Guardian's Mate

Carson suddenly reached out, grabbed the zipper of her jacket, and yanked it down. Rae squeaked and ducked her head, praying her shirt still hid the Collar.

Carson was after something else. “You’ve got a weapon in there. What is that?” His hand went unerringly to the sword’s hilt and he yanked out the top half of the sword.

Rae had the presence of mind to shake her head. “I don’t know. It’s broken but it looked interesting.”

Carson studied the sword, bringing it close to his eyes to examine the silver, the runes. Rae was surprised he could hold it, but maybe it was different for humans, who seemed immune to Fae magic.

“You stole this from them?” Carson demanded.

A more difficult question. Rae wet her lips. “No one seemed to want it. It’s broken—it can’t be worth much.”

“It’s silver.” Carson examined it again. “But the edge is sharp like steel. Weird.”

He backed away with it, opened another cabinet, and tucked it inside. “It’ll stay safe in there,” he said, locking the cabinet with a key.

“You’ll give it back to me, won’t you?” Rae asked, her worry not feigned. “I mean, I should get something for my trouble.”

Carson only gave her a look of faint disgust. “Yeah, you’ll get it back.”

He’d concluded she was a Shifter groupie, Rae saw. He thought she was a groupie hanging out with Zander and Ezra, who’d gotten more than she’d bargained for when they’d gone wild in the bar fight, and who’d stolen from them when they’d been caught.

Fine with Rae. The man could despise her all he wanted, as long as her plan worked out. She didn’t really care what her captors thought of her.

Carson studied her a few moments more, his gaze full of distrust, before he turned back to Miles.

“Head for Anchorage. We’ll transfer them there.”

Transfer them to what?

Miles didn’t answer. He was too busy playing with controls and looking nervously around him. Carson eyed him as sharply as he’d eyed Rae, then he turned and left the wheelhouse.

“I do not like this,” Miles said.

The fog outside had thickened. As the boat backed, a fumarole, or whatever it was called, in the rocks beside them vented a sudden shaft of steam.

Miles jerked the vessel away, but Rae yelled, “Look out!” as a black cliff loomed up on their other side.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Miles cranked the wheel and pulled levers. The rock drifted past the bow, inches from the hull.

Rae left her seat and went to the wheel. Miles was sweating, droplets welling on his forehead and trickling down his temples, but he held the boat steady.

As Rae peered out the windows, alert for more obstacles, she noticed what the thick smell of diesel and sulfur had masked. She sucked in a startled breath and looked up at Miles.

Miles snapped his attention from the instruments to her, his eyes widening. If his scent had come to her, so hers had gone to him.

“Aw, damn it.” Miles moved one hand from the wheel and grabbed at the neckline of her shirt.

Rae tried to twist away, but too late. Miles yanked her shirt open at the neck, revealing the glint of her Collar.

“You’re one of them,” Miles said, hand still on her shirt. “Man, oh man, oh man.”

Rae jerked from his grasp. “You should talk. You’re one of them too.”

“What?” Sweat trickled faster as Miles returned to steering the boat. “What are you talking about?”

Did he really think Rae wouldn’t know? “You’re Shifter.” Rae stepped closer and inhaled. “Maybe not full blood. But you’re definitely Shifter.”

Miles leaned to her, a sudden growl in his throat. “You keep that to yourself. Promise me, or I’ll tranq you myself, I swear.”

Rae growled right back at him. “What are you doing hunting Shifters and letting them be put in cages? How can you justify that?”

Miles’s mouth tightened. “I justify it when I see Shifters tearing up a town and leaving people dead. I justify it when they nearly kill the wife of a good man, turning him half crazy.”

Rae’s lips parted. “Shifters don’t do that.”

Miles snorted a laugh. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, sugar. Shifters do do that. I’ve watched them. You get the rogue ones who escaped the rounding up and they let their frenzy or whatever they call it take over. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

“Are you sure they were Shifter?” Rae asked, though with less confidence.

Miles’s eyes became as hard as Carson’s. “Yeah, I’m sure. I saw them shift, become wolves, and go after people. Very, very sure.”

Rae fell silent. Some Shifters claimed that Shifters who didn’t take the Collar, with nothing to restrain them, slowly went feral. Maybe it was genetics, the argument went, maybe Shifters were simply changing, finding it difficult to adjust to the modern world. In theory, those who hadn’t taken the Collar would succumb to the gradual deterioration of their sanity.

But the Collared Shifter leaders, like Eoin, had begun concluding that the feral tendencies were rarer than they’d thought. Collars were being removed from Shifters gradually, in secret, and the Shifters who’d had their Collars off were fine so far.

Now Miles, a part Shifter, was telling her there were violent, un-Collared Shifters still out there.

“My friends aren’t the Shifters you saw,” Rae said. “Zander and Ezra are not feral or violent. Nothing wrong with them.”

Miles’s lips thinned. “They’re un-Collared. They have the potential to go feral.” He steered them around another rock, the fog brushing the windows. “What about you? Why are you with them?”

Rae wasn’t about to tell him. “Long story. What about you? What kind of Shifter are you?”

He looked sideways at her. “Fox.”

Rae blinked. “No, you’re not. There’s no such thing as a fox Shifter.”

“Beg to differ,” Miles said. “Gray fox. My mother was Shifter, my father human. My father, who was a Marine, died a couple years ago. My mom left after that. Kind of disappeared. She gets in touch once in a while.”

Now Rae stared in shock. “She abandoned her cub?”

“Cub?” Miles shot a surprised glance at her. “You mean me? I’m fifty-two. I think I can take care of myself by now.”