Hawk shifter Colin has been mentoring Eagle shifter Riley for several months now. Because Eagle shifters are so rare, Riley is constantly in danger of being captured and forced into slavery, so Colin has his hands full with training Riley to be a halfway decent soldier, protecting the younger man from their enemies and trying to fight the growing attraction they have for one another. Then Colin discovers a bigger threat to Riley, more dangerous than all the others. Riley can’t run away from this threat since it comes from within him. Will Colin be able to save Riley from himself, or will the Eagle be lost to his own internal demons?
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Riley’s Regret
Copyright © 2011 Stephani Hecht
ISBN: 978-1-55487-879-6
Cover art by Angela Waters
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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Smashwords Edition
Riley’s Regret
Lost Shifter Eleven
By
Stephani Hecht
Dedication
To all those out there who are suffering in silence.
Chapter One
In retrospect, maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to draw smiley faces on all the targets at the coalition firing range. Not only had it pissed off the felines, but the Hawks had failed to find the humor in it as well, which just puzzled Riley, because who didn’t like an emoticon every now and again? Even if it was at the end of a rifle site.
Yet, like so many other things in his life, he’d found out the hard way that his actions had yet again left him on the butt side of trouble. So after he’d been chewed out by both the feline and Hawk leaders, Riley had done what any other civil-minded Eagle shifter who was in the hot seat would do—he sneaked out of headquarters.
He’d gone to the one place where he could find peace. The one place where he didn’t feel like a freak, reject, underachiever or disappointment, and that was the fountain in the center of the local shopping mall.
As strange as it sounded, that place had the ability to calm him down no matter how upset he became. It may not look like much—just a small stone circular pool with a tiny cherub in the center, but it did Riley more good than a thousand Dr. Phils ever could.
He stretched out, belly down, across one curve of the wall encompassing the water. All around him, shoppers rushed by. Humans who were all blissfully unaware of what truly lurked amongst them or how awful the world really was. Riley almost hated them for the ignorance.
He let out a sigh as he rested his cheek on the cool stone and skimmed his fingertips over the surface of the water. He’d give anything to go back to that world again. The one where he’d just been another human and didn’t know he really was an Eagle shifter and not to have to live with the fact that a whole world of nasty waited out there and that most of them wanted to literally throw his sorry ass into a gold cage.
The water felt cooler than normal. Odd, since as far as Riley could tell, the weather outside hadn’t changed. So why should the fountain inside the mall be any different?
“We really need to go,” Noah admonished in a strained voice.
Riley gazed at Noah’s reflection in the water. Just a bit taller than him and with black hair, the Jaguar shifter had been one of the few who Riley could really call a friend. Noah now wore a worried, harried expression as his gaze darted from side-to-side. Riley almost wanted to snark at Noah that if he were so worried about getting caught, then maybe he shouldn’t have tagged along for the field trip. In the end, Riley held his tongue. He knew the only reason why Noah was there was because of the deep-seated loyalty they had for each other.
“Just give me five more minutes and then I swear we’ll head back,” Riley promised as he continued to trail fingers over the water’s surface.
Riley carefully avoided gazing at his own reflection since he’d never liked what he found there. While many went out of their way to tell him how beautiful and special he was, he just didn’t see it. To him, he just appeared to be scrawny. His hair was too pale and unremarkable. His eyes were a dull brown. His mouth was too thin. His nose too narrow. In other words, there was nothing spectacular about him at all.
Which probably was the reason why he got a thrill out of piercing his body. It was the one way he found where he could truly control his appearance and how others viewed him. Numerous parts of his body sported hardware. He currently had one on his bottom lip, one on the side of his nose, another on his right eyebrow, and that was just to name a few. That same thought process went into his hairstyles. His latest style, gelling his blond locks into a faux hawk. As far as Riley was concerned, if it made him look odd or different, then sign him up.