dark hair back off his forehead with the ease of someone who doesn’t bother asking permission. He leaned forward, chasing her touch. She paused and laid her hand on his cheek. “You’re resisting the shift.”
He looked at her, confused and scared. Her words didn’t make sense.
Her brow furrowed as she interpreted the look on his face. “You know nothing of this world, do you?”
He dropped his head into his hands.
She sighed, long and low. “I was just going to bring you something to eat and drink. But I guess I’ll go ahead and give you a history lesson.”
She scooted until her back was against the wall and her dress billowed out around her legs.
“Come here,” she said to Griff, reaching for him.
He was too delirious and hazy to protest. And he wouldn’t have anyways. Because this gorgeous, good-smelling girl was guiding his head down to the pillow of her lap. She traced his hairline with one finger then laid her bare hand against his arm. And she told him everything.
Griff woke with the sun; it dappled the hardwood floor where he lay. At some point in his sleep, he’d shifted back to his human form. It happened sometimes, when he was especially relaxed. When he looked, he saw Alayna’s fox curled on the bed. But just one sniff of the floor beside him and he knew that the bed was not where she’d slept for most of the night.
CHAPTER THREE
Ruby watched this woman, this Alayna woman, out of the corner of her eye as she poured a cup of tea for both of them. She was extremely beautiful. And regal. And confident. She wore the extra sweats that Ruby had loaned her with the grace of a supermodel. No wonder Griff was head over heels for this woman.
But Ruby couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong. “Would you mind peeling these?” she asked as she set a bowl of apples in front of her. “We’re making apple pie.”
Alayna nodded and started in.
Ruby decided just to jump right in. “Are you in trouble?”
Alayna’s hands continued to peel apples but her eyes slid to Ruby. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, well, no offense, but you’re acting like a woman with a secret of some kind. And I’m good at keeping secrets.”
“It’s that obvious, huh?”
Ruby shrugged. “I’m just offering.”
Alayna said nothing so Ruby turned back to the pie crusts she was rolling out.
“How much do you already know? About me and Griff?”
“Not much. Just that he loved you. And didn’t want to leave you. But then he couldn’t come back for you.”
“Couldn’t?”
Ruby missed a beat with the rolling pin. “Ah, I think that’s probably for him to explain.” She turned back and clapped flour off her hands and into the sink.
Alayna considered that for a minute, decided it didn’t change anything, and went back to peeling apples. “My father is–was–a very controlling man. You saw him, that day you rescued Griff. Everyone was scared of him.”
Griff heard Alayna’s voice carry out from the kitchen and he froze as he crossed the living room. It pained him that she wasn’t telling him, that he had to eavesdrop. But he needed more information and he needed it fast.
“I’d been planning on leaving him. Running away. But then Griff came and I… couldn’t. I stayed. But as soon as you all rescued Griff, I took the first chance to leave there. I left the main city and kept my ear to the ground, waiting for any sign that Griff had come back for me.”
Out of sight in the living room, Griff pressed his palm to his chest and squeezed his eyes closed for one painful second.
“The thing was, that as soon as I was away from my father, and no longer eating and drinking the foods he was giving me, something started happening to me. I shifted for the first time.”
Ruby gasped. “He’d been drugging you to keep you from shifting?”
“Apparently.” Alayna sighed and set her knife down for a second, then stared hard out the kitchen window. “I never knew I was a shifter until then. There are shifter children born on Herta every now and again. It means that my mother, bless her whoever she was, must have been a shifter. My father knew this, of course. And instead of cursing me to becoming a shifter slave on Herta, dosed me with some kind of medicine that kept me from shifting. But the medicine had a side effect. My body fought it, adapted, developed an ability.”
Ruby lowered herself into a kitchen chair, her chin propped on her hand like she was watching a soap opera. “What ability?”
“I’m a healer.”
“Oh, like you did with Kain?”
Alayna nodded. “I’m not exactly sure how it works, but I developed the gift.”
“You can heal anyone of anything?”
Without answering, Alayna reached out for Ruby’s hand and turned it over to reveal a shiny red burn from the oven. Alayna bent over Ruby’s hand for just a second before she pulled back to reveal the new, fresh skin.
“Wow. Okay. Holy God.”
“Yeah.”
Ruby turned her hand over a few times, her eyes wide as saucers. “I don’t get it, though. You’re acting like this is a bad thing. A curse.”
Alayna sighed. “I don’t regret the gift. I’m grateful for it. And I’m grateful for the opportunity to help people. But, here.” She held out her hand again and Ruby went palm to palm with her.
After a few seconds, a great calm swept over Ruby. A few stray worries she’d been holding tight just sort of whispered away into nothing. The light headache that had been brewing in the back of her head dissolved into thin air. And the tension in her shoulders melted like butter. She suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of affection for Alayna. She liked this girl. She wanted her around. She thought she’d be a great match for Griff.
“See?” Alayna said, pulling her hand back.
“See what? There’s no downfall to that. Alayna, that’s an incredible gift.”
Alayna sighed. “Yes. But that affection you feel for me, right now? Give it a few days. It’ll fade. You’ll settle back into your natural feelings. Just like everyone.”
The truth sifted down and landed on Ruby. “You mean that your gift makes people love you?”
Alayna nodded. “For a small amount of time. If I’ve recently touched them.”
“And…” Ruby put the pieces together. “You think that’s what happened with Griff? He loved you because of your gift?”
Alayna picked up the knife and started peeling apples again. “I know for a fact that’s what happened with Griff. And now I’m here and he’s here and I finally got out of Herta and I have no idea what I’m gonna do next. But I know that I can’t stay—”
“Are you kidding me? Baby. God. That’s really what you believe? That I never loved you? I was only drawn in by your gift?” Alayna jumped as Griff appeared at he
r side, on his knees on the kitchen floor, his hands on the legs of her pants.
Baby.
Alayna bit down on the fluttering inside of her. At his sweaty-good scent. The warmth of his hands through her clothes. His nearness.
They were both only semi-aware of Ruby slipping out of the kitchen.
“It doesn’t matter, Griff. I’m leaving as soon as possible anyways. I can’t stay here. I have to figure out how to survive on Earth. And I can’t do that if you’re always around, distracting me.”
“You’re not leaving without me. I’m never leaving you again.”
“Griff.”
“I love you. Alayna, I love you.”
She scoffed. “Apparently, you weren’t listening. You don’t love me, Griff. It’s the effects of my gift, okay?”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Alayna, that’s ridiculous.”
“No! It’s not. Not when I’ve been alone for the last decade. Because every single person I’ve helped with my gift has loved me simply for what I could do for them. None of them, not a single one, has ever known me. Or even tried.”
“Alayna, my love for you has never faded. If it really was because of the gift then it would have gone away when I came back to Earth. But it never faded.”
Or so you say. She wanted to believe him. Her heart screamed to believe him. But she’d learned the hard way over the last ten years how fickle someone’s love could be. “Griff, you touched me all over yesterday. I released your grief, and then you got all sex eyes and sweet words and now you’re confused, I get it, okay? My gift is like a drug. Trust me. Give it a few days and you’ll go back to normal.”
He looked impossibly frustrated and the look plucked a chord in her. They used to fight all the time. And then they used to make up.
“Alayna, this is my normal. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. I fucking pined for you!” He only looked mildly embarrassed to be shouting that in his sister’s kitchen.
She crossed her arms over her chest, a skeptical look on her face.
Griff wanted to toss a chair through the window. He wanted to shift into a lion and roar until he collapsed with exhaustion. He wanted to rip their clothes off and make her remember what they’d had together.
“I can’t believe you don’t believe me.” He sank into the chair, despair written into every line of his face. But then he was standing again. Fire in his night-blue eyes. “What can I do? What can I do to prove it to you?”
He shifted forward and she shifted back. “Don’t touch me.”
He reeled back like she’d slapped him.
“No! I don’t mean it like that.” She wanted, needed, to wipe that horribly pained expression off his face. “I mean that that’s what you can do. Don’t touch me. Don’t come in contact with my gift. And then tell me how you feel.”
His eyes lit with understanding. “Alayna, I’ve been not touching you for a decade. Isn’t that proof enough?”
“No,” she replied, simply. “The effects of having touched me yesterday will fade. And then we’ll both see how you really feel.”
He shifted even closer to her, so that they were only an inch apart from one another but he didn’t touch. “Yes. Then we’ll both see exactly how I feel.”
They glared at one another until Griff rolled his eyes, laughing just a little.
“Madwoman.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I am, Griff. I lost it when you left. Everything. My mind, even. But I figured out my shift. I figured out my gift. And after years of searching for the portals in the west mountains that could lead me through to Earth, I found them. I found Valentina and Kain and they brought me here. So I’m free. I’m on Earth and finally free. And nothing is going to stop me from being free for the rest of my life. If that makes me mad then I’m mad.”
That wiped the smile off his face. He reached up to her but froze. “Alayna.”
She rose and swept out of the kitchen, leaving the scent of fresh cut apples in her wake. This was gonna be a lot harder than it sounded.
***
The next day Alayna sat down with all the women, baby Carmen included, and it was decided that she’d stay on in the guesthouse for a while. Milla was going to help figure out how to get her some under-the-table work so she could save up some money and Inka was going to reach out to some other shifters they knew down in the bayou. When Alayna had enough money saved, she’d head down there, wherever that was, and she’d start her life. As a free woman.
In Alayna’s mind, she’d never been free a day in her life. First she’d been chained to her father by his manipulative and controlling ways. Then she’d been stuck in Herta, struggling always against the urge to fall slave. Though she imagined that her gift of healing had made her more resilient than most. And now? Now she just had to figure out how to get free of Griff. And that could start the second he admitted that his feelings were synthetic.
She just had to wait him out.
“Found you a job,” Milla said, a sandwich in one hand and a cellphone in the other.
“What? But you just started looking five minutes ago!” Alayna looked around at Valentina, Ruby, and Inka, but none of them seemed particularly surprised by Milla’s success.
“I’ve got connections,” Milla answered matter-of-factly, as if that answered Alayna’s question.
“That’s what this thing is? A connection?” She pointed at the cellphone and Milla laughed.
“No, this is a cellphone. I just used it to text some people about job openings around town. Here, you can look if you want.”
“Wow!” Alayna messed around on the phone for a second. She liked all of Earth’s shiny, glowing objects. She wanted one for herself. “What’s my job?”
“Waitress at the Eagle.”
“Milla!” Ruby admonished.
“What?” Alayna looked at all their faces but couldn’t tell what the big deal was. “What’s the Eagle?”
“It’s a bar. A pub, sort of,” Valentina answered.
“Don’t you think it’s a little rough for her?” Ruby asked Milla.
Milla’s eyes traced up and down Alayna. “The woman’s been surviving, on her own, in Herta for a decade. I think she can handle a few drunkies. Plus, a pretty girl like her will get tons of tips and she needs cash.”
“Drunkies? You mean the only danger is drunken men?” Alayna waved a hand through the air. “I’ll be fine.”
The phone vibrated in Alayna’s hand and she jumped about a foot in the air. Milla chuckled and took it back. “It just means I got a text.”
“What’s it say?”
“That you need to come down to the Eagle for an interview in an hour. So, we’ve gotta get going.”
“My job is an hour away?”
“No,” Milla rose, kissed her niece on the cheek. “But you can’t keep wearing Ruby’s tiny clothes. You’re about my size. You can raid my closet.”
“Oh, fun!” Inka practically shouted. “Let her raid my closet, too!”
“Inks, I don’t think she should wear tights with giraffes and a solar system dress on her very first day of work.”
Alayna had no idea what those things were, but she liked the idea of new clothes. She loved clothes.
They said goodbyes to all the women and were just heading out the kitchen door toward Milla’s car when she almost swung directly into Griff. He jumped back like she was made of hot lava, carefully avoiding her touch. His eyes went comically wide, teasing her.
“Whew,” he mimed wiping sweat off his brow. “That was very close.”
She refused to let her mouth smile, but her eyes might have given her away.
“Where are you guys going?” he asked, leaning forward and taking a chomp out of Milla’s sandwich, still in hand.
“To get clothes for my new job.”
Griff blinked at her. “You? A job?” He thought of all the times he’d seen her in silks and finery. The jewels her father had had her wear. The fancy soaps and creams she’d lov
ed so much. All those fancy braids in that thick, thick hair of hers. He knew she’d been getting by on her own for a long time, but still, he was having trouble picturing her clocking in and clocking out.
“Yeah,” Milla responded for her. “And we’re gonna be late so…”
Alayna scurried after Milla. She could feel Griff right behind her.
“What job is it?”
“Waitressing,” Milla called as she slid into the car.
“Where?” His voice had a slight edge to it.
Alayna got the sudden feeling that Milla was telling Griff the littlest amount of the truth as she possibly could.
“Wait until we’re already driving away,” Milla muttered out the side of her mouth to Alayna. She threw the car in reverse and put Alayna’s window down.
The second she threw the car into drive Alayna put her head out the window. “The Eagle!” she called.
And had just enough time to see Griff’s face shutter down.
She turned to Milla as the car sped away down the block and for some reason, the two women burst out laughing.
***
Griff didn’t like this. He didn’t like the Eagle. He didn’t like the warm beer in his hand. He didn’t like the annoying-ass grin on Kain’s face. And he didn’t like the tight black pants and tiny black T that Alayna was wearing to waitress. Okay. Well, maybe he did like that. But he definitely didn’t like other people liking it.
She’d been a waitress for all of about five hours and Griff’s teeth were already majorly on edge. She had zero experience, and it showed, but apparently the manager had taken one look at Alayna and he’d hired her on the spot. Go figure. Probably had a little something to do with the clothes Milla had pasted onto her. Alayna was a little thicker than Milla, so the damn things were stretched to the legal limit.
“Dude, you’re being creepy.”
Griff slowly, very slowly, pulled his gaze from Alayna and landed it on Kain.
