Chapter 38
JESS
The next few weeks alternated between being joyous and rocky.
Cade and I continued to have amazing, hot, wonderful sex.
When we weren’t jumping each other’s bones, we lived together in relative contentment. I finished a painting and did piles of good work for my graphic art clients, designing websites and book covers and doing a couple of nature photoshoots. I wasn’t a super good photographer, yet, but I’d been getting into it since it fit so well with my other visual work. In the past, I’d mostly used my camera to take shots that I might want to paint, or use as inspiration for painting, but now I’d begun to use my camera as a tool for more art.
I also started designing the mural Cade wanted for the large empty wall in his house. We spent some time over at the compound, hanging out with his mother, whom I really liked, and with Heck, who had turned out to be her lover. But I was still avoiding most of the other members of the pack. I wasn’t ready to be upfront with them about my dual shifter nature.
The bad was that I still felt like a person plagued by multiple personalities, and I think Cade was growing impatient with that. “You’re just you,” he kept insisting. “Like I’m me whether I’m a man or a wolf. Don’t try to convince me it’s any different just because you have this rare darkling aspect. She’s still you, Jess.”
Yeah, a nasty violent me with a penchant for drinking blood.
Because he absolutely refused to put the Highland Choker on me, I did sleep shift on several occasions. When I shifted to my wolf, he could always sense it somehow. He would wake up and follow me out. I would nudge open the back door and run down the back porch steps into the barnyard. Wolfen Cade would run with me, and together we would race across the fields and into the woods, where we would prance and dance, flirt and play.
We stayed away from other wolves, so it was just the two of us—mates who enjoyed our time together, even though this sometimes meant that we got little sleep and woke up to the human world bleary and in need of large quantities of caffeine.
But on the nights I shifted to my darkling form, he usually didn’t wake.
She didn’t wake him, either. She just stood over him, gazing down and struggling with her own dark desires. Listening to his heart and lusting for his blood.
I was now able to remember what happened when she came. When I was in the form, I was surging with deep-seated emotion, yet at the surface, where flesh touched the world, I was cool. My heart hardly beat, my fingers were cold, and I needed very little air. Cade didn’t wake because I was cloaked in an aura that made me stealthy. When I touched an object in the room, like the bedposts, my fingers left a faint impression of frost.
Cam had told me many months ago that darklings could wield something he called chilling magic. “We can slow objects around us. Briefly, at least. You should practice. You’ll get better at your magic if you use it.”
Sometimes I wanted to practice, but I was still too scared of my darkling self. Every time she emerged, my soul seemed to be divided. Part of me was in her, trying to learn her, control her, be her. But the rest of me looked on in horror, afraid of what she might do.
One night, not shifting, but dreaming, I woke perspiring and disoriented.
We’d been playing with Barney that night before bed—he was a sweet puppy whom I had grown to love with a passion that reminded me of how I had once felt about my dog, Dusty. In the nightmare, I saw Dusty again and wept over her.
When I jerked awake, I felt as if I was tied down, helpless, I couldn't move. It felt so real. There was a man's body, strong, merciless, holding me down. He was going to hurt me. He had a knife.
I fought to get free, thrashing, trying to throw him off, feeling him restrain me, screaming until a hand covered my mouth and smothered my cries.
I knew his scent at once. It flooded in, calming me. But just as suddenly, I felt angry at him because I thought he must have tied me down again—put me in bondage without warning me. BDSM was okay; I loved, it in fact, but I didn't like to be surprised with it.
"Ssh, Jess, it's okay. It's me, hon. Take it easy, you’re safe."
The hand moved away from my mouth and I tried to relax. As full consciousness returned, I realized I wasn't bound at all. That must have been part of the nightmare. Cade wasn't restraining me, but holding me. In sleep, our limbs had become entangled.
As my coiled muscles loosened, tears welled up in my eyes. I squeezed them down. "I'm sorry. I was dreaming.”
“I figured. You’re okay, babe. I’ve got you.”
Somewhere in the room, a dog whined. Panic washed through me again. The dreams—and the memories—were still so close. I knew it was Barney and that he was probably dreaming, too. But the dog I saw in my mind’s eye wasn't Barney.
“I misled you about Dusty,” I blurted. “I couldn't bear to remember it. We didn't all escape safely together. Jonathan killed my dog. Just as he’d threatened to do. I wouldn't have sex with him, and he slaughtered Dusty.”
I burst into sobs.
“Holy fuck,” Cade growled as he comforted me. "It's a good thing that creep is already dead, or I'd rip him to pieces myself."
* * *
When the sleep shifting and the nightmares didn’t stop, I slipped out of bed one night, took my phone downstairs and called Cam. We hadn’t talked since before my wedding.
“I told you to fuck some cowboy, not to marry him,” he said as soon as he recognized my voice.
“I guess you heard.”
“Oh aye. Your mum had a hissy that could be heard all the way to Edinburgh.”
“Yeah well, she was hoping I’d marry you.”
“No. No offense, but no. Although, it would be an interesting experiment to see if we could breed a full-blooded darkling.”
“Shut up. Whatever darkling DNA I have in me is more than enough. Is there any way to get rid of her all together?”
“If that’s why you’re calling, forget it. Yours is part of you just like mine is part of me and the Zrakon is part of my twin. She giving you trouble again?”
“I’ve been sleep shifting again. My darkling comes out at night and I think she wants to drink my husband’s blood.”
“So? He’s a shifter, right? It won’t kill him. He’ll probably love it; they usually do. Frenzied orgasms for both partners, in my experience.”
“But what if she takes too much?”
“Fuck, you’re such a worrywart. You’re strong, but you’re not all-powerful. If the guy’s such a weakling, leave him and come back to Scotland. I could use your talents here.”
“Doing what?”
“We’re having some darkling problems, actually. There’s a truce in place now between the races, but skirmishes are always breaking out. People like us, who can temporarily take the form of a darkling, are useful go-betweens and mediators.”
He’d offered before to train me to do just that. Become a mediator. Which I suspected was just another word for a spy. Or worse.
“Then there are the slave nets, which you had your own unfortunate brush with. Human trafficking has always been a thing, but shifter trafficking has been increasing. We want to stop it. Put an end to those fuckers once and for all. Darklings or even darkling shifters could be really useful there because of our chilling magic. The creeps mostly use guns and we can stop bullets. You can be both a hammer and a shield in the battle against evil.”
“What are you, a superhero recruiter? I don’t want to battle evil. I just want to stop myself from committing any!”
“You’re rare and valuable, Jessica. The way I see it, you’re wasting your talents in Montana. You could be here doing something useful. Do you even know how to use your magic?”
“Not really. I’ve poked around with it a bit, but I haven't practiced. How exactly does it work? Could you teach me to be a shield instead of a hammer?”
“I suppose. But anyone can be a protector. You could be something special. You could be an avenger.”
“I’ve told you before—screw that. I’d rather protect than avenge.”
“Fine. I can teach you that, but you’ll have to come to me. Your magic will be stronger here, anyway, closer to its origin and source.”
“I wish I could just be an ordinary wolf shifter instead of a freak.”
My cousin muttered something about not having time to listen to me whine and hung up on me.
Sigh. I didn’t want to go back to Scotland.
What I wanted was right here in Whittier, Montana.