Darkness swam before my eyes. Walls. I was in a small room. I shoved upward, and my palms sank into the plushness of a mattress. Panic swelled my heart, and I bolted off the bed. The frantic thump of my heart beat out a single name. “Thom.”
“Here,” he rasped. “I’m here.”
Fumbling in the dark, I found my way to the bed and climbed back in with him. “Hey.”
His eyelids fluttered, unable to rise, but his mouth curved. “You’re in my me space.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. “Thom—”
“Shhh.” A wide palm wrapped my ankle, as familiar to me as my own hand. “Let him rest.”
Eyes adjusting to the gloom, I could make out Thom’s outline in the center of the bed. I had slept next to him on one side while Portia snuggled up to his other. Santiago lounged on the floor beside her, his head tilted back to rest on the mattress, and Cole had chosen to sit at the foot of the bed, guarding the door. I noted another shadowy figure and identified Miller slouched in the far corner, using the walls to wedge himself upright.
“Come on.” Cole rose, hauled me up, and led me into the living room. “Let me get you some food. Then we can talk.”
While he puttered around in the kitchen, assembling a stack of sandwiches, I sank onto the couch. The bedroom had been so dark, I assumed it was night, but that couldn’t be right. And out here, it was obvious a new day had dawned.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Cole sat next to me and balanced a plate on my lap. He carried soft drinks in the other, and he set those on the coffee table. “Take your time.”
“Thom was missing.” I bit into the first sandwich after he put it in my hand, and my stomach roared. I devoured it like I hadn’t eaten in days instead of hours. “Wu escaped through the skylight.” That part still gave me sweaty palms. I took my next bite slower. “I saw Miller. He wasn’t thrilled, but he got over it.”
“He associates his true form with his past.” Cole popped the tab on a can and passed it over. “He finds them both hideous.” He watched me polish off the first can then handed me a second. “Is that all?”
“No.” I scrunched up my face trying to remember. “There’s more.”
“Don’t strain.” He noticed my first sandwich had perished and lined up another sacrifice. “I’ll tell you.”
“I get the feeling this isn’t going to be happy news.”
“Thom had been captured, he was injured. You traded yourself to the Drosera in exchange for him.” He squared his shoulders, bracing himself. “They tore off his wing in front of you, and . . . you shifted.”
The thunder in my chest rolled. “I did what?”
“You shifted,” he said again, quietly, “and you slaughtered them all.”
The hunger vanished, and I pushed away the plate. He captured it before it hit the rug and set it aside. “I . . . ate them?”
“Yes.”
Feeling ten kinds of stupid, I pulled up my shirt and examined at my flat stomach. “How is that possible?” The full scope of what I had done smashed into me, and I shot to my feet. “I don’t remember. Any of it. I ought to recall turning into a . . . ” I had never asked about my true form. I hadn’t wanted to know. It seemed so distant, so impossible, I dismissed it out of hand. But if I was at risk of exploding into that shape, rampaging without memory of doing so, I ought to at least have an idea of what I was up against. “Was I her or was I me?”
The answer was a long time in coming. “You were some combination of the two.”
“Then why don’t I remember?” I rubbed my face with my hands. “If she didn’t kick me to the curb, how could I forget?”
“Human minds are fragile,” Wu said softly, gently, like he was afraid of spooking me. I hadn’t heard him enter the room. “They break so easily, and what you did would have shattered yours. I have a theory if you’d like to hear it.”
I almost pushed the matter of what I had shifted into, but I was turning pro at ignoring things that caused my brain to stutter and smoke to pour from my ears. “Sure.”
Cole gripped my hips and lifted me onto his lap. I curled against him, safe in his arms, and waited for Wu to get to the point.
“Your brain has a partition,” he hypothesized. “The same thing that altered you when you entered this terrene built a failsafe into your mind. When Luce is in control, you’re aware of everything that happens. She is your dominant personality now. She’s the persona you revert to when the danger has passed.”
I wet my cracked lips. “You’re making me sound schizophrenic.”
“You are, in a way.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “The stress of your awakening is causing fractures, but it’s not rupturing your core the way I feared. It’s splitting you in two, giving you two personalities. One is Luce Boudreau. The other ought to be Conquest. The other is Conquest, but less.” He gazed at me with what I hesitated to label as awe on his face. “You’ve leashed her. She can only do so much for so long, and then you snatch her back.”
That sounded . . . not entirely terrible. “Does that mean I have no control over my other form? Is it hers?”
“Now that your body recalls how to shift, you might convince Cole to help you slide into that shape and test it.” Wu dropped his arm. “I believe it’s a mental shift, not a physical one, when Conquest surfaces.”
That made sense given my access to the cold place had never been impeded by my human body.
“Okay.” I blasted out an exhale. “I can deal with that.”
Warm lips pressed against my temple, and Cole breathed in my ear. “You were magnificent.”
“You would think so,” Wu said dryly.
Needing a moment or ten to absorb what they were and weren’t saying, I asked, “How is Thom?”
“I reattached his wing.” The amusement slid off Wu’s face to clatter on the floor. “I have a minor healing gift, as you’ve probably realized, and I could do that much.”
So, his magic touch had a medical explanation. It should have relieved me of the guilt I felt when his touch sparked against my skin, but all I could think was Thom, Thom, Thom.
Tears welling, I swallowed hard. “There’s a but in there somewhere.”
“I can’t promise he will ever fly again.” He rubbed the skin over his breastbone, his mouth a tight line. For a winged charun, this must be akin to delivering news of a death to family members. “Additional treatments over the next forty-eight hours will fuse his bones and muscle faster than they could regrow on their own, but it will take months to build up his strength again. From there . . . It’s in his gods’ hands.”
“I never should have let him go alone.” I wiped my cheeks dry. “He should have had backup.”
“Thom is an experienced operative,” Cole soothed. “He knew the risks, and he chose to take them.”
“He lost a wing, Cole.” I pictured his scarred face, his kinked whiskers. “What will he do if he can’t fly?”
“He will adapt.” He tucked errant hairs behind my ear. “He’s a gifted healer in his own right, and his people are winged. This might not be a common injury for them, but it would have happened during dominance or mating fights. He’ll know what he’s up against, and he’ll have ideas on how to treat it. Just give him time to mourn.”
“Okay.” I sank back against him. “As long as you don’t think he’ll do anything drastic.”
“Thom is pragmatic.” Cole tightened his arms around me. “He knows his own value. Even if he must wait until he returns home for treatment, he would endure. The knowledge he’s collected is too valuable to lose.”
Well, that answered one question. The coterie was aware Thom wasn’t a permanent fixture, a fact that stabbed me through the heart imagining the day he left us. Having almost lost him, I saw clearly how it would be to go on without him, and I couldn’t imagine parting with my friend even under happy circumstances.
“He agreed to act as our healer under the condition he was allowed to return home at a time of his choosing,” Cole told me. “He never belonged to Conquest the way he belongs to you. He’s your friend.” Cole stroked a thumb over the banding above my elbow. Even through the shirt, it made my soul hum. “Thom was ready to leave after seeing Earth, that had been his goal, but then you . . . changed.” He smiled. “The mystery proved too much for him to resist. He decided to stay on, and he hasn’t left yet.”
Unable to bear thinking on the topic any longer, I let it go. “How are the others?”
“Portia and Santiago are fine.” Meaning so was Maggie. Physically, at least. “Miller is still resting. He needs a few more days to fully recover, but he can be mobile in twenty-four hours.” He hesitated, debating a confession. “Maggie sat with him for a long time. She’s never held control for that many hours. Portia was impressed with her endurance.”
Hope and worry for my best friend clashed in the pit of my stomach. “How did the dogpile happen?”
“The coterie is yours,” Wu answered for Cole. “They’re drawn to you, and you refused to leave Thom.”
“What about Sariah?” I hadn’t spared her a thought since realizing Thom was missing.
“She’s in her room.” Wu glanced in that direction. “She’s asked permission to reach out to a few of her contacts to gauge War’s reaction. Santiago deferred her request until Thom was stable.”
“He can track her movements and pull the plug if she attempts a double-cross.” He spied on people with ease through their own equipment. Walking through the backdoor of his own tablet, he could do in his sleep. “It might be worth the risk.”
“There’s something else.” Wu woke the screen on his phone and showed me a map. “Another body’s been found.” He zoomed in on the area in question. “Kapoor passed along the update. This one is the liveliest yet. It had to be restrained.”
“That’s who called.” I had noticed him on his phone, but I hadn’t thought much about who rated an answer during an op. “How far is Redwood?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“The bodies are being put into the waterways north of here,” Cole said thoughtfully. “This corpse is more talkative because the taskforce is catching them faster.”
“Not fast enough.” Each life lost was one too many. “Do we have agents combing north along the river?”
“No.” Wu cast me a withering look. “Why would we do something so obvious as hunt for a killer?”
“I’ve had a lot dropped on me.” I huffed out a mocking laugh. “Forgive me for falling behind the curve.” Heaving a great sigh, I shoved upright on Cole’s lap. “It appears I’ve already showered.” The clothes I wore were clean, and so was my skin. “Let me get dressed, and we’ll go.”
“Maggie bathed you.” Cole followed me up when I stood. “I’ll talk to Santiago and—”
“I want you to stay with Thom.” I fisted his shirt. “He’s back with us but . . . ” I shook my head. “There’s no one better than you to watch his back. Can you do this? For me?”
“For you.” He covered my hand with his. “I would do much worse.”
There was subtext here I wasn’t grasping, a shift in his perception of me that made me warm and cold all over.
Magnificent.
That’s what he called me. That’s what he saw when he looked at what lurked beneath my skin.
I saw beauty in each member of the coterie, but I was vain enough to want him to find me beautiful. Full stop. That he did made my stomach do this loop-de-loop thing that made me thankful I quit eating when I did.
“I’ll rouse Santiago and Portia.” Cole glanced back at Thom’s room. “They can help me put Miller to bed, and then I’ll set Santiago to work on securing a connection for Sariah’s recon. Maggie has been resting for a few hours, so she’ll probably be ready to sit with him again. I’ll do the same with Thom.”
A peculiar sensation dragged at me, a sense of displacement that worried me more the longer I stared out the window. “How long was I out?”
“Three days.” Cole palmed my nape again, and his heat radiated down my spine. “We all slept.”
“Not all of us.” Wu followed my line of sight. “I stood watch.”
“Thank you,” I rasped, “for protecting them when I couldn’t.”
“We’re even,” he assured me. “Miller saved my life. I don’t forget my debts.”
We parted ways then, and Cole followed me into our room. He didn’t say a thing as I stripped out of my pajamas. Panties and the matching bralette Mags had layered under my clothes kept me modest, but a flush spread across my chest and up into my face the longer he watched me.
All too soon, I had the black suit on. I didn’t want to leave them. I wanted to huddle together, hide in this safe place, and forget the world outside this hotel while we licked our wounds and healed. “Get an order together, and we’ll pick up food while we’re in town.”
The coterie would wake hungry, like me, and I had decimated the groceries.
“I can do that.” He tracked me, the predator in his eyes. “I’ll even text with updates.”
“Keep spoiling me,” I warned him, “and you might never get rid of me.”
“I can live with that,” he said simply.
Stupid tears pricked the backs of my eyes, and I used the excuse of needing to freshen up to retreat to the bathroom. A cold washcloth to my cheeks helped get my head on straight, but I wasn’t fooling anyone. Let alone myself.
Cole wanted to keep me.
Maybe that wasn’t love, not as humans understood the emotion, but it was a start.
Conquest might be shadowing every move I made, but I wouldn’t let her have this. I wouldn’t let her have him. Never again. He was mine. I wanted to keep him right back. And if Conquest thought she might slip her leash, she had another think coming. I would turn that sucker into a garrote if that’s what it took to keep her hands off him.
Cole had earned his happiness. He had won his peace. He deserved to love and be loved in return.
And if I had to stitch the halves of myself together to be a worthy partner for him, that’s just what I’d do.