One True Mate 7_Shifter's Paradox Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Glossary

  1 - Did the Bear Live or Die?

  2 - The Old Guard

  3 - Time Needs Anchoring, Beast

  4 - Doctors aren’t for Frying

  5 - Lowdown on the When

  6 - Back to the Asylum For the First Time

  7 - Not on Evie’s Watch

  8 - Rhen’s Meadow

  9 - When were we?

  10 - Time Passes Quicker in the Meadow

  11 - Whose Mate is She?

  12 - Past - The Knotted Wolf Arrives in Illinois

  13 - Past - They Sent the Beast

  14 - Past - Flat. Flat. More Flat.

  15 - Past - The General has Red Hair

  16 - Past - Sergeant Bitch, Reporting to Steal your Job

  17 - Past - Daddy’s Girl

  18 - Past - A Beautiful Man

  19 - Past - Time To Recognize

  20 - Past – Here is your Spanking, Sir

  21 - Past - Mate Crush

  22 - Past - Beastie Boy Gets Mean

  23 - Past - Big Bad Wolf Chief

  24 - Past – In the Tunnels

  25 - Past - Sergeant Bitch, Reporting to Steal your Dignity

  26 - Past - Sergeant Bitch, Reporting to Steal your Male

  27 - Past - mine? Mine. MINE!

  28 - Past - Bad Girl

  29 - Past - Stolen Kisses

  30 - Past - Mating Day

  31 - Just in Time for a Kiss

  32 - Leilani, I need you!

  33 - Does the Wolf Exist Outside of the Forest?

  34 - What Special Wolf Hell is This?

  35 - Magical Mystical Bullshit Tour

  36 - Puppy See, Puppy Chew

  37 - Harlan, Making the Hard Decisions

  38 - A Season of Change

  39 - No Wonder

  40 - Unable to Do Anything But Run

  41 - Rhen’s Blessing

  42 – Wolves Can’t be Vegan

  Notes From Lisa XXOOXXOO;)

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Glossary

  1 - Did the Bear Live or Die?

  2 - The Old Guard

  3 - Time Needs Anchoring, Beast

  4 - Doctors aren’t for Frying

  5 - Lowdown on the When

  6 - Back to the Asylum For the First Time

  7 - Not on Evie’s Watch

  8 - Rhen’s Meadow

  9 - When were we?

  10 - Time Passes Quicker in the Meadow

  11 - Whose Mate is She?

  12 - Past - The Knotted Wolf Arrives in Illinois

  13 - Past - They Sent the Beast

  14 - Past - Flat. Flat. More Flat.

  15 - Past - The General has Red Hair

  16 - Past - Sergeant Bitch, Reporting to Steal your Job

  17 - Past - Daddy’s Girl

  18 - Past - A Beautiful Man

  19 - Past - Time To Recognize

  20 - Past – Here is your Spanking, Sir

  21 - Past - Mate Crush

  22 - Past - Beastie Boy Gets Mean

  23 - Past - Big Bad Wolf Chief

  24 - Past – In the Tunnels

  25 - Past - Sergeant Bitch, Reporting to Steal your Dignity

  26 - Past - Sergeant Bitch, Reporting to Steal your Male

  27 - Past - mine? Mine. MINE!

  28 - Past - Bad Girl

  29 - Past - Stolen Kisses

  30 - Past - Mating Day

  31 - Just in Time for a Kiss

  32 - Leilani, I need you!

  33 - Does the Wolf Exist Outside of the Forest?

  34 - What Special Wolf Hell is This?

  35 - Magical Mystical Bullshit Tour

  36 - Puppy See, Puppy Chew

  37 - Harlan, Making the Hard Decisions

  38 - A Season of Change

  39 - No Wonder

  40 - Unable to Do Anything But Run

  41 - Rhen’s Blessing

  42 – Wolves Can’t be Vegan

  Notes From Lisa XXOOXXOO;)

  One True Mate 7: Shifter’s Paradox

  by Lisa Ladew

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons or organizations, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Copyright © 2018 Lisa Ladew All Rights Reserved

  Book cover by The Final Wrap. <3.

  Cover model: Lovett Taylor, the ultimate silver wolf

  Photographer: Furious Fotog: the talented Golden Czermak

  Special editorial assistance by Savan Robbins. Of course. I gotta thank her every day - except when she’s irritating me. Then she gets nothing! Except winky faces.

  Ooooh, have I mentioned my editor, Sue Currin yet? She is wickedly funny and looking forward to her sharp commentary on my words and worlds always gets me excited for edits.

  Thank you to Kristine Piiparinen, Carin Borland, and Amanda Quiles for all your help <3

  And of course, my best babes, the babes at Books, Babes, and Badasses. How about the DEW CREW!!!! <3 my dewdettes in the dewgeon, making me laugh every day. Lol.

  Oh! And Jayme Maness, thank you so much for all your help. I couldn’t do it without you. Jayme mails out my books, puts together all my giveaways, reminds me of all the stuff I have to do, and helps out with launches. I’m sure she does a ton more that I’m not thinking of right now.

  Dani Hershberger and Kelly Cagle also have been helping me soo much! Dani works on Sunday Hottie or Toddys and Want a Ride Wednesday, while Kelly holds down the website. That means I get to write!

  And so many thanks to my husband… John somebody. You know, that guy that holds everything together while I hide from the world from within my mind. You’re everything I say you are when I’m at my most vulnerable. <3

  Glossary

  Bearen – bear shifters. Almost always work as firefighters.

  Citlali – spiritual leaders of all shiften. They are able to communicate with the deities telepathically, and sometimes bring back prophecies from these communications.

  Deae – goddess.

  Dragen – dragon shifter. Rare.

  Echo – an animal with the same markings of a shiften. Usually seen as a harbinger of bad things, but could also be a messenger from The Light.

  Felen – big cat shifters. Almost always work as mercenaries. They are also the protectors of Rhen’s physical body and a specially trained group of them can track Khain when he comes into the Ula.

  Foxen – the foxen were created when Khain forcibly mated with female wolven.

  Haven, the – final resting place of all shiften. Where The Light resides.

  Impot – a shiften that cannot shift because of a genetic defect caused by mating too close to their own bloodline. Trent and Troy are not thought to be impots because they were born during a klukwana.

  Khain – also known as the Divided Demon, the Great Destroyer, and the Matchitehew. The hunter of humans and the main nemesis of all shiften.

  Klukwana – a ceremony where a full-blooded shiften mates with another shiften with both in animal form, then the mother stays in animal form during the entire pregnancy. The young in the litter are always born as their animal. Wolven from a klukwana always come in at least four to seven young. Bearen are always two cubs, and felen are unpredictable, sometimes only one. Shiften born from a klukwana are almost always more powerful, bigger, and stronger than regular shiften, but many parents
don’t try it because of the inherent risks to the mother during the (shorter) pregnancy and the risk that the shiften young may choose not to shift into human form. A lesser known possibility is that the shiften young will have a harder time learning to shift into human form, especially if no one shifts near them in the first few days after birth.

  KSRT – Kilo Special Response Team, or Khain Special Response team. A group of wolven police whose primary goal is to hunt down and kill Khain, if that can be done.

  Light, The – the creator of the Ula, humans, Rhen, Khain, and the angels.

  Moonstruck – insane. Shiften who spend too long indoors or too long in human form can become moonstruck slowly and not even realize it.

  Pravus – Khain’s home. A fiery, desolate dimension that sits alongside ours.

  Pumaii – a small group of specialized felen tasked with tracking Khain when he crosses over into our dimension.

  Renqua – a discoloration in a shiften’s fur which is also seen as a birthmark in human form. Every renqua is different. The original renquas were pieces of Rhen she put inside the wolves, bears, and big cats to create the shiften. Every pure-blooded shifter born since has also had a renqua. Half-breeds may or may not have one. Some foxen acquired weak renquas when they mated with shiften. Also called the mark of life.

  Rhen – the creator of all shiften. A female deity.

  Ruhi – the art of speaking telepathically. No humans are known to possess the power to do this. Not all shiften are able to do it. It is the preferred form of speaking for the dragen.

  Shiften – shifter-kind.

  Shiftsegen – a special blessing left for the One True Mates by their father, a pendant that represents their angel half and the animal of their intended mate. The shiftsegen is powerful and unpredictable and its uses and powers are not clear.

  Ula – the Earth, in the current dimension and time. The home of the shiften.

  Vahiy – end of the world.

  Wolfen – a wolf shifter. Almost always works as a police officer.

  Wolven – wolf shifters, plural.

  Zyanya – when a wolfen dies, the funeral is for the benefit of humans, but the important ceremony is the zyanya. The pack mates of the fallen wolfen run in wolf form through the forest, heading north to show the spirit the way to the Haven. When they reach a body of water, they all jump in and swim to the other side, then emerge in human form.

  1 - Did the Bear Live or Die?

  Eventine Mundelein floated bodiless in time or space or somewhere, her only hold on reality, on the present, a thought on repeat in her non-mind “Did the bear live or die? Did the bear live or die?”

  A voice came to her through time. Or space. Or somewhere.

  It was Leilani’s voice, quiet, soft, from far away, but Eventine heard it like a whisper in a quiet room. “Evie, this way, come this way. I need you.”

  Eventine went.

  2 - The Old Guard

  Harlan Mundelein stalked through the big Illinois farmhouse, toward the kitchen where Burton was yelling for him. “Pipe down, Burton, I’m coming,” he muttered under his breath. What would Burton be like today? Lucid? Maybe. But maybe not. It was the 29th anniversary of Harlan’s mating, and the day was hard on both of them. Harlan snorted thickly, more of a snarl really. This motherfucking travesty of an anniversary was hard on every shiften who still lived. Which was about half of how many there used to be.

  All their females had been killed at once, and it had happened on the day that Harlan had mated, twenty-nine years before. Although he still felt like he was in his 20s, although his renegade mind still said stupid shit like he was 14, he now was 53, and his miserable fucking life as a tired, alone wolven was finally on its slide down the other side of middle-age. With any luck he could get his stupid ass killed sometime soon, join his Eventine in The Haven. What he wouldn’t give to see her again, to touch her skin one more time...

  He entered the kitchen. Burton greeted him warmly, showing him the dining room table. “Harlan! Finally. Look, here’s the drinks and the food and the cake is in the oven.” He gave Harlan’s khaki uniform the once-over, like he was still Chief of the Serenity Police Department. Which he kind of was. When Burton had taken his side-trip into looney-ville, Harlan and Wade had quietly removed him from office, setting him up here at his house where he had everything he needed, his range and his pictures and his fairy drops. They set him up weekly visits with Remington, the doctor, who was a cat, and never mentioned him again. No one else mentioned him either, almost like he'd never existed.

  The wolven couldn’t handle another blow and every one of them knew it. They had all been like zombies for years, the males barely holding it together, the fathers collectively watching their pups, all males, flounder without their mothers, their sisters, that necessary maternal energy. The shiften females had done what any female population did for their males. They tempered them, they soothed them, they rewarded them with beauty and softness and kindness and kept them in line with harshness when needed. But it was a female harshness, one that always looked for the best. One that always considered the family as a whole, the community, their neighbors and friends as one, all of them pulling together for the strongest whole.

  And then they’d been gone. All of them.

  Males like Burton had done the best they could, but there was no recovering from something like that. All you could do was live through it. Live through it they had. And now the males in charge were the generation of wolven in their 30s who had grown up without mothers, without females and their fathers were just... kind of… fading away. If no one mentioned Burton again, had he ever really been Chief?

  Harlan shook his head, studying Burton. The male looked good. No wrinkles to speak of. His eyes were clear, his skin dark, like the sky just before midnight, mysterious and full of secrets. He didn’t look crazy, but he’d always been secretive.

  “Burton, Chief, look, no one is going to want to come. You do this every year, and every year, it’s the same thing. You remember that this isn’t just the anniversary of when me and Evie mated, right? This is also the anniversary of—”

  But he cut off when he saw Burton’s face, the way it fell. No one liked to be reminded of when all the shiften females had succumbed to a water supply tainted by the greatest enemy of all of them. Khain. The demon.

  Harlan tried again, gently. “Burton, no one wants to come.”

  Burton shook his perfectly round head, his dark, coarse hair shorn short still, like he liked it. “They are all coming.”

  Burton must have been approaching 80, although he had always been secretive about his age. But he did not look a day older than Harlan was. Still vibrant. Still strong. It didn’t make sense because he had no mate to slow his aging, never had, but not making sense never stopped anything from being a thing.

  Harlan wanted to give up, but he couldn’t. “Don’t get upset if they don’t. There's a lot going on right now. Heather is in labor and has been for way too long, no one knows what to do. They are talking about c-sections but Graeme is against it. Willow and Bruin got mated yesterday, Bruin is the bear I was telling you about, he’s the fire chief now, but his mate, Willow, when she touched him she gave him back his renqua, and she gave back his brothers their renqua. Bruin and Willow are heading out of state now to tour country, all the major fire departments, and then the world. It’s a big deal, Burton, you remember, right? I told you? B3, he bet away all the bearen renqua?” Harlan smacked Burton on the shoulder over his own renqua. Just to remind him of their connection with Rhen, their goddess, their creator, their deity. Burton’s renqua was a star, like all Citlali, shiften slated as leaders, with divine vision.

  Harlan’s renqua was a knot, a thick and twisting knot that he used to think meant he was special. He would give anything not to be fucking special anymore. He was tired. He’d been fighting for too long. Special was overrated.

  Burton didn’t even seem to notice Harlan’s words, but Harlan would never stop telling
him everything that was going on in the world, no matter how disconnected from reality Burton seemed to want to be. Burton went slightly blank, staring out the window into the yard of the 56 year old farmhouse that just happened to sit on 56 acres of hobby land, with a little red cabin in the back.

  Jaggar Lockport lived in the cabin, Canyon and Timber Wheeling, too. The Old Guard, Harlan thought. Jaggar was old guard: he’d been 16 when Harlan had arrived in Serenity, a 23 year old male with a prophecy that pulled him into the thick of things, just months before it had all happened. Canyon and Timber were too young, really, just babies, but Harlan had known their mom, known them as kids. So yeah, Old Guard. They counted.

  He squeezed Burton’s shoulder. “You here, Burton?” It had to keep Burton grounded to the present to hear what was going on, Harlan hoped. Things were heating up. Burton was not fit for duty anymore, but he was still a Citlali, still a wolven, and if the shit hit the fan, they would still need him to fight. Khain had shown up at the bearen estate a few days ago, and there had been no energetic indication at all. The felen had never felt him come into the real world from the fiery dimension, rather like the human concept Hell, that he lived in, the Pravus. Something big had happened, and if Khain could run around the real world without them even knowing, they were all in a world of hurt. More of a world of hurt. Plus there were a cadre of new bad guys—Harlan’s head hurt just thinking about it. About what had happened recently and what was coming. It wasn’t gonna be good. Were they losing the war?

  Shiften didn’t mate humans often because the half-breeds they made were not strong enough to fight and were rarely able to shift. But an angel had stepped in after the “incident” if that’s what you called it when half a population was wiped out in one vicious swipe, and mated with human females to make the “one true mates.” The half-angels that were fated to mate the shiften and birth a new army to fight Khain.