To Love a Shifter: A Paranormal Romance Boxed Set (110 page)

“Remember where you are.”  He directed a meaningful gaze toward the other town folk loitering in the area.  All of them were staring at us in great interest but quickly looked away upon meeting my gaze.

“You’ve been too at ease already with using words you should never speak outside home.”

Lucian took his hand away and I nodded.  “Sorry.  But can’t we do that instead?” I insisted in a whisper this time.

“Haven’t you forgotten?  You’re grounded.”

I rolled my eyes.  “Oh, come on.  You didn’t really mean it—”

“He did,” Dyvian chanted gleefully.  “Really mean it.”

“
Lucian
.”

“If you don’t walk home with us, that’s your choice.”  Lucian turned his back and began walking away.  Dyvian simply shrugged and turned to walk away, too.

“You don’t mean that,” I cried out.

“I have to follow what big bro says, sorry.”  Dyvian tossed the words over his shoulder.

Lucian didn’t even bother to answer.

I began to walk.  “I won’t forget this, Lucian.”

Still no answer.

Gritting my teeth, I thought hard about how I could get back at Lucian, and after a while, I knew what I had to do.  “I’ll also make sure everyone knows what a bad
boyfriend
you are to me.”

Lucian stumbled, which was enough for me.

My second day of school, even if I didn’t actually get to class, taught me a valuable lesson—never ever let anything lull you into thinking Evren life could be in any way normal.

Breakfast was the typical Chevalier affair.  Lucian pondered the state of the economy, Dyvian ate his food like there was no tomorrow, while I fussed over the way I looked.

“I have a question,” I declared after joining them at the dining table.  I took a slice of toast and told myself I wouldn’t touch anything else on the table.  Lucian’s cooking was delicious—too delicious, actually, making it hard for me to maintain my weight.  Although Dyvian told me Evren didn’t gain weight the way humans did, I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Shoot,” Dyvian garbled out while munching on a strip of bacon.  Once again, half of his face was hidden behind a pile of food.  The mouthwatering feast tempted me to ignore my weight goals.

Turning away from the invitation to sin, I doggedly bit my way through my toast—whole wheat, bland, but utterly safe.  “Lucian told everyone I’m from Australia.  But I don’t sound Australian, do I?  What if people start noticing?”

Dyvian’s twirled his fork around.  “That is a bit of a problem.”

I glanced at Lucian, expecting him to have a solution.  He always did.  He was reading the business papers—again—but I had no doubt he was listening to our conversation at the same time.

“Well?”  I pulled his Financial Times down so I could see his face and enjoy the beauty of his forest green eyes.

Not that I’d ever tell him
his eyes are beautiful.
  Teasing Lucian about crushing on me was one thing, but having him know about my crush on him was another, and one of the X-Files-Don’t-Ever-Speak-Of-It variety.

A small smile played on Lucian’s lips then.  It made him so much cuter.  The smile widened.  I frowned.  What in the world could be in Financial Times that would make him smile like that?  Curiosity temporarily wiped out the niggling issue of my so-called-Australian identity.  “What are you smiling about?”

The smile vanished and Lucian coughed.  “Nothing.”

My eyes met Dyvian’s in mutual suspicion.  “Oh, wait.  I think I know what it is.”  When Lucian glanced at me in wary astonishment, I became convinced of the accuracy of my hunch.

Lucian took a drink of his coffee.  “What is it then?”

“You hit the jackpot with your stock investments.”  I flashed a triumphant smile.  “Didn’t you?”

Lucian’s lovely eyes blinked, stared, and gleamed.  “You could say that I’ve hit the jackpot, I guess.”  Another smile started tugging at his lips, and I decided he was laughing at himself for being silly enough to think he could keep something like that from me.

Dyvian and I gave each other hi-fives.  “Told you I knew.”

“He doesn’t usually keep things like that a secret though,” Dyvian remarked.

I had figured the answer to that, too, and I answered before Lucian could.  “Because he still doesn’t want to give us any reason to celebrate in Vegas.”  I rolled my eyes and turned to Lucian.  “Right?”  I had been pestering Lucian to let me go to Vegas—what was the point of being in Nevada if you could never go to Sin City?—and Dyvian had been supporting my side just to annoy his brother.

Lucian, who had opened his mouth to speak earlier on, closed it and simply nodded.  The gleam in his eyes had turned into a full-fledged twinkle, and by now, his gorgeousness had reached the eye-popping level.

My breath hitched but I quickly willed it back to a normal pace.  Drat.  I had to stop hyperventilating every time Lucian did something more than blink.  With Evren hearing so good, I was sure one of these days, either Lucian or Dyvian would notice how my breathing tended to race when Lucian was around—add one and one, and come up with a hugely embarrassing two.

The thought was enough to make me shudder.

“Are you all right, Deli?  You’re breathing rather fast.”  Lucian’s perusing gaze landed on me with razor-like precision.

I choked on the toast and reached for my milk.  I tilted the glass all the way up to cover my face and used all my power to stop my cheeks from reddening.

The last drop of milk vanished, and I lost my excuse for avoiding Lucian’s gaze.  “I-I’m okay.  Just—worried about the Australian thing.”

Dyvian settled his elbows on the table and clasped his fingers under his chin, his eyes narrowing.  That wasn’t good.  Of all the times for Dyvian to pay attention to something besides his self-indulgent pursuits, why did it have to be now?

“There’s something you’re not telling me here.  I don’t believe that’s the only thing you’re worried about—”

“It is,” Lucian and I insisted at the same time, his voice curt while mine sounded defensive.

All three of us looked at each other in shock.

Incredible. 
Lucian had taken
my
side?

Lucian was the first to recover.  His face took on its usual unreadable mask and he nodded to me.  “If you don’t leave now, you’ll be late for school.”

A glance at my watch confirmed his words and I stood up quickly.  “I’m off then.”

“You two are hiding something from me,” Dyvian muttered.

“It’s nothing,” Lucian and I once again responded simultaneously.

The three of us shared another moment of body-freezing shock, with a mixture of suspicion—Dyvian’s, confusion—mine, and irritation—Lucian’s.

“See?”  Dyvian broke the silence as he stood up.  “You two never agree on anything, and now you’re saying the same thing at the same time?  You guys are officially keeping a secret from me, and I intend to find out what it is.”  On his way out, Dyvian made a sudden about-face, and he slapped a hand on his forehead.  “Damn.  I can’t believe I didn’t think of this.”

He knows, oh, my God, he—

“You guys are secretly going out, and you don’t want me to harass you about it.”

“No,” I yelped while the word rolled out from Lucian’s tongue dispassionately.  But we still spoke at the same time.

Dyvian’s grin widened.  “I rest my case.”

“It’s not like that,” Lucian bit out as his brother turned away, whistling, but Dyvian didn’t even miss a beat.

I scowled at Dyvian’s back.  If he kept teasing Lucian like this, there was no way Lucian would ever confess that he liked me.  And he liked me, he did!  I could feel it.  But I was willing to concede that maybe he hadn’t accepted the truth yet.

Lucian faced me and I forgot all about my consternation with Dyvian as embarrassment surged forward.  Was I being too obvious about how much I liked him?

“You’ll be late if you don’t start moving.”  He cleared the table, scooping up the dirty dishes like a pro.

I jumped to my feet to help him but he waved me away.  “It’s okay.”

Lucian moving around in the kitchen with impressive finesse that always seemed surreal, and I teased, “Tell me honestly.  Have you never thought of yourself as uncool for always having to be the one to cook and do the housekeeping?”

“Dyvian would end up burning the whole house down if I left him in charge.”  He began loading the dishwasher.  “You’ll be late,” he said for the third time.

“Sheesh.  I can take a hint when someone wants me to leave.”  I grabbed my school bag, feeling ridiculously wistful at the thought of leaving Lucian.  I hesitated, then grinning, I skipped to Lucian and tapped him on the shoulder.  Dyvian teasing Lucian was bad, but me teasing Lucian was fun.

He twisted halfway and glanced at me questioningly.

I puckered my lips.  “No goodbye kisses for your girlfriend?”

“I heard that,” Dyvian shouted laughingly from the living room.

“Out.”  Lucian glared, pointing to the doorway.

Laughing, I left the house feeling much better.  He liked me, he really, really did.

It was a normal—and beautiful—start for the day, like I told you.  It’s probably why I never imagined that ten minutes later I’d be careening off the highway and fighting for my life.

T-Pain and Akon were singing from my car’s radio when a lunatic suddenly blocked the road.

I slammed on the brakes and held on to the wheel for life.  Not the world’s most experienced driver—nor the best person to be with during emergencies—I could only scream and pray silently for rescue as the car spun out of control.

The seconds ticked off until I finally crashed against a tree head on.  If not for the seatbelt, I’d have been thrown out of the seat at the ferocious impact.

A tearing sound of metal from above penetrated my badly jarred brain.  I looked up and gaped as a pair of hands tore the roof of the SUV away.

This is so not normal. 
The words pounded my brain over and over, and I shakily worked on unclasping my seatbelt.  But then again, how could I ever let myself think that being Evren was normal?  I threw the door open and fell out of the car just as the roof of the SUV made one last ear-splitting shriek.

Never, ever look back. 
It was the one thing I learned from watching horror flicks.  I ran as fast as I could but someone—something—gripped my hair painfully, pulling me back, and I screamed, struggling wildly.

A man with flashing red eyes—the lunatic who thought standing in the middle of the highway was a safe mode of entertainment—grinned at me, a long curling tongue striking out from his parted lips.  He saw me shudder and tightened his hold, making me cry out involuntarily.

“It’s nice to see you again.”

Again?

“The pleasure’s all yours.”  Ignoring my thudding heartbeat, I struggled to remember if I’d had the misfortune to meet him in the past.

He sniffed.  “You smell different.”

Oh, God, how gross could he be?  Couldn’t he be polite enough not to let me know he wanted me for lunch?  Close to hysterics, I wondered whether he’d been raised to be a cannibal or if he was, like, a product of genetic mutation or inbreeding and no one ever taught him that it was bad manners to eat one of his own.

Another painful wrench of my head and then he was twisting my arms behind my back, followed by more disgusting sniffing.

I flinched and tried to push myself back against his hold to avoid the sickening contact of his wet, wrinkling nose.

“Different but familiar,” he continued in a terrifyingly conversational tone.  Violence, apparently, was nothing new to him.