Vikenti did the same thing Sevastyan had done. Holding his hand palm out, he stepped toward her, cutting her off from that direction. “Sweetheart, you know me. Take a breath. Your leopard is out of control and only you can get her to stop.”
Her vision was blurred, and she didn’t know if it was the weird way she was seeing, in bands of color that wavered, or the liquid in her eyes she couldn’t quite get rid of. Her body hurt. Her lungs. Mostly her arms.
She shook her head and eyed the two men warily. Sevastyan was walking toward her with slow, unhurried steps. Vikenti did the same.
“Don’t come any closer. Stay away from me.” She didn’t recognize her own voice. It was low, husky. She wanted to rake at them, scream, strike back.
Ania whirled around and ran in the opposite direction, running toward the Amurov estate. It was the only way open to her if she wasn’t going back to the house and disaster. She would have to face the truth, and she couldn’t. Not when chaos, rage and guilt ruled her mind. She had no plan. No idea what she was doing. Nothing made sense.
“Ania, stop.” Just ahead, Zinoviy was hopping around, dragging on his jeans for her modesty, and coming toward her. Slowly. He gave her a tentative smile. “Honey, I know you’re upset. You have every right to be . . .”
“No.” She shook her head violently. He couldn’t say it out loud. He just couldn’t. “Get away. All of you go away.”
Kiriil and Matvei emerged from either side, each holding up a hand and trying to murmur soothing nonsense to her, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. The roaring in her ears was too loud.
“Ania.” She heard that. So soft. How had she heard that low, caressing voice when she didn’t hear anyone else? She closed her eyes. He was right behind her. They’d been distracting her all along, corralling her in while Mitya came up behind her.
She whirled to face him, almost choking. Her throat closed. Her skull was far too tight. Her teeth hurt and her clothes were so painful on her skin, she needed to pull them off. She whirled around to see Sevastyan close. Too close. Vikenti and Zinoviy were closing in on her on one side. Kiriil and Matvei on the other.
“Look at me, baby. Only at me,” Mitya said softly.
She swung back to stare at him, but her vision was so messed up she couldn’t see him. “I can’t be here.”
“I know. You don’t have to be. Miron has the car waiting. We’ll go home.”
“I don’t have a home. There’s no one.” She swung around again. “I need you all to leave. Go away. I can figure this out.” She was growing desperate. The only way out was to fight. She had to fight.
Jewel pushed close. She felt her rising. Felt her wanting to help. To take over.
“Mitya, she’s going to shift,” Sevastyan warned.
Mitya took her from behind, wrapping his arms tightly around her and lifting her off her feet. She exploded into action, throwing her head back, driving her heels into his shins.
“Get off me!” she yelled. “I mean it, get off me!”
“It’s all right, Ania. You’re safe. Just breathe with me.”
“I want you to go. This is my property. Get off me now!” She fought with everything she had, punching at him, kicking, trying to turn so she could use her knee. She could hear someone screaming, and it was only the fact that her throat hurt that made her realize it was her.
Twice, Jewel attempted to shift, but Mitya refused to loosen his grip. The second time, there was the slide of fur and teeth sank into her shoulder in a holding bite. It hurt. Everything hurt. She still fought him, struggling so hard she nearly got loose. He caught her arm, but it was slick with blood and he slid off. She whipped around, raking across his chest.
Sevastyan came up behind her before she could do much damage, catching her around the waist and jerking her away from Mitya when she would have kicked him. Before she could do any damage to him, Mitya had her again, locking her to him.
“Ania, kotyonok, calm down. Breathe for me. Jewel’s too close and she’s scared. You have to take control.”
“Fuck you, Mitya,” she snarled. “She wouldn’t be afraid if you weren’t scaring her. Get away from me.” Her voice came out more of a growl than human.
He caught both wrists, pinned them with one large hand and locked his arm around her back, forcing her tightly against him, trapping her arms and hands between them.
“Miron’s almost here with the car,” Sevastyan reported.
She could see lights through her blurred vision and they hurt her eyes. She forced air through her lungs. “I could have stopped him.” She whispered it, her face pressed tightly against Mitya’s chest, the fight draining out of her. “You should have given me the chance.”
He stroked a caress down the back of her hair. “He was done, baby. He attacked you.”
“He attacked me before and I was able to get him to stop.”
“He was done.”
She closed her eyes and let tears leak out. There was no way to stop them and she didn’t try. She felt defeated. Jewel subsided, calming under the close proximity of someone in such control, the way Mitya was. He commanded everything around them, including her and her leopard. He made the decisions and she was expected to abide by them.
“Would you take me to a hotel, please?” She didn’t open her eyes or look at his face. She couldn’t. She could hardly bear that his skin was touching hers.
“I’m taking you home, baby,” Mitya said. His voice said it all. Implacable. Commanding.
She was too tired to fight. She didn’t care where he took her, because in the end, did it matter?
8
“YOU should have let me do the job,” Sevastyan said. He paced across Mitya’s great room. “She’s had too many blows and that little leopard of hers has no idea what it’s doing. Damn it, Mitya. This isn’t over. I’ve got someone over at her estate waiting for the doc. We need a legit death certificate and he has to be cremated tonight.”
Mitya sighed. “There’s the matter of the leopard she killed in the hallway. Did we get an identity on him?”
Sevastyan shook his head. “No such luck. He was in leopard form. Looked as if he came from Panama. Hard to tell, Mitya. It just makes no sense. He definitely wasn’t from around here. I took pictures and we can make inquiries, but he’s not one of ours.”
Mitya sat in front of the fireplace, not even bothering to clean the blood from his chest where Jewel had raked claws across him and torn his flesh. Ania was down the hall, in the master bedroom. She had steadfastly refused his help when he tried to take care of her arm. He’d done it anyway, because he was bigger and stronger, and in the end, brute force had won out, although he wasn’t calling it a win.
He shoved both hands through his hair. “What about the other one, how did he get away?”
“We were thin. Very thin tonight. Kiriil and Matvei were sent to the other side of the house and the bastard had a clear path out of here. We all have his scent if we come across him.”
“That hasn’t been much of a help so far.” Mitya was distracted and trying to keep his head in the game. Ania was all that seemed to matter to him at the moment. He wasn’t certain how to repair the damage done. Her breakdown was harsh and real. He didn’t know whether to give her the space she said she needed or force her to accept his comfort.
“Relationships are difficult, Sevastyan, when we have no idea how to have one.”
“Are you absolutely certain she’s Dymka’s mate?” Sevastyan demanded. “Or yours? She doesn’t seem in the least compatible. You’re . . .” He trailed off, clearly searching for the right words. “There’s no compromise in you. No give at all. You expect her to just follow your lead without explanation.”
“That’s called trust, Sevastyan.” He answered his cousin absently, his mind already working the problem that he’d created by insisting he carry out his promise to her
father. The man deserved to die with honor. He’d made certain there’d been as little pain as possible to the leopard when he’d delivered the killing bite. He wasn’t sorry he’d done what he believed to be right. He was upset that he hadn’t prepared Ania better for the outcome.
“Mitya.” Sevastyan stood in front of him. “For once in your life, listen to what I have to say. Trust is something that is gained over time. Not because you take her to bed. She’s been living with a dark secret for a long time. She’s angry and hurt and scared. This thing has now escalated way out of control.”
Mitya shoved both hands through his hair again, making it wild and as out of control as he felt. He had his own blood on him. He had her blood on him. He had the blood of Antosha’s leopard on him as well as Dymka’s. He was a mess, and yet he couldn’t move.
“What I did was right.”
Sevastyan threw his hands into the air in surrender. “Yes, Mitya, what you did was the right thing. Absolutely. It was honorable. Sometimes, you can’t do the right thing. For her, maybe it would have been better to turn that particular job over to me.”
Mitya shook his head. “My father never chose the right way one single time. Not one, Sevastyan. I’m not ever going to be like him. We’ll choose honor every time.”
“At what cost? She’s not going to accept you.”
“That’s impossible. We’re a bonded pair. Dymka says Jewel is close. Just a little confused right now.”
“What are you going to do when Jewel begins to emerge and your woman refuses you? What then, Mitya?”
“It won’t happen.”
“It’s going to happen. You weren’t looking at her face, I was. She’s going to go the moment she thinks she can.”
Mitya was done talking about it because the fact was, Ania was his mate. He knew she wanted him, she had just stepped off their path for a moment, and rightfully so. It all made perfect sense to him. Sevastyan could say they weren’t compatible all he wanted, but he knew better. She just needed a little more time with him. Jewel had to have patience. A mating leopard would drive them beyond anything Ania could conceive. There was no way he was letting her out of his sight when she was so close to emerging.
“I’ve called for Drake to come. He and Joshua and a couple of others will be flying out immediately. The memorial service has to be planned as well. The number one problem, aside from my beautiful Ania, is what happened tonight at her home. She should have been protected at all times.” He couldn’t imagine what would have happened had he not been there.
His eyes met his cousin’s, and Sevastyan saw something there that made him wince. Mitya was a product of his father’s twisted, maniacal upbringing. The man had wanted to bring the killer out in his son’s leopard, teach him to rage and hate, to be cruel, so he would pass those traits on to his human counterpart. Lazar had managed to do that from the time Mitya was very young.
Mitya’s leopard was a straight-up killer, and what did that make the man? It was there in his eyes. He couldn’t altogether blame Ania for being leery of him. Or Jewel his leopard. Jewel even more than Ania had to be confused. She could read Dymka every time she rose, and she clearly read him correctly—and she feared him as much as she was enamored with him. At the moment that was what was driving Ania to leave him.
“Ania’s father should have been protected in his own home. He might have been able to last a few more days, or weeks, long enough to see me put a ring on his daughter’s finger, but instead, he had enemies come into his room and smash his things after bashing him with the butt of a gun. Tell me how that happened, Sevastyan.”
“Drake sent us the man from Borneo. Amory Binder worked for him there, worked for his crew rescuing kidnap victims or delivering ransom. I liked the kid. In fact, I worried a little about him. I called for a check when I realized we’d been infiltrated, and he was the only one not to answer. I thought they’d killed him and fully expected to find a body. He knew the combination to shut down the alarm on the house. He had to have used it.”
Mitya couldn’t contain the adrenaline rushing through his veins. He leapt up and began to pace, feeling his leopard close. The thought of a traitor that close to his woman and her father, without him knowing, was abhorrent to him. He needed action. He needed to find Amory Binder and challenge him. His leopard wanted out. Demanded to come out. He would hunt the bastard, track him and kill him. Mitya was inclined to let him.
“He let them in. I want to go back to the house, Sevastyan.”
Sevastyan opened his mouth to protest, but then nodded. “They wanted something in that house. They assumed it was in Antosha’s room, so they took the chance and looked for it there. By the look of it, it either wasn’t there or we caught them too soon. In any case, we’ve vacated the house. We reset the alarm with a different code since Amory knew the old one.”
Mitya was already stripping, his muscles rippling with power, with the need to hunt. He rolled his jeans, just as Sevastyan was doing. “Give the orders to surround this house. Keep her protected, Sevastyan.”
“I’m going with you.” When Mitya started to protest, Sevastyan shook his head and continued shoving his jeans into the small pack he secured around his neck. “Don’t bother with the orders, fire me, I don’t give a fuck, but I’m going with you.”
Mitya didn’t fire his cousin, what was the use? In any case, Sevastyan was a vicious fighter. He’d been raised much the same way as Mitya, and his leopard was experienced and brutal in a fight. “Give the order to protect her and let’s go.”
Sevastyan did as Mitya said but added his own orders. He was taking no chances with Mitya’s protection. Vikenti and Zinoviy were already at the Dover estate cleaning up. They were from his lair, two men he counted on when he needed them. He trusted them with Mitya’s life, and that was saying the most he could about them. He left orders for Kiriil and Matvei to handle Ania’s security and then turned to Mitya, nodding that he was ready.
The two men went out the front door straight into the brush, shifting as they did so. It wasn’t long before they were running full out toward the neighboring estate. They didn’t want to take a car because the headlights might be seen. Their house was lit up, just as their yard was, but the Dover estate was dark and appeared deserted.
Ordinarily, leopards could run fast for short distances, but they were shifters, not wholly leopard or wholly human. They were conditioned to run for miles if necessary, and both men kept themselves in top shape. They were able to cut across the distance between the two estates, shortening the way considerably because the road had to curve around the properties. As they approached, they slowed and kept downwind, creeping up carefully onto the estate.
Vikenti and Zinoviy joined them just outside the house. “Thought we saw something out this way,” Vikenti reported softly to Sevastyan. “We were just circling the house to look.”
Both shifted back into their leopards and the four continued around from the southern side to the front. Mitya nudged Sevastyan and all four stopped as they came up on the landscaping around the front entrance. Two men were at the locked front door, one bending down as he worked on the lock. Amory and a stranger. Mitya’s gut settled. He had him now.
Dymka lifted his head and sniffed the air, his whiskers warning him of everything and everyone close. Two more men were moving up on either side of the house. Another appeared to be around the back. Dymka turned his head, his eyes glowing in the dark, but it was Mitya giving the orders. He looked to Vikenti. Vikenti’s leopard immediately responded, moving around the house to creep stealthily on the shifter assigned to guard the other side just in case. He dispatched the man before he even realized he wasn’t alone and then made his way back around.
Sevastyan and Zinoviy took out the two guards on the sides of the house, almost right in plain sight of Amory and his partner. Amory suddenly lifted his head, looking right and left. He straightened slowly and said som
ething to his partner, who whipped his head around and then called out to the men already dead in the yard.
Amory pulled a gun. “I know you’re out there. Just back off and let us get what we need.”
Dymka crawled forward, inch by slow inch, gaining ground, staying to cover. His hate-filled eyes remained on the traitor. This was the man who had all but killed Antosha and destroyed his relationship with Jewel and Ania. He crawled on his belly, using the freeze-frame stalk of the leopard, one that could be excruciatingly slow, but kept the animal, although he was large, from being seen.
“Mitya. Sevastyan. I know you’re out there.” Amory turned first right and then left, examining the flowers and leafy plants placed artistically around the front of the house. “Let’s talk about this.”
His partner had pulled his weapon as well and was doing the same as Amory. Once, he shifted just his upper body, utilizing his leopard to try to find where the enemy was. “They’re out there, Amory,” he declared, his voice tight.
“Settle down, Kris,” Amory advised. “Just keep your back to the house and your weapon ready.” He raised his voice. “The old man took something from us. Something important. We just want it back.”
Mitya could care less what was taken. He wanted Amory dead. Dymka wanted to tear him and his leopard from limb to limb. Neither he nor Sevastyan made the mistake of answering. That would allow Amory to zero in on their positions immediately. Vikenti, however, moved back into deeper cover, and he had no problem centering attention on himself.
“Antosha assured us he didn’t take anything.” Vikenti had the ability to throw his voice from any direction and he did so, turning Amory and Kris toward the sound, which was quite a distance from where he actually was.
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