She didn’t laugh. “Live forever in Shiftertown?” She shook her head. “I don’t know, Eric. I just don’t know.”

“Shh.” Eric pulled her close, his body and hers warm with their release. “I’m keeping you near me, no matter what, love. I need to protect you, and I need you to ease this pain, whatever it is.”

Iona’s fear turned to concern. “Are you all right? I was so scared.”

“Fine now.”

She ran her hands down his chest. “What is happening to you?”

“I wish I knew. There’s a couple of people I need to talk to, who might have some answers.”

“You told me you’d felt something like it before, when you took the Collar, but you never finished explaining.”

Eric went quiet. He didn’t like to think about the dark days of their initial confinement, when the Collar first fused to his neck, when he had to fight the humans every day to keep his family together and unharmed.

He pulled Iona closer, letting the warmth of her body comfort him. “When Shifters were rounded up, some of us were experimented on. The humans wanted to know how we did what we did, how much physical stress we could stand, things like that.” He shuddered, involuntarily, remembering. “They wanted to use Jace. He was young enough to stand the experiments, they said, but old enough to be a good test subject. I refused to let them take him, so they took me in his place.”

Iona rubbed his chest again, her instinct to comfort. “That’s awful. What did they do to you?”

“A lot of things. Pumped me full of adrenaline, tortured me to see how much pain I could take, filled me with tranqs to see how many I could stand. They provoked my fighting instinct so it set off my Collar—again and again and again. They did that, they said, so they could adjust the Collars. I spent a year in a cage, mostly in pain, until a Shifter rights group got the experiments declared inhumane, and we were released.”

Iona leaned into him and closed her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“I got through it. This pain now is like some I suffered in the experiments, but I don’t know what’s triggering it, or why.”

“Your Collar?”

“Don’t know. Which is why I’m talking to some Shifters who might.”

Iona kissed his chest. “You were suffering like that all those years ago, while I was hiding in my mother’s house, pretending to be human. That makes me feel bad…weak and scared.”

He rubbed her cheek. “You were a cub, a half Shifter. I don’t like to think what they would have done to you if they’d found you. I’m glad you were safe.”

He truly was. Iona might feel guilty, but Eric had no anger at all that she’d escaped the attention of the humans too curious about Shifters.

Eric kissed her again, enjoying the hint of afterglow. As he pulled back from the kiss, savoring her taste, he reached over and shut off the water.

“Let’s go to bed,” he said. “We’ve used all the hot water, and Cassidy’s going to kill us.”

Iona woke when sun came pouring through Eric’s high window. Eric slept next to her, spooned into her side. His face was relaxed, his sleep, peaceful.

As Iona lay back, trying not to think about what she’d have to face today and the decisions she’d have to make, she wondered why Eric, the big, bad Shiftertown leader, had what must be the smallest bedroom in Shiftertown.

The room was wide enough for Eric’s bed and a nightstand, and that was about it. A corner closet had been built into the wall, not a very big one. The rest of the walls were blank, long and narrow.

Iona thought about the way Eric wanted her to alter the plans for the new houses, and she studied the walls around her with interest.

Eric stirred beside her, coming awake. His body was warm, his c**k plenty stiff against her thigh. For a night not filled with sex, it certainly had been sensual.

“Morning, love,” Eric murmured. He pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder.

What would it be like to have him say that to her every morning for the rest of her life? Heady.

“Your room doesn’t match the house,” she said, to distract herself.

“Mmm?”

“Your room doesn’t fit. There’s too much space between it and the bathroom. It doesn’t match the footage in the hall.”

“That’s true.”

“Why squeeze yourself in here like this?”

Eric shrugged, his body moving in a good way. “Diego and Cass need the biggest room, especially with a cub on the way. I like Jace in the front room, where he can come and go as he pleases. He’s restless. I don’t need much space.”

“And these are false walls, aren’t they? You sleep in here to guard whatever’s behind them.”

“I knew you were smart the moment I met you.” Eric drew a fingertip between her br**sts, but Iona refused to let him divert her attention.

“It’s not too hard to figure out,” she said. “What’s back there?”

Eric swung himself out of bed. The sunlight fell on his naked body, bronzed from the strong Nevada sun.

Regrettably, he pulled on jeans before he turned to the closet in the corner. He opened the door, revealing hanging shirts, pants, and a couple of jackets, then he reached up for a catch and pulled the whole closet away from the wall.

Iona stared in astonishment as the closet moved aside to reveal a solidly beamed doorframe in whitewashed brick. The brick passage led to shadows, but Eric reached around the corner and flicked on a light switch.