Nikolas by Faith Gibson Read Free Book Online

else will do it for you, ever again.”
    Xenia sighed. “Then Keene is definitely my mate. But how do I explain all of this to him? We haven’t known each other that long, and I really thought he was the one.”
    “If he is the reason for your transition, he is the one. You should tell him the truth. He will feel the mate pull to you as well, and he won’t really have a choice but to be around you. I have yet to see a mate who ran for the hills at seeing the shifter side. While most of the shifters have mates who are also shifters, it isn’t unheard of for the mates to be fully human, like your mother and my mother.”
    “My mother… what’s she like? I lost both my adoptive parents about a year ago to a home invasion.” Xenia paused as she took a sip of her drink. “That’s when I moved up here to Alexandria.”
    “I’m so sorry for your loss. Your biological mother, Caroline, is great. You look a lot like her, except older.”
    “Older? How is that possible?”
    “When a human woman mates with a shifter then has a child, her body stops aging. Caroline had her first baby when she was in her late twenties.”
    Xenia frowned. “How old is she exactly?”
    Sophia didn’t hesitate to tell her, “Two hundred forty-five.”
    “You’re shitting me!” Xenia exclaimed. The slang term sounded funny said with her accent.
    “I shit you not,” Sophia said, trying to lighten the moment.
    Xenia downed the rest of her drink. “I’m too old to have a kid.”
    “You’re the shifter, not the human. You will look the way you do now for the rest of your life. What you need to be concerned with is phasing and getting your shifter side under control before you go out into public. We’re not ready for the world to know we exist.”
    “Yeah, I can understand that. By the way, why exactly are you here?” Xenia stood and poured herself another drink.
    “It’s a long story, but if I want you to trust me, I’m going to trust you.” Sophia told her aunt everything she knew about her parents’ abduction, which wasn’t much. When Xenia asked what she could do to help, Sophia pulled the disk from her pocket. “You can help me decipher these glyphs.”
     

Chapter Five
     
    “What do you mean the disk is gone?” Kallisto would have choked the huge man on the other end of the line had he been standing in front of her.
    “Just what I said, Boss. We watched the bench until lunchtime. When we never saw the woman, we checked to be sure. It’s not there.”
    Kallisto didn’t bother saying goodbye. She disconnected and yelled, “Sergei, get in here!” When her faithful companion strode into the living room of their hotel suite, she threw her phone at him. “Get on your computer and hack into the video surveillance at the zoo. Find out who took the fucking disk,” she seethed.
    Sergei’s men had kept an eye on the ferries, but none had reported seeing the young woman. Either she was waiting until later afternoon to retrieve her clue, or she had not followed their instructions and had found alternate transportation. The fact that the disk was missing meant she either showed up when they weren’t looking, or someone else had found it. Neither scenario was acceptable. If Miss Brooks already had the disk, Kallisto needed eyes on the woman so she could eventually retrieve it back. If someone else had the disk... Kallisto didn’t want to think about that scenario.
    Her father would not find this acceptable. He didn’t appreciate failure of any kind, and in his eyes, this minor setback would be considered failure. Her father wouldn’t raise a hand to her, but he wouldn’t hesitate to raise one to Sergei. He would give her that disappointed look only a parent could give their child. Kallisto had no wish to see that look on her father’s face. She saw it often enough directed at her brother.
    Kallisto stood behind Sergei and placed her hands on his shoulders as he frantically searched the video feed from the zoo. He was