Page 88 of Shifter's Homecoming

Grey tensed, ready for anything… anything except what happened.

A searing pain ran down the length of his chest as the skin there split open and a memory fell in on him, one that must have been erased or kept from him before. Him, in the Pravus, with Rex and Soren holding him, while Khain first removed hisrenquawith a scrape of an overgrown claw, stamped a fakerenquathere, and then marked his chest.

Grey was now Khain’s right-hand wolf.

Grey resisted the urge to cry out. He resisted the urge to run.

There was nowhere to go that the demon could not find him.

56 - One Last Field Briefing

Rowan climbed up the ladder as fast as she could, wonder at what had just happened filling her, but fear for Reed driving her. She made it up onto the tree bridge, then ran under the spiky platform where Reed was sequestered, Trent following her. Her serum should have kicked in already, so she snatched a quick look at the mess on the crane.

She saw three mountain lions dragging the headless body of Rex’s animal down the crane, while the black wolf was coming her way. He shifted into a naked man and she looked the other way, quickly.

“Reed!” she called.

The platform came down right away, the spikes all retreating. Reed looked dazed and not quite herself. She had a nasty bump on her forehead right at the hairline, with a bit of blood oozing from it.

“Oh no,” Rowan said, reaching out to touch her face. “Look at me,” she said.

Reed looked at her. Rowan stared into first one of her eyes and then the other, wishing for a flashlight. She gently touched the bump on Reed’s forehead, and when she did, red mist rose from her fingers. Reed cried out, and then dropped her head into her hands.

Rowan snatched her hand away. “Did I hurt you?”

Reed looked up slowly, shaking her head. She touched the bump, but the bump was gone and the scrape in the center of it was healed over. A small half-circle of hair where the bump had been was now a deep red, contrasting with the rest of her black curls.

Rowan made a kind of ‘eep’ noise, then looked up at Trent with her hand up and her eyes wide.

Trent smiled at her. He was naked, too, and dripping wet, and she barely noticed, because she was so surprised by what had just happened.

“Your power is to heal,” he said. “I should have known. We all should have known.”

Rowan squeaked again and looked at her hand, then looked at Reed, then looked at her hand again. Healing. Like that? Just… instantly? Such a thing shouldn’t even bepossible.She thought about her life, she thought hard about if such a thing had ever happened before, and she couldn’t say that it had. So maybe Trent had brought it out in her, or maybe Reed, or maybe… her mind cast about for some explanation and settled on all of that, plus the pendant. She nodded to herself, thinking she could handle healing as a power. In fact, she thought she might just love it.

Troy reached them. He pushed past her and went to Reed. He knelt, and again Rowan had to avert her eyes quick like a bunny. Naked men everywhere. It was going to be hard to get used to.

“That is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Troy said, running Reed’s red streak through his fingers. He stood and pulled Reed to her feet. Rowan gave up on trying not to look at him. She just tried not to look atdown.

“What is sexy?” Reed asked, her hand to her head, her voice subdued.

“Your, hair, it’s red right here.” Troy pulled the curl in front of her eyes.

Reed took the curl and stared at it, but before she could say anything, Troy was kissing her, picking her up, carrying her down the tree bridge. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and kissed him back.

Rowan looked to Trent. He was staring across the expanse of water at the mountain lions, and she guessed he was probably talking to them telepathically. Then he lifted his nose and seemed to smell the air around them.

“Gone,” he said. “They are all gone. It’s just us left out here.”

“Can you be sure?”

“It seems like it. Thedragensays so.”

She hadn’t seen the dragon. She was kind of glad. A girl could only take so much at one time.

Her man pulled her into his arms. He kissed her. He whispered things to her. He picked her up like Troy had picked up Reed, and then he carried her down the tree bridge, toward the fully-blazing inferno of her laboratory. Sirens started up in the distance, coming closer.

“I’m going to lose my job,” she said, her legs wrapped around him, her hands on his shoulders.

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