Glamoured (Shadow Beast Shifters Book 6)

As I walked back along the red carpet, my wolf was calmer in my chest, and I had the sense she thought we’d gotten a reprieve from our fate. I didn’t have the heart to remind her it was no doubt temporary. Our fate was set in stone, and it was my own damn fault for allowing myself to fall apart all those years ago and to hand my heart to someone to be used against me.

A heart that, ironically, I hadn’t even known I’d lost until recently.

The eerie calm remained as I continued up the red path, all the way back to the tent. The pair stepped out of the shadows a moment later, taller than was natural, more beautiful than should be possible, and… with a baby strapped to the fucking Shadow Beast god’s chest.

Simone had told me Mera was in labor, but damn, seeing the truth of it was a whole other thing.

At some point I’d ground to a halt, and it was Mera who closed the last few steps and raced down the path to me. “Sam!” she cried, her voice filled with the sort of power I hadn’t felt the last time I’d been in her presence. It wasn’t the only change either. Her ombre red hair was more luminescent, the green in her hazel eyes piercing, and her skin faintly glowed as if so much energy pulsed inside of her that it couldn’t be contained.

“Mera?” I said hesitantly, unsure why she was even here. “Did you hear about the mating?”

Tiny flames flickered to life in her eyes, and if I’d been in a different mood I might have even reacted to that. “I did not hear about the mating,” she growled, sounding like she was barely holding on to her fury. “Because my so-called friend has been ghosting me for years. Fucking years. I don’t even know why we’re here now, outside of the fact that Simone thinks you deserve one last chance.”

She crossed her arms, and I swallowed hard. Flickers of pain tried to push through the numbness, but I couldn’t let them out. If they got out, all the rest would too. “I’m sorry,” I said listlessly. “I was trying to deal with the shit in my life, and I just couldn’t… I couldn’t care about anyone else. I only have so much energy to give, and it’s been fucking spent up.”

Her face softened minutely. Shadow moved in to stand at her side, one of his massive hands pressed to the back of the baby carrier. “Congratulations,” I said softly, my heart aching for everything I’d lost in my fuck-ups. “She’s beautiful.”

She was more than beautiful, with thick curls of red falling down her face, and the same shadowy glowing skin as Shadow. She looked to be about eight months old, but it was hard to tell behind the protective hands of her father. Changing the subject because I couldn’t do the baby thing right now, I asked quickly, “If you didn’t hear about the mating, what are you doing here?”

The Fates weren’t about saving me these days, so there was some other reason.

“Your alpha invoked my name,” Shadow rumbled, his tone prominent in the unnaturally quietened land. “Mera worries about you, so I keep an eye on this pack. When my name was spoken, I knew we needed to return here.”

Mera wasn’t looking directly at me, and it was clear that I’d hurt her even more than I thought. That harsh truth cut through some of the numbness in my chest and I took a step closer. A rumble escaped from Shadow, but he didn’t stop me. No doubt he knew his mate was an uber badass and could take me out with a mere thought if she wanted to.

“I’m so sorry, Mera,” I told her softly. “I’m a terrible friend.”

“The worst,” she sniffed with a growl. “The. Fucking. Worst.”

I nodded hard. “You’re right. You’re totally right as always. I wanted to tell you the truth, but I’m…” I shot a quick look toward the scariest dude in the room. ‘I’m worried about how certain shadowy beings might react. I must protect someone who can’t protect themselves.”

This got their full attention. Gazes locked on me, one set of eyes concerned and the other with flames raging. “I can find out very easily,” Shadow warned me, chest rumbling harder. “It’s not good for your health to hide information from me.”

Mera reached out and put her hand on his arm. “Babe, if we read between her not-so-subtle lines, this is kind of the reason Sam has been avoiding us. Maybe tone it back.”

He rumbled again before shaking his head. “I don’t tone, you know that, Sunshine.” She shot him a small smile and soft eyes, and he let out a huff. “But I might have time for a stroll with our baby girl. Give you two a few minutes to chat.”

Shadow might think he didn’t tone… but for his Sunshine he went close.

There was no place he was out of earshot though, so I proceeded as if Shadow was at my side listening. “I truly am sorry, Mera. You and Simone are shifters I could see myself being best friends with forever. Growing old together—” I paused. “Wait, do you age?”

She shook her head. “Nope. Neither does Simone, but that’s her story to tell. Back to yours.”

She was impatient, and as predicted, I could no longer hide the truth from her. Not when she was face to face with me.

“You know how I told you that before I shifted I dated a moon-loving, crystal-wearing, gorgeous man who marked me with his vision of a wolf.” I pressed my hand to my tattoo, the memories still not clear, outside of those few moments I’d managed to recall.

Mera nodded. “Yes, I remember. The tattoo caught my attention because it’s super lifelike, and because it was not a normal shifter wolf, but more like…” She trailed off and I blinked at her, waiting for the rest of the thought.

“More like what?” I finally prompted.

“Simone’s new wolf,” she whispered. “Holy fuck. It’s just like Simone’s new hybrid form, and… it must be connected. Shadow said that we’re all connected, which is why I have not… will not… give up on you.”

Simone’s hybrid wolf form? I’d clearly missed a lot in my prison of Clarity pack and shutting out the rest of the world.

Mera shook her head at the confused expression I was shooting her way. “We’ll deal with that later. Let’s get back to your story before Shadow gets antsy.”

I glanced back down the path again. “How much longer can he keep holding Clarity pack in stasis?”

Mera laughed, relaxing. “He could hold them forever. Don’t worry about that.”

Fair enough. “So, anyway, the crystal-loving dude,” I continued. “The weird part about my relationship with him is that I could only ever remember those few facts. At the time I thought it was because I was away from the pack, my wolf angsty about being alone. Or maybe it was due to the fact that he was human, or at least I thought he was human…”

Mera was nodding, her expression encouraging.

“Turns out, I was pregnant.”

She went so still she could have been mistaken for a Clarity pack statue. “Pregnant? To a human?”

I shrugged and coughed out a weird sound. “The baby is not human, and timing suggests it was crystal guy, but I can’t actually remember anything else from that time. I don’t even remember being pregnant. Apparently, I stumbled into Clarity when I was pregnant and in the fog of memory loss, shifted here, and found out my mate was the alpha’s son. They didn’t take kindly to me being knocked up, so they took the baby from me. The only reason she wasn’t killed was to be used as a bargaining tool. They hid her from me until I tried to escape into your old pack.”

Mera’s mouth was so wide open now I could see down her damn throat. “You never knew about your baby until Alpha Lorenze called you back?”

I shook my head. “I don’t remember any of it. Being pregnant, giving birth, shifting and finding my true mate. Anything that was connected to that part of my history and the child is a blank space in my head. Completely blank.”

The pain of knowing what I’d missed was all I had from that time.

“Why did they let you leave in the first place, if they had the baby to keep you there?”

I swallowed hard, trying to find words. “The alpha’s son rebelled and rejected me. He didn’t want used goods. The alpha released me in an attempt to force his son’s hand. It didn’t work, and after the alpha killed him, the contingency plan was initiated. I was yanked back in and forced to exist here until the second son was of mating age.”

Mera’s arms were around me so fast that I almost shoved her away as a reflex. It was only as the warmth of her energy surrounded me that I relaxed. It had been so long since I was hugged like this, full-bodily, and I couldn’t contain the sob that rose up in my chest. This was why I’d avoided seeing her or Simone. Why I’d avoided close relationships. I could not afford to hope or wish or want for a life that was out of reach.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Mera choked out against my shoulder. “We would have helped you save your child. No mom should have to miss out on those days with their baby.”

Fuck. She really wanted to break me.

When she pulled back, she stared into my eyes hard enough to see my brain. No idea what she was searching for, but if she thought she could pry memories free like that, she was welcomed to try. The gods knew I’d already tried everything.

“We are going to fix this,” she said with all the confidence of her goddess-like powers. “You should have known that Shadow would smite that fucking alpha in a heartbeat. Why did you waste all this time trying to deal with him and sacrifice yourself?”

I swallowed hard. “At first it was to keep the pack safe, but when he finally allowed me a decent amount of time with my daughter, I discovered that she’s sick. He’s the only one who knows exactly what and how to stop this illness from taking over her system. I can’t kill him, despite my desperate need to, and I can’t even keep the pack safe any longer, since all my focus is on Tabitha.”

“Tabitha,” Mera breathed. “A new bestie for Aurora.”

Gods, that painted a perfect picture. “She’s my little angel, but there’s something seriously wrong with her, Meers, and I can’t fix her without his fucking help.”

Mera’s forehead crinkled as she pondered this. “If this happened before you were twenty-two, then she should be like… ten, right?”

I pressed my lips so hard together that they ached. “She should, but she’s still a baby. I’ve known about her for a few years now, and in that time she’s aged so slowly it’s a barely noticeable change.”

Mera’s concerned expression grew. “Are you sure she’s your child?”

My nod was rough. “Yes. Her energy is mine, I knew it the first moment I touched her. Even if some of her energy is foreign.”

Tabitha was only half shifter. The other half, I’d guessed at, but I didn’t know for sure.

“Foreign?” Mera repeated.

I nodded again. “Yeah, the mixing of two genetic lines is making her sick and stopping her from aging. If she doesn’t have whatever Alpha Dickhead holds for her health, she starts to fade completely. So, I’m stuck doing his bidding. One heir for his pathetic son and I get Tabby back with instructions on how to keep her alive.”

Mera shook her head, face creasing in sad lines. “Girl, you know that Shadow can read minds, right? At least he can read shifter minds. We could have stripped that information and all the rest from Lorenze in a heartbeat.”

If she’d have stabbed me with a knife, I would have been in less pain.

“I… I never—” I had to clear my throat. “I never knew that. Alpha Lorenze doesn’t allow information like that in our pack, and I never had the chance to know the end of your story.”

I mentally beat myself up for a few minutes, while Mera looked on in sympathy. Which somehow made it worse. Should have expected I’d made a stupid as fuck move like that.

A sigh escaped. “I think I was scared for Shadow to know about Tabby in case her mix of genetics was not sustainable. That he would choose to destroy her rather than release whatever she is into the world. I just… I couldn’t handle that. It was better to sacrifice time and freedom in the hope that eventually I could have my child and the secret to her health from Alpha Lorenze.”

“I wouldn’t allow him to destroy her!” Mera said in a rush. “Not that I even think he would. He doesn’t interfere with free will much, and gods know Aurora is scary and powerful already. There’s nothing your daughter could bring to this world that ours wouldn’t try and one-up.”

“I should have expected it,” I said softly. “That after having a child of your own, you’d understand my desperate need to keep her alive.”

Mera snatched my hand up and squeezed it tight. “I understand better than you think, and I don’t care what Shadow says, we’re saving your girl.”

For the first time in years, a flutter of hope took flight in my heart. A hope I prayed wasn’t the final stitch in the fabric of my undoing.