Claimed by Panthers: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (Panther Shifters of the Amazon Book 3)

by Laura Wylde

“First, tell me your names.”

  “I’m Jabari.” He pressed his finger in to his chest. “This is Tony.” So now the Italian had a name. “Ramon.” I would always remember that name because it belonged to the man who matched the beast. “And Seth.” Huh, that was someone I hadn’t really noticed before. He was intriguing in his own little way too. “Can we know your name too?”

  “Uhuh. I’m Tara.”

  “Right, Tara. Now we all know each other a little better. We can talk.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “You mean you’re going to tell me everything?”

  No one said anything for a beat too long which told me all that I needed to know. These guys weren’t going to tell me anything, which was incredibly frustrating. The more that everyone shut me out of this secret, the more I wanted to pull it apart.

  “Okay, that’s fine. I will just contact the environmental press,” I replied in the most innocent tone of voice that I could manage. “Like I was just saying to Pedro, I can have journalists crawling all over this place in a heartbeat. You guys must know how wild photographers get over trying to get an image of something new. Someone will find this albino panther even if it isn’t me.” I shrugged, acting helpless. “I mean, it would be better if it was me because I’m not an asshole like a lot of them. I only want to see one, I don’t want to dissect one.”

  I caught a glimpse between them all. This was getting to them. Well, good. If they would just tell me what the fuck was going on, then I wouldn’t need to threaten this. I wasn’t keen on it myself, but as I had learned in my life, sometimes the end justified the means.

  I reached across to grab my picture. “I know there will be many people who are interested in buying this picture anyway, so it isn’t an issue to me. I will be rich…”

  “Okay.” Jabari reached across and grabbed my hand before I could lift the picture off the table. I froze, almost as if I was completely unable to move, like he had some kind of magical power over me. “Okay, fine. We don’t want that, and you know it.”

  Thank fuck, finally we were getting somewhere.

  “Why don’t you want that?” I leaned in, getting far too close to Jabari. That wasn’t what I intended at all, but it was too late. I couldn’t back down now. “You want to tell me?”

  He didn’t give me an answer. None of them did. Instead, they looked at one another with panic in their eyes. Some time or another, this was going to have to come out. And as far as I was concerned, it had to be now.

  Jabari

  Those fucking cameras. Of course they belonged to her, we should have known. Seth did predict as much and we didn’t really worry too much about it, but now with the evidence in front of our faces, we couldn’t push it away any longer. As her eyes darted towards Ramon, I knew that this smart woman wasn’t going to be fooled by stupidity.

  I wasn’t sure if she would follow through on her threat to get the crazy ass environmental media out here, but we really couldn’t risk it. That high level of interest in us couldn’t end well.

  “Okay, Tara.” As the leader, it was up to me to sort this. “We can talk.”

  She breathed out a sigh of relief. “Okay then, I’m glad to hear it. Let’s talk.”

  “But I want to see all of the footage you captured first. All of it.” I needed to know just how serious this was. “After I have seen what you have, then I will talk to you.”

  Tara folded her arms across her chest, defiantly. “Why won’t you talk without seeing it? That’s my personal footage. I don’t see why I should show you anything.”

  “You want something from me, I want something from you. That’s how it works.”

  There was a strange fizzing sensation in the pit of my stomach as I struggled through this stand-off with Tara. She wasn’t about to make it easy for me, which only made my attraction to her more intense. I didn’t want to feel this way, I would have done anything to push it away, but that just made it burn through me with an even fiercer flame.

  I hoped that the other guys couldn’t see it. I wouldn’t be able to stand the ribbing. But as I looked into Tara’s eyes and I saw that steely determination there, the rest of the room simply melted away until it was only me and her. There was a glimmer of thought that maybe I should just reach across and grab her. See how she reacted. I could imagine her kissing me hard, wrapping her arms around me and allowing her passion to shine through. Her tongue in my mouth, my hands all over her body, her lips and teeth all over me… God, it was a hot fantasy.

  The idea created a storm brewing in the pit of my stomach. It was challenging to focus on anything other than the curve of her lips, the shape of her hips, her pert breasts…

  “Fine,” she eventually sighed. “I will go and gather what I have. Bring it here.”

  My eyes flickered over the bar. I didn’t know everyone here and I sure as shit didn’t want everyone to hear what we were discussing. This conversation needed to be private.

  “No. Don’t bring anything here,” I snapped, angrily. “We can’t talk here.”

  “So, where the hell do you want to talk then?” She shrugged helplessly, looking around at all of us in turn. “Everything is in my room. I don’t think that we can all fit…”

  “We’ll try.” I rose to my feet and indicated for the others to do the same, which they did but with much less gusto. “We’ll make it work, somehow.”

  Before I could move out from my seat, Tara shocked me by pressing her palm to my chest. Her strength wasn’t the thing that prevented me from going anywhere, it was the electricity that bolted through me. I could tell from the way that her eyebrows nearly popped out of her head that she felt it too, but she remained brave and kept her hand there.

  “If you come to my room then I want you to take me to the jungle at night. I know you don’t want me to go because of danger or whatever… but I already know that you went there so I want you to take me too. I will find these creatures, with or without you. There is much more activity at night from these nocturnal beasts and I want to see it in the flesh.”

  I couldn’t resist smirking at her. I wasn’t sure if she sensed it but the words ‘in the flesh’ just made me think of her naked, showing me every damn sexy inch of her. “But that means you want two things from me. For me to talk to you, and to take you to the jungle.”

  “Right, and I’m taking four strapping muscular guys to my bedroom and trusting them…”

  “Yes, I guess that’s fair enough.” Just because I knew for sure that we wouldn’t do anything wrong, it didn’t mean she did. I had to give her whatever she wanted to make sure that nothing was done in public. I would just have to work out a way around this. “Okay, then. It’s a deal.”

  I held out my hand and she shook it, keeping her eyes fixed on mine the entire time. As we shook, there was no denying the intense chemistry flowing between us. It was palpable. Practically filling the entire room. There was no shying away from it now, everyone could see it. Surely.

  “Right, okay.” She nodded for a moment too long. “Come on, then. Let’s go.”

  I could feel the eyes of the rest of my pack upon me. They were probably wondering what the fuck I was playing at. To be honest, I felt like that myself, but this was something that we needed to do. As far as I was aware, no one had ever gotten so close to seeing us before as panthers and working out the truth, and we needed to do something about it. If we let Tara go without understanding what information she had and what she intended to do with it, then we were fucked.

  I couldn’t have Jakar and Javier kicking my ass over this one. It wouldn’t work. They were depending on me to protect everyone including their packs and their families. This was important.

  We all remained behind Tara as she took us to her room and as we finally reached where she was staying, I could immediately see her issue. This was a tiny room and we were massive. It was going to be incredibly difficult to make this work, but we needed to try.

  “Come on,” I hissed at Tony behind me. “We a
ll need to get in. We all need to see this.”

  We basically filled up the room. I wasn’t even sure that Seth could see over Ramon’s shoulder to witness everything coming to life on Tara’s laptop screen, but it was the best that we could manage. Instead of worrying about everything at once, I decided to just focus my needy eyes forward as Tara clicked rapidly through the pictures.

  Fucking hell. My heart sunk. This was bad, really bad. She had everything, all the angles of the jungle. It wasn’t just the one camera that we noticed, there were a few of them. Tara really had it all. I even winced a couple of times as I saw the fight with the jaguars. That was terrible. There were some stupid mistakes made by all of us. No wonder I got injured.

  “There’s this one.” Tara pointed at the screen. “Look at this. The jaguar swipes the panther…”

  She showed me the place on the panther’s throat where there would inevitably be an injury… the exact same spot where I was sporting a brand new scar right now. I should have just ignored it, but seeing the accident happen, my fingers automatically traveled to the spiteful pinch and of course, Tara watched the whole thing. If she didn’t know before, she did now.

  “It erm… seems strange…” She tried to speak through her obvious shock but it clearly wasn’t easy for her. “That the big cats are so territorial. It doesn’t seem like normal behavior to me.”

  “No?” I raised just one eyebrow. “Because it seems like it would be normal to me. That sort of thing happens in the animal kingdom all the time. The fight for territory. For survival.”

  She gasped, loudly. I had said too much, now she was going to start worrying about us.

  “Anyway,” I said, hurriedly. “Show me the rest of what you have.”

  It took her a couple of moments, but she finally did what I asked. Much as I kept my eyes on the screen, I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing on edge every single time she looked at me. I didn’t need to be a mind reader to see what was going on in her head. She was figuring things out slowly and trying not to ask how much danger our lives were in.

  “This is what I want to talk to you about,” she eventually rasped out. “This, right here. The four of you about to head into the jungle. Because I see you here going in, but not coming out.”

  “We… came out a different way, that’s all.”

  “I could work that much out. But what I don’t get is why you aren’t picked up on any of my cameras. No stills, no video, no nothing. What happened to you as soon as you walked in between the trees? People don’t just vanish into thin air, you know.”

  I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to answer this just yet. I needed to gather my thoughts up, to get them in order, to work out how we can get out of this. There had to be a way that I could fool Tara. Smart as she was. Our secret had been kept for generations, probably from much smarter people than her. I couldn’t be the one to fuck it up.

  “Because…” She continued, knowing exactly what my silence meant. “The next time anything is seen, it’s four panthers. Including the albino one. The ones from the fight.”

  She looked at Ramon who immediately averted his eyes. It was pointless for him to try and hide his white hair and red eyes now. Tara had already seen them. She fucking knew, she had it all worked out. There were no words I could use to calm this situation down, to change her mind about what was going on. All we could really do now was try to get her on our side.

  “Tara…” I started, but she had already decided that I wasn’t going to give her what she wanted.

  “Don’t try and palm me off with any bullshit. Don’t. Just stop it. Everyone keeps trying to keep me away from everything. No one will give me any information, which just pisses me off. I’m not some little girl who needs to be kept away from anything. I should be the one to make that decision for myself. Whatever it is, I can handle it. It isn’t an issue for me. You must have seen something because you were there. Or heard something. Maybe you heard something. Or perhaps you just know. Either way, you should just tell me already before I lose my mind.”

  As she broke off panting, and stared desperately at me, I nodded like it was her rant that changed my mind rather than making it up before. I didn’t want to embarrass her or make her feel like she’d wasted words. Also, it gave me a couple of moments to work out how to start.

  “You’re right.” That seemed as good a place as any to start. “We do know something.”

  Immediately, sensing what was about to happen, Seth moved towards the door to guard it. If I was going to share this information with Tara, then we needed to ensure that no one else overheard. The wrong ears could lead to even more issues than we were already facing.

  “What… erm, what do you know?” Tara replied, the color draining from her face.

  “We know about the panthers because… well, like you already suspect, we are the panthers.”

  “You are?” Her hands clutched to her chest. I got the impression that she wanted to pace the room, but she couldn’t because we filled the damn place up. “So, Adriana was right.”

  “Is Adriana the cat museum lady?” Tony piped up. “Because she thinks that she knows more than she does. I’ve been to see her exhibit and it isn’t all correct…”

  “But you are shape shifters, aren’t you?” She asked him. “You are the panthers, you just said. But right now, you’re looking at me as a human. So, she must be right about that.”

  “Right.” Tony’s head hung low. “Yes, she was right about that.”

  “And you.” This time, Tara pointed to Ramon. “You’re the albino panther.”

  He nodded, shyly. It seemed like his different coloring actually bothered him here. “Yes, I am.”

  “I see. Wow, this is… this really is the find of a lifetime.”

  Shit. This was bad. This would be the find of a lifetime for her or any human. If someone could prove our existence, then we would be in serious trouble. The whole world would come to see us. They would hunt and kill us. Dissect us for science to see what was going on inside of our bodies, what made us different.

  “We are already nearly extinct,” Tony spit out, clearly thinking along the same lines as me. “It’s a struggle enough for us to reproduce, don’t make it worse for us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I needed to take over this conversation before Tony made a real mess of it. “Yes, our numbers are dwindling, and they have been for a long time, ever since humans forced us into hiding. Letting humans know about us is dangerous, which is why I needed to see what you have of us.”

  “Of course. But… there are more of you, right?”

  “There are,” I confirmed. “Which is why the presence of the jaguars is an issue for us. They don’t like the way that we live our lives. They basically want us to bow down to them and become part of their much bigger pack.”

  “That wouldn’t be good for you?” She asked, warily. “That’s why you fight?”

  “Exactly. We need to keep them away from Panthera and the rest of us.”

  “What… what’s Panthera?”

  Shit, again I had said too much. Why couldn’t I stop myself when I was around Tara? Why did she loosen up my tongue in a way that no one had ever done before? I could tell from the terrified look that Seth was giving me that he didn’t agree with me saying any of this.

  But it was too late. Tara knew. There was no climbing out of the rabbit hole now. We were all in too deep.

  “It’s our hidden underground city where we all live our lives without persecution,” I told her. “And that’s where we want to remain. But before we can be sure that we will be left in peace, we need to get rid of the jaguar threat.”

  “Why is there a jaguar threat though? Has this always been the way?”

  “No, it’s more of a recent thing. More to do with reproduction. Like Tony said, we haven’t been finding it easy. There aren’t many of us left. They want to reproduce with us.”

  “Wouldn’t that be the
answer though? To help keep your race going?”

  “No!” My anger wasn’t really directed at Tara, this wasn’t her fault, nor did she know, but it made me crazy angry. “No way. The jaguars treat the panthers like we are a genetic anomaly, a blip on their otherwise perfect record. If we mate with them, they will be doing us a favor and will expect us to bow down and be treated like scum. I don’t want any of us to go through that persecution, or any of our children. I want to remain in Panthera.”

  I could almost see the cogs ticking in Tara’s brain as she mentally tried to fix our issue for us. Not that she could. That was something we needed to do alone, and right now we basically had things under control. There wasn’t anything specific for us to worry about. The jaguars were being kept at bay… but this was nice for me to see. She already cared a little about us.

  If she cared enough, then she would keep our secret for us. She wouldn’t want our race to be wiped out by the jaguars or the humans.

  “I want to go to Panthera,” she suddenly blurted out, shocking all of us. “Take me there. I want to see it for myself.”

  Uh oh, that wasn’t what I was expecting. This was a problem.

  Tara

  My mind spun with all this new information. It was too much for me to handle. I had my suspicions about the shape shifters, but it was never truly real in my mind. How could it be when it was a supernatural, paranormal phenomenon that was more out of a dream than in reality?

  Only, it was reality. There was no way that Jabari and the others would lie to me about this. They just wouldn’t, it’d be crazy. They knew how much money I could make from this if I really wanted to. I would only have to sell one picture, one story to the right person and my life would be set. Theirs would be a mess, but that didn’t have to concern me at all. Not many people would put the needs of these beasts who were already going extinct before their own… these guys were just lucky that it was me who found them.

  “Yes, I want to see it,” I reiterated, just in case they didn’t get it. “I want to see all of it. I mean, I am a felinologist, after all. Maybe I will have some suggestions about reproduction that doesn’t involve the jaguars if that really isn’t what you want to do.”