From the Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) (39 page)

I laughed as I pulled it out. “I take it you went out and got a new phone while I was gone?”

“Yeah, figured I’d better or Mom was going to kill me if she had to call yours one more time
—I sent her a text as soon as I got it turned on so she’d know I still had the same number. Save that so you know it’s me calling,” he replied as he pressed another button, abruptly causing the ringing to stop.

I was already doing that and told him so. “You’re my number two speed dial, pretty boy.”

A look of mock hurt crossed his features. “I’m not number one?”

“No, that’s voicemail,” I said with a grin.

Laughing, he kissed me again and then opened the driver’s side door of my Jeep so I could climb in. “Not that it needs saying, but be careful on the freeway. And give my mother my love. Oh, by the way—Saphrona has already made up the guest room in the house for us so that Mom can stay in our apartment. That way she doesn’t have to pay for a hotel, but won’t feel like she’s intruding or imposing on anyone.”

“I’d actually meant to suggest that myself and forgot last night,” I said as I fished my keys out of my pocket and put the car key in the ignition.

Race chuckled. “I wonder why that was?” he said, his eyes sparkling now, but with a smolder of desire burning behind the humor.

“You know perfectly well, pretty boy,” I said, leaning over to give him another quick kiss. “Now enough teasing, you need to focus. Thinking about sex won’t get you very far with the wolves.”

Sighing, Race straightened. “Thanks for the reminder,” he said drily. “But you’re right. I need to get my mind out of the gutter for the next few hours. If I’m going to make these people see that they’d be a lot better off without Kevin, then I’d best get my head in the game.”

I reached for his hand. “Race, you can do this.
I know you can.”

He returned the light squeeze I’d given him. “Your faith is the only thing making me think I can, too.”

“Hey, when you see them, and you talk to them, you’ll see it too. And I’m sure most, if not all, of the wolves will believe in you just as much as I do, once they’ve seen how much you care about them,” I said firmly.

Race smiled. “Thanks, Juliette,” he said, giving my hand another squeeze before releasing it. “If Mom asks… you can tell her what’s going on. If you feel comfortable doing it. But I think you should tell her something, I know she’s probably already worried herself into a knot over this ‘meeting’ I have.”

I nodded. “Okay. She did seem concerned last night.”

“My mother’s been living just this side of a paranoid meltdown ever since I phased the first time,” Race told me. “I hate that she worries so much.”

“Seeing you tonight will surely put her mind at ease,” I said.

He sighed. “I hope so,” he replied, then leaned in to give me another long, smoldering kiss. Both of us pulled away from the other reluctantly, but knowing if we didn’t we might both be late for our appointments.

I waited until Race had climbed into Mark’s Dodge before I pulled my seatbelt on (a new one, given Race had torn the driver’s side belt) and started my car. I backed up and turned so that I could go down the drive forward, and honked a final goodbye at Race as we both reached the street, turning in opposite directions.

***

Traffic coming in and out of Port Columbus was, to put it mildly, a bitch. Bad enough it had taken me a little over an hour to drive there—took me nearly half an hour once I was on the grounds to get into the short-term parking garage and find a spot to park. I was thinking it was a good thing I’d left early as I got out, then discovered as I headed for the walkway into the airport just why it was that getting a spot had been so difficult:

There was a science fiction convention going on at one of the nearby hotels.
Cosplayers were out in droves, celebrating their fandoms and showing off their costuming skills.

Little do
they know
, I mused as I threaded my way through the crowd.

When I reached the gate for Delta Airlines flight 1102, I found a vacant seat in the waiting area and settled in to wait another hour for Race’s mother to arrive. I tried not to be nervous as I plugged a set of
earbuds into my cell phone to listen to some music. It had been sixteen years since I’d seen Caroline Covington, who’d always been very sweet to me when her son and my brother would take off and leave me all alone because they didn’t want to be bothered with a shadow. But that was a long time ago— and I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I was a woman now and I was dating her son. We had very similar conditions.

She was bound to have questions. About what I was, what I could do. She’d want to know if I could tell her anything about what Race was. It occurred to me as I sat there not really hearing
Linkin Park in my ears that she might not actually like that Race and I were together. She might well have wanted someone who was normal for him, and not a freak of nature. But then, she’d have to consider Race a freak of nature as well if that were true. And from what he’d said—and what I’d heard in the undercurrent of her voice last night when we spoke—Caroline loved her son fiercely. She hadn’t run from him in fear of what he was and she could have. Instead, she had taken her son and run in fear of his being taken away from her. I had no doubt that she did not consider Race a freak of nature, and didn’t really think she would see me that way. But a girl can’t help wondering what her guy’s mother will think of her, even a mother she’s known since her childhood.

Before I knew it, the concourse door had opened and passengers from flight 1102 began filing out. I pulled the
earbuds out of my ears and stuffed them in the pocket of my jacket along with my cell phone, scanning the women who were departing from the plane and wondering if I would even recognize Race’s mother.

I needn’t have worried. After about three minutes of searching, a woman with green eyes and blonde hair the same shade as Race’s approached me, a smile very similar to his forming on her lips. “Juliette, is that you?” she asked.

I nodded and returned her smile. She looked very lovely for a woman nearing 50; she was trim and wore her gray pantsuit very well. “Ms. Covington, it’s so good to see you again after all these years,” I said, stepping up to her and offering my hand to shake.

When Caroline grabbed it she pulled me to her, her embrace tight. “Oh my dear girl,” she said, her voice suddenly hoarse with emotion. “My boy isn’t alone anymore.”

I knew she meant in the world of the strange and unusual, and so I hugged her back. “He never was, ma’am. He just didn’t know it. The people he used to work for kept it from him, and to be honest I’m surprised they were able to do it for so long.”

She stood back, and I saw that she was fighting tears. Here was the proof of my musings—her heart was still breaking over the fact that Race had been the only
shapeshifter he knew for so much of his life. For the fact that if she’d only confided in my mother—once her best friend—he wouldn’t have had to be alone.

Before she could speak, I placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Please do not beat yourself up over doing what a mother should for her child. You thought you were protecting him, and Race understands that. None of what he’s been through is your fault.”

Caroline laughed a little when she looked up at me again. Her eyes still shone with unshed tears, but she was smiling. “I am amazed you understand him and believe in him so completely so soon,” she said. “And so very, very pleased. Whether my fault or not, I know my son has been very lonely all these years, not being able to share what he was with those he felt close to. Now he has you. And he has Mark as a friend again, and all those others in your…family.”

I nodded,
then asked, “Do we need to get anything from the baggage claim?”

She shook her head and jiggled the handle of the small, wheeled suitcase she had brought off the plane with her.
“No, just this. I can only stay a couple of days, but… I needed this. I need to see him, to see that he’s okay, even though I know he will be with you and Mark. When you have children Juliette, you’ll understand… Fearing for their safety is one of those ‘mother’s fears’ that never really goes away.”

I only nodded and gestured in the direction of the exit. Race and I might have become intimate faster than most people would think was normal, but children were the furthest thing from my mind. We hadn’t even talked of marriage yet—only that we knew and understood that our bond meant we’d be together for the rest of our lives. That wasn’t to say that I didn’t want them, because I did, and Race being the father of my children was a given. But truth be told, I wasn’t entirely certain whether or not
Race even wanted to be a father. Children were a subject that hadn’t yet occurred to either of us.

I paused in mid-step then, realizing for the first time that the pack meeting would have started half an hour ago and I hadn’t even thought about it. I’d been selfishly wrapped up in my own fears and thoughts to think of Race and what he
was having to deal with today.

“Juliette, is everything all right?” Caroline asked.

I blinked and started forward again. “Yeah, I think so. Race is at that meeting he had today, and I’d just about forgotten.”

“You seen very concerned about this meeting,” my companion said. “
Can you tell me about it?”

I wondered how to tell her without scaring the curl out of her hair, and realized that in order for her to understand, I’d have to start with imprinting. I explained that phenomenon in as simple of terms as I could—that being a
shapeshifter or even becoming a vampire enabled a person to find their soulmate, and once we had, any threat made against our mates could put us in a blind rage.

“So you and my son are
soulmates?” Caroline queried. Then she laughed. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. I know you developed quite a crush on Race not long before we left, and he was always considerate of you, at least whenever he wasn’t being a complete boy and ignoring his best friend’s pesky kid sister.”

I
nodded, a grin on my face as we stepped into an elevator that we miraculously ended up having to ourselves. I pushed the button for the fourth level, which was where I had parked my car, thankful for the brief respite from having to speak in a whisper.

“Yeah, I remember those days… By telling you this, you’ve probably already gathered that someone recently threatened me. The man who did that was the leader of a pack of werewolves, a man who thought that by getting
me out of the way, Race would be willing to mate with his daughter.”

Caroline frowned as the lift stopped and the doors pinged open. “But you just said
you and Race were soulmates, that it was a two-way thing for the pair of you because he’s s different kind of shapeshifter.”

I nodded as I led the way to my car. “It is. But this man believed that because Race is so special to our kind, because he can become more than one kind of animal, then he could mate with more than one woman. I don’t know if he could form the same kind of bond he and I share, but he may well be able to sire children with other women. Before he and I bonded, our kind could only have children with humans.”

Race’s mother lifted her free hand to her forehead. “Oh my, all this talk of bonding is making my mind twirl. It’s like I get it and I don’t get it. I don’t understand what you mean by that—that before you and Race bonded, your kind could only have children with normal humans.”

I hadn’t said “normal humans”—that was her description—but I let it pass. She’d lived with the belief that her son was a singular entity since he was 14, and though for all in
tents and purposes he still was (being the only known true shapeshifter alive), she now knew that there were others out there who could turn into animals, even if it was only one as opposed to many. Caroline was still getting used to all of this new information, and it would take time before her mind could wrap itself around the fact that humans were not the only kind of people who lived on this planet.

“That’s because it’s true. Something about the power that makes us what we are only allows us to have children with others of our kind when the Beast Master has bonded with his or her mate,” I explained.

“Oh, okay,” Caroline replied. “I think I get that. Sort of.”

I offered a reassuring smile as we reached my Jeep at last and I unlocked the hatch, lifting it so we could put her bag in the car. When I’d pushed it closed again I unlocked and opened the passenger door for her, then climbed behind the wheel.

“Anyway, Race confronted the man yesterday after what had happened. He had to—his animal instincts wouldn’t allow him to just let it go,” I went on. “They got into a fight and Race won.”

Caroline gasped. “Is my son okay?” she asked, even though I knew he’d texted her earlier that morning.

“He’s fine, I promise you. He won, not just because he’s younger or even because he’s the Beast Master—I believe he won because Kevin Tracey, the man he fought with, was wrong. Because what he’d done was wrong. But just like with wild wolves, if a pack leader is challenged and defeated, to the pack it means he’s no longer capable of being their leader—no longer capable of guiding and protecting them.”