A Cougar's Claim (Charmed in Vegas Book 7) (17 page)

Agony seized her. Doubled over as the force of her muscles contracting and tearing from her shattering, exploding bones, she fell to the floor. Ringing pitched in her ears, drowning out all other sound. The grit and dirt on the floor burrowed into her hands and knees. She shrieked and crumpled into a ball, the pain too great to contain in silence.

***

“M
other fucker. Shit. Fuck.” Kit didn’t dare to touch Rhiannon. He rushed to clear chairs, tables, discarded clothing, and food wrappers away from her so that she did not inadvertently touch anything and add to the horrific experience of having her cougar force its way through her body from the inside. The cougar inside him wanted out, now, to help her. Scorching electricity burned his chest, the mate bond a sparking, fizzing beam of unfiltered torture. “This is way too soon for you to shift, baby. I need you to try and calm down.”

“Oohh...f-f-fuck y-y-y-you,” she huffed.

Concentrating on the magic binding them together, he tried to telepathically send her comfort, calm, and the knowledge she did not suffer alone.

All around the interior of the bar, shifters stirred to wakefulness, stretching, yawning, and sitting up on the floor. Many observed them with the yellow or ice blue eyes of their wolves.

“Who the fuck are you and what the fuck did you do to Rhiannon?” A tall, rangy, naked man with a three inch high blue Mohawk crossed the stage and hopped to the floor.

Kit growled, flashed fangs, and positioned himself between the newcomer and his mate. “She’s my mate and she’s upset. Stay away from her or I’ll rip out your intestines and make a jump rope for our first born child.”

A pulse of wild, unfettered shifter magic bubbled through the room, rising through the soles of his feet and lifting the hair on the nape of his neck.

“You’re obviously a total shit ass at taking care of her. No self-respecting wolf would allow his mate to suffer like that through a shift.” Blue hair rummaged in discarded clothing until he located a pack of cigarettes, took one out, and tossed the rest to a man who silently joined him.

Their features bore a family resemblance. Perhaps these were the brothers Rhiannon had mentioned.

“I need Jase Barrientos out here, now.” Fangs and claws extending to lethal lengths, Kit stood over Rhiannon, his heart ripped in half as he listened to her suffer, knowing he could do nothing to ease her pain.

Make an example of him.
The cougar snarled, ready to rip the blue haired shifter’s throat out.

“You might want to reconsider the level of hostility you’re directing at my brother. I’m Tristan, that’s Callum. We’re the alphas of this pack,” intoned the second shifter who strode across the stage. This one wore jeans and had silver bars through both nipples, his hair shocking white with purple tips. “Rhiannon is our friend, and also a friend of our pack.”

Translation: Fuck with anyone, and he’d be ripped to shreds by a pissed off wolf pack.

“Rhiannon trusts you, so I’ll tell you why we are here.” Kit knelt near his mate, adopting a stance that didn’t offer overt violence, but left him ready to protect his mate. Fighting tears as he observed her fierce, agonizing battle, he said, “Long story short—Rhiannon asked Jase to pay off a loan for her with Vince Mancini. We came here looking for Jase hoping to find the money but it appears there was a food, alcohol, and sex orgy here possibly funded by the money Jase was supposed to use to pay off the debt.”

Focused inward, on helping to soothe Rhiannon, he didn’t hear Tristan’s response right away.

“If you’re her mate, touching her will help her through the change.” Tristan held up one hand to stave off any questions. “Just do it. I don’t care what you’ve been told about contact during a shift, or what you think you know. Doesn’t apply to mates. You cougars need to get out more.”

Rhiannon cried out, her mouth caught open in a rictus.

“If you’re wrong I’m going to beat the living hell out of you.” Hands quivering, he stroked over her hair with the tips of two fingers. She didn’t flinch away or cry out, so he tried again, touching her cheek, and throat, waiting for any sign she needed him to stop.

Callum took a drag of a cigarette. “Not bad for a bastard fuck like my brother, eh? Jase is in the back.”

Rhiannon quieted under his touch. Her still human skin encased misshapen bones and muscles. Kit stroked her back and kept his senses attuned to those around them. Rhiannon’s safety came before anything else.

“Relax. I won’t let anything bad happen, I promise. Did you hear what Callum said? Jase is here. We’ll get this sorted out real soon.” Each whimper or cry from her felt like he’d stabbed himself. Cold sweat beaded on his back. Rhiannon’s eyes flashed green-gold, reflective in the low light. Lifting his head, he made unflinching eye contact with Callum. “Get him out here, or I go and find him myself and I will tear out some fucking spines if I have to.”

The alpha wolves shared a long stare. Tristan shrugged, the movement nothing more than a twitch.

“Barrientos! Get your ass out here. You can fuck your little wolf later.” The shout carried the weight of magic with it. Kit stared at Callum, reassessing the nude, tatted up and pierced werewolf. Powerful. Dangerous.

Kit stroked Rhiannon’s back. “It’s too soon for you to shift. You need to find your happy place or you’re going to be trapped between forms, love.”

“If you’re here to put a beat down on Jase, you should know the repercussions for such an act will be far reaching.” Tristan crouched down and nodded in approval at Rhiannon. “She’s getting control now.”

Of course she was. Rhiannon wasn’t some average shifter. She was his mate, strong and smart and capable.

“Jase is the heir to my alpha. I’m here to take him home.” And if that meant ripping a hole through this pack of wolves, he’d do it.

“See, that’s where things are going to get even stickier than they already are. Jase is a part of our pack now. If you listen hard, you can hear him fucking his mate in the walk-in freezer.” Callum chuckled, stubbed his smoke out in an overflowing ashtray, and unleashed a tidal storm of pack magic into the room. Around them, men and women growled, shaking sleepiness and hangovers from their bodies in response to the call from their alpha. “Guy’s a kinky fucker, but I’m not gonna judge him based on that. Rhiannon can tell you all about my collection of nipple clamps.”

The quip rolled right off Kit’s back. He didn’t care whether or not Rhiannon had had sex with this guy in the past.

“Shut up Callum. You’re trying to get a rise out of Kit so he’ll make a mistake, and that’s not going to happen.” Rhiannon paused every few words, her voice strained. She struggled to her knees. “If Kit bothered to release even the power he holds in his little finger, you’d find your balls on fire.”

Offering her a hand up and coiling one arm across her back, Kit made no effort to hide how proud her confidence in him made him feel. He rubbed his cheek on her hair and kissed the crown of her head.

Tristan’s eyes bled to the ice blue of an artic wolf. “Sorry Kit, but my brother’s correct. Jase falls under our pack’s protection now. You can’t take him anywhere if he objects. You are only one cougar in a den of wolves. You will fall if you raise fang and claw against us.”

“Just send him out. Jase might be a member of your pack now, but he is the son of my alpha and the one meant to take over as Alpha before he mated one of your wolves and got naked with her in the freezer.” Kit kept his tone measured and calm. Sort of. Power and shifter magic leaked through his shields, agitating the wolves. “I need to know what he did with the money Rhiannon gave him. If he used it to fund this orgy you guys had going here—”

Wood and plaster exploded into the bar from the far left wall. A bloodied and battered man-shaped body landed amid the debris, his beach ball shaped gut rising above the pile of rubble.

“Special delivery! One lying, thieving, rapist mob boss at your disposal.”

“I
nila you crazy ass dragon. What the fuck did you do?” Rhiannon instinctively recoiled from the remains. The cougar could separate scents into different parts, and there was a thread of rot coming from the large, fat man lying a few feet away with his belly rising up like a pale, bloated gibbous moon. Her knees shook and her muscles hurt from almost shifting. Thank God Kit had been there to help her get control. Her cougar had gone crazy, unable to come out like she wanted, but too angry to retreat on her own.

“Dragon’s tits!” Inila stomped into view. “Why are you hiding? Did Kit hurt you? Because I’ll fucking kill him if he did. I didn’t get ogre guts in my teeth for nothing.”

Kit widened his feet and freed both hands for combat. To her shock, Callum and Tristan took flanking positions next to him. “She’s my mate, I can’t hurt her. You’re the one scaring the shit out of her. She’s not used to the way everything smells and sounds and looks different yet.”

Warmth poured through her. Without Kit supporting her, she’d have been trapped between forms. He’d saved her. He had her back. He hadn’t left her when things got hard. She’d been waiting for that to happen, for him to bail. But here he was, at her side, threatening an almost immortal being for her.

Kit loved her. He really loved her. The mating bond between them coursed over and through her in a constant stream of warmth and safety and happiness. She could feel him there, almost like she was physically touching him.

And she loved him, so much. The feeling had been planted as a seed many years ago, and now that seed sprouted and unfurled into a blazing, glorious light in her soul.

Callum lobbed a length of wood at Inila. “You’re fucking paying to fix the fucking wall dragon. I just had the door in back replaced after that temper tantrum you threw last month and now you damn near tear the fucking building down.”

Smoke rolled out of Inila’s nostrils. “I paid for the door.”

“You did not, you treacherous wench! You worked some convoluted scheme that ended up costing me double—” Callum sputtered, red faced, as several of the wolves he’d awakened with pack magic chuckled and twittered around them.

Tristan coughed. “Lovely to see you again, Inila. What have you brought us? Is that Vince Mancini?”

Mancini? Oh hell, what had Inila done? The mob would be after Inila for years until someone found a weapon capable of killing her. She wanted to slap her friend silly and hug her all at once.

“I went to see the slime about buying out Rhiannon’s marker. I bribed some of Mancini’s henchmen and found out he’d hired a demon to find Jase before Rhiannon did. Wanted to kill Jase, take the money, and Rhiannon too. Your pack magic protects you from demons, so the demon’s been tracking Rhiannon instead. Pretty standard thing in an assassin’s tool box, except Rhiannon was human and the demon attacked her more than once. She almost died.” Inila kicked the body hard enough to lift it four or five feet off the ground. “Turns out Mancini
had
gotten paid and used Jase dropping off the scene to trick her.”

Mouth hanging open, Rhiannon fought the urge to whoop with joy and a surge of self-hatred. She’d jumped to the conclusion that Jase screwed her over so readily. “So you’re saying for once I didn’t trust the wrong person?”

“Yeah. I know. I almost shit a lava rock myself.” Inila checked the screen on her phone and sent a text message.

“What the hell is going on out here? Rhiannon, hey honey, it’s good to see you. I’m glad you’re back in town.” A tall, sandy haired man made his way through the loitering crowd, not yelling, but projecting his voice with the ease of someone used to being the center of attention. Tattoos covered most of both arms and his chest, muscles moving under his skin like water. Both nipples and his tongue were pierced. Knowing Jase, he probably had one in his cock as well.

Speak of the irresponsible shifter himself. Still sexy, but not Kit level sexy.

Jase Barrientos embraced his stunned cousin in a one armed hug. He gripped the hand of a petite, barefoot blonde with the other, her long cartoon character T-shirt engulfing her frame. “Kit! Brother! What the hell are you doing here? How’d you get time off to come to Vegas?”

“Hey, you have to meet Avrie. Avrie, this is Kit, my cousin from back home. You’ll love him, he’s very responsible. And this is my friend Rhiannon.” The blonde gave Kit a shy smile and shook his hand and waved at Rhiannon, her cheeks bright red, not even trying to talk around Jase’s excited babble. “Avrie’s my mate. Can you believe it? I found my soul mate. She’s a wolf shifter, and man, she makes the most incredible brownies. Oh my God they melt in your mouth.”

“Jase, did you pay off a debt for Rhiannon?” Inila snorted in indignation, but Kit pressed on.

“Of course I did. Rhiannon, really? My feelings are hurt. I’ve done some screwed up stuff but I’d never let that guy get his hands on you. I even made him give me a receipt. Avrie came up with that. To have him put it in writing.” Jase beamed.

Rhiannon’s heart beat slammed in her chest. “Jase, he told me you hadn’t paid it. I got back from my mother’s funeral and have been on a wild goose chase trying to find you. All you had to do was answer your phone.”

“Oh, yeah, see, that’s kind of a long story. You know that aquarium down the Strip a ways? I threw my phone in one of the exhibits.”

“What? Why in the hell would you do that?” Definitely not the answer she’d thought she’d get, but it was more interesting than him saying he’d lost his phone or broken it.

“Well, see, I knew that if I didn’t answer—”

The reek of sulfur crept into the room and the hackles on the back of her neck rose. A collective warning roar rose through the crowd of shifters.

Everyone went on alert, aside from Inila, who studied her nails, rolled her eyes, and intoned, “Demons. Always about the dramatic entrance.”

“Who in Satan’s ball sack killed this welsher?” Lilith materialized, in all her black booted, dead man’s colored eyes glory, standing on Mancini’s chest. She brandished a hunting knife, purple energy crackling around her free hand.

***

C
hrist. He wanted to take his mate home. Leave this crazy ass shit show, get something to eat, sleep, make love to his mate, and get on a plane. Now the demon was back.