Claiming Valeria Read online

  He put out a hand, palm out. “Everything’s going to be all right. I just want to help you.”

  She snapped at his hand, her little tail whipping back and forth in agitation, but he kept it near her face, allowing her to take in his scent. She took a cautious sniff, then growled again, her eyes flashing the green of her jaguar. Keeping her gaze glued on Rui, she inched backward until her head was next to her father’s.

  He remained still, knowing she needed a few moments to come to terms with what had happened, even as his animal urged him to grab her and leave—now.

  The little jaguar licked the dead man’s cheek, trying to heal him in the way of a cat.

  That’s when he realized she’d shifted to jaguar, which meant she was a fada, a shapeshifter—but not a river fada like him, or even some other form of water shifter. No, she was an earth fada.

  He briefly closed his eyes. Could this night get any worse? Water and earth fada didn’t get along at the best of times, but Rock Run and the Baltimore earth clan were longtime enemies. At the moment, the Baltimore shifters were in disarray, wracked by a brutal internal war. But it was only a matter of time before they regrouped and tried—yet again—to wrest control of Rock Run.

  He had to take the cub and get out of here. Now. The last thing Rock Run needed right now was war with another clan.

  He seized the little shifter by the scruff of her neck, grabbed the nightgown and loped down the stairs.

  She yowled the whole way. In desperation, he snatched up the clown and stuck it in her face. To his relief, she snagged it with her front paws and quieted.

  He gripped her neck lightly and stared into her eyes, letting her see his dominance. Water or earth shifter, he was her superior in size and strength, and her animal needed to recognize that. Her gaze dropped and she whimpered, all the fight leached out of her.

  He reached the back door and then halted. Someone waited on the other side, someone who smelled of metal and decay.

  The cub’s tawny head jerked up, sensing the danger. She whimpered again, a small, heart-rending sound.

  He swore under his breath and dashed back upstairs. Thank the gods, there was an open window in the human’s room that let out onto the roof at the front of the house. He stuffed the nightgown in his back pocket, hefted the cub in one arm and climbed out.

  Setting her down, he inched up to the peak and risked a look down. Night fae had eyes like a cat, but the two men below had their gazes trained on the back door.

  Just two of them. The S.O.B.s were damn sure they could take him. If he hadn’t had to get the little earth shifter to safety, he’d have enjoyed allowing them to test that theory.

  He jerked his head at the jaguar, knowing she could easily keep up in her cat form. “This way,” he said in a subvocal voice only she could hear. The half-blood’s rowhouse was a few from the end. The two of them moved soundlessly down the roofs in the other direction.

  The second-to-the-last house had a small dormer jutting out of its roof. Rui dropped to a crouch on the far side, the cub hunkered next to him, her small body shivering despite the warm night.

  He passed a hand over her fur. Deus, she was young. She felt as thin and breakable in this form as she had as a girl.

  “Don’t worry,” he murmured in the same low voice. “They won’t find us here. But you have to be very quiet. Don’t move. Can you do that?”

  Night fae were like vampires, but rather than sucking blood, they sucked energy. The only way to hide from them was to freeze, slowing your heart rate and breathing, so they couldn’t track you—and pray like hell that it worked.

  The cub nodded solemnly and pressed against him. To his relief, her shivers slowed and her breathing calmed. It occurred to him that she’d done this before, and the ice around his heart cracked open enough for him to feel a stab of pity.

  Although it was nearly midnight, the sidewalks were dotted with people enjoying the cooling night air. He heard the murmur of voices, the sound of footsteps. From somewhere nearby a cat in heat screeched, and somebody threw open a window and hollered for it to shut the fuck up.

  The noises quieted again. Then the sound of a door being kicked open shattered the night. The night fae had gotten impatient.

  Now was their chance. He told the little shifter to climb on his back. “We’re going down.”

  She took the clown between her teeth and obeyed. He shimmied down a drainpipe to the ground, where he took the cub into his arms and dashed the few hundred yards to the alley where he’d stashed his motorcycle.

  He set the cub on the pavement. “Shift,” he ordered.

  She shifted. It took her a long time, her small reserves nearly depleted.

  When she was a girl again, he dropped the nightgown over her head. It was pink, with a cartoon princess on the front, and something about that detail brought home how very young she was.

  He felt another unwelcome stab of pity, and it made his voice gruffer than he intended. “Tell me where your mama lives.”

  She screwed up her face. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks. “I don’t have a mommy.”

  Rui tensed, knowing he wasn’t going to like this. But he softened his tone. “What do you mean, menina?”

  “She died. The bad men hurt her and she died.”

  Hell. Rui stared down at the girl, flummoxed. He could leave her near a Baltimore earth fada’s den—the earth shifters had dens scattered all over the city, unlike his clan, who preferred living together in a single underground base. They would know who her mother was.

  But with her mother dead, would the earth clan accept a mixed-blood child, especially one with night fae in her? Hell, for all he knew, her mother had been caught up in the savage internal war the Baltimore shifters were fighting, one that had left whole families dead. It would explain why Silver hadn’t asked the earth clan for help hiding his daughter.

  Handing the little girl over to the Baltimore shifters could be signing her death warrant. And apparently the night fae were after her too.

  That’s when it hit him. The half-blood hadn’t stolen a thing from Tyrus. He’d stolen this child.

  Which meant that Rui had killed a man simply for protecting his own daughter.

  His whole body went rigid.

  The little shifter gave a moist sniff.

  He scraped a hand through his cropped black hair. “What’s your name?”

  “Merry Jones,” she said with a tremor in her voice. “M-E-R-R-Y. Like Christmas.”

  He swung her into his arms. “Well, Merry Christmas Jones, I guess you’re coming home with me.”

  * * *

  Rock Run was about an hour north of Baltimore at the top of the Chesapeake Bay. The clan owned a large, pie-shaped piece of land edged on one side by the bay and on the other by the Susquehanna River, with Rock Run Creek running through the center. The clan base was deep underground in the caverns that ran along Rock Run Creek.

  By the time Rui had reached Rock Run, Valeria had already gone to bed. But as he entered his quarters, she emerged from the bedroom, rumpled and adorable in one of his T-shirts, her dark hair tumbling around her shoulders.

  “Rui?” She yawned. “What—” She froze, hand still covering her mouth, as she saw the little girl.

  “This is Merry. I—” He licked suddenly dry lips. “I found her. In Baltimore.”

  Valeria’s brows lifted but the look she turned on Merry was kind. “Olá, sweetheart. Are you lost?”

  The little girl shook her head.

  “She’s part earth shifter.”

  “Sim?” Valeria’s brow furrowed. “And a bit fae as well, no? But why—” Merry whimpered and Valeria’s face softened. She gathered the child into her arms and sat down in a nearby chair, rocking her gently back and forth. “It’s all right, menina. It’s all right.”

  Merry had been mute the whole way up from Baltimore, perched before Rui on the motorcycle, one hand clutching his arm around her waist, the other fisted around her clown. She hadn’t even c
omplained when he brought her through the narrow tunnel that was the only way for a land dweller to enter the base.

  But now she burst into tears. “I…want…my daddy.”

  “Shh,” murmured Valeria. “Of course you do. Don’t worry, we’ll find him for you.”

  “Can you?” Merry sniffed. “Please?”

  “Of course. Senhor Rui will help me. He’s the best tracker in the clan.”

  Rui swallowed something sharp as glass. “I can’t,” he said, and switched to Portuguese so the girl wouldn’t understand him. “Ele está morto.”

  Valeria sucked in a breath. She glanced at Merry and replied in the same language. “Does she know?”

  “She was there. She didn’t see it happen but she saw him after.”

  “Poor baby.” Valeria pressed a kiss to the little girl’s head. “But why bring her here?”

  “She’s mixed—human, night fae, earth fada. I asked about her mother, but she told me she’s dead. I was afraid to leave her with the Baltimore shifters.”

  Valeria nodded. She’d only been at Rock Run a couple of months, but she’d heard about the local earth fada and their problems.

  Then her full lips pressed together. “Her papa.” Her gaze was accusing. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

  He looked away. “Sim.”

  “Madre de Deus.” The words were a horrified whisper. “How could you?”

  The bond between them was still tenuous, not complete until both of them accepted it during the mating ceremony—but he felt her recoil from him.

  It sliced at the deepest part of him. Valeria had grown up in a prosperous clan in Portugal—an old, rich clan, where the warriors didn’t have to hire themselves out as assassins and mercenaries just to survive. She didn’t understand that he’d had no choice.

  “Querida—” He reached out a hand.

  She ignored it to murmur to Merry.

  His animal rumbled, puzzled and angry. She was the mate. She should know that if he killed, it was for the good of the clan.

  “Valeria,” he said, louder this time.

  She stiffened but resolutely kept her gaze on Merry. He let the hand drop back to his side.

  Merry lifted her head from where she was cuddled close to Valeria’s heart to scrutinize him with hazel eyes slashed with shards of green, her jaguar very close to the surface.

  “Are you a bad man?” The question hung in the air.

  Rui opened his mouth, then shut it again. He shook his head and took a step back. At the door, he said, “I have to report to Dion.”

  Valeria finally lifted her head to look at him. He blinked. His warm-hearted, sensual, maternal woman looked as unforgiving as the harshest judge.

  “You do that. And then don’t come back. Not tonight, anyway. She needs time.”

  He stared back, despair an icy sludge in his veins. It was then that he realized how much he’d counted on her warmth to balance the coldness in him. He glanced from Valeria to the tearful little girl and then wrapped the familiar chill around him like a shield and with a curt nod, left the apartment.

  He made the walk to the alpha’s quarters encased in that same chill gray ice. Despite the late hour, Dion answered on the first knock. He took in Rui’s tension with one sharp look. “What happened, irmão?” He waved him inside and closed the door.

  “It’s done. But—” Rui explained about Merry Jones.

  “She’s our clan now,” his friend said immediately. “I’ll go to her, mark her with my scent so the others know she’s under my protection.”

  Rui nodded. He’d expected Dion to see it that way, even though the last thing they needed was another mouth to feed—and an earth shifter at that.

  They discussed the night fae. They both figured Tyrus had sent the two men after Rui to make sure no one got out of the house alive. Dion was furious, but there wasn’t much he could do. Tyrus was a powerful fae, the son and heir of the night fae prince himself. The clan was too weak to go up against him. All they could do was take the bastard’s payment and then never work for him again.

  And then Rui left Rock Run and went to a bar in nearby Grace Harbor. He started to toss back shots of whiskey, but no amount of alcohol could drown out Valeria’s accusing face and Merry’s small, clear voice asking, Are you a bad man?

  But he couldn’t blame the whiskey. He was sober enough when the sun fae queen, Cleia, strolled into the bar on the prowl for another fada lover, dressed in a flirty little red nothing. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He’d seen what she’d done to the men before him—how they returned drained, and fit for little but fishing—but he hadn’t cared. All he wanted was to sink himself into that long, golden body and sex his brains out.

  So he went home with Cleia, intending to stay for a night. He told himself it was to give Valeria a chance to cool down. But even then he knew he was lying to himself. What he was really trying to do was forget all the men and women he’d killed—and the children he’d left father- or motherless.

  Are you a bad man?

  Just one night, he told himself. What harm could that do?

  But Cleia was a powerful fae, with a glamour that made her damn near irresistible. He’d lost himself in their dark, hedonistic play. The night turned to a week, and the week to a month.

  Each evening he told himself: Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll go back to my mate.

  But each morning he found himself staying another day, caught in the fae queen’s seductive net.

  In the end, he stayed a year.

  An entire fucking year.

  He returned to find he’d lost his mate—and he had no one to blame but himself.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Present

  Rui’s glass held only a few dregs of red wine. He raised it. “This is empty,” he said in a soft voice that had the half-dressed blonde on his lap—a human named Katie—scurrying to fill it.

  They were in a small, shabby house near the Baltimore waterfront, not unlike the one from which he’d taken Merry Jones. He ignored the twinge of guilt that accompanied the thought of the little earth shifter.

  He’d taken Merry back to Rock Run, and Valeria had adopted her as her own. Both females seemed to be thriving. He had nothing to be guilty about.

  If you discounted the fact that he’d murdered Merry’s father and left Valeria for the sun fae queen practically on the eve of their mating ceremony.

  Katie poured wine into his glass with hands that trembled. He smoothed the frown from his face. She’d wanted to be with a fada, had come onto him in the Full Moon Saloon with a mixture of boldness and innocence that had pricked his jaded senses. But now that she had him, she was stiff and skittish, fear oozing from her pores in acrid waves.

  She wasn’t wrong to be afraid. But it irritated him all the same, carving like a knife through his wine-induced haze.

  Across the room, Jorge and Benny were occupying themselves with three other women—a sea fada from Jamaica, a slumming night fae who’d conjured a plush rug for them, and Rui’s own sometime-lover Beatriz. He eyed the limbs entwined in a sensuous knot of dark and pale. Was that even possible?

  Like him, Jorge and Benny had been Rock Run warriors. Like him, they’d been taken as lovers by Queen Cleia. And like him, they’d returned different men: colder, more cynical, weaker in mind and body. Rui had turned to wine and women, but Jorge and Benny had given in to their animals and left Rock Run to travel the oceans in their dolphin forms.

  Dion thought the two men lost for good. He’d be furious if he found out they’d returned and were attempting to resurrect the bacchas right under his nose. The wild, orgiastic rituals had been banned for a good reason—they brought out the worst in fada, bringing their feral side to the fore so that a fada in the grip of the Delírio—the Frenzy—was more beast than human.

  Rui should’ve informed his alpha the first time he’d seen the two men, late one night in a bar just a few miles from Rock Run. But he hadn’t, and he wasn’t sure why, except that maybe it wa
s his way of thumbing his nose at Dion, who made no secret of his contempt for Rui and the way he lived his life now.

  If Dion found out that Rui was here today, he’d be out on his ass. Banished from Rock Run.

  He stared into the dark red wine and wondered why that didn’t bother him more. Lord knew, Dion had put up with enough from him. No longer fit to be a warrior, Rui had become a fisher instead—the worst frigging one in the clan. Somehow his Gift for tracking failed him when it came to fish.

  Or maybe it was that he just didn’t give a damn.

  Once, he and Dion had been inseparable, raised together from the time they were pups. They’d been born days apart a little over a hundred turns of the sun ago, when the clan still lived in Portugal. When Rui’s mother died a few weeks after giving birth to him, it was Dion’s mother who’d nursed him along with her son. And ten years later, when Rui’s father was killed in the battles over territory that had led to the clan leaving for America, Dion’s parents had taken him into their family—and their hearts. The two of them had played together, trained as warriors together, chased their first women together.

  When Dion took over as Rock Run alpha after his father’s death, it had been a foregone conclusion that Rui be his second-in-command. Rui hadn’t challenged Dion for leadership, although he knew his friend had half-expected it. Whenever a new alpha took over, there was a period when everyone in the hierarchy jockeyed for place. They both knew such a battle would be too close to call.

  But frankly, Rui didn’t want the headaches that went with being alpha. He was content to be second, a powerful position in its own right, and one where his hunting and tracking abilities were best utilized. He and Dion had quickly settled into a comfortable routine, working more as partners than alpha and second.

  And then came the night he’d killed the half-blood.

  Katie shifted uneasily on her feet, drawing his attention. He ran his gaze over her with an almost clinical interest: blond hair, blue eyes, creamy skin set off by two black scraps of lace that functioned as a bra and panties. He crooked a finger at her.