The Awakening: Britton (Entangled Covet) (16 page)

evidence. Then I trailed the perp’s scent to a house. He wasn’t there, but I picked up another scent and

started snooping around the outside. That’s when I heard a whimper.” Britton blew out a ragged breath.

“I’ll never forget that sound, Val. So innocent…so full of fear. And it came from the cellar. That’s where I

found her. She was barely five years old, and terrified.”

She covered her mouth with her hand. “
You
were the one who found that little girl?”

“The asshole had welded a cage door onto his small utility room. Only big enough for a cot. He had her

locked inside. I thought I could just yank it open, but I couldn’t get the door to budge. Fucking steel. Then

I noticed the floor was dirt. I had no idea when that man would return, and I felt the pressure to get her out

and keep her from being caught in a cross fire. I told her I was going to get my dog to help.”

“Dog? I thought I heard your beast was a—”

He held up a hand. “I didn’t think saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to get my jaguar,’ would be a good idea.

Since she was so young, I believed I could get away with telling her it was a dog. I made sure to say that he

was a nice black dog that loved to be scratched behind his ears, so she shouldn’t be afraid. Then I moved

out of view and shifted. In less than a minute, I had a hole dug under that door. She didn’t even hesitate,

just crawled out and hugged my neck, Val. Then scratched me behind the ears.”

Britton paused, remembering how overwhelmed he’d felt at having earned the complete trust of this

terrified child. How in those moments he’d been so damn proud to be part of SPAC, of being a shifter so

he’d been able to save her, not knowing that in only a few short hours everything would be taken from

him.

“I wasn’t about to leave her unprotected so I could shift back and put my clothes on. I
deliberately

decided to make sure she got to a safe location first. Unfortunately, this wasn’t some abandoned house out

in the sticks. It was in a residential area. As soon as I padded outside, the neighbors saw me and the

screams started. And then I was being shot at. I had nowhere to go but back in the cellar. The little girl was

even more terrified at the ruckus, and I’d saved her once, so she followed me. Which meant I still couldn’t

shift. Then animal control came and tranquilized me. It wasn’t really enough to knock me out, but I had to

pretend.”

“Oh, Britton. I knew a child was involved, but I had no—
Dea
, now I feel even more horrible for the

things I’ve said over the years.”

He waved it off. “I screwed up. Not only did the High Council believe I put the entire race at risk by

shifting in such a public area, but I FUBAR-ed that case horribly. We already had a murder on our hands,

and now that same shifter had kidnapped a human child. And
I
brought it all into the public instead of

concealing it.”

“How did you get away from animal control?”

“The dispatcher was a half-shifter. When she got a call that a black jaguar was on the loose, she

dispatched the call to SPAC, who then figured out it was me. They sent a shifter who worked for animal

control to ‘accidentally’ let me loose.”

“I don’t understand, Britton. The High Council was able to get the case hushed up. I know the

perpetrator is in Kerker. And there weren’t any human reports of a man shifting into an animal. So why are

you being punished for something that essentially didn’t happen?”

“Why was Samantha Mills thrown in jail and her baby taken from her?”

“She broke the law.”

“In the eyes of the High Council, so did I. Old laws, Val, old laws that they cling to in the name of

preserving the shifter race.” He sighed. “At least I wasn’t put in Kerker.”

“But twenty years without your beast…”

He shrugged. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. The first year was tough, but the last three have been easier.

It’s become my life. Besides, being a human has its perks. When I get pissed, I don’t have a claw-swiping

cat making it worse. ”

Dea
, he was so fucking lying now. It
had
been his life, up until a few days ago. Yeah, his beast’s anger

could magnify his own, or they could have opposite reactions and have a battle of wills…but not having

that
wasn’t
a perk. After losing the animal, then getting it back, he realized how much he loved the

connection he had with his beast, how empty he’d been until he’d felt it stir within him yesterday.

Now he was going to have to do the adjustment all over again. As much as he would love to grab hold

of Val’s encouragement from earlier, he wasn’t fool enough to believe that the High Council would ever

give him a full pardon. If he even ventured down that line of thinking, he was just asking for a world of

hurt when this was over.

“It just isn’t right,” she murmured.

“I did the crime, now I have to do the time.” He tried for a lighthearted smile, but it felt flat to even him.

“You didn’t do a crime,” she insisted. “Not in my eyes, anyway. You saved a little girl from
Dea
knows

what horrible fate.”

An odd sensation tweaked his chest, almost like gratitude…but deeper. As if her support was something

he’d needed to hear. Which was insane. “There was a lot I could’ve done besides shifting. The High

Council had no trouble letting me know each and every possibility as they injected the serum. I could’ve

called for backup and had the girl moved, so she wasn’t connected to a shifter. I could’ve left her there and

gone back later after we’d apprehended the suspect. I could’ve, could’ve, could’ve.”

“Thinking back now…would you have done it differently?”

He was silent a moment. “No. All it took was that whimper. No choice. I had to get into the house.”

She slid across the tub toward him and took his hand. Her lips curved up sadly. “You did the right

thing.”

The feel of her slender fingers entwining with his sent shock waves over his body. He sat stock-still for

the space of a second, then he grasped her around the back of the neck and pulled her close, their faces

inches apart. A sharp gasp shot past her lips and he stopped, but he couldn’t make himself let her go. They

were frozen, his hand latched around her neck, her hands braced on his shoulders, her quickened breath

puffing onto his mouth. Their gazes locked. For an endless moment they regarded each other. Then she

lowered her eyes.

“I think we should eat,” she whispered before pushing away.

Water sluiced down her body as she stood. He watched her climb out of the tub and wrap herself in a

towel before going inside. The door closed gently after her.

A whistling exhale gushed from his lungs as he looked down at the roiling water. He shoved a hand

through his hair.
Fucking hell
. The need to kiss her had been even stronger than this afternoon. His

attraction to her had become more potent. Practically overwhelming. Far more powerful than anything he’d

ever felt before.

What had changed?

A thought occurred, one so terrible it felt like a two-hundred-pound jaguar had barreled into his chest.

His
jaguar.

Only one thing had changed. He was a shifter again. Which meant…

Fuck. Me.

These odd symptoms weren’t some manifestation of the serum. These symptoms were the
Drall
. That

irresistible urge to mate.

Forever.

No.

No. No. No.

He did not want this. Being immune to the mating instinct was the only part of being human that he’d

liked. No worries about encountering that one woman on earth who would awaken the compelling need to

kiss. But not just any kiss.
The
kiss. It was dangerous, and it wouldn’t lead to a wild fuck-filled night in

bed. No, that intimate meeting of lips would lead to the mating instinct blasting forward, controlling him,

goading him to begin the bonding ritual—to
fewse
his soul to hers.

The fucking
Fewshon
. He shuddered. Once he marked her, she would become a part of him. Her soul

would thrive within him. He’d be consumed by
one
woman—for all eternity.

The mere idea made him feel sick. The one-woman deal wasn’t for him. Never had been, never would

be.

Besides, after watching the hell Aidan and Liam had gone through to get their love-for-eternity bullshit,

Britton had the damn sense to run while the getting was still good.

For a bonding that supposedly promised the ultimate happiness, it sure brought a shit-ton of pain and

suffering along with it. He wanted no part of that.
Damn
it. This attraction he suddenly felt for Val wasn’t

even real! The
Drall
had bulldozed over years of bona fide loathing, and was making him feel all warm

and tingly toward his worst enemy. How messed up was that?

At least she would never know. The mating instinct only triggered when a male shifter met his true

mate. As a half shifter, she didn’t have a
Drall,
so she was clueless, with none of the misdirected symptoms

he was having—thank the
Dea
for that, at least.

He had to get this case over with pronto, so the High Council would give him the serum again and kill

the damned instinct.

He hated the idea of giving up his beast again, but right now he was more terrified of the
Drall
than he

was of sixteen more years as a human. Nothing scary about being human. Boring, maybe. The
Drall
?

Petrifying. Boring won out over being bound to one woman until the end of time.

He shuddered again. Yeah, get the case over and life would return to normal.

Val would never know that she was supposedly his eternal mate.

The idea was so preposterous he snorted. There was no way in hell Val had been
made
for him unless

the
Dea
really did have a twisted sense of humor. Maybe the serum had somehow fucked up his shifter side

and had made the instinct latch onto the first woman who wandered into his sight. That made more sense

than him and Val being destined for each other.

Destined to
kill
each other sounded more like it. But eternal love? Yeah. Right.

But even as he tried to convince himself of that, a shiver of doubt ran through him. A shifter had only

one true mate. One.

He shook himself.

No.
No.

There was no
way
Val was his mate.

Either way, the next few days would be a lesson in restraint. If the unwanted attraction to her was

almost too much to resist now, what would it be like in a few hours, or hell, a couple of days?

Aidan and Liam had both gone stupid as soon as the
Drall
kicked in.
Zombie stupid
. Britton apparently

still had some sense left in him since he was able to walk away. But for how much longer?

He and Val were trapped here together. Now that he knew the risk, he had to push her away. Keep her

at a healthy distance. Because if she got too close, he feared he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from

kissing her.

And once that happened, he’d be lost.

One single kiss, and there’d be no turning back.

Chapter Eight

Val dumped a can of Beefaroni into a bowl, then shoved it into the microwave as she tried to calm her

racing heart. Unfortunately, her mind kept rewinding to just a few minutes ago, when Britton had his hand

locked around the back of her neck, his lips an inch away from hers, his breath warming her mouth…and

the damned organ started hammering against her breast again.

Britton had almost kissed her.

Not once, but twice today.

And both times, against her better judgment, she’d wanted him to.

The first time he’d pulled away. The second time, he’d hesitated, and that had given
her
the strength to

pull away.

She understood his indecision. They’d always wanted to rip each other’s throats out, not rip each

other’s clothes off. However, she was damn close to grabbing some T-shirt and yanking. Fighting this

attraction was becoming exhausting. No, she didn’t want to be just another one of his many women, but she

did want him.

She’d finally faced that fact in the hot tub. The man had worn boxer briefs for
Dea’s
sake. The material

had hugged every manly curve of his impressive package, and when he’d caught her gawking, that package

had started to rise for an official greeting.

Oh, yeah, she
wanted
the blasted the man.

The microwave dinged. She grabbed the bowl and walked to the table. She’d just put a forkful of the

pasta in her mouth when Britton’s cell phone rang at the end of the table. But he was still in the bedroom.

Was it someone from the PD? She craned her neck to peer at the screen.

“Olivia Johnson.” The pretty fingerprint analyst from the PD.

Val’s stomach twisted with a shocking amount of jealousy.

He opened the bedroom door. Just like the other night, she couldn’t drag her eyes away from how the