Chay gave his employee a nod and then headed out to join Dom. He swung his leg over his bike and started it up after putting his helmet on. He hated wearing a helmet and missed the days when he could feel the wind blow through his hair, but he also preferred his head in one piece and not splattered all over the pavement.
Getting to the other side of town took about five minutes. It took longer to stop for beer and pizzas. By the time they parked their bikes on the side of the motel, Chay’s falcon was close to breaking free.
Chay turned off his bike and then pulled his helmet off. The moment it cleared his head, he heard shouting. His gaze shot to the second floor. From where he sat, it was easy to pick out the number twelve on the door closest to the stairs.
It was also easy for him to see that the door was open.
A loud roar broke through the air. Chay hooked his helmet on the handlebars, jumped off his bike, and took off running for the stairs. He could hear Dom running behind him. He would have shifted and simply flown to the second floor, but they were within the town limits. He couldn’t chance that someone would see him.
Chay reached the second-floor landing just as a man dressed all in black came flying out of the doorway to room twelve. He hit the railing and went sailing over it. There was a very sickening thud a moment later. Chay didn’t have to look to know that, whoever it was, he wasn’t getting up again.
When he reached the doorway, it took one simple look to see what was wrong, and there was a lot. Three men dressed in black, just like the guy who had gone over the railing, had a black panther cornered against the far wall. Behind the panther stood a man with a long white braid.
Chay drew in a deep lungful of air. He smelled one shifter—panther obviously—three humans, and one something else. He wasn’t sure what that something else was, but it was coming from the man with the white braid.
Chay’s eyes were drawn to the snarling panther. The beat in his chest told him he was looking at his mate. And if that wasn’t enough to convince him, the blue eyes would have done it. He had looked into those vivid blue eyes just an hour ago and known he had found the other half of his soul.
Without making a sound, Chay walked up to the closest human and wrapped an arm around his throat, squeezing until he felt the man go limp. He didn’t want to kill him unless he had to. Cleaning up dead humans was a messy job. It could also bring him to the attention of the local police, and he really didn’t need that.
When he grabbed the next man in the same manner, Chay saw Dom do the same thing to the remaining human. In just a few seconds, they had both been rendered unconscious. The second Chay lowered his human to the floor, he crept toward the panther.
Such a beautiful creature, sleek, jet-black, and muscular. The cat hissed at him, curling its lip back to show off a very impressive set of teeth.
“You know who I am,” Chay said as calmly as he could. If Gabriel didn’t recognize him in the heat of his rage, he could easily rip out Chay’s throat. Chay slowly lifted his hand and held it out, trying to be as nonthreatening as he could.
“Go ahead,” he said when the cat eyed him hesitantly. “Smell me.”
The panther stretched his neck out as far as it would go, giving his hand a little sniff, then another one, a bigger one. Chay didn’t know if Gabriel understood what he was smelling, but the panther did. He started to purr as he pushed into Chay’s hand.
“There you go,” Chay said as he stroked his fingers through Gabriel’s fur. “See, I told you that you knew who I was.”
“Who are you?”
Chay glanced up at the white-haired man when he spoke. “I am Chayton Garon. I am the other half of Gabriel’s flame.”
The guy’s eyes rounded, so he must have known what that meant.
“Such a pretty cat,” Chay said, returning his attention to his mate. He loved petting the cat, but he wanted to hold the man. “Shift back, Gabriel.”
“He might not know how,” the older man explained. “This was his first time shifting.”
Well, that would explain why he hadn’t known Gabriel was a panther. Shifters had a unique scent, one they didn’t get until they shifted for the very first time. It was a built-in trait to keep shifter young safe from predators.
Chay grabbed the tufts of fur on either side of Gabriel’s face and held his head still as he stared into his eyes. “I want you to think about being human, Gabriel. Think about having two arms and two legs, walking and talking. Find your center, that place deep inside. That’s where your human is while you’re in cat form. It’s time to trade places.”
The panther let out a soft mewl of protest.
“You and I will go for a long run soon. I promise. But right now, I need the human you back.”
Chay smiled his encouragement when he felt the fur around Gabriel’s face start to recede. He tried to keep that smile on his face when he saw how hard the shift was. He knew once Gabriel got used to shifting, he’d do it in seconds, but those first few shifts were a real bitch. Chay still remembered his first few times, and not fondly.
By the time Gabriel was fully back in human form, sweat was dripping down his body. And what a body it was. Chay got only a glimpse of it before the old man tossed a blanket over Gabriel. He didn’t know whether to thank the guy for protecting his mate’s virtue or smack him from hiding such a beautiful sight from him.
“We need to go,” the old man said.
Gabriel panted as he held up his hand. “Give me a minute, Aldrik.”
“Yeah,” Dom said from the doorway. “I think your minute needs to be more like ten seconds. We have company coming.”
