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

by Cristina Rayne

  “Hmm—good point.” Maxim grabbed his cell phone from his desktop and began scrolling through his contacts. “Maybe a surprise visit isn’t the best way to go about this. Sasha sent me Mitch’s number earlier just in case. Maybe if we alert them to the danger, tell them we know Kylie’s an innocent in all this and that we believe the lions are coming for her, they may agree to accept our help. For this, I think it’s best that we deal with Mitch rather than his mother.”

  “Send him a text first,” Hunter said. “Tell him you need to talk to him about something important but to make sure he’s not overheard by anyone, especially his mother. That way, if Kylie and her father really are with them, they won’t be spooked into running again.”

  “I can do one better,” Maxim said. “The Wilsons live clear across town in The Highlands residential area. It should take you a good thirty minutes to get there. After he responds to the text, if he responds, then you leave here, and I’ll wait about twenty minutes to make that follow-up call. That way if they do choose to run, you’ll be close enough to maybe head them off, though I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that. If she’s there and she agrees to talk, then send me a text. I’ll gather some of my security and meet you there. We can all decide what to do from there.”

  “Maxim—once you talk with Mitch, I really do think you should let me deal with the rest alone. You should be concentrating on gathering intel on that ranch. We both know that you and your people have the best chance of unearthing something useful.”

  “And that’s exactly what I’m doing. As a Polyshifter, Kylie may very well have information vital to our cause, but if it turns out Kylie hid her true heritage out of fear rather than subterfuge, then she may be the very key we need to successfully infiltrate that ranch of horrors.”

  “That’s a lot of ifs,” Hunter said.

  “After months of a whole lot of nothing, suddenly within a few hours today, you’ve talked to a guy who has seen Anna and Ryder alive as well as learned of someone who is uniquely able to help us save them should she choose to do so,” Maxim said. “Right now I’m willing to take a few things on faith that it’ll all work out favorably in the end for all of us.”

  “Fucking optimist,” Hunter quipped, shaking his head. “All right. Send your text. Let’s get this show started.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Kylie nearly jumped out of her skin when Mitch’s cell literally started barking.

  He flashed her a sheepish grin. “Sorry. I set it as my new tone for incoming texts to tease one of my wolf friends.”

  “News?” Karen asked as he glanced down at his screen.

  He shook his head slowly, his lips curving down slightly. “No, I don’t think so. It’s probably something work related. Excuse me for a moment.”

  Karen snorted as soon as Mitch was out of sight, making Kylie turn to look at her questioningly.

  “I very much doubt that text was from a coworker,” Karen said wryly. “I’d be willing to bet a year’s salary that text was from his not-as-secret-as-he-thinks girlfriend.”

  “Ah,” Paul said with a smile. “The infamous tigress.”

  “What tigress?” Kylie asked, eager for a distraction from her heavy thoughts.

  “Lately our Elders have been a bit vocal about the younger generation’s choice of mates,” Karen explained. “It seems they feel too many of our newly-turned adults have been choosing non-cougar mates and are worried about our numbers dwindling. In response, the younger generations have just become more secretive about their out-of-clan relationships in order to avoid drawing the Elders’ attention. Mitch knows I could care less if he’s dating someone other than a cougar, but I think he’s trying to avoid putting me in an awkward position with the Elders over it. I’m supposed to be encouraging him to marry a nice, sweet cougar after all.”

  Kylie shook her head. “The Elders do know this is the twenty-first century not the sixteenth, right?”

  “From what you’ve told me about your meeting with the jaguar clan Elders,” Paul said, “that may indeed be the problem. Perhaps the old shifter clan traditions are too ingrained to change so easily. I think—”

  “We have to leave now!” Mitch suddenly shouted as he ran into the living room, his phone still clutched tightly in his right hand.

  Kylie was immediately on her feet. “Why? What happened?”

  “They know you’re here! Grab your bags and let’s go!”

  “The lions? The jaguars? Who?” Paul demanded

  “Both,” Mitch replied grimly, “but right now it’s the jaguars whom we have to worry about. I just got off the phone with Maxim Clarke, a prominent figure in the Siberian clan.”

  Kylie froze at the mention of that name. If he was calling then…

  “He said that his people have evidence that the Sniffers have found out Kylie’s identity,” Mitch continued, “that he knew we were helping you two after the incident in the forest this morning.” His eyes turned worriedly to Kylie. “He said that Hunter Rivera is on his way to collect you before the lions can.”

  Kylie felt as though she had been stabbed in the heart. Why—when she had already resigned herself to never seeing him again—why the hell did this have to happen now when she was so close to leaving Riverford for good?

  She grabbed Paul’s empty hand and started tugging him towards the kitchen where the door to the garage was located. “Mitch is right. We have to go right now.”

  “Kylie…!” Paul protested, planting his feet and tugging back firmly on her hand until she was forced to stop.

  “No,” Kylie said heatedly. “Hunter had his chance to hear me out, and he blew it. I don’t know what game he and Maxim are playing, but I’ve made my decision. The best thing for me to do right now is to leave and go to London as we planned.”

  “Kylie, look at me,” Paul said, dropping both her hand and the two bags he was carrying to grasp her shoulders firmly.

  Kylie reluctantly met his eyes.

  “Are you one hundred percent sure this is what you want to do?” he asked. “I know you’re scared and hurting, but after we leave here, there’s no coming back. Are you sure that’s what you want? It’s still not too late to change your mind. If you decide you want to wait for him, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  What I want is for us to be safe, she thought sadly, but if it was true that the lions now knew who she was and with Hunter’s motives for coming after her still up in the air, safe was the last thing she would ever be if she stayed.

  So she squared her shoulders and fixed him with a determined gaze. “I’m sure. Let’s go.”

  For a brief moment, Paul looked almost stricken, but before she could even process the implications, one of the living room windows suddenly exploded inward. A figure dressed all in black and what looked like a swat vest came flying through the heavy navy curtains and came to a rest in a defensive crouch only a couple of feet from Paul’s back.

  Paul instinctually shoved Kylie back and started to turn when the black-clad figure slashed at his middle with a partially-shifted hand sporting the razor-sharp claws and golden fur of a lion.

  “Paul!” Kylie screamed as the claws ripped through the thick material of his sport coat on his right side.

  Her adoptive father grunted in surprised pain as he completed the turn and stumbled back, grabbing for his side. A dark stain was already beginning to spread out into the material beneath his hand.

  “Covering yourself with human stench is clever, I’ll give you that, but it’s useless against me,” a familiar female voice sneered, and Kylie suddenly found herself looking into the face of the lioness she had faced off against only a few hours earlier. “I got a good look at your face, and I never forget a traitor. A traitor always faces her Alpha on my watch.”

  Some deep instinct buried within her psyche had Kylie baring her teeth threateningly at the other woman. Then twin snarls sounded in the air behind her, and in a blur of gold, Mitch suddenly lunged past her in his cougar form towards the
lioness.

  The lioness shifter snarled and skillfully sidestepped his charge. Mitch attempted to stop his forward momentum and slipped on the hardwood as he was turning, crashing into the far wall. The impact caused shards of glass to rain down onto his body that had not yet fallen from the ruined window.

  Kylie used the lioness’s momentary distraction to race over to Paul. Her hands pressed at his back in an attempt to steady him as he backpedaled away from the fight.

  “It’s just a scratch,” he insisted in a strained voice as Kylie frantically pulled him back.

  Then suddenly there was another cougar running to stand between them, roaring warningly at their blonde attacker just as Mitch managed to right himself with a hard shake, sending a multitude of glass fragments flying in every direction.

  The lioness’s eyes flitted quickly between the two cougars before her eyes narrowed, and she said in a voice that demanded obedience, “Walk away. My business here is with the traitor of our clan, alone.”

  In answer, Mitch lunged at her back—only to fall prey to a direct kick to the muzzle that was so fast that Kylie almost didn’t see the transitional movement at all. There was a sickening crack, followed by a squeal of pain, as Mitch’s head snapped to the side while the rest of his body went tumbling.

  Karen let out a roar of rage and leapt for the woman’s throat. The lioness threw herself back with all the grace of a professional tumbler, one boot catching the underside of Karen’s muzzle hard as her body bent into a back handspring. Karen dropped to the floor hard in a heap of twitching limbs, shaking her head vigorously as though trying to clear water from her ears.

  “Never mind me, just run, Kylie!” Paul cried, trying to push her towards the kitchen, but there was no way in hell that was going to happen.

  While Karen was only momentarily stunned, Mitch was out for the count, still in his cougar form and lying on his side about three feet from the lioness. Kylie’s eyes zeroed in on the blood dripping from his muzzle.

  Even if she had wanted to run, she could well imagine the lioness completing her shift and chasing after her like a lion running down a gazelle. She wasn’t about to let Paul, Mitch, or Karen become that gazelle, either. No, the only chance they had left, however remote, was for her to shift and fight.

  The only problem was all of her shifter souls were completely dormant at the moment. She had to somehow touch Mitch’s blood before the lioness could grab her and hope she actually had a cougar soul to awaken.

  Kylie had a momentary surge of irritation about the lost bracelet that she desperately needed before she abruptly broke away from Paul, causing him to topple onto his knees with a startled gasp without her support, and sprinted towards Mitch. She sensed more than saw the lioness move towards her just as she stretched out a hand and dove for the small puddle of blood. Just as her stomach hit the hardwood, she managed to dip the tips of her fingers into the liquid crimson a split-second before the back of her blouse was gripped in a tight fist and she was hauled roughly up to her knees.

  She gasped, and the unique smell of lion as only a shifter could experience inundated her senses. Rather than feel a surge of triumph that her shifter side was once again active, the accompanying smell of the lioness’s anger and disgust were so strong to Kylie’s newly sensitive nose that all she could feel was a sudden urge to gag.

  “Disgusting! I can smell this one on you, too!” her captor spat. “You’re so saturated in his stink and the jaguar’s that I can barely smell the lion! Not only a traitor but a whore!”

  Kylie half-expected to feel the woman spit on her. Instead, the sharp tips of several claws suddenly dug into the soft flesh of her throat just short of breaking skin.

  “I should just kill you now, but watching your Alpha shred you to pieces for your disgrace will be much more satisfying, I think.”

  It was then that the implications of the woman’s earlier words finally sunk in. She still thinks I’m a lion.

  Instead of coming to the obvious conclusion, her disgust at Kylie for sleeping with a shifter of another clan blinded her to the truth. If she shifted now, then there would be no hiding her Polyshifter heritage anymore, but if she didn’t—dammit!

  Her eyes darted wildly to Paul, who was still on his knees where he had fallen with an alarming amount of blood staining his side. They were screwed either way, so unless the neighbors had heard all the roaring and crashing and had called the police, then she had no choice but to—

  Suddenly, what felt like a brick wall slammed into Kylie’s side, and both she and the lioness went flying, landing painfully into a tangle of limbs. As she gasped and choked after a breath that was no longer there, Kylie struggled to make sense of the chaos that had abruptly erupted all around her. Hands were grabbing her beneath her armpits and dragging her back quickly across the floor, while her ears were suddenly filled with a cacophony of snarls and hisses and the smell of fresh blood reached her nostrils along with…

  Kylie nearly choked again as she tilted her head back sharply in order to confirm with her eyes what her nose was impossibly telling her. It was Hunter, his hazel eyes bright and glaring in the direction of the snarls as his face hovered above hers. A burst of conflicting emotions flooded her entire being and she immediately began struggling to pull out of his grip.

  He had sent her away. She had decided to accept it and move on. He wasn’t supposed to be here, dammit!

  “Don’t,” Hunter scolded, his gaze moving down to lock onto her own as he pulled her up until her back was pressed firmly against his chest and his arms wrapped more securely across her chest and waist.

  She felt her chest tighten painfully as that word reminded her of that first show of his distrust back in the forest.

  His eyes were unreadable as he added, “Let Maxim and Lana take care of that bitch.”

  Kylie’s eyes unwittingly moved towards the fight. The lioness was currently trying to tear out the throat of a ruddy-colored wolf while the largest tiger she had ever seen had mounted her back and had one of her shoulders in a death-bite. The wolf hastily rolled away from those snapping fangs, and the lioness took advantage of that short reprieve to literally rip herself out of the tiger’s jaws and bound off towards the couch and over the back.

  Hunter’s arms tightened around her as the lioness turned around as if to begin another charge, but then that golden, blood-speckled back suddenly began to ripple. Kylie sucked in a sharp breath when the lioness shifted back into the blonde woman.

  “It’s a fucking petting zoo in here!” the lioness snarled before spitting out a glob of blood onto the sofa cushions that had streamed into her mouth from the set of deep gashes Maxim had likely sliced across her forehead.

  She also was bleeding from several bite wounds on an arm as well as the huge chunk of flesh missing from her right shoulder. Though she was in her human form, her posture and the way she was glaring at each of them in turn was blatantly like that of an injured, cornered animal.

  For a long, tense moment that seemed to last an eternity, no one dared breathe. Then between one blink and the next, Maxim suddenly bounded forward and leapt at her, his paws hitting her squarely on the chest before she could even react, and over she went, the back of her head hitting the floor with a sickening thunk. He stood over the still body for a few moments, his keen eyes fixed on her face, before he stepped off to the side and shifted back into a man.

  “Lana,” Maxim said without taking his eyes off her, “there should be some zip ties in the back of the SUV. They’ll do for now.”

  A naked brunette abruptly stepped into Kylie’s peripheral. “On it,” she said simply before turning to head towards the front door, seemingly unconcerned that she was about to walk outside in the buff and possibly give the neighbors an eyeful.

  “Keep an eye out,” Hunter added. “There may be more of those bastards waiting to ambush us outside.”

  “Let me go!” Kylie demanded, pushing hard against his steel-like arms. “I need to get to Paul!”
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  She had been expecting him to resist, so she was thrown a bit off balance when he immediately loosened his arms around her. Without a word, she moved from his embrace and crawled over to where Paul was currently lying on his back, his hands pressing a wad of his own sport coat against his wound. His face was ashen, and an alarming amount of blood was starting to pool beneath him.

  “Oh my God, Paul!” Kylie cried. “A scratch my ass—let me see!”

  “I honestly—didn’t think it was that deep,” he whispered, his eyes fluttering as though he was struggling to stay conscious.

  “Don’t pass out on me, dammit!” Kylie barked as she moved his hands away from the wound.

  A gush of blood flowed from at least three vertical slashes starting from just below his ribs and curving to his side. She hastily pressed his already blood-soaked coat hard onto the wound, making him grunt with pain. He was in very real danger of bleeding out.

  “Help me! He needs an ambulance now!” Kylie shouted, turning pleading eyes on Hunter.

  At that moment, she didn’t care that this man had hurt her or about his motives for showing up at the house. The only thing that mattered was getting Paul help before he bled out right in front of her eyes. She would never forgive herself if he ended up dying because he had tried to stand between her and a lion assassin.

  Kylie almost let out a sob of relief when Hunter immediately nodded.

  “Leave that lion bitch to Lana,” Hunter said to Maxim. “I need your help carrying him out to the truck. It would be faster if I just drive him myself rather than wait for the medics to show up.”

  “To your clan’s clinic?” Maxim asked as he rose from his crouch. “They won’t be pleased that you’re taking a human there.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m not asking first. He’s lost too much blood. On top of the shock, he doesn’t have time for the usual bullshit.”