Sarai's Fortune (2 page)

As she gathered her gear and put away the dummies, the rhythm of Sarai’s heartbeat picked up a little. Was she finally going to have her answer to the question that had been tormenting her for months?

She glanced up at the large building that made up the safe haven, home, and business of the Keller Dare. A single structure, from her vantage point behind the buildings, she could see the extensive wings. Made of natural stone and wood, it fit beautifully in the surrounding Bitterroot mountain range in Idaho.

All of the compounds of the Shadowcat Nation were similarly impressive, though in different ways. When the original Alphas had formed the Nation, they’d done something crazy-stupid. They’d pooled all the resources of every cougar joining the dares to bet it all in an insane series of big gambles in Las Vegas.

Sarai still couldn’t understand the logic, but she did understand desperate times called for desperate measures. They’d needed money to support this method they’d chosen to ensure their survival. To give them credit, they’d had a Seer to guide their every move. The risk had paid off and been the basis for starting the wealth of the Nation. One of the results was the compounds like this one. The main base for each dare.

But, try as she might, she just couldn’t see it as
her
home. This one wasn’t a prison like the Carstairs Dare compound where she’d lived the last twenty years. It wasn’t home either. She wasn’t safe here. She wasn’t sure she was safe anywhere.

She just hoped that, whatever the solution was Andie had devised, it had nothing to do with Zac Montclair. Any future where Sarai and Zac were together was doomed.

After Sarai put away all the evidence of her training, she whistled to her guard and the two of them headed back inside where he left her at her door. She quickly showered and dressed in a conservative white button-down paired with a navy skirt that flared a little. She usually dressed to avoid attention—conservative, boring, safe.

Then she headed down to the large cafeteria-style dining room. Although it was still early, the sun was on its way up, casting light over the spectacular mountain views just outside the tall windows. Small wisps of mist still lingered among the crags and trees outside.

She sniffed, enjoying the scent of bacon filling the air. Mountain lion shifters were definitely meat eaters. Her stomach rumbled. At this compound, Jaxon had anything they couldn’t grow themselves flown in.

The pilot who did the food runs was, of course, one of the dare members. So were the folks who did the farming. Everyone in the dare contributed to it in some way. The compound ran like a small town. They had teachers, ranchers, cooks, folks to run their outside business interests and investments, engineers, a medical wing, their military, of course, and many other occupations. Essentially a full town in a very large building. They even had in-house entertainment of varying kinds.

But those were just the cougars who lived in the compound full time or at least a good portion of the year. Others had lives outside the compound. They were much harder to protect out there. Fewer and fewer took the risk of leaving the compound these days. Those who did still lived in groups with other cougar shifters.

Across the room, Andie was sitting next to Jaxon eating. She waved Sarai over.

“I have a feeling you had more to do with their union than anyone knows,” a familiar voice interrupted her thoughts.

She looked up to see Mark Reynolds, Andie’s father. She twisted her lips into a rueful expression. “Let’s just say this day has been a long time coming.”

At least, it had for Sarai. She had foreseen this possible outcome years before. She had done everything in her limited power to steer events in this direction, determined this curse of hers would benefit the small list of people whom she loved.

Her visions were never set in stone. They could be changed. Free will, choice—those were the key to altering the future. At least for other people.

No one knew her own future was often a black hole to her, with unwanted, confusing glimpses, and only rare moments of clarity. Sarai intended to keep that fact—a weakness her enemies could exploit—a secret.

“Your daughter has been a true friend to me,” she told Mark.

He looked down at her, his face set in its usual stern lines. His lips quirked in a rare smile. “Figures Andie’s best friend would be a Seer. She always did gravitate toward the misfits.”

Sarai shrugged. “They say crazy is often drawn to itself.”

Mark chuckled. “I guess so.” He was silent a moment. Sarai glanced back over and blinked in surprise as he looked down at his shoes, appearing uncomfortable. “I wish I could have done more…to help you—”

Sarai reached out to lay her hand on his arm. “Don’t. If anyone were going to survive Walter and Kyle Carstairs, it would be a Seer. You did everything you could. For all of us.”

Mark searched her eyes, and Sarai looked back steadily. After a moment he nodded.

She patted his arm. “Time to eat,” she said, then she moved toward the buffet table.

She felt bad for Andie’s father. As Walter Carstairs’s second-in-command, Mark Reynolds carried a lot of guilt. But blame never benefited anyone.

After piling a plate with eggs and bacon, Sarai started toward Andie’s table. As she walked, her gaze strayed to another table close by, landing on Zac Montclair. Her heart skittered.

The polar bear shifter sat alone at a table set slightly apart from the rest of the folks in the room. He looked deceptively casual, dressed in his uniform jeans, black t-shirt, and combat boots. He propped his elbows on the table as he ate. Despite the relaxed position, the muscles of his arms stretched the seams of his t-shirt.

At close to seven feet tall, he was intimidating by any standards. Maybe that’s why people would walk out of their way to give him a wide berth rather than risk coming into his space. Even now, two female cougar shifters doubled back around their table to leave the hall without passing by him.

But something about his unsmiling demeanor intrigued Sarai. She didn’t feel like he had a naturally off-putting personality. That perhaps the world had forced him to become so stoic a person. She had the bizarre urge to get to know the true man.

Zac angled his head her way, and their gazes tangled briefly. She looked down, mortified to feel an unaccustomed blush warming her cheeks. She felt like a walking cliché. He was possibly one of the best-looking men she had ever seen. His dark brown hair was sprinkled with gray at the temples, his chiseled jaw also covered in salt and pepper scruff. Then there were his deep brown eyes that seemed to see all the way into her soul anytime they fell upon her.

And he seemed to look her way often.

She’d never reacted to someone she barely knew like that before. Granted, she usually didn’t allow herself to get close enough to most people to react to them one way or another. Either way, though, she’d never act on her attraction. So it didn’t matter.

Since she was walking with her head down, she just barely avoided stumbling into a table of breakfast eaters. “Sorry,” she muttered as she gave herself a mental kick.

“Walk much?” Andie grinned as Sarai sat down beside her.

“A lot on my mind,” Sarai murmured.

And then some, she thought. Zac was a major distraction she just didn’t need right now. Not with Kyle still on the loose.

She forked a bite of fluffy scrambled eggs into her mouth but didn’t really taste them as she thought about Zac. The problem was she’d had visions of the polar bear shifter.

Most of what she saw wasn’t clear, like looking through a mud-splattered windshield. Which likely meant the visions involving Zac involved her in some way, because they were hazy, patchy in a familiar way. Perhaps her involvement explained why she’d never seen Zac’s longstanding friendship with Andie…because she was tied to it in the future somehow.

And then there were the flashes she’d had of Zac lately—the clearer ones—that made her pulse race. Images of him in the throes of passion, ecstasy molding his face into something harshly beautiful. She’d heard his groans, felt his leashed strength under her fingertips. So real she’d woken still tingling from the warmth of his skin.

But the other images of Zac were what had her running scared: Zac in his polar bear form, incredibly powerful, going down under a pile of cougars and wolves with a mighty roar; Zac bleeding profusely, looking completely broken; Zac on his knees before Kyle Carstairs—the man whom Sarai feared above all.

What made this doubly frustrating was the fact that she saw what happened if she told anyone her vision—Zac, Andie, Jaxon. No, she had to deal with this on her own. She’d be damned if she’d just sit back and let
any
of that happen. Not if she could help it. She’d just have to stay well away from Zac Montclair.

Free will. Choice
.

Those were the key to changing the future.

The morning light filtered into the hallway from a window as Zac made his way to Andie and Jaxon’s room after breakfast. While Zac found the Keller compound impressive, he also found it somewhat claustrophobic. The mansion was huge, more like a hotel than a house, but all enclosed. Granted they were housing and protecting an entire community of cougar shifters. Zac’s own home was a far cry from this megalopolis Andie had married into. He preferred the homey, more traditional feel of his own Timik’s village.

Zac hadn’t been too surprised when Andie had visited his table earlier to ask him to stop by her room when he was done. Now that Jaxon and Andie were back from their honeymoon, they were getting right to business.

He was fairly sure he knew the reason behind Andie’s request…Sarai. Just before the wedding, he’d agreed to become her protector.

When Andie had first come to him, confided Sarai’s dilemma, and her proposed solution, Zac had wrestled with two emotions.

He’d felt a fury toward Kyle Carstairs that had surprised him in the way it was disproportionate to his nonexistent relationship with Sarai. Something about the reclusive, delicate Seer had gotten under his skin. The thought of her living in such fear for that long had his protective instincts roaring to the surface.

With a wry twist to his lips, Zac conceded to himself that his reaction could have something to do with the intense attraction he felt. Even just a hint of her warm vanilla scent in the air, and his body would tense in anticipation.

It had not gone unnoticed—by him at least—that Sarai avoided him. He got the impression she didn’t like him. Any time he looked over to find those piercing blue-gray eyes directed his way, her gaze would skitter away, but not in a shy, flirtatious way.

She almost seemed to look at him like a Rubik’s cube she couldn’t solve, rather than a man. More than once he’d caught her frowning at him. If she saw him in a room, she was quick to leave, and while she was there, she kept to the opposite side of the room. Based on those actions alone, he worried Andie’s plan didn’t bode well, though he agreed it was the only viable solution.

Zac had kept all this to himself. Things would play out however they did. Protecting a Seer was paramount. Shifters who possessed additional powers were rare. Only a handful of those were Seers. They were a supernatural version of an early warning system for their people. Essential these days.

He didn’t examine too closely why protecting Sarai—not the Seer, the woman—seemed even more important. He’d focus on his mission and, at the very least, he hoped Sarai would accept the plan. He didn’t think friendship was in the cards. Maybe a partnership was doable.

Sarai’s survival depended on it.

He reached Andie and Jaxon’s door—one of several in the long stretch of hallway—and knocked. He liked that Jaxon didn’t show his status as Alpha with some ostentatious display or some penthouse suite just for his use. He lived and worked among his people.

As he waited, Zac worked a crick in his neck. The bed in his room was definitely not built for someone his size. Polar bear shifters tended to be huge in stature, especially the men. His father had once said their human bodies needed to bear the burden of the shift into such a large animal.

Male cougar shifters weren’t exactly small. Jaxon was a good chunk over six feet. Still, they had nothing on polar shifters, and Zac was tall even for his kind. Cougar shifters were leaner, just as muscled, but built more like distance runners. Polar bears were more like professional fighters.

The door swung open to reveal a petite woman with dark hair tumbling over her shoulders who stood there, a smile gracing her lips.

“Hello, kuluk,” he murmured.

He only used the Inuktitut term of endearment for Andie. She was the only one who’d earned the word in his opinion. Not only was she his closest friend, like a little sister to him from the moment they’d met as children, but she’d also saved his life—dragging him, unconscious, across the frozen lands of Northern Canada.

“How’s married life treating you?”

He almost smiled when a rare blush swept up Andie’s cheeks. Very little could fluster the cougar shifter. Usually she had a snappy retort for everything.

Jaxon’s amused chuckle sounded from within the room behind her.

Andie glared over her shoulder. “You, zip it,” she told him. To Zac, she said, “It’s dandy. Come on in.”

Zac stooped as he entered the room. Like the beds, the doorways in this building were made for men much shorter than he. Yet another difference from his own village, where the buildings were all built for polar bear shifters.

Briefly he glanced around the room. Andie hadn’t wasted any time putting her own touches on the suite of rooms the Alpha claimed. Several framed pictures of nature scenes, a couple of pillows, and peach scented candles now graced a room that, like the rest of the compound, was done in rustic, natural hues.

Zac glanced at Jaxon, who lounged on the brown leather couch.

“Treating her right, Keller?” Zac deadpanned.

Andie elbowed Zac in the ribs. “Leave him alone. We’re married now. You can let up.”

He merely grunted in reply. He had initially been distrustful of Jaxon’s intentions toward Andie, and as Andie’s quasi-older-brother, he’d appointed himself her chaperone and protector. In truth, Jaxon had earned Zac’s respect long ago. Messing with the guy was just for his own entertainment these days.