Blood Oath (Shifters Unlimited Prequels Book 1) Read online

  He checked first over his shoulder before turning, but his mouth dropped open as he took in the vision before him. The sassy, hardworking tomboy who’d grown up next door had transformed into a sleek, sophisticated-looking gal. From the short dark bob accentuating her sensual jawline and elegant neck, to the tailored forest-green jacket hugging her curves, and down to the camel-colored skirt that skimmed her knees and flashed her slender calves and ankles. His skin heated as his trousers grew uncomfortably tight.

  She was always beautiful, but evidently, she was a chameleon as well. The length of her hair didn’t matter. She was stunning. Then his brows drew together as he realized anyone else would notice the same thing.

  “Is it that bad?” The dejection in her voice refocused him. Before he had a chance to ruin her great reveal, he strode to her and cupped her cheeks.

  “You’re irresistible. I’m determined you should wear a long cloak with a deep hood so no one else will try to take you from me.”

  Her smile bloomed before she leaned into him. “My charmer. Perhaps I should take all this off and you can prove to me how irresistible I am.”

  “Gillian. I’ve never been able to resist you, but you’ve been hiding all your life. Where we have to go, you’re going to turn so many men’s heads, I’m not sure I can handle it.”

  Her eyes glistened. “Why do you need to worry? I’ve been yours since you played hooky from your chores and went fishing with me at Fellman’s pond.”

  He snorted. “You were six years old, and your idea of fishing was to catch them as they slipped over the falls. It’s lucky my dad and yours didn’t find out about your plan to go there on your own.” He ran his palms down over her shoulders and captured her hands in his. “But times are different, and a pretty lady can catch the eye of many shifters or humans. A lady’s choice in her man needs to be more obvious.”

  He stepped back and fished into the watch pocket of his trousers, bringing out the treasure he’d kept there tied to a string to make sure he didn’t lose it. He lifted the delicately wrought gold ring with a dazzling diamond solitaire, then sank to one knee. “Will you agree not just to be my mate but also my wife, Gillian Wallace Mann?”

  She blinked, the luminescence of moisture sparkling on her lashes like stars. “It’s gorgeous. Though a little eccentric for shifters. Can we afford this?” she asked, still clutching her hands together.

  “I paid for it months ago.” Then he shrugged to ward off the heavy emotions swamping him. “I’ve been carrying it with me for the last year. Since you can’t shift during your pregnancy, you have several months to wear it. So what do you say, my love?”

  “Yes.”

  Even as she held out her hand to him, he sensed the sharp pain swirl away from around his heart and erupt along his skin until the alpha’s mark at his neck ached with a rawness he hadn’t felt since fangs first tore through his flesh. At least his heart was free of the terror—for his mate owned every piece of it. He watched her glance around the car and back at him.

  “We should celebrate.”

  Yes. But no. He and his cat both wanted to prove their commitment to her. However, the alpha’s pain gouged deeper, reminding him of his priority to keep her safe before anything else.

  He tugged her down to him and brushed at the faint lines of fatigue under her eyes. “As tempting as intimacy with you would be right now, I want you to have a warm bed and a hot meal before we bind ourselves to each other forever. We should relax here together and take a nap so we can be on our guard when the train stops in Vancouver.”

  Her eyes shadowed briefly with disappointment, but she nodded and snuggled with him against the duffel. It didn’t take long for her soft breathing to become shallow as she lapsed into sleep.

  He didn’t join her, instead remaining vigilant. Deep in his heart, the rasp of pain reminded him the enforcers weren’t done with them, and neither was Gauthier.

  5

  Gillian eyed the perspiration on Callum’s forehead as he sat in the cool shade of the Seattle railway station. He’d tried to hide it from her over the last few days, but she knew something was wrong. Being a shifter made him immune to human diseases, ruling out the flu, whooping cough, or some other disease. Human diseases. The only conditions her journal addressed.

  Lucky for her, she had other skills. Binding from a mystic spell to keep her from shifting didn’t mean her cat had kept quiet all these years, merely unable to come out and prowl. They still communicated. Gillian didn’t need paws on the ground to sense danger, and since her pregnancy, all sorts of new preternatural instincts had kicked in. Reassuring sensations confirmed her baby’s healthy state as a tickling awareness warned her of Callum’s near-heart-attack-like symptoms. The occasional clench of his left hand lit a shadow of terror inside her, especially as he kept his distance from her. Yet as each day progressed, her certainty grew. If they’d mated, she could use the tether of their mate bond. Absent that, she relied on her tried and true experience based on years of friendship and trust.

  His refusal to cement their bond bothered her. However, as much as she’d wanted to push and claim her mate, something held her back too. He wasn’t ready. She didn’t doubt his love and refused to start now. But she didn’t want him to pay lip service to their bond. Their future and dreams depended on mutual strength, not Callum taking care of Gillian. His hesitancy forced her to watch and wait for the right time to issue her challenge—the time when his heart was free and open, when he wouldn’t refuse or accept her out of the misguided need to shelter her.

  She embraced the basic questions. Did he want their child? Could they be a successful mated pair? She’d learned quickly to drown those sabotaging thoughts. Callum was the same loyal, honest man he’d always been.

  No, something else, someone else, was widening a crack between them.

  She’d kept careful watch over him since they’d left Vancouver. First, the nearly undetectable tremors appeared, followed by a slight shake in his broad shoulders as if he fought back more than pain. Then the tight lines around his mouth became permanent, joined by his nervous rubbing of the scars on his neck. He’d told her once those scars were from an accident in his youth. His cat had become ensnared in a rope trap, and his parents found him just in time. She doubted the story, but she didn’t begrudge him his childhood secrets. Yet whatever plagued him grew more intense the farther they moved from their old home. She suspected some twisted piece of magic she didn’t understand. Either way, she wanted his torture ended.

  Callum was a strong man. Tall and lean with his potential hidden in his human form, and more powerful and swift with the added tensile strength and endurance of his animal form. He might worry about his abilities against Gauthier’s enforcers, but Callum had wrestled in his youth with other shifters in town. She’d secretly watched even while her mother thought she was home safe in her bed.

  He’d been young for those challenges, having just lost his parents at seventeen. And while she’d clenched her fist to her mouth from her spot high in the trees, she’d silently cheered for every strike he landed. His moves were clever, with strategic hits targeted at disabling his opponent. What worried her now was that Callum didn’t have the heart to kill—except for her. No matter what threat stood in his way, he always offered a smile and an open mind. It had worked well for him. He’d won lifelong friends with his disposition and frankness. He had won her heart.

  Yet now she needed him to relinquish his goodness and embrace blood lust. To fight back, not just for her but for his salvation. He had to survive. Mating marks or not, he was hers, and she planned on a long, prosperous future together. No matter what it took.

  He moved uneasily beside her and stood to glance around at the growing rush of people gathering.

  “How long until boarding?” Gillian asked.

  “An hour, but we can head down to the platform now.”

  Great, they’d stand in the smoke and crowds. But when he held a hand to her, she accepted, heading for
the platforms of the southbound trains.

  His gait faltered. She flicked a glance at him. He stared straight ahead, his face taking on a hard, bitter twist. Definitely not good.

  She’d already checked her journal notes, referenced any pages she could find in the anatomy book about strange diseases. Nothing made any sense. Leaving her with one hypothesis and one reason why he was vulnerable and she wasn’t—his alpha bond. If she was right, then the farther they fled, the worse it would get. Not that he would back down. He’d sacrifice himself to save her and their child.

  Which meant she needed to find an alternative solution, though she’d prefer he be honest with her so they could decide together. He could start by telling her about the note in his breast pocket from the bank box in Vancouver. He hadn’t shared the contents with her, though she’d seen him take it out and read it several times when he thought she wasn’t looking.

  What could be so important? He’d given her money from the bank box and insisted she memorize names and addresses if an emergency occurred, but the letter remained a secret.

  She stroked her fingers inside her skirt pocket over the wad of bills. Time to implement plans of her own. With a little finesse, she could plot a safe route to…well, just about anywhere that didn’t take them farther away from Karndottir’s border. Callum might consider it rational to run as far from the alpha as possible, but based on the physical manifestation of his symptoms, that rationale wasn’t working.

  “I need to use the powder room.” Hardly a fabricated excuse. Her baby spun and swirled inside her, the need to pee more insistent than the need to eat some days.

  His brows drew together, but he glanced around once more and then nodded. “I’ll be right here.”

  The entire way to the corridor housing the lavatories, she’d felt his eyes on her. At the last moment, she slid in with a giggling group of young women. When they headed toward the bathroom and she continued on to the rear exit of the station, she took off her hat, fluffed her hair, and jogged around the building, only to re-enter the train station, heading straight for the last ticket booth.

  “Two for the Northern Pacific Railway,” she stated with a bit too much emphasis, her heart pounding at the likelihood of Callum realizing she was taking too long.

  The man behind the counter tilted his head and closed his eyes as if exercising patience for her request. “To anywhere in particular or all the way to the end, madam?”

  She stared over his shoulder at the map and long list of stops and times. Well, Wisconsin seemed a bit far. “I’d like to get tickets where we can stop, visit, and get back on the train later. Probably to…” Where had Callum said this territory’s alpha lived? Right, Montana somewhere. “How about between here and Missoula.”

  “Madam, people usually buy tickets to go from one place to the next on the rail line.”

  Well, that didn’t work. She sighed. Loudly. And pouted, having noticed this worked with other women getting their way during their Vancouver-to-Seattle ride. “What a shame. My husband worked along the Canadian rails, and they—well, I guess they do things differently.”

  He perked up. “A fellow rail? I’m not supposed to do this, but I can offer you an employee ten-day pass. Fee’s the same, you understand. But you get a bit of leeway as to traveling back and forth—figuring out where you want to go and such.”

  “Perfect.” She gave him her best smile, satisfied as ruddy red washed across his cheeks. Looked like she’d executed that perfectly. Then he wrote the price on a slip of paper for her. Perhaps enticing a man to do her bidding needed a little work. Not that she planned on practicing. Callum had given her more than enough money so she could rent rooms and buy food if something accidentally happened to him. All of which only increased her worry and suspicion about what he wasn’t telling her.

  “Thank you for your help,” she replied, sliding the bills across the counter. Now she only had to convince Callum to board a train that wasn’t going south and see if his strange condition eased. Resolved for the next stage of her plan, she headed back into the main rail station waiting room.

  Callum frowned as she approached, his head turned toward the hallway where she’d originally headed and then back toward the direction she’d just come. “You went to the powder room. Why are you—”

  Whoops. “I needed a breath of fresh air afterward. I noticed some new options while I was there,” she said, moving in front of him. “You’re not the only one with exciting ideas, right?”

  He rubbed his face and reached for her.

  Nope. She stepped back. Once he had her in his hold, he’d only pressure her into boarding the next southbound train. “Trust me?”

  He gave a quick glance around and tucked his arm around her shoulder, drawing her against his body. “Of course.”

  His muscles jerked against her, but he gritted his teeth and moved with a lot more energy than she had noticed earlier. He started to steer them to the southern departure platforms, but this time, she glanced around and caught sight of the problem.

  “Really, trust me.” Following her instincts, she gripped him around the waist and tugged him against her into a dimly lit alcove. When he resisted, she grasped his head and pulled his lips down to hers, solidifying them together as one tight unit.

  Callum might be at greater risk having a blood bond with the alpha, but enforcers could trace her scent even though she hadn’t pledged her oath. Knotted together as they were, their mingled scents and energies would be harder to decipher. The knowledge wasn’t from her own experience but fed into her mind in a way she couldn’t quite nail down and accompanied by a tingle tickling in her belly she trusted above all.

  From the intense expression of the hulking man who stalked past the alcove, a disheveled male looking too much like the man who had assaulted her in Doc’s barn to be a coincidence, the enforcers were close on their trail.

  “He’s almost gone.” Callum’s lips moved over hers. He gave a slow swipe of his tongue over her lower lip, then he turned away and watched the man retreating as she did.

  She pushed him from her into the main corridor and grasped his hand, hustling back in the direction they’d come. “Hurry. Our train leaves in five minutes.”

  She jogged, and thankfully, he followed, their fingers linked. He didn’t waste time arguing either. Neither of them broke their stride as harried humans bustled around them.

  Finally, reaching the last car on her train’s platform, she hopped up the steps. Callum’s body heat radiated behind her, and he pressed close, shielding her from the other passengers. She sank into an empty row at the rear of the train, the only row of seats with no facing seating, where their backs could be to the wall and they could watch everyone who entered. He slid into the seat next to her.

  Stuffing the duffel down at their feet, he leaned close to whisper in her ear. “You do realize we need tickets for this train. I’m not sure they’ll honor my work on the Canadian rail or let us pay onboard.”

  She slipped the tickets out of her skirt pocket and waved them under his nose. “Look what I have.”

  Eyes wide, he jerked back. “What made you think to do this?”

  “I’m not letting him have you,” she said, not bothering to beat around the bush. Callum’s expression softened. “So we can parallel his territory until we come up with a solution.”

  He released a sigh that warned her she hadn’t quite won. Then he closed his eyes and pressed his lips to her brow. “Love you.”

  “Good thing.” She stroked her hand along the side of his face, satisfied that his complexion held more color and the lines of pain around his mouth had lessened.

  “We’re going to start our new life by being honest and open with each other,” she added.

  He winced, and when he shook his head, she pressed a finger to his lips and stared into his eyes. “We may not be mated yet, but I can tell when you’re in pain. I can also tell when you’re keeping secrets.” She glanced pointedly at his breast coat pocket
.

  He looked remorseful, but she was convinced it would take several more attempts on her part to break through his stubborn male need to protect her. They settled back in their seats, her racing heartbeat slowing as she counted through the seconds until the train would leave the station.

  After a long moment of silence, Callum brushed the pads of his fingers over her cheekbone, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the secret letter. “The man who forged our United States documents was in this territory for about two weeks before he pledged to the new alpha.”

  “Did he experience the pain also?”

  Callum nodded.

  “Then a new oath seems like a simple solution. I’m assuming the new alpha and his oath took away the pain?”

  He didn’t look convinced. “He implied his bond from his oath to Karndottir was removed.”

  She eyed the tight clench of his jaw. “What argument can you possibly find not to do the same thing?”

  “My pain will fade with time. The longer we’re here, the easier it will be for me to adjust. Eventually, we can move farther away from the alpha’s hold.” Even as she opened her mouth to argue, he grasped her hand. “We’re having a child. One who could carry your sister’s gift. I won’t risk another alpha deciding our child is too much of a threat to live. I can’t compromise on your safety or the baby’s. Please don’t ask me to.”

  He had a point. One she didn’t have the evidence to refute even though she knew in her bones the child she carried wasn’t like her innocent sister, Dana. But she’d pick another time to debate it with him. He was the one suffering right now, and he’d at least conceded to her change in their plans.

  Later, after he’d rested and was thinking more clearly, she might mention the fact that if the territory’s alpha, Deacon Black, was strong enough to remove another alpha’s oath bond, then he was probably also powerful enough to detect escaped shifters in his territory. As well as infants who carried the stigma of an omega.

  She squeezed his hand and focused instead on the passengers boarding as the train whistle blew.