Page 46 of A Lion's Heart
CHAPTER 12
Decan woke with a start, the dream having pulled him in instantly, bending him to the point where it threatened to break him once more.
How many nights would he dream of his time in the SIC? How many times would he relive the most horrific years of his life? Forever, was his answer. He would never forget and thus would never stop trying to take Ewen Mackey and his band of killers that called themselves the Ruling Cabinet down. They were not rulers. They were anything but because they cared about no one but themselves. Working with shifters to kill other shifters all in the name of keeping humans safe. But Decan knew there was much more to it than that. He knew it and so did Keller. Together they had to bring them down. There was no other way for the shifters to be safe, whether above or underground.
She wasn’t in the bed with him.
That was the next jolt that Decan’s system didn’t need.
He sat up looking around the dark space. They were still in the basement of the cabin that Blaez said they could use. Decan hadn’t bothered to ask the lycan how he knew of this place or who it belonged to. He’d only taken the directions and found the key in the location that had been given. They couldn’t go back to Oasis tonight because any one of them could have been followed. So they’d split up. Keller, Gold and Kyss were at a hotel while Jordin and Zion were at a campground that a group of protestors used when they weren’t walking back and forth in front of the Ruling Cabinet’s headquarters in downtown Houston. Those protestors knew more than the other humans gave them credit for. If anyone had truly decided to listen to them, they would know exactly where the majority of the Shadow Shifters were hiding and how to get to them. Luckily for the shifters, everyone thought the group of sixteen to twenty-somethings, were just troublemakers looking for attention instead of finding a job like the rest of the human world. The problem with that philosophy was that there weren’t many jobs to be had, unless one wanted to be a shifter hunter. Most large corporations and just about all of the small businesses had shut down years ago. The human’s economy was in shambles. Their homes, what was left of them after the months of hurricanes in certain areas, blizzards simultaneously in others, looting, fires…you name it, and this civilization had seen it.
It was a totally different world from the one Decan had been born into and even more different than anything Nisa could have imagined.
Tossing his legs over the side of the bed, Decan stood and inhaled deeply. He followed the scent which led him up the stairs and into the front room of the cabin. That’s where Nisa stood, off to the side as she peaked out the window. It was dark in the house and outside so if there were a human out there, they had no chance of seeing them. But Nisa could see out. So could Decan.
“I didn’t know it would be like this,” she said quietly.
He took another step toward her but thought better and stopped. If he got too close he’d want to touch her and no doubt take her again. The need to be inside her had not been satiated with one time. He’d known it wouldn’t.
“My father said if we came above ground without supervision we would be killed. He and Uncle Nick told me and Shya that every day of our lives.”
“They wanted you to be afraid,” he said. “Fear should have kept you obedient.”
She chuckled wryly.
“You don’t know me or Shya. We are the direct opposite of obedient.”
“But you’re smart,” Decan told her. “Because you never let your father see how disobedient you were being.”
“Why didn’t you tell him you knew I was going above ground?” she asked without turning to look at him.
“It wasn’t my place,” he answered.
“But you followed me. Why?”
“I’ve been taught to protect. In the military, my parents, my cat. Protect our kind, protect the innocent, protect mycomp…everyone,” he finished and cleared his throat.
Decan knew what had happened between him and Nisa. He knew exactly what they were to each other now. He knew and he hadn’t decided how that was going to play out yet. So, for now, he wasn’t going to speak the word. Not that refusing to speak it would make it any less so.
“I’ve been taught to hide,” she told him. “To sit in an underground prison and hide.”
“You were tops in your tactical training. Eli Preston thinks you’re ready to be elevated to an enforcer.”
She shook her head.
“My father will never allow that. Just as he never allowed me to travel with any of the guard teams that went above ground in search of other shifters in trouble.”
“He’s been taught to protect what is his.” Decan couldn’t believe he was defending Roman Reynolds’ motives.
The Assembly Leader had chosen to hide and he’d made the entire species do the same. It was disgraceful. Keeping them locked underground as if they’d been the ones to start this war. Sure, Blaez had said that Rome had no other choice. That he was trying to keep them all from being hunted and brutally murdered, but none of Rome’s new regulations had been there to save Decan when he’d been captured. The one that saved him had been the one that set that fire at the SIC. That fire had changed Decan’s life forever and now, he wasn’t going to follow the leader as easily as he’d been taught. Because this time, the leader didn’t have a clue what it felt like to be tortured and taunted just because of who he’d been born to be.
“But I’m not his,” she said. “I belong to myself. So shouldn’t I have some say in what I will do with my life?”
She was right and she was wrong.
Nisa Reynolds did not belong to her father. She now belonged to Decan. He wisely did not say that to her. She was no more ready to accept their fate than he was.
“You don’t know what’s out there, Nisa. You have no idea how dangerous it is for shifters now.”
