Page 100 of Shifters Unifying

Fuck.Acheron had put on one hell of a show. Our enemy meant to break me, that was what Logan said, because Acheron was frightened of me. I’m not sure I bought all that, but it gave me a little hope, and a little hope would have to carry me the rest of the way.

My mate wasn’t going to be happy when he figured out that my intention hadn’t been to go back to Six-Mile immediately. No, we needed the relic, and we needed it now. Acheron’s theatrics had made that incredibly clear. Logan was going to be livid I didn’t regroup with everyone back at the manor.

Dealing with the fact that Acheron might have—probably had—my birth mother and forced her to attack her own brother wasn’t something I could process right now. Maybe her actions had been to save her son, maybe they had been because she wasn’t really Marcus’s sister anymore. Either way, none of it mattered… I had to find Marcus, and we had to flee, but myallegeduncle had disappeared from the creek bed.

Searching the growing crowd of injured shifters was taking too long, so I caught the arm of a lumbering passer-by I didn’t recognize. “Have you seen Marcus Steele?”

He spun around, his right eye flashing, his left eyeball bloodied and bulging so far out of the eye socket that he couldn’t close his eyelids over it. Cuts covered the left side of his face, with bruising so bad it looked like blood blisters.

“Is that a fucking joke?” he snapped.

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.” I released his arm as though it was a hot fire poker. “No, wait, I can help you. May I?”

He gestured to his mangled eye. “You think you can help? You a healer?”

“Yeah.” I placed my hands on his shoulders, staring intently at the visibly wounded parts of his face. Gently, I delved in theinexperienced, clumsy way I could, shocked to find broken ribs, wrist, and femur on the other side of his body.

Healing… healing…

In my head, I pictured the bones around his eye and the cells inside knitting back together, being made whole again. Then I turned my attention to his ribs, wrist, and femur. A rainbow cloud formed around him, and he gasped, choking on the impact.

“Shit, that’s a lot… of that,” he muttered. “Who… the… hell…are… you?”

I lowered my hands, pleased that his eye had returned to its socket, and the bruising on his face only looked slightly yellow. “I am the multimorph.”

He dropped to his knees on the ground beside me. “Multimorph, I had no idea.”

“Why would you? We’ve not been introduced.” I hooked my arm through his and tugged him to her feet. “Don’t do that. What’s your name?”

“Homer Jones.”

“Well, Homer, I’m pleased to meet you. I’m Emma. Do you know Marcus Steele?”

His expression turned guarded, as though I had asked a trick question. “Yeah, I’ve met him a time or two. What of it.”

“Well, if you see him, tell him I’m looking for him.”

He dropped his head and half-bowed. “Yes, multimorph.”

I hurried away before the exchange became more awkward than it already had. Healing everybody would exhaust me before our trip to the cave, so I continued my search without helping.

Soon, I spotted Marcus, standing a little way away, pale and shellshocked, staring at the place his sister had been lifted into the air and commanded to attack him.

“Marcus,” I yelled. “Come on. We’ve got to get out of here. Without the deer piss.”

Somewhere in Louisiana

“You’re telling me you’re not sure which way to go?”Unbelievable.

Marcus shook his head and shoved his hand through his sandy brown hair. “The terrain seems different than I recall… somehow.”

“You can’t be serious.” I waved my arms.Shit.“What’s wrong with you? That’s the whole reason you’re here, Marcus. You havegotto focus.”

He stared at something in the distance, something I couldn’t see. “It’s like my brain isn’t altogether or there’s something I’m trying to remember. Something important. It’s pulling at me, like my memories are being sifted. It’s unsettling…”

“Do you have any idea what it is?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he frowned at the half-closed gashes in his skin. Blood dribbled from the largest one on his forearm. I’d never seen him look so uncertain. Normally, he was well-dressed, put together, and wholly in control alphahole.