CHAPTER TEN
No, Graham wasn’t cured. And that was going to be a problem.
He staved off the thought by brushing his lips against Misty’s, but for the first time in his life, he faced the question—What do I do?
Graham always knew what to do. If he didn’t, he made something up. Yelling at one of his Shifters or knocking them across the room usually helped. But this time, brute force and bullying wasn’t going to work.
Thirst pounded through him. Kissing Misty calmed it, but as soon as he released her, his mouth grew parched again. He needed to drink.
Graham also knew, though he wasn’t sure how he knew, that his gunshot wound was only temporarily healed. Fae magic had closed it up, but Graham would bet that, if the Fae chose, he could rip it open again. Shifter metabolism being what it was, Graham would still heal from the shot eventually, but he’d have to go through the agony of its infliction all over again. And maybe the Fae would keep reopening the wound, just to punish Graham.
Misty, though, was free. Somehow the stupid little spell with the roses and tequila had burned the Fae water out of her. Possibly the tequila alone had done it; humans were weak when it came to alcohol. Maybe that was the same reason it hadn’t worked on him—Shifters had a high tolerance even for the strongest liquor.
“Graham?” Misty touched his face.
He loved this—Misty in his arms, a moment of peace.
Graham had left his mark on her. The dark love bites on her neck and breasts stood out in the moonlight. His mark, his brand.
He closed his fingers around her wrist and held on. “You can’t tell anyone it didn’t work. Swear to me.”
Misty blinked in concern. “Why not?”
Graham didn’t answer for a moment. He kissed her again, savoring her taste. He thought about moving his fingers back between her legs, where it was hot, sweet, slick. He could bring her to climax one more time, forget about spells and Fae. Only Misty was important.
“Graham?” Misty’s voice was soft, but insistent. “We’ll need help to figure this out.”
“No,” Graham said, his voice harsh, though he softened his hold on her wrist. “If my Shifters think I’m Fae-touched, they’ll fall apart, and take me with them.” They needed him, and that wasn’t just arrogance. Most of Graham’s Shifters hadn’t adjusted to living in the city yet, with Shifters they didn’t know. Most hadn’t adjusted to living in a Shiftertown, period, even after twenty years. They’d have all gone feral, or died, or curled into little balls of whimpering fur if Graham hadn’t done some of the shit he’d done. “If they know I’m under a Fae’s power, they could turn on me, take me out—kill me—and maybe Dougal too. I know that’s not allowed, but my Shifters are pretty wild and don’t care. So, they can’t know. No one can.”
Misty gave him the startled look she always got whenever he told her how violent Shifters were. Why did humans think Shifters had been tamed? Making them wear the shock Collars was like putting a tiny bandage on a gaping wound.
“There must be someone you can talk to,” Misty said. She caressed his face, as though she found something she liked in the scarred, harsh mess of it. “Reid, maybe?”
“I said, I need to think about it.” Graham gentled his impatient answer by kissing the inside of her wrist. “This is the kind of problem a Shifter takes to his leader. Except I am the leader.”
“Eric, then,” Misty said. Sweet lady; she was so naive. “He’s your partner.”
Graham snorted a laugh. “Right. Don’t think so.” Eric had wanted Graham under his thumb since Graham’s Shifters had been forced to move into Eric’s Shiftertown.
Misty didn’t look convinced. Graham kissed her again, letting the kiss turn lingering. He loved that the terrible thirst slaked a bit when his mouth was on hers.
He wanted to stay kissing her forever, the fragrance of the flowers she loved wrapping around them. Misty’s scent was even better than the flowers’, her soft body under his worth every second of his agony.
Graham had to fix this, and fast. And then figure out what the hell to do about his growing mating frenzy for Misty. He’d not be able to stave it off for long, and if the frenzy consumed him, it would be as dangerous to her as any Fae spell.
? ? ?
Graham stayed the night at Misty’s, which entailed more pizza. The cubs ate most of it.
Reid departed before the pizza arrived, borrowing the book from Misty, intrigued by it, he said. Graham knew Reid’s real reason to leave was his ache to get back home to the bear Shifter, Peigi. It had been more than a year since Peigi had been rescued from an insane, feral Shifter in Mexico who’d kept her and other women in a basement, more than six months since Reid had moved in with her. And still she and Reid weren’t officially a couple, for some reason.
Graham stayed with Misty not only to protect her but also because it was clear Xavier wasn’t about to leave. Xav might claim he was just doing his job, and had three other DX Security men stationed outside the house, but Xav was inside, with Misty.
In spite of her apparent recovery, Misty was still reluctant to go to bed, afraid to dream, but Graham eventually talked her into it. Misty needed her rest—she’d had a hell of a time. The cubs, as wolves, dashed into her room ahead of her, leapt up on her bed, and curled up on the foot of it. Misty let them, kissed Graham good night, and shut the door on him.
Good thing. If Graham went in there, he’d want to hole up with her and never come out. And then everything in the outside world would go to hell.
Thinking of Misty’s scent, her warmth around his fingers, the taste of her when he’d touched his fingers to his lips, made him not care about the rest of the world. Let it go. Mating frenzy was more important, right?
He made himself turn away and leave her alone.
Graham didn’t blame Misty for fearing to dream. Still under the spell, he didn’t want to sleep either. He talked to Xav. He walked around the house on the outside, sticking to shadows. He checked the backyard; he checked on Misty and the cubs. Matt and Kyle were curled up on her feet, fast asleep, and Misty was breathing evenly, her face relaxed in slumber. Watching Misty lying there made Graham want to go curl himself up around her, but again, he closed the door and let her rest.
Graham watched Misty’s TV, running through the three hundred or so channels he didn’t get in Shiftertown. He looked through Misty’s DVD collection and her downloads after that. As he already knew, Misty liked chick flicks, each of which featured a pretty heroine who blundered into embarrassing situations, had wacky best friends or zany coworkers, and fell in love first with the wrong guy—the bad boy who broke her heart—and then the right one, the nice guy who’d been there all the time. Graham had argued with Misty that females in real life wouldn’t settle for the beta and would keep trying for the alpha, but Misty had rolled her eyes and told him he didn’t understand romance. Well no, he didn’t. Not the kind of romance in those movies, anyway.
But what the hell. Graham decided to give one a try, desperate to stay awake.
It was his downfall. On the heroine’s third fumbled conversation with the geeky-looking nice guy—who didn’t deserve to end up with her—Graham fell asleep.
He woke in the cave with the spring and the fountain.
“Shit.” Graham scrambled to his feet. His side throbbed, and he looked down to see blood soaking through his T-shirt.
“You’ll die of that.” The Fae didn’t enter with a bang; he was just there, when he hadn’t been a second before. He gestured to Graham’s wound. “You should tend it.”
He had the look of all Fae—tall, pointy eared, white haired. He was dressed in silver chain mail, with a sword at his side, as though ready to run off and do battle with something. Over the mail he wore a shimmering silver cloak draped across his shoulders.
Graham deliberately did not press his hand to his wound, as much as he wanted to. “You know why the Shifters rebelled from the Fae?” he asked. “Your crappy fashion sense. You’ve been wearing the same clothes for a thousand years.”
“Time moves differently in Faerie.”
“Good for Faerie. Who the hell are you, and why are you stalking me?”
“You may call me Oison.”
Not his real name, Graham knew. Fae had a thing about true names. “I don’t care about calling you anything,” Graham said. “Get the hell out of my dreams.”
“I can’t,” Oison said. “You have been chosen.”
Chosen. Fae loved to say crap like that. Anything dramatic. “So, un-choose me before I kick your sorry ass.”
“I cannot do that.”
Graham started toward him. Oison watched him come, unworried.
Stupid-ass Fae bastards. This Oison had hurt Misty, had tried to enslave her, and for that, he’d die.
The cave’s floor was slick like glass—no, it was polished obsidian. Graham slipped, the gunshot wound hurting him, but he refused to fall.
The fountain burbled incessantly. Fat vines snaked up the walls and across the floor, turning the rock cave into a jungle of flowers. The scent was thick. Graham thought of Misty’s small garden where the much sparser growth had smelled clean and sweet.
Graham reached Oison. The Fae was tall, like Reid, with the same eyes that tried to bore into Graham’s skull. But Reid had proved to be smart, reasonable, and helpful, despite his Fae-ness, and he had a true fondness for Peigi and the cubs he’d helped rescue. Somewhere inside Reid was a heart, and feelings.
This Fae had used Misty to lure Graham to the desert, then tricked Misty into feeding Graham spelled water. Oison had caused Misty to be hurt, terrorized, and trapped. Therefore, he had to die.
Graham roared, shifting as he attacked. Who cared if it hurt like hell when his clothes fell from his bloody side? This was a dream.
Graham loved the look on the Fae’s face as two hundred and some pounds of snarling wolf landed on him. Eat this, shithead.
Oison went down, scrabbling to draw his sword as he fell, but Graham ripped into him with teeth and claws. He met the metal of the mail, but it peeled back like tinfoil, and Graham tasted blood.
Oison struggled, the sword falling to the obsidian floor with a clank. Graham opened his mouth wide, clamped his teeth around the Fae’s throat, and ripped. The Fae screamed, then the scream died to a gurgle in an eruption of gore.
Graham tasted lifeblood pouring into his mouth. He snarled his victory, raking open Oison’s skin to find bones. Oison’s coal black eyes fixed, then filmed over.
Graham scrambled off him. He sat back on his haunches, lifted his bloody muzzle, and howled. He’d defeated his enemy. He’d saved himself and Misty from the Fae’s clutches and the damned water spell.
Sudden pain cut off Graham’s breath. The echo of his wolf’s howl bounced from the cave’s high ceiling and evaporated.
Graham’s Collar had come alive. Dormant while Graham had attacked the Fae, the Collar was now a hot band of metal, shocks arcing around it and straight into Graham’s body.
He howled again, this time in pure agony. His body shifted of its own accord from wolf to his in-between beast, his strongest form.
The Collar’s shocks increased, blasting him with hot pain. Graham clawed at the Collar, desperately trying to make it stop.
He saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Through his blurring vision, he saw the Fae, bloody and torn up, rise and draw his sword.
Fae swords were works of art. They were fashioned of bronze or silver—iron and steel were poison to the Fae. This one looked silver. As well, Fae swords were almost always full of spells. The Swords of the Guardians had been made by a Shifter centuries ago, but woven with spells from that Shifter’s Fae mate.
Oison held his sword battle-ready as he made his way to where Graham fought his Collar. Graham reached his huge, clawed hands for Oison, ready to kill again—as many times as it took to put the a*shole down.
Oison swung his sword, stopping when the tip contacted the Collar. Graham’s agony increased. The Fae held the sword against the Collar, spells on the blade feeding into the Collar and then into Graham.
Graham was being baked alive. He roared, hands going for the Fae’s throat, which still ran with blood.
Oison shouted at him in a Fae language, but Graham somehow understood it. Monster, created of filth. I hold you. By sword and by Collar, you are mine. You will give them to me, the battle beasts, and Fae again will walk the earth.
Graham tried to jerk away from the sword but Oison was merciless. Graham saw runes shimmer across the sword’s blade, heard whispering: weakened, enslaved, obedient.
“That’s what the Collars are,” Oison said, his voice clear, no matter that his throat was a bloody mess. “Chains that will bring you back to us. You have enslaved yourselves.”
Graham used all his will to wrench himself sideways, finally breaking the contact with the sword. He fell down, down, and the flowering vines reached up to pull him to the slick floor.
He heard himself shout, F*ck you! then something started hammering on his chest, dozens of blows, full force.
Graham dragged in a breath to fight this new threat . . . and found himself lying flat on his back on Misty’s couch, the same stupid movie on her TV. Two little wolves were standing heavily on his chest, beating on him with their oversized paws.
? ? ?
Misty emerged in the morning to find Graham at her kitchen table, red-eyed and irritable, his hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. Kyle and Matt, in their human form and dressed, their faces already dirty, bounced in chairs opposite him. Xavier stood at the stove, a towel over his shoulder, black T-shirt hugging his torso, as he cooked something that smelled wonderful.
Misty poured herself coffee. She enjoyed leaning back against the counter and taking a leisurely sip, happy to no longer crave liquid by the gallon.
Graham, on the other hand, was still under the spell. He lifted his coffee and took a sip, but his hands shook. He pulled the cup from his mouth after one taste, as though stopping himself from pouring the burning brew down his throat.
“You all right?” Misty asked him.
“Do I look all right?”
His voice was harsher than usual. His eyes were bloodshot, lips dry. This was Graham with a hangover, under a thirst spell, and by the looks of it, little sleep.
“No, you look like crap,” Misty said. “You need to drink something.”
Graham growled. “I need to go back to Shiftertown. Only reason I’m still here is to feed Kyle and Matt. And to make sure you’re all right for the day.”
“Xav’s making us chili killies,” one of the twins proclaimed.
“Chilaquiles,” Xav said good-naturedly from the stove. “Mama’s specialty. You’ll love this, Misty.”
Misty’s stomach growled. After the tequila shots, she should be as dry-voiced and red-eyed as Graham, but she felt pretty good. She’d had a dreamless sleep, waking when the sun rose to find the two wolves curled up on the bed next to her.
They’d leapt out as soon as she’d opened the door, and she’d hurried through her shower and dressed, concerned about Graham.
Xav brought two plates filled with eggs, fried tortillas, cheese, and tomatillo salsa to the table and put them in front of the cubs. He’d already laid out forks, and fortunately, the cubs decided to try to use them.
Graham had pushed aside his place setting, his elbows where his fork and knife would be. The flame tattoos climbed up his arms—red, orange, yellow, outlined in black.
“You need to eat something,” Misty said to him.
“No, I don’t. I need to go back to Shiftertown.”
Kyle and Matt didn’t have to be told to hurry. They were already halfway through their meal. All the pizza last night obviously hadn’t filled them.
“Well, eat something at home then,” Misty said. “And drink.” Just because Graham couldn’t control the thirst didn’t mean he didn’t need water.
“Will you let me worry about that?” he snapped. “You stay home. There’s a crazy Fae running loose, and he might get pissed off because you broke his spell. I’m sending over reinforcements.”
“I can’t stay home,” Misty said, watching Kyle and Matt shovel in the rest of the eggs and tortilla chips. “I have to talk to my insurance agent, make sure they receive the police report, call people about getting my store repaired, postpone incoming deliveries, and apologize to all my customers for having to cancel their orders. I’ll be busy.”
“Then you wait for my reinforcements.” Graham shoved aside the coffee and thrust himself to his feet. “Come on, you two.”
Matt and Kyle abandoned their places and licked-clean plates to barrel toward Misty. “Good-bye, Aunt Misty!” The two little boys hugged her legs, two eager faces turned up to her. Misty leaned down and hugged them back, kissing their foreheads. They gave her sticky kisses in return then broke away from her.
“Bye, Xav!” Another enthusiastic leg hug, and then they were out the door, heading for the small truck Graham had driven over.
Misty’s broken front door had been temporarily repaired with a piece of board nailed over the torn part, plus it was guarded by another muscled man in a black T-shirt and black camouflage pants.
“Graham,” Misty called as Graham strode out the door without another word. She caught up to him in the driveway, as the cubs climbed enthusiastically into the pickup. “Wait a minute.”
Graham swung to her. She expected him to give her hell again about wanting to talk, but he said nothing, only waited.
Today he looked less human than ever—a wild animal posing as a human being. His light gray eyes were hard with anger and pain, his short hair mussed, and the scars on his tanned face and arms were stark white. He was battling thirst and need for sleep, and losing.
“You should stay here,” Misty said. “You need to rest. Maybe Reid can find another way to break the spell . . .”
Graham’s words cut over hers. “No. Until this is over, I’m staying far away from you. Stick with Xav and the Shifters I send over, but keep away from me.”
Misty took a step forward. Her body hummed from his pleasuring of her last night, from the way he’d held her when they’d finished, her half-naked body folded into his. Graham hadn’t forgotten that, his look told her, and he wasn’t angry at her. He was scared.
“Graham . . .”
Graham raised his hands. “Stay. Away.” He moved his hands as though physically shoving her back, and then he turned around, got into the truck, and slammed its door.
Without looking at her, Graham started up the truck, backed out of her driveway, and roared off. The cubs waved out the window, then the truck turned a corner and was gone, leaving Misty alone with the warming morning and the stench of exhaust.
? ? ?
"Warden,” Graham said, walking into the Shiftertown leader’s house. “We need to talk about the Collars.”
Graham hadn’t been invited in, and Eric’s sister and his son, Jace, were in front of him before the screen door slammed, the soft snarls in their throats threatening mayhem.
“Good going, McNeil,” Eric said from where he lounged on the couch. He was in T-shirt and jeans, his bare feet propped on the coffee table. “Why don’t you charge into an alpha’s territory and start giving him commands? That’s the way to get your balls torn off.”
Graham watched Cassidy and Jace, who continued to block his way, their eyes, so like Eric’s, fixed on him with near-feral anger. Diego had come out of the kitchen, and now he paused in its doorway, also watching Graham. He was probably armed, like his brother, and Diego had less of a sense of humor than Xav.
“We don’t have time for this shit,” Graham said. “We need to get the Collars off the Shifters. All Shifters. Right now.”
Eric finally looked startled, though the only sign he made was his Feline eyes widening a little. “And you know why we can’t rush.”
“Things have changed. Collars need to come off. Now.”
“He’s not wrong,” Stuart Reid said from the other side of the screen door. Unlike Graham, he was savvy enough to wait outside until the alpha Shifter invited him in. “Or things are going to get bad for all Shifters, everywhere.”