Chapter 70

CALEB

The car I was working on had been through some shit.

It was like nobody had changed the oil in it for years, I could hardly believe it was running. My arms were coated in oil and a slight sheen of sweat had broken across my forehead from doing this in the summer heat.

Turning to get a wrench, I smelled something that made me stop. That chick from the bar!

Annoyed at myself for wanting to investigate, I sighed and got out from under the car. By the time I made it to the sink to scrub down my hands and arms, she had found me.

“Dish soap?” she asked curiously.

“It cuts the oil faster,” I explained. “What do you want?”

“Your help,” she shrugged. I could hear her boots click as she walked around the car, I refused to look at her. “Do you own this shop?”

“No, my friend Ryan does, what do you want?” I repeated myself. She needed to cut to the chase. I wanted to get her away from me, but I also wanted to just pull her into the car and breed her until we could both hardly move.

It was a heavy conflict inside me. “I saw something …”

“In a vision,” I cut her off. I’d heard this before. The last time a group of seers came through, they were responsible for more than one death.

“In a vision,” she agreed apprehensively. “My neighbor was going to get mauled. There was a shifter there …”

I didn’t want to hear anymore.

She was going to say someone in my club had attacked someone and I knew that was a lie. I wasn’t going to sit around and let her cause infighting.

I was about to cut her off, but her sentence surprised me.

“It was huge! I don’t know what it was, some kind of giant cat that I’d never seen before,” she said. It sounded familiar. Why the hell did that sound familiar?

I tried to think, tried to remember anything that would make sense for that.

Nothing was coming.

My mind was spinning on gravel. Until it hit something. The Bar.

“At the bar last night, I heard a couple of guys talking about seeing something like that," I admitted. "He said he was in his kitchen in the dead of night and saw something huge stalking through the alley behind his house.”

“In my vision it was night,” she agreed quickly. “Do you know where he saw it?”

“He lives on Oak and 5th, just on the corner,” I explained. Why was I helping her so damn much?

“Can you take me there? I’m new to the area.” No.

I wanted to say no, was dying to say no so that I didn’t have to endanger anyone with this viper, but she sounded earnest. Her friend was in danger and she wanted to help. My body wanted to help her and my mind was starting to agree.

“You said you’re new here, who’s your friend?”

“Her name’s Anna. She’s halfway through her third trimester right now, in my vision she was still pregnant, so it’s within the next few weeks,” she said quickly.

I nodded.

“Alright, let me finish up here.”

I didn't expect her to wait for me.

It took me another two hours before the car was working again, and even then, I had to almost shout at the owner to knock some sense into him about getting his oil changed. When I came into the office to clock out, she was sitting patiently in a chair by the water cooler.

I hated making her wait.

God, looking at her, though, I wished we could have spent that time doing something else. There were so many things I wanted to do with her if I …

I cut off that line of thought and shoved it away. That didn’t matter, we had shit to do.

“Ready to go?” I grabbed my bike keys from beneath the desk.

“Yeah,” she smiled. Little dimples formed in her cheeks as she smiled, I wanted to kiss them and then claim her mouth.

God, I was screwed.

 MEGAN

A week had passed and we had nothing.

I still had to do my job, he still had to do his, so our time together was limited. I could tell he hated me, though. He wouldn’t come near me, spoke as little as possible, and seemed angry or frustrated the whole time.

I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong.

Yeah, okay, he had a thing against seers, but why?

I’d never hurt anyone, it’s not like by telling them the visions I made it happen.

Night had fallen hours ago and we were walking the alleys alone together. Our motorcycles were at his home, parked there because they made too much noise to ride through on the hunt. We’d seen something that looked like a large pawprint the day before, but I couldn’t be too sure about it.

“The guys said something else that night,” he said suddenly. I turned to him, surprised.

It was windy out, and the air flicked through his dark hair. I could swear I saw some gray in it, but he was in his twenties. I couldn’t imagine what had stressed him out so much that his hair started turning. His hands were in his dark brown coat’s pockets, pulling it close to him against the wind.

“What did they say?” I was surprised.

“Something about mixed breeds,” he said. “All I could find about that was a bunch of eugenics purists who wanted shifters of a kind to only mate with each other. Wolves with wolves, foxes with foxes, that kinda deal.”

I frowned, staring down at the road ahead of us.

“Mixed breeds have a different connotation outside of Ember Abyss,” I shook my head. It was a name I’d been called. “Outside of here, it means more like two people of different types getting together, like a shifter and a human, or a witch and shifter," I explained. "I'm considered a mixed breed, but because seers have extra power, it's not thought of like that."

“Oh,” he nodded. “I just know that they brought it up. What would a mixed breed have to do with this?”

I shrugged and looked down an alley to make sure nothing was coming for us.

“I heard once that there used to be laws that human men couldn’t date shifter women,” I admitted.

“What?” he frowned. “Why?”

“Well, the animal a shifter turns into is based on paternal DNA.” I tried to say as plainly as possible. “So, when there’s a mother, they have that gene, they should be able to shift, but their father doesn’t have the DNA to pass down.”

“So, what happens?”

“If the mother’s parents were the same kind of shifter, then nothing, just a healthy baby.”

“What if they’re different?”

“The child usually can’t be carried to full term,” I looked away. “Sometimes, like if it’s a horse and a zebra or a dog and a wolf, it’s close enough that the child can be born. They can shift, they’ll just be not quite either,” I explained. I could remember just snippets of the medical books my mom had.

“Holy shit,” he sighed out in surprise.

“So, they probably thought it was just some kind of mix, but I don’t know of any cats that are that big,” I frowned.

“It’s probably just a large bear.” He shook his head. I frowned.

The more I thought about it, the more I knew it was a big cat. I’d have to research it later.

“Hey, don’t worry about it, we’ll help your friend,” he nudged my arm. The touch was electric.

Overwhelming.

I pulled away quickly and felt my whole face flush red. What the hell? Even when I was dating my ex-boyfriend, I never felt anything like that.

My whole body was sparked to life. “Are you okay?” he asked.

His voice was a little breathy, he felt it, too.

“I have to go,” I lied. “I have a little more work to do tonight, we can do this again tomorrow.”

He seemed disappointed as I rode home. I passed out the second I got to my bed.

There was too much stress and too much complication, I just wanted to move to a nice town and join up with some bikers. Instead, I was playing Nancy Drew and trying to help my pregnant friend stay safe.

It wasn’t exactly how I saw this going. I didn’t wake up until almost noon.

There were no texts from Caleb, he must not have found anything the night before. It was hard to focus on work, hard to make sure I was listening to everything. My mind kept tracking back to that touch, the sensation of his skin on mine.

I rubbed my fingers against that part of my arm, absentmindedly, wondering what it meant. What was this? No way in hell was he, my fated mate, he didn't even want to be around me. He acted as if he hated me.

For what?

How I was born?

I didn't ask my parents to decide to date each other, I didn't ask to be born a seer.

Life would have been so much easier if I wasn’t.

A couple of minutes after nightfall, I ordered Chinese food to be delivered. He could investigate by himself for a night, he'd understand. As I ate, I pulled up Google to dig around and see what I could find. Shifters mating with humans was usually pretty cut and dry.

There wasn’t much information on what kinds of offspring would result. A lot of support sites for shifter women who couldn’t bear children with their human mates, some adoption agencies that specialize in these

women, but nothing on the children that could result from it.

Frowning, I sighed and walked into my kitchen to clean up my mess. As I glanced up at the window above my skin, I caught my reflection.

Never, not once in my life, had I been able to see my future. In middle school I used to try all the time, staring into mirrors and any shiny surface I could, trying to trigger a vision.

Nothing happened.

I must have stared for hours of combined time, hoping for a future where I’d be happier, where I could live some kind of fairytale romance.

I eventually gave up, assuming I couldn’t see my own.

As I rinsed off the plate I’d eaten my Beijing beef off of, I made eye contact with myself again and the world slipped away from me. I felt nauseous, but I wasn’t at home anymore.

Caleb was there.

I watched him, my eyes adjusted to the dark to see what was happening. He was having sex with someone.

They were writhing together, moving hard and fast, his whole body was muscle-flexing and moving as he filled her. She moaned, and I recognized my voice!

Shocked, I watched as the two of us changed positions, it was carnal and starved. He turned his face up to the ceiling as he came, he was gorgeous.

Something was new, though.

Besides just his naked body, I was also shocked by a long, fresh, scar across his neck. It looked like it had hardly healed. I gasped, he didn’t have that there any time I’d been around him. I’d looked at every part of him besides his eyes, and I never saw it.

The me in the vision slid off his cock, took him into my arms and kissed him.

“I love you,” she murmured against his lips.

The shock sent me spinning back to my kitchen.

I had dropped the plate while I was gone, it chipped a little, and I turned off my sink to recover. My whole body was throbbing like I'd been the version of me who just had sex. Leaning against the counter, I tried to catch my breath.

What was that scar?

Sometimes visions take ages to manifest, but this one was so vivid it felt like it would happen soon. He was so damn attractive, so good-looking, but I thought he hated me. Why would he want to have sex like that?

I said that I loved him!

My face felt hot, so I decided to step out.

Gathering my trash, including the takeout containers, I tied off the bag and carried it out of my apartment.

There was already someone going down the stairs.

Anna was there, carrying a small garbage bag, holding her very pregnant belly.

She was wearing a blue nightdress, just like the one in my vision. She looked like she’d stepped right out of that vision.

It was tonight!

“Anna!” I shouted, following her.

She jumped a little in surprise. Gripping on the rail, she turned to look at me.

"My bladder is so small right now, you can't go scaring me like that," she gasped but was almost laughing.

“Sorry, but what did I tell you about taking out the trash,” I tried to sound like I was joking, too, to relax her.

“Oh, I’m fine, it’s just the bones from tonight’s salmon, I didn’t want them stinking up the place.”

“Here, I’ll take it.”

“Well, that’s sweet of you,” she smiled. “I heard that you’ve been running around town with one of the Carved Flame members late at night. What’s going on with you two?”

This wasn’t the time for this.

“Nothing yet,” I smiled simply. “I was just on my way out, I’ll catch up later.”

“In your pajamas?” Crap.

I was in my embarrassing cartoon mouse pj shorts and an old tank top. “This is fashion,” I teased.

“Mhm,” she laughed. “I see that other motorcycle down there; tell him I say hi when you get back up to your apartment!”

He was here?

“Sure.” I forced a fake laugh.

Running the rest of the way down the stairs, I had to hurry. He was in danger.