Masked By Danger by Christa Wick

Chapter Four

Witch tongue…

Her flesh burning from the silver and the blue light that erupted with her chanting, Iris tried to shove aside the vague, unpleasant memories of the witches she had met as a child.

Except for one of the women, it wasn't the witches themselves who had been unpleasant. The troubling memories came from what Iris learned about herself in their presence.

Casting words were slippery to every shifter's ears. Wolves couldn't catch them, couldn't hold them in their minds long enough to roll them off their tongues. Wolves might be magic, but they couldn't learn or cast magic.

For Iris, her ability as a child to not only remember the words the witches used but repeat them with effect had been the first clear sign to her that she was not a shifter. She had told no one, not even the beloved grandmother raising Iris after her parents' deaths.

The secret had saved her life the day she was forced to flee clan lands, letting her fight back with a power no one knew she had. That power had shielded her until today, when Cade Mercer stormed back into her life, his words and behavior claiming the impossible.

He thought she was in heat.

Absolutely, totally out of the question—she couldn't be.

The blue light dancing around her fingertips and the foreign syllables rolling off her tongue proved as much. She wasn't a wolf, wasn't one of the clan's women, even though she'd been born to a mated pair.

Even though she could smell like a wolf…

And see like one at night.

Iris looked at Cade to find him staring at her, gaze wide and his jaw tight with suspicion. She pushed the distraction away and continued the chant. Beneath her fingertips, the silver melded to one unbroken circle around her neck. She knew the moment the chain was fully restored when a fresh growl rumbled through Cade's chest and the van steered straighter beneath the driver's suddenly steadied hands.

She released the necklace, then dropped her gaze to her pants with the ripped fabric around the button. No fixing that—fabric and plastic don't respond to casting, even most metals wouldn't, just iron and silver. Sure, she could and had made a pair of shoes scuttle across the floor from where they were hiding under her bed, and she had shut a door or two, but the magic wouldn't hold.

Untucking her shirt to cover the front of her pants, she scowled at Cade. "Better?"

The answer was "no," even though he didn't utter a single word. She heard it in the hot exhalation of breath as his nostrils flared, saw it in the angry shudder that rolled over his body as his gaze narrowed.

With a nervous lick to her top lip, she patted around the right side of her waistband. Her hand closed over her badge. Unclipping it, she rolled the shield at the tip of her fingers, her gaze riveted to the curved gold edges of metal instead of the angry shifter in front of her.

Cade had every right to be angry and no right at all. He had no idea what she had done for him, just like she had no idea what lies his father had filled his head with after she escaped the clan a dozen years ago.

The air in her lungs froze at the thought of the elder Mercer. Her brain became fuzzy, as it always did when she tried to remember the details of that day. Vague images and sounds danced at the corners of her eyes and ears.

Hank and his accomplices hurting her, threatening to kill Cade and her grandmother, a piercing pain and then the magic she had kept hidden exploding, her body suddenly free from his grip, legs pumping, running hard, her flesh an alien thing that just barely followed her commands.

She sharpened her focus on the shield, her grip on it so tight the edges threatened to slice her skin. She didn't care about the pain, knew the magic running through her body would heal her the same as if she were a shifter. It was more important to stop the panic attack that threatened while she still had a chance to convince Cade to turn the van around or at least stop the vehicle and let her out.

She looked up, her cop façade in place. "You really think you can kidnap a homicide detective with another one dead on the ground?"

He shrugged and for a second she saw the eighteen-year-old boy she had been crazy in love with instead of the hardened shifter who had thrown her into the van and clawed at her pants.

She blinked, dismissing both memories as she jabbed her finger at the back door. "That's my partner—"

Cade's growl rumbled through her body, gripping her and holding her paralyzed as he closed the small distance between them.

"I tolerated that word the first time you used it." His breath played hot over her throat as he spoke. "Don't say it again."

"Joshua—" A second growl, more menacing than the first, froze her tongue for a few more seconds. She closed her eyes, tried to control the trembling she knew he could see, if not feel. She swallowed, shook her head. "Detective Harper was—"

"He's not anything but a stain on the sidewalk now," Cade reminded her. "That bullet was meant for you. You're not going back."

"I can take care of myself." She wanted to argue further, but his head had started to move in a familiar pattern, his nose and mouth lifting to the top of her head as she heard him inhale. His face made a slow descent to pass against her ear, and then her throat.

Iris threw her hands up to block him. "Don't!"

He was scenting her for another male, one whose odors went deeper than the surface to hide in intimate places. Any such trace of a man was long gone.

"Stop and let me out," she ordered, squirming to gain a little space between their bodies.

"If I do, you’ll have to give up the clan. The only way to stop the cops' questions is to give them us." His hand closed over the badge she still played with. Taking it from her, he tucked it in his jeans pocket. "You want to turn everyone over? Me? Your grandmother?"

"My grandmother's dead," she bit out, turning her head, but not before she saw shock flicker in his dark eyes.

"And how the hell do you know that?" he barked. "You visited our lands after you left?"

Wiggling away from him, she shook her head, then pressed her face against her knees and wrapped her arms around her shins.

"I saw it," she answered, her words muffled. "Felt it when she passed."

"Don't believe you," he growled, his hands continuing to move over her with all the efficiency of a street cop until he found her cellphone. "Andra swore she kissed you goodbye the night she passed. No one believed her, but her words always stuck with me. She was convinced you visited."

Iris had felt the kiss, her heart breaking at the distant press of her beloved grandmother's lips. But she hadn't been there—not physically.

Cade slapped a padlock on the side door, then moved into the front passenger seat. Rolling down the window, he tossed the phone and badge. Hearing the right rear tire smash the phone's case, Iris hugged her legs a little tighter.

"You can't take me back to West Virginia," she said, trying to project authority, but her voice shaking too violently to sound like anything other than a frightened woman. "If you take me back there, I'm as good as dead."

Cade twisted in his seat to stare at Iris.

She forced herself not to squirm, not to think about the times they had spent away from the watchful eye of her grandmother or the hateful stare of his father. She beat back the comforting scent of pine and wintergreen that had lured her out of the strip club with its dead bouncer. And as she waited for him to say something—anything—she realized he didn't care if she lived or died.

Whatever emotion had stirred within him when her necklace broke, it was the product of animal instinct. With the silver restored, she was nothing more than a mission the clan had sent him on.

“There’s only one place I'm taking you, and it isn't Virginia," he said, his voice hard as he turned to face the front of the vehicle. "You're going to the Witches' Council. They're the ones who sent me to find you. They're the ones who think you’re so fucking important."