A. Arthur - Shifter's Claim

Priya shook her head as if trying to digest everything he’d just said. Bas figured he might as well put it all out there at one time and let the chips fall where they may. He reached out to her, taking her hands in his and thanking the heavens that she hadn’t pulled away. Taking that as a good sign he slid a little closer to her.

“Look, I was an ass. I’m man enough to admit that. I messed up with you and that’s not normal for me. I don’t mess up with females. At least I only did one other time.” Bas took a deep breath and recited the events in the Gungi all those years ago, saying it aloud for the first time in his life.

“It was right after my parents’ divorce when I was already feeling like they’d both let me down in not fighting for their love, for the joining they’d had. I had been dating this girl named Mariah, but broke up with her right after my parents announced their separation. Not wanting to be around anyone I knew, anyone I thought I’d known for that matter, I went to the Gungi for a few days. I had no idea Mariah had followed me down there until I saw her one night in the forest.”

He dragged both hands down his face, not believing he was telling this story and yet knowing it was absolutely necessary at the same time.

“Palermo Greer and a couple of his flunkies were assaulting her,” Bas reported through clenched teeth. “I wanted to go to her, to help her but I thought about the exposure first. I thought about those stupid rules and I hesitated. Then they shifted and killed her and I was still standing there, frozen in shock. She died right in front of me and I couldn’t, I didn’t stop it. I felt like I’d let her down at that point, like I was no better than my parents. As stupid and self-destructive as I can now say that was, I refused to let anybody in, refused to ever have someone close enough to me that I could let them down again. And it worked for years, until you came along.”

Priya didn’t speak, just watched him. It was an intense stare that a lesser man may have fallen beneath. But Bas had come here with a purpose, he’d set his course, made his plan, and there was nothing that he was going to let stop him from at least putting that plan forth to her. What she did with his words, his feelings afterward was completely up to her.

“You were double trouble because I felt something for you the moment I saw you at the hotel. That connection only solidified when you were outside of Rome’s office. I wanted you too badly to really think about the consequences of being with you. And then it was just too late, consequences were out the window and you were in my arms. And then he shot you and I was in the Gungi all over again.”

He sighed, wishing she would say something, do something, but maybe understanding why she didn’t. She needed this from him. Hell, he needed it for himself, so he took a deep breath and finally said what he thought he’d never say to a female, let alone a human, in his life.

“Life with me will not be easy. In fact, everything you’ve ever known will change. And that’s big, Priya. You’re a human and I’m a Shadow Shifter. We’re not the same and yet I cannot deny the feeling that we are one. Can you?”

She couldn’t.

Oh, how she wanted to. The moment he said the woman’s name she’d wanted to smack him, to yell at him that he should have never been comparing her to another woman. A dead woman at that! But she couldn’t because she knew why the comparison was made, why the guilt had eaten at him and kept him quiet all these years. She knew and she ached for him because of it. She ached for him because for so long she’d allowed herself to be trapped by caring for her family that she hadn’t taken the time to do things solely for herself, to make her own life better, just for her.

So no, Priya could not deny that she and Bas were one. It was absolutely asinine for her to even try. And if she were extremely honest with herself, as she accepted that Bas was being with her now, she would acknowledge that she’d felt the connection from the very beginning. She didn’t think she had to be a Shadow Shifter to admit that.

“You make things too hard, Sebastian Perry. Sometimes you just have to go with what you know,” was her reply. “I wish you would have told me all this sooner but I get that you were doing that brooding male sort of thing. I guess that’s universal and doesn’t discriminate between species.” She’d tried to keep things light, as the emotion in her almost clogged her throat and Bas looked as if he might actually stop breathing if this conversation wasn’t over soon.

He smiled then, the genuine smile she’d wanted to see since first meeting him. It was the same one that had reached inside her chest and tugged on something there.

“If I could stand on that balcony and watch you shift from a cat to a man, you should have known you could trust me with all your baggage and your fears. Because we all have them, Bas. Hell, I’ve been looking for validation all my life and I had to go thousands of miles across the country to figure out I only needed to please and impress myself.”

“You know what I also knew the moment I grabbed you in that hotel hallway?” he asked.

Priya shook her head. “No. What’s that?”

He released one of her hands and lifted a finger to trace along the line of her jaw. “I knew that you were the other half of me. It was like looking in the mirror at a reflection that was just like me on so many levels, and yet as different as night and day.”

Priya was the one to smile this time, her heart nearly about to burst at his words. “I love you, too,” was her quick reply.

Later that night as Priya lay in Bas’s arms, in the comfort of the Willard InterContinental where it all began for them, she thought of his earlier words about her life never being the same and everything she ever knew changing. It had already begun to happen.

When she’d questioned Bas about being at her apartment, it was then that he informed her of the break-in. After a meticulous search she realized the only things missing were the key chains she’d saved as keepsakes from her trip to Perryville. Bas had assured her that she could have all the key chains she wanted from now on, but both of them knew what that meant. Priya wasn’t the only one that suspected something was going on, something unexplainable.

He’d offered to either move her out of the apartment or to let her stay there with an armed guard at her side twenty-four/seven. She’d opted to move.

Two days later he’d taken her to dinner with Rome and Kalina at their home in Virginia called Havenway. There they’d discussed in detail what Priya’s job with the Stateside Assembly would be and how she could work from Sedona, traveling to Maryland or wherever else they needed her when necessary. The females, Kalina and Ary, also talked about a joining ceremony since she and Bas were officially mated. Priya wasn’t 100 percent positive but she assumed in their tribe this was the equivalent of marriage, a place she didn’t feel like she was ready to venture just yet. She’d spent years believing—thanks to her mother’s past performance and her father’s cowardly escape—that relationships didn’t work, so moving in with Bas was a big enough step. Surprisingly, Caprise took her side, telling the other females to leave her be and let her and Bas find their own way.

This was a new world for the Shadow Shifters, Rome had said that often at dinner. It was also a new world for Priya, one she decided she was willing to venture into, despite what Bas thought might be a big price for her to pay. She believed in him and in the Shadow Shifters, what she wasn’t so sure of was how the world would react when they found out about them, because eventually—and Priya sensed they all knew this—their secret would be revealed.