Change of Heart 05 - Forging the Future Read online

  I smiled at him.

  “Let me take you for a late dinner after work tomorrow.”

  “That’s not a good—”

  “Please, Jim. I’d love to feed you if you’ll let me.”

  He was handsome, gentle, and so obviously kind, but I had no business going on a date with the sylvan of a tribe I didn’t belong to.

  “It’s not a date,” he explained like he was reading my mind. “I’m just taking pity on the pretty reah.”

  I snorted out a laugh.

  “See, come on. There’s no harm in us sitting together, talking, and sharing a meal.”

  No, there wasn’t. “Okay, fine.”

  His grin made his dimples pop. Oh yes, very handsome man. “Good. What time do you get off work tomorrow?”

  “Eleven. You sure you want to eat that late?”

  “Definitely. It’ll be worth it.”

  Yes, it would. Already I could tell he’d be good company.

  Opening the gate, I walked through and then closed it behind me. I was surprised he was still there.

  “Go home, kitty,” I teased.

  His eyes narrowed. “You know, if you don’t end up having a home, you could stay here with us. Our semel would protect you.”

  “That’s a very kind offer, but your yareah is already not enjoying my presence here.”

  “I am, though… enjoying your presence. You’re very easy on the eyes.”

  “As are you.”

  He leaned forward and wrapped his hands around the bars of the gate. “I’ve never seen such dark gray eyes before.”

  His were a lovely warm blue.

  “Let me come up there with you.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t cheat on my semel.”

  “You don’t even know who your semel is.”

  “But that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten me as well. I have to go on the assumption that he’s out there, missing me.”

  “You’re not missing him.”

  That was a lie, though, because the idea of a mate, the one person who knew me… him, I had been missing for so very long.

  “He might be dead.”

  “That’s possible,” I replied, my throat suddenly dry.

  “Even if you find him, do you really want to be returned to a place you don’t know? To strangers? Wouldn’t you rather stay here and make a new life?”

  “I still want to know about my old one, and it would be better if I met my semel without your scent all over me.”

  He growled then, which startled me. “Oh, but Jim, I want my scent all over you.”

  It was hot, sexy, but I knew how it would play out, so that leeched the heat from his words. Just his fingers on my skin lifting my chin had stung. Having him kiss me, bite me, claw me—all the things panthers did in bed—would make me scream, and not in a good way.

  “Dinner tomorrow,” I said softly. “I’ll see you.”

  “Until then,” he agreed after a moment.

  I turned for the door, and when he called for me, I smiled and waved. After I locked the door behind me, the wave of relief was instantaneous. Yes, he was a nice man, just not the one for me. Until I knew if the man to whom I’d belonged was dead or alive, I wasn’t about to take another to bed. Not that my body would seemingly allow it anyway. I had a whole new batch of uncertainty to contend with. Just thinking was exhausting because I was scared all over again.

  Once inside my apartment, I was going to take a shower first, because I smelled like smoke and alcohol, but I was too exhausted and so collapsed onto the air mattress that needed to be inflated a bit. It turned out that it didn’t matter. I only managed to toe off my shoes before I passed out.

  Chapter 3

  IN MY dream the noise was a train, but what it turned out to really be was pounding on my front door. When I figured that out, woke up enough to make sense of my surroundings, I stagger-stepped across the small space—only 350 square feet total—and opened the door as far as the chain would allow.

  Two men stood on the other side, and even though they smelled like panthers, they gave off a policeman vibe.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, my voice gravelly since I’d just woken.

  “Jim Smith?” the one standing closest asked.

  I grunted.

  He smiled instantly, and my brain processed how striking he was. Short hair, immaculate beard and mustache, blue-blue eyes, thick brows, long straight nose, and those full lips that made you think I wouldn’t mind taking a bite of those.

  “Hi,” I said breathlessly.

  The dark navy blue suit fit him perfectly—like it was made for him, which perhaps it was—hugging his broad shoulders, narrow waist, and long legs.

  “Hello,” he greeted. A faint accent warmed his voice. “I’m Dov Yadin, and I work for Domin Thorne, the akhen-aten.”

  “Okay.”

  He turned sideways so I could see the man behind him, also handsome, but in a different way. His partner made me think of men who brawled in bars, slept with too many people to count, and drank like fish. He was not as polished, instead a bit rumpled, but the rakish grin, bright red hair, and dancing green eyes put me more at ease than his more pristine counterpart’s handsome visage.

  “Wickham Morris,” he said quickly. “Wick. Good morning to ya.”

  He had an accent too, though his was easy to place. “You’re English?” I asked.

  “What was your first clue, mate?” he teased.

  I closed the door, unhooked the chain, and then opened it wide. “Good morning, gentlemen, what can I do for you?”

  “As I said,” Mr. Yadin began, “we work for the akhen-aten, are now members of the tribe of Rahotep, and are former officers of the I-oo-set.”

  “The what?”

  He said it again.

  “Could you spell it?” After he did, I could see the word just as I had reah: Iusaaset.

  They were both waiting.

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly. “Nothing that you said made any sense to me.”

  His brows furrowed, and Mr. Morris came forward.

  “Don’t you know who you are, then?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Wick,” he corrected.

  “Wick,” I repeated.

  “And Dov,” Mr. Yadin insisted. “Please.”

  Wick offered his hand. “Would you mind us coming in to have a word?”

  “No, please do,” I said, inviting him in as we shook.

  I repeated the action with Dov, and when they were both inside, I closed the door behind them, painfully aware of how shiny they both were in my dingy little apartment.

  “I have coffee or tea,” I offered. “And water, of course.”

  “Nothing for us,” Dov replied kindly. “We would just like to speak to you.”

  I had a card table and one chair and a window seat in the living room that was built into the wall. “Please sit, I’d rather pace, if that’s okay.”

  “That’s fine,” Wick said agreeably.

  “Would you explain what the Iusaaset is?”

  “Certainly,” Dov replied. “Where shall I begin?”

  It sounded like he was ready to launch into the history of the world. I lifted my hands to stop him. “Sorry, I just want a quick little summary of what you do.”

  Wick chuckled. “He already knows you’re long-winded, mate.”

  Dov glared at him. “I’m sorry?”

  Wick’s smile split his face as he bumped his colleague with his shoulder and then turned to me. “In a nutshell, the Iusaaset is the organization that polices werepanthers all over the world to make certain that no one does anything dodgy.”

  “Dodgy?”

  “Anything that would get us, as a species, noticed.”

  “Oh.” I understood then. “So like no werepanthers on the six o’clock news kind of thing.”

  “Yes,” Wick agreed.

  “And the Iusaaset, they’re the ones that make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “That’s righ
t.”

  “What does this have to do with me, sir?”

  “Please, just Wick and Dov,” Wick requested for the second time.

  I forced a smile. “Okay.”

  Dov exhaled sharply. “So could you tell me what your earliest memory is?”

  I glanced back and forth between them.

  “Please,” he prodded.

  Taking a breath, I explained. “A little over three months ago, I woke up on this ranch outside Lubbock when I heard crying.”

  “What happened?” Wick wanted to know.

  “I don’t know, but one moment I was asleep and the next I had my eyes open, and there was a little girl sobbing right next to me.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I was in a cage, and she was outside of it, screaming and bawling because there was a man there holding her hair and pulling down her pants.” Obviously she’d been terrified, from the shrieks and crying, as well as the fact that she peed down her leg and tears and mucus trailed down her cheeks.

  “Go on,” Wick pressed, interrupting my memories for a moment. I hadn’t even realized that I’d stopped speaking aloud.

  “The man must not have seen me, and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because of where I was in the cage. I mean, it was really dark,” I said thoughtfully. “But I got to my feet as fast as I could, and I shoved my paw through the bars and scratched him up enough that he let her go and ran away. He was screaming that he was going to come back with a gun, and the girl must have thought he was going to shoot both of us—she was really young, maybe five, six—and I think because she was so scared and she just wasn’t thinking, she opened the cage, got inside with me, and closed the door.”

  I remembered it clearly.

  “Bagheera,” she whispered, and I had no idea who that was, but she moved slowly, cautiously, crawling across the straw at the bottom of the cage. “I won’t hurt you.”

  Won’t hurt me?

  “Don’t be scared, okay?” she said, her voice breaking with the end of the crying.

  It was very sweet that even in the nightmare she was living, she was worried about me.

  When her fingers grazed my fur, I purred so she’d know I was harmless, and she wrapped her arms tight around my neck, holding on for dear life. It was ridiculously dangerous, and if I’d been a wild animal merely reacting to the closeness of people to my cage and lashing out, she would have been eviscerated. But as it was, I let her hug me, cut off my air supply just a little, and basically treat me like her pet. She was little and scared, and I was her protector.

  When the attacker returned with a woman and a man and several others armed with rifles, I heard him telling them that the child had wandered into the area where they kept the animals they would hunt and had been killed. The lights going on nearly blinded me.

  “Where’s my child?” the woman screamed, and I could hear the terror in her voice. She was probably the little girl’s mother, and from the way she was hanging on to the man beside her, I was guessing he was her husband and the girl’s father.

  “Mommy!”

  Her mother was the first one to gasp.

  “She’s alive?” The man I’d mauled was stunned.

  There we were, inside the cage, her with her arms around my neck, leaning, and me, tail swishing but otherwise statue still beside her.

  “Sweetie,” her father’s voice cracked as four men lifted their guns to kill me. “Come out of there slow.”

  She shook her head, tears welling again as she pointed at the man who was still bleeding from the scratches I’d given him. “He told me not to scream, but I did anyway.”

  Not a sound from anyone.

  “He’s going to try and hurt me again. He tore my clothes, see?” she said, turning so they could see the ripped buttons on her blouse. “And he punched me on the cheek and nose.”

  Instantly I was no longer the focus of attention.

  “Mommy, I peed,” she lamented. “I’m sorry, but I was superscared.”

  “Oh, no, honey, that’s okay,” her mother soothed, gaze darting to me and then back to her daughter. “Can you come out of the cage, please?”

  “But Bagheera saved me.”

  “I see he did.”

  The little girl pointed at the mauled man again. “He wanted to take my clothes off and I tried to run but he caught me but Bagheera made him stop.”

  It took a moment for her words to sink in. Her mother was the one listening closest.

  “Take him out of here,” she ordered, and two of the men dragged the little girl’s attacker from the abandoned barn while her father and three others still trained their guns on me.

  “Mommy, please don’t let Daddy kill Bagheera.”

  “No, baby,” she promised. “This is the end of Daddy hunting anything at all.”

  Her husband sighed, but I saw him nod and lower his gun. The other men did as well.

  “Take it somewhere,” his wife said, “anywhere, and let it go.”

  “Yes,” he agreed.

  “It’s tame, for heaven’s sake,” she rasped, her voice sharp with the whip of judgment. “Jesus Christ.”

  He was horrified as the words sunk in, and I saw his face scrunch up, disgusted with himself and what he’d been about to do.

  “It’s like shooting a housecat,” his wife finished harshly. “It’s obscene.”

  I sat stone-still as the little girl hugged me one last time before she crawled out of my cage. Mother, father, and child all embraced the second she was out. I didn’t wait for what would happen; instead I flew from the cage before it could be closed and reached the barn door faster than any of them could react.

  I glanced back, and one of the men lifted his gun.

  “You shoot that cat and it’s your job,” the little girl’s mother told him. “And just so we’re clear, anyone even fires at that cat on my land, and I’ll turn them in for poaching.”

  “And if he attacks your cattle?” one of the men asked her.

  “Whatever he wants is his,” she said quickly, her gaze meeting mine. “Go on, now.”

  I was gone seconds later and off the ranch by dusk.

  “How long did you remain in your panther form?” Wick asked, bringing me from my reverie.

  “I don’t know, a couple months? I think I run faster than other panthers, at least it feels like that.”

  “Of course you do,” Dov said, encouraging me.

  “I shifted back in Baton Rouge, went to a homeless shelter, got some clothes, and then stayed at a church for a while before I got a job washing dishes.”

  “And then?” Wick pressed.

  “Well, my boss at the diner where I worked, he’s a panther, and he told me to leave Baton Rouge because his semel didn’t like outsiders at all. I wasn’t safe, so I left.”

  Dov nodded, and Wick pulled a phone from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and made a note. I wondered if they would have a word with that semel.

  “My boss suggested I come to New Orleans and get a job waiting tables, and that’s exactly what I did. It seemed like as good a plan as any.”

  Wick and Dov were scrutinizing me.

  “I like bartending better, so I’m doing that now instead.”

  Their faces were hard to read.

  “I swear that’s what happened.”

  “We believe you, mate,” Wick said quickly.

  “Thank you,” I mumbled, hoping my trepidation didn’t come through. I hadn’t told anyone about the little girl or how I had regained consciousness, because it was troubling. Evidently I’d been awake for some time before that but hadn’t been aware of what was going on around me. The loss of time was scary.

  “Something wrong?” Dov queried.

  “No,” I assured him. “It’s just sort of scary not to know yourself or where your home is.”

  “Well, whatever happened, we’ll find out.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s a good thing you shifted back,” Wick chimed in. “Panthers who remain in the
ir animal state too long tend to forget that they were ever human.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said, even though maybe I had at one time.

  “I wonder what prompted you to shift back to human?”

  It had been the dream…

  “Do you have any idea what it could have been?”

  …and it was private.

  “Jim?”

  I couldn’t answer; it would give away too much.

  “You can trust us.”

  But I couldn’t, not with something I didn’t understand myself.

  In the dream, there was a blond man, more beautiful than any I’d ever seen and probably one that didn’t exist anywhere outside of my subconscious. And even though, because he was running, I never saw his face, I heard him laughing, deep and rumbling, so I got the feeling that he wasn’t running away from me, but instead with me. We were going somewhere together, and I kept reaching for his back, trying to touch him, to get him to stop and turn around. I wanted to feel the powerful muscles moving under his sleek, golden skin, but I just couldn’t reach him. What was odd, though, was that I felt like if I’d just been able to reach him, he would have stopped and turned and taken me into his arms. It was a game, except he didn’t know I wasn’t playing. He was used to me being right there with him, and if I’d been able to touch him, he would have known that.

  The husky sound of his laugh made my heart pound and my throat dry and my dick harden between my legs. Every night I woke up throbbing with need and hunger, and I wanted him desperately. My dream man made me yearn for him, and it was ridiculous; he didn’t exist, but still, I woke almost feverish with heat every morning. The strangest part of the dream, though—I was in human form, not my animal one, and so because of that, because I wanted to be running with the handsome stranger, I’d apparently shifted back to human to try to figure out who he was.

  Maybe he was searching for me, whoever he was, and I didn’t want to miss him because I was a panther and not me. What if he didn’t recognize me in cat form? I couldn’t take that chance.

  “Jim?”

  I coughed to cover my unease. “Sorry, but really, I have no idea why I shifted back. Normally it’s a conscious decision, isn’t it, and I don’t remember making one.”

  They were both quiet, studying me.

  “So are you sure I can’t get you guys some coffee? I need some.”