Page 29 of Between Imminent Fates

Since it was a Saturday, he didn’t have any place to be, which was a relief. It became a leisurely morning—as most of his weekends were—with a slightly increased appetite and quicker jogging pace, but not remarkable.

Part of Jax began to believe that the process he’d signed up for had failed. Perhaps he hadn’t done it right: the bite hadn’t been deep enough, or it hadn’t drawn enough blood.

By mid-afternoon, the bite that had seemed a significant wound last night was nearly healed. The patch of broken skin now looked pitifully small, and he began to doubt his recollection of it. He had no way of knowing if this had triggered the desire reaction—and no one to ask one way or the other.

It was only when the moon rose that his confusion turned to agony. Pacing the length of his apartment, Jax fought against the rising tide of nausea and building anxiousness in his gut. His body began to feel foreign. His hearing became painfully sensitive and the clothes he wore scratched his skin. Every light seemed obnoxiously bright, and things that’d had no smell before were now overpowering.

Jax barely had the presence of mind to put Zeus in the bathroom and close the door.

As he collapsed on the floor beside his bed, sweating and shivering, he realized that he might’ve made a mistake. He had no support, and no idea what was happening to him. Laying there pathetically, he began to understand that what he was feeling wasn’t nausea.

Something inside him wantedout.

Chapter Ten

Key

Something was wrong withJax. When she’d attempted to teleport to him only a moment ago, it’d failed. His psychic signature, a thumbprint that had been burned into her mind since the moment they’d met, no longer registered to her psychic senses.

That could mean one of three things: his signature had changed, he was shielded somehow, or he was dead.

Without a way to communicate with him, there was only one viable option: his apartment. She had visited many times, and she could draw on her location memory to pull her there.

For a foreseer, not knowing what she would find inspired an anxiety that was foreign. Walking into situations not knowing the outcome was something she’d had very little experience with.

Closing her eyes, Key teleported into Jax’s kitchen. The apartment was eerily silent. She dared not even breathe for fear of missing something important. Her psychic senses exploded outward, finding that it was entirely empty. Even Zeus was missing.

Moving through the apartment on legs that felt numb, she found little to support her theory that Jax had been killed. Though there were several new gouges in the wood flooring in his bedroom, nothing else indicated that he’d been attacked and left for dead. At least not here.

Without a signature to follow, she had no leads on where Jax could’ve gone. If he’d been taken by Rayn, a man capable of weaving Shields, Key wouldn’t be able to find him. On the other hand, a massive change would’ve been required to alter his psychic imprint. It would’ve been nearly impossible for a human to accomplish that without a significant level of trauma.

And if he had passed away—

A sob tore from Key’s throat. Being with Jax had been the first time she’d allowed herself to truly let go, to not be the mastermind behind a plot that was vitally important.

She had allowed herself to be free with him—to have fun—and now, it’d come crashing down around her. Everything she did had an ulterior motive, but it’d never been forced with him. Her one thread of happiness had now spun into a noose.

Key collapsed on the couch. Snagging a pillow, she inhaled the scent of leather and spice that clung to it. For a moment, all she could do was hold it close. There had to be some way to find him.

As her mind whirled with the next best step, the sound of dog nails on hardwood made her still completely. A deep masculine voice hummed outside Jax’s door, and the moment keys jangled against the look, she shot to her feet. Relief poured through her as she recognized it.

Zeus was the first through the door, the dog happily surprised to find Key waiting for them. As he trotted over for pets, she simply stared at the person who’d entered behind him.

Jax Hunter was no longer human.

When he caught sight of her, his eye color shifted—to hiswolf. “Key.”

Battling against the tears that blurred her vision, Key reached toward him, her fingertips settling against his breastbone. The steady heartbeat that thrummed in his chest and the masculine traces of spice and leather were uniquely him, but he’d been fundamentally altered. Jax Hunter had been bitten and turned into a werewolf in the short amount of time since she’d seen him last.

Instant, searing pain knifed through her at the thought. Unknowingly, she had let him go through the debilitating transformation alone. Deep inside her, her soul seemed like it was splitting in two.

“What happened?”

Recognition dawned. “I won’t stand by while people are being injured, Key. I won’t hide behind my humanity. If I can help these victims with such a simple change, then why wouldn’t I?”

“Jax,” she cried, “this wasn’t what I meant.”

Nothing about becoming a werewolf was simple. He had undergone the change alone, without a guide, and had no idea of the implications and dangers associated with it.

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