I'm not going to lie, the first few minutes of watching her stumble around in her high heels and fancy jewelry felt pretty good. That's how long revenge is sweet: about three minutes. After that, I started feeling guilty. I'd wanted to scare the hell out of her, but as she got more and more scared, the less fun it got. After about fifteen minutes, I felt like a real asshole.
I was trying to decide whether I felt guilty enough to go out there and fly her back when she turned into a snow leopard. I’d known that her new instincts would make her shift, and a snow leopard would have no trouble with the cold or the wilderness. My plan all along had been to wait until she shifted, then leave and let her find her own way down. I'd figured she'd lose all her jewelry in the snow, not to mention her high heels, and have to deal with being in another state with nothing but a scary mystery. I thought it might make her think twice before doing the ‘love ‘em and drain their bank accounts’ routine again.
So I left. I can tell you, I didn't feel good about myself. But at the time, I told myself that I haven't done her any real harm and anyway she deserved it.
It never occurred to me that anything could happen other than her leaving the mountain as a snow leopard, turning back into a woman, and getting on with her life. But I'd also never bitten anyone before.
I don’t know for certain exactly what went wrong. But—and I found this out long after it was too late for me to do anything about it—Fiona couldn't turn back into a woman. She was stuck as a snow leopard for months and months. Finally, another shifter heard there was a snow leopard on the mountain where no snow leopard belongs, guessed what was going on, and rescued her. He helped her get her real human form back.
I should have done that. I changed her in the first place. She was my responsibility.
I don't know if you can understand exactly how wrong it was, what I did. It wasn't only vengeful and mean and careless with another person's life. It’s absolutely forbidden in shifter culture to bite a human except to save their life, or if you’re very close and they ask you to. Even then, you have to really think about it. It’s true that Fiona was injured, and maybe could have died if I hadn't bitten her. So that part was maybe okay, though I hadn’t exactly done it because I was such a great guy.
But regardless, whatever my motives were, once I’d bitten her, it was my responsibility to look after her. I violated that by dumping her on the mountain, and then I violated it again by not following up and making sure she was okay. I was embarrassed that she’d tricked me and ashamed of what I’d done to her, and I wanted to forget about the whole thing and pretend it had never happened.
Six months later, I got kidnapped. It was a much more sophisticated job than what the man hunters did to us. I went flying, I landed in an isolated area where I was planning to spend some time as a snow leopard, and I got shot with a tranquilizer dart. I woke up in a lab.
It wasn't run by the wizard scientists. I only found out about them later. This lab was run by a black ops agency called Apex. They were experimenting with humans and shifters, trying to make super soldiers they could control and blackmail.
I was so arrogant. I told them who I was, like they didn't know. I told them I was rich and famous and they'd never get away with kidnapping me. I even tried bribing them. They didn’t care about any of it, which was a bit of a blow to my ego. All they cared about was that I was a shifter, and they could use me to try out something they’d been planning for a long time.
They didn't kill my snow leopard on purpose. That wasn't what they wanted at all. They wanted to give me the ability to shift into a lot of different animals, my original one included. But something went wrong. The very first time they strapped me down and put another animal inside me, it killed my snow leopard.
I knew it had happened, but they didn’t believe me. And they didn’t stop. They put more and more animals into me, and then they put me in a room and told me to shift. I would have refused, but at first I couldn’t even control whether I shifted or not.
I came out as this hideous mess of body parts, twitching in a pile on the floor. It was disgusting and horrible. I think it even freaked out some of the Apex scientists.
It was six months before I could even stop myself from shifting, and a year before I could force myself into a shape like the one you saw, a horrifying, painful jigsaw puzzle that at least could move in some kind of coordinated way. But still, a monster.
There's something else I haven't told you. It's about my snow leopard.
Remember how I said that a shifter’s inner animal has a voice and can talk to you? My snow leopard didn't want me to bite Fiona. He wanted me to take her to a hospital. When I ignored him and bit her anyway, he was fighting me all the way. I think that's what went wrong with her—why she couldn't change back to human for so long. My snow leopard didn't want to change her, and that may have interfered with the process.
After I bit her, he wanted me to stay with her. He didn't want me to dump her on some mountainside. And when I left, he wanted me to go back and check on her. We fought and fought over it. He was angry at her too, but I was the one whose pride had been hurt. She’d fooled me and I was set on making her pay for it. He was the better part of me, and I overruled him every step of the way.
I hadn't known you could have that level of conflict with your inner animal. I didn't know your inner animal could get that angry with you. But mine did. By the time I got kidnapped, my snow leopard had stopped speaking to me. He was still there. I could feel him. But I already hadn’t heard his voice in months.
I think that's why he died. I think that's what went wrong with everything. He was the part of me that was so disgusted with what I’d done that he didn’t want to be a part of me anymore. And those monsters inside me weren’t monsters originally, they were ordinary animals. If I was a better person, I bet they wouldn't be monsters. I think I'm the reason why their experiments didn't work the way it was supposed. I'm a monster, and all they did at Apex was make it visible.
I know I should have told you earlier. But you saw me as the person I was before, that golden boy who had everything and could do anything. I wanted to be that man again. I wanted to be the man who deserved a woman like you. But I'm not. Eunice didn't do anything to me that I didn't deserve.
Chapter 27
Carter fell silent.Despite the heat, he felt cold. But that too was what he deserved. He’d left Fiona in the cold because she’d hurt his feelings, and in return he’d ruined her life. He’d alienated his own snow leopard, and he’d lost him. He’d behaved like a monster, and he’d become a monster.
Now that Fen knew what sort of person he really was, she’d turn her back on him and walk out, leaving the monster alone in an empty house full of his own useless inventions.
Carter fixed his gaze on the floor. He didn’t want his last sight of Fen to be her look of horror, betrayal, and disgust.
A warm body hurled itself at him. Startled, his arms instinctively closed around her. Fen’s arms locked around him, holding him tight. Her hands were clasped behind his back, her arms right up at the base of his hideous wings. She scooted into his lap and nestled her head into his shoulder, rubbing her silky hair against his skin.
She rested her legs atop his and put her feet over his. As much as was physically possible, every part of her was touching him. Her touch said,acceptance.Her touch said,intimacy.Her touch said,unconditional love.
Carter was stunned. “What are youdoing?”
“I’m hugging you.” Her voice was a muffled as she spoke against his throat. He could feel her warm breath and the vibration of her lips. “You idiot.”
“But I’m—”
