by Maddy Barone
Taylor and Colby had run ahead, but loped back now. Colby turned human to talk. “We found where Olivia’s horse bucked her off. She started walking home., but …” He swallowed, not quite hiding cold fury. “You better come look.”
Tracker heard his mate suck in a quick breath, but she pressed her mouth into a flat line and rode beside him to the place Colby indicated. He handed his reins to Tami, meeting her eyes for a moment of silent communication. Her face was calm, but he scented her fear and it almost killed him.
He moved carefully around the tracks on the sandy path, reading the story they told like a man might read a book. He looked up at the top of the cliff lining one side of the path, measuring how far a man would fall if he jumped off. On the side of the cliff he smelled something that made his heart pound with sick dread and icy rage. His daughter’s terror and pain lingered here. He followed the tracks going northwest for about a quarter-mile before returning to stand at Tami’s stirrup. Even from her saddle she must have read some of the tracks for herself. She met his eyes, but he could see her composure was a front. He waved his sons and Colby over.
“It looks to me like Olivia was bucked off and started for home,” he told them. “Right there, she was ambushed by two men.”
His oldest boy, twenty-four this past summer, was scowling to hide his fear and anger. “One man picked her up and ran off with her that way.” Taylor pointed to the northwest with his chin. “The other one followed behind.”
“Are you sure it’s a man, cuz?” Colby’s black brows were pulled into one thick line over his eyes. “Both of them, I mean? He —or it— doesn’t have regular feet. They look more like mountain cat tracks.”
“Doesn’t smell like a man either,” said Parker.
No, it didn’t. The boys were right. Tracker nodded approval. “It walks upright. We’ll call it a man until we know different. He’s moving almighty fast. We’re hours behind him so we need to cover ground quick. Parker, shuck your clothes and let your wolf out.”
Parker obeyed, stuffing his clothes in the saddlebag behind Tami’s saddle. Tracker did the same. Tami’s hands were clenched on the reins so hard her knuckles showed white even through her suntanned skin. “You’ll move faster without me.”
“Yeah.” Tracker nodded at Matt. “You’ll go back to the ranch with Tami.” For a moment it looked like Matt would protest, but he only nodded. Tracker looked up at Tami, the woman his wolf had chosen for their mate, with gratitude. He’d fallen in love with her before he’d ever met her, and every minute he’d spent with her for the past twenty-five years had made his love stronger. Her light brown hair had begun to turn to silver, and sun, weather, and age had put lines on her beloved face. She was so beautiful to him, and so brave. It must be like a knife digging around in her guts to let her men go alone to rescue their daughter, but she smiled at him. No wonder he loved her. “We’ll bring her home to you, Tami.”
Matt took the reins of the horses Tracker and Parker had ridden, and moved a few yards down the trail to give Tracker a moment of privacy with his mate.
Tami nodded calmly. “I know you’ll find Olivia and bring her home. I’ll be waiting at the ranch.”
Before she could turn her horse, he gripped her knee. “Come here.”
He reached an arm up to draw her face down to his. The kiss was light but heartfelt, telling her he loved her, he trusted her, and he would bring their little girl back to her. One tear slid down her cheek to touch his lips. She flicked tears from her eyes with a forefinger and smiled at him while she straightened in the saddle. She nodded at all of them, and rode back down the path to join Matt, her shoulders back and her head high.
There was no time to waste. The trail was hours old. He refused to think of what might be happening to Olivia right now. He would find her. He would bring her home to her mother. And he would kill whoever had taken her.
Tracker let his wolf out and led his kin along the trail of his daughter’s kidnappers.
Chapter Five
As Kit ran full speed along the teeny ledge, Olivia gripped the thin fur covering his back. It was softer than she expected. He made a final leap into his cave and bent over to set her down. Kit’s smaller cave looked almost welcoming after the menace swirling in the one they’d just left. Olivia swayed as her feet landed on the ground. Nonetheless, she moved quickly away and held out both hands to ward off his embrace. “Just wait, Kit.”
“Why wait?” That face, with its mix of human and cat, looked confused for a moment before it cleared and he ran a clawed hand down his furry chest. “I not human. Can’t give you sex in this shape. We wait until I change.”
Olivia braced her feet. “We’ll wait a lot longer than that. I’m not having sex with you.”
His lips peeled back to show wicked fangs when he growled. “My mate!”
Olivia folded her arms, hoping to hide her hands’ tendency to shake. “Yeah? But I haven’t accepted your mate claim yet. In my pack, a man doesn’t force his mate to have sex. He waits until she agrees.”
His furry face frowned. “You have a pack? Like a pride?”
“We’re the Lakota Wolf Clan. You have mountain cats, right? I mean, you can be human or a mountain cat?” She examined his odd, half-feline face. “Well, mostly a cat. We have wolves. We’re like you.”
The expression on that furred face was hard to read, but she thought he looked interested. “You are a wolf?”
“No. Only the men have wolves.” Why was she explaining this to him? She considered backing further away, but decided against it since he was talking and not trying to tear her clothes off. “Most of my male relatives have wolves. I grew up with that. So, you see, I understand about mates, really, I do. It’s the wolf that chooses the mate, but it’s the mate who decides whether or not to accept his mate claim.”
“How long until she accepts?”
She wondered if she should mention Aunt Naomi making her mate wait three years. Probably not. “As long as it takes for him to woo her into agreeing. Sometimes it’s a long time. Sometimes it’s only a few weeks.”
“Weeks?” His fur seemed to bristle.
“Yes,” she said firmly.
Her stomach rumbled with hunger. How long since she’d last eaten? Kit must have heard it too, because his furred face wrinkled.
“I will get you food,” he said. “Stay here.”
As soon as he left the cave, she walked to the opening and looked out. She had to get away. Kit hadn’t gone far, though. He came out of what must be another cave and hurried back, carrying a bag in each hand. Olivia retreated back into the cave as he came in.
“I haven’t had time to hunt,” he said, almost apologetically. “When I found you I forgot that I needed to hunt.” He lifted one bag. “Dried meat.” He lifted the other. “Water.”
Suddenly parched, Olivia took the water bag and drank. She recognized the container as the stomach of a large animal. It wasn’t her favorite form of canteen, but the Clan sometimes used such things. Waste not, want not, the hunters always said.
“Sit,” Kit said, handing her the bag of meat.
Olivia took it. “Thank you.” It never hurt to be polite. She sat cross-legged on the blanket and pulled out a handful of dried meat that had been pounded flat with berries. It was delicious, almost as good as the pemmican the women in the Clan made. A wave of homesickness sliced through her. She shoved it back and tore off another bite of meat.
Kit watched her eat, frowning. “I’m sorry I didn’t feed you first. A good mate would think of that. I’ll do better. I will be a good mate.”
Olivia continued eating. Maybe it would be gracious to assure him it was okay, but she couldn’t give him any encouragement. She hadn’t had time to be hungry until now, but she would need food to keep her strong enough to escape. “You were hunting when you found me?” She was careful to keep any sarcasm off the word ‘found.’
“Yes. I’ve never gone so far east. Too many humans that way.”
She
took another long drink, and this time couldn’t suppress the sarcasm. “I guess it was just pure luck that you happened to find me.”
“Yes.” He smiled. It might have been a fond smile, but with his cat face it was hard to tell. Olivia repressed a shudder.
“Lucky me,” she muttered.
He prowled back and forth in front of her. “What is wooing?”
She almost swallowed a piece of jerky whole. “What?” she croaked.
“Wooing. The queen wants us to mate soon. You say I must woo you before that. What is wooing?”
His diction was becoming clearer. “Well, wooing is…” She tried to think of what wooing actually consisted of and how she could use it to put him off until she could escape, or her father found her. She selected another chunk of meat. “Wooing is nice. A man and a woman talk to get to know one another. He brings her presents. He never insists on sex. He doesn’t try to rape her like you tried to rape me.”
“I no rape you!”
“When I first woke up! What was that?”
Somehow his feline face projected hurt. “I give you sex.”
She dropped the jerky back into the bag balanced in her lap and waved her hands around in helpless fury. “But I didn’t want you to give me sex! That’s what rape is.”
Kit stared at her with alien green-gold eyes, still prowling. “Tell me more of wooing.”
“When a man finds his mate, he is gentle and kind. He is …” Her imagination ran out of ideas. “He tries to make her fall in love with him.”
He stopped prowling to stare again. “Fall in love? What is that?”
Now she stared. And realized he was still naked. “Oh, dear. Put some clothes on, Kit.”
He didn’t move. “What is fall in love?” he insisted.
“Really? You don’t know what love is?”
“No.” He closed the distance between them like a cat closing in on prey. “You tell me what it is. We talk. That’s wooing. I woo you. Then I give you sex.”
“You will not give me sex,” she shouted, standing up. She found herself almost toe to toe with him and retreated. Immediately he closed the gap she’d put between them, so she made herself stop. “Kit, you can’t give me sex until I ask you to. And I’m not asking you to.”
He trailed the backs of his fingers over her cheek. “The queens not accept you until we have sex. If you not accepted, you die. I can’t let my mate die.” He curled his hand around her arm, obviously taking care to not let his claws touch her. “Sit down. Talk. I woo you.”
“We’re not having sex,” she warned.
“No sex,” he agreed. “Yet. Soon? Tomorrow?”
Olivia tried to control the panic threatening to drown her. Was one more day enough time for her dad to find her? “Maybe in four or five days,” she offered.
“Two days,” he countered.
“Kit,” she began.
“Can’t wait long. Queens say. I give you sex or all the males do. Choose.”
She pressed her lips together hard to keep the tears back. She could either have one lover or two dozen. Surely dad was already on his way. “Three days?” she asked with desperate hope.
He trailed the backs of his fingers down her cheek again, a strange sort of tenderness in those feral cat eyes. “I no force you. We talk? Woo?”
What else could she do? “Okay.”
He exerted gentle pressure on her arm to move her over to the blankets. “Sit. You cold?”
“A little.”
“Sit.”
He let her go to put more wood on the fire, and then joined her on the blankets. His flattened cat nose touched hers for a brief moment before he moved away. With a horrible shudder, he shifted from half-cat to man. It was an agonizingly slow transformation, with crunching sounds as if bones were breaking. In spite of fascinated horror, Olivia felt a reluctant wave of sympathy.
“Does that hurt?” she asked. “It looks painful.”
He shrugged and grabbed a pair of jeans to put on. She shifted to make room for him on the blanket. He sat and faced her, their knees touching. “Olivia, I will never cause you pain. I’ll never force you to have sex. I didn’t understand before. I’m sorry. I will fight even the entire pride to keep you safe.”
“I want to go home,” she whispered. “You could court me there. Woo me there.”
He shook his head, his golden brown hair flowing over his shoulders with the motion. “I can never leave the pride. I can’t live in the human world. I’m not human.”
She tensed as he moved to sit beside her and drape an arm over her shoulders. She had to find a way to convince him to let her go. That or she had to escape. “You’re not a cat either. I mean, a regular cat. You can’t change completely into a cat.” She peeped sidelong at his face. Really, it was a handsome face in its human form. “Can you?”
He was quiet for a long minute. “No. I’m not like the others in the pride.”
Keep him talking, she thought. If he’s talking, he’s not raping. Actually, her fear of him had eased into curiosity. “Is that why you live here in this cave when everyone else is in that other, big cave?”
Again, he was silent for a while. “I don’t like being too close to the others,” he finally said. “They are afraid of me. When I was very little, before I could fight, they attacked me. Only Juanita protected me. And Dev. Maybe I would be dead if they hadn’t been my friends.”
“That’s sad,” she said without thinking.
“They don’t attack me anymore.” Kit leaned to press a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Tell me, my mate, what love is.”
“Love,” she said slowly, thinking about her mom dad and how they acted toward each other, “is when a person cares more about another person than they do about themselves. They want the other person to be safe and happy.” She frowned. “I think.”
A smile curved his lips, making him startlingly handsome. “I love you,” he said.
She leaned away from him. “No, you don’t! You don’t even know me.”
A shade of hurt crossed Kit’s face, dissolving the smile into a tiny frown. “If love is caring about you more than I care about myself, then I love you. I want you to be safe and happy. You said that’s what love is. I love you, Olivia.”
She swallowed hard. “We haven’t known each other for very long. It takes time to fall in love.”
Inwardly, she hesitated. It hadn’t taken her dad any time at all to fall in love with her mom. He said he’d fallen in love with his mate before he’d ever laid eyes on her. But that was different. She blinked back the urge to cry. Just thinking of her parents made her ache to be home with them. She missed Parker and Taylor, as bossy and overprotective as they were, because even though they teased her, they loved her. Her cousin Colby was a fiercely alpha wolf, and half the time she wanted to punch him, but she knew he would die to keep her safe.
“Why does it take time? You’re my mate. I knew it as soon as I scented you.” Kit hauled her tightly against his side. “I love you. Do you love me?”
Olivia took a deep breath and let it out in a shaky sigh. “How can I? I don’t even know you.” A low growl rattled in his throat and her lips trembled. “So we should talk to get to know one another.” She cast around for a safe subject. “Um, how do you know I’m your mate?”
His brow furrowed. “I just do. How do the wolves know when they have found their mate?”
That made her pause. She had to think about it for a minute, because her automatic response was that they just did. “The wolf tells them.”
“They tell themselves?”
He was almost cute with that baffled look on his face. “No, their wolf tells them.”
Kit looked more baffled than ever. “They aren’t the wolf?”
“No. The wolf lives inside them.”
Kit shook his head. “I am a cat. I am a man. I am both. I love you as a man, and I love you as a cat.”
“Oh.” Olivia edged a little further from him, and tried to think of a non-r
omance topic to bring up. “So, tell me about your family. Do you have any brothers?”
* * * *
Kit stared at his mate, trying to keep his frustration back. Why didn’t she love him? He loved her. Why didn’t she want him to give her sex? He would act whichever way she preferred. Fast, aggressive, slow, tender. All she had to do was instruct him and he would obey. But she was rejecting him. He examined her carefully for any hints of her feelings. Her face was composed, except for the tiny shaking of her lips. Her breathing was too fast and too shallow for calmness, but she pretended well. Was she angry? Or frightened? She wanted to talk, so he would talk. What had she asked? Were brothers the same in the human world as they were in the Pride?
“There are nineteen mature males in the pride, and six juveniles, and two kittens. They are my brothers.”
She flashed him a quick glance out of her eerie, pale blue eyes. “Is a juvenile a teen-ager?”
“A juvenile is a male not yet mature enough to give the queens sex.”
His mate looked faintly ill. She pressed her lips together for a moment. “How old is that? Twenty?”
Kit wondered what the significance of twenty was. He pondered a minute. “Do you mean how many summers they have seen? A male matures usually sometime between his twelfth and his fifteenth summer.”
“Oh, lord. How old are you?”
He preened under her desire to know more about him. “I have twenty-one summers.”
“And do you have full brothers?”
“I told you. Nineteen mature brothers.”
“No, I mean your siblings. The sons of your mother and father.”
Kit had an idea of what she meant by mother and father, but those were human terms. They spoke the same language, but they didn’t seem to completely understand one another. “The queen who bore me died when I was born. I don’t know which male fathered me. The Queens choose any male they wish to have sex with. Their children are all brothers and sisters.”
“Oh my God!” Olivia slapped her hand over her mouth. Her eyes were huge. “Do you mean that you, and Maria, and Juanita, and Tricia might be literally brother and sisters? And you have sex with them?”
