Shifter's Lady (9 page)

It was raining. Indoors. She lifted a hand to feel the raindrops and realized a second truth. She was glowing.

“Oh! It's me,” she gasped.

Ethan laughed out loud, then pulled her back down into the circle of his arms. “I kind of figured, with the Atlantis thing and all,” he murmured into her ear. “It's fascinating, but maybe you could stop it before the bed gets soaked?”

She felt the heat sweep through her face as she blushed. “Of course.” It was only a matter of a moment to focus on cutting off the water she'd unconsciously channeled. Then she turned her focus inward, and the glow on her skin faded.

“I'm sorry. I never…I've never done that. Called water without knowing it. I don't know how—” She stopped babbling, caught by a random thought. “It is true that intense emotion can sometimes trigger our abilities, so perhaps passion? I should write this down.”

Ethan's arms tightened around her. “I have a better idea, my beautiful scholar. Why don't you write it all down later? The adrenaline reaction stuff you told me about earlier, the raining, the glowing. All of it.”

He smiled, and there was much of smug male triumph in it. “Be sure to spell my name right in the ‘passion causes rain' part, okay? E-T-H—”

She shoved at his chest, smiling in spite of herself. “I think I'll remember your name. I've certainly used it enough times this night.”

He rolled onto his back, pulling her with him, and she felt his penis hardening against her leg. “How is that possible? Are you able to rouse again so soon due to your dual nature?” she wondered aloud.

“No, this is all you,” he said, tangling his fingers in her hair. “Why don't we see how many more times you can call my name?”

She kissed him until she was breathless, then lifted her head. “You are very arrogant.”

“Yeah, I am,” he agreed lazily. “But maybe this time you'll call a thunderstorm.”

Then he rolled her underneath him and was anything but lazy for a very long time.

Ethan stood at the window, looking out at the spectacular view of Big Cypress. Dawn's first warm glow touched the tops of trees, ribbons of light with gilt edges, like packages waiting to be opened by eager children.

The comparison led him to thoughts of the children of the pride, who looked to him as a role model for how a modern shape-shifter could interact with other shape-shifters, with the humans and, now, with the Atlanteans. Trying to work toward common goals and against common enemies.

What if Travis's mind worked like Fallon's had? What if he planned to take Ethan's pride and turn it over to the vampires? Organos was dead, but it never took long for another bloodsucker to pop up and fill a vacuum.

“A peacock feather for your thoughts.” Her warm voice soothed and caressed him, bringing a smile to his face and a shimmer of interest to parts of his body that should have been limp with exhaustion.

He turned away from the window and took a moment to study her. In the faint morning light, she glowed like a jewel among her colored scarves that lay scattered across his bed.

He'd always have fond memories of those scarves.

He leapt across the space that separated them and dove onto the bed, catching her in his arms. “Peacock feather? We say
penny.
Don't the peacocks protest?”

“We only offer peacock feathers that are found lying about, silly man. We don't go around plucking palace peacocks.”

“Plucking palace peacocks? Now say
that
three times fast,” he
murmured, bemused by this woman and her exotic expressions. Her exotic experiences. Hell, she'd made it rain in his bedroom.

Three times.

He kissed her neck and inhaled deeply, drawing the scent of warmth and sex and ocean-kissed skin into his nostrils. His scent was on her, too, he realized. The thought of it pleased him more than it should have.

He was getting possessive about her, and he had no right.

Which pissed him off.

“What does time have to do with it, anyway?” he demanded.

She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

Cursing himself for a fool, he jumped up and off the bed. “You should. Beg my pardon, that is. If you think you're going to just use me for sex and abandon me. Go back to Atlantis.”

A slow smile spread across her face, and she sat up, not bothering to lift the sheet to cover herself. He found himself hypnotized by the sight of her creamy breasts, their rosy tips pointing up at him.

“I confess I am delighted at the idea of being thought seductive enough to use you for sex,” she purred, laughing at him.

But, no. She was laughing
with
him, he realized, and it was very different. Her laughter was inviting and welcoming, not mocking. He suddenly felt a cold, black mass in his chest rip open and let air and warmth and her own gentle summer rain into his heart.

It scared the crap out of him.

But it was a day for courage. He almost laughed. Facing Travis didn't scare him at all. Putting his heart on the line terrified him.

“If I win this challenge, will you give me a chance? Will you promise to give us time to know each other?”

There. He'd said it. Now the ball was in her court. If Atlanteans even played ball in courts.

“
When
you win this challenge,” she replied, “we will take all the time we need to know each other. You have my word.”

He nodded, a fierce joy rushing through him. He would win this challenge, and he would prove to Marie that she belonged with him. Easy.

“So now I prepare,” he said.

She lifted her chin and tried to smile. “Now you prepare.”

Marie spent every one of the hours from dawn until midnight with Ethan. She watched him as he ran command sessions concerning everything from evacuation of the women and children to more mundane issues, such as emergency plans for the enormous business infrastructure that he and his team administered for the pride.

Kat called in every hour, reporting on her quest to find Jack, asking how Marie was faring under the strain, and inquiring about Ethan. Marie recognized Kat's ever-deepening worry for her pride members and friends and attempted to give solace. But there was little she could do over the telephone, and the barriers were still in place that blocked Kat from returning home.

She used Kat's phone calls as a reminder of sorts, and attempted to contact Alaric and Bastien each time she hung up with Kat. But every try was met with the same blank deadness. Empty space with no trace of either of them. She pushed the fear aside, to worry about later. First she had to get through the day and Ethan's challenge. Then she would find a way to contact Atlantis.

Alaric and Bastien were still alive. She
knew
it.

If anything about that long, long day surprised Marie, it was discovering the presence of so many moments of peace in the middle of planning for a war. For war it would be, she discovered, were the unthinkable to happen and Travis to defeat Ethan. William and the other warriors of the pride made it clear that they would challenge Travis, one after another, until he lay dead on the ground of the challenge circle.

She'd thought there would be more bluster. More of the hearty “Of course you will win, Ethan” directed toward their alpha. But the panthers were nothing if not pragmatists, as she supposed should be expected from a species walking the edge of extinction. If the pride alpha fell, another would take his place. It was the natural order of things.

“Damn the natural order of things!”

“So fierce, ocean girl,” Ethan said softly from behind her, startling her. “What's on your mind?”

She whirled around. “
You're
on my mind. This stupid challenge is on my mind. It's only two hours until midnight, and you're talking about bank accounts with William. Shouldn't you be training or something?”

A fleeting smile crossed his face, then he stared solemnly into her eyes. “I love that you're worried about me, but there's no need. I'm going to make damn sure that Travis doesn't live through this. He sealed his fate when he put his hands on you.”

“Stop it! It was nothing,” she insisted. “You saw how easily those scratches healed. Do not risk yourself for such a petty reason.”

He bent to kiss her. “It wouldn't be a petty reason, trust me. But there is so much more to this. The alpha challenge is a longstanding tradition among my kind. I can't refuse it, or my own pride would relieve me from command. Survival of the fittest applies to shape-shifters more than to any others.”

“Ethan, I feel so useless. Please give me something to do.”

“You mean something more than you've already done? Like helping that woman who was having labor pains? Or comforting the children who've taken refuge here with their mothers? Or offering logical, calm advice in any of a dozen discussions I've had today?”

She shook her head. “They were false labor pains brought on by stress. It will be more than a month before she delivers that baby, the Goddess willing.”

Ethan took her shoulders in his hands. “Here is what you can do for me. Get out. If the worst should happen, and—”

“It won't. Don't even think it,” she said, refusing to hear him say the words that spoke of his possible defeat and death.

“Marie, you have to listen to me. If the worst should happen, the new alpha must offer safe passage to anybody who wants to leave the pride. Travis is insane, but the reps from the other prides will force him to do this. That's one of the reasons I'd hoped to get Jack here, too, but it doesn't matter. There are enough of them with honor that you'll be safe.”

She shook her head wildly, not wanting to hear it. Unable to bear the thought that the man she'd only just discovered could be torn from her after only the span of a day.

He caught her head, trapping it in his hands so that she was
forced to look at him. “If I'm defeated, promise me you'll get out.”

She stared into his golden eyes that burned with determination and realized her assent would relieve some measure of his burden. “I promise.”

He studied her as if to measure the strength of her promise, then, evidently satisfied as to her sincerity, he nodded. “Then now we prepare.”

Two hours later, Ethan strode past the ring of shape-shifters who surrounded the newly formed arena. They'd carved the space out of a dense spot of swamp forest only a few miles from his headquarters. He spared a moment of regret for the fallen pines and dwarf cypresses that had been hastily chopped down to form the challenge circle.

“What part of nature
preserve
don't you bozos understand?”

Travis laughed that high, skittering laugh of his again. “You won't have to worry about little details like that after tonight, Ethan. You'll be as extinct as your pathetic Florida cats.”

A deep rumbling voice thundered from out of the shadows. “Neither of them are extinct yet, Travis of the Texas panther pride. And if you keep talking so casually about the extinction of your own kind, you're going to piss me off.”

Travis snarled at the sound of the newcomer, but Ethan threw back his head and laughed. “Jack! Never thought I'd be so glad to see a tiger.”

The hugely muscled weretiger strode into the circle as the wary panthers backed away from him. No matter how fearless, no panther was going to be a match for a shifter whose true shape was a five hundred pound tiger.

Jack shook Ethan's hand and then turned to greet Travis. But Travis snarled at him and backed away. “Get away from me. You stink of the jungle.”

Jack's eyes narrowed, but his smile never slipped. “Nice manners. Lucky for you I'm Switzerland in this challenge.”

Travis stripped off his shirt and threw it to the ground. “What are you talking about?”

“He's neutral,” Ethan said. “Just here to observe and make sure that all the rules are followed.”

Travis sneered at them. “Is that so? Maybe Switzerland is a little too late.”

The sound of dozens of guns being cocked echoed through the clearing, and Ethan, Jack, and Ethan's pride members all crouched into position, ready to shift and face the threat.

“Oh, better wait for your girlfriend to join us, Ethan,” Travis said, his eyes glittering with malice as he pointed to the path Ethan had just traveled.

Ethan sensed her before he saw her.
Marie.

The bastards had Marie.

Primal rage poured through his body at the sight of the two men dragging her into the circle, her beautiful hair tangled around her. They shoved her to the ground, and Ethan moved to help her, but Travis wagged a finger at him as the two thugs both pointed pistols at her head.

Marie held up her hand as if to tell him to stand down, no sign of fear on her face this time. She was far tougher than she knew.

“They can shoot faster than you can leap, Ethan,” Travis said. “So now we fight, without the help of your tiger buddy. And after I rip your intestines out and wrap them around your head, I'm going to fuck your woman right here on the ground next to your dead body.”

A red haze of intense fury washed over Ethan's vision until he was nearly blinded from it, but he forced it back. Forced cold logic to wrest control from his rage.

He couldn't make a single mistake in the coming battle. More than his own life depended on it. If they hurt Marie…But he forced the thoughts back. He needed icy logic and cold control.

Ethan looked at Jack and made a nearly imperceptible gesture, subtly signaling that he didn't think they could rush the guns and win. Jack returned the gesture, agreeing.

“You want to fight or stand around boasting, Travis?” Ethan went for the emotional reaction. “Fallon always said you were all bluster and no balls.”

Travis screamed a high, thin scream of pain and anguish. “I loved her! I loved her, and she left me for you. You never loved her, you bastard. You let her die. So now I'm going to kill you, and my men are going to shoot every member of your pride if they so much as twitch.”