Mate Claimed

“Get that fire we were talking about going,” Eric said. “Reid, take Iona and everything we brought and meet us at the roadhouse where Diego dropped me off. We’ll come cross-country. My clothes are there, and I don’t want them left around for police to find. Graham, everything here has to go. No DNA from any of our Shifters, nothing left of the experiments. Got it? No, Iona, don’t argue with me.”

Reid was already gathering up the sat phone and Xavier’s equipment, the researchers’ phones, and anything they’d left behind. He piled everything into Iona’s numb arms.

Iona glared at Eric as he bent to kiss her. “Don’t you dare blow yourself up, get caught, or get shot.” She melted into the kiss then, her look saying everything. “Come home to me.”

“Don’t worry, love. I’ve done this before.”

Iona smiled a crooked smile. “And I want to hear all about it.”

Eric dropped another kiss to her lips and stepped back. Reid folded his arms around her, and then they were gone.

Sabotage. Eric had gotten good at it during the last World War. It was amazing what a Shifter could do with a little gasoline, fabric, and matches. Shifters were good at getting away quickly and silently as well. The Nazis hadn’t known what hit them.

No gasoline here, but plenty of natural gas lines and tanks of oxygen and acetylene. Eric got the tiger Shifter up and shifted back to his human form to help them build piles of debris and make them so explosive they would bring down the building.

Eric took more tanks of acetylene and oxygen and went down into the basement with the tiger, setting the canisters leaking at strategic support points.

They raced back up the stairs and out onto the roof as Graham finished on the top floor. When Graham joined them, Eric dialed the cell phone he’d left down in the basement to set everything off.

They heard a distant boom that rocked the building. Tiger Shifter stood up in the dark and spit onto the roof. “It is finished,” he said.

Graham lit an alcohol burner he’d brought upstairs with the lighter he’d found, and threw it hard into the stairwell. The three of them sprinted for the fire escape, flowing over and down it as the windows blew.

Orange fire lit the dark as the building belched flame. The three Shifters, in their animal forms, leapt from the fire escape to the ground two floors below and sprinted into the darkness.

Behind them, the building exploded, lighting the sky. A giant ball of fire arced toward the runway. Security police and a fire truck raced toward the runway, more worried about whatever planes were there than a building that housed iffy experiments.

The tiger was running, following Graham, and Eric came right behind them as they headed west through the desert.

Reid and Iona popped back into existence in what looked like a dark parking lot full of pickups and Harleys. At least, Iona thought she saw that before dizziness spun her around, and she started to fall. Reid caught her in surprisingly strong arms and held her upright.

“That was weird,” she said breathlessly.

“Not what I said the first time I did it,” Reid said. “I didn’t know I knew that many swear words.”

“Where the hell are we?”

“The roadhouse on the Ninety-five. There’s Shane.”

Shane was running out to them, his big bulk made even bulkier by the heavy jacket he wore against the November cold. “Iona. Thank the Goddess.”

He caught Iona in a large hug that stole the rest of her breath. “Mom drove me up here. I take it Eric’s on his way back?”

“Running across the desert as we speak,” Reid said. “With Graham and…another Shifter. Hope your mom brought the big truck.”

Nell had, and by the time she pulled her F-250 around to them, Eric came walking out of the desert, fully dressed, Graham at his side, flanked by the tiger Shifter—in his tiger form now. Eric didn’t stop until he reached Iona, who shivered in the darkness, and pulled her straight into his arms.

“What do we do with him?” Iona asked Eric the next morning.

She sat in the circle of Eric’s arms on the edge of the back porch, the sun streaming warmth but the air cool. Cassidy lounged next to them on her favorite Adirondack chair with baby Amanda in her arms. She’d liked the sling Iona had fashioned that kept Amanda against her, but Nell had found her one that was soft and pretty. Diego sat on the arm of the chair, his touch never far from his mate and cub.

Graham was out making sure his Shifters were safe, while Reid was here, having decided to keep an eye on Tiger Man. The tiger Shifter was dressed now in sweatpants and T-shirt that Shane provided, the man as big as the grizzlies. Reid sat next to him on a picnic bench in the yard, Jace on his other side.

Kellerman had been reported dead this morning in a fire on a military base—news reporters never said which base. He’d gone into a deserted building alone, according to the guard that had been stationed in front of it, and the building had blown up not long later. No survivors.

The Shifter council said the appropriate things, such as, “He will be missed,” made noises about appointing a new head, and got on with it. The council people Graham had spoken to resigned. Tomorrow, the human council would come for the ground-breaking ceremony for the new Shifter houses. Life in Shiftertown would move on.

Liam Morrissey had set out lawn chairs for himself and Kim, the pair of them sitting together, baby Katriona on Kim’s lap. Liam took a sip of coffee that Iona had seen him spike with something in a flask.