After the mind-blowing orgasm, Benie had blacked out. When she awoke, her body felt all loose and gelatinous. The kind of relaxed that normally took a heavy dose of muscle relaxers and painkillers to achieve. She should have been embarrassed, but she felt too good to feel anything but awesome.
A moment later, she heard Ian say, “I think we put her in a coma.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Trace countered. “Her mind is the calmest it’s been since I’ve met her. She’s not even dreaming.”
Benie felt the velvet softness of her bed caress her stomach. When had they taken her to her room?
Trace was on her left, Ian on her right, and both men were talking over her. She remembered with a pleasant quiver how they felt inside her as they’d worked together to bring her to climax. There was no way, she thought ruefully, that two men of their size should have fit comfortably inside her at the same time, but it had been more than comfortable—it had been glorious.
She kept her eyes closed, pretending to still be out. She didn’t want the moment of this afterglow to end. Not like before. She hoped if she was still enough, both men would stay and never leave.
Ian stroked her back. “I’ve never seen her skin do that before,” he said. “It’s like millions of blinking lights on a Christmas tree.”
She closed her eyes against his stare. She couldn’t be an experiment anymore. She couldn’t handle this moment being reduced to an opportunity to collect more data.
“You’re wrong,” Trace said again.
“What?” Ian said.
Trace looked down at Benie and tangled his fingers in her hair. “She’s awake.”
Benie grunted. “Can’t put one past you, can I?” She wondered why either Ian or Trace would stick around such a freak show act.
“You’re not a freak,” Trace said.
Benie gave him a sharp look, but then softened. “I know you can read my mind, Trace. I accept that. But could you be a little more discreet about it? I mean, do you really have to remind me all the time?”
“I suppose not.” He chuckled.
Ian’s hand stilled on her back. “Benie, we have a problem.”
“No shit.” Her problems were too many and too complicated to even list.
“Not what I mean.” He drew a circle with his finger on her lower back, then drew a line toward himself, then another line toward Trace. “I have no idea what this means.”
Benie chewed the inside of her cheek. She had no idea what he was talking about. Ian stood up and took Benie’s left hand. She followed him off the bed. Trace came around and took her other hand. They rotated Benie so that her back was to her dresser mirror, and then they both turned to face the opposite wall as well.
“Now look,” Ian said, peering over his shoulder.
Benie craned her neck around. “What the hell does that mean?” There was a violet circle on her lower back, matching both Ian’s and Trace’s in size. Only instead of one line pointing downward, she had a “V” through hers that pointed outward toward the men.
“I’m not sure,” Ian said.
“I think I do,” Trace said.
Benie raised a brow. “How?” She couldn’t help but think if Ian didn’t know, how in the heck could Trace?
“I may not be a genius, but I’m certainly not unintelligent, Benie,” Trace said stiffly. “Besides, this has more to do with our world and not science.”
“Our world?”
“Yes. Our world.” Trace rubbed his chin and shook his head. “Look. You can’t keep your head in the sand about what you are anymore. It’s too important. You are in a lot of danger. Now more than ever, if these marks are what I think they are, and I’m pretty sure they are.”
“What are you talking about?” Benie grabbed a nightgown from her drawer and pulled it over her head. She grabbed a pair of panties from the next drawer, stepped into them, and shimmied them up over her hips. “You’re talking nonsense.”
He grasped her upper arm. “I’m not trying to scare you, but you’re in very real danger,” he said again. “We all are.”
A knock sounded at the door. A clicking noise drew Benie’s attention. She glanced over and a numb shock took hold. “Ian?”
She watched, dumb struck, as his bones and muscles began to break and twist and reform. His face elongated at the center, his nose and mouth protruding.
“What’s happening? Ian?” She turned to Trace, whose puzzled expression must have mirrored her own.
“I didn’t know Ian was a lupine shifter,” Trace said.
“He’s not,” Benie protested. “He’s a person. He’s not an other worlder.”
“Until today, I would have agreed.”
Ian collapsed to the floor. Fur sprouted along his skin in a beautiful dusting of various shades of brown, black, and gray. Benie, with disbelief, lowered her hand to his muzzle as he shifted into a giant wolf. Ian growled, snapping and snarling as he backed away.
“The way he thinks has changed.” Trace sniffed the air. “Even his scent is different.
“I don’t understand,” Benie said. “How is this possible?”
“I don’t know. We are not the werewolves of fiction. Someone can’t be changed into a lycanthrope. They have to be born to it.”
The knocking at the door couldn’t shake her attention from the wolf in her bedroom.
“No.” Benie covered her mouth as she tried to hold back from screaming. “He was attacked by a shifter earlier this week, the tracker who came after me, but this…”
“I’ve never heard of someone being turned, Benie. That’s pure myth. Not reality.”
“Then how do you explain this?”
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
The knocking grew louder and more persistent.
A loud blast shook the loft floor, and Benie could no longer ignore the problem, especially since her best friend turned werewolf took off in a run toward the noise. Benie and Trace ran after him. In the living room, just inside the exploded front door, Benie saw a short man with a nearly bald head and thick pop bottle glasses. Dr. Gray? What the hell was he doing here? And why had he splintered her door? Benie took a step forward, but the wolf leapt between her and the psychiatrist, bearing his teeth and growling a warning at the man.
“Get your things, Benoica. You and your mates have to leave now.”
“What is going on here?” It was as if north was south and south was north.
“Your new power came in like a thunderclap in our world. He knows you’re alive, and he is coming to kill you.”
Was she hallucinating again? “Who is coming?”
“Your father.”
Her stomach dropped, and a cold chill ran down her spine. “My father is dead.”
“You’re biological father.”
“How can you know any of this? You’re just a shrink.”
The doctor shook his head and stepped toward her. Ian barked and Trace positioned himself next to wolf, his fingers elongating and reshaping into claws.
Trace cast a menacing glare at the short, elderly OW. His voice was rough and low when he finally spoke. “He isn’t who you think he is, Benie.”
The elder man pushed his thick glasses up on his nose. “Hello, Calder.”
Trace barely nodded his acknowledgment. “Hello, gray man.”
* * * *
Garrick Mauldin paced the river-stone floor of his office. He was tall, thin, and deceptively frail-looking. His short white hair didn’t contrast much with his pale skin or bright gray-green eyes. He wore a blue sweater vest over a white button down shirt and gray slacks. He didn’t look like the most powerful man in all of the human and non-human world, instead, he looked like a tenured college professor.
Anger, rage, and hatred permeated every part of him—he’d felt the power shift like a blast of heat in the air around him, triggering a palpable connection to the girl.
Over twenty years ago, he’d suffered the loss of his wife, their second husband, and especially his child. Her death had grieved him the most. Garrick had shut himself away for months after their deaths, sick with pain of the broken bonds. But he’d gotten over it. Slowly, surely, and over a long period of time.
He’d taken reign over the Caledon and the role entailed as the one remaining heir to the throne. Garrick believed it was better to be feared than loved, and for the past two decades that had been his motto.
“Keane!” he shouted.
A tall man with bronze skin and white hair walked into the room. He held his head high. His long white hair hung down to the middle of his back. He carried a sword at his side, and the scars marking the many battles he’d survived would have frightened almost any foe. His pale blue eyes avoided Garrick’s as he waited for his king to command.
When he’d become the sole monarch to their people, Garrick had put Keane in charge of the wardens after exiling the previous leader. Keane was a good soldier. Loyal. Unlike his predecessor, he hadn’t held a grudge over Marta’s death. Still, Garrick had secrets he didn’t want anyone to know about. The girl for instance.
He banged his fist against the wall, his frustration growing as the tie between him and the girl grew. “The slayer is still a problem. The trackers have failed, and she still lives.” He’d hired mercenaries to take out the girl instead of using the wardens. He didn’t need anyone asking questions, and no matter how much Garrick trusted Keane, he couldn’t trust anyone with the truth.
“I need someone smart and deadly for an important mission.”
“Can I ask what that mission is, my king?”
“No, you may not.”
Keane nodded. “As you say. I’ll have a name for you in the next hour, my lord.”
After Keane left, Garrick cursed fate for its meddling. It could only be chance of fate that a second Triune had been formed. All those years ago, his plan had worked very well, he’d survived the broken bonds. But now, to have confirmation that his daughter, his baby girl, had somehow survived that fateful night and grew up to create another power-triad…
Well, that just pissed him off.