Night air hit her, nearly making her lose her nerve. But she felt her claws, felt the power inside her. She ran for the edge of the roof, with the image of a cat in her mind. It was inside her; she would force it to come out.
She would run through the barrier in her mind that kept her from Wyatt, from everything they could be. She leapt into the air and fell down in the dark night, knowing she was in trouble if she couldn’t change.
But she felt her entire body twist, and then she landed on the ground more softly than she could have expected.
She looked down to see her hands were paws, silky and pale in the moonlight.
Her animal was finally free from its bonds. And it was ready to find her mate.
She took off into the woods in the direction of his place. In her cat, she knew what her human had only been vaguely aware of. He was hers. Hers. Hers.
She’d already claimed him the other night. Now she would go be with him, face danger with him, protect him. Tell him she loved him, even if the human in her was too bruised and afraid to.
Deep inside, in the part of her that hadn’t been able to be broken, she was utterly in love with him. And he deserved to know.
She ran out into the night, not caring what happened as long as she got to be with her mate. After all, now that she wasn’t only human, he had no excuse to keep her away.
16
Wyatt pulled at the chair he was tied to. “Are you sure this is necessary?” he asked Jace, who looked a little too amused by the situation.
“Yeah,” Jace replied. “We want them to think I caught you and you’re the kidnapper.”
“Fine,” Wyatt said.
When Jace had gotten in contact with Lyle, Lyle had insisted on coming out, just as planned. In order for it to look like Jace was on Lyle’s side, Wyatt had to appear to be in custody.
Thus, Wyatt had to be tied to a chair. He sighed and tested the ropes on his arms. He could be out of them in an instant if he used his claws.
Jace had given him something to hide his scent, because Lyle had no idea Wyatt was a shifter or what kind he could be.
So they waited.
It wasn’t long before someone knocked on Wyatt’s front door, and Wyatt bit back a groan as he attempted to look caught. He hated being in this ignominious situation, but if it meant Valerie was safe…
He still felt vaguely like his body had been through a tornado whenever he thought of her rejection. It was hard to conceive. He hadn’t ever really imagined himself falling in love, and maybe he was a conceited dick, because he definitely hadn’t imagined being rejected.
“Okay, I’m opening the door,” Jace said, walking toward it. Wyatt knew under his coat, Jace carried all kinds of weapons in case Lyle brought company.
Wyatt didn’t care what happened as long as it was over soon and things could go back to normal. Though he still hurt when thinking about Valerie, he missed having her on the ranch. He missed thinking about her. Missed being with her.
The door opened, and in walked a man of slightly above-average height and ashy-brown hair. He probably wasn’t more than thirty or so, but there were deep lines under his eyes already. He wore a black suit that looked a few decades behind the times, and as he entered, he observed Wyatt with a smug grin.
“So is this the one?” Lyle asked as he came into the middle of the room a few feet from Wyatt.
Thankfully, the layout of the room was pretty simple since this was just one of Wyatt’s spare bunkhouses his hires would use during the busy summer months. He didn’t want to set the trap anywhere near where Val might be if she happened to come back to the property.
Not that she’d ever want to see him again as it was. But better safe than sorry.
“Yup, this is him,” Jace replied, leaning back on a small table and folding his arms, watching casually.
“And where’s the girl?” Lyle asked as he sized up Wyatt. Lyle didn’t know Wyatt was pureblooded cougar and if he wanted to, he’d tear Lyle’s face off with zero hesitation. But the best way to see justice served would be for Jace to hand this punk over to the dragons and let them do their thing.
“She’s around here,” Jace replied. “We’ll find her soon enough,” he said vaguely.
“Humph, some tiger you are,” Lyle replied snidely.
Wyatt could see Jace bristle subtly, but made no motion. They had to be sure Lyle was here for Val and spring the trap when he least expected.
He appraised Wyatt with a sneer and walked over to him. “Who do you think you are, taking what’s rightfully mine?” he said, glowering.
Jace had set up recording devices in the room beforehand so anything Lyle said could be used against him as evidence. Not that what they already had wasn’t enough, but this would further prove Lyle was the one that had hurt Val in the first place.
That’s right. Just keep digging your own grave, Wyatt thought. “She’s not yours. Not after you hit her.”
“I did what I had to, you imbecilic, thieving human hick,” Lyle swore as he backhanded Wyatt across the face. “She deserved it.”
Jace moved toward them, but Wyatt just sent him a glance signaling it was all right. The pathetic attempts from this lower-than-dirt trash of a man were nothing compared to making sure Valerie’s attacker was brought to justice.
Just then, Wyatt became aware they were being watched, observed. He looked out the window as Lyle continued to swear and curse, and for a split second, he swore he saw the glint of something outside, like the moon’s reflection in a cat’s eyes. He focused on it, trying to see better, and Lyle only became angrier that Wyatt’s attention was directed away from him.
He raised his hand again to hit Wyatt, when something leapt through the window, crashing through it and landing in the center of the room. A cougar, and a fairly large one at that.
But not just any cougar. It was Valerie. That scent, it had to be.
Wyatt’s eyes went wide.
Before anyone knew what to do, the cougar lunged at the stunned Lyle and sank its teeth into his shoulder. Lyle shouted in pain as the cougar dragged him down to the ground and shook him around violently.
“Keep your… damn hands… off my mate,” Valerie cursed as she bit deeper into his shoulder and then threw him across the room, where he crashed into a wall, motionless.
If Lyle had been anything less than a shifter, he would have never survived that. As it was, he would probably be out for a good while, and he’d feel the pain from that for days, if not weeks.
For a minute, Wyatt forgot he was still tied down and just sat watching the large, elegant cat turn to him. It still had her blue eyes, and its body was long and sleek, with pale, silky fur.
Jace moved first, walking toward Val a little.
“Whoa, nice one,” he said with a smirk.
In an instant, Val turned on Jace and growled ferociously. He backed up a pace and locked eyes with the cougar.
“How dare you do this? We trusted you,” Val growled at Jace, looking ready to pounce at any second.
Suddenly, Wyatt realized how compromising the situation looked and moved to stop Valerie before she tried picking a fight with a tiger.
“Whoa, it’s okay. This is all fake. It’s just a setup,” Wyatt said, tearing through the ropes that bound him to the chair and standing, hands outstretched. “See, no one captured me.”
Val turned to Wyatt as he stood, and awareness of what was going on showed on her face as he came close to her.
“What are you doing here?” Wyatt asked.
“I needed to see you, make sure you were safe,” she said, nuzzling into his side affectionately.
Wyatt felt caught off guard. He’d accepted she didn’t want him. Tried to focus on moving on and catching the men who’d hurt her. He hadn’t expected to see her so soon, and inside, he was still reeling.
She’d even called him her mate when she’d been attacking Lyle.
What had changed?
Still, he was more than glad to see she’
d finally found her cat.
Just then, there was the sound of lowered voices outside and a group of footsteps pattering on the dusty ground and up the wooden steps. A second later, a knock sounded on the door.
“Sorry to interrupt the happy reunion, but it sounds like we’ve got company,” Jace said, moving to the door and pulling a gun out of his jacket.
“What do you mean? How many?” Wyatt said, feeling his senses on alert at the foreign intruders.
“His posse. Lyle never went anywhere without a herd of cronies,” Valerie said.
“I saw the cars outside and a few of them lounging around before Lyle came in. But it looks like they’ve brought even more. They’re like lemmings,” Jace said, waiting in front of the door as another pound resonated through the small house.
“Hey, boss, everything all right in there?” a voice from the other side asked suspiciously.
At his side, Wyatt could hear Valerie panting lightly, probably from the exertion of running there all the way from the McAllister ranch. That and doing a number on Lyle. The adrenaline would be wearing off soon, and she wouldn’t be able to hold the change much longer.
Especially since she’d never shifted before. It was something that took stamina. The reason Wyatt ran in his cougar form almost every night once it was dark.
“Hey, Valerie, I can tell you’re getting tired,” he said as he caressed the cougar’s cheek. “Let us take care of this, okay? Let me be the one to protect you this time.”
Valerie nodded in reply and backed a few steps away as Wyatt changed into his cougar. With Lyle taken care of, the only thing that stood in the way of him and Valerie finally having a shot at forever was a dozen or two men.
Child’s play for a cougar like him. Nothing would keep him and Valerie apart. Ever.
“How many on the other side?” Wyatt said. His cougar was ready to tears off some heads.
“Maybe twenty. At least a few shifters, but most of them are a pretty motley mix, based on the scent,” Jace replied as his huge body filled the small doorframe as the wooden door rattled over and over, the men on the other side trying to break their way in.
“Let them in,” Wyatt growled.
Jace just grinned with acknowledgement, showing a sharp fang at the corner of his mouth, and moved away. The men on the other side pounded the door again, and it finally ripped free of its tiny hinges and fell to the floor with a dusty thump.
For a moment, the men crowded around the door peered in at the huge, angry cougar. Wyatt let out a sharp roar at the intruders on his turf, and then men poured inside.
Wyatt became a flurry of motion, moving on instinct and reacting instantly to everything. He thwacked the first man to reach him, sending him tumbling to the side like a rag doll, then head-butted another and sent him flying back into the men coming through the door.
Some of the men were armed with knives and clubs and other rudimentary weapons, and a couple were wielding firearms, which they brandished as they realized the gravity of the situation.
Wyatt pounced on those first, swiping his huge paws at their weapons and sending them clattering to the ground. Several brave souls charged at Wyatt, swinging their weapons wildly, but he sprang backward with his cat reflexes, only to charge at them with fierce precision that disarmed and incapacitated them instantly.
While Wyatt swiped and pawed and bit, Jace moved to the back of the room, standing between the door and Valerie, just in case any stragglers got past Wyatt.
He was grateful Jace was letting him handle this. Val was his mate, so it was his duty to protect her. He’d been waiting to do it since the first time she showed up with those bruises.
Two of the men changed into mountain lions, though they were both smaller then Wyatt, and began circling him. He could sense they were far from pureblood, probably part of Lyle’s family or shifters that had lived in the community far up in the mountains where Valerie had come from.
He’d give them an especially warm welcome.
Wyatt didn’t wait for them to attack, but leapt at the one nearest to him, clawing as he reached for his neck. The second came at Wyatt from behind, but he kicked back with his hind legs, sending them backward as he tussled with the cougar in his grips.
From the corner of his vision, he could see several men charge between the oversized mountain lions to go in Valerie’s direction. But before they could get within feet of her, Jace dispatched them with several lightning quick moves that Wyatt could have missed just by blinking.
Another man crawled through the window, wielding a double-barrel shotgun, and Jace pulled a pistol from his jacket and fired it at him. A tranquilizer dart stuck into his neck, and the man tumbled backward from the windowsill, landing outside with a thud.
The shifter Wyatt was fighting was firmly gripped in his viselike fangs and yielded to him, too bloodied to fight anymore. Though he would have liked to have more time to terrorize them like they had Valerie for years, he knew there were still others.
He turned around just in time to face the second as it came at him a second time, and with perfect timing, he swung his paw at him. His strike landed square across its face, sending him reeling into the near wall, crashing into the wooden panels and nearly breaking down that entire side of the house. He didn’t get back up after that.
Nobody would come near his mate. Ever again.
By now, those men that hadn’t been incapacitated had started to realize the futility of the situation, regardless of how numerous they’d been to start, and started to back away from the giant, nasty, bloodstained cougar in the middle of the room. Wyatt let out one last, possessive growl, and any able-bodied ones that could still move hightailed it out.
As Wyatt made sure there were none left to challenge them, Jace busied himself with a large wad of zip ties, binding the unconscious and half-conscious men’s legs and hands so they’d have to face justice, finally.
Suddenly, Wyatt heard commotion from the back of the house and turned to see another cougar that had appeared from nowhere facing down Valerie.
From the intense bleeding on his shoulder and the weak movement, Wyatt instantly recognized Lyle. Somehow he’d gotten back up from the sound beating Val had given him earlier and was now right in front of her, snarling and furious.
“You were a shifter the whole time? You lying, cheating little—”
“I don’t belong to you anymore, Lyle. I belong to no one. You don’t own me. You never did, bastard,” she said, cutting him off and not backing down at all.
Jace pulled his gun and aimed at Lyle, but Wyatt waved a paw for him to back down and readied to pounce on the no-good dickhead that dared come near his mate.
“Trying to trick me all this time. I’ll make you pay!” Lyle said, lunging for Valerie.
Wyatt ran for him, more than happy to tear off his head, when Valerie stopped Lyle cold with one powerful swipe to his face. Wyatt could hear the impact as her claws connected with Lyle’s cheek, and the force of it redirected his entire body to the side as he was flung into a small bed that crashed beneath him.
All the anger she’d harbored for years had come out in that one, solid strike, and Lyle was now quiet, lying in the shattered remains of the wooden bed frame.
Valerie stood watching him, chest heaving, and Wyatt slowly walked over. She nestled into his side. When Wyatt was sure she wasn’t hurt, he rubbed against her cheek with his. For some reason, this all felt so right, the two of them back together.
“Are you okay?” Wyatt asked tenderly.
“I’m fine. Finally done taking out the trash from my past,” she replied, sounding satisfied. “I couldn’t have done it without you,” she said. “You gave me a place to get strong.”
“You’re the strongest person I know,” he said, staying close.
While they nuzzled, Jace walked calmly over to Lyle and covered him with the blanket from the bed. A second later, the unconscious cougar shifted back into his human form, and Jace cuffed him with a very stur
dy-looking pair of handcuffs.
Wyatt was pretty sure Lyle wasn’t going to be moving for quite some time after that, though.
“Sorry, shoulda done this earlier,” Jace said as he finished zip-tying and cuffing the remaining men strewn about the room. “Nice hit, by the way,” he said with a nod in Val’s direction.
For a moment, Wyatt and Valerie appraised the situation. The cabin was wrecked, and there were a large number of men motionless or barely moving strewn all around.
“You guys go. I’ll take care of explaining everything to the police, and I’ll call this in to the dragons over this area,” he said with a wave. Then he kicked Lyle in the side once for good measure.
Wyatt shifted back into his human form, then looked in a nearby dresser for a spare pair of jeans. He found one and threw them on, and even though they fit quite ill, they’d do for a minute.
He waved Val into the bathroom and closed the door while she shifted back and then handed her a spare blanket from a cupboard into the room, wanting very badly to see her soft figure again but knowing it would be better to wait.
She came out of the bathroom, wrapped several times in the oversized blanket, and Wyatt scooped her up into his arms and walked out, putting her into his truck and driving back to the central courtyard of his property and his place in the main lodge.
There was a lot of explaining to do.
17
Wyatt was glad the grounds were mostly abandoned as he walked back over the main lawn after parking his truck.
Valerie felt like no weight in his arms at all, and it was nice to feel her warmth against him, hear her breathing.
“I’m so glad you’re back, sweetheart,” he said, kissing the top of her head.
“Did you miss me?”
“Of course,” he said. “How does it feel being a cat?” They reached the front door and he opened it, still keeping her in his arms.
“Powerful,” she said. “Awesome. Like a part of me that’s been hiding forever is finally free.”
“I want to hear more of how it happened,” he said. “But first we need to clean up from this fight.”
Mountain Lion (Bear Haven Book 4) Page 12
