Sarai's Fortune (3 page)

Zac moved to the corner of the room, standing to one side of the fireplace, his arms crossed over his chest. He got straight to the point. “I assume we’re here to put the plans for Sarai into effect.”

Andie nodded.

“She’s too valuable to lose,” Jaxon said. “A Seer is too vital to the Shadowcat Nation. We’ll do anything to keep her.”

Zac narrowed his eyes. He got the impression that Sarai had been used all her life. Was this just another form of control over one of the Kuharte, the supernatural gifted shifters?

“And I’ll do anything to keep
her
safe,” Andie murmured.

Jaxon leaned forward to give her hand a squeeze. “Me too.”

Andie gave him a small smile in return.

Zac relaxed slightly. He should’ve known that Sarai meant more to Andie, and Jaxon was only speaking for the Shadowcat Nation. He gave himself a mental shake. For a ridiculous moment, he’d been tempted to growl at Jaxon. Over a leggy blond who wouldn’t look at him.

“So she still sees Kyle capturing her if she goes home to her old dare?”

“Yes. Unless things have changed while we were on our honeymoon.” Andie paced a little, her agitation with the situation obvious.

Zac didn’t blame her. If she and Jaxon had taken Kyle out when they had the chance—when Andie had killed his father to become Alpha of her old dare, usurping Kyle—they wouldn’t be in this situation.

Andie paused in her pacing. “We’re anticipating that once she knows the plan, her visions will change. There has to be a way out of the future she’s seeing.”

Zac’d had some contact with a Seer in the past. Consequently, he knew that was possible. He hoped, for Sarai’s sake, that would be the case. Still, they had to convince her first.

“I don’t think she’s going to like this idea,” he muttered.

Andie’s eyebrows shot up, and she glanced curiously over at Jaxon, who shrugged. “What makes you say that? I think she’ll be relieved.”

Zac doubted that but held his own council. They’d see who was right soon enough.

Suddenly he tensed as he caught a trace of a scent. Vanilla, unmistakably Sarai, which meant she had to be close by. Zac sniffed the air again, focusing the heightened sense he got from his polar bear side. She had to be right outside the door. He looked over at Jaxon and Andie, who didn’t seem to be aware of Sarai’s presence. Maybe he was just hyper-aware of her—where she stood, what she was doing, sometimes even how she was feeling.

Why was she just waiting out there? Why didn’t she just come in?

Sarai stood in front of Andie and Jaxon’s room frozen in place mid-knock. Her chest rose and fell with each rapid intake of breath. Anyone walking by would have seen her standing there, staring blankly at the door, practically hyperventilating. Except she wasn’t seeing the whitewashed wood before her. She was watching the images of a vision flashing through her mind.

She’d tried to explain it to Andie once. Sometimes her visions came softly, peaceful moments of clarity or dreams. Sometimes, like now, they beat at her mind. Like watching someone flip through a pack of pictures, not always in sequence.

What made things worse was that she had the ability to change the images…to see different outcomes as she mentally adjusted small moments or decisions, like moving chess pieces on a board. There could be a
lot
of ways to change the ending.

Now—with this vision—she watched the images in horror. She knew exactly what Andie was about to tell her. If she followed that path, if she did as they were about to suggest…then Zac Montclair would die.

The hazy images she’d seen of him before this now came to a gruesome conclusion. She saw those animals rip into him. In her mind she screamed—calling for him to shift into his great polar bear form. But he didn’t, or couldn’t. In the end, his body lay on the ground, unmoving and covered in blood. His open, dead eyes seemed to stare right through her as if to blame her for his fate.

Sarai felt the pain sear through her soul. She’d done this. Her decisions had led to his death. She wanted to sink to her knees or double over with the agony, but when she had her visions, her body couldn’t move. It was like being trapped in a nightmare, unable to wake.

Instead, she started to move the chess pieces. If her decision to go along with Andie’s plan led to this, then what would happen if she didn’t?

A small whimper escaped her lips. Staying in the Shadowcat Nation wasn’t an option. She’d already seen that Kyle would find her if she stayed in Andie’s newly named Reynolds Dare. According to the laws, staying in the Keller Dare, or any of the other eight dares, wasn’t an option. They already had Kuharte of their own.

Which meant her only option was leaving the Shadowcat Nation and going rogue. She tried that decision, watching the vision shift and alter as she fought back her nausea.

Now she watched, sickened, as that path ended in her own death. In multiple ways. Leaving now, before talking to Andie, meant Kyle would find her and hold her prisoner for years, doing unspeakable things to her until he got the Seer child he wanted before killing her. Leaving later today, she would die at the hands of a wolf pack or coyotes. Making her way up to Alaska, where her father’s family was from, would lead to a very bloody death at the hands of a grizzly bear.

Heaven help her. No matter what she did, if she didn’t go along with the plan, she died.

Sarai finally stopped trying to find another ending to the future which now rang clear as a bell inside her mind. She released herself from the vision, starting with a long slow blink. She resisted the urge to rub her eyes. Pulling out of a vision always felt similar to waking from a particularly vivid dream. Her body didn’t want to let go yet, but her mind said it was time to get up. To her, she’d taken ages to ride each possibility to its conclusion, but, in reality, she’d only been standing there a few minutes. She gave her head a little shake to clear it.

Every decision she tried, in an effort to alter the outcome, laid out for her a future she couldn’t stomach. She was cornered. The acrid taste of fear welled in her mouth.

Slowly, she lowered her shaking hand, needing a moment to collect her thoughts. With a swallow, she glanced down the hallway, making sure no one was watching. Then she wrapped her arms around her middle as she leaned back against the wall opposite the door.

Sarai faced a choice…a terrible choice. Save herself or save Zac.

Hell, what a mess.

The question was an impossible one to have to answer in normal circumstances. Her recent visions of herself and Zac together, making love in ways that made her wake up at night with her body clamoring, made this even harder. Because she wasn’t just picking who lived and who died between herself and an acquaintance. She was choosing between herself and her lover.

Granted, he was only a future lover at this point, depending on what she decided to do now. That fact didn’t make the connection she felt with him any less real, any less potent.

The only thing keeping her from freaking out completely was the amount of time—weeks, maybe months, but at least not days—before any one path played itself out.

With a deep breath, she put off a final decision for now. Perhaps following one path a little ways would open up some options she couldn’t see yet. Either way, right now she needed to go inside and pretend she was fine, or they’d wonder where she was.

Sarai spent only another minute focused on calming her nerves. Finally, she stepped forward, raised her hand, and knocked.

****

Finally Sarai’s knock sounded at the door. Zac had just been on the verge of going out there to check on her. Instead, he relaxed back against the wall as Andie moved to usher her in. Sarai hesitated when she spotted him, and Zac would have sworn for a moment that there was desperation in her eyes. It was gone before he could be sure. She blinked but said nothing as she moved further inside.

As both girls took a seat in the chairs facing the couch, Zac looked down and studied his feet. He took a moment to school his features. A pretty face didn’t usually get his heart rate up. Besides, up till now she’d barely spoken two words in his direction. His reaction continued to baffle him.

Andie jumped right to the point. “We’ve come up with a solution to your problem.”

“Oh?”

Zac felt Sarai’s gaze brush over him like a physical touch. He didn’t have to look up to know she was watching him. He resisted the urge to shift positions—or to flex his muscles like a high school boy trying to impress a girl. He was only a few short years away from thirty, for Pete’s sake. He should be past such urges.

Besides, Zac had seen the back of her more often than he’d seen her face. How he knew the color of her eyes so well since they were rarely the part of her he could see was a bit of a mystery to him. Not one he cared to examine too closely. Still, he had to wonder why she ran from him.

It also didn’t bode well for what was coming.

Catching the direction of Sarai’s glance, Andie said, “It’s okay. Zac has agreed to be part of the plan.”

She looked at Zac fully, holding his gaze steadily for the first time since she’d met him. “So you’re aware of the threat I face from Kyle Carstairs?”

He gave her a single, solemn nod. “I know he is after you. As a Seer, you would be a powerful weapon in the wrong hands. Andie explained that Kyle wants to mate you, for you to bear his cubs, so he can have Seer children fully under his control. That about it?” His words had been perfunctory, delivered without any hint of his opinion of the situation.

Sarai grimaced. “You got most of it, but you left out the bit about Kyle killing me once I provide that child. Then there’s the part where I’ve seen that if I go back to the newly claimed Reynolds Dare, he’ll find me and take me. I’m not safe there.” Zac looked to Andie, whose grim expression confirmed Sarai’s story. He clenched his teeth against the dark anger thrumming through him. How could anyone put this woman through hell like that? For an insane moment, he fought the urge to wrap her in his arms, to hold the world at bay for her.

Sarai shifted her attention back to Andie. She drummed her fingers on her thigh, a nervous habit he’d noticed she had.

“I’m still not clear on what the plan is. Did you use the negotiations with Zac as leverage to get permission to have two Kuharte at the Keller Dare? One with each Alpha or something?” she asked, hope evident in her voice. A Kuharte was a shifter with additional, special powers. Jaxon’s dare already had one in residence—JoLynn, a Healer.

Andie shook her head. “There was no way they would ever let us do that. No dare gets to have more than one Kuharte. They’re already not all that thrilled about two Alphas living in the same dare, even with my father acting in my stead.”

Sarai didn’t look too surprised to hear that.

Andie continued. “But we figured out another way for you.”

Andie paused and three sets of expectant eyes watched Sarai closely in the silence that lingered. She looked back and forth at them with her eyebrows raised. “What?”

“No visions yet?” Andie asked.

Sarai flinched a little. Zac didn’t think the others even caught the slight movement, but he had. “No.”

She was lying. He was sure of it. What was she holding back?

“Hmmm…” Andie frowned. He knew she’d expected this option to change Sarai’s future. “We are having you assigned to Zac’s Timik.”

Sarai’s fingers picked up the pace, tapping a restless rhythm. “I thought it might be something like that.”

Andie looked pleased with herself. “We had it written into the treaty with Zac’s Timik of polar bear shifters that a Shadowcat Nation representative would be assigned to live with him and his people as a sign of faith and the bond between our nations. As an added show of confidence, we made that person one of our Kuharte…You.”

“I see,” she said slowly.

“Something wrong?” Andie asked, her head tipped to the side.

“No. Just taking it all in. So how does this work exactly?”

“We think it best that—”

“You’ll need to stay with me at all times.” Zac’s deep tones pulled Sarai’s gaze to where he stood beside the fireplace.

She tipped her head. “Can you be more specific?”

“You go where I go.”

“Why can’t I just stay with your Timik regardless of where you are?”

“I will be spending a great deal of time with the Keller Dare, and I assume you’ll want to be there as much as possible. Also, given the danger following you, I plan to keep you with me and only put my Timik at risk when I’m there to help defend them.”

She gave him what appeared to be a forced smile. “Sounds like a plan.”

“Do you see Kyle finding you there?” Jaxon asked.

Once again, Sarai flinched slightly. “No. I don’t see him finding me there.”

Zac frowned. Something was off. He could feel it is his bones.
What is she hiding?

Sarai stood up, trying to hide her shaky legs. So far she didn’t think any of them had picked up on her internal panic. “I know you both took risks setting this up for me. I really appreciate it.”

“Our pleasure.” Andie reached out and squeezed her hands.

“So when does this arrangement start?”

“Immediately,” Jaxon said.

Zac levered himself off the wall he’d been leaning against, catching her attention. “The plan is to leave today.”

“Today?” Sarai raised her eyebrows. She hadn’t seen that part coming. She thought she’d have more time to make a decision.

Andie stood and gave Sarai a hug. “I’m sorry for the short notice. We got final agreement from the other Alphas the day before our wedding, so we didn’t have time to set things in motion till now.”

“I understand,” Sarai said faintly.

“His schedule will be yours moving forward. Unless you have a vision that requires you to take action of some kind. Let him know when that happens. When you’re here, we’ve set up a suite of rooms for you, sharing a common living space between you.”

“Not that we don’t trust our people, but—”

Sarai interrupted Jaxon’s caveat. “—But we’re a bunch of cougar shifters. Playing for the team was never a strong suit?”