The Cougar's Bargain

 

Avon, Massachusetts

Copyright © 2015 by Holley Trent.
All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

 

Published by

Crimson Romance

an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

Blue Ash, OH 45242. U.S.A.

www.crimsonromance.com

 

ISBN 10: 1-4405-9299-3

ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9299-7

eISBN 10: 1-4405-9300-0

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9300-0

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

Cover art © 123RF/frugo and 123RF/Анна Павлова

 

I'd like to give a heartfelt thanks to the voracious readers in The Wolfpack who are so supportive about shifter and paranormal romance. The enthusiasm is infectious and keeps me at the keyboard writing and in my chair daydreaming of new additions to the Desert Guards world.

This one's for you, ladies!

 

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• Title Page
  
• Copyright Page
  
• Dedication
  
• CHAPTER ONE
  
• CHAPTER TWO
  
• CHAPTER THREE
  
• CHAPTER FOUR
  
• CHAPTER FIVE
  
• CHAPTER SIX
  
• CHAPTER SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHT
  
• CHAPTER NINE
  
• CHAPTER TEN
  
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
  
• CHAPTER TWELVE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  
• CHAPTER NINETEEN
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  
• About the Author
  
• More from This Author
  
• Also Available
  

“Find him someone more suitable.”

The edict echoed in Hannah Welch's memory like church bells in a deep valley—loud and startling as it first chimed, and then increasingly softer, lulling her into a false sense of security just before it harkened again.

“Find him someone more suitable.”

She flinched and slid down the wall in the dark corner. Sighing, she allowed her legs to go limp beneath her, and as her ass hit the linoleum floor, she let her head loll to the side.

So tired.

She hadn't been able to sleep with that wild animal in the room, and because she'd made a bargain regarding him the day before, she couldn't leave. She had to fix him.

He
was Sean Foye, a goddess-cursed Were-cougar who had been trapped in his animal form for several weeks now, because Hannah hadn't wanted to be his mate.

Per his goddess's instruction, he'd abducted her from a campground, just as his brothers did to her friends Ellery and Miles, and held her captive on the New Mexican ranch his mother owned. Hannah had put up a good fight for six weeks because she'd wanted to go home to North Carolina—where she had a family and a nursing job—but she'd failed. Once Sean had officially named her as his mate, he'd had exactly two weeks to get Hannah to agree to be with him forever—and
he'd
failed. So now he was suffering the consequence of being eternally doomed to his animal form.

As if that weren't enough, now Hannah was a Cougar, too. During a recent fight, a young Cougar who'd needed to make a distraction had accidentally infected her. She'd become a kind of monster she never knew existed up until two months ago, and the learning curve had been unkind.

At least she didn't hurt anymore unless she tried to shift, and she avoided that at all costs. She was made to do it the first time so she could force her body to rest in its animal form, but there'd been nothing restful about that shift. Her new alpha had had to hold her down as her bones slipped out of their natural positions and curved into new ones. She'd wanted to die, and even when it was over, it still hurt. She wasn't as strong as the born Cougars.

It'd been nearly a month since she left the hospital with a cheek and jaw full of stitches and with so many people looking on with pity. She didn't want pity. She just wanted to be left alone, really, so she could make sense of this thing she was now.

The animal in wait inside her frequently muddled her thoughts and slowed her reactions. She was no longer comfortable in her own skin because she didn't know what she was anymore. She'd been trying to accept herself as she was for almost thirty years, and thought she was starting to get somewhere.

Now she had to start all over again … but maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.

She put her hand to her face and rubbed the scar, watching the animal in the corner watch her.

He bared his fangs and a low growl resonated from his chest, but she was pretty sure he wasn't going to move. She'd been in his basement for a day and a half, and he'd hardly moved, not even to eat.

He'd been growing increasingly erratic in his prowling, and his brothers Mason and Hank worried that Sean's consciousness was currently on the wrong end of the cougar-human spectrum. Usually, a shifter thought like both man and beast at the same time, but the longer he stayed in his animal form, the more his impulses changed. The more memories he suppressed.

He would tamp down everything he knew about being human so his conscience didn't get in the way of primal practicability—of
survival
.

They needed to bring him back.

Worried he would soon be too far gone, Mason and Hank had jumped him out in the desert and forced him downstairs three days prior. As he hadn't eaten what they'd tossed down, the big cat was probably famished.

Hannah wasn't sure if it was the man inside looking at her through those cat eyes or if it were some wild beast that didn't care about the man's memories, but it didn't matter either way. It didn't matter which form he was in. The curse's cure was non-discriminatory.

She wrapped her long braid around her thumb again and again, twirling it while plotting her move. She hadn't had a plan when she'd entered the basement, and had only known that she couldn't leave until she brought the man back out with her. To get him up and going, she had to accept him as her mate. She didn't want that any more than she had two months ago, but she had to live amongst his brothers now. Whether she liked it or not, she was a part of their clan, and she couldn't look at them without feeling so fucking guilty. Sean wasn't a fate worse than death, but she didn't want him. Didn't want
anyone
.

So, she'd made a bargain with his cunning deity who was now
her
goddess, too.

“Find him someone more suitable,”
the Were-cougar goddess
La Bella Dama
—informally, Lola—had said before Hannah had descended into Sean's basement. She'd stared down her nose at Hannah and said it in a quietly terrifying tone that Hannah had known meant she'd be making no further concessions. She'd made too many already.

Lola would let Sean and Hannah off the hook permanently if Hannah found him someone else. For the time being, she'd have to claim him—accept him—and pull the man out of the cougar's shell because she couldn't market a man who wasn't technically a man anymore.

“What am I supposed to do with him?” she whispered to herself.

He bared his fangs again, sharp and frightening, but of course they were. Sean was a Foye and the Foyes were all big, beautiful,
scary
cats. They were only slightly less imposing on two legs. If she ever told anyone how scared of them she was, even now that she was also a Were-cougar, they wouldn't believe her. She'd been doing too good a job of pretending to be unbothered.

At the vibration of her phone in her borrowed flannel shirt's pocket, she sat up straighter and silenced the sound before it agitated the watchful beast. She didn't want him to pounce, because even if she shifted, she wouldn't be strong enough to fight him off. Even in his weakened state, he would have been stronger than Hannah at full capacity, and she was tired of picking fights she couldn't win. In spite of what her father believed, sometimes it wasn't just a matter of
trying
hard enough. A lady needed to know her limits. If that made her a coward, so be it. She was a fraidy cat.
Literally
.

“How's it going?” her friend and fellow Cougar mate Miles asked when Hannah whispered, “Hello?” into the phone.

Hannah locked her gaze at the snarling cat across the room and swallowed hard. He'd lifted his head and the fur on his neck stood up.

Oh. Shit.

“Um, about as well as could be expected,” she said.

“Hang in there. It may not seem like it, but Lola says Sean's still inside that cat.”

“I guess Lola would know, huh?”

Sean snarled at her again, and she resisted the urge to grab the sprayer from the nearby kitchenette sink to hose the hissing cat down … if that even
worked
on cats his size. Were-cougars had the lengths of their human counterparts and all muscle mass expected of powerful cats. The reddish hulk in the corner had to be over two hundred pounds. Hannah had already been scratched up by one Cougar, and didn't plan on adding any new scars to her collection.

The white jags on her left cheek would probably never completely fade. The first time she'd shifted into her brand-new cat self, they'd healed some, but there was a limit to how much her weak magic could do. When she'd been pitying herself in the hospital after the attack, she wouldn't let the one person who could do her scar any good touch her. Sean's brother Mason was her alpha now, but in her opinion, he was just one more man in her life who'd make her feel like she wasn't enough. It was easiest for her self-esteem to just stay out of the intimidating cat's orbit.

“Are ya hungry?” Miles tried to put some sunshine into her voice.

Ever the optimist.

Miles had always had optimism in spades, though. In the ten years since they'd met in college, Hannah had never really seen the woman down in the dumps, and Lord knew she had the right to be. Miles had no family, and for a long time, had no one in her corner. Now she had a Were-cougar for a mate, the favor of
La Bella Dama
whom Miles acted as ear and emissary for, and an adopted family comprised of witches, shapeshifters, and a demigod or two. Hannah envied Miles for her family-by-choice. Hannah's family-by-blood paled in comparison lately. They'd always been dysfunctional, but the funny thing about space was how it made perceptions change. The longer she stayed away, the less she blamed herself for relationships not working. In the past, every negative family exchange had seemed like her fault.

Now, she knew they weren't her fault, but that didn't make her feel any better about how they were.

“I'm a little bit hungry, yeah.” Hannah put her head back against the wood paneled wall and watched Sean settle onto his belly. His heavy eyelids drooped, but she knew he wouldn't sleep. Neither of them had slept since she'd gone downstairs, which was just as well. If she didn't sleep, she didn't dream. She was tired of the nightmares. They'd been sporadic up until she was attacked—and had been that way since she was a child—but something about being a Cougar and Lola's so-called “avenger” made them worse.