Autumn's Blood: The Spirit Shifters, Book One (22 page)

Autumn pressed her lips together.
“Just so you know, I don’t do well with this macho
bullshit.”

His head tilted to one
side, one eyebrow cocked. “Yeah, well, just so you know, you
forgetting
about your
cell phone may have put this whole town in danger, so quit the
girly whining and think about the bigger picture.”

He snatched his shirt from the floor,
turned and walked from the room, leaving Autumn shocked and
breathless. Her legs went weak and she sat back on the edge of the
bed. She wanted to chase after him, or else do exactly what she’d
been planning as soon as she got Mia’s call and get the hell back
to Chicago, but his words rang in her ears.

She curled up on the bed, still warm
from Blake’s body heat and smelling faintly of him, and succumbed
to tears. Eventually, exhaustion claimed her.

Chapter
Nineteen

CHOGAN PAUSED OUTSIDE the bedroom
door.

His cousin was charging around town
with all the subtlety of a bull. The man was clearly on a mission.
Though Chogan knew he should be offering to help, he couldn’t
resist taking some kind of advantage, knowing Autumn would now be
alone. If his cousin and uncle’s story was right and her blood
could change regular people into spirit shifters, he didn’t intend
to let her get too far out of his control. Her being tall, blonde,
and beautiful also helped spark his interest, but he’d been there
before with Blake and a woman, and he didn’t intend to repeat that
particular part of their lives again.

He lifted his hand and gently rapped
his knuckles on the wood. In the back of his mind, his wolf
prowled, edging him on, trying to urge him to send it in first to
observe her unnoticed. Only his desire not to encroach on her
privacy held him back. From the deepness of her breath, he assumed
she was sleeping as planned, but from the state Blake had been in,
he thought something else had happened.

He ran a hand through his long hair,
pushing it away from his face, and then knocked again. The
temptation to walk right in lingered. Why did he care about her
opinion anyway?

A choked sound came through the closed
door.

He frowned. “Autumn?”

Screw it.
He pushed open the door to find her starting to
sit up. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy. Her skin looked blotchy,
her mouth bruised and swollen. Strands of her hair stuck to her
face, making her appear both vulnerable and sexy. He noticed a
couple of buttons of her shirt were missing, a tantalizing hint of
creamy skin peeking through the gap.

“Autumn?” he said again, frowning.
“What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

She blinked at him and shook her head
slightly as if she’d been expecting to find someone else standing
at the door.

She was expecting someone
else, you fool. She was expecting Blake.

“Chogan?” The frown on her face
matched his own. “Where’s Blake?”

“He’s off rounding up the
forces.”

“To save Mia?”

“Who is Mia?”

She looked into his face, and, to his
horror, burst into tears. “How the hell has this happened?” She
buried her face in her hands. “A couple of days ago, I was worried
about a job interview and whether my dad gave a shit about me or
not. Now, my best friend has been kidnapped by a bunch of
government crazies, and I’ve discovered people can turn into
goddamn animals.”

She lifted her head and tossed back
her hair, blinking back the tears. “I must be dreaming all of this,
or else I’ve lost my mind and should be sitting in a padded white
room right now.”

He dropped to his knees in front of
her and took her hands. She lifted her eyes to him, pools of ocean
blue. “Autumn, this is all real. I’m sorry about what’s happened to
your friend, but they’ve taken plenty of our friends as well. She
might just end up being another casualty.”

She snatched back her hands. “Don’t
say that!”

“I’m sorry, but we’re up against the
big boys here. We’re bound to take casualties. Even with Blake
rounding up help, there’s a chance we’ll all go down.”

She stared at him, alarmed. “What are
you saying?”

“I don’t think a group of shifters is
going to be able to take on a military building and men with guns.
There’s a good chance we’ll go to try to rescue our people only to
end up dead as well.”

“So why are you going?”

His jaw stiffened. “What else am I
supposed to do? Stand by and let them get away with this? As
shifters, we’re connected to something higher than regular humans.
Humans keeping shifters captive is like a twist on what’s natural.
We should be above them. We should be the ones taking them
prisoner, not the other way around. Humans should fear and revere
us. We shouldn’t be hiding away like dirty little secrets. Autumn,
if you are what my uncle says you are—the start of our kind—then,
do you understand how special that makes you?”

She closed her eyes briefly and shook
her head.

He continued, “You’re like the
daughter of our maker, the closest thing to having a goddess on
earth.”

The air seemed to shiver between them
and he reached out, intent on touching the smooth skin of her
cheek, his hair falling in a sheet like a curtain shielding them
from the rest of the world.

Suddenly, Chogan became aware of
another presence in the room. In his head, his wolf growled, only
to be met with the snarl of another wolf.

“I hope I haven’t interrupted
anything.” Blake’s voice came, low, controlled, but with fury
bubbling behind his words.

Autumn leapt away as though a ring of
electricity had suddenly formed around Chogan’s body, propelling
her from him.

“Blake!” she cried.

But he ignored her, all his attention
focused on his cousin. He stormed into the small room, the two big
men crowding the small space.

“So are we back to this again?” Blake
said. “You and I after the same girl?”

“Blake!” Autumn said, sounding angry
herself now. “You don’t have any claim on me, and we weren’t even
doing anything!”

“It’s okay, Autumn,” Chogan said.
“This isn’t just about you.”

She lifted both hands and
shook her head, stepping back.
Sort it out
between yourselves, then,
her gesture
said.

Chogan put out his hand and caught
Blake’s arm. “I wasn’t fucking Shian, Cuz.”

Blake shook him off, anger blazing in
his eyes. “No? Then what were you doing with her out in the forest
that day?”

“We were just talking. You know, tea
and sympathy, and all that.”

“Bullshit! You don’t do ‘just
talking.’

“Shian was my friend as well, Blake.
You forget that. Her dying left me just as cut up as you. Don’t you
think I wish I’d been able to save her that day? I ran those events
over and over in my head, trying to figure out if I could have done
something differently. One minute we were walking, and the next
she’d slipped and hit her head. The doctors said the aneurysm had
already formed and would have ruptured at some point. The accident
simply sped things up.”

“I know all that,” Blake growled. “But
what I still don’t understand is what you were doing with her at
all. She was my girlfriend, Chogan, had been since we were not much
more than children. She told me she was going to lunch with some
friends. She lied to me to spend time with you. Tell me why she’d
do that if there was nothing going on between you?”

“I don’t have anything else to tell
you.”

“You’re a goddamned liar, cousin. And
everyone wondered why I couldn’t stomach living in the same town as
you.”

Blake caught sight of Autumn. “I’m
sorry you had to be a part of this. Now you’re welcome to
him.”

“Hang on a minute!” Chogan reached out
and grabbed him.

Blake lashed back around, his face a
sneer.

His eyes flashed yellow …

AUTUMN GASPED AND backed against the
wall supporting the bed’s headboard.

Blake’s snarl made her jump. His eyes
flashed that burning yellow she had seen as a wolf, and he suddenly
hunched over, a low roar emitting from his chest.

Her eyes flicked to Chogan.

“Don’t do this, Cuz,” the other man
warned, but the warning came too late. The change had already
started.

Chogan’s face whipped toward her and
she saw the same amber color in his dark eyes. He opened his mouth
to speak, but long, sharp teeth already filled his mouth, his jaw
beginning to elongate. “Go,” he managed to tell her, his words
mumbled, like he had a mouthful of cotton. “Run!”

She darted one way, but Blake’s
changing form already blocked the door to the room. She tried to
move toward the window, but now Chogan filled that space, his body
in the throes of the shift. Unlike before, when they’d both removed
their clothing, now their shirts ripped with their changing bodies,
jeans left in tatters.

“Stop it, both of you!” she demanded,
but they didn’t even hear her.

Blake lifted his now almost fully-wolf
head and howled, a mournful, heartbreaking sound that seemed to
echo right inside her head. Autumn clamped her hands to her ears,
thinking her eardrums might burst from the vibrations. He shook his
coat, the final remains of his clothing falling from his body. She
caught sight of Chogan, his beautiful russet coat now
complete.

The big, silver wolf that had been
Blake lowered his chest to the floor, like a cat after a mouse, and
pounced.

In a twisted, snarling bundle of fur
and teeth, the two wolves fought, crashing over everything they
came into contact with. The stack of tapes exploded, plastic
shattering. The small collection of sports trophies crashed to the
floor.

Autumn screamed, pressing her back
tight to the wall, her heart in her throat.

The two wolves separated, circling
each other as best they could in the limited space. Chogan’s
massive shoulder brushed by her, the fur soft and warm, a total
contrast to the fierce terror she experienced at the sight of
them.

Both wolves crouched and sprang at
each other again, meeting in midair. They hit with a clash of teeth
and claws. With Blake being the stronger wolf, he forced the other
wolf to land on its back, crushing a bookshelf beneath their
combined weight. Autumn gave another shriek of fear, and Blake spun
around to face her.

Blake’s amber eyes locked on Autumn,
and a shiver of terror trembled through her. Would he attack her?
Would he even know who she was, or had his wolf completely taken
over? She didn’t know how much of him still existed in
there.

“Blake?” Tentatively, she reached out
a hand. Behind him, Chogan paced in the small space, his eyes fixed
on the scene unraveling. “Nothing happened between me and Chogan.
It’s you I want.”

There, I’ve said it out
loud. And to a giant wolf at that.

He moved forward, lowering his head.
He pressed against her body, his nose nuzzled against her hand, his
cheek against her breast, rubbing up against her like a cat. Her
hand went up and rubbed the top of his head, traveling over to run
the tips of his ears, like slips of velvet, between her
fingertips.

Above his head, her eyes darted toward
Chogan. The other wolf didn’t look like he wanted to fight, pacing,
alert, but not attacking.

Blake stepped away from her and sat
back on his haunches. A shudder went through him and he whimpered
as the change began, the whimper morphing into a howl. She winced
as bones cracked and reformed, as his fur melted back to skin and
his eyes became human once more. Blake rose from a crouch. This
time she couldn’t feel anything except empathy for him, no reaction
to his nudity. His vulnerability for such a strong man caught at
her heart. He’d loved someone and lost her; that much was clear.
She now knew the reason for his abandonment of his home, for the
pain she saw in his eyes when he spoke of his past, and the reason
for his antagonism toward his cousin. Not only did he blame Chogan
for his girlfriend’s death, but he also thought Chogan had been
playing behind his back. No wonder he’d reacted so badly to seeing
his cousin and her in such an intimate position before.

Suddenly, nothing seemed more
important than making him understand how she felt. Though she’d not
quite figured out her own emotions in her mind, she knew in her
heart that the most vital part of her life suddenly focused around
him being in it.

Behind them, Chogan, too, changed back
to a man. She couldn’t help her eyes being drawn to the sight.
Would the change ever seem real, or would she forever feel like she
was watching it happen on the television, complete with special
effects?

Chogan grabbed some clothes from the
dresser and pulled them on, both the shirt and jeans hanging from
his frame even though he was a big man himself.

Blake reached out and took her hand.
She wanted to step toward him, to close the gap between their
bodies and lay her head against his chest, feel his heartbeat, but
something held her back.