Warriors of Poseidon 1.5
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But he was still curious. "Tell me about your gift."
She stopped, finally turning to face him. "What are you talking about?" Honest confusion clouded her eyes, and she put her hands on her hips. Six miles of walking, and she wasn't even winded. She had warrior spirit in her, his woman.
The woman. Not his woman. The woman. Dammit.
"Your gift. The ability to calm aggression. Is this a shapeshifter ability that has been kept secret before?"
She blinked, then laughed bitterly. "Gift? Right. You mean curse. The lovely ability I have to calm hostility and aggression in everyone, including myself. The gift that keeps me from ever becoming a true shapeshifter."
Somehow, he felt the fury radiating from her. He saw the evidencethe clenched jaw, the narrowed eyes, the hands fisted on her hips. But he felt the rage and pain, somehow inside himself. Impossible. But true. He tried to form a coherent question. "How does it—"
She cut him off. "How do you think we get in touch with our animal sides? We tap our animal instincts. A panther is a true predator. I can't reach the predatory side of myself, dual-natured or not, when my gift automatically switches on to calm any aggression anywhere around me."
Kat pulled her hat off, wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. "That includes, in case you were wondering, any of my own aggression."
He flinched at the anguish searing through him. Wondered how he could possibly feel her pain burning in his blood. "Kat, I—" But even as he formed the words, a blanket of calm muffled her emotions.
Wild Hearts In Atlantis – Warriors of Poseidon 1.5
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She sliced her hand through the air, dismissive. "No. I didn't tell you because I want your pity. Just thought I should let our Atlantean liaison know that I'm a poor choice to be your counterpart. I'm a half-breed who will never truly be a panther. You'd be better off with somebody else."
He reached out, couldn't help himself. Touched the curve of her cheek with his fingertips. "Quinn said you. You were the one. Prince Conlan agreed. And this is my first assignment as liaison, so perhaps we can figure this out together."
She seemed to hold her breath, staring up at him. He could lose himself in her gaze.
Sink into the warmth of her amazing mouth and spend the next hour or seven kissing her. Touching her. Plunging into her.
Her face suddenly pinkened as though she could read his entirely unliaison like thoughts, and she took a jerky step back from him. "Well, um, okay. We—we've checked this path, and there's no sign of the trouble that—"
Her head snapped up, and she lifted her face into the sluggish breeze, as if she were scenting the wind. "Do you smell that?" she whispered, the lines of her face gone hard, her eyes feral.
He shook his head. "All I smell is swampland. What do you—" he broke off, Atlantean senses sharpening. His sense of smell may not be as keen as a panther's, but his hearing was preternaturally sharp. "Moaning. That way." He pointed through a grove of trees and took off at a dead run. The moaning had sounded human.
Even in human form, Kat moved like the panther she was and seemed almost to flow through the underbrush to meet him as they found the source of the moaning. It was a shapeshifter—another panther. The man stared wildly up at them, throat drenched in scarlet blood from the wounds that ripped through the side of his neck. "Kat? It was Terminus," he said, voice rasping with the effort. "Tell Ethan. Terminus did this."
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Kat dropped to her knees next to the man, tears streaming down her face, already barking orders into her radio. She gave their location, then dropped the radio on the ground and reached for the man's wrist, trying to check his pulse. "Nicky? No, Nicky, no.
You have to hang on. We'll get help, I