Saved by Wolves (Shifters Meet Their Mate Book 1) (24 page)

“What’s going on?”

“You want to be there,” he said, giving her a nudge and a flash of white teeth, then turning to return to his post.

By the time she reached the ring of spectators, Kirra nerves were ragged. The unmistakable thuds and grunts of a fistfight cut through the air, and she was afraid of what she’d see. Was Jackson fighting a Cat? Or—

“Aim lower, Marcus!” a man next to her yelled. “Go for his gut!”

Marcus? Pushing her way past the yelling man, Kirra was just in time to see Marcus deliver a punishing blow to Jackson’s stomach, right where he’d been shot. Jackson folded over in pain for a split second, then was upright and moving, hammering Marcus’s face and chest with fists like sledgehammers. Blood trickled down Marcus’s chin. They circled the rough ring drawn in the trampled grass, hands clenched, teeth bared.

“Stop that!” she yelled, but they didn’t even twitch. Their focus was so intense on each other, a twister could have ripped through Blue’s Hollow, taking everything with it, and they wouldn’t have noticed.

Someone called her name from the edge of the crowd. It was Daisy, making her way over. “It’s okay,” she said as she reached Kirra. “It’s normal.”

“This is normal? Friends beating the crap out of each other?”

Daisy nodded, grinning. “When Kal and Rick—my mates—did it, it lasted for over an hour before they called a draw. I think your guys’ll go for at least two hours.”

“You’re happy your mates were fighting?” Marcus tackled Jackson around the waist, and they went down hard. Jackson rolled with the momentum, and twisted to get Marcus’s head in a leg lock.

“Well, yeah. They were fighting to prove their worth.” Realization crossed Daisy’s face. “No one’s told you about the Right of Challenge, have they?”

“Isn’t the challenge for the right to be alpha?”

Daisy shook her head, then nodded. “There’s a challenge for that, sure, but this is different. If two males want to bond with the same female, and she hasn’t chosen or refused either, they can fight. Loser backs off, and the winner gets to ask the girl to bond with him.” She winked. “Guess who the lucky girl is?”

“They’re fighting over me?” Wonder and excitement filled her, then disappeared as anger took their place. “They don’t have the right to do that. I choose who I want to be with.” Never mind that she hadn’t been able to make up her mind and was coming to tell them both that she loved them. It was still her choice.

“Well, you don’t have to say yes to the winner,” Daisy said. She kept talking, but Kirra’s couldn’t focus on her words. Jackson was back on his feet, and Marcus rolled out of the way of a kick, then jumped to his feet, shaking his head as if to clear it. They were going to tear each other apart and no one was going to do anything to stop them.

She crossed into the ring. Someone grabbed her from behind and tried to pull her back, but she twisted out of their grasp and kept going. When Marcus spun and side kicked Jackson, then retreated, she lunged between them, throwing out her arms.

“What are you doing? Are you crazy?” She pointed at Marcus. “Jackson almost bled out a few days ago, and you’re trying to reopen his wound? And you”—she whirled on Jackson—“is there a reason you’re trying to knock all of Marcus’s teeth out?”

“Move,” Jackson said. “We’re not done.”

“Oh, yes you are.” Kirra glared at the gaping crowd. “Fight’s over. Get out of here, all of you.” Laughing and cracking jokes, they slowly dispersed, until she was alone with the two hulking idiots. Marcus worried at a loose tooth with his tongue, and Jackson rubbed his stomach, but neither said a word.

“You’re partners. You shouldn’t be at each other’s throats.”

“It doesn’t concern you,” Jackson said.

Marcus snorted. “Yes it does. It’s all about her.”

“Daisy said this is some kind of challenge over me. I won’t have it. I make my own decisions. And one of them is that if you don’t stop this idiocy and shake each other’s hands right now, I’ll never speak to either of you again. I mean it.”

“A draw?” Marcus asked. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“I could live with that,” Marcus said to Jackson. “You?”

Jackson scowled, but he slowly nodded.

“Well, go on then,” Kirra said. “Shake hands, and then let’s get you two cleaned up. You’re bleeding.”

Marcus took a step forward, then Jackson, and they shook hands.

Kirra released the breath she’d been holding. Half of her had expected one of them to take a wild swing. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

“Not yet,” Marcus said, catching her hand. “Say it first.”

“Say what?”

“That you’ll bond with us. Be our mate.”

Kirra took a step back. “Your mate? Both of yours?”

Jackson frowned. “You changed your mind already?”

“No, I...” Daisy’s story of her mates fighting and declaring a draw suddenly made sense. “Are you sure?”

“Do you think I’d fight Jackson if I wasn’t sure?” Marcus said, only half joking. Jackson just stared into her eyes and inclined his head.

Kirra took a deep breath and studied them. Nothing in their attitudes or body language had ever indicated there was anything between them other than a working partnership, but she needed to be clear on what she was agreeing to. “Uh, just to clarify, when you say we’d all be bonded, does that mean you two...” She trailed off, not sure how to phrase the question delicately.

They stared back at her with blank faces, then Marcus looked over at Jackson and laughed. “She wants to know just how much we’ll be sharing,” he said, then grinned at Kirra. “As studly as Jackson is, he really doesn’t do it for me. We’ll be bonding with you, not each other.”

Jackson’s face went slack, then his eyes widened and he stepped to the side, putting space between himself and Marcus. Marcus whooped again.

Kirra felt heat radiate from her face, but didn’t regret asking. She’d needed to know exactly how complicated things could get. She waved Marcus to silence. “What about children? I know how important they are to your clan. We could never have any.”

Marcus shuffled his feet. “Well... that was part of the deal we made with Jasper, to get him to lift the ban on bonding with a human. No children.” His voice dropped at the last, and he wouldn’t meet her eyes, and she thought he already regretted the deal he’s made, then he looked up, green eyes wide and serious. “The chance that we’d have children with a shifter mate is pretty slim anyway—Donovan is the only child born in the last eight years. And honestly, even if it wasn’t a slim chance, even if it was guaranteed that I’d have kids with some future mate, I’d rather be with you, someone I love, and be happy without children, than mate with someone I don’t love.”

He loved her. And he’d said it so casually, as if it were a given. A fact.

Jackson nodded. “We’ll live in Wolf’s Run. You can stay with his gran until we build a house.”

“We’ll make the house I’m building larger,” Marcus clarified. “It won’t be hard.”

“And we’ll get different partners,” Jackson said.

“What? Why would you do that?” Had she destroyed their friendship so badly that they couldn’t even work together anymore?

Marcus squeezed her hand. “It’s what most partners who’ve mated with the same female have done. It works better that way. When we’re on patrol, we can be gone for up to a week at a time. It’s better if we take different shifts, so one of us will always be at home. We’ll overlap sometimes, but not very often.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” And was probably for the best. It was hard to picture the three of them living under one roof. There’d be a lot of adjustments and give and take necessary, and while she could see Marcus going with the flow, she didn’t really see Jackson budging on anything.

“What would I do, though? And what about Francesca? I can’t just desert her.”

“She can stay with Gran, too,” Marcus offered. “She won’t mind the company. After our house is ready, we can build her one too, if she needs it.”

“What does that mean? If she needs it? Why wouldn’t she?”

“The tiger twins are breaking with their clan and will be staying in the barracks.”

“So?”

Marcus raised his eyebrows at her, and Jackson gave her a
think about it
look.

“Ah. I see your point,” she said. Quinn and Kelvin followed Francesca’s every step like twin shadows. Very dangerous, very protective shadows. She’d tried to get Francesca to talk about what had gone on in the lab while she was there, but her sister wasn’t ready to open up yet. Whatever happened, it had forged a bond between the three of them.

Jackson said, “The alphas have agreed that we need to find out where the other labs are so we can rescue our people. To do that, we need you and your sister. You know the labs and you know computers. You find the information and we’ll bring them down together.”

“But how would we do that? You don’t even have electricity here. We’d have to go off shifter lands to work.”

“No. Norris—a Raptor—came up with a brilliant idea. We’ll use a generator and put it, the computer, and any other electronics you need in one of those cage things that block electricity.”

“A Faraday cage?”

He nodded. “Yes. A Faraday cage.”

It could work. And Francesca would jump at the chance. Just... “If you already talked to the alpha and worked all this out, why were you fighting?”

Marcus hitched a shoulder. “It seemed like the right thing to do. Plus, we weren’t sure where you stood...”

They’d manipulated her. She tried to be angry about it, but felt a smile rise to her face.

“You’re both sure about this? That we can make this work?” She eyed their spreading bruises. “And you won’t kill each other.”

“We love you, and if you’d do us the honor of bonding with us, we promise to keep you safe and happy for the rest of your life,” Marcus said.

“Bond with us,” Jackson said. “We will be good mates.”

“Not good mates,” Kirra said, and Jackson’s face froze, lips thinned. “The best. You’re the best men I’ve ever met, and I’ll be proud to be your mate.”

T
hree months later

Heavy rapping on the bedroom door pulled Kirra from a wonderful dream, and she stretched her arms out lazily, enjoying the feel of the morning sun on her face. An arm wrapped around her and tugged her close, and she opened her eyes just in time to see Jackson closing in to claim her lips in a deep kiss.

The pounding got louder, more insistent, and Jackson pulled away, scowling in the direction of the door and the living room beyond.

“Maybe if we’re really quiet she’ll think we’re still asleep and go away,” Marcus whispered in her ear from behind her, brushing hair from the nape of her neck so he could pepper it with light kisses. Kirra turned her head to give him better access.

“I heard that,” Francesca called. “Well, not exactly the words, but I heard you. Get up, Kirra. I found something.”

“You’re always finding something,” Kirra mumbled under her breath, but she reluctantly disentangled her limbs from Marcus and Jackson’s, got up, and began tugging on her clothes. Ever since they’d started going through the lab’s files, Francesca had thrown herself into the work. Kirra had always known she was smart, but her sister consistently made heads and tails of data and concepts that made no sense to Kirra—especially the more scientific, biological data. They hadn’t been able to pinpoint the location of any of the other labs yet, but it was only a matter of time. There was years of research to go through, and they’d only scratched the surface so far.

Kirra opened the door just as Francesca raised her walking stick to pound on the door again. She caught the sturdy stick and forced it down. “Quit smacking that thing into the door. We just finished building this place, and Jackson’ll be upset if you dent his hard work.” He’d carved three howling Wolves into the door. When she’d asked him who the third was supposed to represent, he’d said it was her, because she was part of their clan now. It was a sweet thought, but Kirra had the feeling it was really because he had no idea how to carve anything other than a Wolf.

“I wouldn’t have to smack anything if you’d get up in time,” Francesca said. She poked her head around the door. “Morning, Jackson. Marcus.”

Jackson grunted a reply, his back to them as he pulled a shirt over his head. Kirra was thankful he’d already donned pants. Sitting propped against the carved headboard, sheets pooled around his waist, Marcus grinned and waved. Then he swung his legs over the bed and started to stand, sheets slipping down.

Kirra shut the door. “This had better be life or death. It’s the first time in over a month Jackson and Marcus have been home at the same time, and you have to wake us up at the crack of—”

“It’s at least nine,” Francesca interrupted. Without watches, neither of them ever knew exactly what time it was except when they were working on the computer, but they were getting better at judging by the sun and the feel of their bodies.

Kirra glanced outside, and sure enough, the sun was already high in the sky. A blush worked its way up her throat as she recalled the busy night she’d had, and the reason she’d needed to sleep in.

“Okay, so what was so—”

“We’re part shifter,” Francesca said.

“What?”

“I found records about experiments dating back twenty-five years. Experiments using human eggs, shifter sperm, and genetic modification. I don’t know all the details yet, but it’s pretty clear we were two of the original subjects.”

“Original? There were more?” Why was she surprised? Of course there were more.

“At least a dozen. Maybe more. They found shifters were too volatile to control in a military setting, so they were trying to create a hybrid, a human with shifting abilities that would be easier to mold into what they wanted.

“Instead they got us.”

“Yeah. They call us psi. They must have coined the term after we left, because I don’t remember it, and it’s only used in the more recent records. Anyway, that’s not the really big news.”

“Being a part human, part shifter, part something else isn’t the big news?” Maybe she should have felt shocked at hearing she was the result of some strange experiment, but instead, a wave of relief flooded over her. She was part shifter. She belonged.