by Callie Rose
There’s no him, no me.
Just us.
My body goes tight as another orgasm looms over me, and I can feel sweat dripping down my temple and dampening the back of my neck.
“Almost there, baby,” Kian murmurs. “So fucking close.”
“Me too,” I gasp. “Please. Kian, fuck, please…”
His forehead presses harder against mine, and our gazes are locked. In this moment, nothing else exists but his dark brown eyes ringed with that startling gold.
But then something draws my attention away from him. Not a flash of movement I see or a sound I hear. Just a… a feeling.
My gaze flicks toward the corner of the hotel room, and I realize Kian and I aren’t alone.
There’s a man standing in one corner, watching us with blazing blue eyes. His skin is tan, making the light blond of his hair appear even paler. His face is devoid of expression, not a single emotion readable in his features, but the way he stares at us so intensely makes goosebumps break out on my skin.
Shock ripples through me, and on its heels comes the orgasm that’s been threatening for so long. I cry out, clinging to Kian as he drives into me. He bites down on the curve of my neck, growling against my skin.
“Mine.”
The voice sounds like Kian’s, but as I watch, the stranger’s lips move, forming the exact same word.
As if he’s claiming me too.
My eyes pop open, and I suck in a gasping breath as I wrench myself out of the dream. My heart is thundering, and lingering pulses of arousal make my clit throb. The room is dark, and there’s a disorienting moment where I struggle to remember which hotel room I’m in, in which city, in which state.
Instinctively, my gaze darts toward the corner of the room where the stranger watched us in my dream.
A man stands there, half obscured by shadows.
A tall blond man with bright blue eyes.
Chapter 7
I jerk up in bed, shock flooding me and turning my skin to ice.
The man and I stare at one another in silence for several heartbeats, neither of us moving. He’s unblinking, a ghostly, beautiful statue in the sliver of light falling through the crack in the curtains. Half his face is forged from the shadows in the corner, and the other is damn near alight from the streetlamp outside.
For a moment, I sit frozen, my hands clawed into the blankets against my chest. On the heels of my dream, I’m not entirely certain he’s real. Maybe he’s just a vision—a night terror, a holdover from the dream, the way old photograph negatives could overlap in the developing process.
My head feels foggy enough to lend truth to the idea. Despite my jolt of terror, maybe I just haven’t fully awakened. There’s no way someone could have gotten into my room without me knowing it.
But… the ache in my head from the fight with Kian is more pronounced now. The ibuprofen I took earlier has worn off, so the throbbing has crept back in. I have vivid dreams, but they don’t usually include pain.
Then the mate bond hits me, and I know it’s not a dream.
The bond rushes through me like the wind on my bike. My wolf howls to life, a presence inside me that whines for this pale-haired stranger, aches to be close to him. The bond is electric in my body, just as strong and certain as it was the night I bonded to Kian. It’s an almost corporeal connection, a line stretching between us, connecting us as one.
He’s one of them, I think, floored by the realization. This man is one of my three mates.
It’s hard to swallow. Even harder to believe. I was raised with the dead certainty that every wolf had one fated mate, if you were lucky to meet them and be bonded. But I watched Ridge learn to share Sable with her other three mates—all of them alphas of the packs that came together with ours. Not to mention, Gwen warned me that I had three mates after I’d already bonded with Kian.
And here he is. One of them, at least.
So I have no reason to doubt the feeling.
My chest tightens, and my stomach churns. His face is entirely unfamiliar—a stranger—and yet everything about him screams mine. There’s a familiarity that runs deeper than the surface. The way I sensed Kian like a storm on the horizon when he walked into that bar three years ago. My body knew before I did.
The bond is an all-out attack on my senses trying to drag me to this nameless stranger, but I remain on the bed, looking at him while he’s looking back.
He doesn’t move, though I know he feels it. There’s no way he can’t. It’s a desperate pounding in my blood that has to be happening to him, as well.
The air conditioner kicks on with a low hum, startling me from the reverie. The real world rushes back in, dampening the screaming bond enough that I can gather my wits about me. I shove away the rising desire, the aching need, and remind myself that this man is dangerous.
I came here to kill him. Even if I didn’t know him at the time.
Get off your ass, Amora! my mind screams. I know I need to leap into action. This is my chance—a second chance tonight to carry out my mission.
Still, I remain frozen in place.
God, he’s gorgeous. Where Kian’s darkly sensuous, this man is pale and illuminated. Even standing as still as stone, he vibrates with energy.
Get up!
I finally convince my hands to unclench, and the blanket falls away from my chest. My knife is on the nightstand, and I’m calculating whether or not I can reach it before he reaches me, when my mate moves.
His weight shifts just enough to draw my attention, and there’s a blur of something that flashes in the angle of the streetlight. Then something long and heavy slices through the air toward my head.
Except… it misses me.
I jerk away, turning to stare at the knife embedded in the headboard.
Only inches from my head.
I raise an eyebrow and glare at him, fury lancing through me. “You missed.”
He inclines his head, and his shoulder-length platinum hair brushes over the dark fabric of his shirt like spiderwebs, but he doesn’t respond.
Suddenly, an odd, quiet hissing fills the room. It’s close to my ear—really close. I glance back at the embedded knife and notice for the first time that there’s a strange shadow on the headboard. The room is dim, and the sliver of light passing through the curtains is enough to cast a few shadows on the floor and across the mattress, but this one…
This isn’t normal.
It’s darker than most shadows, and it doesn’t seem to have a source.
As I stare at the black shape, it squirms. At first, I think I’ve imagined it—a trick of the light, a trick of my own movement, a trick of gravity. Because there’s no way in hell a shadow can move on its own.
Until it moves again.
It squirms against the knife’s blade, parts of it rising from the headboard like a corporeal black cloud.
My breath hitches in my throat.
Is that motherfucker alive?
I’m no stranger to magic. Hell, I’m no stranger to some real crazy kinds of magic, not after the battle with the witches back in Montana—the one that brought Gwen into my life and set me on this path. But this is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
Peter Pan’s disembodied shadow, only darker and more menacing.
Then it attacks.
The shadow slides away from the blade pinning it to the headboard as if the knife isn’t even solid. It leaps for me, coming away from the tacky upholstered bedframe like a thick, black cloud.
I launch backward, falling off the bed in my haste. On the way down, I grab my knife off the nightstand and land on my back with my legs above me, still tangled in the covers. Not the most graceful thing I’ve ever done, especially considering I’m in what amounts to panties and a t-shirt with my ass in the air in front of a stranger. But I at least manage to get my blade ready.
The shadow follows me down, and I lash out. My blade flashes silver in the moonlight but does nothing to the blob. It barrels toward me, undete
rred, and I roll away, wrapping myself even tighter in the blankets as I try to dodge its attack.
The blond man looms over me; I didn’t even hear his approach. He punches out, his fist catching the shadow as if it’s actually a solid form. The dark cloud lurches away from me and hits the bedside stand, passing through the lamp and slamming into the wall, where it disappears.
“Get up,” the man says in a low, dangerous voice.
His voice is deep and raspy, like it's not used to being used. For a moment, I stare up at him in the ambient light, astonished to find he has curlicue black tattoos just like Kian. Only… his tattoos move. Right before my eyes, they shift up his arms like a wave crashing on the shore before they freeze again.
Before I can get too interested, the shadow appears on the ceiling behind his angelic face.
“Behind—!”
But I don’t even get to finish my warning.
The man whirls around on surprisingly light, graceful feet and lashes out with his knife. His timing is impeccable—the moment the shadow launches at his head, he’s turning and slicing. The shadow jolts and falls aside toward the TV stand, where it disappears into the darkness.
I manage to kick free of the blankets then scramble to my feet and adjust my grip on my knife. The blond stalks toward the television, his fingers curled tightly around his own dagger. His weapon puts my dinky switchblade to shame. It’s more like a fucking miniature machete than a pocketknife.
I’m not used to having the smallest knife in the room.
We wait in absolute silence broken only by the distant passing of cars. It’s wild to think that life outside is just trucking along while I’m battling a literal shadow in my motel room with my second mate after rumbling with my first mate in the woods.
I rode my motorcycle right into the fucking twilight zone tonight.
I’m staring at the television stand where the thing vanished, but the blond’s scanning the room, which makes me think he knows the beast better than I do. So I tear my gaze away from the pressboard stand just in time to see the shadow reappear from under the bed.
The little bitch heads straight for my ankles.
I kick out at it, but my foot passes right through it. I growl in frustration and dance away from the undulating mass. It’s like I’m fighting smoke, trying to punch something that doesn’t even have form.
When the blond steps in and snags the shadow with a mean roundhouse, the thing flies across the room, tumbling into the shadows in the corner.
“What the fuck, man?” I snarl, pointing my switchblade at him. “Why can you affect it when I can’t?”
His blue gaze cuts to me, and his expression is enigmatic enough to make me want to put my fist through his face. But we’re interrupted when the shadow returns.
The blond and the shadow start an incredibly fast, powerful dance around the motel room. It’s as if the shadow’s pissed, now, like it’s an honest-to-God living thing and we’ve gotten on its last nerve. It slides seamlessly through the shadows, darting into one corner and out of another, slithering beneath the bed and the table, fluttering beneath the curtains. Before it leaps from the shadows and becomes bulbous. A living creature. A living threat.
I try in vain several more times to land a blow on the damn thing, but nothing I do works. I lunge away from the shadow’s repeated attempts to reach me while the blond fights with his knife and fists. He slams into the table, knocks over the chairs, and takes out everything unattached to the nightstand during the fight.
When the shadow slams into the giant flatscreen television, and Blondie lifts his knife like he’s about to skewer a five-hundred-dollar machine, I grab his knife wrist.
Ignoring the way desire and need flood my body from our skin to skin contact, I snap, “Not the television! Do you think I’m made of money?”
Blondie purses his lips and looks at me like I’ve lost my damn mind. And maybe I have, but he won’t have to pay for damages.
I drop his wrist, my fingertips still tingling and warm.
Before I can lift my knife and look around for the shadow, the blob suddenly appears between us. A long tendril whips out at me, latching onto my wrist. It burns like fucking hell, like I’ve dunked my arm in boiling water. I let out a cry and stumble backward into the table. My hip catches on the edge, and I slam down onto my back on the tabletop, still in the thing’s burning clutches.
Blondie growls and grabs the shadow in his hand. His palm sizzles, and he lets out a yell—mostly to release the pain, I think, because he wastes no time throwing the shadow against the wall and slamming his knife into it. He slashes his knife down, twists it, then slashes up again—
—and the shadow explodes.
Little wisps shoot outward and dissipate into smoke. Within seconds, nothing’s left.
I’m lying on the tabletop, my legs splayed and my t-shirt riding up on my stomach as I breathe heavily through the pain. My fingers are still curled around my knife, but it’s more out of a need to squeeze something so I can ignore that the skin on my wrist is scalded with third-degree burns.
The blond man glances at me. He’s not even winded. His expression is hard to read, though his piercing blue eyes glitter darkly as his gaze sweeps down my way-too-exposed body.
Then he lunges past me, throwing the curtains aside as he leaps through the window.
Startled, I leap to my feet and stumble over my own legs to follow. I throw back the curtains to find the window open, a cool, desert breeze blowing inside. That’s how the fucker got in my room. I didn’t even think to check that it was locked before I went to sleep.
His hair shines in the moonlight as he sprints through the motel lot.
No time for hesitation. I throw a leg over the edge of the windowsill and drop to the sidewalk, then shift into wolf form to take off after him.
I’m either running on fury or determination, and the emotions are so similar I can’t tell the difference. But I’m not letting this guy get away. I don’t know what the fuck is going on—why that shadow attacked me or why Blondie boy ended up in my bedroom—but I’m getting answers.
No matter how far I have to run.
Blondie vanishes under the overhang of a dark gas station—apparently closed for the night—and when he re-emerges in the moonlight, he’s no longer human, but a giant blond wolf. He barrels into the street and heads for the shopping center, toward the outskirts of town where the wilderness will give him places to hide.
I spare a glance both ways before crossing the street, since I’m not really interested in getting flattened by a late night car, then go full throttle. My burned wrist aches, and I feel every pounding of my foot on the ground through the raw, sensitive nerve endings. I push through the pain anyway, my sight trained on the wolf ahead of me.
Blondie’s fast. Too fast. He swings wide around the shopping center and vanishes into the trees.
I put on a burst of speed, ignoring the pain in my paw. When I hit the grass, it dulls the pounding enough to clear my head, and I glance around the forest for my mate.
Only darkness and the murmur of the wind through the trees. At least when Kian crashed through the forest, I could hear his big, bumbling body in the brush and follow him based on sound alone.
This guy has vanished like a phantom.
Putting my nose to the ground, I sniff around in the area where I saw him leave the pavement. I pick up a hint of him after several seconds, and I’m floored by the smell—contrary to his pale, icy good looks, Blondie smells spicy and warm, like the steam rising off a mug of chai tea. The scent sends a thrill through me, and my wolf whines for him. She wants him for reasons contrary to what I’m here for, and she is not winning that battle.
I take off into the trees after him with my nose to the ground. I don’t need to see to follow scent markings, so I just rush through the undergrowth, testing the ground every few feet to make sure I’m still locked onto Blondie’s scent. But I hardly make it half a mile before his trail goes cold.
Frustration makes my fur bristle, and I let out a long, angry howl.
Again.
How did both Kian and this guy cover their scents so thoroughly?
They were both right in the palm of my hand today, and I lost them. I turn a couple more useless circles before finally giving up.
I return to the motel at a slower pace than I left it, limping on my burned wrist. Now that the rush of adrenaline has faded, all of my aches and pains from fighting Kian earlier today have returned. I feel chewed up, spit out, and left to die.
Which reminds me—if Blondie hadn’t shown up in my room… maybe I would have.
Or maybe because Blondie showed up in my room, he put my life in danger. Living shadows have never tried to kill me before, after all. Seems a little suspect to me.
Back outside the motel, I realize climbing through the window after Blondie had been a stupid idea, given the fact the door was right there. I shift to human form, glad it’s the dead of night and no one seems to have heard the commotion. So no one’s around to see the crazy naked lady climbing through a motel room window. I grimace as I haul my beat-up ass back through the window, then turn around and lock it behind me.
I turn on the light that dangles over the table and grimace at the state of my room. I hadn't realized it was happening in the fury of the fight, but we made a mess of the place. I right both chairs at the table, then pick up the dislodged alarm clock and return it to the nightstand, as well as my water glass and wallet. There are knife marks in the headboard, on the wall, and on the table.
Not a chance in hell I can explain that to the manager. At least I didn’t pay with a credit card. Maybe I can slip out before the staff notices and tries to make me pay for damages.
I turn on every light in the room—both globes over the bed, the strip of buzzing fluorescents over the sink, the combination light-and-fan in the shower, the sound of which makes my teeth hurt. Then I check for shadow beings who want to kill me, but there don’t appear to be anymore lying in wait.
At the sink, I run cold water over my burned wrist, hissing at the pain. It looks better than it feels, probably because shifting sped the healing process. But the skin is still fairly mangled in a strange approximation of a handprint.
