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With a look of stunned horror, Simone reached inside the sweater and withdrew her medallion, holding it up. Grasping it in her hand, she ripped it from her neck. Sensory input, including her scent, roared into Mischa. There was no mistaking it, Simone was human, or had once been. He could smell the transition as it overrode her other scent. His nostrils flared as he drank in her intoxicating scent mingled with his own.
The release from whatever the medallion had done seemed to affect Simone, as well. The color drained out of her face and her knees began to buckle. With a strangled cry, she reached for him. Mischa was at her side in the space of a heartbeat, catching her before she could hit the floor.
CHAPTER14
SIMONE
She drifted in a haze of dreams and pain. Fragments and images from what had to be lives before and lives to come flashed before her eyes, disturbing her rest. Mischa soothed her down the bonding link, and she knew he was near.
Her mother was desperate, her fear palpable to the baby in her arms. Loud, rapid, staccato sounds and her mother fell, trying to shield her from those who had ended her life. Simone screamed for her mother; screamed so someone could comfort her.
“Shut it up,” snarled one of the gunmen.
“Don’t you dare,” growled a man with eyebrows that looked like fuzzy caterpillars.
“Our orders were to eliminate the threat once and for all,” said another of the men.
“That child is no threat.”
“We can’t take care of a human foundling.”
“Giuliano? Giuliano? I thought I heard shots,” said a tall, stern woman. “Oh my god!”
“This is the business of men,” said the man with the bushy eyebrows. “Go back to the house.”
“And what? Let this child become the business of men? I don’t think so,” said the woman.
The woman pushed past the man with caterpillar eyebrows and the loud, bad men, scooping Simone up and touching her mother’s face as she made the sign of the cross. “I will pray for you and will ensure your child will never be touched by what happened here.”
Simone was held close to the woman’s breast, comforted by the pounding of her heart and the gentle kisses she bestowed on Simone’s head. One of those who had hurt her mother stepped in front of the woman who was now carrying her away.
“Am I now the business of men?” she asked, archly.
The man with the gun moved out of her way, and the woman carrying her strode away with her in her arms.
As the darkness lifted, Simone realized she was back in her bed, their bed. With wakefulness came the realization that there wasn’t a single part of her body that didn’t hurt. Not the lovely sensual ache she’d felt from Mischa’s claiming, but a bone-deep hurt, as if somebody had used a baseball bat on her.
“Simone? Are you awake?” he asked.
“Sort of.”
“How do you feel?”
“Frankly, like crap. Everything hurts, my eyes don’t want to focus, and my mouth feels like the Chinese army marched through it in their sweat socks.”
The deep, rumbling chuckle was sensual and soothing at the same time. “Try not to think too hard. Do you remember where we were and what we’d learned right before you passed out?”
She nodded and groaned. “My parents lied to me.”
“We don’t know that…”
“Of course, they did. They knew I was human. They had someone create that medallion to keep other shifters from knowing I wasn’t one of you. I didn’t know, Mischa. I swear I didn’t know.”
“I believe you. Your parents will be here in a few days, and we’ll get it all sorted out then.”
“I’ve had the weirdest dreams. I don’t understand any of them.”
“They say humans who transition often dream of events from previous lives and from lives that may come.”
