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

by Cristina Rayne

  By the time she made it back downstairs, Paul and Karen’s low voices coming from the living room had been joined by a deep, energetic third.

  When she stepped into the room, Karen’s son, Mitch, was sitting on the couch with his back to her next to Paul listening to his mother talk about the merits of staying on the interstate versus taking the back roads. He turned before she could call out a greeting, his nostrils visibly flaring.

  “Wow. You really do smell just like before,” Mitch said, narrowing his eyes curiously at her as though she was a puzzle to be unraveled. Not surprising as he was an engineer. “Completely human. Not a hint of jaguar at all.”

  Kylie smiled thinly and walked over to him. She held out her hand to him.

  “Here. Take a good, long whiff. I’d like to know if that’s really true.”

  Mitch looked at her strangely, and she hastened to explain, “My mother always said that when my father was in his human form, he had a faint, underlying scent that gave away what he truly was, but she never described exactly what she had smelled.”

  Paul nodded. “Alan and I discussed it a few times. He said it was like trying to hide a natural scent with a spray of cologne. A shifter really has to stick his nose close to even realize it’s there. It’s the scent all Polyshifters carry from birth until their first shift.”

  Mitch took Kylie’s hand and lifted it up to press the back of it directly over his nose. He inhaled deeply several times before moving her hand away.

  “I stand corrected,” he said. “There’s definitely an underlying—sweetness, for lack of a better word, beneath the normal muskiness of your human scent. However, the only reason why I even noticed it was because I was looking for it specifically. As long as someone doesn’t press their nose into your skin, I think you’ll be fine. You can’t smell it at all in the air around you.”

  Karen closed her eyes and sniffed the air for several seconds. “All I smell are two humans and a kitten.”

  Kylie couldn’t help but smile at the sour look Mitch shot his mother. She was grateful for Karen’s attempt at easing some of the tension in the air.

  “That’s good,” she said. “One less thing I have to worry about. I’ll just have to be careful not to leave a sock behind anywhere. Speaking of, any updates while I was changing?”

  “Nothing yet,” Paul said as Mitch scooted over to make room for her on the couch. “We were just trying to decide the best route to Mobile once we’ve planted the false trails in Dallas. If we manage to leave Riverford before noon today and drive all night once we leave Dallas, we should be able to make a late afternoon flight tomorrow from Mobile Regional Airport to Heathrow in London.”

  “Nonstop?” Kylie asked hopefully.

  Paul sighed. “I wish. The best I could find was a flight with a two-hour layover in Atlanta. All the rest connect to JFK, and I’d like to avoid stopping in New York City at all costs. Flying into Heathrow is enough of a risk as it is. We’ll decide where to go from there on the flight over.” He fixed Kylie with an intense gaze. “We have a lot to discuss first.”

  The invisible hand around her heart squeezed tighter. She struggled to keep the pain from her expression as she nodded. Another painful conversation she had prayed they would never have to have.

  She knew what she would have to do going forward. Now that her secret had been revealed to outsiders, her days of living out in the open as a normal human were over. She would have to say goodbye to her friends, to college. She would do all of this for Paul’s sake. After everything that Paul had done to protect her, it was her turn now to protect him from a life of fear and running.

  Kylie had to seek out her mother’s Polyshifter clan, a place that might as well be ripped out of the pages of a fairytale for all she knew its location beyond some vague references her mother had once made to her about it being in the British Isles. More importantly, it was a place where a human could neither step foot in nor find. If she managed to find it and if they accepted her into their fold, it would be as if she had disappeared off the face of the earth.

  Once Paul and she arrived in London, Kylie would have to say goodbye and go on alone.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Relativity sucks, Hunter thought irritably as he stared at the unmoving man, willing him to open his eyes with every fiber of his being. However, the man’s eyelids didn’t so much as twitch.

  A quick glance at the large, round-faced clock that hung on the wall facing the hospital bed told him that he had been sitting by the wolf shifter’s bedside for only an hour when it had literally felt like days. Sitting still and doing nothing was practically torture. While he knew how important it was to be the first person the wolf saw when he finally woke up, Hunter felt completely useless, especially given the task Maxim had taken up while he sat twiddling his thumbs.

  The idiot that he was, he couldn’t even try calling Kylie because his phone was currently lying somewhere in the dirt in the forest, and he couldn’t remember her number. No doubt everyone under the sun was trying to call him and wondering why he wasn’t picking up. He expected a barrage of phone calls to the clinic any second now.

  He hoped to fuck Kylie hadn’t been one of those missed calls. He also prayed that Maxim would be able to locate her before the Elders started asking about her whereabouts. He would have to tell them the truth, and right now, he wasn’t a hundred percent sure that was the right thing to do. With the life of a woman he had come to care for a great deal on the line, he damned well better be one hundred percent sure.

  Hunter winced at that last thought, realizing what he had been refusing to admit to himself. Why else had her very likely betrayal have pierced him so painfully rather than just stoke his anger?

  He dropped his head into his hands. No matter what truth was revealed, he was utterly screwed either way.

  Suddenly, a sharp gasp sounded to his left, and Hunter jerked his head up in enough time to see the wolf shifter practically leap from the bed with a snarl of warning, his blue eyes glassy with confusion and panic and darting from side to side as if frantically searching for an escape route. Hunter immediately froze in his chair, not daring to move as the man used the bed as a barricade.

  The high-pitched sound of the heart monitor signaling a flatline filled his ears. Not surprising as the wolf’s IV tube and finger pulse oximeter were now dangling off the edge of the bed next to him. He could both smell and see blood trickling from the back of the man’s left hand where the IV needle had been ripped out.

  He had to do something to calm the fear-crazed man quickly before either he tried to shift or the medical staff responding to the flatline signal made it to the room. Hunter slowly rose from his chair, immediately capturing the wolf’s attention.

  “Stay back! Stay back!” the wolf shouted, his voice cracking. His eyes were still wild and clearly seeing enemies everywhere. “I’ll fucking bite your hands off if you so much as reach for me, I swear…!

  Instead of wasting time with reassurances of safety that would never be believed, Hunter folded his arms against his chest and said in his most authoritative voice, “Listen, buddy. You were the one who came looking for me in my territory. We just saved your ass, so why don’t you calm the fuck down before you reopen all your wounds and waste all my clansmen’s efforts.”

  The wolf stopped snarling at him for a moment, his eyes narrowing suspiciously for a split-second before they widened in disbelief.

  “I—remember,” he rasped. “In the forest—you’re Ryder’s brother!”

  Hearing that name made Hunter’s chest tighten painfully with a maelstrom of emotions. He forced his face into a neutral expression and nodded with a calm he absolutely did not feel.

  “Thank God,” the wolf said, collapsing to his knees with something like a sob, letting his forehead fall against the edge of the mattress. “I thought the Retrievers had caught me.”

  “Retrievers?” Hunter questioned with a frown. “I had the lioness on your tail pegged as one of their assassi
ns.”

  The wolf looked up sharply, a flash of fear in his eyes, before he shook his head. “No, they—”

  The door abruptly burst opened and both men growled at the sudden intrusion almost in unison. Gerald, the young doctor in the forefront of the entering staff, instantly stopped after only moving a couple of strides into the room, causing the two nurses behind him to nearly collide into his back. He looked from first his would-be patient crouching in a defensive position on the other side of the bed, his hospital gown halfway open and barely covering his crotch, to the still-wailing heart monitor, to Hunter.

  “Good timing,” Hunter lied, struggling to keep his irritation at the interruption from his voice. “You can help him get back into bed. He was still disoriented and in danger mode when he woke up, but…” He turned his attention to the wolf. “…you’re okay now, right?”

  The wolf shifter stared at Hunter for a couple of seconds before slowly nodding.

  Still looking a bit wary, Gerald approached the injured man as cautiously as if he was a wounded, cornered animal. After a moment’s hesitation, a male nurse whose name Hunter couldn’t remember followed. Once the wolf was back in his bed, Gerald picked up his bleeding hand and tsked after examining it more closely.

  “You’ve definitely blown out this vein,” Gerald said. “Shawn, grab some supplies to clean and bandage the wound while I examine the rest of his bandages. Sidney, I need you to start another IV in his other hand.”

  While the three attended to the wolf, Hunter stepped away to lean against the far wall, observing them in silence. He was dismayed to see blood seeping through one of the wolf’s bandages along his back, wondering if the doctor would decide that the injured man needed rest and kick him out.

  If that happened, he would have to get the Elders involved, something he had been hoping to avoid until he’d had a chance to talk with the wolf privately. He was already walking a thin line as it was not calling Gaither the moment the wolf shifter had awakened as the Elder had requested. He couldn’t afford any more delays.

  “It hurts, but nothing that warrants you pumping me full of more drugs,” the wolf was saying, drawing Hunter out of his thoughts. “The last thing I need right now is to be fuzzy headed and on the verge of passing out again.”

  “Yes, it’s important that I talk to him as soon as possible,” Hunter cut in, deciding a little nudge was needed. “The Elders are expecting my call.”

  Gerald looked over at him and frowned. “Just make it quick, Hunter. We may heal fast, but we’re not immortal.”

  “It’s okay, Doc,” the wolf assured him. “He has every right. It was his territory I breached, after all.”

  Clever. For a jaguar, a breach of territory was the one thing others could not interfere with, not even the Elders. He would have used the excuse himself, but he felt the less everyone knew about the incident, the better. At least he was guaranteed privacy now.

  Gerald sighed, but nodded. “I resealed your wound. Just try not to move any more than what’s necessary. You may have only reopened one of your wounds a small bit this time, but next time you may not be so lucky. I’ll be back in an hour to re-examine them.”

  Only when the door closed behind them did Hunter move to reclaim his seat next to the bed.

  “For future reference, I would rather you not mention breaching my territory to anyone else,” Hunter said.

  “He wouldn’t have left us alone, otherwise,” the wolf replied. “What I’m about to tell you is for your ears only. Your brother seemed to think that you were our best chance, and given what he sacrificed to ensure that I had a chance to escape, I’m inclined to trust his judgment with you.”

  Hunter stared at him for a long moment, trying to process what this man was telling him. However, right now he only wanted to hear the answer to a single question.

  “Ryder was alive when you last saw him?”

  One beat, two, and then his heart began to drop to the pit of his stomach when the wolf didn’t answer right away.

  “He was when I last saw him,” the wolf finally answered, “though from the beating he was receiving, I can’t with all honesty say that’s still true.”

  It took every ounce of will in Hunter’s being to keep from shifting and going for the injured wolf’s throat. It isn’t what it sounds like. He didn’t run and leave Ryder behind. He wouldn’t have dared come to me, otherwise.

  Over and over he repeated those thoughts in his head until he could no longer feel his muscles rippling.

  Taking a final, deep breath in order to calm his lingering anger, Hunter finally fixed the wolf with what was probably still a hard gaze. “Maybe we should start at the beginning. I’ve never seen you running with the Riverford packs before. What’s your name?”

  Hunter was pleased that his tone sounded normal rather than tinged with hostility. The last thing he needed to do was to cause this man to clam up.

  The wolf’s body was visibly tense as he met Hunter’s gaze without blinking. No doubt he had sensed how close he had come to getting his throat ripped out.

  “That’s because I’m from one of the suburbs—Parker Grove. My name’s Jack Bray. I only have cousins here.”

  “So you’re part of Tanner Bray’s lot.”

  Jack’s shoulders relaxed a bit as he nodded.

  “Although I really would like to know how you ended up bleeding in my part of the forest, answer me this first. Were you and Ryder being held against your will by the lions?”

  The look in Jack’s eyes turned from wary to bleak. “We were their personal lab rats is what we were.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Hunter sucked in a sharp breath. “Explain.”

  Jack turned his head, his gaze fixing on some point along the far wall in front of him. “About a year ago, my mate, Maya, and I were heading south out of Parker Grove to our favorite hunting spot when we were pulled over by what I thought was a highway patrol car. Two human patrolmen ordered us out of the car before I could even say a word, telling me that our license plate matched one of a suspected drug runner and they planned to search it. However, once we both had gotten out and had walked to the rear of the car where they had directed us, the sons-of-bitches Tased us, and it must have been set at a really high voltage because I blacked out almost instantly.

  “I woke up as the same men—only now they were dressed in normal jeans and t-shirts—were pulling me out of the back of an SUV parked behind a large two-story brick house. It was surrounded by cattle pens as far as the eye could see.”

  His face suddenly contorted into a look of disgust. “The smell was probably what woke me. It was like I’d been chucked into a lake of cow shit, it was so eye-wateringly bad. Just thinking about it now makes me want to hurl. Only when I escaped a few days ago did I find out it was a cattle ranch pretty much in the middle of nowhere, about a couple of miles west of Amarillo. At least that’s what it is on the surface, but below, it’s a medical research facility several floors deep right out of a horror movie.”

  As Jack talked, Hunter felt his body grow stiffer and stiffer with barely contained rage. It was only when his palms started to sting that he realized that his nails had started to elongate into claws and had stabbed into the pads of his tightly-fisted hands.

  “Did the same thing happen to Ryder?” Hunter growled, unable to keep the anger from his voice this time.

  Jack shook his head. “He said he was taken down by a tranquilizing dart while out on a run in his forest territory. I imagine it was the same one where you found me. He did say that once he had been missing for a while, you would have taken it over. We knew that all the roads leading into Riverford were being watched by the Sniffers, so that’s why I aimed to get into Riverford through the forest along the southern edge. I figured if I didn’t run into you within the forest, itself, then I would try looking for you at some of the places Ryder mentioned.”

  “Did those bastards take anyone else other than you three?”

  “I only know of
twelve others—all female. A couple of cougars, an alligator, a gray wolf, a tiger—”

  “That tiger,” Hunter cut in, nearly falling out of his chair as he unconsciously leaned closer to the wolf. “Do you know her name?”

  Jack’s gaze suddenly became hyper-focused. “Anna.”

  Hunter slowly let out the breath he had been holding. He didn’t know whether or not to feel overjoyed or stricken to finally hear someone speak that name.

  “Twenty-two? Blonde hair, blue eyes?” He had to make sure before…

  “Yeah.” Jack’s voice was barely louder than a whisper. “She looked about that age, though I only saw her once, about six months ago, as we were both being dragged down a hall. It was probably when she was first brought in because boy did that tiger fight the bastards who had her with everything she had in her. You see, once the lions’ scientists get a hold of you and start pumping their shit into your veins, you’re lucky to even lift a finger without breaking a sweat.”

  Hunter stared at the wolf in horror for a long moment before he closed his eyes in renewed pain. “Fuck.”

  “You’re a jaguar, but—” Jack began hesitantly.

  “Anna Barkova. She’s my best friend’s mate-to-be, not mine,” Hunter finished for him. “Too many things match up for it not to be her. Just what the fuck were those bastards doing to all of you?”

  The sadness and weariness on Jack’s face suddenly melted into something unreadable. “Like I said, we were lab rats,” he replied, his voice deepening with renewed tension. “The hell if I know what those sick bastards hoped to accomplish doing what they did to us. It was painful and debasing, and if I ever get my hands on those fuckers, I will enjoy slowly tearing out their throats!”

  It was apparent that he wasn’t going to get any more details other than that from the wolf, not when the horror of what he had been through was so fresh, so Hunter decided to try a different angle.

  “You said that my brother helped you escape,” Hunter said, watching the other man’s face carefully. “How did it come about? From what you’ve told me, I got the impression that everyone they abducted were kept separated.”