Unbound: Shifters Forever Worlds(18)

The sound of a wind tunnel flushed through her head. Honor. These bastards…

She didn’t need anyone to confirm it for her. These were the animals that killed her family. Rage followed the wind tunnel. A rage so all-consuming that Glory yielded to her ivy as the ivy pressed for a shift.

This shift would not be difficult. She’d remained in practice after that first painful shift that brought her out of her healing hibernation. She’d become adept at the art of shifting quickly and almost completely painlessly.

With a final push, her ivy took over, pushing Glory to the rear of her mind while the ivy’s branches and leaves replaced Glory’s skin and bones.

Her ivy had become larger and much more fearsome than it had been when she’d been younger. Her tendrils wrapped Abel’s cohort in a grip, branches like bands of steel wrapping around his body, constricting his very breath from him.

We’ll see how you like this, shifter.

Shifters were long-lived and could heal quickly, but they couldn’t heal when suffocated to the point they lost all their life-giving oxygen.

Your life is mine.

“Kill her, Basil.” Abel gasped the words out, his face already light blue.

Abel shifted into a huge badger, lethal, but nonetheless futile in her grasp. His teeth were no match for her branches.

“I’m trying.” Abel’s brother Basil shifted into a badger as well. A smelly, dark, greasy looking oversized badger. He sunk his teeth into her ivy’s branches, snarling louder.

Abel stopped moving. Basil was still attached to her. She turned to grab him and he leapt back then shifted into his man form.

“Morton, Bill, this way, hurry!” His voice was tinged with fear.

Rightly so.

She advanced on him while he ran toward a clearing.

Behind her, Glory’s ivy heard the sound of a branch breaking.

She turned toward the noise and found three more shifters facing her.

“Tranq her, now!” Basil screamed.

One of the three newcomer shifters raised a pistol.

Ivy had never seen tranquilizers but she’d overheard a shifter discussing it one day when she’d been in the forest in her ivy form and two wolf shifters had walked by. They hadn’t known they were in the presence of an ivy shifter, and they’d continued walking and talking, completely unaware.

She remembered they’d mentioned that a tranq would render a shifter unconscious.

The sound of air being released with a pop from the pistol heralded a sharp pinch as a steel dart penetrated her bark, sinking into a soft spot, embedding itself in the center of her wood.

In seconds, her vision became fuzzy and she lost her balance, crashing to the forest floor, rendered unconscious.





11





Dane stretched, his eyes flying open. His leopard told him right away something was off.

Maybe even wrong.

Sitting up on the couch, several things struck his shifter senses. The first was the scent of Glory.

Everything Glory.

He let her scent sit on him for a moment, analyzing.

Their lust, her climax, those were easy to identify and understand.

The fear and the tears?

Not so easy to understand.

He remembered her falling asleep with him. During that time they’d migrated; she wound up laying on his chest.

Evidently she’d cried. He touched a spot on his torso that had emitted the strongest scent of her tears. A tiny pool of the moisture had dried, leaving the almost indiscernible ring of its existence on his body.

The next thing his senses picked up was the quiet in the house. No sign of her heartbeat nor her breathing.

No Glory at all.

She’d left.

Why? Why after what they’d just done? Her scent was still strong. She hadn’t been gone long.

Should he give chase?

Near him, on the coffee table the loud sound of a cell phone vibrating on wood disrupted the alarming peace. He flinched from the jarring sound and leapt to his feet, heading toward the offending noise.

Hopefully it was Glory with an explanation as to why she vanished without a word.

Picking it up, he saw the name.

Mae Forester.

Uncle Frank’s note said to call her. Should he talk to her now or go after Glory?

Aunt Mae could keep. He pressed Decline and pocketed the phone. He dressed to go after Glory.

In his pocket the phone began its insistent buzzing. Could it be Glory?

Again Mae.

Again he declined the call.

On the third ring, he decided if she was going to work that hard to reach him, he should talk to her.

Tapping on the Accept icon, he put the phone to his ear and gathered his clothes.

“Dane?”

“Hey, Aunt Mae.”

“I was beginning to worry when you didn’t take my call.”

“Worry about what?”

“That something had happened to you. That you’d been hurt…” On the other end he heard her breath being sucked in. “Or worse.”

“I’m fine.” Except I’m headf*cked again. Over Glory. Again. “Uncle Frank’s note said to call you, that Glory’s parents were killed by the same shifters.”

“Yes. I was supposed to talk to you, if something happened to him.”

“How long have you known that the same shifters that killed my father and Uncle Greg were the same ones that killed Glory’s family?”