Shifting Fates (Urban Fantasy Shifter Romance Book One)
Author: Aubrey Rose; Nadia Simonenko
Date: 2000-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Werewolves & Shifters; New Adult & College; Military; Literature & Fiction; Romance; Paranormal; Holidays; Contemporary
Description: From New York Times bestselling author Aubrey Rose and Nadia Simonenko comes a thrilling new shifter romance series: Shifting Fates: an Urban Fantasy Shifter Romance What happens when a soldier falls in love with the shifter he's been sent to kill? In post-nuclear Manhattan, there are two kinds of survivors: humans and shifters. Cage After his older brother Ben was killed by shifters, Cage followed in Ben's footsteps and joined the military. His job is simple: protect the surviving civilians in the wreckage of Manhattan and put down the dangerous shifter mutants prowling the streets. Bitter wi
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

SHIFTING FATES

Urban Fantasy Shifter Romance Book One

By

Aubrey Rose and Nadia Simonenko

What happens when a soldier falls in love with the shifter he’s been sent to kill?

In post-nuclear Manhattan, there are two kinds of survivors: humans and shifter.

Cage

After his older brother Ben was killed by shifters, Cage followed in Ben’s footsteps and joined the military. His job is simple: protect the surviving civilians in the wreckage of Manhattan and put down the dangerous shifter mutants prowling the streets. Bitter with revenge, he can’t wait for a chance to get even with the monsters who killed his brother.

Bindi

Half-wolf, half-human Bindi is one of Cage’s monsters. She lives underground, hiding away from military patrols and protecting the ragtag pack of shifter children who have come to depend on her. She’d do anything to get out of the city and get her pack to safety, but nobody gets in- or out – of this city.

On Christmas Eve, Cage catches Bindi – in human form – stealing extra rations for her pack. In a moment of pity he lets her go, but not without being struck by a sense that there’s something special about her. Something… different.

***A Shifter Romance Series that will pull at your heartstrings***

When he finally discovers her secret, Cage must decide what’s more important to him – finally avenging his brother, or saving the woman he’s come to love. And Bindi will learn a lesson about humanity… and about love.

Copyright © 2014 Aubrey Rose / Nadia Simonenko

All rights reserved.

First Edition: April 2014

ISBN: TBD

Chapter One

Bindi

It’s Christmas Eve and there are too many people in Times Square for my taste. They’re mostly humans, too.

Most nights, the streets in lower Manhattan empty out and the monsters come prowling: genetically mutated near-animals who scour the alleys for trash or food. They leave their deformed tracks in the radioactive ash coating the sidewalks of Lexington. They scavenge dumpsters. They lunge, territorial. They slouch toward nothing.

But tonight, the still-human survivors swarm the streets instead. Bright and sparkling, Times Square makes the world look almost like New York City before the war. At least, that’s how I remember it from when I was a little girl.
The military has turned on the lights for an extra hour.

To celebrate. That’s what they said over the loudspeakers.

My right hand is on the knife inside my coat pocket as I move through the crowds of men and women, my small fingers clenched white around the handle. I have a doll for Kit stuffed into my hidden pouch along with the rations packages I’ve already stolen, and I’m having trouble keeping all of them balanced inside.

Another guard crosses the street. The huge store windows are empty now, and I press myself back, turning my face towards the window and pretending to fix the hood over my hair in the reflection of the glass as the sentry guard passes.

My long dark hair is wound tightly back into a braid, partially covered by the ragged burlap hood of my coat. I blink and cannot tear my gaze away from the bright irises of my eyes in the light.

Green and blue like the waves in the bay, my dad used to say. I tilt my head and I am squinting into the light but I don’t care. Tears fill my eyes and I smile. My eyes are shining green now, then blue in the harsh fluorescent light, and because of the brightness my pupils are nearly invisible in the reflection.

That is how I like to imagine myself—blind, with no eyes anymore, just color.

In the darkness where I live now, everyone’s pupils have taken over the color that their eyes used to be. Predators in the light are majestic, their eyes tawny as a lion’s, or bright green as a snake’s. But only grubs live underground, and those who prey on grubs. Sewer rats have black eyes. So do we.

My eyes are rimmed red from the tears, and I breathe out through a clenched jaw as the reflection of the sentry passes behind me. He glances at me, and I am certain that he notices that my arms are hooded, my outdated identification badge obscured. I choke on my fear as his gaze sweeps me over.

I know what he sees. Small female. A limp. A cane. No threat. Still, my thumb rubs circles of worry into the knife’s handle.

Then he is around the corner and gone, and I’m safe.

My other hand swings the metal rod that I use as a cane, and I dart another glance to the mirrored glass. I bend over farther to look like an older woman, hoping that my small stature will hide me in the crowd. I let my left foot drag slightly as though I, too, have the radiation sickness that makes all the men and women here weak in their limbs. But I’m not weak. No, I’m stronger than all of them.

I am one of the monsters.

The city blocks are lit harshly with bright fluorescent tubes that stretch out over my head, as though cautioning me not to look upward, toward the stars. Even with my head down, I am unused to the brightness, and when I squint I hope that the normal people around me don’t notice.

My breath is a white cloud in front of me as I cross the street and begin to limp alongside the food distribution line. There are more people here today than I’ve ever seen before, all hoping for extra rations at the end of the line. My eyes search for an easy target.

There is an old man twenty feet ahead of me, his bag already bulging. He must have been through the bread distribution once before, maybe twice. His nose is so close to the glass that his breath turns the surface of the window white and cloudy. Inside of the distribution centers, the frozen bags of food pulse forward on metal conveyor belts. Soldiers watch the packages, guns at their side.

As I pass by, my foot seems to catch on the sidewalk and I stumble sideways. My cane clatters on the sidewalk and I fake a fall against the old man, clutching his coat.

“Ah!” I cry out as if in pain while my hidden hand sweeps the knife out and slices into his bag. My fingers have already plucked out a small package of rations by the time the man helps me up.

“Are you alright, miss?” he asks. There is a note of genuine sympathy in his voice that gives me the smallest twinge of guilt.

“I’m fine,” I say, tucking the ration package safely and securely into the depths of my coat pocket while I use his arm to balance myself. “Just a crack in the sidewalk, that’s all.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m fine, really, I’m fine.” I hurry away and around the corner, hoping not to be recognized by any of the soldiers patrolling the food distribution. I’ve come here too many times, made too many small disturbances to not be noticed eventually. The others are waiting, though, and I cannot come back empty-handed.

Only two more blocks and I’ll be at one of the entrances. My feet begin to hurry of their own accord, and when I round the corner I am moving too fast to avoid the tall patrol guard coming around the other way.

“Ow!”

We crash into each other and I fall. Stupid, stupid! I have so much momentum that I can’t right myself without lunging out to catch the guard’s arm.

Big mistake. He catches my hip with his other hand and I feel the hidden pouch inside of my robe begin to shift upward. His hand is pressing against the fabric of the pouch, upending the contents. They’ll fall out, unless—

“This isn’t your day, huh?” he says. I lean into his hand, trying to balance the rations packages so that they don’t tumble from the pouch. I can’t lean any farther in; I’m nearly pressed against him at this point.

“Hey,” the guard says. I look up into his eyes, light brown and concerned, and a shock runs through my chest. It hits me so hard that I can’t help but jerk my arm up to ward him off. My hand hits the pouch and it turns upside down.

Three rations packages go scattering on the icy sidewalk, along with the small doll I stole for Kit.

I’ve never done anything so clumsy. I am not clumsy. I have instincts that any human would kill for. And yet here I stand, utterly frozen, astounded at how badly I’ve messed this up. Kit’s face flashes in my mind: her bright red hair, how I thought the doll would match it perfectly.

Stupid. My fingers reach out for the packages, but they are already exposed. The guard grabs my arm.

The guard takes a step back, still holding my arm with one hand as he looks down at the packages. He is vulnerable, his body open.

There. It’s time. He knows. Break his arm first, take his gun, kill him, and run.

The thoughts run through my mind, a carefully planned scenario that I’ve never had to actually act out. My pulse quickens, my skin tight over my limbs. I’m ready to shift into my wolf form if I need to.

Looking up at him, though, I can’t bring myself to raise my arm, to snap his elbow. Instead I pull back and break his hold with a twist of my arm, leaping away from him and bending to snatch my cane up from the ground. I am crouched, ready to run, when I look up and see his eyes.

They’re light brown, flecked with gold, and even in the dim light they shimmer and glow. Something in them draws me close, makes me want to go back to him, to lean forward and see who he is, who he really is, under the soldier’s uniform. His face is mesmerizing, and I breathe quickly, trying to will myself into action. Kill or be killed. Kill or be killed. He’s huge, and I am losing the element of surprise with each second I wait.

Huge. Strong. His shoulders are broad and heavy, and I can’t keep my eyes from wandering over his defined muscles, can’t stop imagining how his hand would feel if it moved over my hips, my body. In this instant, I can feel my pulse hammering against the insides of my wrists, against my temples. I can feel my skin flush with a desire that I’ve never before known. It’s something so fierce and instinctive that it rattles me to the core.

He looks down at the rations packages on the ground, and then he kneels down on the sidewalk and picks up Kit’s doll. He hands it to me and starts to turn away.

I don’t know what I am thinking. I should kill him. I should have already killed him. I’m giving him too much time to think, to form a plan of attack. I need to be gone. Gone! Out of this light—

He reaches into his pocket, and I try to swallow but my throat is clenched tight. Every muscle of mine is vibrating with tension and, as much as I hate to admit it, repressed desire. My claws are beginning to emerge from my bones, twisting against my skin. I struggle to keep them retracted. Why? Why not kill him?

The guard pulls out a square of foil-wrapped chocolate and holds it out to me. I can smell it even through the cold air. My mind is suspicious. My stomach growls.

My fingers reach out and take the gift and as I take the chocolate my fingertips brush his hand.

Again I feel something pass between us. Without thinking about it, I am being pulled in by his eyes. There’s a softness in his face that belies his appearance, his soldier’s uniform, his gun. There’s a tenderness in his gaze that sweeps over me, evaluating, and as he watches me I know without a trace of doubt that he desires me, too. If I were human, I would be overjoyed. As it is, I’m terrified at the dizzy feeling that I get at his touch.

I breathe in to try and get some oxygen, to relieve the dizziness in my mind, but I can only smell him. Sweat and soap, a soldier’s scent. And more than that, a masculine musk of something secret, something hiding underneath his skin...

“I didn’t see nothing,” he says. His voice is low but not threatening, and something—instinct? desire?—tells me to hold still, not to attack. It makes no sense. He knows my face. But I don’t strike out at him with a killing blow. I wait.

He shakes his head slightly, his light hair reflecting the glow from above. I want to reach out and touch his face, touch his hair. But he is already pulling away.

“Merry Christmas.”

He walks away quickly and is already around the corner before I can speak. I don’t know what I would say to him, even if I hadn’t choked. Thank you, maybe? Glad I didn’t have to kill you?

No… I would’ve told him Merry Christmas.

Tomorrow is Christmas. I shovel the rations back into the pouch along with Kit’s doll and dart back down the alleyway. I lift the sewer grating and swing down into the darkness, my feet finding purchase on the damp ladder.

Above me I pull the grate back, and with a loud clang it settles into its grooves. As if by my signal, the lights go out overhead, and the city falls into the same darkness I know every day. I can see the stars now, pinpoints of light in the thin black slice of sky looming over the tops of the brownstones. The soldier is up there, somewhere, maybe watching the stars like I am.

If I were human… I shake my head. Silly to think like that. There’s nothing aboveground for me except food to steal and soldiers to hide from. I climb down slowly into the dark tunnel that will be my home forever, until I can escape this godforsaken city.

Tomorrow is Christmas. It’s also my birthday. A wry smile curves into my cheek.

I’ll celebrate being alive.

Chapter Two

Cage

It’s Christmas Eve and there are so many people lined up in Times Square tonight for food that I’ve resigned myself to a double shift. Even if the Major hasn’t called it in, it’s only a matter of time now. There must be seven hundred people in line tonight.

“Families in the left line, individuals in the right—single file, wait your turn,” a sergeant barks into a megaphone from an overseer tower high above the fray. The Major had me and the grunts out all morning figuring out how to set up the queues for tonight’s festivities. We ended up looting all the retractable belt-barriers from an abandoned, bombed-out theater on 42nd street. Between those and a few dozen assault rifles, the crowds are behaving great.

“Keep the lines moving. Get your Christmas bag and move along!” shouts the sergeant at nobody in particular. Way to spread the Christmas cheer, buddy.

I watch from my walkway perch as the grunts shove civvies through the line one after the next. They can’t be bothered to spare a second’s kindness to the poor saps trapped in this hell-hole of a city, not even on Christmas Eve. God, I hate this job sometimes… still better than being upstate, though.

“One bag per family unit. Keep the lines moving, people!”

I shake my head in disgust and climb down from my perch. The rickety, corrugated aluminum stairs creak and groan every step of the way.

None of these poor civvies deserve to be trapped here like this—their only crime was being in the city when the first bombs fell. God only knows how we missed it, but all it took was one small plane with a big-ass payload to glass the city.

No… that ain’t quite the word I’m looking for. Sure, the epicenter of the blast was totally leveled, but the big surprise was the fallout. As I hear it, ain’t nobody ever heard of a bomb like this one before—we’ve known about nuclear fallout since before I was born, but this stuff’s different.

It changes people. Some of them, at least. Makes them stronger, faster… more animal-like.

No… it straight-up makes them into animals—shifters, we call them, since they can change forms at will. They prowl the city streets at night, and they’re why the army’s here in the first place. It’s the army’s job—and my job—to keep the shifters contained in New York, and those poor, radioactive civvies are stuck along with the shifter scum.

Not like we can tell them apart until they change form, anyway, and if they do… well, it’s probably too late by then.  That’s what they tell me about my brother Ben, at least.

Poor Ben. He got jumped by a shifter while on patrol one night and never saw it coming. That’s why I’m here now. I enlisted the day my mother got the bad news, and if I ever see a shifter, I’ve got a bullet with the fucker’s name on it.

One of the grunts sidles up alongside me as I begin my patrol around the perimeter of the food lines. A plastic sign shaped like a giant lobster hangs like an oversized carcass above the entrance to our makeshift kitchen. It was there when my battalion moved in—the civvies say it used to be a restaurant. Kind of fitting, if you ask me.

Nothing gets in or out of our barricades around the city, and that includes food and supplies. Everything these civvies have comes from us since they can’t get it anywhere else.

“Evening to ya, Cage,” he greets me.

“Evening to you, soldier.” Officers aren’t supposed to fraternize with the grunts, but our company commander didn’t come for the festivities tonight and I ain’t nobody special.

“They keeping you busy? What’ve they got you up to tonight?”

“Just taking in the sights,” I answer, pointing at the enormous crowd pushing and shoving in anticipation of their holiday meal. He nods and grins.

“Yeah, some real lookers in the crowd tonight, let me tell you,” he drawls. “Check out that chick over there near the front—she’d be a real babe if it weren’t for the radiation.”

I hardly know what to say to something like that, so instead I say nothing. Knowing when to bite my tongue’s gotten me a long way in life—not many 22-year-old captains out there, let me tell you.

“Oh don’t tell me you ain’t been looking,” he says, nudging me with his elbow and digging his grave just a little deeper. “It’s Christmas Eve, Cage. Have a little fun already.”

I groan inwardly as we patrol and then scan the crowd to play along. The thing is, I haven’t been looking at all. I couldn’t care less about getting some radioactive ass, to tell the truth. I’m here to do my job, keep my head down, and sock enough cash away to leave this whole sorry place behind after my term’s up.

“Nope, ain’t seeing anything worth my time,” I finally answer, and he rolls his eyes at me. He can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen. Was I this stupid when I was his age?

“What about her? I bet she’d be great in the—”

“Soldier,” I interrupt, “don’t you have a job to be doing?”

He stares belligerently up at me, and just as I’m certain I’m going to have to knock some sense into him, he nods his head and submits.

“Walkway overlook… keeping watch, sir.”

“Then get to it,” I order. “Now.”

“Sir, yes sir,” he answers, giving me an exaggerated salute, and then he finally turns face and leaves me alone. Thank God.

I leave the crowd behind and turn right at the corner, moving out of the temporarily bright lights of Times Square and heading slowly down 42nd. I’m going to loop around the block, I think, and then make my way back to my perch. I haven’t seen a damned thing out of the ordinary tonight, but I can’t say I expected to. No shifter in its right mind would come out in the open like this—it’d take a brazen lunatic to show up with hundreds of civvies and a lookout with enough firepower to level the whole block.

Still… it’s a bit of a disappointment. I mean, the whole reason I signed up was because of what happened to Ben, and two years later, I ain’t had even one chance to avenge him. Two years in this god-forsaken city and I haven’t run into a single—

“Ow!”

I turn the corner and barrel straight into a civvie going the other direction, nearly knocking the tiny woman clean off her feet.

She yelps in surprise and her metal cane falls to the floor with a clatter as she loses her balance. She grabs tightly onto my arm as I reach out to steady her, and I can feel her nails digging into my arm through all three layers of clothing as if it’s little more than butter. Jesus, she’s got a strong grip for someone so small—if she’s more than five-foot-two, I’ll eat my hat.

“You okay, miss?” I ask, instinctively putting my arm around her protectively. I didn’t mean anything by it, but my hand touches her hip. She stiffens and tries to pull away from me.

“Sorry,” I say. That’s pretty much par for the course for me when it comes to women. “You alright?”

“I… I’m fine,” she stammers, still trying to pull away from me. Or at least… I think that’s what she’s trying to do. She’s squirming against my hand, but something here doesn’t feel quite right.

“This just ain’t your day, huh?” I say, letting go of her and cracking a smile to try to lighten the mood. She finally looks up at me, and it’s as if time stops dead in its tracks.

Before I got a good look, I thought she was older. She’s thin and pale as if she hasn’t eaten in weeks, but damned if she isn’t one of the most gorgeous women I’ve ever seen in my life. Beneath the hood, her dark hair frames her long, narrow face, and her eyes—I can’t tell if they’re green or blue or maybe both—draw me in like nothing I’ve ever felt before. For one short eternity, I’m absolutely speechless.

That’s when the stolen pouch falls out of the pocket of her ratty brown coat and ruins the moment.

The pouch pops open as it hits the ground, upending its contents all over the cracked pavement. Rations better suited for five families than one tiny woman spill out onto the sidewalk along with a small, red-haired rag doll, clearly earmarked for a little girl’s Christmas present.

This really ain’t her day one bit.

I grab her arm, but she breaks free of my grip and leaps backward away from me, grabbing her cane from the ground in one quick, fluid motion as she lands.

I take a step back from her, watching her lithe form as she hits the ground in a crouched position, almost as if she’s deciding whether to run for it or attack me. Her chest rises and falls quickly as she watches me, and her eyes dart wildly back and forth. She’s stunningly beautiful in a strange, wild sort of way.

Jesus, what the hell’s wrong with me? She’s a bloody thief and here I am admiring her. I should just shoot her and be done with it.

But I don’t. I don’t even raise my gun. I actually feel bad for her. We barely give civvies enough food to survive on even the best of days, so I can hardly blame her for grabbing extras.

I turn away as I bend down and pick up the delicate rag doll. Exposing my back to her definitely isn’t the smartest thing I’ve done tonight, but somehow I know she isn’t going to try anything. I just do.

I turn back to her, reach into my outer coat pocket, and then add my own little Christmas present to the pile as I hand her the doll. Every year, my mother sends me a little case of dark chocolate bars for Christmas—the type I used to love when I was little. I know for a fact that you can’t get them down here in the city; I hunted for them for months after I was first deployed.

I hand her the chocolate bar along with the doll and then back slowly away. I’d like to pretend I maintained eye-contact the whole time out of distrust, but the truth is, I don’t know if I could’ve looked away from those gorgeous, color-shifting eyes if I tried.

It’s Christmas Eve. Live and let live.

“I didn’t see nothing,” I tell her, smiling so she knows it’s no big deal. “Merry Christmas.”

Without another word, I break away from her intense gaze and hurry back the way I came. I can’t let myself be seen with a civvie, especially not one I’ve just let steal extra food, and I sure as hell don’t want her to feel like she owes me anything. The civvies have it hard enough, and they don’t owe me shit.

The woman’s blue-green eyes burn holes in my mind as I head back toward the ration lines, and even though I tell myself not to, I look back over my shoulder.

The street is dark and empty as if she’d never even been there.

Chapter Three

Bindi

I’m most of the way down the A line tunnel when I hear a noise from up ahead. A scrabbling of claws on the wet gravel ground. My eyes squint into the darkness and I freeze mid-stride, clutching the ration packages back at my hip so that I can pounce if I need to. Nothing emerges.

I sniff, but the air in the abandoned subway system is stale with rat droppings and rotted sewage and I can’t smell anything more than twenty feet away without wanting to gag at the stench, even in human form. I take another step and hear the noise again.

This time I see them.

Three pairs of eyes blink at me from the darkness, and in a second the monsters come pouncing out of the shadows.

“Eee!” I pretend to fall backwards as the two bobcats and the small fox barrel into me.

“Get off of me, you little monsters!” I’m laughing, tickling their furry bellies, and we all tumble to the ground together in one happy pile of rowdiness. Even though it’s cold down here, a nice warmth moves through my body as the kids nip and growl in fun.

Lily shifts back first, claws retracting, shaking her white-blond hair out of her eyes.

“Bindi, what did you get us?” She pokes at the rations packages with one finger. She’s too shy as a teenager to show her excitement but too young to hide it completely. Her arms are crossed over her chest, and I realize for the first time that the kids are growing up. They won’t be able to run around naked for much longer, shifting back and forth. They’ll have to pick a form and stick to it. For some reason, that makes me sad.

“Not now,” I say. “Let’s get back to the den first. You guys must be cold.” We’re far enough up the A line that I don’t think the soldiers will be patrolling, especially not with the crowds of survivors they’re watching downtown. Still, I’d rather be back in the den and safe with the kids.

“Three packs!” Logan has shifted back too, the mirror image of his twin sister, and he’s already digging through my pouch. “Did you get any more copper wiring for my projects?” I slap his hand away playfully before he can get to the pocket where I’ve hidden the rag doll.

“Cut it out,” I say, darting a quick glance down at Kit. Her fox snout is up, sniffing the air, her tail flicking back and forth. “There’s a secret present in there for you-know-who.”

Immediately she shifts back to girl form, wrapping her thin arms around my leg.

“Bindi! Bindi! A present? Really?!”

I tousle her hair. Even in the dim light of Logan’s makeshift lantern I can see her curls, bright red and frizzed beyond belief.

“Only if you promise to behave,” I say. “And if you help me make Christmas dinner.”

“I will, I will!” The boisterous eight-year old shifts back into fox form and bounds forward into the darkness, jumping off the sides of the wall. I’ve never seen anyone who can shift as quickly and easily as she can. It must be because both her parents were shifters. It’s a shame they didn’t get to see their little girl grow up.

“What is it like over there?” Lily asks me. “Did you see a lot of survivors?”

“Lots,” I say. “Hundreds and hundreds. It was like in the old days, when you couldn’t even move on the sidewalk without bumping into people.”

“Wow,” Lily says softly, and I know she’s trying to picture a street full of people. But she never knew what it was like in the old days, before the war. She was too young when it happened to really remember.

“Lots of soldiers, too?” Logan asks. “Kit, quit it!” Kit is jumping between Logan’s legs, trying to get him to trip over her. She darts away and rolls, ears over tail, somersaulting and then jumping up at Lily. Lily catches the little fox easily in her arms and Kit cuddles against her chest.

“Too many soldiers.”

“How many do you think there are? Like, total?” He’s frowning, and in front of me I see Lily’s jaw tighten. She looks ahead pointedly.

“Too many,” I say again. I know why he’s curious, but I don’t want to encourage him. No answer I give him will bring his parents back.

Darkness clouds my mind. There is too much death here in the Laz, in the cold and radioactive city that used to be the center of the world. The topsiders still call it New York, but that city died years ago with the bomb. Along with my family. Along with everybody else’s families. There aren’t a lot of kids left anymore, topside or elsewhere. Nobody to protect them. Nobody left to care.

All that remains is the radioactive skeleton of a city: the Lazaretto Containment Zone.

“What did you guys do today?” I ask instead, hoping to change the subject.

“We made you something. You’re going to love it,” Lily says, her face brightening.

“Don’t tell her,” Logan says.

“I’m not telling her,” Lily says. “I’m just saying she’ll like it.”

“It’s a surprise,” Logan explains.

“I can’t wait to see it,” I say. I really can’t, especially now that I see how excited they are about showing me. I want to give them their presents right now, but it’s not Christmas morning yet. Kit’s ears perk up when Lily mentions their surprise, and now the small fox wriggles happily up to her shoulder and perches there, looking ahead to where our tunnel begins. I see a faint glow of light from the tunnel underneath the locked door.

Kit can’t wait any longer. She jumps off of Lily’s shoulder and races ahead to where the dark subway bends out and the entryway to our tunnel begins.

“Ow, Kit!” Lily says. “Wait for me!”

Lily shifts back into bobcat form, and Logan follows suit. They bound ahead and I follow slowly, the rations packages feeling light as air now that I am close to home. Lily is already tapping out the secret knock, and the door opens from inside where Nim must be waiting for us.

When I walk through the door and see what they’ve done, I gasp.

“Do you like it?” Kit says, skipping back and pulling me by the hand. I swear, the only reason she shifts into human form is because she can’t drag me around any other way.

“I love it,” I say, letting her tug me forward. Tears well in my eyes and I have to struggle to keep from crying. I let the rations packages fall to the ground. “I love it, Kit. I really do.”

The entrance to our den, once you get past the door, is a circular grate that used to let excess drainage flow through the subway system. The kids have strung lights all through the iron grating, from the floor to the ceiling, and covered them so that they shine in different colors. It’s glowing through the entire tunnel. It looks beautiful. It looks…

“It looks like Christmas,” I whisper.

I walk forward to get a better look. The bulbs are an eclectic collection of lights, some big, some small. There is a double set of lights that I see came from one of Logan’s old toys, an electric truck. He must have taken the headlights off.

Some of the bulbs have been covered with old wrappers - a pink Pepto-Bismol plastic bag, a green bottle. All of the colors twinkle and shine in the darkness of the abandoned drain tunnel. The lights themselves are strung together with copper wire wrapped in straws, hooked up to the generator.

“You wired all this, Logan?”

The bobcat twin is already getting dressed, pulling on his jeans quickly over his underwear.

“Yep,” he says sheepishly. “I know it’s kind of not the best present to make you go out to get the wires, but…”

“It’s beautiful. Who decorated the lights?”

“Me! Me!” Kit squeals, tugging an oversized sweater over her bare limbs. “Me and Lily watched to make sure I did it all right! And Nim went out to find more light bulbs that work!”

“Oh?” I arch one eyebrow over at Nim. “That so?”

Nimrah is leaning against the wall in a leather jacket he found down on one of the subway platforms, too cool for his own good.

He remembers the war. He was young, but he remembers. I can never keep him underground, even though we’re not safe to roam the streets here. The soldiers could always be just around the corner.

We try to be quiet when the soldiers are above us. Patrols come overhead all the time, but Logan has set us up a little lamp and a system of grocery store sensors so that whenever anyone ventures near either entrance - the tunnel or the ladder - the lamp flashes. It’s ingenious. I wonder, not for the first time, if Logan might have been a scientist or an engineer in this lifetime were it not for the disease that has made us all monsters. His future after the bomb struck was circumscribed by the arc surrounding the whole of New York City.

Strange. I always thought of New York City as a big place, but now that it’s emptied out it seems so small.

“You like it, right?” Nim says, pushing off of the brick wall. His hair is black, his eyes black. Unlike the rest of us, he seems meant to live in darkness. I have to remind myself that he’s a child still. Just a teenager.

“I love it.”

“I thought it would remind you of Christmas, maybe.” He affects nonchalance, but I can tell that under his practiced words there’s a current of nervousness. He wants to please me. All the kids do, but he’s older than the rest, and he’s beginning to get more familiar than familial when I’m around. I don’t know what to do about his crush on me, whether to squelch it or let it run its course. Or to wait.

“It’s wonderful,” I say. “Very Christmassy.”

I give him a hug. A motherly hug. His arms squeeze around mine, holding on for a split second too long. The warm pressure wakes something up in me, and I drive it back down. Not Nim. I can’t. I won’t.

“Let’s start dinner,” I say cheerily. I won’t think about it.

I walk under the grate and follow the others down to the den. The drainage tunnel we’ve set up as our home is in the shape of a long, lower-case T. The door and the grate lead into the tunnel, and at the end there are three little nooks we’ve curtained off for bedrooms. Lily and Kit share a room, as do Logan and Nim. I’m by myself in the middle, where the escape ladder is, and where the storm drain leads out to the sewer. It gets a bit wet, but only in the winter.

In the middle of all our bedrooms is a clearing big enough for us to live – a living room and kitchen all in one. It’s strange to think how this much space would’ve been a luxury apartment before the war.

Lily and Logan work side by side over the small electric cooktop that I helped Logan rig up last year. Lily watches the pan, searing the side of pork carefully. The pot of small white potatoes and carrots steams white and hot, and the Christmas lights color the steam, tinting it pastel shades of green and red. Logan stirs.

Kit is playing with her paper dolls. I kneel down beside her on the carpet, laying one hand on the back of her head, smoothing down her red curls.

“What are you playing at?” I ask.

“Princes and princesses,” she mutters, intent on the dolls and their journey.

The piece of leftover carpet stretches across half of the den, but right now Kit has decided that the shredded edge of the carpet is the forest in her paper figures’ kingdom.

“Still at princes and princesses,” Nim says. “When are you going to grow out of playing with dolls, Kit?”

“When you shut your butt, Nimrod.”

“Hush, both of you,” I say. “What’s their names? Your princesses?”

“This one is me,” Kit says. “Princess Kit.” The piece of paper is only slightly torn, but smaller than the others. I nod.

“And this one is Princess Lily. And Lily is married to Nim, and I’m married to Logan.”

“What?!” Lily and Logan both look up from the stove at the same time.

“What?” Kit asks.

“I am not marrying Nim!” Lily cries. Her face is flushed red, though Nim’s not even looking at her.

“Do you really want to kiss me, Kit?” Logan asks.

“Eww! Gross! No!” Kit says, throwing Logan’s paper doll at him. It flutters to the ground a foot away, and she picks it back up. “No kissing! We’re just married!”

“Oh, well, as long as there’s no kissing,” Logan says, and winks at us both. Kit sticks out her tongue at him and gives him a raspberry. I reach over and, with my fingers, go to pinch her tongue. She snaps it back in her mouth lickety-spit, as my dad used to say.

“What about me?” I ask her. “Who am I marrying?”

“No, silly, you don’t marry anyone,” Kit says, bringing out another doll that I suppose is meant to represent me, long black streaks of hair drawn down the paper. “You’re the queen.”

“So I rule the kingdom?”

My mouth still has a smile on it, but Kit’s answer has pierced me deeper than I thought such a small barb could pierce. She didn’t mean it, I say to myself. Of course she didn’t mean it. It still hurts.

“Yes. You rule everything. You’re the queen.”

“Well, if I rule the kingdom, I decree that we are eating Christmas dinner right NOW!”

Kit squeals and runs to the table to set out the cloth napkins and scavenged silverware. She places the settings carefully around the wooden circle. Nim sets out the water glasses while Lily and Logan spoon out portions of the ham and vegetables, and in ten seconds we’re all sitting around the low table, ready to eat.

I take Kit’s hand on one side and Lily’s on the other, and then we’re holding hands around the meal that smells better than anything we’ve eaten in the past year.

“Thank you, Lily and Logan, for preparing this wonderful dinner for us,” I say. “Thank you to Nimrah for getting the gas for the stove. Thank you to Kit for the beautiful lights.”

“Thank you to YOU for getting us food,” Kit says.

“Thank you all for another year together,” I finish. “I love you all.”

“Love you all,” Kit says.

“Love you all,” Lily and Logan say together.

“Love you all,” Nim says, and he’s looking straight into my eyes when he says it.

His black eyes are too dark for me to understand. Pensive, desirous maybe. I picture his body, strong and naked, the way it is after he shifts. Something catches in my throat and I cough to get rid of it. I know what he wants me to think, and I don’t want to think it.

The others fall to, digging into the hearty dinner, but Nim waits a moment before picking up his fork. My eyes move to my plate and I begin to eat.

“Delicious ham,” I say, after the first bite. “Perfect!”

“I want ham every dinner,” Kit says, shoving a fork of steaming meat into her cheek and talking all the while. “I want a ham as big as my whole plate!”

“I could eat a ham as big as this table,” Logan says.

“Remember how we got this table?” Lily said. “Nimrah was the one who found it.” She is cutting her ham delicately into little pieces with her knife. I don’t think she’s had a bite yet.

“I remember!” Kit scoots forward in her chair so that she’s sitting on the edge. “I remember! I remember Nim fell into a big puddle of poop!”

Lily’s face turns bright red, but Logan and Kit burst into bright peals of laughter. Nim leans back in his chair, a half-grin on his face. He’d lost the big wooden spool coming down the subway track as he rolled it down a slight slope. It had wobbled and dipped as it balanced on the subway track, and Nim had tried to catch it before it rolled forward into the sewage puddle ahead of them.

Of course, the spool had caught on one of the train ties and Nim had flown straight over it, landing headfirst in the muck.

“I would have caught it too, if you hadn’t been screaming at me so much not to fall in,” Nim says.

“I was trying to help,” Kit says.

“Hey Kit,” Logan says. “If I’m ever in a fight with a bear, help the bear.”

Kit scrunches her face up for a second before she gets the joke, and then she falls off of her chair in a fake agony of embarrassment. Then she scrambles back up and quickly goes back to eating.

“I was only little,” she says, twitching her freckled nose and taking another huge bite of potatoes.

“You’re pretty damn little now,” Lily says.

“Lily, don’t swear in front of Kit,” I say half-heartedly.

“I am not little! I’m eight! I was only seven and a half then!” Kit pouts for a moment, and then her face breaks out into a huge grin. “Nim smelled so much like POOP!”

“Stop talking about poop!” Lily cries. “It’s dinner time!”

“Hush,” I say, becoming aware of how loud we’re getting. “We shouldn’t shout here.”

“Hush,” Lily repeats. “It’s dangerous.”

“It’s okay,” Logan says. “Besides, we’d see the lamp flash if there was anything coming near us.”

“Is it still plugged in?” Nim asks, frowning suddenly. “I thought we unplugged it from the extension cord. When we were testing the Christmas lights.”

Logan blinks.

“Oh, I guess we did unplug the cord, didn’t we? Lily, plug the cord back in,” he says.

“Say please,” she says.

“Pretty please with a dingleberry on top.”

“Gross!” Lily crosses her arms.

Nim leans over and plugs the lamp into the extension cord. It flashes once, and everyone goes silent.

Kit’s eyes go wide and she brings the back of her hand to her mouth.

“Do you think—”

Another flash.

“Shh,” I say, and the air could shatter like crystal around us now, that’s how tense we are. The lamp is flashing, flashing. Kit sucks her pinky finger in terror. I can tell she’s trying not to whimper or give us away.

We’re all sitting completely still around the table when we hear the footsteps. They’re not overhead, though.

“They’re in the tunnel,” Nim mouths to me. I lean over and pull the plug from the generator. The Christmas lights turn off. The lamp is flashing like crazy. Logan’s sensors work, alright. I only hope they weren’t too late.

Then Nim pulls the lamp plug out of the extension cord, and we’re all plunged into darkness.

In the dark, I feel Kit take my hand. I reach out and grab Lily’s, and then we’re all moving backwards together, toward the ladder that will be our emergency exit if we need it. If they come in. I pray they don’t come in.

Normally we have time to move the furniture around, make the small enclave look uninhabited. Now, though, there are half-full pots of leftover food on the table. The stove is hot. There’s no way they could miss us, if they looked in through the door.

The unlocked door. Damn. I shake my head. We can’t risk locking it – the noise would give us away.

The steps are louder now, and I can make out at least three separate pairs of footsteps. Three guards. We could fight them, if we have the advantage of surprise. Or we could run.

The dim sweep of their flashlight comes in through the cracks of the entrance door. I look up, and although my eyes are already adjusting to the dark, I cannot see half as well as if I were in wolf form. In the dimness, I can only barely make out the ladder rungs.

The ladder goes up to an abandoned playground that people have been using as a dump yard, and our emergency exit is well-hidden under several layers of trash and junk. It’s unlikely that soldiers will be patrolling up there.

Of course, it’s unlikely for soldiers to be patrolling in the tunnels, and here they are. I can hear their steps coming closer, the hard soles of their boots clicking on the damp stone. If we try to escape, that would mean pushing open the ladder entrance, and that will be louder than any talking or laughter. And they would still be chasing us. We might escape, but then we’d have to find another den to live in.

I hope that they walk right past the side tunnel. I hope they never find our den.

Kit is breathing fast, and in my hand I can feel her claws beginning to extend and retract in pulses. I pull her to my chest and kiss her on the top of the head. If we have to run, she’ll be the first up the ladder.

The footsteps pause outside of the entrance, the flashlights swinging around and lingering on the door to our den. I hear Nim next to me shifting into panther form. He is breathing fast, too. I can hear it. I bow my head and prepare to shift if I have to.

I hate shifting. Well, no, that’s not the right word. I like being a wolf. I like having strong legs, being able to run. But down in these tunnels, there’s nowhere to run, and since I don’t do it very often, it hurts more.

Kit’s heartbeat is so loud I can hear it in my ears. Maybe it’s my heartbeat. I can’t tell.

The steps continue on.

I exhale. It’s a minute before we are sure they’re gone entirely. I let go of Kit’s hand and go to plug in the Christmas lights. They don’t look quite as colorful as they did before.

Logan plugs in the warning lamp. It’s stopped flashing.

We’re safe. I breathe in again, then out, regaining my composure.

“Are they gone?” Kit asks.

“They’re gone,” I say. Maybe another patrol will come, but for now we’re safe.

We finish dinner, but our conversation is hushed and careful. After dinner, I bring out the bar of chocolate.

“I knew it was the present! I smelled it!” Kit cries softly. “I smelled it when we were in the tunnel.”

“There’s another present for you yet,” I say, kissing the top of her red frizzed head. “This is dessert.”

“Another present?” Kit asks. The only remainder of the chocolate is smeared around the outside of her lips.

“Oh, I love chocolate!” Lily says. She inhales the scent of the chocolate deeply before taking a bite. We eat together, but nobody else says a word, too busy enjoying the luxury of the sweet dessert.

We go to bed early, and I pull my curtain closed around my cot before tucking myself in. It’s been a long day. Dead tired, I’m about to fall asleep when I feel a small hand tugging at my arm.

“What is it, Kit?”

“Can I sleep with you, Bindi?” she whispers. “I’m scared of the soldiers.”

“Of course,” I say. She shifts, her over-large sweater falling to the floor as she changes into fox form. Quick as anything, she hops into my cot, curling up against me. She whimpers a bit, and I stroke her soft red fur.

“Don’t worry, Kit,” I murmur. “They won’t come back tonight. You’re safe.”

I pet her behind the ears until she’s breathing deeply and regularly, her whiskers twitching slightly. I hope her dreams aren’t about patrol guards. I hope she’s dreaming about princes and princesses. I think about what she said: You don’t marry anyone.

I’ll be twenty years old tomorrow, and I’ve never even kissed a boy. Maybe Kit is right. Maybe I won’t ever marry anyone. Maybe I won’t ever kiss anyone. Or fall in love. A thin chill washes through me, and I pull the blanket in tighter, up to my chin.

“I will fall in love,” I whisper to myself. “I will kiss a boy someday.”

I’m thinking of Nimrah when I say it. It should be him, when he’s grown, anyway. It just makes sense. He’s probably the last shifter left in New York City that’s even close to my age. The other shifters I’ve met… well, most of them deserve to be called monsters. Nim is different.

But when I close my eyes, I don’t think of Nim. The face that flashes into my mind is that of the patrol guard, his golden hair shining under the topside lights of the Laz. His is the face that haunts my dreams tonight.

Chapter Four

Cage

The six soldiers approach, three on each side of the long, black box, marching in perfect unison. The red and white stripes of the flag—Ben’s flag—stand out in sharp contrast against the gleaming black wood.

Mother stands as still as a stone, not even blinking as they come closer and closer. She hasn’t said a word since we arrived—not that there’s anyone else to speak to. Even though the whole town’s here today, it still feels as if they’re a world away. In my mind, it’s just us, my brother Ben and the minister.

And… and Ben’s gone now. That’s his coffin they’re marching slowly toward the deep hole we dug for him. That’s his flag—soon to be Mother’s flag—and in about ten minutes, it’s all that’ll be left of her oldest son.

He always said he’d come back for me after he’d served his term, but this ain’t quite how I envisioned it.

The coffin reaches the grave and the minister starts saying something. I can’t hear a word he’s saying, though… it all flies in one ear and straight out the other as my brain spins in place. The reality ain’t set in yet for me, but I know it’s going to hurt like hell when it finally does.

Mother still hasn’t moved a muscle and she’s clenching her hand so tightly around mine that my fingers are going numb.

The minister’s words are nothing but white noise now, wind rustling the grass as the soldiers slowly fold the flag. Ben’s flag.  He ain’t coming back, Cage. He ain’t coming back…

“Sorry about your brother, Cage,” whispers a boy behind me named Todd. I don’t answer him. I can’t.

Todd’s sixteen, I think—he’s a year behind me in school, or at least he used to be. He used to work the tourist circuit with me every summer. We lugged downstate tourists’ whitewater rafts and kayaks for miles on our backs along the river until the coal mine offered him a job last winter. He took the coal job and dropped out of high school, just like most everyone does around here.

Ben refused to let me take a mining job; he said it was too dangerous and that my job was to keep my grades up. Then I could get the hell out of Ontonwa Falls forever.

“How’d he get killed anyway?” whispers someone else from either a million miles away or maybe right next to me. I feel like everything’s spinning.

“They say it was monsters,” whispers someone else. “The City’s full of them now, and they ripped him to pieces or something. That’s why they ain’t done an open casket for him, ya know?”

I want to block out all the whispers and listen to my brother’s last rites, but somehow, the only person I can’t hear is the minister. It’s as if my brain’s inviting in every voice but his, letting each and every little rumor float into my head and stain Ben’s memory.

“No way,” titters someone else from off to my right. “It’s a closed casket because Ben ain’t got no skin anymore. The shifters wear their victims’ skin to hide themselves during the day.”

That last one doesn’t even make sense to me, but now I can’t block out the image of wolves tearing my brother to shreds, slowly peeling back his face while he screams in agony. A nearly uncontrollable urge builds up inside me to spin around and punch every last one of these stupid fuckers in the teeth until they shut up, until they run for the hills and leave me and my brother alone. I can’t do it, though—I’m pretty sure that I’m the only thing keeping Mother from fainting right now.

“And into your hands, oh merciful God, we commend your servant Ben,” continues the minister. “Accept into your arms a lamb of your own flock…”

A lamb torn apart by the wolves—slaughtered for nothing, not even devoured…

One of the soldiers hands my mother the flag while the others lower Ben into the ground, and as Mother lets go of my hand, something breaks inside me. I had the whole thing backward—she’s all that was keeping me standing. A strange panic rises like bile into to my throat as the black box sinks lower and lower, and I drop to my knees beside the grave as ‘Taps’ starts playing somewhere above me.

Ben’s all I had left and I couldn’t even keep him.

The buzzing in my head grows stronger and stronger until it drowns out the bugle, and my vision narrows until all I can see is Ben’s gleaming black coffin and the clumps of dirt raining down on it scoop by scoop.

I’ll kill all of them. I’m going down to that city and killing every last fucking one of them…

The first of three honorary volleys fires off in the distance, and tears blur my vision as reality finally sinks in. Ben’s gone forever, and everything we’d planned was for nothing. I was going to finish school and then we were gonna skip town together after his tour was up. He was saving up to start a business and I was going to help him with it.

It’s bad enough Ben’s gone, but why’d they have to bury him here? He hated this town and now he’ll never escape.

Mother’s hand presses gently on my shoulder as I stare down into the hole, but she’s not helping. I can’t breathe. I feel as if I’m going to suffocate as the dirt finally covers my brother and—

—and somewhere in the back of my mind, I suddenly realize I’m reliving the nightmare. I’m smothering myself with my pillow again.

I wake up on my cot and gasp for air as the nightmare fades around me. No matter how many times I relive Ben’s funeral, the pain never lessens—it’s still as real as the day they brought his remains home. I close my eyes and lie in the darkness, listening to the soft, somehow calming sounds of the soldiers—my new family—sleeping around me. My pulse slows to normal, but there ain’t no way I’m getting back to sleep now. The sheets are completely soaked with sweat and cling to my skin with every movement, and I feel like I could use either fresh air or a stiff drink.

I climb out of bed and throw on my fatigues, and then I tiptoe down the long line of cots. The red glare of the digital clock above the door burns 04:40 into my retinas the entire way. Out in the lounge, the grunt on night watch is lying on the couch with his feet up on the armrest. He snaps to attention and salutes, trying to pretend he wasn’t just dicking around with a comic book. I return an exhausted salute. I’d chew him out on any other day, but I’m too tired right now to care. Instead, I keep going straight past him, past our makeshift mess-hall in what was once an executive break room, and out into the stairwell.

If there’s one thing that’ll wake anyone up, it’s climbing fifteen flights of stairs. I sure as hell ain’t enjoying it, but by the time I’ve huffed and puffed all the way up to the roof access door, my head’s as clear as ever. The rusty hinges squeal in protest as I shove the door open, and I slip out into the cold morning air.

I may be a bit of a country boy at heart, but I’ll tell you one thing: I’m never gonna get tired of the view from up here. The city feels like it goes on forever, a speckled checkerboard of light and dark thanks to limited electricity. If it wasn’t for the winter haze, you could probably see Ground Zero from up here, the deep, black-charred hole where the first bombs struck. Tonight, though, the city just fades to a deep, midnight blue on the horizon.

“What, you ain’t sleeping either, Cage?” asks a soft voice from my left, and I nearly jump out of my pants in surprise. About fifteen feet away, a short blonde leans out over the railing with her arms crossed before her. It’s Emma, a second lieutenant in the Alpha Platoon.

Shame on me not checking my surroundings, but she scared the shit out of me.

“You shouldn’t be awake either, Emma,” I answer gruffly. I’m not very good at avoiding questions, and she sees straight through my non-answer.

She cocks her head to the side and raises one eyebrow as she looks me up and down, and then she grins, pushes off the railing and saunters over to me.

“My excuse is the snoring and I’m sticking by it,” she says, leaning in so close to me against the railing that I can feel the heat radiating from her skin. “What’s your reason, or do I need to play twenty questions like last time?”

I shuffle a few inches to the right and put a little space between the two of us before answering.

“Thinking about Ben again. More of the usual.”

She nods and then turns away, staring down at the city as her shoulder-length blond hair dances on the wind. I try not to be too critical of military management now that I’ve gotten a taste of how hard it is to keep the grunts in line, but some administrator seriously screwed up when he deployed Emma with us. Not only is she the only woman in our pathetic excuse for a company, but she’s just barely eighteen and so thin that I could pick her up with one hand. I’ve seen her handle a rifle during training exercises, and she’s living proof that even the best stance in the world won’t help when you’re too light to stop the recoil. What sort of madman thought it was a good idea to send a frail young girl into the Lazaretto Containment with a bunch of unruly grunts like us?

“I’d ask if you want to talk about it, but I already know the answer,” she says, still not looking at me. “Eventually there’s nothing more you can say, is there? You just want it to end so you can move on, but it keeps on hiding inside and waiting for you to let your guard down, doesn’t it?”

And there’s why Emma doesn’t belong here, I think. She shouldn’t be here because she’s too damned smart to be stuck at Ground Zero. She should be off working as a psychiatrist or something, not stuck here in hell with me. I’m here because my big plans all died along with Ben, but why on earth did she join up?

I just nod back to her and stare silently out over the city. She’s right as usual—she’s heard Ben’s story plenty of times. The show’s over and there’s nothing left to talk about.

“I probably ain’t supposed to ask this, but why’d you sign up anyway?” I finally ask after what feels like forever, and for a brief instant, Emma’s face hardens into a grim mask. Before I even know what I’m looking at, though, the emotion’s gone and the lost little girl is back.

“You’re from upstate too, right?” she asks, glancing in my direction before returning her gaze to the darkened streets below.

“Yup. Ontonwa Falls,” I answer. Emma’s from some podunk little village a good fifty miles north of my hometown. I forget the name, but the town’s so small that Ontonwa is like a boomtown in comparison.

“Then you know what it’s like.”

I sigh and shake my head, and my breath crystallizes in the freezing night air. I may be from upstate, but I ain’t psychic and I have no idea where she’s going.

“Pretend I ain’t from up there,” I tell her. “Imagine I’m some stupid city-boy from SoCal or something and explain it in my language.”

“You? A SoCal city-boy?” she snorts. “Might as well tell me to pretend you’re a minotaur or something, Cage.”

“Would it help if I mooed?” I ask with a grin, and she doubles over the railing in a fit of laughter. I don’t think my joke’s quite as funny as she seems to, but I’ll take it wherever I can get it. The frozen cloud of Emma’s laughter quickly disappears into the night, and she rolls her eyes at me before answering.

“Cage… what’re all the girls from your high school up to these days?”

“Dunno, really. Haven’t given them too much thought lately,” I answer, shifting my weight back and forth from foot to foot as I lean over the railing beside her. Somewhere off in the distance, a car alarm goes off. The apocalypse came and went and people still ain’t learned how to shut those stupid things off.

“Any of them make it out?”

Out of where? Oh, I see where she’s going now. I shake my head.

“Nope. Last I heard, pretty much all the ones I knew from my class are still in Ontonwa.”

“Exactly! You think it’s hard for guys to get out? Take a look at us,” she all but spits at me. I don’t think the venom’s directed at me, but I still take a step back to keep a respectful distance. “We all end up stuck there doing whatever the hell we can to make ends meet. Strippers maybe, married to our old high school sweethearts if we’re lucky, probably mothers by nineteen…”

“It ain’t that bad, Emma,” I protest, but I already know I’m full of it. She rolls her eyes at me again and scoffs.

“It is and you know it, Cage,” she says, looking me straight on with a fire in her eyes I ain’t seen before. “You wanted to know why I’m here? That’s why. I’m here because it was my only way out.”

She turns away again, her anger spent, and all I can do is lean against the railing beside her in silence. Damned if I know what to say to her after something like that… you and me both, Emma? No, it ain’t really both of us. I could’ve worked in the mines if I stayed, but they would never have hired a tiny thing like her. She’d have ended up trapped and helpless just like everyone else.

The one thing I can honestly tell her finally comes to me.

“Sorry.”

“Ain’t your fault, Cage,” she says, still not looking at me, and silence takes over again. Now her story’s told, too, and there really isn’t anything left to say.

Emma shivers after a few minutes, or maybe more. I have no idea how long we’ve been standing out here in the cold, and I only just now realize she’s not wearing a coat.

“You want to head back in? You won’t be much use if you get yourself sick, Emma.”

She shakes her head. “No, not yet. Still need some time to think.”

“I thought you said the snoring kept you up?”

“Sure… let’s go with that,” she answers, shooting me a thin-lipped smile. “It’s as good an excuse as any.”

She looks disappointed that I don’t follow up on her invitation to talk more, but one, I ain’t a junior psychiatrist the way she is, and two, I’m her senior officer. I stepped over a line by even telling her about Ben in the first place, and I have no business treating her like anything more than a soldier. She’s too… damned if I know what it is—young for me, maybe? No. That’s not it. Innocent?

Fragile. That’s the word I’m looking for. Even if I wasn’t her senior officer, it’d never work because I just can’t see myself ending up with someone I have to protect all the time. No way in hell I could deal with that. I can barely deal with protecting my platoon.

There’s one thing I can do, though. I take my coat off and drape it gently over her shoulders.  The cold wind stabs bitterly into my exposed arms, but it’s still worth it. You’d think I gave Emma a kitten judging by her smile.

“I’m gonna try to get some sleep,” I say, patting her on the shoulder as I turn away. “Just toss the coat on my trunk when you come in and I’ll grab it in the morning.”

“Sleep tight, Cage,” she tells me, and then as I head for the stairwell, she calls after me.

“Hey, Cage?”

“Yeah?” I look back at her over my shoulder.

She opens her mouth to speak, but then shakes her head and turns away again.

“Thanks for the coat,” she says, sounding almost as if she’s ashamed of herself or something. I stare back at her for a long time before answering.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing,” I tell her, and then I step inside out of the cold and close the door behind me.

Fifteen flights down… tiptoe past the sleeping soldiers… and into bed again. The clock reads 05:45 now, and I’ve still barely slept a wink. At least it’s Christmas and we’re getting the day off. I’ll have plenty of time to catch up on my sleep—it’s not like I have anywhere else to go.

This is my second Christmas in New York. I can’t believe I’ve been in this awful city for two years now. What the hell am I doing?

Spinning my wheels? Surviving? Trying to make up for Ben?

None of the answers seem to fit tonight. I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m too tired to worry about it anymore. My eyelids flutter shut and I finally fall asleep.

Merry Christmas.

Chapter Five

Bindi

The patrol guard stops me again as I go to leave. He turns me around. Again I see his eyes like yellow bismuth twinkling under the fluorescent lights of the military grid. This time he doesn’t let me go.

This time he kisses me.

Twirling in a slow embrace, my movements seem impossible to prevent. My hand pushes against his chest, but not unwillingly. Lips hotter than the sun seize mine, and I am dizzy with pleasure. A sweet ache works itself through my body until I am arching against him, and then we are kissing, kissing, and I never want him to pull away. I know in his arms I am safe.

Something falls out of my pouch. The rations. He pulls back and I see a flicker of doubt in his eyes. Then his face begins to shift, to morph into a kind of creature I’ve never seen. His nose pulls back into a snout, and he grows even bigger. He looks down at me in terror and anger, and I know somehow that it’s my fault that all of this is happening.

All my fault.

He’s huge now, furred and fanged, and his claws pull me back toward him, closer, closer, until his hot breath puffs out through his sharp teeth. Then...he roars.

I jerk out of my fantasy with a start and tear the covers off of my shoulders. Too hot. Kit, still curled up next to me in the cot, flicks her tail once but doesn’t wake up. I’m panting with an embarrassed mix of desire and fear.

It stings me that I can’t control my thoughts. Even my fantasies end in nightmares.

Patting Kit’s furry fox head, I whisper soft things until I know she is sleeping soundly. Sweat has dampened my clothes, and as I pull the blanket off of me, the cold chill of the tunnel makes me want to snuggle back up with Kit and sleep until morning.

But today is Christmas, and I am Santa Claus.

I tiptoe to the stove where I left the pack of rations and pull out the small ragdoll with red hair. Kit should love it, even if one eye is a bit torn off, dangling by a loose thread. I think that maybe I should fix it but I don’t know where Lily keeps her sewing stuff. Oh well. They’ll have fun fixing it together. I wrap the doll in a piece of colored cloth and tiptoe back to the cot.

Kit’s paws are twitching, and I hope that her dreams end better than mine do. Slowly, trying not to disturb her, I tuck the wrapped doll at the bottom of the cot so she will see it when she wakes up.

The other presents I have hidden in a bag next to my cot. For the past two months, I’ve been on the lookout when I go topside for food. Sometimes I scavenge through dumpsters to see if there’s anything that the other shifters have missed. I try not to tread into territory I know is dangerous. There are monsters living in the Laz, and they’re not all animals.

I heard of a human gang living in a brownstone in Washington Heights who would shoot any animal that came down their street. Just snipe them from the window. I don’t ever go out in animal form anymore, even though it would be faster.

Still, I’ve found some treasures apart from the old bags of beans and rice. That’s what’s normally left in the emptied out apartments. But sometimes I get lucky.

For Logan, I have a little box filled with tools that I’ve found over the past months. Two screwdrivers and some screws; a pipe wrench; plenty of wiring from a computer I found shattered in the middle of the street. Someone had thrown it out of a window. I put the toolbox at the foot of his bed where he lies sleeping.

For Lily, I really wasn’t sure. She keeps the tunnel clean for us, and does most of the cooking with Logan, but I didn’t think she’d appreciate a new scrubpad or whatever. Instead, I snuck downtown to the east side where the rows of boutiques used to tempt rich ladies into overspending. A brick through a window, and I was inside. I picked out a beautiful light green dress for her and some fancy underwear: two bras and a handful of silk panties with price tags on them that boggle my mind.

Now, I put the wrapped package of clothes on her bed and worry that I made the wrong choice. She’ll love it no matter what—Lily, sweet Lily, always wanting to please—but I hope that I have better taste in clothing than I think I do.

At Nim’s bed, I pause for a moment and watch him. He’s almost a man now, and not for the first time I wonder if we’re destined to be mates.

I don’t think he loves me, not truly. And I certainly don’t love him. But the kids need someone to look after them, and if I ever were to get caught...

Not now, though. Maybe not ever. Nim turns in his sleep, the blanket falling off of his shoulder to expose his bare chest. His body is strong and able. He is a born fighter. I worry that he will go out looking for fights if he doesn’t have someone to come back to. I don’t want to lose him. I worry what it will take to keep him.

He’s so tall that his feet hang off the edge of the cot. I put the small square package next to his bed instead, so that he won’t knock it off. Not that it would break or anything—it’s just a book.

I check the clock. There’s plenty of time before the kids will wake. I put on my shoes and pull on a jacket. Slipping out of the tunnel, I close the door behind me. I walk quickly up the tunnel, trying not to step in the puddles as I go. I don’t have the lantern, and the tunnel is black as night until I’m around the bend.

The far side of the tunnel opens up into a subway stop, and I pull myself up on the train platform. All of the subway stops have been boarded up, but here there is one board loose and I’m able to squeeze through without breaking it. The last thing I want is to attract attention to the tunnels we’re hiding in. Likely as not, it doesn’t matter. Likely as not, they already know we’re somewhere down here.

Why else would they have sent out a military patrol last night, on Christmas Eve?

I run lightly through the empty streets. The sky is turning gray with the incipient dawn, but it’s still cold when I get to the edge of the river boardwalk. My breath comes out in white puffs. I look around but there are no patrols, and it’s too dark for humans to be coming out of their homes. After all, there are monsters prowling in the dark.

I wait, watching across the East River, and then the sun rises.

The sun breaks over the Macombs Dam Bridge. Or what used to be the bridge. The military blew up the middle of all of the bridges so nobody would escape from the city.

The whitewashed steel bracings of Macombs used to arch majestically across the entire river. Now the middle of the bridge is gone and the cables dangle crooked and useless. The steel is charred and twisted. The sun comes up through the middle of the gap, silhouetting the snapped steel tendons of the bridge.

The water flickers with light. The East River is cleaner now that everybody is dead in New York, and nobody to spill oil or gasoline into it. Ripples turn red and orange and white with the rays of the sun. The edges of the river are crusted with black ice. The ice reflects the red light of the sun, and for a second it seems to be a river of blood, but then the sun heaves up over the bridge and the red is gone and there’s only white, white light reflecting off of every bright and gleaming surface.

Ducks paddle around under me, hoping for bread even though nobody has fed them for years.

I close my eyes and feel the warmth spread over my skin. The rays lick my nose, my ears, my neck. I pull off my jacket to feel the sun on my arms. It’s cold, very cold this morning, and there’s frost on the ground, but I don’t care. I open my arms and let myself breathe the warmth in and out with my whole being, ignoring the goosebumps on my skin. Looking again up the river to the bridge, I smile in the silence.

My present to myself is this: a Christmas morning sunrise.

The siren breaks the morning air, wailing over the river. The ducks startle away, paddling out to mid-river. I snap my head around to see if there’s a patrol nearby. None that I can see. The siren rises to a high pitch, and my heart beats fast as I realize that it’s coming from farther west. They’re doing another raid. And from the sound of it, the sector they’re gunning for is the one right over our den.

I run.

Chapter Six

Cage

“Attention!”

I snap to attention at the head of my platoon and salute as the Major arrives at exactly 0800 hours. It’s Christmas morning and even though the troops are all supposed to be on leave today, he’s ordered us to report for duty. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last four years, it’s that you do what the Major tells you to do, period.

Major Harkut is a good twenty years too old to still be in his current rank, but even the first time I met him, something about the way his eye right eye twitched as he looked me up and down told me everything I needed to know.

He’s still a Major at his age because he’s insane.

Not strait-jacket, padded-room insane, mind you… a different, more dangerous type. He’s the type of insane who would knowingly send a company on a death mission if it’d advance his cause even the slightest bit, casualties and morals be damned.

In other words, he’s exactly the sort of crazy person the Lazaretto Containment needs right now.

“Captain Jones, at ease,” he barks. I relax my posture and approach him as my platoon watches on, my breath shallow in my chest. He’s my commander and I’d obey his orders to the end of the world, but I’d be a liar if I said he didn’t creep me out a little.

“Jones… were you briefed on today’s operation?” he asks, lowering his voice as he looks up at me. I’m a big guy—6’2” and 230 pounds—but something about Major Harkut’s confident glare tells me he ain’t cowed in the slightest. He’d break me in half in a second, given the chance.

“No, sir.”

“We’re retaking the Harlem Sector at noon today,” he tells me. “Radiation levels came back low enough that Central Command’s declared it salvageable. Platoon Alpha will be accompanying the engineers and protecting them while they evaluate functional infrastructure, Beta is covering Amsterdam Avenue, and…”

I nod silently, hanging onto his every word as he points at the enormous map of New York City plastered on the wall of the barracks. The Harlem Sector encompasses the territory between 125th and 175th up along the Harlem River, and, at least according to this map, the area we’re going into around 155th Street is densely packed with civilians.

“Sir,” I interject as he pauses to take a breath, “may I ask what we’re doing about the civilian population?”

He shoots me a long, almost disdainful stare, and then he turns back to the troops.

“Men… this little patch of sunlight is our target today,” he announces. “Harlem Sector—memorize it, because you’re all going in today. We’re taking back the functional infrastructure, salvaging whatever we can, and establishing a permanent presence in the area. Any objections?”

“No, sir!” shout two-hundred soldiers in unison, their voices so loud in the cramped barracks that my ears ring.

When the troops finally go silent, I clear my throat and speak up again.

“Sir… the Harlem Sector is heavily populated,” I repeat. “What are your plans for the displaced civilians?”

I point at the highlighted rectangle on the map from 155th to 160th street—a tiny yellow island in a sea of red—the one safe haven for civvies in a sector teeming with shifter scum. “If we push them out, they don’t have anywhere to go. There’s no functioning water or sewage for thirty blocks in—”

“Fuck the civvies!” interjects a grunt in the second row of the Beta platoon. “They ain’t much better than the shifters.”

I’d swear you can feel the room ice over as the Major and I stare the boy down. Neither one of us is taking kindly to his little outburst, even if our reasons for being angry aren’t the same. The Major prizes discipline and he’s clearly pissed at the breach of decorum, but me… I’m more concerned that we’ve got a psycho who doesn’t care about the people he’s supposed to be protecting.

“Do you want to do the honors, or do I deal with this one, sir?” I whisper to the Major.

“I leave it to you, Jones.”

“Soldier… step forward,” I bark, and the lines part as everyone backs away from the stupid shit until he’s standing alone in the center of a lonely circle. He doesn’t look too sure of himself anymore, and he nervously comes to the front of the room.

“What’s your name, soldier?”

“Johnson, sir,” he mumbles.

“Johnson, huh?” I repeat, practically spitting sarcasm. “It’s a shame you don’t much care for the civvies, because you’re gonna be serving them meals for the next month. You will report to the Times Square kitchen at 1200 hours today, and if you skip a single meal, I’ll let the Major deal with you.”

“Sir—”

“Shut the fuck up, Johnson,” I snap, and he goes silent. “Now get your ass back in line.”

The Major chuckles behind me, and I turn to face him again.

“To answer your question, Jones… we’re going to be displacing them to the Park Sector North in Central Park by the Beta Platoon. There are limited facilities, yes, but more than enough room for everyone. Any issues, soldier?”

He stares up at me, and I can see the unspoken challenge gleaming in his eyes. He’s daring me to question his order again—challenging me to stick my neck out for the axe.

“No sir,” I answer, trying my hardest to keep my voice cold and calm. “I understand, sir.”

The Major nods, satisfied with my response, and then he turns back to the troops again.

“Soldiers, you will receive your assignments from your platoon commanders at 1030 hours today. Any civilians are to be corralled for relocation to Park Sector North. If they refuse to leave… well, I’ll leave it to your platoon commanders to decide how threatening they are, if you get my drift.”

“Sir, yes sir!” everyone shouts, the walls vibrating from the noise.

“Oh, and if you see any Contaminates… their elimination is, of course, a priority,” the Major finishes, crossing his hands behind his back.

Contaminate is the politically correct word for what we call shifter scum. Why anyone felt it necessary to sterilize the word for a bunch of filthy, murderous animals is beyond me, but I ain’t exactly a Washington politician.

“Troops, dismissed!”

The lines of soldiers break and everyone scatters to enjoy what little of their Christmas they’re going to get before this surprise operation. I bee-line for the balcony door—our barracks is on the twentieth floor of an abandoned skyscraper—and step outside into the frigid air to clear my head.

Those poor civvies, thrown out of their makeshift homes on Christmas morning. Cold. The idea leaves a horrible taste in my mouth, and I shake my head in disgust. It ain’t my call and it ain’t my say, but if it was… no way. It just ain’t right.

The girl’s blue-green eyes burst to life in my mind again, and my heart sinks even further into my stomach. What if she lives there? What if I’m about to throw her and her little girl out onto the streets? No… I can’t think like this. She ain’t my problem—she’s just a thief I let go free because it was Christmas Eve and nothing more.

Not like I’ll ever see her again anyway. I didn’t even find out her name.

The door opens behind me with a metallic clang, and I snap out of my thoughts and spin around. The Major nods in greeting and then joins me at the railing. I nod back to him as he leans over and stares down at the street below.

“You smoke?” he asks.

“No, sir.”

“All the more for me, then.” He pulls a cigar out of his inside coat pocket and strikes a match against a metal railing bracket. Within seconds, the sharp smell of tobacco fills the air and invades my nostrils. I’ve never been able to stand tobacco smoke, but I can hardly ask him to put it out, now can I?

“I wanted a quick word with you, Jones,” he says in between puffs. “It’s about the operation today.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Normally, I’d put you with your usual Gamma platoon,” he continues, “but today, I need you to change things up a bit.”

That doesn’t sound good. That doesn’t sound good at all. The Major continues.

“You’ve whipped those boys into a good bunch of soldiers, so I want you to go with Delta instead today.”

“Sir, with all due respect, Delta is…”

“…is a bunch of borderline retarded dumbfucks?” He finishes my sentence for me. It’s not quite the sentiment I’d have expressed, but it’s close enough.

“Something like that, sir.”

He chuckles and taps his cigar against the railing edge, watching as the ashes fly off into the winter wind.

“That’s exactly why I need you there, Jones. They’re too dumb to breathe, let alone make it out of this without killing either themselves or civilians,” he explains. “You’re going to be replacing their current commander while he undergoes some… let’s call it re-education… and your job is to make sure they don’t screw this whole mission up, understood?”

The absolute last thing I want to be doing on Christmas Day is evicting people from their homes with a bunch of dimwitted, undertrained grunts, but I don’t have a choice. His orders are final and I know it. All I can do is what I’ve always done: salute and say “Yes, sir” as impotent fury builds up inside me.

This isn’t what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re not supposed to be claiming the city for ourselves—we’re supposed to be protecting the civilians from the murderous animals lurking around every corner.

“Think on the bright side, kid,” the Major says, stubbing his cigar into the railing. The ash is black and gray, and some of it drifts out into the city. “Maybe you’ll finally get to kill one of ‘em.”

“Yeah,” I say, not looking at him. “Maybe.”

Chapter Seven

Bindi

When I get back to the den, the lamp is flashing wildly but everyone is still asleep.

“Get up! Everybody get up! Patrol coming!”

“Patrol?” Lily rubs her eyes as she sits up in bed, her sheets tangled at her feet. Her claws are out. “Where?”

“Sirens above. They’re doing a raid.”

“Are we shifting?” she asks. “Should we shift?” I can see her breathing faster as her claws extend, becoming more feline already.

“No, Lily. We just need to hide.”

Kit jumps off the bed and is back in human form before she reaches me.

“On Christmas? Why would they come on Christmas?”

“I don’t know, Kit. Quick, Logan, pack your things. We have to get out of here fast.”

“Take my things?”

“It’s a raid. We have to take anything we want to keep.” If they come down and find our den, I know that they’ll take everything. The stockpiles of food. The stove and all of Logan’s electronics. And if they find us, they’ll kill us.

“Where’s Nim?”

My eyes look around the den wildly, but I don’t see him.

“Nim?” Kit’s eyes are wide. “Uh oh.”

“Uh oh, what?” Logan says.

“Kit, where is he?” Lily asks.

“He said... he said last night he wanted to get a present for Bindi. Topside.”

My chest seizes up with fear. If he’s above ground, he’ll be caught in the net. And Nim can’t control his shifting, not when he’s angry. He’ll surely be killed if he’s found by the patrol.

“Topside?” Logan repeats. “Why didn’t you tell him not to?”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Lily says.

“He said it was a secret!” Kit cries, her lip quivering.

“Bindi, what are we going to do?” Lily asks. All three of them turn their heads to me. I’m the one who is supposed to have all of the answers. But right now all I can think about is Nim.

“Pack and get dressed,” I say. “We’ll head northward and hide in the sewage drain until we know it’s safe.”

“But Nim—“

“I know!” I whirl around to face Lily. She’s acting like she’s the only one who cares about him, and it isn’t helping me calm down any. “I’ll find him. You help Kit get ready.”

“I’m ready,” Kit pipes up. “I have my sweater and my present. This is my present, right?”

She’s clutching the wrapped doll to her chest. I nod, my mind racing. Where would Nim have gone?

“Logan, you’re in charge,” I say, as he finishes packing up the lantern in his pack along with as many cans of food as he can fit.

“Why is he in charge?” Lily asks. “I’m older than him!”

“By, like, a minute,” Logan says, rolling his eyes.

“Stop it!” I yell. The kids immediately shut up. Kit is crying quietly now, and I don’t have time to comfort her.

“Logan, you take everybody up to the sewer to the inside tunnel. You have your welder?”

He nods, his eyes wide with fear. He understands what I want him to do.

“Weld the grate shut. Stay inside until I get back. Don’t make any noise.”

“But you’ll be outside—“ Kit starts to say.

“Shh. Kit.” I bend down on one knee so I’m face to face with her. “You have to be brave for right now. I’ll be back and I’ll do the secret knock, and then you can open up and we’ll all be together. I have to go find Nim now.”

“But—“

I shake my head. Kit throws her arms around me, hugging me tighter than I thought her little arms could.

“I love you, Bindi,” she whispers into my ear.

“Love you too, Kit. Logan?”

“Come on Kit,” he says.

He grabs Kit’s hand and they go to leave, Lily alongside them with her pack full of food. Kit whimpers only once. She turns to look back at me at the door, her eyes filled with fear and sorrow. My heart aches to have to leave her, but she’ll be safe with Logan and Lily. Then they are gone, and I am alone in the den.

I climb up the escape ladder and shove my shoulder into the hatch. Crabgrass has grown over the hinge and it’s hard to push open, but once I do I am out of the darkness. The blaring siren fills my ears and I squint into the sunlight. They’re close, or they will be soon.

I have to find Nimrah.

I edge my way through the piles of junk and pick my way through the weeds and thicket that have grown up through the plastic, carefully replacing the bigger pieces of corrugated tin and torn plastic tarp. If I can keep them out of our den, we can wait it out and move back in after the patrol. But Nim...

Then, in a flash, I know where he is. There’s an art supply store down Amsterdam a few blocks away. One time I’d taken him out with me on a rations run, and we’d gone by the front window.

It was one of the few stores on the street that remained pretty much untouched by either shifter or human survivors. Who’s making art when everyone around them is dead, dying, or a monster? Not me. Not anyone. But I’d stopped in front, admiring the watercolor paints and brushes. Only for a second, but I’m sure Nim remembered.

I’m sure that’s where he is.

The sunlight feels wonderful on my face, but I can’t even pause to enjoy it right now. I am so frustrated that it’s day and not night. If I were under the cover of darkness, I could shift and run down the streets swiftly to Nim. Nim, my dear Nim.

As it is, I run calmly, jogging down toward the art supply store. To anyone looking, I might be out on an errand, a young girl trying not to be outside for too long.

Looking down Amsterdam, I see the awning over the store. The door is closed. And ahead, farther down the street, I see the patrol guard. More soldiers than usual, too—a good ten of them this time. They’re walking my way. My heart begins to pound, and I feel the points of my claws pushing against my skin to get out. I duck down next to a trash can overgrown with ivy and peer out into the street from behind the browning leaves.

Thankfully my vision is twice as sharp as any human’s. If they had binoculars, they might see me, but these soldiers are under-equipped like usual. If only a group of shifters would work together to stop them, we could. A single strong shifter could take out this patrol without too much trouble at all. I could take them out, maybe.

Stop it, Bindi. I shake my head, tearing my thoughts away. There’s no escape from the Laz, no matter how many patrols we could kill. They’d just send more and more to kill us, to drive us out of the holes we live in.

A movement through the store window catches my eye, and I look back to see Nim inside. He’s trying to open the door.

I wave my arms from behind the trash can, trying to get his attention, but he’s focused on the chain lock at the front door. At least he’s in human form. How did he get into the store, anyway? Go back out the same way, I think. Go back, Nim! Go back! Don’t—

He reaches back with his arm, and my pulse beats heavy in my veins. I can’t move, can’t attract attention, but he will be caught if I don’t. A sob chokes my throat and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know. I don’t know—

A crash, the sound of glass shattering and falling to the sidewalk. Nim jumps out after the glass, crouching on the sidewalk. He’s as lithe as a leopard, even in human form. I look up to the patrol ahead. They’ve seen him.

Before I can shout for him to come my way, he’s turned and started running away from the patrol.

I hope that they will let him go. He’s in human form, after all. Then one of the soldiers begins to run, then another, and suddenly the entire line of soldiers are racing after him. Nim ducks into the first alley across the street from me and most of the patrol run straight past him, but just as I’m about to let out a sigh of relief, the last two soldiers turn and follow him down the alley. As the last one turns the corner, I see him draw his gun.

No.

My body is hot with anger and fear, even in the chilly air. As quick as I can on human feet, I sprint across the street and into the next alley, hoping to find Nim before they can catch him. He’s one long block down, and I only hope that he’s coming my way.

By the time I reach the end of the alley, I’m having a hard time breathing. I want to shift but I know that would be even more dangerous, now that patrols are certainly in the area. I hear footsteps around the corner. A gunshot fires and the brickwork corner in front of me explodes into chips and brick dust, the echo of the shot ringing in my ears.

I scream.

Nim hears me as he comes running. I know he hears me. He knows my voice, and as a shifter, he can probably smell my scent. He angles his path into the alley I’m in. He’s partially shifted into cat form, and as he runs by, another shot fires. He jumps and he’s already a panther when his paws hit the wall.

He caroms off the side, pushing off of the brick wall, and jumps—jumps back—toward the soldier who is coming around the corner with his gun drawn. I feel Nim’s fear and smell the hot gunpowder. I scream again, and the soldier looks at me with wide eyes before Nim twists midair and pounces on him.

One swipe of Nim’s claws, and the soldier is down. His gun clatters to the ground as blood pours from the wounds in his face and neck. Nim is on him, paws pinning him down easily, and he goes for the last bite. The jugular.

“No!” I shout as Nim sinks his teeth into the soldier’s neck.

I shove Nim off of the soldier, and he snarls, looking up at me.

“Run!” I hiss, pointing wildly down the short alleyway. I don’t know what I’ll do—how I’ll distract the other soldier, how I’ll explain. I’ve thought about attacking soldiers more times than I can count. But this is not what I want for Nim.

I never wanted him to kill. I never wanted him to be a murderer.

Nim is crouched low, his breath hot and white in the air. Blood drips from his claws and fangs onto the street. I feel his anger, his desire to kill. I know what he wants. He wants to protect me.

The man on the ground is gurgling, choking on his own blood. His hands move over his slashed throat helplessly.

I’m about to yell at Nim again, but the other soldier rounds the corner and sees us. His eyes dart down to his partner lying on the ground. I realize in an instant that it’s the man from last night, the patrol guard who gave me the chocolate.

Nim growls, his black fur bristling, his haunches tense. The soldier raises his gun, and fear tears through my whole body.

I throw myself at the soldier, coming up with a plan as I move.

“Help!” I cry out as I crash into him. I knock him off balance and his gun fires. I’m terrified that he’s hit Nim, but I can’t look back to see. My hands are against his chest, clutching at his arms.

The shock comes, again, through my body. It hits the soldier too, I can see it in his gold-streaked eyes. Something between us arcs hot and electric, and it makes me dizzy, but I can’t let him go. Nim needs to get away.

“Help me! Please!” I cry. The soldier finally gets his bearings and shoves me off of him, aiming his gun. I turn to look, fright choking me so hard I can’t breathe. But Nim is already at the end of the alleyway, darting off down the street.

The soldier kneels quickly at the side of the injured man. I don’t think he’ll live. Nim bit into him pretty deep. I watch him as he checks the dead man’s pulse, unable to stop myself from noticing his strong arms, his broad shoulders. I swallow my desire back inside. Now is not the time.

Then the soldier looks up at me, his face stricken with anger.

He knows. He knows what I am. I’m sure of it.

Chapter Eight

Cage

I have no idea what the Harlem Sector used to be like before the war, but it’s one hell of a shithole now that the war’s over.

New York City ain’t exactly famous for its nature, so seeing a place as overgrown as this area is… well, it just feels so strange compared to the area around my barracks down near Times Square. Thick ivy grows up the walls of the old brick buildings, insidiously creeping through broken windows and taking over the long abandoned apartments, and even the once-ornamental trees have taken on a life of their own. Their enormous roots rip through the sidewalks and tear holes in the already crumbling streets as they grow out of control along the curbs. Even the hedges decorating the tiny, iron-fenced yards tower over us now, gargantuan green monsters ten years overdue for a trimming.

I'd never admit it to my troops, but I'm really glad it's daylight right now. There could be shifters hiding all over the place up here and I'd never know it… not that I have a snowball's chance in hell anyway with this disgrace of a platoon.

"Stay in formation!" I snarl for probably the fifteenth time in as many blocks, and my ragtag bunch of Delta idiots hurriedly reforms their line. It'll disintegrate into banter and sightseeing again soon enough—you'd think these boys were a bunch of tourists or something. In a way, they really are tourists, though. They're so young that there probably ain't a single one of them that'd ever been to New York City before the war. I know I sure as hell hadn't.

I wonder what kind of infrastructure Central Command thinks they’re going to reclaim up here. This place is falling apart. I haven't seen a single person yet, thankfully. I don't want to be the one rounding up civvies and carting them off to Central Park on Christmas morning, so it's actually a relief to me that we've been assigned to shifter patrol. I'm going to just keep walking these boys in a circle until the Major calls us back to base.

We take a right turn onto 158th Street and carefully make our way straight down the middle of the empty road since the sidewalks here are too far gone to use. A grunt starts whistling in the back, and I belt him across the back of the head as I pass.

"Did I say you could whistle, soldier?"

"Um… no sir," he stammers, looking down at his boots and trying to match the rest of the platoon's cadence. It's a lost cause—it ain't like the rest of them are maintaining any consistent pace either.

"What's your name?"

"Private Briggs, sir."

"Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open, Briggs," I tell him. "Whistle again and there won't be anything left of you for the shifters when I'm finished. Got it?"

"Yes, sir." He swallows nervously, and I nod to him before continuing up the line to check on the other idiots I'm stuck babysitting.

I'd expected this area to be crawling with civvies after what I saw on the map this morning, but if they're here, they sure don't want us to know. I can't say I blame them, though… who'd want to deal with the military on Christmas morning? They're probably all inside with their families, sheltered from the harsh winter cold.

Man, this place creeps me out even in daylight. The bare, gnarled branches of the trees feel as if they’re reaching down, clawing at me, flailing hungrily as my platoon passes beneath them. I ain’t usually superstitious, but there’s no way in hell you’d get me out here in the dark. Not without my gun, at least.

My radio crackles to life every now and then with updates from the other platoons. They're finding a few families here and there, but so far, most of the buildings are completely empty. In my heart, I hope it stays like this and that there's nobody living here at all. I hope this whole damned sector's completely deserted so that we aren't wrecking anyone’s life on Christmas morning.

We loop around the block on 157th Street, and just as we turn onto Amsterdam to start our loop over again, a brick shatters the glass of a nearby shop and ruins our quiet, uneventful stroll through Harlem. A thin, almost emaciated looking boy with black hair dives out through the broken window with a bag of looted goods, and he immediately spots us and darts off down the street.

Before I can say anything, the Delta platoon chases after him.

I shout for them to stop and come to attention, but they ignore me. This is why Delta is the worst platoon to get stuck with: because I could beat them over the head with my orders and they still wouldn't listen to me. The Harlem Sector's all but abandoned—who cares what the boy stole? Looting doesn't matter anymore, but these morons are still chasing after him.

And this is how we all end up dead, my inner cynic chimes in, and I shake my head in disgust as I chase after my wayward soldiers.

The boy darts like an arrow down the street much faster than I'd expected given his bag of loot, and he’s easily outpacing my troops. I ain't the fastest guy in town myself, and I'm not going to be able to keep up with these idiots for much longer. I've always been more of the strongman type, better suited for barreling over things than dodging them. It made me a great linebacker in football, but it sure ain't helping me much today.

The boy ducks behind a dumpster and then darts to the left down an alley as the Delta soldiers run straight past him. The only one who notices is Private Briggs, and he breaks rank and disappears down the alley after the boy. Great. Now I have to choose between Briggs and the rest of my troops. I hate this platoon so much.

I choose Briggs. The others can take care of themselves, and even if they can't… well, I'll probably kill them for this when I next see them anyway.

The Harlem Sector was bombed twice during the war, and the wind's blown a decade's worth of thick, gray ash into the alleyway. The boy may be faster than I am, but there's no way he's going to shake me now since I can follow his footprints as clear as day. Briggs is getting winded, too, and I'm slowly making up ground on him.

The footprints veer to the right at the end of the alley and back out onto 157th Street again, and I sprint down the street after Briggs, who is just turning down the next alley over. I leap over an abandoned pair of shoes in the middle of the sidewalk and then do a double-take as I suddenly realize there's something very wrong with the footprints.

They’re not human anymore.

The familiar oblong shape is gone, replaced instead by the pads of an enormous cat. That skinny little boy is a fucking shifter… no wonder I can’t keep up with him.

My brain can't decide whether to scream in terror or laugh in delight, and it eventually settles on a grim, silent excitement. This is my chance. I'm finally going to put a bullet into one of the monsters that killed Ben.

A single gunshot echoes through the street, followed close behind by the sound of someone screaming in pain. While I’m standing here getting all excited, Briggs is becoming that monster’s lunch.

I pull out my pistol and sprint for the next alley. Major Harkut’s voice crackles through my radio, but I ain’t stopping to answer him now.

The first thing I see as I turn the corner is the enormous leopard sinking its teeth into Brigg’s throat as he screams. No… scream ain’t the right word anymore. The noise he’s making’s closer to a choked gurgle now, and I’m surprised at just how strongly the sound turns my stomach.

The second thing I see is the girl from the Christmas food line, and it’s as if time suddenly stops around me. I recognize the brown, hooded brown coat, the tuft of dark hair flitting out from beneath the oversized hood, the sleeves so long they cover all but her fingertips... my gorgeous little thief stands frozen in place as she stares in horror at the carnage, and if she doesn’t run for it, she’s going to be next on the menu.

“Jones? Report in, Jones!” The Major’s voice pops and crackles from the poor radio reception, and the clock restarts as the shifter’s gaze snaps upward from its meal to me. Thanks for all the support, Major.

I level my gun at the monster’s head, and it hisses at me as it crouches low to the ground, powerful muscles rippling beneath its black fur as it prepares to strike.

Think you’re so tough, huh? Let’s see you outrun a bullet, I think, and—

“Help me! Please!” screams the girl as she suddenly leaps into my arms, knocking me off balance and sending my bullet through a nearby window instead of through the shifter’s skull. My ears ring loudly from the gunfire, and as the girl clings to me, something strange, almost indescribable happens. In an instant, my body burns hot at her touch as impossible feelings burst to life in my head. I don’t know what’s happening to me, but there’s a fucking monster about to kill me and all I can think about is how… intoxicating… this girl smells. Killing the shifter isn’t about revenge anymore—it’s about saving a girl I don’t even know but who I suddenly want to protect more than anyone else in the world. What the hell’s happening to me?

You’re about to die, idiot!

The thought yanks me back to my senses and I shove the girl away from me. She stumbles and then falls to the pavement in an undignified pile of arms and legs as I turn my attention back to the monster, but the shifter actually ran for it rather than attack me. In the time it took me to break free from the girl’s panicked embrace, the monster made it to the far end of the alley. I take aim, but the enormous black cat darts around the corner and disappears from sight before I can fire. I shake my head in disgust and lower my weapon.

I stare first over at the terrified girl crouching against the wall and then down at Briggs’ lifeless remains bleeding out and staining the pavement red. The silence is so thick you could spread it on bread.

“Jones! Report in immediately!” Major Harkut’s voice pipes in over the radio, shattering the silence. I slowly lift the receiver to my mouth.

“Captain Jones reporting. Contaminant encounter with Delta patrol. One man down, plus found a civilian,” I say. “Civvie’s safe. Private Briggs is dead.”

The radio goes silent for a moment, presumably the Major forgetting to hold down transmit as he swears at me in fury. He does that sometimes.

“Are you okay, Miss?” I ask, turning back to the girl. She’s staring off down the alley, watching the ash-gray leopard prints disappear into the distance, and she startles at my question.

“I’m okay,” she answers. She climbs to her feet and wipes the ash off her brown coat, her grimy hands little cleaner than the pavement itself.

“Do you have enough men to clean up the mess?” asks the Major. By mess he of course means Briggs, and if he wasn’t swearing at me before, he’s definitely going to now.

“Sir, Delta broke ranks chasing a looter,” I answer. “They ignored orders and scattered. I have no men at all—just a civvie.”

The girl scowls at me and I scowl right back at her. It’s her fault I don’t own a leopard skin rug now. The radio goes silent for a minute, but the Major is surprisingly civil when he speaks again.

“We’ll call the rest of your boys in and deal with them when they get back to base. Clean up the mess as best you can and then relocate the civilian to Park Sector North. Understood?”

“Forget it,” interjects the girl, stepping back from me and crossing her arms. “I live here and there’s no way you’re…”

“The civvie’s putting up a fuss over here,” I tell the Major, ignoring the girl’s outburst. “She doesn’t want to go.”

The girl shakes her head, the comically oversized hood flopping back and forth against her face. She takes another step back, tensing up as if getting ready to run for it if she needs to. Where’d her cane go, anyway? Last time I saw her, she had a noticeable limp and a metal cane, but she’s clearly as healthy as they get now. It was probably part of her disguise to steal food.

“Was that the civvie I heard in the background just now?” asks the Major.

“Yes sir.”

“We don’t have time to be dealing with insolent gutter scum,” he growls. “You sure she’s not going to come quietly?”

I glance over at the girl for confirmation, and she glares coldly back at me and shakes her head.

“Nope. She’s staying put,” I answer.

“Then I’ve got a change of orders for you, Jones.”

“Sir?”

“She’s radioactive trash just like everyone else in this city, and she ain’t worth the effort.”

“Sir?” I repeat, suddenly not liking where I think this order is going. I glance nervously over at the girl, her beautiful, blue-green eyes staring anxiously back at me.

“Shoot her.”

Chapter Nine

Bindi

Shoot her.

The words hit me in a sharp burst, echoing in my ears, and I am surprised by my own reaction.

I feel nothing.

The numbness flows through me and out, and a wash of sorrow takes its place and floods over into self-pity. How could I not pity myself? I am twenty years old today, and this is how I will die.

I could shift, of course. Try to kill this soldier standing in front of me. Try to run away. But I don’t want to be a killer, and I am tired of running.

Yes, tired. That’s it. I’m tired of all of this.

I look up at the brick buildings which seem to curve cavernous above us, although it’s well past dawn and the sky is a light gray; the clouds look like they’re glowing in the sky. The wind is blowing through the tunnel and I think of Kit and Nim, of the twins, of our den scraped out of a tunnel sitting under a pile of trash. I think of going home, and I am too tired. Nim can take care of them as well as I can. He will have to.

I find the soldier’s face in the blurred and dizzy world, and I fix my sight on his face, his eyes. Deep mines of gold. Summoning all my energy and will, I take a short step forward. He’s watching me intently, and I see the clockwork in his mind turning.

I reach out and touch his lips with my hand. The shock that runs between us when we touch is as thin and sharp as a knife’s edge. It subsides, but only into a heightened state of tension that keeps me on my tiptoes.

He breathes in, and I feel the rush of the chilly air come through my fingers.

My claws ridge the skin on the back of my hand as the energy flows through our bodies. It’s an electric hum, like one of Logan’s experiments strung across the tunnel, something that takes my body and pulls, stretches every nerve so that I am nearly vibrating with the strain of it.

I could do it now. He’s vulnerable. But I want him to know what’s about to happen. I want him to understand.

His eyes meet mine and I see the light dawning in the flecks of his eyes. The clouds have broken and the sun is shining gold in two perfect circles. His lips relax and he breathes out.

The warmth, oh, the sweet warmth of his breath on my fingertips. Tingling shivers fly through my fingers, my arms, my body. His body under my hand.

I push myself up on my tiptoes and let my hand drop from his lips, steadying myself instead against his chest.

Do it now. Don’t think. Don’t breathe. Do it.

Tears are running down my cheeks as I tilt my head back and press my lips softly to his. The earth trembles, or maybe it is the electric arc pulsing as we touch, and I press against him and - do I imagine it? - he leans into the kiss, and desire runs wild and hot through every fiber of my being.

The world is flying around us as he deepens the kiss and I close my eyes, seeing nothing but brightness. My mind is gone, erased with light. My thoughts whirl too fast to catch. The ache to touch him is so strong that I almost cannot will myself to hold back. I think that maybe I will kill him with this desire.

Then it is over and he has stepped back, and all that are left are the ghost traces of something alive but hidden, hidden deep down in the dark gap of what used to be my soul, maybe. I touch my lips in astonishment. This is a part of me that I did not know existed. I am elated, thrilled, ready for death and aching to live. My heart! It pulses in my chest so large and loud that I think I will die already here, before the bullets pierce me. Die of this ache. Let this desire within me swell and take me under the waves of it. Let me drown in this ecstasy!

My first kiss. My last kiss.

He raises his gun.

Chapter Ten

Cage

My hands shake as I raise my gun.

This is wrong. Everything’s wrong. It’s as if she flipped my entire world upside down with one kiss—one soft, beautiful kiss that left me neither breathless nor speechless, but instead did something far more dangerous.

It left a thought behind… one little thought, the most dangerous of all to an officer.

...the thought that maybe, just maybe, I’m wrong.

I have to obey the Major’s orders. There’s nothing left without order, and I can’t be the one to break file. She won’t relocate to Central Park quietly,won’t ever submit to the military’s demands—I can tell that in an instant—so I have to kill her.

My gun levels at her head as she kneels before me, eyes closed, awaiting the inevitable. Just pull the trigger and be done with it. Pull the trigger, Cage. Pull it and you’re done here. It’s so easy… you’ve done it plenty of times in training.

Plenty of times in training against monsters, not against gorgeous young women who just kissed me…

That’s why I have to do it. I have to shoot her because if I don’t, order is shattered and I’ll have ruined everything. I can’t let my confused emotions decide my actions.

I close my eyes, my teeth grinding as I try to pull the trigger. Just pull it!

I raise the gun above my head and fire straight up into the air, breaking a good ten gun laws in the process.

Her whole body convulses as the gunfire echoes deafeningly through the alley, and then her eyes fly open. She stares up at me in terrified incomprehension, and I drink in her gorgeous aquamarine eyes as I lift the radio to my lips.

“It’s done, sir,” I tell the Major. “Civilian’s down. Commencing cleanup.”

Lying may be a sin, but I bet God will understand this time. Even if he doesn’t… well, I bet it ranks a hell of a lot lower on the charts than the summary execution of an innocent woman.

“Okay, let’s get you somewhere safe. I ain’t gonna take you to Park Sector North, but the military’s reclaiming Harlem, so you won’t be able to stay here anymore.”

“No. I’m not going anywhere with you.” She shakes her head and looks away as she climbs to her feet.

Damnit.

“Look… just come with me, will you?” I ask as exasperation builds up inside me. “By this time tomorrow, Harlem’ll be crawling with grunts. It’s either relocation today on your own terms or relocation tomorrow on theirs.”

“I’ll take my chances,” she says, taking a step back from me.

“Are you crazy? They’ll shoot you!”

Just like I almost did before your eyes broke me…

“So shoot me first,” she says. She lifts her chin and stares up at me, her deep blue eyes boring holes straight through me as if they’re digging deep into the darkest recess of my mind. “We’re all dead here, anyway. Nobody escapes from this city. Not me… not you.”

She takes another step back, and somehow that second step finally gets the message through my head.

She’s not coming with me. She really means it. She’d rather take her chances out here with a damned shifter on the loose than end up corralled with the other civilians.

Either I shoot her or she goes free… and I can’t shoot her.

Sounds like she’s made up my mind for me.

I turn away and start walking toward the end of the alley, but then turn back to her again.

“Hey… before I go, do me one favor, okay?” I ask.

“What?” She raises an eyebrow inquisitively.

“Tell me your name.” I’ve wondered since the first time I saw her, and I’m not leaving without it this time.

The corner of her mouth turns up in the faintest hint of a smile, and then she pulls her hood down so that her face is masked in shadows.

“Bindi,” she finally answers.

“Good luck, Bindi. This is twice now I’ve let you go. I can’t do it a third time.”

She says nothing, and I quickly turn away and start walking.

She’s on her own now, I tell myself. She doesn’t need my help, doesn’t want it anyway.

How’s she going to make it in this sector? The military’s moving in tomorrow, and who knows what the grunts would do to her if they found her. Central Command ain’t exactly sent the best and brightest out here to Ground Zero.

She’s got a little girl, Cage.

I shake my head and keep walking. It’s not my problem anymore. I tried to get her to leave and she refused. Her problem now.

Right.

I keep walking. I’m almost to the end of the alley now. A few more steps and she’s out of my life… just like she’d have been out of my life if I’d pulled the trigger.

Ben would’ve knocked my teeth out twice by now for pretending this is her problem, for acting like this is her fault. She’s not the one evicting people at gunpoint.

Don’t look back at her. Don’t you dare turn around. She’s on her own now and...

I turn around.

I halfway expected her to be gone just like on Christmas Eve, but she’s standing tall, motionless, in the middle of the alley. Between her oversized, hooded brown coat and the shadows cast by the buildings, she looks like she stepped straight out of either a nightmare or a fairy tale, simultaneously both terrifying and beautiful.

A gust of wind blows through the alley and kicks up a thick cloud of ash, and I spin on my heels and hurry out back onto Amsterdam Avenue.

She’ll be fine on her own. I don’t know what’s got me so convinced, but I’m sure of it.

Chapter Eleven

Bindi

The soldier leaves, and I am alone in the alleyway. At my feet the puddle of blood is already clotting into a dark red.

I’m alive.

A noise shakes me from my stupor and I fall into a crouch. The rat jumps from the trash onto the cold asphalt and scurries away through a hole in the brick wall. Was it a shifter or not? I don’t know.

“You’d better be careful, little guy,” I say to the dark hole. Those unfortunate enough to shift into small animals get killed sooner rather than later.

Then I think of how close I came to death, and I laugh hoarsely.

I slink back to the subway entrance and walk up the dark tunnel, stepping along the train ties. I pass by the den and look in, but there is nobody there.

I walk on.

Down near the last stop before the tunnel splits off, I see the sewer drain just under a thin beam of light from above. The grate has been welded on, and the silver flashes bright in the light, the rays reflecting off of the watery ground here.

“Good work, Logan,” I whisper.

The dim light is surprisingly bright after the pure black of the tunnel. The beams of light take any chance they can to bounce, reflect, stay alive, before being eaten by the darkness.

I knock the special pattern on the grate. The sound echoes through the sewer. From inside the darkness I hear a low squeal, followed by hushes. Then the eyes peer out from the dark and Kit runs forward. I kneel down into the dampness.

“Bindi!” she cries. “You’re back! You’re back!” She flings her small arms through the sewer grate and I clutch her hands, kissing her tiny fingers.

“Thank god!” Lily says. Logan follows her forward with a huge smile on his face, and Nim follows silently.

“No, don’t cry, don’t cry,” I say, when I notice Kit’s sobbing. “We’re okay. It’s fine. Everything is okay.”

“I missed—I thought—” she whimpered.

“Are they gone?” Logan asks. He has a welding torch ready to go, and I nod.

“Yes, the sweep is over. We’re safe.”

“Come on, Kit,” he said, putting a hand to her shoulder and guiding her out of the way of the grate. “Let’s get out of here and back to the den, okay?”

“Okay,” Kit says quietly. Logan tousles her hair before setting to work, but her eyes never leave me.

“It’s disgusting in here,” Lily says. “Down at the bottom, it’s completely flooded. With shit.”

“Don’t say shit, Lily.” My admonishment is weak, and I can’t even pretend to care about her cussing. “Or else Logan will weld you back in for the night.”

“No!” Lily cries out, but a smile is cracking through her face already.

“I totally will,” Logan said. “You’ll have to sleep here. And your pillow will be a pile of poop!”

“Ewww!” Kit says, laughing. I’m glad he can make her laugh. It’s more than I can do right now. I feel so tired.

“We’ll be out soon,” Logan says, lowering his torch. “Like, maybe five or ten minutes.”

I look at Nim through the bars. He’s the only one who isn’t smiling, not even a bit. His mouth is pinched at the edges. He coughs, and swallows, and meets my gaze.

“How’s the guy?” Nim asks. His eyes flicker down to Kit, who’s sucking on her pinky finger. “The one I... the one I fought.”

My eyelashes flutter against my cheeks, and I can’t look at him. I press my tongue against the top of my mouth and take a deep breath.

“He’s fine,” I say. I can’t say anything more. My throat is closed tightly shut and I think I might cry.

***

Back in our den, in bed, I am lying back against the rough pillow. Kit is curled up against my side, her soft snout nestled in the crook of my elbow. She kicks in her sleep, and I pat her head absentmindedly.

Thoughts swim through my mind in the darkness, but when I close my eyes the only thing that I see is the face of the soldier, his light hair and golden eyes. I feel the press of his lips on mine, the hot taste of his breath, the electric ache that sent my body reverberating with desire.

I don’t know his name, and that’s for the best. I shouldn’t have told him mine. Dangerous, too dangerous. I promise myself to do everything I can to forget him. He is a soldier, and a human, and nothing but a threat to me and to my family.

But as I drift to sleep, my control weakens, and there is only one thought running through my mind:

I wonder if I will ever know his touch again.

***

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Be sure to find out what happens to Bindi and Cage next!

Shifting Fates Book Two: Uncaged

From New York Times bestselling author Aubrey Rose and Nadia Simonenko comes a darkly erotic shifter romance series that will thrill you like never before.

An unlikely shifter romance blossoms in the middle of a terrible war...

Bindi can’t stop thinking about the nameless soldier who kissed her and saved her life. She knows that he could never love her if he knew who she truly was—a wolf shifter leading a pack of shifter children. When she gets thrown in prison for stealing rations, she must decide if her freedom is worth telling the truth... and losing Cage in the process.

Cage has vowed to follow orders – that’s what a military captain does. But if the military’s orders are to kill a woman whose only crime is stealing food for her family, maybe it’s time to break a rule or two.

When Cage finally realizes the truth about Bindi, he must search his heart to forgive her. And when his own dark secret comes to light, it will change the way he looks at the world... forever.

From werewolves to werebears, this new book in the paranormal romance series Shifting Fates will take you on a wild and emotional ride that gets steamier with every chapter!

*** A Shifter Romance Series that will pull at your heartstrings ***

When he finally discovers her secret, Cage must decide what’s more important to him – finally avenging his brother, or saving the woman he’s come to love. And Bindi will learn a lesson about humanity... and about love.

***

EXCERPT:

His hand is so hot it feels like it’s burning. Almost unconsciously, I lean back into his touch, closing my eyes.

“You feel it too, huh?”

I can only nod my head. His fingers run along my shoulder, across my collarbone. Every place he touches tingles with an electric energy that I can’t understand. The desire in me knots up my chest and stomach. It twists me until I’m burning hot between my thighs.

One of his hands kneads my neck, his fingers massaging the tense muscles there slowly, deeply. My lips fall apart in a silent moan. It feels so good. Is this how it would feel, to have someone love me? To have someone there to protect me, cradle me in his arms?

His other hand is still moving, and I can only let out a small gasp as his fingers slip over my shoulder and run across the top of my chest, pressing lightly against my collarbone. Every touch is electric, and when I close my eyes I can see the shocks as he touches me, the sharp tingle that starts at my skin and runs down deep inside of me.

There. Spikes of pure white energy. They pulse in a soft static fuzz along the places his fingertips drag. They penetrate, moving along my nerves as he strokes me. White fireworks exploding in the sky behind my eyelids. Bright white shocks crashing through my system when he touches me with his thumb on the soft patch of skin behind my ear.

His fingers run up my neck. One finger brushes my earlobe and I shudder with pleasure. He takes my chin in his hand and tilts my head back toward him. I open my eyes and see him watching me with an expression that is predatorial, but, strangely, I don’t feel danger. I can see that he wants me just as much as I want him.

“Bindi.” His voice is raw with desire. “Can I...”

I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know what I want to happen. But I nod anyway. Tonight, after learning so much about him, I can’t help but give him my trust.

He turns me to face him, taking me in his arms, and he gently presses his lips to mine...

Available now!

Check out Aubrey’s #1 shifter romance series!

Blind Wolf

"I needed a story to get lost in and this was the perfect choice."

-Hermosa Writer

Julia has never been on a date in her life. She's a curvy girl with no money, no education, and no way out of the town she works in as a library assistant... until Damien shows up. He's just like the prince charming Julia always imagined would sweep her off of her feet. There are just a few things standing in the way of true happiness: he's blind, he's dating someone, and he's WAY out of her league.

Oh, and he's a werewolf.

Damien lost his eyes two years ago in a wolf battle. Ever since then, the straggler pack of disabled wolves he leads has been searching for a place to call home. One house seems like the perfect choice, but Damien realizes too late that the person who lives there is the girl he met at the library. The human girl. Damien is torn between loyalty to his pack and raw lusting desire for the girl who haunts his dreams day and night.

She's a human. How could she be his true mate?

From NYTimes and USA Today Bestselling author Aubrey Rose comes a new shifter book that's as wild and hot as anything. This werewolf shifter BBW romance novella is 25,000 words long, has some naughty language, and a lot of naughty sex. Be warned!

EXCERPT:

She stood up and so did he. He held out his hand and she pressed his palm in a handshake. Without letting himself hesitate, and buoyed by her warm response to his jokes, Damien raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss onto her fingers.

It was a mistake. The connection between them before that moment had been tenuous, if intense. He could feel the separation between her emotion and his, and could untangle them if he needed to. Now, though, with his lips against her skin, he sensed the passage between them open up, widen, and take over his mind. He could no longer tell the difference between a feeling coming from his own mind or hers, and her thoughts reverberated through him.

Not just emotions, this time, as he had sensed before. The emotions were there, to be sure: desire, curiosity, and a hint of fear. But his lips fell apart slightly and he breathed in a sharp breath as he now heard clearly the words that she was thinking:

...the one. He's the one. It's him...

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Chasing Wishes

"Sexy, gritty, dreamy and all around fantastic!"

-Helena Newbury, NYT Bestselling Author

For sixteen-year-old Nina Torres, it feels as if life is nothing but a dead end. Despised by her rich classmates and afraid that she'll become just like her drug-addicted mother, Nina's future seems to get dimmer every day.

There is one bright spot in her life though...

Sitting beside her one night, the only person in the world who cares about her makes a promise. No matter what happens—no matter how much Isaac's wealthy family disapproves—he and his girlfriend Nina will be together forever.

Fate plays a cruel trick on Nina, though, and a visit from Child Protective Services the next morning turns Nina Torres into Irene Hartley, a woman with a future but who will never see her beloved Isaac again.

Nine years later, a blind and incredibly handsome young entrepreneur hires Irene to be his personal assistant. Terrence Radcliffe reminds her so much of Isaac that she can hardly believe her eyes, and she's falling for him fast. Irene knows that fairy tales don't come true, but she allows herself one last wish. She wishes that she could finally say goodbye to Isaac and let herself take a chance on Terrence.

What she doesn't know is that Terrence is also searching for someone: a shooting star who streaked through his life nine years ago, and he won't give up until he finds her...

"I wish I didn't have to go home. I wish I was someone else—someone with a future..."

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The complete Aubrey Rose collection:

Me, Cinderella?

Broken Prince

Blind Wolf

Perfect Mate

Human Shifter

Alpha’s Child

Shifting Fates Book One

Shifting Fates: Uncaged Book Two

Big Girl Backstage Pass

Big Girl Going On Tour

Big Girl Rocking in the Sunshine

Big Girl Playing in Paris

Big Girl Proposal in Paris

Heartbitten

Jenny Rockfort: Secret Undercover Stripper

Jenny Rockfort: Secret Undercover Escort

Wilder Side

Rocking Her Curves: Asher and Trixie Book 1

The complete Nadia Simonenko collection:

Lost

Found

Chasing Wishes

Shifting Fates Book One

Shifting Fates: Uncaged Book Two

LICENSE NOTES

All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the seller website and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

DISCLAIMER

The characters and events portrayed in this book are a work of fiction or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

MATURE CONTENT

This story contains sexually explicit material, and is intended only for persons over the age of 18. By downloading and opening this document, you are stating that you are of legal age to access and view this work of fiction. All of the characters involved in the sexual situations in this story are intended to be 18 years of age or older, whether they are explicitly described as such or not.

Table of Contents

Shifting Fates Book One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

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Shifting Fates Book Two: Uncaged

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