He’d run as fast as he could, pushing his cat until its flanks heaved with each new breath.
He wasn’t going to catch the beast. Not this time.
He hadn’t caught it any of the last times that he’d been chasing it and that fact was eating away at him.
It was killing. Shifters and humans, anything in its path, ended up dead. The rage was deep and real, festering inside this beast until nothing but hate spewed out in return.
He couldn’t run anymore, couldn’t chase the beast and could not contain it either. He did not want to give up. But he had no other choice.
With his last breath the jaguar roared loud and long. It broke through the class that had contained it for years and roared once more before collapsing to the floor and letting the human take over.
Keller Cross hated hospitals.
He hated the smell, the sounds, the stark white walls and the inevitability of death. That was the biggest reason he despised Rome’s punishment for all the things he’d done against the Assembly Leader’s command.
Standing guard outside the room where Cole Linden had been sleeping like a fifty year old baby for the last three months was boring and tiresome and futile. People died in hospitals. Most assuredly Shadow Shifters died in hospitals. He knew, because he’d watched it happen. The fact that this was a Shadow Shifter medical facility built in one of the adjoining bunkers to the Assembly Headquarters in the shifters underworld haven called Oasis, didn’t really matter. It was supposed to. Ary Delgado took pride in the facility she’d designed and ran with efficiency. To her credit, the Brazilian born jaguar shifter was good at her job. She was the smartest and most talented curandero Keller had ever seen. But she wasn’t a god and could not bring anyone or any shifter back from the dead. If there were such a person, Keller would have begged them a long time ago to save his family.
That was a miracle Keller had given up on a long time ago. There was no one to save them, they had to do it themselves. Which is exactly what he’d been trying to do before his plan of murder and revenge came crashing down in the form of the Assembly Leader’s daughter and one of Keller’s only friends getting caught up in that damned companheiro calor.
Another shifter anomaly that Keller refused to accept.
Rome had called Keller a renegade because he’d built a secret bunker and was able to hack into the holodeck vehicle control board. He’d also called Keller reckless because his plan for revenge had almost gotten him, Gold, Nisa and Decan killed. The Assembly Leader had raged at Keller once they’d returned to Assembly Headquarters and when Keller thought all the yelling and growling would be followed by a swift death, Rome had assigned him to babysitting duty.
It seemed that even though he’d screwed up when it was his turn to keep an eye on the Assembly Leader’s daughter, he was now being given the chance to redeem himself by keeping watch over the most prized shifter of the decade.
Keller pushed away from the wall he’d been leaning against and moved to stand in front of the door leading into the room. He stared through the window to the shifter lying in the hospital bed, his arms still at his sides, eyes closed, white sheet tucked around him. It was late so the lights were out in the room and in most areas of the medical center. Keller pushed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and continued to stare.
He wondered, as he had in the past weeks that he’d spent staring at this same scenario, where Cole Linden had been for the past twenty years. What had he been doing and how had he ended up on coma? The biggest and probably most ignored question was who…or what…had brought Cole back to them?
Keller had shifted early upon approaching Ewen Mackey’s house that night and he’d taken down at least four humans before hearing Gold’s roar of pain. He’d shifted back to human form in order to carry the wounded shifter out of the house, just in time to see what he and Decan now thought was a gigantic wing disappear into the fog and Cole on the ground.
Nobody had spoken of it since that night and they hadn’t seen the lycans again. So Keller was left to wonder and stare at the comatose shifter leader as he was doing right now.
Nothing had happened in the past twelve weeks. Cole had not responded to any tests or stimulation that Ary and her team could think of. He simply lay there, sleeping, as if whatever he’d done in the last decade had completely tuckered him out. Or scared him into a place so deep and so dark, he dared not come back.
Keller dragged a hand down his face. He was irritable and tired of standing here and anxious from being stuck down here for so long. He was also horny, but that was a complaint for another day.
Tonight, he would do fine with a nap until his babysitting shift was over. He was just about to resume his position against the wall when something stopped him.
Through the darkness of the room yellow eyes glowed.
Cole Linden was awake.