28. TWENTY EIGHT
TWENTY EIGHT
Natalia
Colton’s breaths are audible over the buzz of people talking and the rushing of air in my own ears. They come in hot huffs, and I can feel him losing his temper. I feel it right inside me like a pressure cooker about to burst.
I keep looking around expecting to spot Jayden somewhere laying on a blanket, held in someone’s arms. Only deep down I know he’s gone. I don’t know how I know, but I just know.
There’s an angry snort. Colton stamps his foot and tosses his head. “Siobhan! Where are you? I know you’re here!”
All of a sudden it’s like someone threw a bucket of ice over me. I freeze.
Siobhan? The woman who was stalking him?
She can’t be here.
“Are you sure?”
He bends forward, hands resting on thick, furry thighs. “I smell her. She’s covered it up somehow, but I know it.”
An older man with salt-and-pepper strands woven through his dark curls leans close and whispers something to the man I recognize as the Jacks’ PR manager.
Craig Thorpe steps forward with an anxious expression.
“Seems like there was a new member on the catering team today, but she’s no longer on site. ”
“Find her. Please.” The strain is obvious in Colton’s voice.
People rush into action, calling out to each other and searching through trucks, vans, cars, tents.
I can’t join in. I’m frozen to the spot, imagining scenarios I never ever wanted to consider: Jayden tossed into the back of a van like produce, or lying on the side of a hill somewhere screaming for us, wondering why no one is coming.
Dios, why isn’t he crying? Why can’t we hear him?
My whole body shudders. A tugging ache bends me in half, and I clutch at my belly as my bones crack like their stretching and breaking.
What is happening?
“Natalia?” Colton touches me softly, but it feels like being pricked with a thousand needles.
I scream. Or I try, but my voice comes out distorted, not mine.
A baby’s wail pierces through the valley, and all my limbs feel like they split apart.
I fall forward, going to catch myself on my hands but landing on cloven feet instead.
All of a sudden the pain is gone, but the world is almost unrecognizable.
All the greens and blues have disappeared from the scene in front of me.
The team banners are black and yellow. Not only that, but I can see almost all the way on each side of me like I’m looking through a panoramic camera.
“What the—” I try to speak, but it comes out as a bleat.
Colton bends down, and his expression is caught somewhere between wonder and concern. “You shifted! You did it!”
I desperately want to ask him what I look like, but no part of my body is cooperating with me right now. I lurch forward on unsteady hooves.
“Whoa, take it easy. You’ll get used to it. Give it a minute.” His hands slide gently along my neck, and at least that feels familiar.
Then I notice the overpowering stench of sickly-sweet florals I could barely even smell before I shifted. I wrinkle my nose and sneeze, but the stench is everywhere, choking the back of my throat. My nostrils flare. I toss my head, but of course, I can’t escape it.
Only I just catch something beneath the hideous perfume. Something warm and milky and velvety soft—if a scent can be soft.
Jayden! It’s the exact scent I get when I lift him after changing his diaper to blow raspberries on his round tummy or when I pick him up from his crib and he snuggles close.
I wish I could talk. I need to tell Colton right now that I know where he is.
The scent is coming from the other side of the parking lot, and I take off, hoping he trusts me and knows to follow.
I shouldn’t have doubted.
“She’s sensed something!” he shouts.
“Should we follow?” someone calls.
“Have people check the exits to the park and search all the vehicles again. Someone call the police. I’ll go with her.”
I don’t look back to check. I can’t. I can only follow my nose as the thick, cloying odor of perfume and the sweet baby scent grow stronger and stronger.
I’m surer on my hooves now. I pick up the pace, darting up a narrow, rocky path that leads away from the parking lot and up an incline.
Trees and rocks and brambles scrape at my fur, but I ignore them. The path looks like it should be slippery, but I never once lose my footing.
I can hear Colton’s heavy footsteps behind me, and several times I hear him huff and slide as his hooves slip on the track.
We’re close. I know it.
I hear Jayden fussing and breathe a prayer to St. Nicolas and all the patron saints that he’s still OK.
We round the bend and I freeze in my tracks, letting out a little bleat of distress. In front of us is a lookout where the path ends in a wooden deck with wire-and-metal balustrade fencing off a steep, rocky cliff and a drop down into the valley.
Siobhan is clambering over the balustrade with Jayden clutched in one arm and a wild, terrified look on her face.
“Wait,” Colton calls, trotting forward to stop beside me with his hands held out in front of him. “Please.”
“Don’t come any closer.” Siobhan slides her other leg over the balustrade, and now she’s standing on the rocky ledge right next to the drop, still clutching Jadyen.
Jayden catches sight of us and starts wailing, his little voice echoing off the cliffs and rocks and his face red and blotchy.
He struggles, and I’m terrified she’ll drop him.
Siobhan creeps further, skirting the drop and making for where a lower ledge offers a sort of bridge to another rock platform. It’s so tiny. I can’t even tell whether the rock is stable or not. Just that it’s perched on a column of stone like a giant version of a hiking trail marker.
What is she thinking?
“I don’t want to hurt him,” Siobhan’s voice is strained. Why is that statement so much worse than before she said anything?
A bellow from Colton tears through the valley. “Stop! Don’t take another step!”
Siobhan is shaking, and it takes me a moment to realize she is crying. “You were supposed to love me. To pick me.”
“I don’t even know you.”
This isn’t helping. The more distressed she gets, the more likely she is to drop Jayden, who is wriggling and reaching his chubby little arms for me like he can recognize me even in this form. His lip curls and the cry he lets out is his hungry cry, the one I’d recognize anywhere.
I blink. Maybe he can!
“You didn’t try—ah!” Siobhan lets out a startled noise as her foot slips.
My heart plummets over the edge of the cliff and all the way to the rocky floor of the valley, but somehow she doesn’t drop Jayden.
“Just come back. Bring my son back. We can talk about this.” Colton is crying, and I know if I was human now I would be too.
Apparently I can’t like this.
“Bring him back.”
“Will you promise to forget that stupid bitch?”
“You had better not be talking about my mate that way!”
Siobhan lets out a cry of frustration. “She’s brainwashed you. She’s a witch!”
“That’s my mate—” Colton breaks off when I butt him with a snap of my head right to his lower leg. He looks down.
I try to infuse my glare with all the words I can’t force my animal form to say right now. Because standing here arguing with Siobhan is useless right now. Can’t he see that?
“Right. I mean, look, we can talk about that if you just come here.”
“We can?” She sniffs.
Colton glances down at me, and I stamp my foot. “Ah yeah. We can. Just get Jayden safe back here and we’ll talk.”
“OK.”
Oh thank god!
She takes a shaky step back toward the ledge. Jayden, excited when he sees she’s moving back toward us, lets out a squeal.
Siobhan cries out. She loses her footing, and there’s an awful moment that seems to hang in the air as she falls. She lands spread out on her front, clutching Jayden’s leg as he dangles over the edge of the drop.
“Help me!”
Colton leaps forward, rushing to the balustrade and already clambering over. I can’t watch. I mean I do, but I wish I wasn’t. Somehow Siobhan doesn’t drop Jayden, but the little guy is crying in terror and Siobhan is screaming.
“Do something. I’m dropping him.”
“I’m too heavy.” Colton curses. He shifts back to human form, but even then, the rocky ledge crumbles under his weight and he doesn’t dare go out far enough to rescue them.
I can’t shift back. I don’t know how. I’ve got no hands. I can’t speak.
But if I’m right about what kind of shifter I am, there’s one thing I should be able to do. Because goats are supposed to be good on cliffs, right?
Only one way to find out.
I gallop to the balustrade and leap onto it, landing on the metal bar with a clang and balancing there for an instant while I look down, assessing the situation.
The ground is so far below. So far I know if I keep staring at it, I’ll lose my cool.
So I don’t stare.
I don’t think.
I focus on the scent of the tiny crying baby I need to hold in my arms again and jump.
As if they already know what to do, my hooves find the little nooks and crannies on the ledge where they can stand, and I hop across the rock in little bounds until I can jump over Siobhan and reach down to grasp Jayden’s onesie in my teeth just like the mare shifter did with her bag when I first arrived in Mosswood.
My parcel is a hell of a lot more precious than hers was, though, and for the two seconds it takes me to haul him up and onto the ledge I have all sorts of awful visions of the material ripping, of the buttons giving way, of me dropping him.
I need my hands back.
Just as I think this, my body shifts. My vision sways. My bones crack and reform, and I have hands again in time to grab Jayden and press him to my chest. He grabs two handfuls of my hair, which now hangs long over my shoulders again, and clings on for dear life.
I still have two hooves—something I won’t question just yet. So I straighten and trot back to where Colton is waiting at the balustrade, handing Jayden over once he finally releases the fistfuls of my hair.
Then I turn back.
Siobhan is still lying prone on the rock, dangerously close to falling.
I can’t leave her like that.
I skip forward, bending and reaching out my hand to her.
“Natalia, be careful.”
I know why Colton is worried, but underneath, this very confused woman is still a person. I can’t ignore that. “Come on. I’ll help you up.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Why would you do that after what I did?”
I look at her. Dirt is smeared on her cheek, and her eyes are red and wet with tears. I think of how it felt when my world was crumbling the day Miguel called off our wedding and left me at the altar. “Because you’re hurting and I know what that feels like.” I stretch my hand out further.
She hesitates.
A moment later she puts her hand in mine, and together we pull her up and back to the lookout. I help her climb over the balustrade and onto the wooden platform, and then collapse to my haunches as all the air whooshes out of my lungs.
There’s a shout and two uniformed police officers come running up the path. The female officer is in the lead, and as they make the top of the trail, she holds her hand out, stopping her male colleague in his tracks. “Is this the missing child?”
“Yes.” Colton’s voice sounds weary.
“Sir, which one of these women abducted your son?”
To my surprise, Siobhan steps forward. “It was me. I did it. I-I’m sorry.” She glances sideways at me and then back at the police.
The female officer steps forward. “Ma’am, you are under arrest. Are you going to come quietly and listen as we read you your rights?”
I share a look with Colton as Siobhan goes without a fight.
The male officer steps forward and clears his throat. A strange blush creeps up his neck, and he won’t look at me. “Ah, ma’am, I haven’t been stationed in Waterton very long, so I don’t have a lot of experience with supes, but, ah… can I get you some clothes or a towel or something?”
I glance down and let out a yelp of surprise at finding myself completely human again and completely naked.
“Ay, yes! I’m sorry. I think this is going to take a lot of getting used to.”
The officer hurries back down the path and returns with a shiny, foil emergency blanket for me.
Colton stands in front of me to protect what’s left of my modesty as I do my best to wrap it around myself, then he hands Jayden to me.
Colton had the foresight to wear underwear that can apparently withstand his shift—I guess I need to look into that now—but he accepts the second emergency blanket one of the officers hands him.
Jayden’s cries have subsided into adorable little hiccups which disappear altogether when I let him feed for a minute.
Thank god he’s OK and nothing happened to him.
If there was any remaining doubt in my mind that this is my family right here, it’s totally erased now. I’ve never been more sure of anything.