Scorpio Sons 4: Chase: (SF/Shifter Romance) (4 page)

She lowered her head as she moved past him. He could read her uncertainty in every line of her body. When she stood in the centre of the living area, she brushed down the skirt of her uniform nervously and waited for him to speak.

No, this wasn't happening. It was simply an unclaimed Mate he was drawn to. It was simple biology. It was just a slightly more exaggerated version of what he felt for the claimed Mates.

But one thing was certain: Alyssa had been right. This Anna Jarvis was one of theirs. And likely had no idea what she was.

He cleared his throat as he closed them into the room together. Why did that thought have his cat ramming the walls of his cage?

"My name is Chase Scanlan. You may wonder why you've been asked to come here this morning…" he started, sounding stuffy and formal even to his own ears.

Way to go, Chase. The perfect approach to use with a frightened girl.

When she did nothing more than stare at him with those big, serious eyes, he groaned and tried again. "You wrote a letter to Alyssa Aimes."

That got a reaction. She gasped softly, and took a little step back, almost as if she expected him to hit her. He covered the few paces between them at cat speed and took her arm.

What was he doing? She wasn't running from him. There was no reason for him to give chase.

Her big eyes looked from his face to his hand, and he could hear her heartbeat speeding up.

"There's nothing to be afraid of. You aren't in trouble. The opposite, in fact. Please, Anna, take a seat. I have a great deal to explain to you."

Reluctantly, she let him guide her over to the leather sofa near the window. Though he tried to sit on the single seat across from her, his cat forced him to take the place beside her on the sofa.

This was not going well. His cat couldn't seem to take his eyes off the girl. Too young. She was far too young for any of them. But his cat seemed to think otherwise.

"How old are you?" he croaked out, determined to use her age to quieten his beast.

He expected her to say sixteen. To work in a hotel like this she had to be at least sixteen. But as his keen ears had detected a slight northern European accent under the LA one, he expected her to be even younger. Fourteen, fifteen? Girls like her often lied about their age so they could work in the US.

"Eighteen," she answered immediately, her gaze steady on his.

Was she lying to him? But why would she? It didn't make sense. Unless she didn't want him to know she was jailbate.

"If I looked at your passport, is that what it would say?" he challenged her.

She drew a US passport out of her apron pocket, still covered by its plastic envelope. This only reinforced his first impression that she was not American bred. Americans never carried their passports around in their own country.

He took her passport and studied it. Yes, Anna Jarvis was eighteen and would turn nineteen in November. There was seven years between them. Too much.

The passport also listed her birthplace as Columbus, Ohio. There was no way she was born in the Midwest. So if her passport was forged, how old was she really?

He decided to let it slip for the moment. It didn't alter anything. She was still one of the female embryos secretly removed from the Guild lab twenty-five years ago. Those fertilized embryos could have been implanted at any time after that, and had been, if the difference in age between Alyssa, Alice and Amy were any indication. But why make her implantation so late if she was supposed to be a mate for one of the Sons?

Chase realised he'd been thinking for too long. Anna was growing restless, and her fingers were itching to take back her passport.

Anxious to reassure her that he wasn't suspicious of her credentials, he leaned in to hand it back.

That was when it happened. That was when his cat slipped its leash and struck.

Chase dragged her in close, pulled back the neck of her uniform and buried his teeth in her shoulder. For a split-second she struggled, then fell still, disquietingly still. Fighting the cat, fighting to stop what was happening, Chase tried to draw back. Never had he felt so helpless, so at the whim of his beast. Not since that first night ten years ago when his cat had jumped free and saved his life.

But the cat wasn't saving his life this time. The panther in his DNA was claiming an available mate. His cat didn't care if she was too young; didn't care that being his mate was a death sentence; didn't even care that Chase had no desire for a mate. His beast was claiming this young girl, and that was all there was to it.

Chase fought the pleasure swirling inside him, the exquisite taste of her blood on his tongue. This was wrong. This was impossible. But her moans ratcheted up his arousal. When had he first started getting hard? At the moment he first saw her? As she passed him, walking into the room? Or was it as late as when they sat on the sofa together, a polite distance between them? It was certainly before he sprung on her like a wild animal.

With that horrified thought, he finally wrestled the beast back and withdrew his teeth from her neck. As an afterthought he licked the wound closed so no blood stained her uniform.

Then he gently drew her away from him and sighed.

This was a total, unmitigated disaster.

The moment she'd seen him standing in the doorway she’d known who he was. He looked so much like the twin brothers who guarded Alyssa that he
had
to be another human Guardian Angel. And everything inside her told her that this man, this confident, hard, and polished businessman was someone she could trust.

That he was also someone who made her heart race and her breath catch, was something else completely. It was one thing to be oddly attracted to two rough-around-the-edges bodyguards; it was another, to be aroused by a sophisticated man like this one. A man who looked down his nose at a domestic, even while he spoke gently to her.

Had he seemed as stunned by the sight of her as Anna had been seeing him for the first time? Yes, she thought so. Was he expecting someone else? Someone crazier, if this had something to do with the letter she sent to Alyssa several weeks ago. It was early March now, and she'd finally sent the letter, the last of about ten draft versions, to the singer in mid-February. She'd just about given up expecting some kind of reply.

Then she was sent to one of the most expensive suites in the hotel, with no explanation why she was to go there, and she'd come face to face with another Guardian Angel.

Of course she knew these men weren’t real Angels. Not sent by God, if there actually was a God. But they were something similar, and so she continued to use the label.

She'd been nervous around him, not just because Chase was rich and sophisticated, as far from someone like her as it was possible to be, but because the insistent tug of attraction was so unfamiliar it was unwelcome. No, all men weren't monsters like those who had taken her as a child. But they were, for the most part, stronger and more forceful than she was, even with her new self-defence skills. That meant they could take whatever they wanted from her, whether she liked it or not.

And hadn't he proven that, horrifically, when he leaned over and bit her on the shoulder? It may not have really hurt – in fact it had taken her to a level of sexual pleasure she'd thought impossible for her– but it had been a violent act, carried out without her consent. And that was too much like what she'd experienced as a child to bear.

Jumping to her feet, she backed away from him, rubbing at her neck. Although she still felt a slight pain at the site, there seemed to be no blood. He
had
broken the skin, hadn’t he? It had felt like his teeth had sunk into her flesh. How could there be no blood?

She looked across at him, ready to meet his gaze, ready to yell and threaten him with charges. In America men couldn't get away with hurting women. And just because he was rich didn't mean he could get away with violence towards her.

But when her gaze meshed with his, every rational thought disappeared. His eyes were no longer light-brown but golden, and the pupils slanted vertically like a cat's. He was growling, the sound rumbling in his broad chest, just like an animal.

"Wh…What are you?" she whimpered, covering her mouth with her hand before she could let out the scream that was building inside her.

Not only had she been attacked, but she'd been attacked by something that wasn't human. Because he couldn't be human! Not with those impossible eyes.
Could he?

How could she have been so wrong? How could her instincts have told her to trust this man when he wasn't even a
man
at all?

She backed up several more steps, trying to judge her chances of making it to the door and the safety beyond it.

"It's all right, Anna. I promise you it's all right. Come, you have to see this. Maybe it had to happen this way so you could be convinced." He stood up and grabbed her hand before she had time to react. Even while she tried to struggle out of his gentle, but firm grip, her heart raced at the contact. And not in fear. How could she
not
fear him? Why wasn't she screaming in terror?

"L...Let me go. Please, let me go." She'd learned long ago that pleading achieved nothing. Yet with this
man
, this inhuman creature, she sensed that it
might
just make a difference.

Relentlessly, he pulled her over to the gilt-framed mirror on the wall.
What was he doing? What had a mirror to do with this?
He directed her face towards the mirror by the chin, just as gently and just as firmly as he’d done everything else.

She studied the frame, looking for a reason for his odd behaviour. What was different about this mirror to any of the hundreds of other mirrors in the hotel? Wasn't it clean enough? Were there finger marks on the glass? Was he one of those fanatics who got upset if everything wasn't perfect?

"Look at your eyes, Anna," he demanded softly.

Her gaze turned automatically to her face, looking for whatever it was that he considered worth bringing her to the mirror for. That was when she saw them, her eyes, shining back at her like blue silver, their pupils elongated like his.

Anna moaned and closed her eyes. That wasn't real. Her eyes couldn't look like that. Had he drugged her somehow? Did he inject a hallucinogen into her when he bit her, like a snake injects venom? She remembered some of the drugs the Protector gave her made her see things that weren't there. But usually the world was all weird and fuzzy when that happened. Right now, everything she could see was clear and in high-definition.

"Lift your top lip. Your teeth hurt, don't they?" He'd moved to stand behind her, and his hands had begun to rub up and down her arms, as if to soothe her. And oddly, it did soothe her. Just like his voice had soothed her from the first moment he spoke. It was too deep and husky for a man like him. He should be a tenor, not a baritone. Her therapist had used classical music to calm her, and had explained the different types of voices. Baritones were usually barrel-chested men, weren't they?

Her mind was careening around like a dog chasing its tail. She needed to focus. She needed to understand what was happening to her!

So she focused on doing what he told her to do, lifting up her top lip to peer at her teeth, because they
were
hurting a little.

"Khuinya! My teeth. What has happened to my teeth?"

He grinned, revealing two impressive fangs, just like hers. "If I remember my Russian correctly, you just said
bullshit
. Where does a nice girl from Ohio learn a word like that?"

"You're talking about my bad language when we look like this?" she exclaimed in hysterical frustration. Why wasn't he taking this more seriously? She'd turned into some kind of creature, just like him, and he found it amusing?

His fingers stroked at either side of her neck, not massaging it, but using feather-light touches that were oddly arousing, reminding her of the pleasure that came with his bite.

"I wanted to explain this slowly, but my cat had other ideas. I'm sorry he attacked you that way. But I have been assured that such a bite isn't painful. My cat wanted to activate yours and that's the only way it's done, as far as we can tell so far."

"Activated my cat? I…I don't understand. I don't have a cat." She could feel her head getting lighter as she began to hyperventilate. Back in the bad old days she rarely got overwhelmed like this, but with PTSD it became standard practise. If she didn't calm down she'd need to find a paper bag, fast.

"You know how you wrote that letter to Alyssa, warning her about Akabar and Rothmen? You felt a connection to her, didn't you? That's why you worried about her?"

When she nodded cautiously he went on. "That's because Alyssa is like you. My brother Colt activated her back in December when she was staying here. He came to get evidence on Akabar, who was every bit the monster you said he was, and found Alyssa instead. She felt the connection to you back then, but didn't understand it, having never met one of her own kind before. But now she's met a couple of other Mates – that’s what we call you females – she recognised the connection and sent me here to meet you. To bring you in."

"Bring me in?" she picked the last part of this deluge of information to focus on. She wasn't going anywhere with this man who could attack her so easily.

"There is so much I need to tell you, but my business meeting will start shortly. Would you like to meet Alyssa? She would love to meet you properly. She remembers you as the shy, young girl who always smiled at her."

Cautiously she nodded. "I…Yes, I would love to meet Alyssa."

"Good, then go get changed and do whatever you need to do so you can return to San Francisco with me after my meeting."

"I can't. I can't just take a day off work and go away with you. I'll be fired. I
need
this job." It was the first excuse that came to mind, and it was partly true. But really, how could he imagine she'd just drop everything and go away with an inhuman stranger like him? Even if he
was
offering her a chance to meet her idol, another supposed cat-person like her. He was inhuman
and
delusional!

"Look, I'll make it right with the hotel. I'll pay them to give you a few days off. Will you come? I promise to keep my hands to myself. And I'll make sure the others do, too."

"Others?"

"Did you ever see Alyssa's bodyguards?"

"Yes. Yes, I did. They look like you. You said they were your brothers?"

"Strictly speaking we are cloned versions of each other. Like identical twins. There were a hundred of us created by monsters like Akabar and Rothmen. You'll meet some of the others when you meet Alyssa."

"A hundred clones? Like the Clone Wars in Star Wars? I saw the whole series when I stayed… It doesn't matter when." She couldn't tell him about the couple who'd cared her after her Guardian Angels had saved her.

He gave a little laugh and she noticed his teeth had gone back to normal. Swiftly, she turned back to the mirror and discovered that her own teeth and eyes had returned to normal. Breathing a sigh of relief she looked back at him to await his answer.

"Yes. But the experiments done on us, in the fields of genetic engineering, using panther DNA, and cloning, weren't Science Fiction; they were just way ahead of their time. It was all illegal and secret, of course. The monsters were trying to create their own private army of super-soldiers, and that had to be kept quiet. When the US government found out, the babies were supposed to have been killed. But they weren't. We were all given into the care of those who fight the monsters. My job is to bring all those super-soldiers back together and make the Guild pay for what they've done."

"The Guild?"

"Akabar and Rothmen and men like them. The monsters. You recognise them for what they are. We all do, because our instincts are so strong. We sense when something is wrong. And the Guild is very wrong."

"These Guild are in Russia. They do terrible things to children there," Anna admitted, feeling an odd sense of rightness about what she was discovering. Somehow she'd always known she was different from her brother. And not just because she had pale skin and eyes when the rest of the family were dark. But she didn't look like this man, either, so how could she be one of these panther clones?

"They're everywhere, doing terrible things to the whole human race. They’ve been using and abusing this planet and its inhabitants for millennia.” He paused to draw in a deep breath. “So you’re Russian?"

She never shared details about her past with anyone, and certainly not a stranger. But too many questions were finally getting their answers, and if she was to get more, she needed to provide some information of her own. "Ukrainian. I was taken from an orphanage in Ukraine just after I turned twelve. Those monsters took me to Russia. They kept me until I was fourteen. That’s when the men I call my Guardian Angels came for me. They gave me a safe place to live and then, when I was sixteen, brought me to America. I have been here two years and nobody here knows where I come from."

"You look younger than eighteen," was the only thing he said after she finished her confession.

"I feel like I’m an old crone. That is the word, isn't it? Crone? Old woman?"

He nodded and stroked the side of her face. "That should never have happened to you. From what we're finding out, our people…the Résistance… keep a close eye on the Mates as they grow up. They're either raised by Résistance, or protected in some other way by them. You should never have been in an orphanage. You should never have fallen into Guild hands."

She felt the grief she kept packed away in the deepest part of herself start to surface. This was no time for those feelings. Pushing them down again, along with the memories of those monsters who now had a name,
Guild,
she smiled sadly and shrugged.

"My parents and little brother were killed in a house-fire. There was no other close family, so I was put straight into an orphanage. There were so much economic and political problems in my country then. I suppose that’s how they got us. Not long after I arrived, they came and took ten of us away to Russia. I don't think any of the others survived."

She felt the traitorous tears stinging her eyes, but refused to let them fall. The tears were not for herself but for those other sweet, lost children. They had all been younger than Anna, but because she'd always looked younger than her years, they must have decided to take her too. For as long as she could, she'd tried to protect and mother those children. Until too much blood and pain made her stop caring about anything but survival.