He wrote the book on it? Who was he? “Why are you here?”
Stax grinned at Cam, anger apparently forgotten. “To meet you, as I said before. Now we can be friends, and I always help my friends. For example, you’re right about mating. It’s a hell of a thing. We shifters already struggle with the duality of our existence. Then some interfering, jealous god decides to sprinkle a little extra torment into the mix and wham!” He clapped his hands together, making Cam flinch. “You run into someone you can’t live without. The call of a mate doesn’t care if you have other plans or whether or not you’re interested in settling down. It’s one of the few things in our world that can’t be denied.”
Did he say jealous god?
“That’s love, too, though, isn’t it?” Davide asked. “Fate? You’re not saying the elders were right and it’s all about biology?”
Stax’s smile softened for him. “There was very little they were right about. And yes, it’s love. The kind that originates in the soul and takes your heart by surprise.” He glanced at Cam from beneath his lashes. “Luckily, love is an infinite resource. No matter how it comes about, it doesn’t need to be confined to only one vessel. Or two.”
Cam stilled. You can have them both.
“You’ve heard of this? Two shifters drawn to mate the same human?” Cam knew that was the question Stax was expecting next.
The man’s smile of approval was blinding. “I have. Less than a handful of times, but it isn’t unprecedented. Most end in tragedy, of course, because people hate happy endings. There’s one story about two female shifters and a human man who ruled an empire. It was twisted into some morality tale about greed, which was, I suppose, appropriate given the circumstances.”
“Why was it a tragedy?”
Stax studied him. “Some people are cursed by their own intellect. They make decisions that go against their instincts. Think instead of feel. A businessman like you can relate. Though to be fair, your particular brand of self-mastery is rare and admirable. It’s one of the things I appreciate most about you.”
Cam frowned and Stax continued. “For this ruler, however, it wasn’t self-control but politics that had him turning from his heart. He chose an alliance over the sisters and, enraged and broken hearted, they lost their minds and destroyed everything in their path until they had to be taken down.”
Cam swallowed roughly, thinking of Davide’s great-grandfather. “Because he resisted their mark, but they were still tied to him.”
“There’s a little more to it than that, and to be fair to him, I don’t think anyone told him he could release them, because he was human and therefore suspect. But yes.”
“You think he would have?” Davide asked.
“No one gave him the chance, so we’ll never know. Most shifters are so focused on what the need to mate does to them that they don’t think about what it does to their other half. Particularly if that other half is human. First comes the shared feelings. Then the dreams. The lust, always, but also secrets you barely remember yourselves. Your fears and hers, which are more dangerous right now, in my opinion.”
“What do you mean?” Cam was confused, but Davide grabbed his hand.
“She’s been feeling everything we have?”
“Not everything.” Stax tapped his walking stick on the floor with a frown. “You really know nothing about this? At least you have an excuse, pack full of orphans, but someone should have educated you. Generations of ignorance,” he muttered. “This is why I turned the others away.”
“What others? What the hell are you talking about?”
Stax sat down on the wide couch with a sigh. “We have a lot to cover, Alpha Locke. And not a lot of time.”
Alpha Locke again. His grandfather had been given that title before he left his people rudderless. “That’s not who I am.”
“It’s who you were supposed to be before you were born,” Stax said argumentatively. “Indulge me for Bailey’s sake. She’s going to need you soon, and she’ll need you ready.”
Cam sat down in the easy chair across from Stax while Davide perched on the armrest, both of them on alert. “She’ll need us? Is she in danger?”
“That’s always her question. Why do you think she clings to her plans? Loves her garden? Makes sure everyone is happy in her world?”
“She doesn’t feel safe?” Davide sounded as if the realization had come as a physical blow.
“It’s a bit out of our way, but…she was sixteen when she showed up in Sedona.” Stax leaned forward, elbows on his knees and walking stick across his lap as he told them the basics about a girl who’d walked into town with less than nothing.
Cam ached as he listened. It didn’t matter that he’d struggled himself in the beginning, before Davide and the others. She deserved better. This dazzling spirit who made time for everyone else had asked for nothing but a roof, and she’d made it into her home. He thought about the night they met, when she’d been on her own, working up the nerve to fall because no one was there to catch her.