“Let her go,” Blaise said, his upper lip lifting in a snarl. “You’ve been found out. It’s time to face up to what you’ve done.”
Caleb laughed with no humor. “I think not. Your human girlfriend is my ticket out of here. None of you will try anything as long as I have her.” He slowly backed away from the bed and the others.
“Why, Caleb?” Blaise’s father asked, stopping Caleb. “After all I’ve done for you.”
“All you did for me? Like taking my parents away so I could grow up with an aunt who hated me and mistreated me whenever she got the chance? I used you, took whatever I could get out of you. And don’t try to deny what you did. Tell them. Tell your precious family what you did to my father. My aunt knew because my mother told her before she took her own life.”
“I didn’t do anything. Your father, my brother, made the decision to abandon you and your mother himself.”
“That’s a lie. He never would have left my mom on his own. You knew he wanted to take your place as leader of our family group. You gave him the choice of losing his life for trying to force you out or banishment. He chose the latter.”
“Is that what your mother told your aunt? If it is, then it’s a lie. Your mother had…problems…when it came to perceiving the world around her.”
“Shut up,” Caleb said with a snarl as he tightened his grip even more on Harley’s throat, causing her to whimper with fear.
Blaise’s father held out his hand. “Stop, Caleb. I’ll tell you the truth. Your mother was never my brother’s mate.”
“Bullshit. She wore his pendant. I remember her wearing it.”
“It wasn’t his. She had a human jeweler make a copy of one. There was no mating bond between your parents. When your mother became pregnant with you, my brother tried to make it work, even though she wasn’t his mate. But he strayed as a lot of males do when they stay in a relationship with a female who isn’t meant to be theirs. He found his mate. Your mother didn’t take it well. She plotted to kill your father’s new mate, and almost succeeded.
“My brother deemed she would always be at risk as long as he stayed in Anchorage. Not wanting your mother to learn where he ran to, he left one night and never came back. It was years later when he finally contacted me. Your mother was already dead, but my brother had made another life for himself and his mate. He thought you were better off being raised by your aunt.”
Caleb growled. “It’s still because of you I lost my family. As our leader you could have kept him from running. You could have ordered him back.”
“I wouldn’t have done that. It was my brother’s choice to make, not mine.”
Caleb took a step back, then another and another, dragging Harley along with him. She didn’t understand half of what had been said. Family groups, mates and mating bonds weren’t a part of her world.
Fear rode her as Caleb continued to inch closer to the bedroom door. Her gaze latched on to Blaise, she pleaded desperately with her eyes for him to do something to save her. He followed, keeping enough distance between them so as not to have his cousin feel threatened. Taylor followed, as did their mother. Aspen stayed in the room with their father.
They made it down the stairs and to the foyer. Caleb kept his hand locked around her throat and an arm around her waist. He removed that one only long enough to open the door before he held her against him once more. He took a step outside, dragging her right along with him.
“Time to show you, little human, what a cougar shifter can do to your kind,” he growled into her ear.
Caleb shoved her away. The rest happened in a matter of seconds. His body blurred then shimmered and a cougar took his place. The big cat went to pounce on her, but Blaise stepped between them, shifting to a cougar as well and blocking the other. Caleb spun in midair before taking off at a run toward the back of the property.
Harley let out a whimper and crab-walked away from the remaining cougar. Her fear took over, her vision swam as she tried to scramble out of reach, but her legs refused to work, leaving her unable to get to her feet and run away.
The cougar that was Blaise would have chased after Caleb, but Taylor stepped in front of him. “I’ll go after Caleb. You have Harley to worry about.” Then Blaise’s brother turned into a cougar as well and took off at a run in the direction his cousin had gone.
Blaise turned to face her and took a few steps in her direction. Harley grabbed a handful of stones from the drive and threw them at him, hitting him in the side and head. “Stay away from me,” she cried. “Just stay away.”
Chapter Seven
Blaise hardly felt the stones hit him, he was so focused on Harley. Her first introduction to his world was not the best, by any stretch of the imagination. No one had expected Caleb to return to the house. He normally came to do his examinations only in the mornings. Obviously, their not allowing him to inject his patient hadn’t sat well with Caleb. He’d more than likely come back to try to convince them to change their minds or somehow sneak the shot in when no one was looking.
He reached for the magic inside him and shifted to his human form. As a cougar, there was no way he could verbally communicate with Harley. And right now she needed explanations, if she was in any state to listen to them.
“Harley,” Blaise said softly as he took a step toward her. “It’s all right. No one here is going to hurt you. You have nothing to be afraid of.”
She whimpered and managed to surge to her feet. Harley shook her head. “Stay away from me. I don’t want you near me.”
“You’re safe with me. With my family. Taylor has gone after Caleb. We won’t let him near you again.”
“No. I can’t do this.” Harley quickly sidestepped around Blaise. “You’re not normal. I found cougar hemoglobin in your father’s blood. I was going to question you about it, but now I know why it was there. You’re cougar shifters? That’s what Caleb called himself.”
“We are. We’ve been living among humans for a very long time without any of you knowing it. There aren’t that many of us. You might think we’re not normal, but we’re just a different species.”
“One that can change into a big cat whenever you want, and obviously fight off a poison that would have killed a human in a day.”
“That does have a lot to do with my dad still being alive. We don’t ever get sick, that’s why his illness didn’t make any sense to us. We also live longer than humans. We can see up to two hundred years before death takes us. My father is sixty-five. My mom is only a year younger.”
Harley backed up more. “They both don’t look that old. I thought they were in their thirties, which didn’t make sense because you’re twenty-eight, or at least that’s what you told me.”
“I really am twenty-eight.”
“I can’t deal with this.”
She turned and took off at a run toward her car, which was parked in front of the garage. A wave of stark need washed through him when he saw she was trying to leave. He couldn’t let her go. He had to convince her to stay with him. He’d show her how good they were together, make love to her until she accepted him for what he was. He loved her and couldn’t let her go. He loved her.
Blaise caught up with Harley as she reached the driver’s side door and tried to yank it open. He used his body to pin her against it, his erection pressing along her bottom. She cried out, her breath sawing in and out of her.
“Harley, please stay with me,” he said as he nuzzled the back of her neck. “I love you. I don’t want to lose you. We can work this out. Aspen is human. She was afraid like you when she first found out about Taylor, but she took his pendant from him and became his mate.”
Harley surprised him by throwing back her head and cracking him on the chin as she viciously jabbed her elbow into his stomach. Blaise took a step back as he grunted in pain. That was all she’d needed to wrench open the car door, clamber into the driver’s seat, then lock herself inside. She fumbled with her keys and eventually stuck them into the ignition and man
aged to get the engine turned over.
Blaise pounded on the window. “Harley, I want to make you understand. You can’t leave.”
“Move, Blaise,” she yelled through the glass. “Or I’ll run you over.”
He quickly jumped out of the way as Harley backed the car up almost on him. She then gunned it as she sped down the lane to the main road. Blaise watched her go, the overwhelming need to be with her increasing.
He ran his hands through his hair and bent over, taking deep breaths as he tried to calm himself down. This kind of behavior wasn’t normal for him. It was then he caught a flash of red in his gaze. He looked down at his pendant and saw the cougar’s ruby eyes glowed. Harley had set the magic off inside it. She was his mate. And she’d just rejected him.
Now he understood the throbbing arousal that coursed through him. Seeing her fear of him, he realized he couldn’t lose her—that he loved her—which set off the magic inside the pendant. That in turn caused a spike in his testosterone level. Her not accepting him caused his body to react in the only way it knew how to convince her he was the one for her—with sex.
“Blaise,” Taylor called as he came up behind him. “The bastard got away. He must have thought something was up. His car isn’t parked here so he had to have left it somewhere else in case he felt he needed to make a run for it. We’ll find him though. Where’s Harley?”
Blaise straightened. “She left me.”
“Well, at least she didn’t set off your pendant. You won’t have to go through what I did while you try to win her back.”
Blaise turned around and faced his brother. With the coming twilight, there was no mistaking the glowing ruby eyes of his cougar head pendant. “She did.”
Taylor’s gaze flicked to Blaise’s necklace before he looked up at him with pity showing on his face. “Shit. She’s your mate.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know,” he said with a growl.
“You have it bad. Come inside. We’d best tell Mom and Dad. We’ll put our heads together and see what we can come up with to help you get Harley back. I don’t think you have to worry about Dad being upset with the idea of her as your mate. She did save his life, after all. Without her, we never would have known what Caleb was doing.”
Blaise followed Taylor into the house, even though every fiber in his being called out for him to chase Harley down. He prayed like hell she would come to realize they were better off together than apart.
* * * * *
It’d been almost a week since Harley found out about Blaise being a cougar shifter. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to talk to or see him, even though he’d constantly called and left messages on her cell over the course of the days. He’d even sent long text messages, explaining everything about his kind. All the things he probably would have said in person if she’d allowed him to come near her.
Her initial fear of what he was had long since dimmed. What remained was a kind of numbness. Harley went about her normal daily routine, going to work, coming home to her empty apartment and eating only because her body needed the food. When she slept, most of the time her dreams were filled with Blaise, of when they’d been together and how good it’d been to be in his arms.
By the end of her work week, Harley had to admit she felt as if a part of her was missing, and that it was Blaise who was that piece. She’d already come to the conclusion she loved him before finding out what he was, but now she realized her feelings for him hadn’t changed. She could get over the fact he was able to shift into a cougar.
She’d let so much time pass since that fateful day, she was afraid to make the first step to let him back into her life. The text messages and phone calls had stopped the day before. What if Blaise had decided to give up on her? What if he no longer wanted to be with her because she couldn’t accept what he was? She only had herself to blame. She was the one who’d run from him, was the one who held him away.
Harley jumped at the sound of her cell phone ringing. She picked it up off the coffee table, her heart thumping at the thought it could be Blaise. The display showed it was someone buzzing from downstairs in the lobby.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Harley? Good, you’re home. It’s Taylor.”
“Is Blaise with you?”
“No, it’s just me.”
Harley’s heart dropped, but she pushed it away. “What can I do for you, Taylor?”
“I need you to come home with me. Blaise isn’t doing well.”
She sat up straighter on the couch. A number of things flew through her mind. Had Caleb done something to Blaise? Had he injured himself?
“What’s the matter with him?”
“I think it best you see for yourself. Will you come downstairs?”
“I’ll be down in a minute.”
Harley disconnected the call. Fear made her rush around the apartment as she grabbed her purse, then put on her sneakers. She was out the door and at the elevator in a matter of minutes.
Downstairs in the lobby, she saw Taylor standing in the vestibule, waiting for her. She pushed open the first glass door to where he stood. “How bad is he?”
“Bad. Thanks for deciding to come. I’m parked in the visitors parking, but if you prefer, you can always follow me in your car.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll go with you.” Seeing Taylor again made Harley realize how much she’d missed Blaise.
Once they were on the road, Taylor glanced at her. “How are you doing? You’re not nervous to be around me, are you? I’m harmless.”
“I know. I didn’t answer Blaise’s calls or his texts explaining everything about cougar shifters, but I did get them. I read all the messages.”
“So you’ve decided we aren’t so scary after all?”
“I guess so. I never felt as if I had anything to fear from Blaise before I knew.”
“Then why haven’t you let him see you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I held him off for so long, I was afraid to take the step to let him back into my life.”
“Then I’m glad I came today.”
They spent the rest of the drive in silence. As Taylor stopped the car in front of the garage, all that had happened the last time Harley had been there came rushing into her mind.
“Did you end up catching Caleb?” she asked as she and Taylor walked to the front door.
“No. He got away. We’re still looking for him. My cousin Jase has taken on the job of hunting Caleb down. He’ll be found. Don’t worry about that.”
Inside the house, Taylor guided her up the stairs. Once they reached the top, he led her to Blaise’s closed bedroom door.
“Blaise is in there,” Taylor said. “Go right in.”
Harley was about to ask him why he wasn’t going to come in with her, but by the time she’d turned her head to look at him, Taylor was gone. She figured he had to have used the preternatural speed all cougar shifters had. Blaise had told her in his texts that they were faster than humans.
She focused on the closed door, took a deep breath and opened it. Harley had expected to find Blaise in bed. Instead she found him walking out of the en suite, naked, his hair damp as if he’d just gotten out of the shower. He came to a sudden standstill once he spotted her.
“Harley?”
“Hi. Ah, Taylor came to my place to get me. He said you were in bad shape and that I needed to come here to see you. I thought something terrible had happened to you.”
“The only thing bad that happened to me was you leaving. You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”
Harley ran her gaze over him. There was no mistaking how haggard Blaise looked or the fact he appeared to have lost some weight. “I missed you too.”
Blaise crossed the distance between them in a few long strides. As he walked toward her, Harley noticed the ruby eyes on his cougar head pendant glowed. She had the sudden urge to touch it, to slip the chain from his neck and put it around her own.
Once he st
ood in front of her, she said, “You look a little the worse for wear.” Her heart beat faster from him being so near. And it wasn’t with fear. Her body remembered what it was like to have him thrusting deeply inside her.
He gave her a small smile. “That’s your fault.”
“It is?”
“Yes. You see, there was one thing I didn’t tell you about cougar shifters in my texts.” He pointed to his pendant. “I didn’t tell you about this. Every male cougar shifter is given one once he reaches adolescence. It has magic inside it. When the male meets the female meant to be his mate, and he’s come to accept her into his heart, she sets it off. The cougar’s ruby eyes glow. Once it does, the female gets the decision to claim the male as her own.”
Harley licked her suddenly dry lips, knowing what Blaise was telling her. She was his mate. “How does she do that?”
“It’s simple. She has to take his pendant from him and place it around her own neck. After that, the mating bond forms between them and their souls join. And from then on, there will never, ever be anyone else for them.”
“And if the female doesn’t take the pendant?”
“The male looks like crap because he can’t sleep, can’t eat, all he thinks about is her and the need to have her as his own. To make love to her until she takes what belongs to her and her alone.”
Arousal slammed into Harley’s body, making her breath catch. She focused on Blaise’s pendant. It drew her. She wanted it. There would be no denying the urge that swept through her.
With fingers that shook, Harley reached up and took hold of the cougar head pendant. She wrapped her fingers around it, then lifted, slipping the chain over Blaise’s head. Once it was free, she pulled it over her own until it came to rest between her breasts. The instant it did so, she felt something snap between her and Blaise, like an invisible string that connected them.
“Did you feel that?” she asked.
“You’re damn right I did. Now I’m going to show you that you’ve made the best decision of your life.”
ToLoveaCougar Page 7
