Mate Claimed (Shifters Unbound #4)(46)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

Eric didn’t laugh. “We mostly drink beer, and we only need a refrigerator for that.”

She turned in a circle, taking it in. “Do all Shifters have this under their houses?”

“Almost all. If a family is large enough to spill to several houses, they might have the underground area in only one house, where the whole pack or pride gathers. Cassidy likes to call this a man cave, but she’s got plenty of stuff down here too. Who do you think insisted on the pool table?”

“But…” High-end penthouse suites in the best hotels on the Strip weren’t this nice. “Why do you live like you do upstairs, if you can have all this?”

“Keeps the humans happy. If the dangerous Shifters live in near poverty, the humans think we’re under control.” Eric’s grin at her astonishment vanished. “These places are secret, Iona. Deadly secret. Only members of the pride or clan see them, no one else.”

“Then why are you showing me?”

Eric rested his warm hands on her shoulders. “I want you to see this, so you’ll understand exactly what we need from you.” He brushed his thumbs along her collarbone. “And because I’ve decided to trust you.”

“Trust me with this?” Iona asked.

“More than that. I’m going to trust you with this.” Eric took her hand and led her to the blank door at the end of the hall.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

As they passed one of the six-paneled doors, it opened, and Jace filled the doorway, half-asleep and alarmed at the same time.

With his hair tousled, his green eyes, and his hastily pulled-on clothes, Iona marveled at how much he looked like Eric. At the same time he looked different from him; the shape of his face and set of his body had come from his mother’s Shifter family.

She wondered how he’d gotten down here—Jace had been in the living room when she and Eric had exited the bathroom and gone to bed last night. She would have woken if he’d come through Eric’s room.

“Dad?” Jace asked. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Showing Iona the vault,” Eric said calmly.

Jace rubbed sleep from his eyes and bolted in front of him. “Are you crazy?”

“She needs to see it.”

“Yeah, but, you haven’t been thinking too straight lately. Cass know about this?”

“She will.”

Jace stepped in front of them again, putting his back to the steel door. “Only mates of the pride, Dad. Only mates. Or did you have a full sun ceremony without telling me?”

“Jace.”

Eric’s voice took on a note of patience, a patience so old that Iona for the first time was struck with how long Eric already had lived. He’d lost his parents and his mate, had raised his sister and then his son on his own, had fought covertly in a war to help humans escape atrocities, had made the decision to move his family here and let humans put Collars on them, had prevented humans from torturing his son by taking on that torture himself.

The laid-back Eric, who lounged barefoot in his house or kissed Iona so sensually in the dark while he fed her chocolates, was a man of complexities and hurt so deep, she’d never understand it.

“We need her to see this, Jace,” Eric said. “She needs to understand how to help us.”

“Cass should be here, then.”

“Cass needs to rest for her cub. Leave her be.”

Father and son faced each other. Jace had the impatience of youth, Eric the calm of experience, but Iona sensed that otherwise, they were evenly matched. She wondered if Jace would ever decide it was time to take over from his father, and what he’d do then.

She saw, in Eric’s eyes, that he knew that time would come. But not today.

“Open it up for me, Son.”

Jace sighed, took a small, round disk from his pocket, and touched it to a blank space in the door. The disk, Iona saw, had a Celtic knot design on it, but she couldn’t discern any place on the door the disk fit. To her, the door looked like an unbroken surface.

A ponderous sound like gears grinding filled the little hall, and the door slowly slid back into the wall. Beyond it was, indeed, a vault.

Eric led the way inside, flicking on lights as he went. The vault was long and narrow, taking up the rest of the space under the house and heading toward Nell’s side yard.

The room was lined with shelves and niches, though, unlike in a bank, only one had a door with a lock. The rest of the shelves were open and held boxes and small glass cases, with no organization that Iona could see.

Eric gestured for Iona to look around. Jace waited unhappily at the entrance, arms folded, as Iona strolled through in curiosity.

The collection looked like a jumble. Iona took one box off a shelf and found inside a clump of little plastic dolls with large eyes and tufts of long purple hair. She started to laugh. “Trolls. I used to play with these when I was little.”

“Cass liked them,” Eric said.

Iona put the box back, wondering why on earth they’d been stored in a vault.

The next box she pulled out was lined with velvet and held about two dozen uncut diamonds.

Iona nearly dropped the box. “Eric. Where did you get these?”

“I forget. When was that, Jace?”

“Eighteen eighty-two. From Africa. Grandfather traded for them—he never went there.”

“Traded with who?” Iona asked.

“Some lion Shifters,” Eric said. “They needed resources more than diamonds, and a safer place to live. My family helped them out, and they gave us a handful of stones.”

Iona quickly set the box back into its niche. “What is all this?” she asked, waving at the shelves in general.

Eric stood in the middle of the room, as nonchalant as ever. “Things our pride and clan have acquired over the years. Some have sentimental value, others more.”

Iona browsed another niche and found an egg decorated with jewels and gold filigree set in a delicate gold holder. Holy crap. “Do the other Shifters know you have this down here?”

Jace answered. “All Shifter families have a vault. Their pack’s or clan’s most prized possessions are stored there, kept secret from humans. Secret,” he repeated with a severe look at his father.

“She needs to know exactly what her construction company needs to do for us,” Eric said. “I want her to understand why it’s necessary.”

Iona looked around in still more wonder. “You’re saying Graham and his Shifters have this kind of stuff too.”