Page 108 of Shifters Unifying

“I know what itcouldmean.Ifwe’re related.” Telling him about the location map his sister had left behind in his brain didn’t seem prudent. Not yet. It could still be a trap.

“You ready to talk about the possibility of her being your birth mother yet? What might that mean for you?”

“No.”

“Will you ever be ready?” he pressed.

“Not until after I tell Logan. Even then, the jury’s out. Don’t push me, Marcus. I have a mother, and I’m not sure I have room for another one, especially not one who’s working for Acheron.”

He sighed. With a pain-filled groan, he sat up, blinked rapidly again, and waved his hand in front of his face. Then he paled. “Well, I have some bad news, Emma.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re going to have to leave me behind,” he said.

“Oh, I don’t think so, Bob. You’re going to help me carry that rock back to Six-Mile.”

“No can do, multimorph.”

“I’m not going to talk about that. Stop trying to force me into it, Marcus.”

He cleared his throat. “That’s not it.”

“Then what?”

“I’m blind.”

My heart clenched in my chest. As much as I wanted to see the trove, I couldn’t leave Marcus at the front of the cave, defending it alone. Not without his sight. Dragging him and the cube into the rear of the cave didn’t make any sense either and wasted more time than we could spare.

“Guess that means you won’t be leading me into the booby-trapped relic trove any time soon,” I said.

“Not this time, I’m afraid. That’s why you have to leave me behind. It’ll take you too long to get back to Six-Mile.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’ll take as long as it takes.” I hooked my arm through his and dragged him to his feet. “Come on, then. You get one end of this rock, and I’ll take the other.”

Together, beneath a waning moon, Marcus and I trudged into the main Six-Mile compound, hours and hours later, supporting the stone between us. Thankfully, we hadn’t met any more shadow mages or corrupted shifters. I assumed that meant Acheron knew of my new skills and was busy working up some other way to attack us, but I wasn’t going to complain about a reprieve.

A shout came from somewhere near the big house, and a horde of shifters engulfed us, carrying us along toward the manor. Logan must have managed to convince nearly all the conclave attendees to come back with him.

“Where have you been, multimorph? Have you been training in another territory?” someone asked and the questioned echoed through the crowd. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

Marcus stiffened as the crush of people bumped into him. He tripped on another’s feet, and his expression hardened.

“Taking care of business,” I answered, forcing a light tone into my voice despite grunting under the weight of the block. “Need to know business. I’ll tell you about it when I can.”

“What’s that you’re holding? Can we carry it for you?”

“No, that’s alright. I found a pretty rock and brought it back for my mate.” It sounded like lie even to my own ears, but none of them challenged me on it.

“Let’s set the stone down here,” I whispered to Marcus. “You can get out of here, if you’d rather. I’ll stay with it until Jasper or Logan gets here.”

“Thanks,” Marcus answered. “I don’t want to deal with the pity yet.”

After we lowered it to the ground, Marcus shot an unseeing glance over his shoulder and filtered into the crowd and disappeared. Shifting hadn’t fixed his sight, and my healing him hadn’t worked either, but thanks to his honed shifter senses, he hid his blindness well. When the Ville Platte Cats discovered his blindness, they’d probably depose him as the alpha. Anything construed as weakness wasn’t easily tolerated in clan alphas, and Ville Platte Cats were worst of them all.

Jasper appeared at my elbow. “Anything I can do for ye?”

I pointed to the block. “Can you get that relic to a safe place?”