Not Quite Free

by Kaye Draper

  Angel laughed—a real laugh, startling in its warmth. “I think we’ve gotten off track,” he said, reluctantly. “We were talking about Sam and how lucky they are to have you as a mate,” Angel reminded him. “And how we are going to get them to stop being so suicidal.” He stood and stretched, then rubbed his hands together, happy to have a scheme to occupy his evil siren instincts. “The leprechaun is wallowing in self-pity, but you’re right. Sam needs you both. Can you get Fin to come here? I think I have the perfect weapon against Sam’s stubbornness.” He grinned in glee. “I know someone who can out-stubborn even our sabertoothed hunter, especially if it’s for Sam’s own good.”

  Emerson sighed as he leaned his head against the back of the couch. “I’ve tried. I tried to get him to come with me today, but short of just picking him up and carrying him here, I don’t know what to do.”

  Angel’s lips curled upward into a wicked smirk. “I’ll get him here.”

  Emerson stood, then looked down at Angel with a concerned frown. “But...won’t Sam be mad when she comes home and finds us here?”

  Angel let the fake smile slide over his lips again, the breezy one that said everything was just a game to him. That he didn’t care about the outcome whatsoever. “Sam will be furious,” he said honestly. “But they’ll just blame me. Didn’t you know, Emerson? I’m the bad guy.”

  Angel moved to the end table to pick up his cell phone. It was a perk of working for the richest guy in the city. He even had service most of the time when he was inside the city limits. Emerson’s eyes lit up when he saw the technology, but Angel set the phone aside and went to the com by his door instead. The phone was useless if the leprechaun didn’t have one. And calling a courier would take too long. He’d send one of Theo’s drivers instead. He lifted his hand to press the button, but a big, greenish hand stopped him, engulfing his hand in that warm grip and giving it a squeeze.

  “Why do you want Sam to hate you, when she’s your mate?”

  Angel let out a sigh that almost came out as a sob. “Because that’s what Sam wants,” he whispered. Then he steeled himself and pulled away, pressing the com to call a driver. Sam could hate Angel all they wanted, but they couldn’t stop Angel from looking out for them. Angel would make Sam whole again, even if he had to suffer every barb and every dark, hate-filled glare he got in return.

  Chapter 2

  I swerved around a random boulder and slowed to carefully ease Theo’s sleek black modified sports car over a section of road that had been completely ruined by the Gods knew what kind of fiend sometime since we first drove through here. Glancing in my rearview, I made sure the car full of security people following us made it safely across, then I depressed the pedal, speeding up now that we were getting onto the more maintained section of road. Other than the rare gas station a couple miles closer to town, there wasn’t really anything out this way that was worth a damn. The closest major city on this lesser-used secondary road was at least two week’s travel—if you were lucky. I had no idea where the ex-sheriff had been headed when we caught him holed up in a shack just begging to be eaten by fiends. Maybe he had no idea either. In my experience, human criminals tended to be on the stupid side.

  I gripped the wheel tighter as a surge of anger welled up in me. That asshole had been in charge when Ahura was gunned down in the street like a pest. Then, when Theo’s people started asking questions, he’d disappeared. I’d bet my one working nut he had other reasons for running off. This probably wasn’t the first time he’d let his rabid underlings get away with murder.

  The thought of Ahura’s death still left a dull, hollow ache inside me, even after all these weeks. I focused on slow, deep breaths. I’d liked her. We were...friends. And we were planning to be more. And now she was just gone. But it was no use moping over it. That was how life worked. Especially for fiends and mixed-blood curs.

  The only thing I could do now was try to get some sort of justice for her. That would have to be enough.

  The car behind me was moving at a snail’s pace. I glanced in the rearview and let out a growl. “Fucking morons.”

  Theo huffed a sigh from the passenger seat, and I flicked a glance his way. The spoiled princess of a politician was getting on my last nerve today. “What?” I demanded.

  I felt his dark blue eyes on me. They changed color, I’d noticed. It was subtle, but now that I knew a little more about how the freaky fiend worked, I could see it. They were darker right now, less...bright. Theo was currently in the most human phase of his cycle. I was still trying to wrap my head around the rare phoenix fiend’s physiology, but from what he told me, his power built up inside him over the course of a month or two until he couldn’t contain it anymore and he either shifted and let it all out...or was forced to when the stress of containing it got to be too much.

  I just hoped like hell I wasn’t standing right beside him the next time he went feathered supernova. It was fucking freaky.

  He just heaved another sigh and turned his head to look out the window at the barren landscape around us. “You can’t go on like this forever, Sam,” he said calmly. “Snapping at everyone and everything, throwing yourself into jobs with complete recklessness.”

  I bared my teeth at him, only to realize I’d somehow partially shifted and had fangs. For fuck’s sake. What the hell was wrong with me lately? “Fuck you,” I muttered.

  He looked at me again, shifting to sit sideways in his seat like a kid. Honestly, he was so good at looking all plain and harmless. I had no idea how much of that was just his natural state, and how much was some kind of concealment magic that allowed him to blend in with humans. It’d be just my luck to find out that my new employer was actually some gross, ravenous monster even in his weakened state.

  “Sam,” he said in a supremely patient voice that said he was feeling anything but patient. “You went off on a tangent again, didn’t you?”

  I shifted my hands on the steering wheel to keep from breaking the damned thing. “Whatever.”

  That got me another one of those sighs. “You were raised outside the pack,” he mused, innocently plucking at the seam of his perfectly pressed suit pants. A soft, harmless human dressed up like a rich, powerful ruler. “Did anyone ever really teach you about mate bonds?”

  I snorted. “I’m not much of a shifter, even for a cur,” I remined him. “No one needed to teach me anything, because I don’t get that whole mate call thing.” For some fiends, especially some of the shifter varieties, the weird, obsessive connection to their mate could rule their lives. Thank fuck I wasn’t one of them.

  Not that I didn’t feel a pull to my mates. It was there. I just knew it wasn’t anything like a full mating call. At least...that’s what I told myself. Frequently.

  Theo was still watching me, and it was making me want to stop the car and yank him out so I could beat that pitying look off his damned face. “Being a cur doesn’t mean you can’t bond just as strongly as a full shifter,” he said carefully. “Are you really that stubborn, Sam?”

  I growled softly and refused to look at him as I sped up. He let out a short, dry laugh. “Of course you are.”

  I thought we were done with the whole stupid discussion. But after a long stretch of silence, Theo opened his stupid mouth again. “You can ask your other mates to come live at the estate too, if you’d like,” he said with a shrug.

  I shot him a glare. “Other mates?” Scanning the road and the surrounding area for stray packs of fiends, I made myself retract my claws. “Angel is not my fucking mate. We’ve been over this.”

  Theo went tense beside me, his entire being radiating panic. Then he took a breath and his posture relaxed. “Angel. Of course he is, you stubborn ass. But that wasn’t the point. I meant that you need your leprechaun and your ogre near you or you’re going to lose what’s left of your mind.”

  I tensed when a soft touch landed on my knee. “I know a bit about shifter bonds, Sam. I know how much it hurts to deny them. And I know that survivi
ng on just the barest crumbs of proximity to some of your bonded isn’t enough.” He squeezed my knee, then withdrew his hand. “You want to be an outcast because that’s who you’ve decided you are. You know people care for you. You just refuse to accept it.” He huffed another sigh. “I don’t want to watch you go feral because you’re afraid, Sam.”

  “I’m not fucking afraid of anything.” I was terrified. My mates were a weak spot, a surefire way to inflict a wound I’d never recover from. Loving people made you vulnerable, made you into prey. Losing the potential of that with Ahura had hurt just enough to remind me how bad it would be if it was Fin or Emerson next time. They were safer far, far away from me and the mess that was my life.

  But the very real possibility that I was turning feral thanks to the ridiculous fucking biology that made me need people was also terrifying. I was fucked no matter what. And not in that fun sort of way.

  “What are you gonna do about that asshole back there?” I said, forcing the conversation away from the absurd and toward shit that actually mattered. The ex-sheriff had been bitching and moaning about “rights” and “due process” and shit ever since we caught up with him.

  Personally, I’d be fine with ripping his guts out and calling it a day. But Theo insisted on playing by human rules.

  “Oh, he’ll get his trial and his due process,” Theo said easily, but the smile stretching his face was the kind that reminded me he wasn’t really as human as he looked. “And part of that due process is being held without bond until we can gather all the evidence we need to sentence him and everyone involved. Publicly.”

  I felt a matching smile stretch my own face. Theo wasn’t just going to mete out justice for Ahura. He was also going to use this as a way to further his political agenda of fiend and cur rights. The dumbass was dead set on changing the world.

  Who knows? Maybe he might succeed. If he didn’t get assassinated the second someone figured out their new human sovereign wasn’t actually human.

  Thankfully, he left me alone with my thoughts for the rest of the drive into Westhold. Apparently the annoying, pushy ass did have some sense of self preservation.

  Once we dropped our prisoner off at a holding facility that I wasn’t sure the general public even knew existed, I drove back to Theo’s estate. Jules met Theo at the door and dragged him off, yammering about phone calls and meetings and a bunch of other political crap that I could give a fuck less about. I stood inside the doorway for a minute, stretching, twisting my spine from side to side, and trying to shake the damned tiredness that was my constant companion lately.

  I scrubbed a hand over my face. For fuck’s sake. I was a mess. I headed down the hall toward the gym. I’d hardly gotten to kick anyone’s ass on this mission. Maybe if I got in some more physical activity, it would calm the restless, prowling sensation of my beast side throwing a hissy fit.

  I paused halfway down the hall, my nose twitching with the ghost of remembered scent. Then I huffed to myself and kept moving. Great. Now I was hallucinating, smelling Fin and Emerson. Fuck my life.

  I had almost reached the sleek double doors that led to the workout space at the back of the mansion when Jules popped out of nowhere, startling me so bad I let out a hiss.

  “Good afternoon, Just Sam,” he said in his smug, butlery voice. He hadn’t quit it with the ‘Just Sam’ since I’d told him to call me that months ago. “Your mother would like you to come eat lunch with her, if you have the time.”

  I gave the butler—a water cur of some undefined type—a look that said exactly what I thought about lunch and mothers.

  He arched one pale blond brow at me and folded his hands neatly before him, as unimpressed with my glaring as always. “Miss Josie says, and I quote: ‘Tell Sam to get their mangey ass out here the minute they get back or I’m going to make their life a living hell.’” He arched the other brow to meet its brother. “She also asked that I remind you she is a prisoner here because of you, so the least you can do is actually visit her once in a while.”

  I ground my teeth together and held up a hand to keep him from relaying any more messages from Josie. “Fine,” I snapped. “Just shut up already.”

  One corner of his thin lips quirked up in a smug smile and he turned to flit away into the bowels of the mansion, off to annoy someone else. I let out a long breath and turned to make my way out back, to the secluded little mother-in-law cabin Theo had built for my adoptive mother as part of the conditions of me coming to work for him.

  Muttering to myself about bossy old parents, I trudged up to the door and let myself in. If Josie had something to say to me, it was best to let her nag me now and get it out of the way so I could get on with my life.

  I stopped in the doorway at the sound of the grouchy old coot’s laughter. She was really whooping it up over something. I hadn’t heard her make that sound in a long time. I shut the door and followed the sound of her fading laughter toward the back of the cabin, where she had a little sunroom that would let her enjoy the outdoors even in the harsh winters. My nose twitched and my entire body started to buzz with restless energy the closer I got to the back of the house.

  No. She wouldn’t. Even for Josie, this was low.

  By the time I reached the sunroom, my body was so tense I felt like I was about to explode. I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned casually against the doorframe, arching a brow at the morons sitting around the space drinking tea and chatting like old friends. My gaze flicked over Fin and Emerson—it hurt to even look at them right now. Then it landed on Angel. Fucking Angel. This was his doing. It had to be. His gold eyes shimmered with some emotion I couldn’t identify. Probably smug assholeness. “Welcome back, Sam,” he said in that perfect, silky voice of his, the sensual voice of compulsion and sexual hunger that had inspired humans to label him “siren.” “We’ve been waiting for you!”

  He reached for the teapot and an empty cup, pouring me tea like this was fucking pre-rift England or something. I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re a dead man,” I told him calmly, my voice even, despite the fangs that I couldn’t quite manage to put away. “I’d say it’s been nice knowing you, but we both know that’d be lie.”

  He kept that stupid, careless smile plastered on his beautiful face as he finished pouring tea and gestured toward an empty wicker chair between Fin and Emerson. “Come on in and join us.”

  I refused to move from my spot against the doorframe. It was the only thing holding me up. Fin. Emerson. Angel. Mate. Want. Need. Hunger. Mine, mine, mine, mine. I wanted to clutch my head and dig my claws into my own brain to make it stop. Angel’s golden eyes started to fucking glow.

  “Sam,” he purred, his seductive magic of promises and lies reaching out and twining around me like his song. “Breathe.”

  Everything else in the room disappeared. The only thing that existed was that sweet voice commanding me to live. To breathe. Flashbacks flooded my mind. Angel the first time I’d met him. When he used his magic to let me breathe under water. When he saved my life.

  Here he was, doing it again. Only this time it wasn’t the shifter clan trying to drown me. It was my own stubborn, stupid heart.

  “For fuck’s sake, kit,” Josie snapped, slamming her teacup down on the low table in the center of the sitting area. “Calm the fuck down and sit!”

  Angel’s influence forced me to take deep breaths and allowed Josie’s sharp, biting tone to stab through the fog of shifter nonsense and penetrate to the part of me that was still human. Mostly.

  I ripped myself away from the doorframe and stomped over to the chair, throwing myself down like a child having a tantrum. I felt about two inches tall as everyone in my life watched me behave like a fucking asshole. But I couldn’t seem to rein it in.

  “Well,” I snapped, my voice low and wobbly. “What the fuck do you want?”

  Angel clasped his graceful hands together over one knee and leaned back into his chair, his long silver hair spilling over his shoulder and not an ounce of tensi
on in his perfect, graceful body. “This is an intervention,” he announced happily, that fake smile still firmly in place.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

  Chapter 3

  Intervention. What a load of bullshit. I felt like a participant on one of those stupid pre-rift reality TV shows the elderly humans talked about. I paced around in the lush grass outside Josie’s house while I tried to rein in my anger. Josie. That damned traitor. You’d think my own mother would have my back. But no, of course not.

  A distant part of me was almost relieved Josie had met my mates without my having to arrange it. I’d never introduced Josie to any of my one-night lays. And I had been hesitant to let her meet Fin and Emerson because...well...because. Josie was important to me. I was used to protecting her so no one could use her to get revenge for whatever thing they decided I’d done to piss them off this time. I wouldn’t put it past some of the shadier hunters at the association to kill the old fiend woman and call it a job, just to put me in my place.

  Not that I thought Fin or Emerson were a danger to Josie. The wariness was just habit, I supposed. And, after all, wasn’t that why all these morons were here right now? My bad habits?

  My chest ached. But...I was already feeling more like myself. I didn’t realize until just now how bad it had been, how much I was slipping down the slope toward insanity. But just being close to my mates for the half hour or so it had taken them to yell at me was enough to take the edge off, so it must have been pretty bad. Fuck.

  Emerson kept giving me shy glances with those big, red-brown puppy dog eyes, but Fin still wouldn’t meet my eyes at all. I remembered nosy-assed Josie’s blunt advice to “Stop being a mopey ass and take care of your mates.” She’d gone on to remind me that among true shifters, having a mate to care for was a good thing. A matter of pride and responsibility and a mark of rank. Not something to be pissed about.