Nadia
What are you thinking?!
She was flirting with him. Not subtly either. This was a blatant thing!
With a rush of blood to her face she turned and fled back to the washroom before things could go any farther. She closed the door behind her as gently as possible, before turning and resting her hands on the counter, staring into the mirror.
Was the flirting such a bad thing? The pit of her stomach, where she normally felt the guiding sense of what to do in certain situations, was noticeably quiet. This was something she would have to figure out for herself.
Great. Why couldn’t it pick now to tell me what to do?
He was hunky, sexy, handsome, gorgeous, panty-melting. Pick one, and it described him, depending on the situation. He was all of them and any of them. She had felt herself growing aroused as she rubbed his shoulders while trying to get him to relax, to think clearly and without worry. It had been a tactic to try and ensure he didn’t get them into a bad situation by worrying over things he couldn’t control, but it had backfired by making her want to sit in his lap and grind her hips against him until he took her, right then and there.
Yet she had only met him a few hours ago. She knew his name, and that was about it! He was a shifter, and he was on the run from another group. Was he truly a terrorist? Why had he been labeled one? In essence: What the fuck was going on? That was what she needed to know before she could make any more decisions.
Sexual promiscuity was not a normal thing for Nadia. She’d had boyfriends before, but this was on a different level completely. Never before had her drive to sleep with someone come so quickly, and been so urgent as well. Her body seemed to respond with instant arousal whenever she was within a few feet of him. Could it just be his bear? Could that affect her differently?
I don’t know. And that’s the problem.
So go find out then.
As if trying to tell her inner-mind to shove it, she decided that’s exactly what she would do. Nadia pushed off the counter, splashed a bit of water on her face, and patted it dry. Then she left the washroom and walked over to where he was still seated at the laptop.
“Anything yet?” she asked, not wanting to push his concerns to the side.
“No, not yet,” he replied.
“Okay, well, while we wait, can you answer some questions?” she asked.
Jared turned to look at her. “I can try, absolutely. I can’t compromise any classified information, but I’m sure I can shed some light on things.”
“What the hell have I gotten myself into?” she asked plainly, not waiting any longer to get into the meat of it.
“A war.”
That was not what she had expected to hear. “I’m sorry. Details please? A war?”
He turned the chair to face her and leaned back. “Yes, a war. Shifters were revealed to be public knowledge more than seventeen years ago.”
“Right. I remember that,” she said. “I was a little kid, only eleven at the time, but that was such a big deal that one couldn’t miss it.”
“Well, everyone heralded it as a great thing. Shifters could go public and not have to worry about being persecuted any further.”
“Yes. After so many years—centuries I guess, actually—of hiding, you could be free with who and what you really were.”
The big shifter snorted. “Well that was a big load of crap,” he said. “Nothing like that ever happened. From the get-go there were riots and protests, saying we should be rounded up and kept in certain areas only. All kinds of things.”
“That’s horrible!” she said with a gasp. “I never heard about any of that.”
“Of course not,” he said. “The news never reported it. It wasn’t worth it. Things like that have been going on for years. But if you searched for it online, there were plenty of things available.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, wanting to reach out to comfort him, but forcing herself not to.
“It’s okay, it had nothing to do with you,” he said. “It died down after a while, as shifters went half-underground again. We stopped being so public, and it became harder for them to come after us. But they never stopped. As the world grew tighter with the internet, the distaste and outright hatred for us grew again, until it was worse than before.”
She could feel the hurt, the depression, that such treatment must instill in someone. The desire to try to help ease that burden welled up inside of her, but Nadia knew she needed to let him finish the story first.
“At some point,” Jared said, breaking the momentary silence, “things began to escalate. There was fighting between the shifter races as some of the more powerful ones tried to take complete control. Human governments have long wanted our powers—for us to become their special strike units, to do things humans cannot.”
“I had heard that most of the time shifters decided to stay apart from human wars and conflict?”
That was the official line, at least. With everything that she had seen, and was now being told, Nadia wondered if that was the truth. It wouldn’t be the first time the government had lied to its people, of that she was sure.
“For once, the truth is as you have heard it,” he replied. “There are some of course who have decided to involve themselves, though most of them are mercenaries.” He flashed her a humorless smile. “The pay is better.”
“So why is there a war going on?” She had a better picture of things now, but there was still something missing.
“At some point, the governments decided to get involved. They tacitly supported an organization dedicated to finding a scientific way to take our abilities and give them to humans without the whole turning-into-an-angry-animal part.”
Nadia couldn’t contain her shock. The gasp of her sudden inhaled breath echoed in the room. “Holy shit. That’s not possible.”
Jared looked at her calmly, unflinching.
“Is it?” she asked after a moment.
“Not only is it, but they have done it. Their serum, named Extremis, has produced all sorts of results. We even have several people on our side, fighting for us, who have been injected with it.”
“Really? What happened?” she asked, intrigued now. This was the stuff of science fiction.
“Well, one of them gained our abilities. Strength, speed, healing, better vision. She’s still completely human, but is now an enhanced version.”
“Fascinating,” she whispered. “And the other?”
Jared frowned, as if he was considering an answer. She thought he was going to say nothing, but he shrugged his shoulders instead. “The other was injected with both that and an experimental serum that turned her into a full-blown shifter.”
Nadia’s jaw popped as it fell open. “No way. You’re lying.” But she could tell by his face that he wasn’t.
“That’s so cool!” she exclaimed, sitting back onto the couch.
Jared’s face closed off. His shoulders tensed and his eyes went flat.
“Or…it’s not?” she asked, confused by his sudden change in attitude.
“Each injection of the serum requires the life of a currently living shifter. All their blood is drained from them and modified in some as-yet-unknown way, that distills it into a vial no bigger than your finger. That holds the power to create a new shifter.”
The blood drained from her face as he continued to speak, outlining the horrors of what he and his kind were facing. And she had called it cool.
“Oh my goodness. Jared, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…” she trailed off as he raised a hand.
“It’s okay, you didn’t know. I won’t hold it against you.
Words continued to fail her. Nadia felt terrible for acting like the death of one of his kind, perhaps even one of his friends, was the coolest thing she had ever heard of. What kind of person did that? She should have waited for the whole story! Now he would hate her.
“So the war is between this organization and the shifters?”
He nodded. “Yes. Myself and the others, the group labeled as terrorists, are members of a shifter Underground resistance. We’re dedicated to preventing this Agency, as it’s known, from spreading to other cities and eventually across the globe.”
“That sounds dangerous,” she said.
“It is.” The response came instantly. “But it’s also necessary. Not every shifter has the training that my men and I do. It is up to us to fight for them, to protect them.”
Nadia’s head nodded up and down.
“How are you going to stop the Agency?” she asked in a half-whisper, positive she knew the answer, but needing to hear it all the same.
“By killing them all, I’m afraid.”
The statement was blunt and matter-of-fact. Jared knew that his enemies wouldn’t give up, and he knew the lengths he would have to go to end the war. Somehow, knowing that seemed to put her at ease around him. He wasn’t lying to her, nor trying to sugarcoat anything. He was telling her the truth, as if she were an equal.
He trusted her, to a degree. Or at a minimum, he was willing to treat her with some respect, despite the fact that she was human, and not part of his team. Nadia appreciated that despite everything that he knew about her, and some things that he did not. She quailed at the thought that eventually she would have to reveal everything that she knew.
Nadia heard a voice speaking, and she couldn’t believe it was hers.
“How can I help?”