Wild Hearts in Atlantis (5 page)

A muffled shriek from the back of the house jolted him to attention, and he shoved the frame back on the shelf and took off at a dead run down the hall, automatically reaching for the daggers he wasn’t wearing. He’d stashed them in the duffel bag in deference to his hostess; that little courtesy might get him killed. No time to get them now. She might be—

“Kat?” He hit the end of the corridor and burst into the doorway with light spilling out, only to see a totally unexpected sight: Kat sat on the floor, laughing, while four clumsy panther cubs crawled and rolled all over her. Bastien stared at her and felt the breath leave his lungs.

Serious Kat was beautiful.

Laughing Kat was a goddess.

She looked up at him, still smiling. “I’m sorry. Did you hear me yell?” She held up the largest of the four, a male. The cubs had cinnamon-colored reddish coats and white undersides and a funny kink in the end of their tails. “He’s trying to prove he’s fiercer than his three sisters, and nipped my finger pretty hard, didn’t you baby?”

When she bent her forehead to rub it against the cub’s, Bastien suddenly understood exactly why the creature started purring. He’d purr himself if he could get her to rub his belly.

“They’re beautiful,” he said, and meant it. “I’ve never seen panther cubs before. Are they—I mean—”

She laughed again, but this time her laughter held a note of bitterness. “No, they’re not shape-shifters. These are full panthers. And for a while, it was touch and go whether
anybody
would ever see a Florida panther cub again, the way the humans were murdering them.”

“Poachers?” He sat on the floor, cautiously held out a hand to the two cubs nearest him. One of them ignored him completely and began to wash her face with one tiny paw, while the other slunk into stalking mode, jumped on his hand, and ferociously attacked his shirt sleeve.

“No, not poachers, although we have to fight them now, too. Believe it or not, it was perfectly legal to hunt these incredible animals as recently as 1967, when the U.S. Department of the Interior listed them as endangered. Damn near too late, too. They were hunted to near extinction by around 1955.” She leaned back against the wall and stretched.

Bastien tried not to be distracted by how long her legs were. “But they’re doing better now?”

She nodded, face still grim. “Better. Still not good enough. An agreement with the Texas cougar coalition back in ninety-five helped. We introduced eight female Texas cougars into our panther population to help with the potential inbreeding issue.”

The male cub curled up on her lap and fell asleep, and Kat absently scratched his ears. “Better and better, still not optimal. Plus, we’re stuck with more of the Texas females than we ever wanted,” she said bitterly.

The change in her tone puzzled him. “I thought they were important to your own cats?”

Kat blinked, then seemed to realize what she’d said. “Oh, never mind. I was thinking of entirely another type of Texas cat that’s shown up here. One named Fallon, to be precise.”

He raised an eyebrow, and she responded to his unspoken question. “We…
imported
several Texas females ourselves, for similar reasons,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “One in particular, Fallon, doesn’t have much respect for anybody who’s not a purebred, and she’s not shy about showing it. Unfortunately, Ethan took her to mate, so…”

As her voice trailed off, he read the truth between the lines. Fallon was an evil bitch who rubbed Kat’s nose in her
shortcomings at every opportunity. Figuratively speaking. Suddenly, his hands itched to stroke Kat’s hair, to offer comfort of some kind.

Again, not a damn bit like him.

The delight Kat had shown while playing with the cubs evaporated, and she stood up abruptly. “I’ll show you to your room, and we can get started in the morning. We’ll certainly have a lot to talk about with Ethan, from what I hear about the big meeting tonight.”

He gently disengaged the cub’s teeth from his sleeve and set it on the floor, then stood as well. Kat stopped, inches in front of him, and stood as if trapped. The room shrank around them, and he felt his throat drying up as he looked down into her eyes yet again. “Kat? I—”

“Door,” she blurted out. “You’re blocking the door.”

“Oh. Sorry. Door.” He moved aside and, for the second time that evening, she fled from him.

He smiled slowly as he watched her. If he’d been a predator, the sight of her flight would have incited him to the hunt. He took his time before following her down the hall, waiting for the urgent hardening of his body to subside. “We may be in trouble, Lady Kat,” he murmured to himself. The cubs on the floor gazed sleepily up at him. “Because I’m suddenly feeling very predatory.”

Alaric shimmered into mist and soared away from the ranger’s cottage, disturbed by what he’d sensed from the shape-shifter with Bastien. In a burst of speed, he shot up and out and didn’t descend until he was floating above the midnight blue waves of the Atlantic Ocean. As he spiraled down into the water, regaining his form on the way, he channeled the magic of the portal into Atlantis.

Grimly hoped that the portal would cooperate. It had a decidedly capricious nature, much akin to that of the sea god himself.

Fortunately for the urgency of his mission, the portal opened immediately and he stepped through onto Atlantean soil. Immediately felt the peace of his homeland rush through him, sweeping through the corroded corners of his soul.

Though not even the peace of Atlantis could fill the emptiness
of some losses. Some wounds would never heal. Her enormous eyes flashed into his mind, and he nearly flinched.

Quinn.

His eyes gleamed with power, startling the two portal guards who’d fallen back at his entrance. They bowed deeply. “Alaric. Prince Conlan sent for you,” one ventured, not meeting his eyes.

He nodded and headed for the palace. The news that Bastien’s shape-shifter liaison almost certainly had Atlantean blood in her superseded his own pathetic longings for a human he could never have.

Quinn had made that clear, as if his own duties did not dictate the same.

Tangled up in his own black mood, he failed to sense Conlan until the prince flashed into form before him on the path. “What news, Alaric?”

Alaric lifted his head, masking the bleakness of his thoughts to calm control and arranging his expression to reflect the same. “There is a problem. Our shape-shifter has Atlantean blood in her.”

“What? Are you sure?” Conlan ran a hand through his hair. “How is this even possible, in a shape-shifter?”

Alaric raised one eyebrow. “Considering the nature of your beloved and her sister, I am unsure as to why you are so surprised by this development,” he said sardonically.

“But a shape-shifter? Is it even possible for an Atlantean to breed with a shape-shifter?”

“Clearly it is, at least if the mating involves a human with slight traces of Atlantean DNA from an ancestor who was born more than eleven thousand years ago.”

Conlan looked at Alaric and nodded. “You were right.”

“I am always right. Can you be more specific?”

Conlan’s lips twitched in a ghost of a smile. “When we met Riley and Quinn, you said everything was changing. After millennia of fighting the shape-shifters on behalf of humanity, now you tell me that they—at least some of them—might be our descendants.

“It’s difficult to know who to battle, when the identities of the combatants switch in the middle of the game,” Conlan continued.

“Yet it is even worse than you know, my prince.” Alaric closed his eyes and sent his energy winging out from his body to refresh itself in the air and waters of Atlantis. As the pure power of the sustaining elements of his home rushed through his body, he felt the energy grow within him until a shining nimbus of energy glowed around his entire body.

Conlan folded his arms. “That bad?”

“Worse. Bastien’s little shape-shifter may well be just that—
Bastien’s
shape-shifter.”

“You don’t mean—”

“I do. Their energies parallel. They have the potential to reach the soul meld.”

Conlan’s face hardened. “To the palace, then. We have much to discuss. I don’t know if I can allow that.”

Alaric laughed, but fell into step with his prince. “Think on how you feel about Riley. Not even Poseidon himself could have barred you from your desire to unite with her. With Bastien and his shape-shifter, you may not have any choice.”

“You’re going to have to tell me about it sometime,” Bastien said, following Kat down a muddy, overgrown path. She’d explained that they were at the very beginning of the dry season, and the path had been covered by as much as three feet of water during the height of the May through October rainy season. They’d passed through stands of dwarf cypress and pinelands, mostly in silence, while she quite determinedly ignored him and he tried desperately to think of something liaison-like to say.

Since he still wasn’t sure what a liaison did, he was good for trying Denal’s advice to try to “build a bridge of understanding” between their two cultures. What better way to do that than by hiking a dozen-mile roundtrip path through humid swamp country? Yeah, so irony wasn’t his strong suit, no more than diplomacy.

Yet as he gazed at the curved backs of Kat’s endless legs, he realized he could think of quite a few better ways to build bridges.

“Tell you what?” she called back, not looking at him. She wore her uniform and her official status like a shield against him today, and he’d seen no trace at all of the breathless
woman who’d run from him the night before. Instead, he’d heard commanding intelligence in her telephone conversations with various members of her ranger force and the local paranormal ops unit.

From the way her phone had rung incessantly, and the side of the conversations he’d overheard, both groups respected her insights and her authority. He’d seen the deference in the actions of the zoological staff who had come to transport the cubs to a secure facility for care and raising. She’d said goodbye to them with sadness, and in her kindness and play with the cubs he’d seen a flash of the mother she would one day become.

The knowledge of her bearing another man’s child sent a stabbing pain through him that he refused to contemplate.

This hike was an attempt to investigate a vague report of trouble in the area that had been filed the night before, before their scheduled meeting with Ethan, the panther pride’s alpha.

But he was still curious. “Tell me about your gift.”

She stopped, finally turning to face him. “What are you talking about?” Honest confusion clouded her eyes, and she put
her hands on her hips. Six miles of walking, and she wasn’t even winded. She had warrior spirit in her, his woman.

The
woman. Not
his
woman.
The
woman.
Dammit.

“Your gift. The ability to calm aggression. Is this a shape-shifter ability that has been kept secret before?”

She blinked, then laughed bitterly. “Gift? Right. You mean curse. The lovely ability I have to calm hostility and aggression in everyone, including myself. The
gift
that keeps me from ever becoming a true shape-shifter.”

Somehow, he felt the fury radiating from her. He
saw
the evidence—the clenched jaw, the narrowed eyes, the hands fisted on her hips. But he
felt
the rage and pain, somehow inside himself. Impossible. But true. He tried to form a coherent question. “How does it—”

She cut him off. “How do you think we get in touch with our animal sides? We tap our animal instincts. A panther is a true predator. I can’t reach the predatory side of myself, dual-natured or not, when my
gift
automatically switches on to calm any aggression anywhere around me.”

Kat pulled her hat off, wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “That includes, in case you were wondering, any of my own aggression.”

He flinched at the anguish searing through him. Wondered how he could possibly feel her pain burning in his blood. “Kat, I—” But even as he formed the words, a blanket of calm muffled her emotions.

She sliced her hand through the air, dismissive. “No. I didn’t tell you because I want your pity. Just thought I should let our Atlantean liaison know that I’m a poor choice to be your counterpart. I’m a half-breed who will never truly be a panther. You’d be better off with somebody else.”

He reached out, couldn’t help himself. Touched the curve of her cheek with his fingertips. “Quinn said
you.
You were the one. Prince Conlan agreed. And this is my first assignment as liaison, so perhaps we can figure this out together.”

She seemed to hold her breath, staring up at him. He could lose himself in her gaze. Sink into the warmth of her amazing mouth and spend the next hour or seven kissing her. Touching her. Plunging into her.

Her face suddenly pinkened as though she could read his entirely
unliaisonlike
thoughts, and she took a jerky step back from him. “Well, um, okay. We—we’ve checked this path, and there’s no sign of the trouble that—”

Her head snapped up, and she lifted her face into the sluggish breeze, as if she were scenting the wind. “Do you smell that?” she whispered, the lines of her face gone hard, her eyes feral.