CHAPTER 16
Rome stood behind the podium in the Grand Hall of the Central Zone Headquarters. It was the largest meeting space in the facility with three hundred cushioned seats, burgundy carpet and warm beige painted walls. Rome wore a dark gray suit with the silver Topétenia insignia pen on his left lapel. On the wall behind him were the shields of each tribe. They were positioned around the newly designed Shadow Shifter shield that signified their unity and loyalty to each other.
As Rome looked out to all the shifters in this zone and his family seated on the front row, he thought that what he was about to do was for all of them. It was his job to unify his people and to carry them into the next generation with the smartest and most innovative ideas possible. He believed he was about to do the right thing.
“Keller Cross of the Bosinia tribe is on his way back to Assembly Headquarters for debriefing and reassignment,” he began.
“Golden Harris has been quarantined due to the poison that was on the blade Lial Johansen used on him. The medical staff as well as one of my Lead Enforcers, Ezra Preston, will be searching for the exact poison and how best to rid Gold’s body of its toxins.”
There were a few murmurs throughout the room and Rome made a point of looking all around as discreetly as possible. He inhaled deeply as he stood there quietly, searching for any scent, any sign of infiltration, but found none.
“Cole Linden, who served as the Central Zone Faction leader since its inception, has been found.”
There were applause and cheers but none that wiped away the block of concern Rome still carried for his friend.
“He is currently in a comatose state,” Rome continued. “Lead Curandero Ary Delgado is not sure how long he’s been this way or how long he will stay in this condition. She will continue to work with the medical staff to find a way to bring him out of it.”
He found Kalina’s gaze and held it for endless moments. She was his rock. The one who had held him last night as he’d cried for the friend that he’d missed these last twenty years, and for the possibility that he may not ever open his eyes again. She was also the one who had soothed his irritation that Decan Canter was his daughter’s mate.
When Kalina nodded Rome stood taller. He removed his hands that he hadn’t realized he’d clenched against the side of the podium and prepared to speak again. To say the words that he knew would take many in this room by surprise. As for him, he’d known it would come to this. Baxter and Eli had told him the time for the Shadows was now. And he’d listened. Over the years Rome had gained a newfound respect for the Overseer who had raised him and who loved Nisa as his flesh and blood granddaughter. He’d also come to appreciate the Seer who Rome had watched being trained and recognized his leadership abilities and loyalty long before any other callings had come to the young jaguar. Together, their foreshadowing abilities had aided Rome on numerous decisions made on behalf of the shifters. He hadn’t liked their last prediction, but none of this was about him. Regardless of what others might say.
“Decan Canter will be the Interim Central Zone Faction Leader from this day until I give further notice.”
Nisa looked crestfallen and Rome instinctively wanted to go to her. To pull her up and hug her close the way he used to when she was a little girl. But his little girl had grown up. He wasn’t sure when or what the hell he’d been doing while it happened, but she wasn’t the spitfire that used to hide under his desk and read books while he was working just so she could be close to him. No, his baby girl had stopped following him around a long time ago. He’d just been too busy to realize that when she stopped following him, that meant she would inevitably find another man to look to. He only prayed—for the lion’s overall safety—that Decan was up to the challenge.
The meeting ended shortly after his announcement and Jace’s brief address to the shifters he’d been responsible for in the last twenty years.
“How could you?” Nisa asked the moment he walked through the stage door leading to a back room.
He’d had to tear his gaze away from the sorrowful look on her face when he’d been on stage and when the other shifters around had stood and began moving through the room, he’d presumed that Decan, correction, her companheiro, would go to her and take care of her. The fact that she’d made it through that crowd to catch up with him the second he walked through this door didn’t bode well for how Decan was going to deal with her in the future.
“I’ve done everything right,” she continued. “Everything!”
Rome watched her breeze past him and moved to close the door. He turned around to see her standing with her fists clenched tight at her sides. She had his complexion but otherwise looked so much like her mother it was eerie. She’d always kept her hair short like Kalina’s, but in a curlier fashion that suited a minimalistic personality. Nisa wasn’t interested in pretty things or primping and posing. She’d grown up with her nose in one book after another. Listening intently to everything Baxter had to teach her. She loved learning to fight with Eli and Ezra and hearing about the seriousness of security from Nick. And when X had let her climb up onto his lap while he’d been working on one of his many tablets at the time, she’d been in heaven. But no matter what, his little girl had always come back to him, cuddling into his embrace and looking up at him as if he could do no wrong. It was a powerful emotion for a man that had gone through the things Rome had to experience. She’d taken every part of him and made it brighter with just her smile.
Now she was glaring at him and he thought it might just make more sense to kill whoever had hurt her enough to put that look on her face. Unfortunately, that person was him.
“My job is to lead our people, Nisa. To do that I have to make the best decisions for us as a whole.”
“And I’m not the best decision. That’s what you’re saying, right?” she asked and took a step closer. “I excelled in everything! You know it because everybody reported back to you when I finished a test or some tasks they threw my way. I even sucked up every complaint I had when you decided I needed a bodyguard to accompany me on this mission. I traveled with him and I didn’t usurp his authority or report the things I knew he was doing wrong to you. But he gets the job! He gets to lead an entire zone and I get to what? Go back home and play in my room like a good little girl?”
Did she really not know? Rome thought.
She was correct in that she’d done everything right. She’d passed all the tests, and he’d thought—after picking up the scent of their calor yesterday—that the logical next step of accepting her companheiro had been completed successfully as well.
“You don’t go back, Nisa. Never go back, never look back. There’s nothing there. Your future is in front of you,” he told her. “That future is with your companheiro.”
“Oh you mean the backstabber! He stole my job! I was supposed to be named Faction Leader. I came here and I updated the holodeck. You know the one that I created! I even found out that someone had broken into confidential files. I went on that mission above ground and brought back valuable information. And oh yeah, I snuck above ground last night and stopped your new Faction Leader from killing the best and most valuable witness we’re ever going to have in this war. So how is it that he gets the job and I don’t?”
“He’s a Serfin.”
She tilted her head, staring at him perplexed. “And? That’s just DNA.”
“It’s evolution,” he replied. “As this new world has evolved in the past twenty years—changing its climate, accommodating more types of shifters and other beings, and foregoing the leadership it had been built on—so have we had time to evolve down here. We’re no longer in the positions we were in before, so it stands to reason that our beliefs need to change. So far there have only been Topétenia Faction Leaders. Now, there will be Serfin representation in the upper ranks. More changes are coming, Nisa and we need to be ready. My actions cannot only be about my family.”
“But I’m just as qualified as he is, regardless of our DNA,” she said, deflated.
Rome moved to her then, touching her shoulders. “You are qualified to take my job,” he told her with a grin. “I’ve never known a more tenacious shifter in my life.”
“I really wanted that position,” she confessed, her voice softer now.
Rome leaned in and kissed her forehead. “I know you did, baby girl. But this is for the best and once you get over being pissed at me, I believe you’ll see the strategic logic in my decision.”
She sighed heavily, bringing her hands up to his arms. “We’re stronger together. Uniting us means bringing us together on all fronts. I see your point. But I don’t have to like it.”
He smiled and hugged her. “I love you, baby girl. I love the woman you have become.”
When she wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him almost as tightly as he was squeezing her, Rome could almost let every bad thing that had ever happened or that could possibly happen in the future vanish from his mind. Almost.
“I love you, Daddy.”
He would never grow tired of hearing that and whatever it took, whoever he needed to put in leadership roles from this point forward, he would. Because growing old and continuing to hear her say it was what Rome wanted most. It was what he would give everything he had to accomplish.
Later that night, Nisa ran long and hard along the indoor space that had been perfectly designed to mimic the Gungi rainforest. Her cat stretched its legs, moving until its flanks heaved from exhaustion. And then she pushed further.
She tried to let the cat take control, to move in the environment created to make it feel at home. She’d never been to the Gungi but even she had to admit that their engineers and scientists had been able to create a pretty realistic setting. The forest floor was heavy with moisture while the drone of cicadas and crickets echoed through the air. Absent the sun, during the day there were specially designed heated lights to assist in the livelihood of the plants and foliage. There were clearings with downed trees and shallow creeks. Buttress roots twisted into elaborate sinuous shapes crept along parts of the floor while verdant mosses and vines hung like beards throughout the area.
None of it silenced her recent memories.
“So what he’s going to be the Faction Leader, that doesn’t mean you can’t finish the job you were meant to do,” Kyss had said when she’d appeared outside of Nisa’s room just as Nisa headed out for her run.
The cheetah had been leaning against the wall and pushed off once Nisa closed the door and fell into step beside her.
“I’ve learned that if you want something in this world, or the one up there, we’ve got to simply take it. So, you want to be a leader, take it. Show the new Faction Leader—and your mate, I might add—that you can do just as good a job as he can.”
Nisa hadn’t wanted to acknowledge her, but then again, she had been wondering where the shifter had been for the past two days.
“Where’ve you been?” she asked. “Why weren’t you above ground with them when they attacked the Ruling Cabinet?”
“Your friend didn’t tell you?” Kyss had asked.
When Nisa remained silent, the cheetah continued.
“I was coming out of my room, prepared to follow you because I knew that if Decan made a move, you would too. Tailing you was a lot easier than trying to keep up with Decan and those other two in his crew. Anyway, Shya was in the hallway and she didn’t look so hot. So I ended up staying with her until whatever episode she had passed.”
While Nisa normally took everything Kyss said as only half-truth, she knew this time was different. Shya had never been the same since her childhood poisoning. The remnants of which would last for the rest of her life. Nisa could only thank Kyss for being there when she should have been.
“Whatever, that’s done now,” Kyss told her. “What’s more important is that you don’t mess this up. You can make a difference here. Don’t screw it up.”
“What’s in it for you?” Nisa had asked her, because she didn’t believe for one moment that Kyss was simply looking out for her best interests, or for the interests of the Shadows as a whole.
Kyss had smiled. She’d worn skintight black pants and what looked like just a black bra. Her hair was down hanging past her shoulders.
“I get to watch how the new generation of shifter leaders will represent us in this war.”
“And that entertains you doesn’t it?”
“You’re damn right it does. And you know I live for my entertainment,” she’d said before smacking Nisa on the ass and walking off.
Nisa could only shake her head as she’d watched her walk away. There were still so many unanswered questions about Kyss and so many reasons not to trust her. Yet, Nisa kind of liked her. She liked her honesty and her courage.
As for what Kyss had said about taking advantage of this opportunity, well, Nisa hadn’t decided how best to handle that situation.
Her cat padded through another shallow creek, then ran up an embankment and stretched out along a mossy hill. It heaved until its breathing evened and then its eyes slowly began to close.
Until it picked up the scent…of its mate.
She remained still as if waiting for her prey. Nisa wanted to sigh or scream. She wanted to do something because she felt like she should. This wasn’t how things were supposed to turn out and she wasn’t supposed to be so confused by it all. Her cat, on the other hand, did not move and felt no trepidation.
As he approached she could sense the wariness. He didn’t know how to approach her or what to say either. There was an all-consuming weight that pressed inside her now, filling her completely when she had no idea how empty she’d been all this time. She moved then, standing and turning to face the lion. The cats stood only ten feet apart, staring each other down. It was most likely a sight to behold, the majestic golden spotted jaguar and the illusive white lion, surrounded by an almost exact replica of the rainforest from which they had originated.
The lion made a sound, a low growl that was his signal to her cat that this was a friendly visit. They’d been in these forms together before, running, challenging one another and bonding, she thought now with a start. This had been happening since day one. She walked slowly toward him and completely around him. He did not make another sound, nor did he move, something he would most assuredly never have done with any other cat this close. When her tail was toward his head as she made her second circle around him, he growled once more. She paused and lifted her head to immediately pick up the new, more intense scent that surrounded them.
Even in cat form, their calor was recognized.
Nisa slowed, the cat’s bones bending and adjusting until her human limbs extended, her body shifting slowly to her full human form. For a few seconds she remained on her hands and knees, her head held down as she took in the large animal still standing beside her. Lifting her head slowly, she looked up at the lion.
He was a marvelous creature. His mane was thick and fluffy, pure white as it stood out against the dark green of the backdrop. His body was massive, huge paws and flanks that only provided a glimpse into the power he could project. He was at least 6.5 feet long from head to rump, with a long curving tail. And then there were the eyes, the ones she’d looked into on so many occasions. The cat’s eyes were different than the man’s in that they were brighter, clearer, and deadlier. They were, right this moment piercing deep into her soul, touching not only her cat, but the woman, as well.
“Why are you here?” she asked, coming to her feet and continuing to stare directly into his eyes. “Why now?”
The lion did not make a sound, only waited for her to continue.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” Nisa continued. “I thought I was coming here to lead. To be a part of the solution for our kind. I wanted to make a difference. But you showed up.”
She remained in front of him, in what would look to any human like a naked woman standing before a vicious killer. His eyes stayed trained on her.
“You lied to me. You touched me. You made me think about mates and all that entailed. I wasn’t prepared for any of this,” she continued and moved along his side.
“But,” the word came out as barely a whisper as Nisa lifted a hand and touched his mane.
It was soft, just like the man’s hair had been when she’d run her fingers through it. She continued, letting her fingers trail down his back. He did not move, but for his steady heartbeat. And she continued to run her hands along his fur knowing that on the man, this was where the scars were. But they were deeper, Nisa thought suddenly. Decan’s real scars were much deeper than the ones she was able to see.
“I saw you in that cell at the SIC,” she told him as she came around the other side of the cat’s body. “I know what they did to you there.”
Decan shifted into human form then, pausing on his hands and knees, his head bowed down.
“That no longer matters,” he said slowly.
“But it does,” she replied. “Because it’s you. It’s a part of you that I don’t know because you didn’t tell me.”
“Nisa,” he said and looked up at her.
She shook her head and backed away from him. “I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know you but I’m supposed to be mated to you for the rest of my life.”
“You know that we are connected. You smell the calor,” he told her.
“None of that was in my control!” she yelled. “None of this is. Before you showed up I knew what I wanted. I knew where I stood. Now, there’s nothing. You’re the Faction Leader now and I get to continue being the Assembly Leader’s daughter.”
He came to his feet then. The male body just as magnificent as the lion’s had been.
“I won’t be Faction Leader without my companheiro at my side,” he told her.
“Why?” she asked. “Why us? Why now? What is it that you really want to happen now, Decan? Because I don’t know. You came to me as my bodyguard. Never once did you say you wanted to rule this zone. I let you touch me because the arousal was too much to ignore. I gave you my virginity. Yet, you gave me nothing of you. I don’t even know where your tribal tat is!”
She knew she sounded irrational. Knew that she should be reacting in a totally different manner, but Nisa hadn’t lied. She didn’t understand any of this. The why or the how and she didn’t know what was supposed to happen now.
He turned his back to her then and Nisa wondered if she’d asked too many questions, or if the answers she required were simply too much for him.
“I want what both of us want,” Decan finally replied. “Neither of us agreed with how your father handled things with the shifters. We don’t agree that we should be locked down here, hiding from the humans. Each time you went above ground without his knowledge you were screaming that very fact. At the same time you wondered why Keller’s bunker wasn’t recorded on the maps as all dwellings in Oasis should have been. You were torn between being loyal to your father and hating what he’d made you…and all of us become. I was the only one in a position to put things in motion.”
“You were the only one cold enough to not only betray your tribe by openly going against our leader, but to do so while lying to my face,” she spat. “I never lied to you, Decan. I never kept anything from you, not even when this companheiro stuff scared me to death.”
“You never lied?” he asked as he whirled around to face her. “You sure about that Miss Perfect Daughter to the Perfect Assembly Leader? Because I don’t recall you coming to me the night before last and saying you knew I was planning something and that you were going to follow me above ground to kill some humans!”
“Because you would have tried to stop me if I had,” she spat.
“Exactly!” he yelled again. “That’s what you do when you try to protect someone you love, Nisa. You keep them out of harm’s way. I didn’t know what to expect up there and I didn’t know you would come waltzing into my life and changing all the fucked up parts until they suddenly seemed bearable. All the pain and rage I’d kept stored inside began to make way for all these new emotions. Ones that had me changing my priorities to the point where my own team questioned me. That’s not how I work. It’s not how I was trained.”
She was blinking and staring at him as he stood no more than three feet away from her now.
“What did you just say?” she asked, having heard all of his words, but still remaining stuck on just a few.
He ran a hand through his hair, his lips drawn in a tight line before finally replying, “I said I was fucked up until I met you.”
She shook her head. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I don’t know what I said, Nisa. I don’t know what I mean. I just don’t know. I can’t remember or I don’t want to contemplate what we just saw up there dropping Cole Linden off like he was some special delivery. He’s in a coma now and none of us know why or how he got that way. Your father is going to ship Keller off to who knows where as punishment for hacking into your system. Lial attacked Gold, almost killing him with some poisoned knife and all I can think about is that if you walk away from me, how will I breathe?”
He hadn’t answered her, or rather hadn’t said what she’d so desperately wanted to hear once more, but Nisa had heard something different instead. She heard her mother telling her about her second awakening and becoming the female shifter she was meant to be. About Shya suggesting that maybe Nisa was doing exactly what she wanted here even though it wasn’t the way she’d envisioned it. To go with it and let the answers come when it was time for them to do so. She also heard Decan’s cry.
As he lay crumbled in the corner of that dank cell in the SIC his head bowed and eyes closed. He had cried, but not for himself, not for the situation he found himself in, but for them. For the Shadow Shifters.
“You could have escaped,” she said softly.
Nisa was moving before she ever realized what she was going to do.
“Each time Mackey or one of his men came into that cell you could have easily killed them and got out of there. His baton, those guns, they wouldn’t have stopped the white lion. You could have defeated them, but you didn’t,” she said.
He looked away from her momentarily and when their gazes met once more his eyes glistened in the darkness. The black and white mixture of his hair and beard more prominent, reminding her instantly of the lion’s regal mane.
“After graduating from high school I came to Oasis to visit my family. I’d heard via the messages my mother had sent to her adoptive parents that were my human guardians about the changes that had been made in those first years after the Unveiling. The plan for Oasis was just beginning to be fulfilled, bunkers were being built, tribes were coming together. My parents were excited. I was disappointed because there was a freedom above ground that Oasis just couldn’t capture. I felt claustrophobic down here, like I was going to die if I stayed.”
Nisa nodded because she could remember feeling the same way most days of her life. She’d combatted that feeling by focusing on creating something better for them—the holodeck—always looking for an answer, a solution to how they could once again join in the world that had forced them out. That was why it was imperative that she run above ground, that she get at least those small opportunities to breathe the free air.
“I joined the Marines two weeks later,” he continued. I came back to visit my family after finishing my tour. Nothing had changed. Sure, they’d built more bunkers and spread out further, but they were still trapped down here. And I hated it. I wanted them and every other shifter out and above ground living the way we were meant to live. But the Assembly Leader was adamant that the shifters stay in Oasis. That we not attempt to fight the humans. So I decided I would make my own plans. I went above ground and had just finished a meeting with Keller when I contacted a woman I’d seen before.”
“Marlee,” Nisa said the name and surprisingly did not feel any twinges of jealousy the way she had before.
“She was a prostitute. She had children and lived in a small apartment. I paid her too much money every time I saw her because I knew she needed it. I didn’t use any other woman, not because I had any serious feelings for Marlee, but because I wanted her children to also have some freedom and to live the life they were meant to live. I’d gotten my tribal tat on my last visit to Oasis. It was long past time but since I was living above ground and trying to fit in, my parents hadn’t thought it was a good idea to have the identifying tattoo. Marlee saw it. Up until that moment she’d thought I was a human, just like everyone else above ground had and because of the fear that Mackey and his goons had helped spread throughout the world, she was afraid.”
“She called the Task Force,” Nisa finished or him. “And they took you to the SIC. They took Marlee too, leaving her children to fend for themselves. Mackey wanted information from you so he didn’t kill you like he did so many others. But you didn’t kill him then.”
She’d been walking as she talked so that now she was standing in front of the man this time.
“The moment I woke up in the SIC I killed the first human that pulled a gun on me. It was instinct and training and my chest heaved as I watched his body fall to the floor, his throat torn out, blood pooling around him. I could hear the humans coming, screaming that they knew this would happen. That we were savages and all deserved to die. Mackey stopped them from killing me and that night they brought Marlee to me. He wanted to see if I could get her pregnant and what a half shifter, half human would be like. She would remain alive as long as I was there to serve a purpose.”
“You took the beatings,” she whispered and lifted a hand to move over the scars on his chest.
Pausing when she felt warmth under one particular set of scars.
“Your tat was here,” she said and looked down at the spot on his left pectoral where the strips of scarring were closer together forming a sort of patch of dead skin. “They burned it off.”
He nodded.
“I wouldn’t tell him who The Desert Cat was and when they heard that the infamous shifter might be close, Mackey decided that Marlee would be the deciding factor.”
“He killed her in front of you to force you to tell him,” she said. “But you don’t know.”
Decan shook his head. “I don’t know who it is. But the shifter showed up that night and set fire to the SIC. I escaped.”
“And began to plan to go against my father’s rules.”
The moment she said the words Decan grabbed her wrist, keeping her hand on his chest as he pulled her closer.
“I planned to free us, Nisa. We deserve to be free.”
He was right. She’d believed that all her life, but she also loved her father.
“He has reasons,” she said quietly.
Decan nodded. “I know some of them now. But Cole is back and even though we have Mackey, they won’t stop. Not unless we stop them.”
He was right again. She knew it as surely as she knew her name.
“I won’t…I can’t do this without you,” he continued.
She looked up at him, wondering once more. “Because I’m your companheiro.”
“No,” he said, his voice lowering to a gruff whisper. “Because you’re my heart. You’re everything I was trying to hold onto each night in that camp. I knew that the moment I saw you at Assembly Headquarters. That’s why I couldn’t leave. I’m in love with you Nisa Reynolds.”
There were no stars, no bursts of warmth in her chest the way Shya’s books had always said there would be. Nisa didn’t feel like flinging herself into his arms and having him lift her in the air and spin her around. There was no intense joy and thoughts of happy ever after. There was, however, peace. It settled over her like a fresh sheet in the morning breeze and wrapped her in security and comfort. She knew exactly what her mother had been speaking of in that moment. This was her second awakening. It was the moment she accepted the woman and the mate she was meant to be.
“I’ll rule by your side?” she asked.
Decan wrapped an arm around her waist, his strong fingers splaying over her bare backside.
“You’ll be my partner,” he told her.
“No secrets?”
“No secrets?” he asked her in return.
She couldn’t help the small smile that slowly spread.
“I’ll plan the future of the Central Zone shifters with you,” he said as he brought the wrist he’d continued to hold up to his mouth and kissed the back of her hand. “I’ll listen to you and respect you.”
His hands moved to her hips then, sliding down until he was lifting her up and wrapping her legs around his waist. “I’ll cherish and protect you.”
Nisa wrapped her arms around his neck and rotated her hips at the feel of the crest of his arousal against the already damp folds of her sex.
“I will help you plan the future of the Central Zone shifters,” she said and gave a slow moan when he pressed his length slowly into her.
“I’ll listen to you and respect you,” she continued.
He kissed her forehead and then the tip of her nose.
“I’ll cherish and protect you,” she whispered when his cock went deeper.
His lips found hers and the words tumbled free as she finally let go. “I’ll cherish and protect. I’ll love you, Decan.”
He growled and pressed his full length into her. She clasped her feet and hugged him tight, never wanting to break this companheiro connection.
“I’ll love you, Nisa,” he whispered and began to move slowly and deliciously in and out of her.
“So I’ve claimed a lion’s heart,” Nisa said on another moan as Decan’s hands spread her cheeks apart and thrust deeper into her.
He nuzzled her neck, licking along her shoulder before sinking his teeth into her skin and licking the spot when she growled in response. “Yes, baby, you’ve finally claimed this lion’s heart.”