“I don’t know,” the driver said. “Some kind of animal. Maybe a shifter. It happened so fast…”
“I believe you,” I said. “No need for apologies. This place is creepy as fuck.”
I marched toward Lord Balam, who had opened the door of the truck that had hit us. He dragged out a white guy, holding him by the front of his shirt as the man sagged to the ground.
“Who are you?” Balam asked, giving him a shake. “What do you want?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” the man said. His face was bleeding from a dozen cuts, and his arm hung at an odd angle from his shoulder, but his voice was sharp and bitter.
“We’re here with the ocelot princess,” I said. “She’s making her pilgrimage through the nations before taking the throne.”
“Ocelot Nation,” the man said with a sniff. “Aren’t you the ones who refused to take refugees when our land started sinking into the ocean?”
“I…I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. We had a tiny territory compared to other Feline Nations. It didn’t seem fair to blame us when anyone else could have taken them, too, and everyone else had ten times the amount of land we did. Still, this was not the time to debate. This was not the time to point out that their rebels had killed ocelot families, had taken our queen hostage and eaten her body.
“I bet you are,” the man said. “Living up in your castle while we live like animals in our own filth.”
Again, I could have argued, but I kept my mouth shut. There was too much that I didn’t know, and I wouldn’t learn it by talking.
“We’re looking for your people’s Keeper,” I said at last.
“What you want with him?”
“We want the amulet.”
“Good luck.” The man smirked before coughing a wet, rattling wheeze that rose inside his chest like a poisoned wind. His eyes fell closed.
“Shit,” I said, glancing up as one of the guards hurled a man twenty feet through the swampy grass. The body fell with a splash, and the man flailed to rise as if the water itself were eating him alive.
Lord Balam leaned closer to the man at his feet, as if to check for breath. The man suddenly sprang up, plunging a knife into the shaman’s side.
I almost screamed in shock, but before I could, Lord Balam wrenched the knife from the man’s hand and slashed his throat. Blood cascaded down the man’s chest. I swallowed the urge to puke. Lord Balam dropped the man, who crumpled to the ground, blood spreading across the blacktop around him.
“That’s one way to make an entrance,” I said. “I guess we don’t come in peace?”
“He tried to kill me,” Lord Balam said, grimacing as he clamped a hand to his side. “I just did a better job than he did.”
“Oh fuck,” I said, an unexpected dart of anguish piercing me at the thought of losing him already. The night before, he’d teasingly invited me to stay in his hotel room, but I’d refused. I wasn’t exactly regretting that now—okay, fine, my body was big-time regretting it—but I had started to like Lord Balam, what little I knew of him. When he’d said he would escort us for this leg of the trip, I’d thought I would have time to get to know the man who had claimed and treasured and ravaged my body so entirely that I’d been sore for days after.
I knelt beside him, pushing his cloak back so I could see if blood seeped from under his tattooed hand. “How bad did he get you?”
“Not too bad,” Balam gritted out. “But we should get rid of him before anyone else shows up.”
I looked down, only to realize the dying man’s blood had spread to where I knelt. I jumped up, nearly gagging at the sight of all that blood. His hand lay sprawled across the pavement, his fingers twitching. “I don’t think we’re going to be welcome in this clan anytime soon,” I said, unable to tear my eyes from the horror.
I’d seen men die before—obviously. As future queen, Father considered it Camila’s duty to witness executions, and it was my duty as Camila’s escort to get her through them. That gave me something to focus on besides the spectacle Father had made of some poor man who had committed a supposed crime. Seeing Tadeu die had been the worst experience of my life. But this was different. Up close, I could see the life literally bleeding out of a human being, could see the brutality and rawness of death. Horror gripped me, and I sat frozen, staring at the dying man.
“Help me get him in the ditch,” Lord Balam said. I obeyed, grabbing his legs and helping drag the body to the side of the road, where we dropped him into the water. Redness swirled away in the water as the body sank toward the mud, bubbles rising from his mouth. His eyes were still open, and I fought another wave of nausea.
“Time to move out,” Lord Balam called to the guards, who were just disposing of the last attacker by hurling him into the water under a moss-covered tree. I figured the vultures would have taken care of the bodies if we didn’t. The cars were another story.
In the distance, the wail of sirens began.
“Fuck,” Balam muttered. “Who called the cops?”
“I don’t know,” I said, running for the car. “But we need to get the hell out of here.”
“Our car’s dead,” Gabor said, meeting me outside the door. “So is our driver.”
“What?” I asked, shock knocking me back again. I’d just watched a man die a gruesome death, but the quickness with which life could be there and then just… gone… It still sent me reeling.
“We have one good vehicle left,” Gabor said. “Let’s get Her Majesty to safety.”
“What are we going to do with the rest of these?” I asked as we hurried to the limo. When I threw open the door, Camila shrieked and scrambled away before seeing it was me. She was hyperventilating, her whole body shaking. I could only pray Gabor had kept her from looking during the fighting.
“It’s okay,” I said, sliding in beside her. I covered my knees with my hands, hoping she wouldn’t notice the blood on them. “We’re going to get you out of here, Camila. Just come with me to the other guard’s SUV. You know you can trust me, right?”
She nodded, her eyes pooling with tears.
“Okay,” I said. “We have to get out now, before the police come.”
“Why?” she asked. “We’re not the bad guys. That’s why I called them. To come help.”
I closed my eyes and took a breath, trying to find patience as the swell of sirens drew closer and closer. “We’re in a foreign country, in someone else’s territory,” I said. “And we killed people. We don’t want the police to find us here.”
“The police here are human,” Lord Balam said, sticking his head in. “They tend to look the other way when it comes to shifters killing each other. But if any of those people were human…”
The other SUV roared past the trucks and screeched to a halt beside us. Gabor hopped down from the driver’s seat, ran around the front, and ducked into the limo. He held out a hand to Camila like she was a cornered animal, and he wasn’t sure if she’d bite or let him hold her. I tried not to let it bother me that she dropped her hand into his so easily, with such obvious relief. Not that I blamed her. Gabor had been nothing but dutiful and obedient on our trip, and as an ocelot guard, he was highly trained in combat and about a million other ways of protecting the royals.
But before this trip, he’d been a palace guard, not her personal guard. We barely knew him. If it came down to the choice between doing our father’s bidding and doing the right thing, we all knew which one he would do. Camila should know that I was always loyal to her and her alone.
Gabor pulled her across the seat, scooped her into his arms, and delivered her to the back seat of the waiting car. The rest of us piled in, and Gabor slammed on the gas just as blue lights appeared through the trees.
I glanced into the third row of seats, checking the guards. We’d lost two of the eight, plus the limo driver and Camila’s maidservant. I closed my eyes and squeezed Camila’s hand. Yes, I’d seen death, but in our kingdom, even death was orchestrated and c
elebrated with fanfare. Here, it had come to us suddenly, chaotically, as if human life were no more momentous than that of a bug crushed on the windshield or a deer crumpled on the roadside.
“Is the princess secured?” Gabor called, snapping me back to the present. I reached over Camila, grabbing her seatbelt and buckling it. Gabor ripped the wheel sideways, and the car veered wildly, the tail ending fishtailing before it righted itself. I slid into Lord Balam, who muttered curses and squeezed his side tighter. His tail flicked back and forth in agitation.
“I’ll lose them,” Gabor said over his shoulder. We sped down an old road, the pavement bleached pale as a fish belly in the sun. Sirens wailed somewhere behind us, but I couldn’t tell if they were still in pursuit. Lord Balam’s tail had begun to distract me as it traced the back of my calf, caressing the soft skin behind my knee.
We turned off the pavement onto a dirt road, then back onto pavement. All the while, the jaguar’s tail inched up the outside of my thigh and tickled me relentlessly. I tried not to react, but the sensation was delicious, and I found myself squeezing my thighs together against the mounting pressure between them as the car hurtled through the swampland. At last, his tail slipped under my knee and flicked the tip between my thighs.
I bit my lip and let my head fall back against the seat, trying not to let my rapid breathing alert anyone to what he was doing.
“I think we’re in the clear,” Gabor said from the front. My head snapped up. Here, the land was a little higher, and dust blew from little hillocks and sprayed the sides of the car.
“We need to lose this car if we don’t want to be obvious,” I said as we passed a boxy old sedan. We slid into a little town with a broken motel sign jutting up from a squat set of brown buildings. Gabor hopped the curb and zipped behind the building, pulling in beside a Dumpster and letting the car idle.
I reached down beside my knee and extracted Balam’s tail from where it had been torturing me, trying to squirm deeper between my thighs. Camila caught the movement, and her mouth fell open in shock and distaste. The look only fanned the flames of my desire. I had to assume this was not a normal part of the mating rituals she’d seen. Instead of making me ashamed, it filled me with excitement. What else could that tail do?
“We need to be off the road for the rest of the day,” Gabor said. “The police might be looking for us. I’ll carry up the bags and secure the rooms. Lord Balam, are you able to check in without drawing attention?”
Lord Balam hesitated, then undid the clasp on his cloak. Without a word, he swung it around my shoulders and settled it around me. Our eyes met, and the intensity in his gaze shimmered through me, as hot as a mirage over the desert. He slipped out of the car, and I held the cloak around me, aware of the weight of what he’d done even if I didn’t know the significance. I’d never seen him remove the cloak, not even when he slept. Until that moment, I hadn’t even been sure he could remove it.
I spread my fingers and let them slide down the thick fur, reveling in the softness of it, the heaviness of it on my shoulders, the warmth of it cradling my body like a protective embrace. I closed my eyes and inhaled the scent of it. It smelled of Lord Balam, like rain and a wild forest. Suddenly, I could feel the softness of wet leaves underfoot, as if I were there, in the place where this pelt was taken. The smell of the rain was thick in my nostrils, the loamy scent of the forest floor clinging to each hair in my coat. I could see the moonlight gleaming off wet tree trunks in the inky blackness under the canopy, could see it glimmer off a leaf as it swayed in a breeze that ruffled my fur. A drop of moisture fell from the leaf, the sound as clear as a footfall on the forest floor.
My eyes snapped open, and I sucked in a breath of the artificially cool, dry air inside the car.
What the hell?
I threw off the cloak. I didn’t want to see any more through the eyes of the jaguar whose life had been taken to make it. I had thought Lord Balam was doing something meaningful, not fucking with my head. I’d gotten all caught up in his teasing tail and believed he felt the same connection that I did. But apparently, he thought it would be funny to let me experience some magic myself. After all, I was a poor little human who was probably dying for it, the same way I’d been dying for some dick.
But I didn’t want magic. I was sick of magic, of all the silly rituals that the clans had to perform. Not to mention that I’d thrown away my virginity while under the influence of it. And now this. I had already seen enough death this week. I didn’t need to see an innocent animal killed, didn’t need to experience it through his eyes. I already spent every night tossing and turning, imagining what Tadeu saw and felt in his last moments.
Lord Balam opened the door as if to climb in, but he stopped. His eyes went from the cloak to me, a frown creasing his brow. After a second, he picked up the cloak and ran his hands over it as if to make sure it was intact, looking at me like I’d thrown his baby on the floor.
I pointedly ignored his indignation and held out a hand. “Did you get the room keys?”
Seventeen
We climbed a set of clanging metal-and-concrete steps to the balcony that ran along the second story, the doors opening onto it. All the remaining guards surrounded Camila as if expecting an assassination attempt.
Not conspicuous or anything.
Gabor ducked into a room to check it before giving us the all clear. I was pretty sure they’d been watching too many spy movies. Yes, we’d been attacked, but that was because we’d gone into panther territory and started asking questions. I didn’t think they were seeking us out, and even if they had been, they wouldn’t be waiting in the room to ambush us. But what did I know? Maybe they had shifty senses or something.
“I’ll stand guard,” Gabor said.
“Um, I really don’t think that’s necessary,” I said. “I know you’re used to doing this at home, but it might actually put us in more danger to be so obvious.”
He gave me a look that he was probably not supposed to give a princess. It fell somewhere between stink-eye and resting bitch face. “I won’t be obvious.”
Deciding against an argument, I went inside to tend to Camila. With her maidservant gone, the job fell to me. It took me a couple hours to broach the subject I’d been thinking about earlier. Camila could be proud, even with me. It was better to wait until she asked for help, but this time, I didn’t know if I could. If something happened to her, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
“Maybe we should split up,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed with a take-out box of unidentifiable fried food. “It will be less obvious when we’re traveling. I can check out where we need to go, find the people we need to talk to. Just to make sure it’s safe before you go in. Today, you were already in danger by the time we knew it wasn’t safe here.”
“You mean you’d get the amulets for me?” Camila asked, her eyes wide. She picked a flake of breading off the side of something and wrinkled her nose.
I popped a round thing in my mouth and chewed. It was slightly fishy and sweet. I was betting on scallops. “Father doesn’t even have to know,” I said. “He’s not here.”
She stared at me a second, then set her food on the bedside table that was already crowded with two lamps, a clock with red, digital numbers, and a box of tissues. “You don’t think I can do it,” Camila said.
Shit. I sucked at being sneaky.
“I think you can,” I said. “I just don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
Camila stood and paced across the tiny room with the matted, dingy carpet and the roaring window unit that didn’t begin to dispel the swampy heat in the air. “You won’t always be there to hold my hand,” she said. “Father was right. I’m already taking you with me. I can’t let you do it for me. I might as well hand over the crown and let you rule the clan for me.”
I didn’t point out that she wouldn’t just be ruling the Ocelot Clan. She’d be ruling the entire nation, which included a lot more than just a few hundred ocelot shift
ers. There were humans, other shifters, vampires, trolls, fae, even goblins. They all wanted a voice, but as the ruling class, ocelots tended to forget about their concerns.
“I would never take that away from you,” I said. “Not to mention it’s impossible.”
Even if something happened to Camila, which I didn’t even want to think about, I couldn’t take her place as heir. Father would continue ruling until the ICFN agreed upon a suitable heir from among Father’s illegitimate children or another aristocratic family—one with an ocelot shifter. I pushed the thought down deep. Nothing was going to happen to Camila. I would make damn sure of it.
“I think you should go,” Camila said, standing at the window with her hands folded primly before her, as if she were looking out on the palace gardens instead of the parking lot of a seedy motel.
“Go where?” I asked. “They only booked three rooms. I’m staying in here with you.”
“I’ll send for you if I need you,” she said, her back rigid.
I sighed and picked up my box of food. I’d give her some time, and if she still refused to share a room with me, I’d just have to camp out on the floor in one of the other rooms. When I stepped outside, the wall of humidity nearly knocked me flat. Apparently, the crappy air conditioner was doing more than I’d thought.
A tall man was slouched against the railing smoking a cigarette, his face hidden in shadow by the pale orange glow of the streetlamps in the parking lot behind him. I grabbed for the doorknob behind me, my heart punching against my ribs.
“It’s just me,” he said, his smooth voice familiar.
I scanned his lean form in his jeans and white T-shirt, squinting to make sense of his features. The familiar, sturdy black boots gave him away. “Gabor?”
“Yeah,” he said, apparently having dropped the formal language along with his guard uniform.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I said, crossing the little walkway to set my food on the rusted metal railing. “I didn’t know you smoked. Or…wore T-shirts.”
Broken Princess: A Dark Paranormal Romance (Feline Royals Book 1) Page 11
