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Copyright© 2017 Raven McAllan
ISBN: 978-1-77339-316-2
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: JS Cook
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This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CAT WITH THE BLUE EYES
The Cats of Craig Mhor, 1
Raven McAllan
Copyright © 2017
Chapter One
Catlin Creamer looked with a certain degree of sympathy as the group of young, Scottish wildcat shifters slunk—there was no other word for it—out of the room. One or two of them snuck glaring resentful glances at the tall, tawny-haired cat, who stood next to her, every sinew in him taut, and every sense alert.
Talk about an alpha male. Catlin mentally shook her head. Nope, don’t go there. Much too much testosterone for comfort.
“They can’t help it you know,” she murmured as the last cat left the room and she shut the door behind them, leaned back on the wood and considered him thoughtfully. “They look at you, who shifts like it’s as easy as drinking a cup of coffee, think they can do it and then get pissed off when it’s not as simple as they imagined. Smile complacently and roll their eyes when you try to tell them about the dangers of straying from our lands when they’ve shifted, because of course they know it all and we’re the oldies.” She sniggered. “Over the hill at twenty-eight, I ask you, it’s enough to make me beg for a pension and retire to Skye and learn to weave.”
She pushed off from the door. “Except I have no inclination to weave.” Or move away from him, but he didn’t need to know that. Restless, out of sorts, and no idea why, except it had to involve the cat in front of her, who contemplated every move she made though watchful eyes. It was bloody irritating. Her long multi-colored skirts swished round her legs and she kicked out at them impatiently. Maybe it was time to change the habits of a lifetime. She caught the speculative expression on her companion’s face—even shifted it was as apt as that stupid phrase went—like the cat that had got the cream. If he said one word, just one word about names, or designated partners, she’d throw something. It was a pity there wasn’t much throwable around. To teach young shifters everything they might need to know, the room was of necessity large and free of obstacles. Even then, after each session some interesting scuff-marks would show in the most unlikely of places.
“You bawl them out for being arsy or cocky and they mutter and moan about you,” she went on. “Unfortunately after that, I’m the poor sod who has to calm it all down. How to Deal With Your Elders and Betters 101. What I wouldn’t give for a quiet life.”
The cat next to her smiled—if that’s what you called the baring of canines—shook and morphed into a hot as hades male. One she’d sworn off ages ago.
He was bad enough as a cat. As a human, a naked human, he was ten times worse.
Dylan MacSween stretched and her mouth went dry.
God, he was magnificent. Long tawny tresses with those gold and dark streaks in them, just like his fur when he’d shifted. A torso sprinkled with short strands of gold and black, which arrowed downward to where dark, wiry, hair made a nest for his, she had to admit, rather magnificent cock. To say she drooled was an understatement.
Her mouth went dry as she thought of what he could do with that appendage…if she agreed to mate with him.
Unfortunately for her, he was her designated mate and she was having none of it. No way would she be told to mate, or subjugate herself to anyone. Even if it did mean she stayed single forever.
“You’d hate it.” Dylan shook his head and let his hair spin around and settle on his shoulders. “Being single for ever.”
“Dammit, keep out of my thoughts. It’s rude to listen in,” she said indignantly. “Mine all mine.”
“You forget as my life partner to be, I can read you without consciously trying. Hear you automatically,” Dylan said as he finger combed his hair and plaited it loosely. “Sod it, this needs cutting. Have you got an elastic handy? Nowhere to hide one like this.” He regarded his naked body unselfconsciously.
Catlin rummaged in her pocket and brought out a pink scrunchy. “Only this.” She waited to see what he’d say as she dangled it from one finger and whirled it around in a circle.
“Thanks, that’s fine.” Dylan took it from her mid-swing, and secured the end of his plait. “Right, any clues where my jeans are?”
“Where you left them maybe?” Catlin said sweetly. Something in his tone annoyed her. “I’m not your servant. I have no idea where you dump stuff, because I have no need to.”
Dylan gave her a black look. His eyes glowed yellow and dangerous before he blinked and sheathed his inner cat. She shivered. Why, oh why did she insist on challenging him?
Because he’s too big for his paws that’s why. But was he? Or was he merely fulfilling his role in the Dowt—their group of Scottish Wild Cats that lived and worked as humans part of the time and shifted into their wild forms at others.
“Never said you were my servant, sweet Cat. I don’t want a servant. I want a partner.” He walked across the room to a tall cupboard and pulled out a black t-shirt and a pair of well-worn, white at the seams, denims. “Now how did these get in here?” he mused as he zipped up the fly. “Never mind, don’t answer. I don’t much care as long as I can get dressed. Naked in Scotland in the winter is not a good idea. Bits might freeze and drop off.” He slanted her a glance and smiled. “Pity not to let you have the chance to experience what I can do with one of them eh?”
“In your dreams.” And mine darn it, oh and in mine. Hot, wet, erotic, skin tingling, clit clenching, need my bullet dreams.
Dylan nodded. “Yep, all too frequently, my love. So, all joking apart, when are you going to see sense and agree to our life ceremony? Belong to me.”
She harrumphed all her ideas about meeting him halfway dissipated by that insensitive statement. “That’s not me. My life is mine. I’m never going to be someone else’s. Belong to you? Sheesh. Not gonna happen. I’m my own person, not yours, the Dowt’s or the man in the moon’s. Watch my lips. Mine.” Why couldn’t he say something different? Use sweeter, softer words? Accept her for what she was, not what he wanted her to be?
He growled, shook his head and his pink bobbled plait jumped around his neck and shoulders before it settled again, as he flicked Catlin’s cheek. As ever his touch seared her skin. One day she was sure she’d see a tattoo or something where he’d touched her.
“What am I going to do with you?” he mused as he stroked her face and sent goose bumps skittering over her skin. “You know it’s going to happen. How else will the Dowt survive and grow.” It wasn’t a question. “Why don’t you believe me?”
She shrugged and did her best to ignore that frisson of something indefinable that slithered and darted over her skin. “I can’t shift.” To her mind, that said it all. How could she partner the head of the Dowt when she could only ever be human? “I can’t shift,” she repeated vehemently. “No good for you.”
Dylan raised one imperious brow. “I heard you the first time. That’s not a problem. I can. I’m head of the Dowt. You, my love, are mine, you just need to accept it.” He made i
t sound so simple.
“Why?” Catlin wailed the word. “Why me? Hell, I’m only here on sufferance, you know that. Just because the Dowt felt guilty when my mum and dad were killed.”
“That is utter rubbish.” His eyes glowed with a feral light of annoyance. “Don’t ever say that again. You, my love, are here because we want you. You’re one of us.”
God how she wished she believed that. But too often things, little things, made her doubt what he was telling her. “Hmm, just because Mum and Dad were shifters, I know that, but I’m the generation it skipped. What would happen if, and this is a big not gonna happen if, just a supposition, if we did get together and had kids. And they couldn’t shift? What then?”
“They’ll shift,” Dylan said confidently.
Catlin narrowed her eyes. “And how do you know that for sure?” she asked suspiciously.
He grimaced but looked her in the eye. “DNA. Doesn’t lie.”
“What?” That was several steps too far. “I never gave anyone permission to take my DNA. I’d sure as hell notice if someone started swabbing my mouth.”
“Hair on your pillow. Toothbrush, saliva… lots of ways.”
“You what?” Catlin screeched and shoved at his chest. Hard. He of course didn’t even move an inch. Instead the bugger smirked. Smirk, I’ll give him bloody smirk. Catlin swayed, did a pseudo trip and landed one wooden clogged foot down his shin. He didn’t even frown let alone grimace. “Breaking and entering and stealing, stealing, is a criminal offence you know. I wonder what the Dowt police or even Scotland’s finest would say about that. Doesn’t matter what it was, if I didn’t give you permission it is…” She poked him again. “Bloody well thievery. What have you got to say about that then, eh?”
“Nothing. It had to be done.” Dylan winced very theatrically, and spoke in such an indifferent tone she shook with the effort not to really have a go at him. With anything that came to hand. “Whoever named you,” he continued in that same voice, “chose well. Cat for a cat.”
Boy, was she temped to stick her tongue out. Only the fact that he was likely to extract retribution stopped her. “My mum,” she said stiffly as memories engulfed her. “She read it in a romance novel, and I guess it appealed to her sense of humor. A cat that wasn’t.” God, she hated the wistful, ‘woe is me’ note in her voice. Her beloved parents had known from the moment she was conceived the generation curse was theirs. Not that, they told her, it made one iota of difference. To them, it made her special. She had most of the traits of their shifter side. Acute hearing, and sensing, understanding some other people’s thoughts, seeing in the dark, and a soft, almost silent tread. Just not the ability to shift from human to wild cat, or strangely hear Dylan’s thoughts. When she told him that he smiled in a most self-satisfied way. “Not until you’re really mine and prepared to accept who you are and what you are to me.”
Sod him.
Oh she’d tried, but never even managed to hear one word, unless he chose to project it to her. As for shifting? Not even a claw instead of a finger. Eventually she accepted it and did her best to be happy with her lot.
Generally she was. After all, it was handy to know what someone was really thinking and not just what they said. She’d ditched several assholes of wanna be sex and sod off idiots that way, and warmed to some others. Never to the extent she wanted to do more than be happy occasional bedfellows or cinema going partners. Friends with various benefits worked for her just fine.
Her parents had been dead almost twenty years now. Dylan, and when she was younger, his parents, had been constantly by her side or on the end of a phone or latterly a WhatsApp during all that time. With their encouragement she truly came to accept what they were and she wasn’t. To enjoy watching the shift and now she realized, to learn to accept Dylan as her chosen one. Oh there hadn’t been pressure. She’d gone away to university, got a teaching degree, and it had been her decision to come back to teach the human side of things to the Trossachs Dowt. She hadn’t realized the Dowt took that as a sign she’d accepted what they thought was a done thing.
“I miss my mum,” she said on a long sigh. “And yours.”
“Ah, love.” This time all his alpha-ness enveloped her in the best possible way as he folded his arms around her and hugged her to him. “I can’t bring them back. I wish I could. But you have me. If you want me.”
This time his tone was serious.
As befitting his words.
Chapter Two
Dylan held his mate as she shivered and trembled in his arms. Why oh why wouldn’t she accept what she was? What they were. How on earth could he show her what she meant to him?
Usually so strong, so confident and yes, he admitted, so alpha, this standoff bemused him. He who ran the Dowt with ease, controlled excited kittens as they discovered their abilities and capabilities, and kept the rest of the Dowt on the right tracks to stay safe, sane, and satisfied with their lot, was at a loss.
He’d understood since he was a kitten that when the time came his designated one would appear, and he’d know it was her.
He had. Even as a tiny child Catlin the termagant, as he from his eight years superiority called her, had been his to champion, and take care of. The minute he hit puberty it dawned on him his protective instincts were more than just that.
The minute she hit adulthood he was certain. Catlin was the one for him. He loved her and more. Cherish was too mushy a term maybe? But it encompassed everything he experienced when he brought her to mind. She was the only person who could make his life complete, the designated mate thing or not. Catlin was, he decided, to put it simply, his soul mate.
If only the council hadn’t become involved—without telling him, when he was recovering from human appendicitis of all things—and informed her of what she was and what was expected of her. After he’d so carefully not done anything to pressure her.
Dylan had listened to his parents, erred on the side of caution and watched Catlin leave the Trossachs and head to university. Even bitten his tongue when she’d headed abroad and taught overseas for a few years.
He’d known she’d come back and by all rights then, everything should have been plain sailing. Which it might have been, except…
Yeah, except. He groaned. She’d been back three years now and still refusing to agree to what had to be done.
“Am I that awful, Cat?” he asked gently as her trembling stopped and for the first time in goodness knows how long she relaxed against him. “Does the thought of being with me seem so horrific you won’t even contemplate it? Why? I love you, you know that.” Or hell, he hoped she did. Hadn’t he told her on many occasions? Shown her as best he could? Dylan was uneasily aware that those times were few and far between. He didn’t show his feelings easily. As head of the Dowt he’d learned not to give much away.
Catlin sighed and moved far enough back so she could look up at his face. Dylan didn’t unclasp his hands behind her but gave her the space she needed. In truth he couldn’t let go. This tiny moment of togetherness gave him some hope.
“Do I"?” she asked in an undertone. “Really? How am I supposed to know?”
“Well, because you do. We’re meant for each other, what more is there to say. I need you. I have to take care of you. Tell me what I’m missing here.” He might be an alpha male, but the workings of a female mind were a mystery to him, and he suspected to most other men.
“Honestly?”
“Of course. Nothing but.” His skin prickled as unease slithered into him. She was so bloody serious. Not like his laughing, blue eyes flashing Cat.
This Catlin bit her lip. Normally erotic, now it made him wary. Especially as her skin was dotted with perspiration. From worry, not arousal.
“Tell me, love.”
Her eyes flashed.
“Please,” he added hastily. “I can’t put right what I don’t know about.”
“Fair enough. So.” She took a deep breath and let it out on a long hiss. She sounded more lik
e a snake than a cat. Or a human.
“No one has ever asked me what I want,” she said so softly he had to strain to hear her. “No one has ever said, hey Catlin, what do you think? No one has ever properly explained to me what this designated partner thing is all about. All I’ve ever heard is the portentous ‘this is meant’ comment. Pompous or what? About as much use as a chocolate fireguard on a raw, dreich night. I have no idea if we just jump in the sack and have hot wet randy sex, take a vow to each other alone or in public, jump over the brush, do a handfast or get married in a conventional way,” she said in one long convoluted sentence. “All I’ve ever heard is that I’m yours and tough sh...sugar if I don’t like it. Well, let’s be clear. I don’t like it and tough sugar if you and the council don’t like that. I’ll leave.”
Never.
Her eyes glittered with deep blue shards of ice and tiny sparkles of fire. “I might not be able to read your mind Dylan MacSween, but I know that bloody look. You cannot force me. In fact I know enough of you and your integrity to know you won’t.”
It was true. Dylan sighed. “Go on, tell me what do I need to do to get you to even consider being mine. Which by the way would involve everyone of those things you said.” He paused and grinned. “Especially the hot, wet, randy, sex.”
Catlin spluttered. “I didn’t, we…I…oh help.” She shut her eyes and then looked skywards. “What did I do wrong in a previous life to deserve this?”
Dylan inclined his head and hid his mirth. The last thing he wanted was for her to have a snit at his amusement. After all it wasn’t actually funny. Or rather the subject wasn’t. It was his life, her life, and the continuing wellbeing of the Dowt. “Probably all of those as well,” he agreed, once he was certain he could speak without sniggering. “But which is needed to get you to say you will?”
Cat with the Blue Eyes (The Cats of Craig Mhor Book 1) Page 1
