“You knew, didn’t you? What I was, you knew all along?”
He was silent for a minute, a routine she’d become accumstomed to. Rome took his time giving his answers, thinking them completely through before speaking. Whereas she, on the other hand, tended to speak now, think later.
“I didn’t know for sure. I knew there was something about you that kept calling to me. I didn’t know it was your cat.”
“My cat,” she whispered, still astounded at the revelation. “I’m afraid of cats, or at least I used to be.”
“A defense mechanism.”
“Defense from what? Deadly house cats out to kill me because they sensed that I was bigger and badder than them?”
He chuckled, which made this really intense moment a little less intense.
“With the report X came up with, Elder Alamar traced your heritage back to two Elders within our tribe. They were joined before having you. Right after you were born they were brutally killed in the forest and you were taken. None of the tribes knew where you were. Somehow you ended up here at the orphanage. It’s not clear who dropped you off or why.”
His words moved around in her mind, filling a gaping hole that she’d fought to ignore all her life. In just a few sentences, he’d given her a past, a connection to people she’d thought lost to her forever.
“What were their names?” she asked, letting everything from being the child of Shadow Shifters to being kidnapped after their murders sink in.
“Natalia and Adao.”
“What are Elders?”
“They are the most knowledgeable of our kind, selected from our tribe to represent us in the Assembly.”
“We’re from a tribe.” It wasn’t really a question; she’d just wanted to hear the sound of it from her own lips.
“The Topetenia of the Gungi rain forest. The jaguars.”
His words seemed simple enough, but suddenly Kalina was hit with a realization. She wasn’t human. She wasn’t the woman who’d worked her way up in the ranks at the MPD. She wasn’t the woman the DEA wanted on their squad. She was something … different.
Sitting up in the bed abruptly, she struggled to breathe. Rome was there instantly, putting his arms around her. This time his tender touch wasn’t going to be enough. She pulled away from him.
“What is it, baby?”
“Don’t baby me! You did this to me,” she yelled. “You made me like this. I didn’t ask you to. I didn’t!”
“Wait a minute, Kalina. Calm down.”
“I won’t calm down. And I’m sick of you telling me what to do all the time. I can do whatever the hell I want.” She moved from the bed, leaning over the nightstand to switch on the lamp. Standing, she hugged her arms around herself, trying to absorb everything that had happened these last few days. It was so much, too much actually.
“I didn’t ask to be different,” she started. “I never wanted to be different. I just wanted what everybody else had. A family, a normal life. Was that too much to ask?”
He didn’t come to her, but he was sitting up in the bed. “No. It wasn’t.”
“Then why couldn’t I have it? Why couldn’t I be like everyone else?”
“I used to ask myself that same thing,” he admitted. “I used to want to be anything but who and what I was. Then I realized I didn’t have a choice. Somebody once told me that you can’t outrun your destiny.”
His voice sounded different, and she turned to look at him. It had always been like this between them, this fine line they walked between fury and desire. Even with that she was drawn to him, even more so now.
“I can’t be this. I mean, what you are. I don’t know how.”
He looked up at her seriously. “You are what you are, Kalina.”
“I thought I knew who and what that was. Now I don’t.”
Rome remembered that feeling. He remembered the nights he sat alone in his bedroom as a teenager trying to figure out the very same things Kalina struggled with now. That’s how he knew there was no one answer that would make everything click into place. Learning about the Shadow Shifters was a jolt to his young system, but he’d had years to get used to it. Kalina didn’t. He’d only just told her about their species before she’d shifted. He should have told her everything at once, should have protected her. Seems he was always falling short in that area.
“When I was ten years old my parents were killed. Rogues broke into our house and killed them while I sat helplessly in a closet. I could hear their screams but I didn’t go to them, didn’t try to save them.”
She sat on the side of the bed watching him closely. He knew he had to continue, he had to give her this part of himself so that maybe she would feel more comfortable with who she was, what she meant to him.
“I wanted to, but I didn’t. For years I was angry and confused. I hated the shifters, hated what they’d done to my parents, my life. Then I began to think about my mother’s words about fate and destiny and finding your own and living the life you were meant to live no matter what.”
“Who killed them?”
The million-dollar question Rome had been trying for years to answer. Last night he’d received that answer. “The shifter that was there last night. The one you killed.”
He looked at her, watching for some reaction. But there was none. She’d killed before. In her line of work she’d had to draw her gun and shoot to kill to protect herself and others. As bad as it sounded, that was a good thing. Death didn’t frazzle or surprise her. And he owed her deeply for the kill she’d made last night, no matter how gristly it may have appeared.
“I killed the man who took your parents.”
He nodded. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You were saving me for a change,” he said with a half smile. “Look, Kalina, there’s so much I want to tell you. So much you need to know. I’m not used to sharing myself with anyone, not used to caring what someone else thinks of me or what I do. But with you I do care, and I want to do the right thing by you.”
She was already shaking her head. “I don’t know how to do this, how to be this person. I don’t know how to be with you.”
He moved over to her, reaching out a hand to touch her cheek. “You don’t have to be anybody but yourself with me.”
“Who or whatever that is,” she said, trying to make light of herself.
“You are a beautiful Shadow Shifter. You are my companheiro.”
“You said that before. What does it mean?”
“My mate. For life you are mine and I am yours.” He wanted to kiss her, to wrap his arms around her, pull her onto this bed and make love to her. But he waited.
“I thought I was falling in love with you. That made me both angry and a little scared. I didn’t see how we could have a relationship after all we’d been through. And now—” She shrugged. “Now I don’t know.”
“Let me teach you, baby. Let me teach you about our ways and our traditions, about the lifestyle of a Shadow Shifter.” He leaned forward then, kissed her lightly on her lips. “Let me love you,” he whispered. “Please, my sweet gato, let me love you.”
Two days later Kalina walked into a satellite office for the Drug Enforcement Agency. Agent Wilson had finally returned her call.
Eli drove her, as he usually did now. He was officially her guard. Rome had explained that as the mate of a Faction Leader, she was almost like shifter royalty; as such she had her own security detail, which consisted of the twins and a group of five other guards. Both Eli and Ezra had come to be like the brothers she’d never had. They joked with her and teased her and basically made her transition a little more comfortable. Not that she was 100 percent at ease with this new life of hers, but she was trying, even though she hadn’t shifted since that night.
She walked into the building alone wearing a pale gray pantsuit and high-heeled sandals. Her hair was a little longer and fell in waves at the top of her head; the sides had grown out as well. As she walked through the
