A Cougar's Kiss (Shadow Shifters Rebellion Book 2)

by A. C. Arthur

  People in the crowd cried out as Tavarus nodded.

  “This is exactly what I’m talking about. No human hand or weapon could have done this damage. This had to come from one of those animals. These men had families, they had jobs and they contributed to this economy, they did not deserve to die! But these animals don’t care about us, they don’t care about peace. They’ve come here to take over our land, to kill us, the very people who built this country! They are despicable and must be demolished!”

  The house lights flickered and the jumbo-tron went dark. Tavarus and the other men on the stage looked around in question.

  “We…ah…might be having a bit of technical trouble,” Tavarus said probably in the hope of calming the crowd.

  Shya didn’t think that was going to work, especially since just a second ago Gold announced through their earpieces, “It’s showtime!”

  “We are the New World Alliance,” Keller’s voice was heard through the speakers situated around the room. “We come in peace.”

  He wasn’t on board with the name Decan had given, but he was either too angry to argue or too tired to give a damn. Shya had sensed both as they’d gathered in the front room of the center just before leaving, the sting of him not arguing when Nisa suggested Shya ride with them to the Paradise Center, pricking her skin.

  “I cannot say the same for Ewen Mackey, current leader of the Ruling Cabinet. These SIC camps were Ewen’s creation.”

  Now pictures of the cages with Shadows in their human forms appeared on the screen.

  “Can you tell who is a human and who is the animal?” Keller asked.

  Another picture appeared, this one Shya wasn’t familiar with.

  “This was an office building where forty-one thousand, eight hundred and fifty-seven people were employed. Thirty-one thousand, one hundred and seven of them were humans. As a result of Ewen Mackey’s pressure moves to buy this company, a rogue Shadow Shifter was brought into this building where it, along with Ewen’s armed team, incited mass hysteria which resulted in five deaths and numerous injuries. One of the deceased was this woman.”

  The picture on the screen shifted to a family portrait of a black man holding his bi-racial son on his lap and his white wife sitting beside him, her stomach protruding with their second child. Their smiles were genuine and bright, the love shared between the three of them all but bursting from the screen. Shya’s chest tightened and her eyes watered at what she suspected Keller was about to say.

  “Janet Lynn Matias was trampled to death in that building, on that day that Ewen Mackey decided he was done negotiating. The baby—a little girl whose name Janet’s husband announced at her funeral was going to be Talisa—was also killed.”

  The room had gone to almost complete silence, but for a few murmurs and gasps.

  “That company was destroyed and all of those who lived were left without jobs because of Ewen Mackey. So, the Alliance has come tonight to announce that we will not sit idly by while the Shadow Shifters are slaughtered for no cause, but the fear fed into your minds by a ruthless band of killers. We will fight to disband the Ruling Cabinet, first by legal means, but then, if not successful, by any means necessary.”

  Shya was shaking with the force of Keller’s words, tears streaming down her face as for the first time she realized just how personal this fight was for him. While he spoke about this woman…Janet Lynn Matias…she recalled his outburst concerning his parents. His tone had been the same, the pain in his voice the same and she ached for him and the stark violence she’d never experienced personally.

  “The Shadow Shifters killed Ewen Mackey!” a voice yelled from the crowd and Shya’s head snapped to the side of the room it had come from.

  “They slaughtered him in their underground facility, and I’ve got the pictures to prove it!”

  “Bring them up here!” Tavarus yelled. “And find out where that voice is coming from!”

  The human guards at the doors pulled their guns just as people began either chanting or hurrying to get out of their seats.

  “Move in toward the stage,” Decan directed. “We’re opening the doors out here, but we don’t want the cabinet members slipping out.”

  Shya moved before she looked to see which direction Nisa would go in. She pushed through the crowd trying to appear like one of them, only she was going in a different direction. She didn’t stop to think about that, just kept easing her way down that aisle. That’s when she heard the first gunshot.

  “Go!” Nisa yelled from behind her and Shya broke into a run toward the stage.

  The members of the Ruling Cabinet had already begun to scramble but they couldn’t get down the steps because a crowd of people had gathered there, yelling at them for an explanation. Shya saw Zion and Jordin jump onto the stage from the opposite direction.

  “It’s them! The animals are here!” someone from the crowd cried out.

  “Shit!” Nisa yelled through the earpiece as the group that had cornered the Ruling Cabinet turned in their direction and began screaming and running.

  Shya didn’t wait for another instruction, she ran and jumped, her legs lifting her over a group of people running, landing her seven feet away on the steps they’d just vacated. Her knees were on one step, hands on the other as she lifted her head and stared into the eyes of Tavarus Macombe.

  “Dirty beast!” he spat and reached behind his back to pull a gun from the waistband of his pants.

  Again, there was no hesitation, her teeth elongated without warning and she leapt again, this time coming down on Tavarus and knocking him to the floor. His gun skidded across the stage and she leaned over to roar into his face. He screamed, his skin turning ruby red as his body trembled.

  “Shya!”

  The cat was taking charge. She could see her claws pressing into Tavarus’ chest and felt the cracking of her bones as her weight rested on him.

  “Shya no!”

  Again, she heard her name—the human name—and the cat pushed back in rebellion. It wanted out and it was going to get it no matter what. It roared again and this time she knew her eyes were different, her body felt stronger, heavier…and then she was lifted into the air and falling onto the floor.

  She rolled over and was ready to completely shift when she looked up to see Keller’s cougar eyes glaring down at her.

  “Control it!” he yelled at her as she knelt on the floor. “Take charge of the shift!”

  She didn’t want to, she wanted to be the cat and to kill Tavarus Macombe for what he’d done to Janet Lynn Matias and countless others. The cat continued to fight back until her arms were shaking and her legs felt weak.

  “Don’t be what they think we are,” Keller continued. “Be better than them.”

  It was too hard. Her chest was heaving, the pain from the cat’s persistence pushing at her bones until she thought they would all break from the stress. She closed her eyes and lowered her head, searching for something inside of her to grab hold of, something that the human could use as an anchor to keep the beast at bay.

  “Come on, little cat, you can do this,” Keller said, his voice softer now, his face closer to hers. “I know you can do this.”

  There it was. The human reached out and held on to that voice, locking it in her brain so that it could be replayed at any moment. She could do this. She knew she could do this, just like he knew. Her breathing slowed even though her body still shook. There was lots of noise around her and just as many scents, but she grabbed hold of one—the cinnamon, but different because now it smelled like it was mixed with something else. No matter what it was, that was also an anchor as she’d thought to look for it and latch on. Her arms still shook, and her stomach felt queasy, but she was all human, her teeth and claws had retracted, and her eyes felt normal when she blinked.

  “We’re going!” Decan yelled through the earpieces. “They’ve called in the military. Let’s move now!”

  Keller lifted her under her arms until she stood.

&nb
sp; “Can you run?” he asked, his gaze bearing down on her. “I’ll carry you if you can’t.”

  She shook her head. “I can run,” she told him and in the next second that’s exactly what she did.

  “Do you need your medicine pouch?”

  She looked up at him with surprise clear in her eyes.

  “I can get it for you if you need it. Just tell me what you need me to do to make it better, Shya, and I will.”

  If she needed him to move the stars and the moon Keller was certain he would give it his best shot because seeing her go for Macombe tonight had struck a chord of fear he’d never felt before.

  “How did you know?”

  She’d run with the speed of all the shifters out of that building and back to the Tracer, but once they got there, Keller had noticed her labored breathing and after picking her up and settling her into the backseat, he climbed in and pulled her onto his lap. She remained cradled in his arms until they arrived at the center at which time, he’d carried her up to his room. Now, she was laying on his bed, her body curled into a fetal position as he stood to the side watching her.

  “I overheard you and Nisa talking before we left.” He’d actually been drawn to the very scent that had angered him and forced him out of the meeting with Decan and Gold. It had led him exactly where he’d feared it would—to her. And when he heard her admitting that she’d been sick for so long he’d felt angry, at that damned poison, her parents and the world in general because it always seemed to take the good ones.

  He’d had to shake those thoughts from his mind and focus on the mission because that’s what he’d come here to do. Falling for this woman who had been dealt such a cruel hand in life wasn’t on the agenda, or at least it shouldn’t have been.

  “I’m okay,” she said and struggled to sit up.

  “You’re not, so stop saying that.” The words came out in a snappy and curt way and he immediately regretted them. He dropped down onto the side of the bed with his back facing her and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

  “You are who you are, Shya, not what life has decided to toss your way.”

  “Really, Keller? So, the pain of losing your parents and of knowing that Mackey killed Janet Matias has nothing to do with the man you’ve become?”

  He dropped his head at her words because he’d just been thinking along the same lines.

  “Her name was Sendy,” he said in a voice so low he wasn’t sure she could hear him. We lived in a small town just outside of Kansas City. “There’d been some talk of a new drug on the streets being pushed by a rogue shifter, but we didn’t pay a lot of attention to that since our town only had about twenty-five hundred citizens. But one day when my mother was coming home from her job at the supermarket, she was approached by a rogue who wanted her to move some of his product through the store. She told him no and he attacked her. My mother was a good fighter and she fought back. I was five years old and that day my father, Boyd, had to pick me up from daycare. When we got home, I saw my mother bleeding on the couch. For weeks my dad took care of her and I helped a little, but she wasn’t healing, and my dad couldn’t figure out why.”

  He cleared his throat and continued. “There was no curandero near our town, so we had to get on the road to find help. We found one in Missouri who admitted her to his hospital, but he couldn’t save her. After days and days of sitting in that room watching her lay perfectly still without opening her eyes, hearing all those damn machines that were supposed to be helping, she died.”

  And so, did a part of him.

  “We had no money because my father had lost his job weeks before when he stayed home to care for my mom, so we couldn’t afford plane tickets to take her body back to the Gungi and we couldn’t afford a simple burial ceremony here in the States. There was a public assistance program that would cremate her body for free and that night my father and I were set to sleep at the morgue so that we could be with her one last time. We didn’t have any place else to sleep anyway. But while I lay on that cold floor knowing that my mother’s dead body was stored on one of those shelves, my father left to find the rogue who had injured her. Twenty-four hours later, I became a ward of the State of Missouri and put into foster care. My father had been killed by a human cop who came along while three Shadow Shifters—two black and one white--argued in an alley. The cop hadn’t known what they were then, he’d only presumed it was a drug transaction at play and used his gun instead of his handcuffs.”

  “Keller,” her voice was a soft whisper, but the touch of her hand on his back was a warm welcome. The comfort that five-year-old Keller had longed for yet never received. “That was your building that Mackey brought the rogue into wasn’t it?”

  He nodded. “I was angry after my parents’ deaths and hated every second of living in foster care. By the time I was ten, the Unveiling happened, and I wanted nothing more than to hook up with the Shadow Shifter leaders and help them fight. But that’s not what happened, Oasis was created, some Shadows went into hiding while others died. I stayed above ground going to school and building a company so I could one day have enough money to make a significant change for the shifters. Ewan Mackey wanted to buy my computer engineering firm, but I knew who he was and what he was doing so I refused. When he grew tired of my answer, he thought outing me to the world as a shifter was a better option. That rogue shifted right there in my office and went on the attack, I had no choice but to shift as well.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Every year on the anniversary of their death I make deposits into the bank accounts of the families who lost someone because of me.”

  “No, because of Mackey,” she said.

  He frowned. “That’s why this is so important to me, Shya. Opening these safe houses and taking a stand for the shifters is all I’ve been able to focus on for years. And then I got caught up at Headquarters and sentenced to babysitting duty.”

  “Which I’m guessing you didn’t have to do if you really didn’t want to be caught up at Headquarters.”

  She wasn’t wrong about that, but Keller didn’t want to talk about himself anymore, he still needed to make sure she was okay. He turned slightly, looking at her propped up on one arm, the other hand still moving over his back.

  He shifted his position so that he could wrap his arms around her waist and ease her back down on the bed.

  “Tell me what I can do to make you feel better.” Because seeing her act as if she wasn’t in pain was killing him.

  “Stay with me,” she said and reached up a hand to touch his face. “I don’t know why but I always feel better when you’re around…and when I’m not shifting into a giant jaguar.”

  She chuckled and the sound sifted through all of Keller’s conflicting feelings until he felt like there was light somewhere at the end of the tunnel.

  “Until you get used to the shift it will take a lot out of you. But you did good pulling it back.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said and shook her head against the pillows. “I had no idea what I was doing when I was finding out all that information and recording it in my journal or on that board. Even those files on Cole and Jacques were confusing, just a bunch of stuff about their DNA. I just liked the idea of knowing something for a change.”

  He sighed, unable to find the strength to warn her about knowing too much. Things hadn’t exactly gone the way Keller wanted them tonight and he was feeling exhausted with the effort and with the weight of the new emotions he was carrying. He wondered if Shya knew they shared the companheiro calor. If she did, how did she feel about it and most importantly what would they do from this point on?

  “Come here,” she said.

  It was his turn to chuckle. “If I come any closer, I’ll be on top of you.”

  Her lips spread into a slow smile. “I know.”

  He could protest, bring up how she already looked like she was in enough pain without worrying about the weight of him on top of her, but he didn’t want to. In
stead, Keller took his time undressing her, easing her boots off her feet, peeling her pants and socks off and then removing her shirt.

  “Turn over,” he told her as he moved off the bed.

  When he was standing on the side of the bed, he removed his boots and his clothes except for his boxers before climbing back onto the bed. She’d done what he instructed, and Keller straddled her back, touching his hands to her shoulders where he began a slow massage.

  “Oh, that feels so good.”

  The words were a soft whisper, half buried in the pillow before she moaned. He continued to move his hands over her shoulders, loving the feel of her muscles relaxing beneath his touch. He eased down her back, unhooking her bra and massaging his fingers over her spine. When a Shadow changed from its human to cat form, the spine was the hardest to meld into the back of the cat. He recalled his first few shifts, in an alley behind one of the foster homes he was in during his fourteenth and fifteenth years. He’d cried out in agony, but nobody had heard him. After a while it became easier, until taking the cat’s form was as simple as breathing to him now.

  At the lower part of her back, Keller eased off her so that he could give this area specific attention. The bending and cracking here was also painful which was probably why she’d rolled into the fetal position the moment she lay on the bed. Her muscles were tight here and he worked them until they felt pliant and she was moaning softly again.

  He worked on her legs and then her feet and by the time he finished and came up to join her on the pillows, Shya was sound asleep. His lips tilted in a smile at the sight of her thick dark eyelashes brushing against her much lighter skin. Her hair was a messy ball on top her head and he gently pulled it free of the band she’d used to hold it together, letting his fingers sift through the soft curls. She didn’t stir when he pulled the comforter back and lifted her so that he could tuck her under it, or when he slid in behind her and eased her back securely against his front.

  That’s how Keller fell asleep after such a tumultuous night, holding her—his mate—in his arms and trying not to be alarmed at the possibility that this wouldn’t last forever.