Tempted by the Jaguar #3: Ramification (Riverford Shifters) (5 page)

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

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.