Chapter 34

Chapter 34

Imogen

What do you do if weird dreams haunt you? Keep busy, of course. Making stack after stack of pancakes for riotous kids and grateful mothers kept my feet moving and my mind blank.

Well, mostly.

In between sizzling pancake batter landing in the pan and eggs and bacon crackling on the hot plate, I saw this. Asher, transforming from bear to man, Lucas and Kyle doing the same. Their eyes following mine just as they had in the gym. The way the three bears gambolled across the forest floor, but it was when I remembered that other dream, almost able to feel Asher's lips on my neck, or were they his teeth, his hand sliding lower, that I moved. Put the pancakes on the plate , I told myself unnecessarily. Grab those eggs before they go hard. Bacon, more bacon ? —

"Yum."

A masculine voice had me spinning around. Lucas stood there looking somewhat wary, but he eyed the platter I was holding hungrily. "Is this breakfast for all of us or?—?"

"Here." I was being rude. No, rude and stupid. Lucas had no idea what I dreamt last night, so of course he looked surprised by the fact I shoved the platter into his hands. "Help yourself." That was said more gently, but not enough.

"Imo—"

"More pancakes!"

A little voice followed by stampeding steps told me someone else had joined us.

"No more pancakes!" Ava cut her little brother off at the pass. "You'll be sick, and then Mum will have to clean you up." Her arms crossed firmly. "I'm not."

"Aww…"

I watched the little boy's face fall and couldn't help but smile.

"Listen to your sister. There'll be pancakes for breakfast tomorrow, as long as your mum says it's OK."

"More than OK." Hannah arrived at the servery window looking a little harried. "Thank you for this, Imogen. It's been so hard to get Kaleb to eat anything…'

And she didn't need any more hard things. I nodded, catching the slight tremor in her bottom lip right before she blinked and straightened up.

"And you need a bath, young man."

"Nooo…" His cries were loud and theatrical, forcing everyone to laugh. "I'm not a boy, I'm a stinky bear!"

His growls, his hands held up as claws, it all took on a different meaning right now. Obviously the kids here were impressed by the idea of bears due to the books that Kyle was reading them, but what if…? This was a secret facility to program children to accept our new bear shifter overlords? I snorted at the idea because that was completely ridiculous. Not even in the paranormal romance books would an author come up with that kind of plot. Instead, I focussed on the situation before me.

"Was there anything else you were after?" I asked Lucas coolly. "There's toast and butter and a variety of sauces in the dining room if you want them."

"Um, yeah, actually." He set the platter down so he could produce something that had my heart dropped through the floor. A box with an international shipping label was held out. "Some of your books came. I haven't checked them because some people like to be the ones to open their packages. Be the first one to sniff the pages, y'know?"

I did know. I'd do just that in the privacy of my own room, but right now I used a knife to slice open the packing tape, only to find treasure inside. K Llewellyn was one of the OG paranormal writers, her books now gone out of print. I had no idea why because I thought they were amazing. Maybe no one wanted to update the pre-internet technology references, or the dated slang, but still… The connection she described between the shifter and his mate was unmatched. The pages sizzled almost as much as the hot plate.

The hot plate!

I quickly turned the now considerably more crispy bacon, then turned the heat down before reaching into the box. Inside were some of the books I'd never managed to find copies of. The Tiger's Kiss and The Dragon's Fire were not super popular with readers and released at the end of her career, so only true fans managed to find copies, and I now held them in my hands. I looked up and into his eyes.

"Thank you. I… Thank you. I'm sorry I was being a bitch?—"

"You weren't." That small smile broke my heart and put it back together again. "Those are hard to come by books. Have you read them yet?"

"No." That came out too hard, too fast. "No, I haven't. I found an excerpt published on the author's website, but then she died. No one's updated it, and they kept saying they'd republish the books but no one did. There was some legal issue…" I sighed. "And you don't care."

"Come and listen to me talk about rare edition comics one day and you'll realise how much I care," he told me. "All books are precious, but some are more precious than others. Lost due to lack of interest, pulped up and recycled, you have to wonder what was lost. Was it amazing or terrible?" He nodded to the covers. "Right now that's Schrodinger's book because you don't know." He picked up a plate, putting some food on it before handing it to me. "How about you sit down and find out over breakfast?"

I realised later he probably meant with him, but I took the plate and barely held back the urge to run back to my room. Instead, I walked there swiftly, sinking down in front of the desk and opening the first page.

Sheena was being so annoying. Her mate was a gorgeous Siberian tiger named Crispin, and in human form he was this tall, dark, and devilishly handsome man who was intent on sweeping her off her feet, but she kept dancing out of his grasp. I knew this back and forth of banter was all part of the foreplay, but right now I knew Crispin had barbs in a very intimate area and a rough tongue, and I wanted to find out how that worked.

My eyes raced over this page and the next, getting increasingly frustrated with her obtuseness. Crispin spoke in a purring tone. He was supernaturally strong, able to fight off a slew of bad guys intent on mugging Sheena with little effort and… I stopped then and looked up. My reflection stared back at me, wide eyed and way too pale, right before I looked back down at the book.

Big, crazy strong, protective, obsessive…

I was up and out of my seat without thought. Breakfast was left uneaten because I had other needs that had to be met. Leaving the books in the room had me feeling antsy. I couldn't help but feel someone might sneak in and steal them, damage them again, even though logically this wasn't true. I closed the door firmly, then walked down the hall, searching for the room with the computer monitors. I was drawn closer by the humming sounds of many computers working at once, stopping when I reached the doorway to stare into the darkness. Multiple artificial lights told me what was making the noise, that and a flickering screen sent strange shadows across his face.

"Lucas?" I asked.

He pulled away from the monitor as if stung, quickly exiting out of what he was looking at. That furtiveness had me smiling, temporarily forgetting what I came here for.

"Imogen!"

He blinked and pushed his glasses back up his nose.

"What're you doing?" I moved closer, grinning, thinking I'd caught him doing something a little naughty, but all the amusement left my body when I saw his screen. Thumbnails for videos littered the desktop and each one made clear that I would not like their contents. Women screaming, women frozen writhing in pain. Panicked women, crying women… "No…" I stepped backwards, realising now that I was right and I was wrong. Part of me was convinced that he and his friends were hiding something, but I thought…

What did I think?

That he was a shifter? The idea turned to acid, burning through my brain. What a fucking ridiculous idea. People talked about it all the time, that so many of those employed to help women and children turned out to be abusers themselves.

"Is that what you're into?" My voice was the sound of breaking glass. "This is why you ‘help' women?" I glanced at the screen, my brain screaming for me to look away, but instead I darted forward, grabbing his mouse from between slack fingers before clicking on the closest video.

"No… no… no!"

Her scream was cut off abruptly as Lucas stabbed a finger down on the space bar.

"Jesus, Imogen." He shook his head, the bright lights turning his glasses into a reflective mask. "I'm not in here jerking off to this shit. This is evidence."

I couldn't hear it. All of a sudden everyone in this entire place was suspect. I'd been here before, hadn't I? Trusting people that I shouldn't have. Was that what was happening right now? "This is…" Lucas didn't want to tell me, but he did anyway and that's what I needed to convince me. "This is a copy of Phil Jackson's laptop. I took a copy of it when we broke into his place. I don't want to look at a single one of these disgusting fucking files. I…"

His obvious disgust was a mirror of my own, and I needed that. Someone to say what I thought, but everyone around me didn't. That this was wrong, bad, vile. I liked to think of myself as sex positive, but there was nothing positive about hurting someone in a non-consensual way. "I'm trying to find out which ones are shit he downloaded from the internet and which ones…"

I didn't want him to finish that sentence, and yet I needed him to with every breath.

"Which ones he created himself."

Fuck.