Returning to Earth should have felt like coming home, but I found the longer I was away, the harder it was to reacclimatize myself to being here. I was no longer a regular shifter who knew nothing about the Solaris System, and it felt impossible to ever be that naïve chick again.
“Follow me,” Shadow said, stepping out into a wide, grassy field. Wherever we were this time, it was hot, and I squinted at the bright sunlight.
“Is it summer?” I asked, trying to get my bearings as I stared at the deep blue sky, flawless outside of a few dark clouds brewing a storm out on the horizon.
At a guess, it felt like we were somewhere south, at least in the U.S.
“The cold season has finished, yes,” Shadow said, pulling darkness around himself, like the sun was offending him. It was the oddest thing to see, with literal shadows lingering above his skin, forcing the light away.
Inky drifted closer too and in the bright, summer day, I could see more pigment and color in the smoke than ever before. “Summer,” I mused. “So I’ve been in your lair for months?”
I couldn’t correlate that. It felt like maybe a month at the most, but judging from the heat, it had to be six months since I’d been stolen from pack lands.
Shadow shrugged. “Time is a human constraint. I don’t track it obsessively the way you all seem to. But…” He lifted his head like he was scenting the air. “It’s July.”
He just… sniffed out the month? Okay, awesome. What else could he do with those senses?
Wait, what? July.
“How is that possible?” I breathed. It had been almost seven months since he’d stolen me from Earth. Simone and Dannie would have definitely assumed me dead at this point—my mom probably hadn’t even noticed I was gone—and I felt sick at the thought of seven months just fading away from my life.
“I need to see my pack!” I bust out, stopping Shadow in his tracks.
He turned, height dropping low enough that I only had to tilt my head back eighty degrees to see his face. “You want to return to your pack? Have I not treated you with respect the entire time you’ve been in my presence?”
There was a warning in those words, like he wanted me to choose my reply very carefully.
So, as usual, I didn’t. “I wouldn’t go as far as respect, but you have been… less of an asshole than I expected,” I forced a smile, because I needed him to give me this, “but my reason for wanting to return to my pack is simply to advise the only two shifters in the world I care about that I’m not dead. It’s been seven freaking months, and the entire time, they’ve had no idea what happened to me.”
His pupils dilated as he stared me down, examining my face, searching for a deeper meaning. “I could send Inky?”
It was all kinds of amusing that he’d adopted my nickname for his smoke friend, but I’d laugh about that another time. Today, I was focused on one truth only: seven months from my pack lands. “I think that might freak them out, considering Inky can’t speak, and even if it could, they would no doubt run first and ask questions later.”
Shadow shrugged, and I refused to let myself get distracted by his shoulders today. “I’ll take your request into consideration.”
He turned away, ending the conversation, and somehow, I knew that was all I’d get out of him. I’d try again tomorrow. This was too important to just let slide.
“Where are we?” I asked, hurrying to catch up, wiping my brow at the sweat already accumulating in this intense heat. “Somewhere south, for sure.”
He didn’t stop this time, and I had a sneaking suspicion he didn’t want to tell me in case I tried to escape. But why would I? Shadow would find me no matter how fast or far I ran, and when he caught me, my life would probably be forfeited.
I wasn’t about to overestimate my or Earth’s importance to him. Dude barely gave half a fuck about anything, let alone us.
“I think we’re in Columbia,” he said shortly. “If humans haven’t decided to change country names due to land mass shifts since I was here last.”
Uh, excuse me? When the freak had land masses changed last? Was he as old as the dinosaurs or something? And did I really want to know that? I was much more comfortable thinking of him being a young whippersnapper around a few thousand years old.
Time for a subject change. “Why is it so hard to sense the shadow creatures? You’ve felt… like two of them in all this time.”
It had been a month in the library—seven months on Earth, apparently—and this was only the second one on his radar. For once, he didn’t ignore or rumble at me. “I can only sense them when they use their various abilities. Otherwise, they’re virtually undetectable. All of us know how to hide our energy when resting.”
Not only when resting, if Shadow was anything to go on. I could almost never feel him until he was very close, and even then, something told me he was still controlling the flow of power around us.
There was no more time to think about it, because we had apparently arrived at our destination: a ragged green and brown field, scattered with prickly thorns and spots of completely dead grass—like a pack of wild dogs had pissed about the place, leaving perfect rings of death. We stood under one of the only trees, a gnarled and ancient piece that would have looked half-dead, if not for a few sprigs of new growth up high.
Shadow didn’t move, staring out across the land, his head tilted in a way that told me he was searching. The creature was not immediately visible, and just as I started to search with the beast, there was the splat on my skin. I looked down to see a sticky substance drifting across my right arm. What…? I blinked as more hit me in the face, and as much as I wanted to make a sex joke, now was not the time.
Because what in the gross shit just landed on me?
Shadow dove for me the moment those sticky strands across my body tightened and I was yanked up into the sky. He caught me in time and thankfully was strong enough to wrench me free from whatever had caught me in its tendrils.
“Ah,” he said when we landed safely on the ground, his firm grip around my biceps.
“Ah?” I screeched. “Ah?! What the fuck is ah?”
“It’s a sprecker; a spider demon.”
A whatintheholygodsnow?
Shadow was close enough to block out the sky above, so I leaned back to try to see around him. The branches spanned out wide above us, and I thought I caught some movement, but it was gone before I could be sure.
“It almost had me,” I said, trying to get my heart rate under control. “Could my wolf have fought it?”
Shadow was watching me closely, his hands still on me, the heat branding my skin.
“You could have tried to fight,” he said, “but the poison in the droplets on your skin would eventually seep into your blood, rendering you too weak. The sprecker only has to wait you out, and it moves at super speed, climbing and dodging in a way that very few can replicate.”
His expression showed zero concern about this poison currently absorbing into my skin, as his palms cupped my face. Heat slammed into me, the fires of his eyes burning bright as he ran his hands across my cheeks. His touch wasn’t smooth; the skin of his palms roughened in sections. I wasn’t sure how that worked for a god with ever-repairing skin, but it was what it was. The worst part was that every time his touch caught on my skin, my stomach did some fucked-up swirl, heat pooling low in my gut.
Really fucking low.
By the time the fire of his power had cleansed my skin and blood of the sprecker residue, I was breathing heavier than I was comfortable with. He removed his hands, and I was able to think much clearer.
“How are we going to stop it?” I asked, trying to back away because he was still too damn close for my sanity. Like… this was not the time to have a mental breakdown and lick a shadow god, right? That would just be a bad idea, no matter how curious I was about his reaction.
The tree at my back stopped me from getting far, and when Shadow leaned in closer, I almost lost my shit.
“You can let me go now, Sunshine,” he murmured, and that was the point I noticed my hands tangled in his shirt like I’d been the one pulling him closer. Well, fuck.
Wrinkling my nose, I growled and shoved him away. “Debatable about who is holding whom, dude.” When in doubt, deflect and blame everyone but yourself.
“Here it comes,” Shadow said, forgetting me as his attention was once more sky-bound.
A gasp choked in my throat as a grey monstrosity came into sight. It didn’t have the eight legs of a spider, but there were multiple limbs. Way more than eight, although some were very small and useless looking, but at least six of the ones close to its furred head looked strong and capable as it scurried about. And how many eyes did one creature really need?
“It wants you,” Shadow said, the full force of his gaze meeting mine. “I’m fucking shocked, are you?”
I gawked at him. “Did… Did you just use sarcasm?”
He lifted his shoulders in a half-shrug, but we all knew the truth. Shadow Beast had just… joked—sorta—with me, and I’d gotten to witness it. Maybe I’d spread those stories if I ever got back to pack life. Or maybe I’d make up some even scarier ones because joking aside, his badassness had not been underestimated. As he was about to prove.
Bending his powerful legs, he launched up into the tree, and like he was channeling Tarzan, pulled himself up and along each branch. “Can’t you fly?” I shouted up to him.
He paused. “Where’s the fun in chasing them down like that? Nah, I much prefer to go at them with a more even ground.”
Lunatic. He was an actual lunatic.
“Stay there,” he said. “I’ll be back for you to neutralize it.”
Crossing my arms, I rolled my eyes at Inky. “Your master is a fucking crazy beast, you know that, right? You’re friends with someone who likes to chase demons down… for fun!” I shook my head. “We need new friends.”
Shadow landed hard in front of us, the ground shaking at the solid thud. As he straightened to his eight-feet height, there was an actual legit smile on his face. “Haven’t climbed a tree in five hundred years. Forgot how fun it is.”
I just blinked and blinked, wondering if I’d hit my head. Or maybe the poison had managed to infiltrate my blood and I was hallucinating. Shadow looked almost… happy. I had no idea what to think about that.
Patting my face a few times, I gave myself a firm slap, trying to wake up from whatever dream this was. Hands landed on mine before I could try again. “No,” he said, serious again. “Don’t do that.”
With a twist of my head, I attempted to see his expression, but he’d already turned away, reaching out to grab the grey creature about to attack us. The sprecker covered Shadow almost completely in its poisonous and sticky substance, but that wasn’t enough to stop the beast from using his shadow magic to secure it in a small, convenient bundle.
“Your turn, Sunshine,” he told me, not looking my way.
Gone was the open expression he’d worn before, a blank nothingness on his face, hiding all his deeper emotions in the many layers that was Shadow Beast.
For a second, I’d had a little more of him to hold on to, but as always, it disappeared before I’d gotten more than a taste.
Scariest part was that this time, a taste was nowhere near enough.
