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“She was torturing me.”
“And why was your sister torturing you?” Olaf asked; he sounded interested.
“She wants me to become a traitor with her, but I am loyal to Anita and Jean-Claude.”
“And who are you to Anita?” Olaf asked of Goran.
“I am Anita’s bear.”
“When did you get attacked by a werebear?” Edward asked.
“At the same time when I caught most of my strains of therianthropy.”
“You’ve never reacted to bear shapeshifters before.”
“They weren’t the right kind of bear,” I said.
“And he is,” Olaf asked.
I turned to Goran with a smile, which he returned. If you didn’t know better you might mistake it for that first blush of love.
Olaf’s lion rose in a rush of heat and predatory energy that made my skin crawl. His cave-dark eyes turned lion orange.
My lioness rose up, sniffing the air. “We don’t have time for this,” I said.
“There is never time for this,” Olaf said, emphasizing the last word a little too much.
Rodina made a small sound. “Cuffs, please?” Ru asked.
“Put her on the ground,” Edward said.
Richard had to let go of Ru so he could lay Rodina as gently as he could on the rough surface of the broken parking area. Edward knelt to put cuffs on her, and Ru started to collapse. I caught him and the moment I touched skin-to-skin it steadied both of us.
I wrapped my arms around him, one arm around his waist to hold him tight to the front of my body so that he didn’t fall. I remembered that I was wearing body armor and I didn’t know how hurt he was, so I started to ease up on rubbing his nude upper body against the roughness of the vest, but he wrapped one arm around my neck and put the other around my waist as if he couldn’t raise it high enough for anything else. He held me tight, and I held him back, burying my face in the bend of his neck. There was sweat on his skin, but underneath that was him, Ru, and under that was his leopard. The scent was exactly what I needed to open me up to Nathaniel and Micah. They weren’t together. That seemed wrong. Bear was in my head telling me without words that I was overthinking this. I stopped thinking and just felt the man in my arms, my hands exploring his bare back and finding bruises, but no cuts. It made me trace my hand between the front of our bodies so I could see if he was cut there, but his flat stomach seemed whole, just slippery with cooling blood; it cools so fast if it’s not still coming from you. I drew back enough to look into his eyes and watch the human black change to yellow leopard and felt my own eyes go. It felt like I fell into his eyes, or he fell into mine, and then I was staring into Micah’s yellow-green leopard eyes in his human face, and then Nathaniel’s lavender eyes spilling to leopard gray. It was like something inside me that had been blocked broke open and I could feel Nathaniel and that he was sitting up in a strange bed in a dark room with Damian lying on his stomach beside him. The vampire was out for the day, so they were closer to the surface than the underground of the Circus. I tried to follow the scent of leopard to Micah the way I could Nathaniel, but Micah was my Nimir-raj, my leopard king, not my animal to call. It was a different connection. I could get glimpses of him but not like the others. The goddess hovering close to me didn’t like that. She wanted me to have them back, because leopard was my animal to call, not Jean-Claude’s; that was why it was so strong even with Deimos in my head.
I felt her power follow my thoughts of Micah downward until she touched him, rolled her power over his skin until he gasped and called for security. I guess I didn’t blame him for being worried. I tried to tell him it was me, but the bear didn’t feel enough like me. I felt his panic, fear that I was the one being attacked, and I fed on his fear, which made his panic worse. I tried to break the connection, but I realized in a way Micah was right. I wasn’t doing this, and though the Mother of Bears thought she was right to do it, if she’d been wrong to do it, I couldn’t have stopped her.
She found the black tiger inside Micah, a second beast he could turn into just as solid as his leopard form. I held a rainbow of beasts, but I couldn’t change shape; only Micah and Dev of our people had secondary cross-species shapes. It was incredibly rare. Dev had started as a gold tiger and acquired lion at the same time that Micah had gotten his secondary shape. Mama Bear found that interesting.
We had to leave Micah alone, because I couldn’t figure out how to explain why he could smell bear. Nathaniel pushed toward me with his power as I reached toward him. He knew that Ru and I were holding each other, and that I’d used him as my doorway back to my leopards, back to him. I saw his mouth move, but there was no sound, and then Deimos closed his power around me, and Nathaniel was just gone again. It staggered both Ru and me. We started to fall, and I made sure that I landed on the bottom, so I didn’t hurt him any more.
Olaf was there glaring down at us, maybe because Ru was on top of me, but I was past caring. I lay there and just wanted the loves of my life back in my head, and not just in my heart.
“Handcuffs,” I said.
Olaf frowned at me. “What did you say?”
“Handcuffs, you need to handcuff me.”
Olaf actually called Edward over. “You want us to handcuff you, so the vamp that bit your neck doesn’t control you,” he said.
I nodded, and even that movement hurt the big bite that Deimos had given me.
Edward lifted Ru off me and said, “Turn on your back.”
I just did what he asked without thinking about it. Thinking gave Deimos more openings to fuck with me. My gun being on the vest made being on my stomach not the most comfortable, but Edward was right, I had to be cuffed behind my back, not in front. “Cuff her,” Edward said, and it took me a second to realize he was talking to Olaf.
Olaf knelt over me, one knee on either side of me. That’s not how they teach you to do it, but Olaf didn’t have to worry about me fighting; I wanted the cuffs on. I needed them on to feel that I was safe to be around. Olaf put a hand on either of my upper arms; his hands were so big they encircled my arms like he could have held my arm plus another one. He lifted me easily and surprisingly gently to my feet. He kept his hands on my arms, but I didn’t tell him to let go. If Deimos tried to get me to hurt someone now, I couldn’t.
