Page 32 of Shadow's Edge (Night Prowler 1)
She looked into his face, a clear and concentrated look, her wide-set eyes gleaming phosphorous green from under extravagantly long lashes. A faint stain of color bloomed over her cheeks. It was like watching a lovely piece of marble flush to life.
“Shifted...”
His heart skipped a beat. Even in a haze of confusion she was so beautiful it made breathing difficult. “You’re a Shifter, Jenna. Ikati. Like your father. Like me,” he murmured, drawn into her eyes.
She blinked once, and her shaking slowly stopped. She released all the breath in her lungs in one long, quiet exhalation, and along with it all the tension in her limbs dissolved.
“Ikati,” she repeated, rolling her tongue over the unfamiliar word.
“It’s an ancient word from our motherland, it means you can manipulate your human form to become...something else. Something more.”
“More than human.” She stared without blinking so deeply into his eyes he felt as if every corner of his soul was exposed, as if he was a mystery, her mystery, that she was trying to divine. Her lips began to lift into a smile, but they paused, then turned down. She frowned.
She then regarded him with an eyebrow raised, that look of defiance he was beginning to recognize settling over her face, thinning her mouth into a firm, stubborn line.
“I think I need to sit down now,” she said.
He moved instantly to drag the ruined silk chair over to her. He positioned it behind her and she sat, her back ramrod straight, her naked body swathed securely in deep folds of cashmere.
She gazed out the windows toward the veranda and the city skyline beyond and didn’t make a sound.
“I know it must be shocking for you. Unbelievable, most likely,” Leander said, unnerved by this unnatural calm. He couldn’t begin to imagine what was behind it. The first time he’d Shifted, at eleven years old, he’d run screaming with joy in circles over the lawn at Sommerley.
But then he’d been prepared. He’d known his whole life who and what he was. He’d always wanted it. While Jenna...
He dragged the other side chair across the carpet and sat down across from her in it, while she only continued to stare out the window, silent, still as stone.
“I think I owe you an apology,” he began, uncomfortable with her continued silence. “I didn’t actually know you would—it’s not your time yet, you see, we still have a few more days—I thought I would have more time to explain. I only thought to show you how I—” He checked himself and ran a hand through his thick hair when he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Jenna gave him a long, frozen look that stripped away every pretense of softness between them. “What else can I do?” she demanded, cool and controlled. Accusing.
He was taken aback by the difference in her. Only a moment ago she had been pliant and soft in his arms, she had kissed him so passionately he’d felt himself melting. He still had the taste of her on his tongue. But now she was sitting soldier straight in her chair and glaring at him with daggers in her eyes.
“I don’t know yet. I’m not sure exactly what you’ll be capable of—”
“But you have an idea,” she interrupted, her voice still the same low, guarded cadence that twisted his heart into knots. Her lovely features hardened into a mask of wariness.
She looked at him as if he were a stranger.
As if he were an enemy.
He longed to reach out to her, find her hand under the layers of cashmere, gather her into his arms, slide his hands into the cool weight of her hair. But he knew she would only recoil, so he remained in the chair, an unhappy clench in his stomach.
“If you can make the Shift to vapor, you’ll be able to Shift to panther as well,” he said. “It’s what we are. It’s what you are.”
This time she didn’t even blink. Her eyes were clear and dark and fathomless. Her gaze flickered down to his lips, then she turned her head away again, raised her chin, and gifted him with her profile.
“A panther,” she said, without inflection.
“Yes.”
A slight pause, then—“A cat.”
“Technically, yes. A cat.”
A little huff of air escaped her lips, which could have been either amusement or disdain. She watched the heat of the day bend the air into shimmering waves over the rooftops of the city beyond the windows and her nose delicately wrinkled, as if she smelled something bad.
“Wonderful. What else?”
