Madison

Madison steamed in silence as she followed the traffic signals to their destination.

That fucking shifter has been asleep for two hours now! How dare he?

She wanted to blast the radio. Or jerk the SUV to a sudden halt. Or any number of other things that might wake him up. Open the window or go roughly over a speedbump. Just to piss him off. Yet she didn’t, because part of her was well aware that the reason he was asleep was because of her.

He’d wanted answers to some pretty important questions, and she hadn’t given them to him. So he’d gotten upset. It was an understandable response. She’d told him that if he wanted to prove that he and his brothers were reliable, that they were trustworthy, then they’d have to come along with her. But so far she hadn’t done much of a job of proving that she was trustworthy.

Too bad. That information is need-to-know, and he doesn’t need to know. All he needs to do is keep you safe, and break down any doors that get in the way. The things you can’t do. Otherwise, he’s just along for the ride. Don’t forget that.

She’d let herself get caught up in his charming persona earlier, but that needed to stop. Madison had a mission, and it needed to be completed. That was all that mattered. Focus. Intensity. No distractions. That was her little motto, and so far it had done her well. She intended to stick to it.

“Wake up,” she practically snarled as she pulled into a parking spot, hitting the brakes harder than necessary. It was a rental after all.

Kean jerked forward in his seat, then slammed back as the restraint caught him. Powerful brown eyes flew open, pivoting to focus on her. “What the fuck was that all about?”

She opened her mouth to reply, but the words fell away as he changed in front of her.

“Kean?” she asked, as he went absolutely still. His jaw clenched tightly and she saw his hands become fists, the knuckles popping slowly as he gripped tighter and tighter. “Kean what’s wrong?”

“You didn’t tell me,” he said, gritting the words out. “That we were coming…to the...” His eyes closed and he shook his head violently. “City.”

“That’s a problem?” she asked, though the answer was rather obvious.

“Could be,” he forced out.

“We’re not really in the city,” she told him. “We’re on the outskirts of it.”

He nodded. “That’s why I haven’t lost complete control yet.”

“You’re going to be of absolutely no use to me if you can’t master being able to move about in the city,” she said. “Are you that claustrophobic?”

“Not that. Small space would be better right now,” he said, needing a breath every several words to get them out as he rocked back and forth in his seat.

A car pulled up next to them, the engine revving loudly. Kean slammed his palms to the side of his head, hissing sharply as he shook violently for a moment. Madison calmly reached for the tranq gun at her side, trying to be discreet about it. Her index finger carefully slid the safety to Off. It clicked into place with very little noise, but Kean looked over at her anyway, his superhuman hearing having picked up on it.

“That won’t be necessary,” he said. “I think,” he added a moment later as another tremor rocked his body.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “You need to suck it up. “We’re going inside.”

He nodded. “Probably.” Another short gasp of air. “Probably good idea. Less…stuff. Smaller rooms. Might help.”

Madison looked at him, suddenly unsure. “There will also be a lot of people in there.”

“Not that many,” he said. “Can deal with crowds like that. That’s not a problem. It’s just…the press. When you go out to the forest, you feel relieved,” he said, taking a slow breath as he spoke in full sentences. “It’s the opposite for us. When we come to the city, we feel overwhelmed, everything pressing in around us, all of it fake. And there are so many of you humans.”

“So, inside?” she asked, pulling the handle to open her door.

“Yeah,” he agreed unsteadily.

Madison kept a hand on the tranq gun the entire time, making sure Kean walked ahead and almost directly in front of her. She wanted there to be no issues if he needed to be taken down.

Not that she relished the idea of shooting him. That would be…tough to explain. Madison wasn’t interested in creating that kind of scene.

“A hotel?” Kean asked, his voice still taut as he struggled to control his bear.

Madison clenched her jaw shut. Were all his brothers like this? If they couldn’t learn to function within a human city, then the shifters were never going to be able to stop the Institute. They would always be effectively untouchable that way. It was an unexpected side-effect. Something she hadn’t planned on.

“Yes, a hotel,” she said belatedly.

Keep talking to him. Distract him, try to get him to focus on you. Your voice, your face. If he’s thinking of that, maybe he won’t be so stressed out from being surrounded by humanity.

“Why?”

“This is the last place the item was,” she told him, her tone indicating the answer should have been obvious.

“Sorry,” he replied, stretching the word out sarcastically into several long syllables. “I’m a little distracted over here.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have slept the whole drive then,” she told him uncaringly. “You might have had more time to adapt, instead of being broadsided by it all.”

Kean swung, a reddish-brown tinge in his eyes as they flashed briefly with anger, before subsiding. “Touché,” he responded. “But maybe you should have been more forthcoming and told me from the start we were coming to the city.”

Madison ignored his riposte. She’d seen the way he’d reacted. Anger had burned right through his tension, making him forget all about it. So perhaps she just needed to keep him irritated with her. Not to the point he would lose his cool, but enough to seethe, to focus his hate on her, instead of his problems with the concrete jungle that was the city.

“Are you going to bitch and whine the entire time?” she asked. “I thought you were used to not knowing what was going on. Your brothers certainly seem like they were the ones making all the decisions without you.”

Kean jerked to a halt, his spine straightening so rapidly it cracked and popped several times. His shoulders bunched as he slowly turned on the spot.

Oh. Oh dang. Okay, maybe that was a little too much.

“I see what you’re trying to do,” he told her, his voice like ice. “But that was too much. You don’t know shit about me and my brothers, okay? So you keep your mouth shut, unless and until I decide that you’ve earned the right to comment about them. Got it?”

Madison nodded quickly. “Sorry.”

Kean didn’t acknowledge her words. He simply completed his turn and strode off toward the hotel entrance, not waiting to see if she was coming.

Okay, too much. Definitely too much. Back it down some.

She hurried after him, following Kean through the automatic doors and into the lobby.

“Well this is a little over the top, don’t you think?” she said, looking around at the gaudy, gold-covered…everything.

Gold-colored inlays in the tile in the floor. Gold creeping vines around the Romanic pillars that dotted the lobby. Gold arches sweeping between doorways. Gold-colored door handles and buttons. Everywhere she looked, everything had a gold aspect to it. The staff uniforms had gold stripes across the shoulders and down the sides. The check-in counter had a dragon design set into it that was all gold colored.

Madison doubted any of it was real, which made it even worse.

“Whoever designed this should be killed,” Kean said bluntly. “This is worse than the all-white of the Institute’s cell block.”

Right. She’d forgotten that he’d been imprisoned in their facility within Longhorne, the city whose outskirts they were now on. He’d broken out with the help of Pierce and Mila, which is where she’d caught up with them. Madison had been conducting routine surveillance of the Institute facility when she’d seen them come flying out of the underground parking like a bat out of hell.

Taking a risk, she’d followed them and offered them a chance to prove themselves. She just hoped it didn’t backfire on her.

“Let’s go,” she said, leading the way across the shudder-inducing gold floor.

The elevators were off to the left, past the reception desk which was along the same wall. To their right was a restaurant, and then along the back was an exit to the parking garage, bathrooms, and a row of computers for guests to use.

Madison walked up to the bank of elevators just as one opened. She stepped inside. Kean stopped in the opening and looked at it, his hand preventing the door from closing.

“Stairs.”

There was no give in his word.

Madison returned his glare. “Elevator,” she said, stepping forward from the back to punch the button.

“Small metal cage, moving around in a big building?” He shook his head. “No. Stairs.”

Madison folded her arms over. “I’m not taking the stairs.”

Kean rolled his eyes angrily, stepped forward, keeping his rear foot in front of the door and scooped her up into his arms. Before she could protest, he had removed her from the elevator and was walking toward the stairs.

Normally Madison would have cried out or shouted if someone picked her up like that. But with Kean, she didn’t. It took several long seconds in which they exited the elevator and were headed toward the stairs before that conclusion registered with her. She just felt so oddly…comfortable.

“Fine,” she said at last. “But you’re carrying me.”

“Deal. What floor?”

“Twenty-second,” she replied nonchalantly.

Kean looked at the stairs, then back at her, then back up the stairs, his left foot already planted on the first one. “Elevator it is,” he decided, heading back to the row of them, Madison still held firmly in his arms, her right shoulder resting against his chest.

He was just the perfect amount of squishy and yet hard muscle. Madison wondered what he might feel like to snuggle up to.

The elevator dinged and she caught herself as her head was already dipping for his shoulder to rest there.

What the hell are you doing? Just because he’s comfortable does not mean you can just allow yourself to rest on him. And why the hell are you still in his arms?

“Kean,” she said as they stepped inside.

He growled at the others who tried to follow them into the elevator. One man in a business suit seemed oblivious and stepped forward, but a second, louder rumble from deep within Kean caught his attention and he backed away, giving them the elevator to themselves.

“Yes?” he asked once the door had slid shut.

“Put me down now.”

“Oh, right,” he said, as if he too had forgotten that she was there. He bent over, setting her down gently.

“Thanks,” she said as the elevator raced upward. “Handling it okay so far?”

“Not really,” he replied tightly.

Madison wondered if he’d just been so focused on not freaking out inside the elevator, and that was why he’d forgotten to set her down.

“But,” he added with false cheeriness, “I can handle that better than climbing twenty-two flights of stairs.” He laughed, and she thought part of it actually sounded natural. “I may be a shifter, but even we have limits of things we’d prefer to do physically.”

Madison couldn’t help herself. She smiled.

The door dinged.

Leading the way out into the hall, she forced her mind to close down. They were about to start looking into what had happened and how—she caught herself. And how the object had disappeared.

Remember what happened, she thought to herself. Be professional, and act like it. You know what you came here for.

Behind her Kean seemed to sink into his shifter persona some more. His steps lightened and he seemed to float across the floor. Madison could barely hear herself as she moved down the hallway, but Kean didn’t make a sound. That should have been impossible for someone his size, but he did it anyway.

Perhaps he could be of use to her after all.

She held up a hand and they came to a halt in front of one of the rooms.

2207.

Reaching into a pocket, she removed a keycard. A quick series of hand motions got across her point that she would unlock it, then he would enter first and check it out for threats while she watched the hallway.

Taking a deep breath, Madison swiped the card. The instant the button blinked from red to green Kean was past her. He glided forward like a wraith, entering the room ahead of her. Madison stuck her foot in the door but stayed in the hallway, watching in case anyone tried to approach from the rear. She pulled the gun from its holster, double-checking that the safety was off.

Several tense minutes went by that had her nearly jumping at shadows. Finally Kean’s voice came from inside the room.

“Clear.”

She stepped backward and let the door close behind her. Turning, she surveyed the room.

“What the hell happened here?” Kean asked, stepping forward.

The hotel room was a disaster. It had been thoroughly ransacked. The sheets were ripped and torn from the bed. Dresser drawers yanked out, contents upended and strewn everywhere. Cushions opened and flung across the room. Wall paintings had been shattered and thrown haphazardly onto the ground.

She didn’t respond.

“Somebody stole something from here,” he said. “Was this your room?”

Madison shook her head.

“Whose room was it?”

“Look for clues,” she said instead, moving into the room, heading for the nightstands. They were still upright, though the drawers had been pulled from them as well, looked through, and then just dropped to the floor. The cheap particle board construction was cracked in many places.

“Madison.”

Kean’s anger-filled voice stopped her in her tracks. The single sharp word cracked through the room like a whip, letting her know she was treading dangerously close to the limits he was going to accept.

“If you want my trust,” he said fiercely, “then you’re going to have to start showing some yourself. It’s a two-way street.”

She just stared at him.

“Tell me what I’m looking for. Clues, you said, I get that. But clues about what?” he growled.

“Clues for who did this,” she said.

Kean stormed across the room. He didn’t walk over things so much as he walked through them. Drawers simply disintegrated as he crushed anything and everything in his path.

Madison saw him coming and backed up quickly. Her shoulders came to a halt abruptly as she hit the wall, and her eyes went wide.

His fists reached out and slammed into the wall on either side of her, as if to pin her in place. Madison knew she could theoretically duck under them, but the effect was still powerful enough to work.

“Enough secrecy,” he snarled, getting right up in her face. “What the hell am I looking for? Clues to who did this? Clues to what they stole? Tell me right now, or I walk and you’re on your own.”

“Raven,” she said.

Kean looked at her steadily, before slowly blinking.

“Raven,” he said at last. “We’re looking for a bird? All this, for a fucking bird?” he laughed. “Seriously, you lost a pet and you’re asking me to help you find it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Raven is a person, not a pet, you idiot. One of my agents was staying in this room.” Her eyes grew cold. “They’re obviously not staying here anymore. So we need to find out where they went.”

“This person was kidnapped.” He sighed. “Why the hell didn’t you just tell me that in the first place?”

Madison had no good answer. Saying that he hadn’t been cleared to know just sounded lame, so instead she kept her mouth shut.

Kean sighed and pulled his arms out of the wall. Then he stepped back and out of her way, shaking his head.

Madison cast her eyes down as he looked back over at her, looking at the floor, then the bed.

Her eyes widened.