Falke’s Captive (16 page)

“We can’t do that until you understand,” Reidar said, coming closer but still out of reach. “Beth, please, you have to trust us. We have to have your trust before we can explain.”

She made a face and squeezed her eyes shut. “You’re both fucking insane if you think trust will ever enter my vocabulary where you two are involved.” When she opened her eyes, both brothers were side-by-side. “I’m not the one who broke into your place! I’m not the one who…who b-betrayed—”

“Shh.” Kelan tried to soothe her, still holding her wrist, skimming his thumb over her pulse point. She couldn’t allow him to succeed. “Beth,” he murmured. “Last night you said you could love us.”

She scoffed at her idiotic notions from last night. From this morning.

“Don’t do that,” Kelan said, and she saw pain in his eyes. Not from the crushed balls, but obvious emotional turmoil. It made her bite her tongue.

She hated the tears that trickled down her cheeks.

“We love you,” he said.

“Bullshit.”

“Beth, please—We didn’t want to hurt you. This is bigger than you can possibly imagine. And maybe we should’ve told you how we felt about you before, but whether you believe us or not, it’s true.”

They
loved
her? Didn’t want to hurt her? “You don’t do this kind of thing to someone you love.” She could barely push the words out as she cried.

“Will you sit down and let us explain?” Reidar asked. “Please? Five minutes. That’s all.” He glanced at Kelan, who nodded. “And then if you decide you still need to call the police, we’ll sit right here and wait for them.”

This time when she tugged her arm, Kelan let go. She moved to the chair by the table and sat. “Five minutes. Go.”

“Go ahead, Kel,” Reidar said. “It’ll look stupid since I have pants on.”

She frowned and looked at the clock.

“Beth,” Kelan said, drawing her attention back to him.

She folded her arms defiantly.

He frowned, closed his eyes a brief second, and then looked straight at her. “Remember, I love you.”

Damn tears burned her eyes.

Then a bright light flashed in the room, nearly blinding her. When she blinked away the white spots in her eyes, right where Kelan had been stood a two-hundred pound cougar wearing the Falke collar.

She blinked again, slowly, sure she was seeing things. “Holy shit…”

Kelan watched Beth blink, then blink again. Her mouth opened, and she murmured, “Holy shit.”

He’d never given thought to the time he’d reveal himself to his mate—to any woman—to someone who could destroy his family. Just last week it was something so far into the future he hadn’t bothered to contemplate it.

But here it was.

Here
she
was.

Dear God, he prayed this wasn’t a huge mistake. Taking the wrap for B&E and vandalism would have been simpler than this.

He swallowed the lump in his throat, tried to calm his thudding heart and projected his thoughts into her mind.
We are Falke.

Beth gasped, flinched, and her eyes widened. She leaned back slightly and gripped the armrests of the chair.

I was the cougar you tranquilized in the woods and brought to your lab. The one you tagged. I was the one you tracked to the store. But it was my brother Gunnar you tried to shoot when you shot me the second time.

“And this,” Reidar said, stepping beside him, “is the reason why we cannot have our existence known. This is why we protect Falke, because Falke is all of us.”

She closed her eyes tight and pushed her fists against her temples, shaking her head.

I spent hours trapped in a cage. Imprisoned, Beth.

She blinked and stared at him again, still shaking her head. “I—I didn’t…Kelan?”

Yes. I know you didn’t know, didn’t mean to hurt me, and physically, I’m fine, but can you imagine what I went through in that cage? Given raw meat I can’t stand, tagged and studied whether I wanted to be or not, and kept locked up behind bars, wondering what would happen to me next?
He tilted his head and held her gaze with steady regard.
I know you said you liked cages, but trust me—they aren’t all they’re cracked up to be when you’re put inside one against your will.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, her hand rising to cover her mouth.

“We don’t want to be lab rats,” Reidar added. “We just want to live in peace like everyone else.”

Beth glanced back and forth between them. “The cat’s talking in my head.” She looked at Kelan. “You’re in my head. How can you do that?”

“It’s something we can all do,” Reidar explained. “It’s part of who we are. When in catamount form, we can project our thoughts into the minds of humans so they can hear us.”

“You can do that? What he did?” she asked Reidar. “You’re one of…” She stared at Falke. “All of you?”

Yes. All of us
, Kelan said.

“The whole town?”

“No.”

“Just your family then…” She looked at Reidar. “Even Heidi? But she’s a vet. Don’t animals act weird around you or something?”

“She can talk telepathically to us, her family members, but she can’t shift.”

“That’s doesn’t seem fair,” Beth said with a frown.

Who said life was fair? Or easy? Or even fathomable?

Reidar added, “Our best guess is that shape shifting is somehow tied to the Y chromosome, because only males have the ability. Something you would have eventually found out with more testing. Something we can’t have discovered, much less revealed.”

Beth stared at them, at Kelan in particular, and the emotions flitting over her face were varied and sometimes unreadable. Excitement, a little fear, a lot of confusion.

She wants to tell the world about us
, Reidar said to him alone.

Beth
, Kelan said, directing his thoughts to her, knowing his brother would hear as well.
We know you are a scientist, and the discovery of a new species—something that should only exist in fiction—could bring you fame and fortune, but you said your life’s work was to save endangered species from going extinct.

“It is,” she agreed, her tone almost eager. “It could. My God…are you alone? I mean are there others like you?”

Ignoring her curiosity for the moment, Kelan urged her to
think for a minute what would happen to us, to our family, to this town even, if you exposed us.
He took the steps to close the space between them, sat at her feet and looked up at her. He couldn’t remember begging for anything in his life, but he begged now.
Please understand. There are very few of us in the world. We wouldn’t survive the publicity, the experimentation, or the public’s paranoia. You put me in a cage once, and I realize it was because you didn’t know, but now you do.

“I know we’ve damaged your trust in us,” Reidar said, “but can’t you see we had no choice?”

She turned her head to look at Reidar.

“We may not have shown it before, but we’re trusting you,” he continued, “because we believe you meant it when you said you didn’t want to harm Falke or any animal for the sake of science, that your intentions are pure. If you really want to help those who need it—”

“Reidar—”

“Now’s your chance to prove it.”

Don’t take away the freedom we have,
Kelan said. He took a deep breath and decided to lay it all out for her. He had to believe she had compassion. He knew she
did
have it; she just needed to look past the scientific discovery to view the big picture.
Dakota is pregnant with Axel and Gunnar’s babies. If you expose us, not only will we become lab experiments, so will Dakota, a normal human woman who fell in love with our kind. Would you harm her or her unborn children?

Beth reached out a hand and touched his head. “You can stop trying to convince me…Kelan. I understand. I know what would happen to you. I’m not so eager for fame or fortune that I would threaten that which I’ve sworn to protect.”

Kelan relaxed with the release of a deep breath.

She licked her lips and ran her fingers down his nose, rubbed his cheek. When she touched the earring in his ear, she smiled. “To cover up the tag hole? You didn’t have an earring the first time I saw you like this.”

He chuckled, which sounded somewhere between a cough and a sneeze in his present form.
Yes. It looks a little strange on a cougar, though, doesn’t it?

She reached forward with her other hand and cupped his face, rubbing her thumbs over his cheeks, burying her fingers in his fur. “You’re so beautiful.”

“You’re the beautiful one,” Reidar said, kneeling down next to Kelan and touching Beth’s face. “We meant what he said before. We do love you, Beth. With all our hearts. And we’re so sorry we hurt you, but our family means every—”

She touched his lips with her fingers. “I get it. I do.” Then her curiosity showed again as she asked, “Can you shift into anything else?”

No, although I think soaring as an eagle would be so cool.

She grinned. “Yeah, it would. Does it hurt? When you shift?”

“It kind of tingles, like an electric current.”

She dug her fingertips into his fur, and Kelan purred, making her giggle. “That’s so…wild.” Then her eyes warmed, and he almost missed the slight shake of her head, the whispered words, “My wild man.”

He rubbed her palm with his nose.
That’s domesticated wild man, thank you very much.

“Of course,” she agreed, laughing. “How could I forget that? Tell me. What else can you do?” She peppered them with more questions, and they responded with patience, even promising to introduce her to their fathers.

“Fathers…I wish I could’ve met your mother. She sounds like she must’ve been an incredible woman.”

“She was.”

“I saw her paintings at the vet clinic. They’re spectacular.”

“Our fathers were her favorite models.”

She sucked in a deep breath and blew it out quickly. Then she laughed. “This is definitely more than I signed on for this summer. What a dissertation this would make.”

“Beth—”

“A dissertation that’ll never get written, never see the light of day.” Then she shook her head and sobered. “I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t make it to the post office yesterday.”

“What do you mean?”

She twisted in the chair and reached behind her to open the mini fridge’s door. Then she handed a small cooler-type container to Reidar. “This is the last of the original blood sample. Professor Whitmore wanted me to send it to the university yesterday, but I didn’t make it there in time.”

Kelan sighed in relief. His blood wasn’t in some scientist’s hands.

“Thank God,” Reidar said as he opened the box and pulled out the single vial inside. “Thank you.” He stood and kissed Beth hard before disappearing into the bathroom.

Beth turned back to Kelan.

Please tell us you didn’t email the test results to anyone. Reidar checked for that, but it was difficult to know for sure that we got everything.

“No, I didn’t. I’d printed out one copy of my initial results, but Heidi kept those. I’m guessing you don’t reveal yourselves to many people.”

Never.

“How many of you are there in the world?”

We don’t know. We suspect there must be others outside our family, but who’s to say how many there are? It’s not something we advertise. Females of our kind are rare, so pure offspring from a mated pair are rarer still. And being that it takes two of us to produce children with a human woman, multiplying the species doesn’t come easy.

Kelan heard the water in the bathroom running and said to Reidar,
Make sure you get it all. Don’t leave even a trace.

Don’t worry, brother
, Reidar said, glancing at him in the reflection of the mirror.
I’ve got it covered
.

“What do you mean by it takes two?” Beth asked. “Is that why you all travel in pairs?”

Yes. Another bit of oddness in our genetic makeup. Axel and Gunnar mated with Dakota, and now babies are on the way.

Beth nibbled on her bottom lip and shoved her glasses up her nose. “Last night…” She licked her lips. “Last night you said, ‘Ours.’ Does that mean you think…that I’m…that we…Did we…”

Goose bumps skittered across his body, the familiar tingles erupting at the base of his spine. The shift rippled like an electric current from his core to his extremities. His vision spotted then blurred into a kaleidoscope of colorful starbursts, and then he was flesh again, kneeling at Beth’s feet.

She gasped, and he leaned up to kiss her, thrilled when she didn’t pull away. Her warm hands closed over his shoulders, and she sighed into his mouth as she surrendered.

“Beth,” he murmured, pulling back just a breath. “We haven’t mated, yet. We’d never do that without first revealing ourselves, but from the moment I woke up in that damn cage in your lab, I knew you were special.” He nuzzled her cheek, her neck, breathing in her glorious scent. “I can’t even explain it, because I don’t understand it. It’s why I risked talking to you back then, even in puma form.”

“You
spoke
to her?” Reidar asked, his surprise evident, but Kelan didn’t respond.

Her cheeks turned rosy. “Oh, right!” She chuckled. “You had me thinking I was turning into Dr. Dolittle. I thought I was losing my mind.”

He grinned. “That’s a small price to pay for stealing my heart. I wasn’t looking for my mate—our mate. And I damn sure never expected her to shoot me in the ass when I did find her.”

She shoved his shoulder. “You’re never gonna let me live that down, are you?”

“Nope.” He kissed the tip of her nose and removed her glasses, setting them aside. “You’re
the one
, Beth.
Ours
. If you can accept us.”

She dropped her head back and moaned as he kissed her neck, her shoulder, nipped at her tender flesh. “This is so…Kelan, I can’t think when you do that.”

“Don’t think. Feel. Can you love creatures like us?”

“Yes,” she said on a soft sigh as she wove her fingers in his hair.

He sat back on his heels, took her hands in his and waited for her to look at him. Her cheeks were flushed, and even in his human form he could scent her arousal.

Reidar was there again, at his side, on his knees. Beth looked back and forth between them, and then a slow smile spread over her plump lips. “Holy shit.”

Reidar chuckled. Kelan smiled. She took one of Reidar’s hands in hers, and in the other she held onto Kelan’s. “I do love you both. Which should feel weirder than it does. And I’m a little scared about all the implications.”

“We’re not going to rush you,” Reidar promised. “We understand this is a lot to take in.”

She nodded. “Yeah, that’s an understatement. And I still have a job to do this summer. I can’t spend the next two months in bed with you.” She grinned. “Though I’m sure I’d love it.”

“Hon,” Kelan said, rubbing his fingers over her bared thigh where her robe had fallen open, “we want you to do what makes you happy, and you obviously love your work. We just need it to not involve us.”

She nodded emphatically. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll tell Whitmore the blood got lost in the mail, or something. And the video…” She frowned at the computer sitting on the table next to her. “Well, I’ll just say it wasn’t recording…or something.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Reidar said. “I’ll make sure it’s never seen. No one else has access to it, do they?”

She made a face. “Um, Tim knows how to log on to it. He set it up on my computer yesterday.”

“Move then, please?” Reidar said, standing up and pulling her to her feet.

She laughed nervously. “What are you—”

“Reidar can do just about anything with a computer,” Kelan said, climbing to his feet, still holding her hand.

Reidar sat in Beth’s vacated chair and started punching keys. “Crap. This is a really secure server. This could take a while.” He glanced at Kelan and said,
Why don’t you take her to the shower? Maybe prepare her for us. Tonight we take her all the way.

Kelan gave a slight nod and tugged her toward the bathroom.

“You two just talked to each other, didn’t you?” Beth asked, obediently following him.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Why couldn’t I hear you?”

“We can only project our thoughts to humans while in catamount form. As humans, our telepathy is limited to blood relations and only while within sight of one another.”