Chapter Twenty-Four
“You’re still your shapeshifter,” Sam insisted, completely confident. “You’re stronger because of it, even if you’re not actively shifting. When your magic was stolen, it twisted up your wiring. It’ll come back to you, Kait.”
“It’s hobbled,” I realized. I put my hand to my chest, because I could feel it there. Like my wolf had once been, my shapeshifter was in there, but held in a cage, pacing, waiting, hungry. And this time, I was the one who’d hobbled her.
Because of trauma, fear, pain? Maybe all of those. But Sam was right. I was still my shapeshifter. I just needed to free myself.
“I’ve forgotten how to shift,” I murmured.
“You just haven’t been desperate enough yet,” he said. “Or angry enough. The shift will come to your call. It’s not natural to you the way it is to me, because you didn’t start out shifting.” He hesitated. “I’d like to try something.”
We were back at Silverwood, and two days had passed since the demon elder had taken my blade. Jared had barely slept, because he was focused on finding Gavin Voss before Gavin found me.
He hadn’t said that, but I knew it was true. I couldn’t blame him for worrying. I was still strong, still a force that Gavin should have been careful of. But I wasn’t close to the power I’d been.
I needed to figure out my shapeshifter.
No one could figure out why it was so hard to pick up Gavin’s scent or find a trail. It didn’t make sense. He was there, in the city, but he was impossible to find.
Lucy was in the kitchen making breakfast, Joe was asleep in the safe room, and Zach and Remy were outside. They were patrolling the area along with half a dozen wolves Jared had sent over, and Lucy had her hands full cooking enough food for all of us.
Her cheeks were flushed with the heat of the ovens, and she rushed around like a tiny tornado, full of energy and life. Ash sat at my feet, waiting not so patiently for Lucy to toss him another morsel of food.
I put my attention back on Sam. “What do you want to try?”
He got up to pace, pausing once to pat Lucy’s behind as she hurried by him with four cartons of eggs. He winked at her when she blew him a kiss but was surprisingly sober when he returned, restless and jumpy, to sit down beside me.
“You told me how Jared pulled out your wolf,” he said. “How he freed her from her chains.”
I squinted at him. “Jared’s a wolf. Alpha or not, he won’t be able to unhobble my shapeshifter.”
“I’m not talking about Jared.”
“Then what…” I frowned. “You don’t mean you think you can free my shapeshifter?”
“I can feel it, Kait.” He looked a little embarrassed and a lot hesitant, but his determination was bigger than his lifelong fear of rejection.
“I felt it when we were standing in the street and you thought it was dead. If I can feel it, I can touch it. I can’t free you, but I can help you free yourself.
” He squared his shoulders and met my stare. “At least I can try, if you’ll let me.”
Lucy left the bacon to cook and came to the table. “Gavin Voss is going to come for you, Kait. You’ll need your shapeshifter. If Sam says you haven’t lost it, you haven’t lost it. It can’t hurt for him to try, can it?”
I wasn’t sure why I was so reluctant. Maybe because I was sure we’d fail, I wouldn’t shift, and then even the small hope I had that my shapeshifter would return to me would be as lost as my magic and my blade.
Also, yanking a shifter out of someone was just so damn personal.
Finally, though, I stood. “All right. But let’s go out back. I don’t want to traumatize Ash.”
“Yes,” Lucy cried, jumping up and down. “It’s so exciting. I’ll look out the window. I don’t want breakfast to burn while I’m out there watching magic happen.”
Though I maintained my calm, their excitement was contagious. As we headed out the kitchen door and into the backyard, I realized that I already believed he could do it. And I did not want another crushing disappointment.
With my wolf and my shapeshifter, I’d still be powerful enough to take on anyone—especially Gavin Voss. My wolf could handle him, but my shapeshifter could decimate him. And I really, really wanted to decimate him.
“You’re getting angry,” Sam murmured when we stood in the yard. “Good. That’s good.”
I nodded. “Let’s do this, Sam.”
I didn’t know what to expect, but I wasn’t really afraid of pain.
Only of failing. When we were in the back yard and stood facing each other, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
I could feel Sam’s anxiety, the quiet watchfulness of my woods, and the patrolling wolves.
Before I’d closed my eyes to gather my focus, I’d caught sight of Remy slipping through the trees, watching for Voss.
But I closed my eyes and shut everything else out. What mattered now was relearning how to shift into my shapeshifter, if my shapeshifter was still with me.
I opened my eyes and looked at Sam. “What do you need me to do?”
“It’s not a matter of me pulling her out of you, exactly,” he told me. “But helping you feel her so you can remember her.”
“Have you done anything like this before, Sam?”
He laughed. “I haven’t. There’ve been a lot of firsts for me since I met you, Kait. Are you ready?”
I smiled. “I’m ready.”
His hand hovered over my chest. “I need to touch you.”
I nodded, then closed my eyes again, shutting out everything but what was inside me. My wolf stirred, then got up and began to pace, but I put her back to sleep. I didn’t want to inadvertently shift into my wolf. Not yet.
Sam placed his palm against my chest and cupped my face with his other hand. His fingers lay over my temple, his palm against my cheek, and immediately, my skin began to tingle. It wasn’t unpleasant, just…strange.
The warmth of his hand against my chest seeped through the fabric of my shirt and past the skin beneath it. The warmth was like a path leading to the secrets deep inside me, and I walked that path, silent, vigilant, expectant.
I saw only darkness, but I felt everything.
My wolf, my heart, lingering memories of my stolen magic.
And finally, rising through the darkness, I saw a light.
Dim, white, and alive. But it was not my shapeshifter.
It was my affinity for the life that lay beyond death.
It was my ability to communicate with spirits.
To see them, speak with them, and help them cross over.
It was there, just something inside me, and with that light came an epiphany.
My shapeshifter was me. Born into the world, my blood, bones, tissues, organs, brain…everything. It was that. Just as the wolf was me, just as the medium was me, and the psycho, and the woman.
The ability to shapeshift had always been there.
It had been restrained along with my ability to shift into my wolf when Adam Thorne had hobbled me, but it was like a baby learning to speak.
It was something inside me that I learned how to do, and then I’d been struck by trauma and had buried it once again. I’d forgotten it.
But I remembered now.
Golden light in the shape of a lion appeared before me, morphing immediately into a butterfly, then a cat, then into the black light of a crow. I heard the echoes of a cawing crow, and I was overcome with sadness. Then the light burst into a tiger’s form, and there was no more despair.
Only fierceness.
All me.
My eyes flew open and I burst into my shift, both gleeful and savage, and despite a shifter’s inborn need to be silent in a human’s world, I lifted my face to the sky and roared.
Sam, pale and wide-eyed, stumbled backward and away from me, but there was only a little fear in his eyes.
The rest was respect, exhilaration, and devotion.
He loved my shapeshifter more than he’d ever loved anything. Even killing. Even Lucy. Because more than his man, he was his shapeshifter.
Every wolf guarding the place shifted when I roared.
As an alpha, my roar called them, and they came.
They were Jared’s and not technically mine, but because I was Jared’s mate, his wolves were my wolves, as well.
Even though I’d chosen to separate myself and my pack and live in Silverwood, they were mine.
They milled around the yard, around me, and Remy and Zach stood beside Sam, unsure. I pranced, thrilled with myself, and sent another roar into the sunny sky. I ran to the woods and the wolves ran with me, leaving Zach and Remy behind to guard the house.
Sam couldn’t shift into an animal, but it didn’t matter. He ran with us, because he didn’t need to shift into an animal to be his shifter. He was fast, strong, and mean, and he did not fall behind.
The woods were not vast, but they were enough.
We wore ourselves out running, frolicking, forgetting the responsibilities of people as we got drunk on freedom.
And because I’d seen the shape inside myself, I shifted into a butterfly and flitted through the air, landing finally on Sam’s outstretched hand.
His arm dipped slightly because I was heavier than a regular butterfly. Bigger, too.
“Beautiful,” he whispered. “Unbelievable, Kait. There’s your magic.”
Oh yes, I was magic. I drifted to his face and lightly caressed his cheek with one of my wings, meaning to give him a kiss. But blood bubbled from his skin, and I flung myself away in horror. My butterfly was a monster.
The cut didn’t take away his smile or his joy, and it only added to his amazement. He wiped the blood off his face and stared at his fingers, then gazed at me, a little envious.
I lost my shift then and returned to my woman. “God, Sam. I didn’t know. I meant to kiss your cheek, not cut your face. I didn’t realize—”
“Kait,” he said, laughing. “I am healing already. And think of what you could do if you meant to cut instead of kiss.”
For a moment, we laughed together, and life was pretty damn sweet.
The wolves trotted back to the house, where they would lose their shifts, change into the extra clothes they’d stashed in their cars, and return to their guard. They’d be starving, and Lucy would be ready with food.
I couldn’t have been happier.
Well, maybe I could have been, if the demon elder hadn’t taken my blade. But still, I was happy. I was thrilled.
“I need to call Jared,” I told Sam as we walked back home. “And my mother.” Then I glanced at him, smiling. “Thank you, Sam.”
“I can honestly say that I am happy I could help,” he said.
“A vicious butterfly, Kait. I’ve never even imagined such a thing could happen.
” He paused. “You know what I think?” He didn’t wait for me to respond before he hurried on.
“I think the magic, the council’s magic, was holding your shapeshifter back.
I think your shift is stronger and better than it ever was before. ”
I didn’t remind him that I’d shifted into a crow before, when I’d fought the angel. Or that I could shift into people as well as animals. Maybe he was right and maybe there were still surprises coming. The butterfly certainly was a surprise.
“What did I look like?” I asked him, curious. “As the butterfly?”
“You were almost translucent. Vivid colors on top, black underneath, like a shadow no one would see coming. Your colors were the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.
Not just because I could see them, but because…
” He hesitated. “It was like the colors were alive. They soothed me to look at them. I think if you’d been intending to kill someone instead of kiss him, those colors would have terrified your victim.
” He grinned and shrugged. “Maybe I’m just being fanciful. ”
But the look in his eyes was dead serious.
We both fell into silence until we once again stood in the back yard, and Remy and Zach were walking toward us. “It was like you were created in a fairy tale,” he murmured. “A very dark fairy tale.”
I grinned at Remy and Zach. “I found my shapeshifter.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Remy said.
“Voss has a surprise coming,” Zach murmured.
“If he ever shows up,” I said, a little impatient now that my shifter had joined the party. “I’m going to get dressed,” I told them. “Go inside and eat.”
I hurried through my shower, my stomach growling. Shapeshifting took a lot of energy, and I needed to refuel. Still, I’d seen Sam completely exhausted after shifting and fighting, and though I’d shifted into different animals and had run through the woods, I wasn’t as tired as I should have been.
I was stronger.
I reached down to touch the blade I no longer carried, pain squeezing my heart when I touched only air.
I’d entered the kitchen when my phone rang, and Saul’s name showed up on the screen. I was surprised he’d waited so long.
“I’m starving, Saul,” I said, “and getting ready to have my breakfast. If you’re calling to yell at me for—”
“The council wants to see you. Aaron will collect you in two nights at two o’clock in the morning.”
I squeezed the phone, anger rising to choke me. “As you’d know if you had taken my call,” I said, my voice hard, “I’m done with the council. Kronor took my blade.”
“You gave the demon elder your blade,” he said, unflappable as always. “I would advise you to attend the meeting, Kait.”
He ended the call.
I wanted to be done with the council. But they held my blade, and I was most certainly not done with my blade.
I couldn’t enter the building if they didn’t want me there, but they were opening it up for me.
“Are you going?” Zach asked.
“Of course she’s not going,” Lucy said, but they all looked at me, and they already knew what I was going to say.
“Yes, I’m going.” I sat down and pulled a heaping plate of delicious food toward me. “I’m going, and I’m going to fight the demon elder to get back my blade.”