Authors: A. C. Arthur
When the furniture had finished being broken and scattered about the room and the roaring and hissing came to a stop, two cats stood, breathing heavily, glaring at each other. He was a big and beautiful panther, where Nivea’s jaguar was golden with rosettes so close they sometimes looked to be big black blurs.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Eli yelled about two seconds after he shifted.
His naked body was in the face of her cat’s, staring down at it with rage unlike any she’d ever seen in him. No, that was not true, she’d seen it before, the day he was beating the crap out of Rimas.
The cat took a step back before Nivea shifted, shaking her head because the quick action always made her a little dizzy.
“I could ask you the same thing,” she shot back.
“But you won’t because I’m the commanding officer. And goddammit! What the hell, Cannon! Why are you here shifting and attacking fucking cats?”
“Attacking rogues, you mean? Last time I checked that was my job,” she snapped back.
“Your job is to do what I say, when I say.”
“That’s bullshit, Eli! My job is the same as yours, to keep our secret safe.”
“Well, you’re doing a hell of a job, coming in here shifting like that,” he roared back. “That cat could have killed you! It could have bitten down on your neck and…” His words trailed off as he closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as if he were in some type of pain.
“Oh, you mean after you’d already shifted? What the hell was that? I walk in on two cats about to tear another’s throat out. What did you think I was going to do?”
There was nothing else she could have done. He was her mate and there was no way she could stand by and watch him be hurt, no way she wouldn’t fight side by side with him. Pain radiated through her chest at the thought that Eli wouldn’t understand that.
When he stalked past her instead of speaking another word she called after him, “Running away again, Eli? You’re becoming a pro at that.”
“Shut up!” he yelled over his shoulder as she tried valiantly not to look at the dimples in his muscled ass, or the power of his bare thighs.
She clamped her lips shut, not because he’d told her to, but rather because he wasn’t likely to listen to a word she had to say. Instead she turned around, staring at the brutalized rogue carcasses, wondering what the hell their connection was to all that was going on around them. Seconds later her face was covered and she stumbled back as Eli roughly put a shirt that smelled like cheesesteak subs over her head.
“What the hell? Are you crazy?” she asked as he lifted her arms and stuffed them through the large openings of the shirt.
“No. But you are if you think I’m going to let anybody come in here and see your naked ass!” he yelled before moving past her. “I’m calling this in.”
He reached down on the floor to where the shreds of his jeans were, picked up his cell phone, and put it to his ear. He’d obviously found some cargo shorts that fit without falling down his hips. His chest, however, was still bare, the jaguar tat on his arm taunting her.
“Use your com link, it’ll be quicker,” she told him.
“Don’t want everyone on duty to know about this.”
Nivea shrugged, not bothering to ask why, and pulled on the hem of her shirt to make sure all her assets were in fact covered. She walked around the room, thinking these rogues weren’t cats, they were actually pigs. Dirty and disgusting pigs that didn’t know the meaning of a trash can or Pine-Sol. Moving around she looked for anything that would connect these two rogues to what was going on—either at the cabin with Agent Wilson, or the hospital with Rimas. Something that would pull all of this nonsense together.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Eli said from behind her. “I’m sure somebody heard all the noise.”
Nivea kept moving.
“The Sanchez brothers are on their way,” he said.
She turned to him then. “Did they know you were coming here?”
Instead of supplying an answer, Eli asked a question. “What are you doing here, Nivea? Did you follow me?”
Nivea rolled her eyes and moved into the kitchen area, looking over the filthy countertops. “Get over yourself, Eli. I have a job to do too.”
“And how did your job land you here?” he asked. “And don’t give me another flippant remark. Answer me, Nivea. What the hell are you doing here?”
She sighed then, figuring it didn’t make sense for both of them to try and keep a secret that was bound to come out anyway. “We’re on the same team here. Caprise, Kalina, and I pieced together the fact that a rogue was in that cabin with Agent Wilson. Why? A rogue was also in the hospital room and killed Rimas. Why again? They’re trying to get our attention,” she said finally. “Or rather trying to keep our attention diverted so we won’t focus on the true threat, Crowe and those hybrids. Or possibly someone who is controlling both Crowe and the rogues.”
Eli was already shaking his head. “Rogues would not be working with hybrids.”
“All I know is that we’re here chasing after them instead of hunting Crowe as we should be. Don’t you wonder why that is? Why were they with Agent Wilson and why kill Rimas?”
“This is not how rogues work,” Eli said, but she could tell he was thinking over her words. He was looking around now, just as she was.
They both stopped when they heard a phone ringing.
“It’s not mine,” he told her, going completely still.
“Not mine either,” she announced, moving out of the kitchen and following the sound.
She kicked it when she was about two steps away from Eli. He bent down and picked it up, gliding his finger across the screen to answer.
“Hello?” he spoke into it. “Hello?”
When there was no answer he pulled the phone away from his ear and looked down at it. With a frown he turned it so that Nivea could see the screen as well.
“Boden,” she whispered.
* * *
Nick tossed the cell phone onto the conference table. It flipped over and landed flat just a couple inches shy of the speaker console in the center.
“If Boden Estevez is alive, you can bet he’s not working alone.” Sebastian Perry’s voice sounded throughout the room.
“I knew that bastard wasn’t dead,” Jace Maybon, Pacific Zone Faction Leader, added, a string of curses following that declaration.
“How did you know?” Kalina asked.
The First Female had been seated next to her mate, a tall glass of milk centered on a blue square napkin in front of her. The milk was flavored, strawberry, because Kalina couldn’t stand the taste of white milk. Jax stood two steps to her right, and Baxter two feet behind her, hands clasped in front of him.
To say that security around Rome and Kalina would be heightened was an understatement. Eli stood directly behind Rome, while Ezra was on the left side of the table, within arm’s reach of Nick. Every high ranking leader of the Assembly would now have their first guard and a second one. Females would have four. Everyone would be armed and ready to kick ass at a moment’s notice, no questions asked. This was the state of the Assembly.
“A few months back I reported that Bianca Adani was looking for representation through my agency,” Jace began. “Now, I know I’m damned good at what I do. We represent the top A-list actors in the world so I can see why someone serious about breaking into the business would look our way. But resumes very rarely make it to my personal e-mail and they’re almost never followed up by a video delivered right to my front door.”
“You never told us about a video,” Cole Linden, Central Zone Faction Leader interrupted. “It must have had tits and ass in it for you to keep quiet.”
“Don’t be crass, Linden,” Jace shot back. “I didn’t say anything because there was nothing to report. I just found it odd that all her information was coming straight to me. When my assistant checked with others throughout the agency, none of them reported receiving the same submission. We all know there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
“How does any of that relate to Boden?” Nivea asked, receiving surprised looks from everyone in the room.
Everyone except for Caprise, who was barely hiding her knowing smirk. Eli frowned, because he didn’t like Nivea being the center of attention, for any reason.
Bas, Cole, and Jace were all on speakerphone so they couldn’t see who had asked the question.
“She’s right,” Kalina interjected. “That doesn’t sound like it relates to Boden at all.”
A throat was cleared but Eli couldn’t tell which one of the FLs on the other end of the speaker it was.
“My grandparents spent their later years traveling the globe, visiting all of the rain forests that had become home to Shadow tribes. During the time they were in the Sierra Leone rain forest they heard of a grand love affair, the rejoining of the tribes some had called it because it was a
Topètenia
and a
Lormenia,
” Jace told them. “When my grandmother finally had a chance to see this couple she couldn’t believe it. Boden was mated to Acacia, the daughter of the
Lormenian
leader, Teodoro.”
There was an audible gasp from somewhere at the other end of the room and Eli saw Ezra’s lips going thin, a muscle ticking in his jaw. He was glad to have the safety of his sunglasses. Nobody could see his surprise or possibly, the anger that was growing within him, without access to his eyes. He stood with his legs slightly spread, hands fisted in front of him, a rush of emotion swirling around like a growing storm inside.
“Wait a minute.” X spoke up this time. “You’re saying that your grandmother had proof that Boden was alive years ago and never thought to tell anyone?”
“She told my mother, who assumed her mother was going senile or something, possibly suffering from some disease she’d picked up throughout her travels. She dismissed the rantings of an old woman who wanted things between the shifters to be like in the old days. My mother didn’t speak of it because she feared the Elders may have hunted down her mother, issuing the same death sentence they had to Boden.”
“That would not have happened,” Elder Alamar spoke up.
He didn’t usually attend these meetings but after Eli and Nivea had brought the phone back to Rome, the Assembly Leader had called in everyone immediately.
“We did not take killing our own lightly,” the normally quiet shifter said.
“But you would kill them!” Jace yelled. “If you saw fit you would kill them because you thought you knew best who should live and who should die.”
“Calm down,” Rome stated evenly, yet dominantly. “We cannot erase the past. The Elders of the Gungi ruled the way they deemed appropriate. We will do differently because we now know more.”
“So if Boden wasn’t killed when he was supposed to be, instead taking refuge in the Sierra Leone rain forest and falling in love with the tiger princess, why is he here now and how is that tramp Bianca connected?” Kalina asked.
“At the end of Bianca’s video there was the
Topètenia
insignia intertwined with that of the
Lormenia
and the
Bosinia,
Croesteriia,
and
Serfins.
I’d already known Bianca was a shifter but I was curious when I saw this so I did some background on her. That’s when I found out she was Acacia’s younger sister, born to a
Lormenia
female that was not Teodoro’s mate and so they’d been shipped out of the Sierra Leone rain forest before she was born. With Acacia dead I put two and two together,” Cole told them.
“And decided to keep this all to yourself?” Ezra asked.
Eli frowned. He’d been hoping that Ezra would keep their silence, that their past would not become a part of this conversation.
Nick, X, and Rome knew what had happened with them in the Sierra Leone rain forest, and Eli suspected their mates did as well. And because Ezra had used what happened to them to help Shya get better, the other FLs now knew as well. Nivea did not know and he did not want her hearing about the mistakes of his past. Not here and definitely not now.
“The why and how no longer matters.”
Baxter spoke up from his spot in the corner. He moved slowly until he was standing near Elder Alamar. “This time would have come regardless of the events preceding it.”
“What are you talking about?” Rome asked. “Do you know something you haven’t been telling me? Something else, that is.”
Eli stared at the Overseer as he came closer to the table. When Baxter looked up at him he knew exactly why. That conversation he’d thought he was overhearing weeks ago, the one that predicted the future of the Shadows, Eli had not overheard it at all. He’d seen Baxter and Elder Alamar having the conversation because he was a Seer, just as Baxter had told him. That’s why he’d heard nothing but whispers when he’d put a glass to the wall. It was a vision that he had no idea when had actually taken place. But right at this moment, there was no doubt that he’d seen Baxter and the Elder talking, conversing about what they should do about Magdalena’s vision.
“
A morte ea destruição. O fim completo da corrida ou uma mudança catastrófica em quem eo que somos virá. Vai chover sobre as cabeças daqueles que não tinham nada a ver com essa luta e um será encarregado de nos ver passar. Um deles será responsável para o futuro de todos nós.
” Elder Alamar spoke solemnly in Portuguese.
Baxter nodded and then looked to Rome. “It was predicted by Magdalena, the Seer of all tribes. She warned of death and destruction. The complete end of the race or a catastrophic change in who and what you all are would come. It will rain down upon the heads of those who had nothing to do with this fight and one will be tasked with seeing us through, she said. One will be responsible for the future of all.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this sooner?” Eli asked, his chest still heaving at the revelation, the acceptance of what he was.
It was Elder Alamar who spoke to him this time. “The job of a Seer is to see what has been and what will be. It is not their job to change the course shifters will take.”
Eli nodded, frowning at the Elder. “So they are privy to all this information but prevented from doing anything about it? That’s a fucking waste!”