Hellcats were solitary, but as far as she knew, tigers weren’t. They were a pride animal, one who thrived while surrounded by others of their kind. What had driven him to turn his back on them and walk away?
It was more than just this mission for his brother.
Something had made him leave.
Something she wanted to know.
She stared at his profile, struggling with the urge to ask, afraid of taking that step closer to him. How was it possible to want something and not want it at the same time?
To want someone but not want them?
Was it just fear of getting hurt again that had her taking a step away whenever she really wanted to move one closer? She was afraid to trust again after what had happened to her.
She studied Grey’s handsome face and those eyes that told her everything he was feeling even when he wanted to hide it from her. Now that she was starting to know him better, she could see she had been wrong about him. He wasn’t good at hiding his feelings at all.
They were always there in his eyes even if his face remained impassive, unreadable.
Those eyes told her everything.
They slid towards her, softened and gained a warmth that reached out to her and offered comfort. They stirred a feeling in her, one even her battered and bruised heart couldn’t deny.
If anyone could give her a reason to trust again, it was Grey.
She lost herself in his eyes, in that silent promise they made, the one that said he would never hurt her, not if he could help it.
He would protect her.
His lips moved, and she struggled to focus on them, to tear her thoughts away from how beautiful his eyes were as they swore that to her.
His words registered one by one.
“Enough about me. I want to know how a hellcat ends up living in Norway.”
She stared at his mouth, her own turning dry as she thought about what he was really proposing.
He wanted to know more than just the story of how a creature born of fire and brimstone ended up living in the frozen north of Europe.
He wanted to break down the barrier between them and move closer to her.
Lyra swallowed her fear.
She could do this.
Because she wanted to move closer to him too.
CHAPTER 9
Grey found it impossible to keep his eyes off Lyra as she walked beside him, her limp less pronounced now. She didn’t help when she took to twirling a length of her long black hair around the fingers of her left hand, pulling his focus there.
To those nails made for raking down his back.
The urge to dominate her rose back to the fore and pushed him to obey it, to turn and take that delicate hand of hers and force it against his chest and make her touch him, stroke him as she was stroking her hair.
He gritted his teeth and shoved back against it, refusing to succumb to it.
The gods only knew how, but he drove it back into submission enough that he could concentrate on Lyra and learning more about her.
He wasn’t sure why he needed to know.
It had been a gut reaction to her asking questions about his life, and about him.
Learning more about her was likely to be a mistake.
When she finally left him, walked out of his life and never looked back, she would haunt him now, everything he knew about her bringing her to life in his mind and making it difficult to forget about her.
To go on without her.
His claws extended, his heart provoking them into emerging as it whispered to him, told him to seize hold of her and not let her leave him. She had been made for him, and he needed to show her that she belonged to him now.
He needed to claim her.
No.
He curled his hands into fists and grimaced as his claws bit into his palms, and he caught the tinny scent of his own blood in the air. He focused on the pain, imagined it to be a thousand times worse, cutting at his heart, shredding his soul. That pain was what he would inflict on Lyra if he allowed the dark urges that gripped him to get the better of him.
He would be no better than the people who had held her captive, or the sick bastard who might own her now if he hadn’t intervened in the auction.
“Grey?” Lyra’s soft voice chased away his black thoughts, shining through the clouds that marred his mind again, bringing light back into his soul. “What’s wrong?”
He realised he had stopped walking and was stood in the middle of the valley as still as a statue and staring at her.
Scaring her.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
She lowered her blue gaze, and pointed. “Your hands.”
Grey looked down at them. Blood dripped from between his clenched fingers.
He pulled the cloth from the back pocket of his black fatigues, turned his back on her and wiped the blood away. More pooled in the deep cuts his claws had made.
Lyra took a step towards him.
“It’s nothing,” he bit out, a little harshly judging by how she backed off. “I was just… I’m fine now.”
He wasn’t.
He was far from fine.
The thought of a male owning Lyra still had his blood running hot, a need to hunt and kill colliding with a terrible need to stake a claim on her.
He drew down a deep breath and held it in his lungs, but he couldn’t centre himself, couldn’t find the peace he normally found whenever he used this calming technique.
His blood still raged.
“I just need a minute,” he whispered, hating the sound of his voice as he admitted that.
He sounded weak.
Would Lyra think him weak now?
A male easily overcome by his emotions?
He sucked down another breath, and exhaled it slowly, emptying his lungs. This time it worked, pushed all the fury out of his blood and let cool calm rush in to fill him.
He didn’t look at Lyra as he turned back around and started walking again.
She was silent as she hurried to catch up with him, and as she fell into step beside him, and even as they crossed the end of the mountain that jutted out into the valley, cutting it in two.
“I don’t really like Hell,” she whispered, as if she was afraid to speak to him now, feared that she might reawaken the darkness that had gripped him, but then her voice gained strength, confidence that eased his heart and lightened it, lifting some of the load from it as they walked. “It’s horrible, isn’t it?”
He silently thanked her for it, for the fact she cared about him enough to want to make him feel better and wanted to be around him still when he had proven himself unpredictable and had shown her that he wasn’t fully in control of himself.
Gods, he should have fought better to hide it from her.
He didn’t want her to feel she couldn’t trust him, or believe him liable to hurt her at any moment.
“I prefer things back home,” she said, her voice light and bright.
When he risked a glance at her, she was smiling, her blue eyes shining with it, as if just thinking about home was enough to chase all her troubles away.
He wished it was the same for him.
Thinking about home left him hollow inside.
What was it like to have a home that made you feel that way?
“Let me see.” She pursed her lips, and he mentally cursed when he realised he had asked that out loud, revealing yet another part of himself to her that he had wanted to keep hidden.
He didn’t want her to think he was lost, even when he was.
She smiled a little wider, but he could see through it, could see the thoughts crossing her mind as she looked at him. She wanted to know why he didn’t feel the pride was his home.
He couldn’t tell her.
He didn’t want her to know that much about him.
She would end up looking at him the same way his pride did.
He could bear it from them, was used to it now having been subjected to it since birth.
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But the thought of Lyra looking at him with contempt, with disgust.
It would destroy him.
“I think I like the quiet. The solitude and the freedom. It’s just me now. My mother and aunt passed on decades ago, but they taught me well, and my mother loved me deeply even though my father was a monster who held her and my aunt as slaves—”
“Gods, Lyra.” Grey couldn’t hold back those words as hers hit him. He stopped and stared at her, reeling from what she had told him.
Her mother had been a slave.
Lyra scoffed. “I’m sure the bastard got what he deserved. That’s the trouble with hellcat males. They always think they can just take what they want… that we females belong to them and should just hurl ourselves at their feet and be their breeding bitches and not complain about it.”
Those words hit him harder and he almost staggered back a step as the force of her anger and her hatred hit him with each one, hammered into him and pierced his soul.
She despised male hellcats.
She feared what they did to the females of her kind.
Things he wanted to do to her.
He closed his eyes, unable to bring himself to look at her when there was so much fury and fear in her eyes, feelings she would have towards him if she knew the truth about him.
He would deserve her wrath too, would deserve her giving him hell and walking right out of his life.
He wouldn’t blame her for it.
“I should have known better than to trust one of them.”
For a dreadful heartbeat of time, he thought she knew about his ancestry and was talking about him.
“Gods, I was an idiot. He said he would help me track down more females from my family… I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him.”
Grey slowly opened his eyes and lifted them, running them over her baggy shorts and t-shirt to her face. Her eyes glowed blue, the fires of her breed burning in them, and fangs flashed between her lips as she spat the words.
“The bastard collared me and sold me.”
He growled low in his throat, his own fangs emerging as her words hit him, conjuring an image of her shackled by someone she had trusted.
Betrayed.
The urge to shift swept through him and he breathed hard against it, fear of her seeing him for what he was holding it back. It grew stronger as he looked at her, and the need to hunt and kill, to bloody claw and fang for her sake blasted through him and drove him to obey it.
“Grey,” she whispered, no fear in her voice, only a strange sense of awe, as if she was touched by how he had reacted, not terrified.
She stared into his eyes, and he grew aware of them, of the fact that his were probably glowing, and would be in danger of revealing his heritage to her if they hadn’t already been blue because of his defective genes.
“Is he the reason you’re so far from home?” It was hard to keep his voice measured and even when he wanted to roar, wanted to bellow his rage so everyone in Hell would hear it.
Including the male she had been tricked into trusting.
A hellcat.
Like him.
Gods, she would never trust him if she knew the truth about him.
He could see that now.
He had thought it before, but even as he had thought it, he had been fooling himself into not believing it, into holding on to the sliver of hope that she might find it in her heart to love him.
It broke through the illusion he had constructed in his heart and hit home with a force that shook him.
No matter what he did, no matter how fiercely he fought his urges and kept them in check for her, she would never feel anything for him.
She would never be his.
He wasn’t sure when he had started wanting her to be that for him, needing her to be his mate and his forever, but it was over now.
“I don’t want to talk about him…” She looked away, turning her profile to him, and sighed. “I was stupid and made a mistake, but it’s over now, and I’m free… thanks to you.”
Would she still be thanking him if she knew what he was?
Would she trust him?
“We should keep moving. Hell has a way of sneaking up on you if you stay in one place too long.” She took a few steps and looked back at him when he didn’t move. “Are you coming?”
Her hand twitched at her side, as if she wanted to hold it out to him and coax him towards her.
Hell, he wished that she would, that she would reach for him in the way he kept wanting to reach for her, to pull her closer to him.
He forced himself to nod and started after her when she began walking again. When she tried moving closer to him, he drifted away, keeping at least fifteen feet between them, a distance that seemed to work for him and eased the need to gather her into his arms and kiss her until she surrendered to him.
Gods, he bet her lips were as soft as they looked.
He had kissed a female once, a mortal. It had been strange, unsettling, but once he had overcome his nerves, had convinced himself that she would have no reason to despise him because she didn’t know his kind existed, it had been nice.
“What did you mean when you said Hell has a way of sneaking up on you?” He kept his eyes away from her as he tried to push aside thoughts of kissing her.
It wasn’t going to happen.
Unlike the mortal, she was aware of his kind and his breed, and she wouldn’t sully herself with him like that. Not if she knew the truth about him.
“There are beasts in this realm that like eating stray cats. It’s better we avoid attracting their attention by remaining in the open for too long.” Her blue eyes roamed the mountain to their left and the valley ahead of them.
“You know a lot about Hell for someone who doesn’t live here. Did you live here once?”
She shook her head, gathered her hair in both hands and lifted it away from her neck. Damp strands stuck to her skin, drawing his eyes downwards.
To her nape.
A lightning bolt struck hard inside him, from his fangs down to his balls, and he grimaced as his entire body tightened in response, muscles clamping down hard on his bones.
The need to sink his fangs into that sweet nape, to claim her as his own, broke over him and he barely bit back the growl that rolled up his throat in response.
Lyra slowly lowered her hair as if she was aware of his eyes on her and the need that surged through him.
“Look at it. Who would want to live here?” She sounded casual, but he could sense her nerves, how he had unsettled her by staring at that spot on her neck where he would need to bite in order to place a claim on her.
He forced himself to take his eyes off her and take in his surroundings.
Black mountains rose ahead of them in a long range that stretched so far in both directions that it blended into the darkness. The golden glow from beyond them silhouetted their jagged peaks. They were forbidding, as grim as the rest of Hell, and the closer he got to the Devil’s lands, the hotter the air became. It was stuffy, had sweat sliding down his spine beneath his backpack.
“It isn’t a patch on the human world.” It wasn’t hard to admit that.
Fresh air, clean water, and lush nature versus humid, liable to poison you and grim black?
Hardly a competition.
“It’s not just their world.” Lyra frowned over her shoulder at him. “It’s your world as much as it is theirs. For as long as mortals have lived in it, shifters have too. Hell, dragons were king there once.”
“That was a long time ago.” Way beyond his years and any lifespan of a feline shifter. “Before someone stripped them of their throne and plunged them into Hell.”
It was a story that had fascinated him as a cub, one his mother had often told him as a cautionary tale when it was time for his nap. The dragons had grown too big for their boots and someone had dealt with them.
When he had grown older, he had read all he could about it, which wasn’t much. No one seemed to know the r
eal reason the dragons had been banished and cursed to live out their lives in Hell.
His urges finally began to level out, falling back to a manageable level, and he breathed easily again, able to enjoy Lyra’s company once more without fearing he might hurt her or drive her away.
She froze.
Her eyes locked ahead of her.
The instinct to fight and protect her had him instantly whirling on the spot, scouring the bleak lands for whatever she had spotted that had spooked her.
In the distance, he could make out something. He squinted and focused. Bodies. Two of them.
The scent of blood hit him.
Old. Decaying.
Lyra took off towards them, running at full speed.
“Lyra, no.”
She wasn’t listening. She raced towards the bodies, her heartbeat off the scale, her fear flooding his own veins.
He growled and gave chase, his backpack bouncing against his bare back with each long stride.
The second he was close enough, he reached out and grabbed her wrist.
She snarled, turned on him and smacked his hand away, sending pain shooting up his bones. The moment she realised what she had done, her hand fell to her side and she looked down at her feet.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean it.” Her voice was a broken whisper, one that tore at him together with the feelings he could detect in her—the pain and the fear, and the regret.
Grey withdrew a step to give her more space. “I know. It’s instinctive. You’re afraid of me.”
And it hurt like hell.
He didn’t want her to fear him, didn’t want her lashing out at him whenever he dared to touch her. It cut at him, carving a hole in his heart.
She shook her head, her black hair brushing her shoulders. “I’m not… I just…”
He walked past her and crouched beside the bodies, giving her a moment to pull herself back together. Giving himself a moment too, because he needed one, needed to get hold of his feelings again and clamp down on them.
It was a fucking mess.
Not his emotions, but the two corpses in front of him.
Something had ripped the females to shreds.
He eyed the shackles on their wrists. Whoever they had been, they had escaped when he had attacked the slave camp.
Treasured by a Tiger Page 9
