“Are you going to report them?” Cassidy asked.
She ate heartily, her brother’s distress touching her but unable to dent her mate-frenzied appetite.
“No.” Eric lifted his gaze, jade green and empty. “I’ll have Neal futz the database and make it look like they’ve always been here. I don’t want those women sent to the ends of the earth, maybe separated from their cubs. They’ve been through too much already.”
Neal Ingram, their Guardian, could access a computer network the Guardians had set up amongst themselves, unknown to humans. They had all kinds of information in their database, sharing across all Shiftertowns. Most Guardians had learned to be expert hackers as well. If anyone could slide the females into the humans’ information undetected, it would be Neal.
Eric returned to staring glumly at the Collars.
Cassidy finished her eggs and scraped the plate. Jace had added green chile salsa to the scrambled eggs, the way she liked them.
Eric sighed and pushed the Collars away. “I can’t do this, Cass. They thought they’d be safe forever from taking Collars and moving into Shiftertowns. If Miguel had been a better leader, they wouldn’t have been wrong.”
“Then don’t make them wear them.”
Eric shook his head, skimming his hand through his short hair. “What happens if someone finds one of the females running around without a Collar? She’d be arrested, interrogated, and the Collar slapped on her anyway. And then they’d come here for the others.”
“Then put the Collar on them,” Cassidy said.
Eric gave her an aggrieved look. “You’re a lot of help, Cass.”
“I’m only trying to point out that you don’t have much choice. If the females don’t take the Collars, they’ll have to hide the rest of their lives—or pretend they’re human, and I don’t think they’ll be able to. Peigi’s taller than I am, and everything about her screams Shifter. She’d be arrested in a heartbeat. Or hunted down. Do you want that?”
Eric shook his head. “But how do I make them understand why they need to take the pain? Why they should be restricted and monitored?”
Cassidy laid her fork across her empty plate. “Eric, Shifters agreed to take the Collars because we knew that capitulating to the humans was our only chance at survival, remember? The Collars were the price we paid to band together and grow stronger, and besides, they keep us from killing each other. That’s all you need to tell them.”
“Obviously they didn’t buy that argument twenty years ago.”
“Maybe not, but look what happened to them. Eric, you know that if those women aren’t accepted into a clan or pride or pack soon, they might go feral. Two of them pretty much are already. You didn’t do this to them. Miguel did.”
Eric clenched his fists on the table, hardening the muscles on his arms. “It’s a hell of a thing, Cassidy, to be leader. I hope you never have to do it.”
“Stay healthy, brother, and I won’t. Besides, if you go, I might have to battle it out with Nell to take over, and even then Shifters might not accept a female leader.”
“They’d accept you.”
Cassidy warmed at Eric’s certainty, but she was skeptical. Shifters were pretty old-fashioned at heart. Females sometimes did take over prides in the wild, but only when necessary, and only until she could find another male to protect her and give her more cubs.
Diego, on the other hand, was good for so much more than protection. He made her laugh, true laughter. He’d made Cassidy think and feel, had torn her out of the numb state in which she’d existed since the night Donovan had slammed out of the house, never to return.
Cassidy left Eric still staring at the Collars and went next door. One of the females, Peigi, was in the backyard, staring listlessly across the green. Peigi turned when she heard Cassidy.
“Stuart told me about the ritual he needs to do to return to Faerie,” Peigi said without greeting. “For it, he needs the lifeblood of a Shifter. I told him he could have mine.”
N
o one could talk Peigi out of her decision. Not Cassidy, not Eric—who in theory had authority over her—not Reid himself, and not Diego.
Diego arrived with Xavier that evening to find Peigi and Reid at Eric’s, Eric and Cassidy trying to dissuade Peigi from offering her life. Diego took one look at Peigi and realized that their arguments weren’t penetrating. Peigi’s eyes were lifeless.
He knew that look. He’d seen it often enough on junkies so hooked they knew only death would release them. On men and women stuck in terrible situations who had given up hope.
But he realized Peigi’s choices weren’t great. She’d had to struggle to remain alive with Miguel, and now that she was free of him, she was told she had to put on a Collar and live in captivity the rest of her life.
The other Shifter women seemed resigned, used to doing what they were told. Peigi had a little more spirit. She wanted to act, and she’d decided this would be her act.
“I’ll stop you,” Reid said, staring her down. “By not doing it. The spell only works at the spring equinox anyway.”
“
Around
the equinox, you told me,” Peigi said. “It’s only a few days past. If you don’t try it, you’ll be stuck here.”
Cassidy broke in. “Not necessarily. Maybe we can find a way to send Reid back without the blood spell. That can’t be the only one that will work.”
Reid shook his head. “I’ve searched for nearly fifty years, Cassidy. I’ve never found another. The
hoch alfar
have locked me out.”
“I’ve been talking to a Fae,” Eric said. “Or at least Marlo flew Jace out after breakfast to talk to him, and Jace is keeping me informed.”
Diego looked at him in surprise, but Cassidy didn’t seem startled. Eric liked to play things close to his chest.
Reid’s reaction was electric. “A
hoch alfar
? You’ve betrayed me to a
hoch alfar
?” He went for where his gun would be if he were wearing it.
“Stand down,” Diego said sternly to him. “Eric, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a Fae warrior called Fionn Cillian. I met him a few weeks ago, when he came through a ley line in Austin. He visits there sometimes. I sent Jace to talk to him.” Eric looked at Reid. “Have you heard of him?”
“There are many clans of
hoch alfar.
Dokk alfar
pay them no mind. Why is he
visiting
Shifters?”
Eric didn’t answer the question. “Jace tells me that Cillian says that ley lines don’t always work for
dokk alfar
because it’s high Fae magic, which is completely different from
dokk alfar
magic. Like the difference between electricity and water. Both have force, but in very different ways, and it’s tricky to put them together.”
“Can’t this Fae open a door for Stuart?” Cassidy asked. “If he’s a friend?”
“I wouldn’t say he was a
friend.
Cillian’s kind of a pain in the ass, and he doesn’t have much good to say about the
dokk alfar
. But he did say that a strong enough spell on our side near a gate weak enough might work.”
Cassidy leaned forward, interested. “Did you ask him about the teleportation? Why it works here but won’t get him back?”
“Jace did, but Cillian didn’t know,” Eric said. “He said that sometimes weaker Fae have latent talent but for various reasons those talents might not manifest inside Faerie. Magic is thinner in the human world, he says, so it’s easier for weak Fae to be stronger here. Or something like that.”
“Weak Fae?” Reid said with derision.
“His words, not mine,” Eric said.
Reid’s face was pinched. “Small help he is.”
“What was so special about that rock cave?” Diego asked him. “You kept going back there.”
“It’s on a ley line, and I think there’s a gate there.”
“Then we should start there,” Diego said, getting up. “Maybe we’ll find something that you missed.”
* * *
C
assidy and Diego rode alone up to the mountain roads that would take them to Reid’s rock cave. Cassidy was unusually silent—no laughter, no teasing. Was she that worried about Reid?
The red lights of Xavier’s pickup glided solidly in front of Diego’s car. Eric’s car, containing Peigi and Reid with Eric, rode in front of his. Xavier’s front seat was taken up with the bulk of Shane.
“Eric needs to be careful,” Diego said. “If he gets caught having Marlo fly your family around everywhere, life will get bad for all of you.”
“Eric knows what he’s doing.”
Cassidy sounded distracted, almost uninterested.
“What’s up,
mi ja
? Something worrying you?”
Cassidy turned from the window and looked at him. “Diego Escobar, I reject your mate-claim.”
Diego’s hands jerked on the steering wheel, then he quickly righted the car. “What?”
“I reject the mate-claim. I’ll make it public when we’re finished here tonight.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I thought you said you didn’t want to reject it.”
“I didn’t. But that was me being selfish.” Cassidy folded her arms, closing herself off. “I want you so much, Diego. I love the way you talk and how you move, and the way you don’t back down from any Shifter, not even Eric. I love the way you protect your mom and your brother. I want you with every piece of my heart.” She stopped, eyes soft. “But you’re not Shifter. It’s not fair to you.”
His chest felt tight. “Does it matter that I don’t give a damn?”
“No. The female’s decision is final.”
“Well, too bad. I’m not ready to accept that decision as final.”
Cassidy gave him an exasperated look. “Diego, humans who pair with Shifters are rejected by human society. I’ve seen it happen; I’ve lived a long time, and it’s always the same. The humans have to live with the Shifters, and they become neither one thing nor the other. Not accepted by humans and not truly accepted by Shifters.”
Diego clutched the wheel as Xavier took a hairpin turn in the dark. “You want to let me worry about that?”
“I’m trying to explain that it will be hard on you. Very few humans stay with Shifters, for a good reason.”
Diego sucked in a breath as Xavier swung around another corner, revealing a vast dark abyss beyond the road. No lights up here, and no guardrails.
Diego started to sweat. “Can we talk about this later?”
“I wanted to prepare you before I announced it.”
“Do me a favor and keep it to yourself awhile. Give me time to convince you to change your mind.”
“Diego, I’m not telling you this for the hell of it. I’ve thought this through. I want you to have your life, not one screwed up by Shifters. I care very much for you. That’s why I’m rejecting the claim.”
Diego kept his gaze riveted to the road. “You’re damn right it’s not fair to me. How about the way I feel about you? That it’s like all the light leaves the room when you walk out of it? That I wake up every morning just happy I know you?”
Cassidy had tears in her voice. “I mean that I don’t want to look at you every day and know that I destroyed your life.”
“Destroyed my life. Right.” Diego cranked around another bend and pressed his foot to the accelerator to make it up the next hill. “Let’s see, you helped me bring down the men who killed my partner after two years of me trying to find them. It was your contacts and resources that got me down to them to finish it. Not to mention, we’ve had the best sex I’ve ever had in my life, and I’m happier than I’ve been in a good long while. How is that destroying my life?”
She gave him an anguished look. “I’m trying to get you to understand. I destroyed Donovan, which is why we’re out here tonight. I’m trying to make up for what I did to him, and I don’t want to have to do the same for you.”
Diego shook his head. “You only get so much guilt, Cass. If you’re saying that if you hadn’t become his mate, he’d still be alive, I don’t agree. You can’t know that. Those hunters might have found him anyway, no matter who he was mated to.”
“I
can
know that,” Cassidy said. “You don’t know the whole story of why he was up here that night. He came because we had a fight. Donovan lived for fun. Dangerous fun. He liked to tease humans, test how far he could push his boundaries. He’d go places he wasn’t supposed to, talk to people he wasn’t supposed to, see how far he could walk the edge.”
“A daredevil.”
“Exactly. He’d thought I was too, which is why we hooked up in the first place. But he started resenting me being dominant to him, resenting me asking him to be careful. He thought I was too much Eric’s second and not enough his mate, and he was probably right.”
“So that night, he basically said,
Screw you, Cassidy, I’m going out alone
?”
“The ban on hunting un-Collared Shifters had been lifted. Hunters were going out all excited, wanting to bag a Shifter. Eric and I told Donovan to stop going for his runs up here, that it was too dangerous. I begged him to stop, and when he wouldn’t, we commanded him, as his leaders.”
“Which I bet did not go over well.”
“No. That night, Donovan stormed out. He went out to a bar with some of his friends, and sometime later gave them the slip. I didn’t know anything about him not still being at the bar until Eric got a call from the human cops that one of our Shifters had been killed.” Cassidy dragged in a breath. “And the kicker was that the cops blamed Eric for letting Donovan run around loose.”
Stupid, stupid. Diego had read in the file that Eric had nearly been arrested, though he’d paid no attention to the incident at the time. Shifters hadn’t been his department, and he’d been wrapped up in Jobe’s death.
He understood Cassidy’s guilt, but he’d come to realize that everyone was responsible for what they did. Diego shouldn’t have led Jobe into the situation, but Jobe should have waited for backup, even if Diego died.
“You blame yourself,” he said. It was natural that she would.
“Donovan wasn’t a fool, but I treated him like one,” Cassidy said. “I’m a dominant female, which means I have the instinct to protect, even when another doesn’t want to be protected.”
“Cassidy,” Diego said, choosing his words carefully, “what he did wasn’t your fault. It was Donovan’s fault for being an idiot. I’m sorry, I know you loved him, but why the hell did he go out running around when he knew it was so dangerous? Alone? What, he was thumbing his nose at you? What an asshole.”