Tempted by the Jaguar #3: Ramification (Riverford Shifters) (2 page)

Hunter’s mind raced a million miles-a-minute as he watched two men from
his clan hoist up the stretcher the injured red wolf had been placed onto
earlier, tubes of blood and saline already feeding into two IVs that had been
inserted into the underside of both pale forearms. The medical team that had
been sent had managed to stabilize him enough to move him, and Needles had been
optimistic about his chances. Hunter had never been so glad to see the
overzealous doctor in his life, thankful that Gaither had called for him
particularly.

Finally, a huge clue regarding his missing brother had fallen into his
clutches.
He might be alive.
His chest ached painfully at the thought.
After a year of fearing the worst, to have that fear so unexpectedly given even
a tiny hope of being lain to rest was jarring.

He should have been beside himself with joy, with relief. He should
have been at the very least calling Maxim to tell him to follow them to the
hospital. His best friend had just as much riding on the information the wolf
shifter could provide them once he had regained consciousness as Hunter did.

He bared his teeth. So why was his jaguar roaring for him to chase
after Kylie
right now
? To do so would probably be the stupidest thing he
had ever done in his life, including his inordinately stupid decision to sleep
with her. He damn well knew that.

Yet, as he stood watching his clan brothers and sisters prepare to move
the injured stranger out of the forest, he was having a tough time keeping
himself from shifting. Even now, he could feel small, rebellious spasms across
the muscles of his body as he held himself rigid.

A Polyshifter…

She could have lied. She could have continued to feign ignorance as she
had when he had told her about Deadends and Returners. Instead, she had looked
him straight in the eye and admitted it, standing there looking so strong and
challenging even though she had been utterly naked in more ways than one.

Kylie had to have known that her admission could have very well ended
with his teeth at her throat, so why? Hunter scowled. Nothing about the whole
mess made any sense!

Why in the hell had she revealed her true nature by shifting into a
lioness
in the first place? Was it just a colossal fuck-up on her part? Caught out, did
Kylie hope that the truth would somehow salvage things, that it would muddy
things enough for him to drop his guard in regards to her again?

Hunter felt a growl forming deep within his chest. Was that whole
string of events—from finding Kylie attacking that piece of human scum in the
forest to finding the half-dead wolf to her shifting into something other than
a jaguar—just part of some grand plan of infiltration by the lions?

Or did she hide the truth because she was scared that I would react
badly, that we would all react badly to such a dangerous secret? Was she
actually hiding from
everybody
…including the humans who adopted her?

“Why the hell didn’t you call me, you asshole?” a familiar voice
abruptly growled behind him, causing Hunter to jump and hiss in startlement as
he whirled around.

“Maxim! What the hell are you doing here?” Hunter demanded.

Maxim looked at him incredulously. “You’re seriously asking me that?
Imagine my surprise when Lana called me half an hour ago to report a bunch of
jaguars—
Needles
among them—scrambling out of Riverford Regional towards
an ambulance and a certain
someone’s
name and the words ‘bleeding
heavily’ being mentioned among their urgent chatter…”

Hunter grabbed his upper arms. “Did you tell anyone else about this?”

Maxim snorted. “Of course not. I jumped in my car and probably broke
every traffic law trying to get here. When I pounded on your door and no one
answered, I followed my nose to you here.” His eyes darted towards the
retreating group. “Now that I know you aren’t the one bleeding out in that
stretcher, mind telling me what the hell happened here? And where’s Kylie?”

At the mention of her name, a mixture of anger and pain surged through
him, but he ruthlessly stamped it down. Now was not the time to deal with that
messed up shit.

“Not here,” Hunter said, giving his friend a minute shake and gesturing
towards the others with his eyes. “They’re taking him to my clan’s private
clinic. If you’ll drive, I’ll tell you on the way.”

His eyes narrowing, Maxim merely nodded and followed Hunter out of the
forest.

As soon as they had climbed into Maxim’s black Mercedes, Maxim raised
an eyebrow pointedly before Hunter could even settle into the leather seat.

Hunter sighed, suddenly feeling more tired and lost than he had in a
long time.

“She’s a Polyshifter, Maxim.”

“
Kylie
?” Maxim asked in disbelief. “You have got to be shitting
me!”

Hunter didn’t think he had ever seen his friend so stunned.

He sighed and closed his eyes. “You and maybe the lioness who attacked
us are the only ones who know right now.”

“Lioness?” Maxim echoed in alarm. “I think you need to start at the
beginning.”

The ambulance started to drive away, and Maxim diverted his attention
for a moment to pull in behind it in order to follow.

“Kylie and I spent last night together,” Hunter admitted after a long
pause. “After Jennifer left, we got to talking, and well, I suppose I’ve done
dumber things—though at the moment I’m having a hard time thinking of any.”

“I doubt that very much, my friend,” Maxim remarked dryly. “So you
slept together. Given where I just found you, I take it you followed my
suggestion and took her on your early morning patrol of your territory.”

Hunter chuckled humorlessly. “We never even got that far. We’d barely
been walking for a few minutes when we both caught a whiff of blood in the air,
and the wolf you just saw my clansmen spirit away dragged himself into view.
How he ended up in my part of the forest looking like roadkill is anyone’s guess,
but believe it or not, that’s not even the question I’m itching to ask him the
moment he wakes up.”

He turned in his seat to completely face Maxim. “Before he passed out,
that wolf said my brother had sent him to find me.”

The car swerved for a couple of seconds as Maxim looked at him sharply.
“What the fuck?”

Hunter ran his hand through his hair in agitation. “My thoughts
exactly. Here was the first real lead I’ve had about my brother in over a year
and the man was on the verge of bleeding out right at my feet! I called for help,
then Kylie and I tried to stop the bleeding as best we could. However, it
wasn’t long before we were attacked by a lioness. The damned bitch came out of
nowhere.

“The way she moved—she had to be one of their assassins. I literally
came within an inch of having my throat ripped out. I managed to kick her off
me before I shifted, but I was nowhere near her fighting level. I got knocked
senseless for a few moments, and that’s when it happened.”

He bared his teeth in renewed anger. “I told Kylie to run, but she
didn’t. Instead, she shifted—into a
lioness
.”

“Did she attack you?” Maxim asked quietly.

Hunter yanked on his hair viciously. “I wish she had. Then I wouldn’t
be so—”

He cut himself off before his tongue could betray any more of his
turmoil. Damn it! They were almost at the clinic. The last thing he needed
right now was to have his head messed up with thoughts of Kylie.

“While I was semi out of it, she faced off against the assassin,” he
continued curtly. “The lioness shifted back into a short-haired, blonde woman,
spat some vitriol at Kylie, and then ran off.”

“I see.”

Hunter couldn’t read his friend’s expression. “And…?” he prodded.

“Where is she now?” Maxim asked, ignoring his question.

He looked away. “I don’t know.”

“You must be joking…”

“She stood right there in front of me and admitted she was a
Polyshifter without so much as batting a fucking eye. My head was already
spinning from both headbutting that lioness’s thick skull harder than I should
have and a dying wolf shifter mentioning my brother out of the blue. I didn’t
know what the hell to think. Plus, my clansmen were probably only a few minutes
from arriving, and there was no mistaking the stench of lion coming off her.”

“Fuck…you let her
go
, didn’t you!” Maxim exclaimed, shaking his
head.

“I did,” Hunter replied hotly, his eyes daring the other man to give
him shit about it.

Which of course he did.

“Damn it, Hunter!” Maxim growled. “I can’t believe you let the best
chance we’ve had
ever
to maybe find out something about a real Polyshifter
just waltz on out from under your nose! If she’s hidden herself so well from
everyone until now, I wouldn’t doubt she could do it again, and better, now
that she knows for sure her cover’s blown! She could be well on her way to the
border by now!”

“No matter what she may have been able to tell us, there’s no way we
would have been able to trust it. You
know
that we can’t trust
any
Polyshifter.” Hunter paused and then continued with a grimace, “…and because of
what happened between us, I can’t trust
myself
to be objective. Right
now I’m more dangerous to the Riverford clans than she is.”

“You fell for her that hard?” Unlike before, there wasn’t even a hint
of judgment in his voice, which made Hunter feel worse.

“She deceived me. She deceived us all,” Hunter said, unable to keep the
hurt from his tone.

“Yes,” Maxim agreed matter-of-factly. “However, I wonder about the
reason. I understand why you didn’t want to hand her over to the Elders, but you
should have at the very least brought her to
me
to question. If she is
truly an innocent in all of this—”

“—then I might very well have sent her straight into the lion’s den.”

That ominous sentence hung thickly in the air as they pulled into the
parking lot of a group of generic-looking office buildings that were co-owned
by all the jaguar Elders. Maxim followed the ambulance to the back of one of
the central buildings where a group of people in scrubs were already waiting to
receive them.

“I fucked up big time, didn’t I?” Hunter said grimly as Maxim slid the
car into an empty parking slot.

“Go on inside,” Maxim said, pulling his phone from a pocket inside his
sport coat. “You need to make sure you’re there the moment that wolf opens his
eyes. Let me worry about Kylie for now. One way or another, I’ll make sure we
learn the truth.”

Hunter hesitated for a few more seconds before giving himself a mental
kick in the ass. What the hell was he doing angsting about his love life of all
things? Maxim, himself, was a reminder that more than learning what had
happened to his brother was at stake here.

“Her adoptive father’s name is Paul Moore,” he said as he opened his
door. “He’s a doctor here in Riverford and smelled human—though now I’m not so
sure we can trust what our noses tell us about anyone associated with Kylie.
You might want to start there.”

Paul had barely lifted a hand to knock on their friend, Karen’s, front
door when the door abruptly swung open and Karen waved them inside with an
urgent hand before either of them could say a word.

“It’s bad,” the cougar shifter said grimly as she quickly shut the door
behind them.

It was a testament to how frantic their friend was that she didn’t
bother to comment on either Kylie’s state of undress or the fact that she no
longer smelled like a shifter of any kind.

“I would make a joke about the Men in Black invading the city, but from
what my son and some of my friends and associates have been telling me, that’s
not far from the truth. We were dead wrong about how many from the lion clans
have managed to sneak into Riverford.”

“What are we talking about here? Sniffers? Special Ops?” Paul demanded
as Kylie’s heart dropped into the pit of her stomach.

“At this point, it’s hard to say,” Karen replied. “Mitch and a couple
of his friends drove out of Riverford along the southern highway right after
you called me, and he said there were a couple of SUVs parked along the right
shoulder right outside the city limits with a couple of men looking under the
hood of one. Nothing too suspicious there, right? Except I just got off the
phone with a friend who reported seeing the exact same setup along the city’s
northern exit. I reported it to the Elders, but it may take a while for them to
contact a few shifters on the force to send them packing.”

It took every ounce of restraint Kylie had to keep from dropping the
F-bomb, something she tried never to do in present company. Dammit! She had to
get out of Riverford before—

“Hunter and I were attacked by a lioness this morning in the forest
behind my new apartment building, so leaving by foot is definitely out of the
question, too,” Kylie told Karen. “She was probably one of their assassins.”

Karen’s eyes widened to almost comical proportions as she grabbed Kylie
by the shoulders. “One of those bastards actually
saw
you?”

“And got blood on me. Unfortunately I didn’t realize it at the time,
and I shifted in order to help Hunter fight her off. The lioness was not amused
to find a lioness siding with a jaguar. She seemed to think I was a rogue from
one of the lion clans, and I’d rather not disabuse her of that assumption.”

“Then…that means your jaguar friend—”

“He wasn’t very amused, either,” Kylie cut her off, hating the bleak
note she couldn’t quite keep out of her voice.

Karen’s eyes softened. “I was wondering why the only jaguar scent
coming from you was faint and male. I suppose there’s no reason for you to
continue on pretending to be just a jaguar now that a prominent member of the
jaguar clan has learned your secret. It’s lucky that you inherited your
father’s ability.”

Kylie nodded. “Being human is safer. My father always said that being
able to revert back to one hundred percent human was rare even for a
Polyshifter. Beyond the lion clans, I’m not even sure if that little factoid is
even known. No one looking for us will look twice at a couple of humans. I’ll
just have to be careful to keep my face covered for those that have seen it.”

“Provided we can even leave the city,” Paul said. “Our best chance
would be to leave the moment the shifters in the police department clear out
anyone suspicious along the northern highway. I’m starting to think that maybe
you shouldn’t drive us after all.”

“Or we can ride in the trunk for at least part of the way,” Kylie
offered, even though the thought of being confined in that suffocating darkness
so soon after that hellish night made her mouth go dry and pulse speed up with
a surge of fear.

“Absolutely not!” Paul exclaimed. “After what you’ve already gone
through, I wouldn’t ever—”

“I can’t be sure that Hunter won’t come after me,” Kylie interrupted
pointedly. “I saw it in his eyes, Paul. The suspicion, the betrayal, but most
of all, the uncertainty. I’ve never mentioned Karen to him, but everyone at the
hospital knows you two are friends. Why make it easy for him to follow our
trail? It’s my fault that Hunter’s even in this predicament, and the last thing
I want is to force him into another situation where he has to choose between me
and his duty to his clan.”

“Then we’ll bring Mitch along, too,” Karen suggested, “make it seem our
trip to Dallas is just a normal family weekend outing.”

“There’s no need to involve your son any more than you already have,”
Paul said. “I would never forgive myself if something happened to him. I hate
even having to ask this much of
you
.”

“Like you, I swore to Alan and Grace that I would do everything in my
power to keep Kylie out of the lions’ hands.” Karen’s expression suddenly
turned stern. “You don’t need to do everything yourself, Paul. The same goes
for you, too, Kylie. This is no time to be stubborn.”

Paul crossed his arms against his chest. “All right. You both have
brought up good points.” He turned to Kylie. “Why don’t you go upstairs and
change while Karen and I hash out the finer details. Hopefully we’ll have a
better idea of our path forward by the time you come back.”

Kylie looked down at herself and grimaced. Yeah, if Karen was going to
call Mitch to join them, then she definitely didn’t want him to see her barely
dressed as she was.

She reached down and picked up one of the duffle bags at her feet.
“I’ll be right back.”

Looking at the dirty and pathetic state of her feet, Kylie decided to
take a quick shower. Lord knew when she would have the chance for another once
they left Riverford.

After removing Hunter’s jacket, she carefully folded it and stuffed it
into the bag once she had taken out a pair of jeans and a simple blue blouse.
She knew she should probably just chunk it into the trash. Keeping it with her
would only serve to rub salt into the wound that had opened up in her heart,
and right now when her mind needed to be clear and sharp, she just didn’t need
that particular weakness to distract her.

“You’re so stupid,” she muttered, her voice sounding more weary than
disgusted as she had intended.

What she had shared with Hunter was over. The sooner she accepted that,
the sooner the hand that was currently brutally squeezing her heart could let
go.

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.