Tempted by the Jaguar #3: Ramification (Riverford Shifters)

by Cristina Rayne

  TEMPTED BY THE JAGUAR #3: RAMIFICATION

  A Riverford Shifters Serial

  CRISTINA RAYNE

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2015 Cristina Rayne

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TEMPTED BY THE JAGUAR #4: INFILTRATION

  ALSO BY CRISTINA RAYNE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was only there for a second, but Kylie saw it in his eyes—the initial shock, but more importantly, the fury and something that could very well be hate.

  Hunter had given her his answer, and she only had herself to blame for the gut-wrenching pain she instantly felt. It was her fault for letting him get close enough to her heart that she could feel the knife of his rejection jab straight through with a savage twist.

  However, Kylie didn’t so much as blink as she continued to stare him down, refusing to show any kind of reaction even though she ached to see the various streams of blood oozing down his body from several gashes in his shoulders and chest. She knew the reputation of Polyshifters within the shifter clans—or more accurately, that the clans other than the lions viewed her kind as utterly dangerous. Rightfully so.

  There was a very good chance that Hunter would decide to attack her—last night’s affection be damned—rather than allow her to explain, and no matter how much it would crush her soul, Kylie wasn’t about to let him drag her back to the Elders without a fight. All those years living in fear of discovery—to just roll over and accept her fate now would be the ultimate insult to everything Paul and her adoptive mother, Laura, had sacrificed.

  Yet, when Hunter stiffly turned his back to her without a word and strode over to the naked man slowly bleeding to death on the ground, she was completely taken aback. Of all the reactions she had expected, that Hunter would show her, a Polyshifter, his back wasn’t one of them. What the hell was he thinking?

  She opened her mouth, the first words of her confusion on the tip of her tongue before she closed it again without uttering a sound. Every instinct within her screamed for her to turn on her heel and flee while Hunter’s attention was elsewhere.

  Two people had seen her shift into a lioness and both had the power to destroy her. She needed to get out of the city now before either of them had time to really think about the implications of what had just happened. Although only Hunter knew for certain that she was a Polyshifter, it was only a matter of time before their lioness attacker figured it out, too.

  Still…that Hunter hadn’t attacked her, hadn’t demanded answers, gave her a small, though likely foolish, hope that he might be open to an explanation, maybe even needed one.

  Kylie stood frozen in indecision for a couple of more beats before the jacket she had borrowed from Hunter caught her eye, lying a few feet to her left in a discarded heap next to the ruined pieces of the rest of her clothes. She quietly, cautiously, moved to retrieve it without taking her eyes from that rigid and slightly bleeding back as Hunter knelt on the ground and reached for the wolf shifter’s neck. Whatever she decided, she definitely didn’t want to be naked for it.

  As she slipped the jacket on, momentarily having a déjà vu of the first time she had been naked in front of Hunter when the hem just barely covered all her naughty bits, Hunter began applying pressure to the worst of the wolf shifter’s back wounds. Kylie felt a huge surge of relief at that action. He wouldn’t have bothered if the wolf wasn’t still alive.

  Kylie took a step towards them, on edge and unsure about what his sudden silence meant, but intent on helping him with the still-bleeding man. Hunter instantly jerked his head around and snarled in warning. She froze.

  “Don’t come any closer!” he warned, his rough tone making her want to crouch defensively and hiss back at him in equal warning.

  She fisted her hands until she could feel her nails cutting into her palms. No—she needed to react as a human for this. Snarling at him could very likely set his jaguar off dangerously.

  “Let me help you help him, Hunter,” Kylie pleaded. Now that the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, about her Polyshifter heritage, she didn’t have to worry about getting the wolf’s blood on her skin and possibly triggering another change in her dominant shifter soul. “You can’t stop all his bleeding alone.”

  She moved to take another step, and he growled, the sound low and menacing.

  “Don’t,” Hunter repeated. “I can’t—” His voice cut off, and that same look of betrayal and hurt flashed in his eyes.

  …I can’t trust you, Kylie internally finished for him in rising despair. It was nothing more than she deserved. After all, she, herself, hadn’t trusted him enough to confide the truth, even after everything he had done for her over the past couple of days.

  “Hunter—”

  “Go. Leave Riverford before the clans come for you,” Hunter interjected in a tight voice, his eyes now double pools of barely contained pain. “Go now before I change my mind and haul you in before the Elders, myself.”

  Her composure in danger of cracking, Kylie clenched her jaw against the sob that wanted to claw itself out of her throat. Her whole body tightened as though getting ready to spring away, but she fought against the instinct. No—there was one last thing she had to say or she would regret it forever.

  She took a deep, shaky breath. “I was afraid to tell you that I was a Deadend from a Polyshifter family,” she confessed softly. It was probably too little too late, but she just couldn’t leave without saying it. “I’m sorry.”

  Kylie then turned sharply on her heel to dart away before Hunter could see her face crumble. She could feel a yowl of emotion wanting to burst forth from her throat, but she gritted her teeth and viciously denied herself that release. The last thing she wanted was for Hunter to hear her pain.

  Her head down and barely conscious of her surroundings, Kylie just kept on running through the trees, away from Hunter, away from the hope of a happy future that had been shattered by her own carelessness.

  Kylie had only known him for a couple of days. They had only connected intimately for less than a few hours, and yet that final rejection hurt just as much as learning that her parents had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth.

  When her bare feet abruptly stepped onto cold asphalt, she realized that not only was she no longer surrounded by trees, but that she was back in the parking lot of Hunter’s apartment building. She skidded to a halt, her chest heaving with more than fatigue, and leaned up against the passenger door of a charcoal-colored truck.

  It was then that the floodgates finally broke and the tears that had been gathering in her eyes began to roll down her wind-chilled cheeks in scalding streams. For a long, agonizing moment, Kylie just stood there hugging herself tightly, half-dressed and crying her silent tears, unable to move her thoughts past the waves of hurt that inundated her entire being.

  Only when she heard a car door slam in the dista
nce, did her awareness crawl out of the black hole of despair it had fallen into enough to realize it was worse than stupid to be standing so exposed. She sucked in a harsh, shuddering breath, hastily wiped at the tears still leaking from her eyes, and straightened. She had to move now.

  Her car was still at her old apartment building, so as much as it pained her to do it, she had to call Paul and confess everything. The endgame decision they both had always feared was finally being forced on them.

  Luckily, she had shoved her cell phone inside her jacket pocket rather than her jeans this morning. She cringed to think of what kind of fuss she would’ve stirred up if she had been forced to find a phone dressed in only a blood-spattered jacket, especially when shifting was now out of the question. Damned if she would ever shift into a lioness again if she could help it. That was as good as painting a bright, orange target on her body.

  Feeling as though every eye in the city was on her, Kylie nervously glanced around the parking lot as she waited for Paul to answer his phone. She began to cautiously move back towards the tree-line at her back. She couldn’t risk going into the apartment complex and possibly being cornered. Besides, Hunter’s apartment was locked, and she had no way to get a key.

  Her chest tightened painfully at the thought of her mother’s bracelet still hidden in Hunter’s guestroom closet. It was now likely lost to her forever. Nothing to be done now but to accept that fact and move on.

  The sky had lightened to a dark gray, the clouds highlighted with pinks and oranges along the horizon. It was probably around seven in the morning. Even though Paul didn’t have work today, she hoped he was already up. At this point, every second would count, no matter what path they ultimately chose to take.

  Kylie wasn’t sure what Hunter would decide to do once the people he had called from his clan arrived to help him with the injured wolf shifter. It was obvious that he was conflicted enough about the inadvertent revelation of her secret to send her away rather than offer her up to the Elders as the spy for the lion clans he had every right to fear she was. Would he immediately run off to find her? Would he rat her out or keep her Polyshifter heritage to himself?

  If she disappeared, how could he explain it to his clan? How much trouble was she about to cause him, someone who had shown her nothing but kindness, patience, and affection?

  “Kylie? Are you all right?” Paul’s urgent voice suddenly said loudly into her ear, making her jump.

  “Paul!” she said anxiously into the phone. “Thank God you picked up! There’s no time to explain, but I need you to come get me at my new apartment building as soon as possible. I just screwed up badly, and I have to get out of Riverford now!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The moment Kylie saw Paul’s car turn into the complex parking lot, she moved away from the truck she had been crouching behind and sprinted towards it. He hadn’t even come to a complete stop before she was pulling on the passenger-side door handle.

  At his raised eyebrow after giving her the onceover, Kylie hastily explained as she closed the door, “I had to shift in a hurry. This jacket was the only thing that wasn’t shredded.”

  “I have our emergency bags in the trunk,” Paul said. “Karen’s waiting for us at her home. You can change there.”

  Kylie knew that her face still bore the obvious signs of her earlier crying, and she was relieved that he had chosen not to ask her about it. At least not yet.

  “She’s already got some of her cougar friends watching the roads out of the city,” he continued. “She offered to drive us to DFW. We’ll buy tickets to somewhere far—Australia or South Korea—to muddy our trail. Then she’ll rent us a car, and we can figure out where to go from there—”

  “Wait a minute! Slow down!” Kylie interjected. “You haven’t even heard what happened, and you’re already ready to throw your life, your career in Riverford away! I’m the only one who has to leave!”

  “Kylie—we talked about this,” Paul said sternly. “There’s no way I’m sending you out there to face the danger alone. You’re a million times more important to me than any job.”

  “But I screwed it all up, Paul! Everything,” Kylie moaned, lowering her face into her hands. “You shouldn’t have to pay for my stupidity!”

  “Tell me what happened,” he said calmly as he drove out of the parking lot.

  “Hunter knows I’m a Polyshifter.”

  Paul looked at her sharply and cursed. “Put your seatbelt on, Kylie. I’ll get you out of here. I don’t care if I have to run down an army of shifters, but I swear on my life, on the hopes of your parents, that I’ll keep you from falling into their hands. Any of them.”

  His words made her sink down farther in her seat in shame. “That’s not the worst of it. I ended up shifting into—into a lioness.”

  The car abruptly swerved, causing Paul to curse a second time. “How in the blazes did that happen? Did you touch the wrong charm?”

  She shook her head. “Hunter and I were walking in the forest behind the apartment complex when we ran across a severely injured wolf shifter. He’d been shredded to an inch of his life. Hunter called his clan for help, and while we were trying to stop the worst of his bleeding, we were attacked by a lioness. Hunter and the lioness fought. He told me to run. I should’ve run, but I just couldn’t leave them. It was obvious the lioness was after the wolf, that she was probably the one that had injured him. Then Hunter was suddenly down and not getting up, and I had to do something. I shifted and…I hadn’t noticed that I had gotten her blood on me, so…”

  “Did the lioness see you as a jaguar at all?” Paul demanded.

  “No. She was so shocked when I shifted to face her that she shifted back into her human form in order to berate me. She said that Hunter’s scent was so strong on me that she had assumed I was a jaguar. After calling me a traitor and disgusting, she ran off into the forest. Even if she doesn’t put two and two together about me possibly being a Polyshifter, at the very least, the lions’ll be after me for ‘siding with the jaguar scum,’ as she put it.”

  “I take it Hunter didn’t react very well to learning your secret, either?” Paul said flatly.

  “No,” Kylie agreed in a small voice, her chest tightening with remembered pain.

  It’s your own damned fault, so get over it.

  “And yet you were able to get away from him to call me…” He glanced at her sideways. “Perhaps you two were a little closer than you led me to believe.”

  Kylie’s shoulders slumped at the implied admonishment. “Last night, we…” She trailed off and shrugged uncomfortably, unable to say it out loud. “Yeah, he let me go because he’s confused, but we’ve only known each other for a couple of days. He told me to get out of Riverford, but he may decide he made a mistake and come after me himself. After all, he knows my scent better than anyone.”

  She smiled bitterly. “Shifting into a lioness, of all things, probably wasn’t the best way of telling him about my true heritage. I thought maybe this time—never mind. It doesn’t matter any more.”

  “You really liked him, didn’t you?” Paul said, his expression suddenly infinitely sad.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she repeated. Maybe if she said it enough, she could one day convince her heart that it was true.

  “Kylie…”

  She shook her head sharply. “I should’ve known better. I was momentarily seduced by the thought of finally belonging somewhere, that we both might finally be able to put down permanent roots.” I was seduced by a pair of kind, hazel eyes and a sexy smile.

  “You were prepared to be a jaguar for the rest of your life,” Paul ventured, sounding strangely hesitant.

  He was the type to offer his opinions freely, no matter how hard they were to hear. It was one of the things she appreciated best about her adoptive father. Hearing the uncertainty in his voice raised all sorts of red flags in her mind.

  However, not even that small uncertainty in Paul’s voice could distract her from the power of his
words. Kylie clenched her jaw against the sob that very blatant truth nearly wrenched from deep within her. She didn’t want to make things worse by crying. She didn’t want to remind him to ask about the tears that had already fallen.

  “Stupid, I know,” she said roughly after a long moment of heavy silence.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, sweetie,” he said firmly. “If anyone should be censured here, it’s me for encouraging you to integrate into the jaguar clan. What I should have done was get you out of the city the first moment Hunter’s back was turned. No amount of information is worth your life.”

  Kylie said nothing, her eyes fixed onto the trembling hands fisted so tightly in her lap that they had turned white. Only this morning she had awoken within the arms of a man she had really started to fall for, thinking that for once in her life, things may have started looking up.

  She should have known better.

  Her eyes fell on a bottle of water sitting in the cup holder closest to Paul. Suddenly, it was clear what she had to do.

  “Paul, did you drink from this?” Kylie asked, picking up the bottle and waving it in front of his face briefly.

  “Good idea,” he said, nodding in approval. “Anyone looking for you will be searching for the scent of a jaguar or lioness. A human’s scent is probably just background noise, so to speak, to the shifters, and where we’re going, there’ll be a lot of it.”

  Kylie unscrewed the cap. “Exactly. That’s why, once I’ve completely repressed the shifter part of me, I don’t plan on shifting ever again if I can help it.”

  Then before her adoptive father could reply, she rubbed her fingers vigorously over the open mouth of the bottle until the scent of Paul’s anxiety and humanity, as well as Hunter’s enticing scent that had been emanating from the jacket she wore, faded into the normal scents of the inside of a car that any human would smell. She rubbed her nose in a bit of relief, finding some comfort in the familiarity of a limited sense of smell, even if the ghost of Hunter’s scent still lingered in her mind as a painful, yet fitting punishment for her moment of weakness.