by Terry Spear
Saving the White Cougar
Heart of the Cougar, Book 10
Terry Spear
Wilde Ink Publishing
Contents
Synopsis
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Author Bio
Also by Terry Spear
PUBLISHED BY:
Wilde Ink Publishing
Saving the White Cougar
Copyright © 2021 by Terry Spear
Cover Copyright by Terry Spear
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
Discover more about Terry Spear at:
http://www.terryspear.com/
Print ISBN: 978-1-63311-071-7
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63311-069-4
Synopsis
Stella White never believed that going on a cougar run would be such a dangerous excursion, painful, punishing, and pleasurable in the end. She realized that sometimes she just needed to get through the bad stuff to get to the good stuff and that meant meeting Ted Weekum, ranch foreman, and the kind of cowboy she'd only dreamed of.
Ted Weekum was visiting with his brother at the ranch when he thought he saw a white flash of fur, but it wasn't until hunters started shooting up the place, claiming they'd shot a white cougar did the notion sink in that the cougar could be one of their own shifter kind. But a white cougar? Unheard of. And yet when he went to save her life—that's exactly what he found. A rare white cougar. Unclaimed. Unmated. The right age. The stars had aligned right that night.
But the hunters aren't through with hunting down the wounded white cougar, or Stella White.
Thanks to Kari Schatteles who sent me the article about an extremely rare white cougar, a young male with leucism, caught on a trail camera in Brazil. Thanks again, Kari! You were my inspiration for writing Saving the White Cougar!
Chapter 1
Stella White was one of the extremely rare white cougars in existence. She was leucistic, not albino. Yet she wasn’t just a white cougar, but a shifter too. And she’d never met one of her kind before either.
Most of the time, being a white cougar didn't give her trouble because she ran in her cougar coat when she felt the urge—after work hours and mostly at dusk or dawn—where no one lived or worked or played. Until today.
When she went into work on Friday, she had her whole day planned—take care of all the legal duties she needed to accomplish as a paralegal for a high-powered lawyer firm, humans only. Have dinner home alone, since she didn't have a current boyfriend. No other cougars were living in Grand Junction, Colorado, and so she was stuck dating humans from time to time. Just like cougar shifters could be, the humans she'd dated hadn't been faithful either. She enjoyed having a boyfriend and dating. She wasn't that into being single. But she did have the one major drawback. She was a shifter and turning a human into one of her kind wasn't a great idea. Now, if she found one she was totally into, she might change her mind. But she hadn't found anyone like that yet.
After work, she was running as a cougar. With the passing days approaching Halloween, it was getting darker earlier. She would go before sunset to enjoy a rock-climbing expedition and check out some waterfalls she had seen on a map. Rainbow Falls were situated about four miles from the rocks she would climb. During a search for places she could safely run as a cougar, she had checked out the location earlier in the week. A place that had signs posted: No Trespassing, No Hunting allowed. Almost as good as a wildlife reserve. That's what she was looking for.
"Are you going out to dinner with Frankie?" Tori Stone was another paralegal at Brown and Sons and Stella thought she was interested in dating her ex-boyfriend.
"Nope. We're through. You can have him if you want. But I have to warn you, he has a roving eye."
"Nah, I’m not interested," Tori said, but Stella knew differently.
The guy was cute, but Stella wasn’t into a guy who couldn’t stick with the woman he was currently dating. It was totally rude the way he engaged in conversations with women all the time when he was on a date with Stella as if he were available and looking for a new hookup.
Stella glanced at the clock. Time to go. "See you Monday."
“See you.”
First, Stella dropped by her apartment to change out of her suit pants and into jeans, hiking boots, and a long-sleeved T-shirt that said: Cougars make the best friends. She threw on her jeans jacket, needing just something light for the trip to the place she planned to run at. She thought about making a quick grilled chicken sandwich, but she wanted to hit the road, do her cougar run, and she could make dinner when she returned home.
She loved exploring new places, hoping she would find the idyllic spot to call her own as a cougar—not for real, but just for visits. It was pumpkin time, but she couldn't wait for the snow to fall. She loved the snow because that's when she could hide the best—white on white, nothing could be better.
Though she really didn't stand out all that much at any time of the year as long as she was in the tall grasses or forests. She would leap into a tree and practically disappear. Maybe not as much as a tan cougar would, but if she didn't switch her tail, she would be good.
Last year, hunters had been trespassing on the land she normally ran on and shot at her, just missing her. Her shifter healing ability meant she healed in half the time that humans would heal, if she didn't bleed out first. But she didn’t want to get shot on a cougar run ever. She had to find a hunter-free zone and she hoped the place she had found would be that for her. At least for a while until she could locate another such place. She was always afraid if anyone spied her, it would be all over the media. Rare white cougar spotted and then she’d have nowhere to run.
She finally reached the turnoff that she'd checked out before. It looked like an old road once used by wagons or maybe more modern vehicles but was overgrown now and it didn’t look like anyone had used it in a long time. Her off-the-road, white Jeep Wrangler was perfect for it as she drove toward the barbed wire fence where she would park and strip and shift. She finally reached the fence and parked. She got out of her Jeep and stretched, loving the fall colors in Colorado, the aspens in their golden finery, the green firs in all their greenery, the blue spruce adding a majestic touch of silver blue to the landscape. A mountain of red rocks and boulders were a few hundred yards from the fence, and she was eager to jump up on the rocks clear to the top and see the panoramic vista.
Maybe she could even spy the waterfalls from there.
The air was chilly as she hurried to pull off her clothes, threw them in the Jeep, locked the keypad on her vehicle, and shifted. Then as a cougar she stretched again, eyeing the red cliffs she wanted to race up. She leaped over the old barbed-wire fence half dipping, the posts leaning over and then raced for the rocks. Signs were posted No Trespassing, No Hunting, but they didn't pertain to a cougar. With leaps and bounds, she finally reached the top of
the rocks and sat up above, smelling the fresh air, seeing the pale glow of the crescent moon against the blue sky, whisps of clouds floating by.
It was just beautiful. She could sit up here all day and breathe in the fresh air and enjoy the fall chill in the air that didn’t affect her as warm as her coat was.
From this vantage point, she saw a ranch way off in the distance. She hadn’t been able to spy it from down below. She narrowed her eyes, looking to observe what she could see. Horses, maybe? Little dots moving around. Cows, maybe. It was a long way off.
Being a curious big cat, she wanted to learn if they were really horses or cows, and she wanted to see who all lived there. But she knew that ranchers wouldn't appreciate a cougar prowling around their ranch and their livestock and would shoot to kill. Not that she had any intention of hunting livestock. The no trespassing signs would be meant for her then, and the no hunting? It didn't count when their livestock could be at risk.
A pickup truck pulled up near where she’d parked her vehicle, and her heart took a dive. What if whoever it was stole her vehicle? Or was the owner of the property having her vehicle towed for abandoning it? Police could be investigating who the vehicle belonged to. And if it was impounded, she’d be stuck here as a cougar without a stitch of clothes to wear!
“Hey, Sims, this looks like a prime hunting spot. But what about the other vehicle here?”
There was one thing she hated about fall. That hunters hunted and she was hunting game. Even if they were trespassing and not supposed to be hunting on the property.
Sims said, "Yeah, I recognize that vehicle. It belongs to one of the paralegals at the lawyer's office in Grand Junction where I had legal representation."
Omigod, Jeffrey Sims? He was a hulking six-foot-six brute and he looked like the kind of man who could be into a lot more illegal stuff than just trespassing and illegally hunting, though that was bad enough.
But his buddies, Clayton and Braxton, made an even more menacing trio—probably all thinking she was running around out here as a human.
"So? You think she's here to catch you illegally hunting?" The man snorted.
"Maybe she's hunting illegally too, Clayton. Wouldn't that be a hoot. She's out here trespassing like us, when her lawyer represented you on the hunting charges," Braxton said.
She recognized their voices from when they’d been in the lawyer’s office.
"I don't see her, do you?" Sims asked.
"Hell, no, but look up there," Clayton said.
She'd already moved behind rocks to jump down the cliffs on the backside, but her darned tail was whipping about in a response to the mixture of frustration and anger she was feeling.
She wanted to bite the men, but not turn them, and that probably wouldn't fare well. They would be turned and then be rogue cougars, and she would have to terminate them. Which she didn't want to do. Then there would be a hunt for the killer cougar, and any puma would be on the hunters’ hit list.
The men had already made it over or through the barbed-wire fence and were running around to the other side of the cliffs before she reached the bottom. One of the men fired a shot at her, the bullet hitting the cliff and splintering the rocks. Her heart skittered as she dodged through the rocks to the base, trying to find cover.
She considered leaping up the bare-faced cliffs again and over to the other side, clearing the fence, and returning to her vehicle. But she was afraid they would wound her or kill her before she could make it. And climbing up the cliff would make her freely visible and the perfect moving target. Racing through the tall grasses was a better bet.
She could hear their heavy breathing and pounding boots on the ground some distance back.
"I'll be damned! A white cougar!" Clayton said.
"No way in hell. Shoot it!" Sims said.
Why would anyone want to kill a rare white cougar? Asses. Then a shot rang out and she felt a nip in her shoulder. Damn it. She'd been hit. She stumbled. Somehow, she had to swing on back to reach her car, dress, and get out of here. But who could take care of the bullet wound now? The police would be called in to investigate a bullet wound. And that was only if she could make it to her car in time, shift, get into her car, lock it, dress, and tear out of there, and reach a hospital.
The men were coming around down below. Another shot was fired, and it hit her arm. The same arm. She was so pissed off she wanted to scream. A good cougar screech could curdle their blood. But she didn't want to alert them as to where she really was. And then she wanted to pounce on them and bite them. No running away in fear of her life, damn it!
She was running full out as a cougar though, the adrenaline surging through her veins in flight mode. All she could do was head this time for the ranch. She’d seen several outbuildings. Maybe one of them would provide her cover where she could hide until she could heal enough and then make her way back to her Jeep.
With her cougar shifters’ faster healing abilities, she thought she might make it. Worst-case scenario, she would just shift in a shed and if anyone found her, they would discover a naked woman was all. No cougar. No rare white cougar to kill. A bleeding woman that someone could take care of. How would she explain the part of how she was naked? That was going to be more difficult to deal with.
Maybe someone would have left some clothes in one of the sheds and she could at least be partially dressed. She figured that would be wishful thinking.
She wasn’t sure about going to one of the buildings off in the distance though as she slowed her pace and began sneaking through the tall grasses now like a predator on a hunt, trying to keep as low a profile as she could so the hunters wouldn't see her, instead of like a cat who was being hunted and running off, trying to leave the danger behind.
"Where is she?" one of the hunters asked as they were still looking around the rocks.
Far away from you, she wanted to say, and she was glad they hadn't discovered she'd moved far away from the rocks.
"Watch for her. She's wounded and will be more dangerous," Sims said.
"She has run this way," Clayton said. "You can see where she has trampled down the grass some and it hasn't sprung back up. And there's some blood on the grass here."
Damn, at least one of the men was a good tracker. She wanted to sprint, run as fast as she could again to reach the buildings so she could hide. She was moving too slowly while trying to keep a low profile. The pain in her shoulder and arm hadn't kicked in yet at least.
Then Stella heard the rattle of a snake's tail, a big one as many rattles as she heard. For a split second, she was torn between leaping out of its way or avoiding jumping above the tall grasses she was navigating to keep out of the line of sight from the hunters. She didn't react fast enough, and the rattlesnake struck her in the back leg, damn it. Her heart was already racing, slow it down! She could imagine the poison pumping through her blood faster.
She was batting zero. She knew she needed to lie down and stop the poison from speeding through her blood, but she also knew that she needed to stop the blood loss from the bullet wounds. Her only chance was hiding in the red barn, the outbuilding closest to where she was running. She could even cry out for help, once she shifted.
Immediately, the snake's bite on her hindleg began burning. Great. Just great.
She smelled the scent of horses ahead, but she realized she hadn’t smelled the scent of the men behind her even when they had circled around her and she had outmaneuvered them. If they were wearing hunters’ concealment, even if the wind direction was right for her to smell them, she wouldn't be able to. She came to the end of the tall grasses and found a pasture where the horses had been grazing and that meant short grass. She hadn’t figured that into her plans.
A large red barn was closest to her location and both barn doors were wide open, offering her refuge from the hunters. Her heart was pounding in her ears, and she knew she had to make a mad dash for it. She saw a couple of beautiful Australian shepherds off in the distance, chasing each other
around the ranch. Some guard dogs, but at least that was a good thing for her, and they were cute. She loved dogs.
Focus, Stella!
Hopefully, the dogs wouldn't see her at the last minute. She planned to hide, heal, and leave when it was pitch black out—if she could survive that long if she couldn't shift back to her human form—return to her vehicle as a cougar and get out of there. So much for this being a safe place to run as a cougar.
Ted Weekum was busy showing his triplet brother, Bill, younger by five minutes, and an FBI agent, around the horse ranch Hal and Tracey Haverton owned out of Yuma Town, Colorado. Tracey was out with her four-year old quadruplets setting up more Halloween and fall decorations, though he told her if she needed help with anything heavy, to let him know and he would take care of it. They'd been decorating all week because of the Halloween party they were having here at the end of next week. All suited up and looking distinguished, Larry Pierce was talking to her, their new lawyer in town, leaving a successful practice in Denver behind, wanting to join his only family, Yvonne Mueller, his sister, and Rick, his brother-in-law. Larry had been in an all-human practice before. They’d needed their own lawyer in Yuma Town to make up wills, take care of estate planning, and anything else that folks in the area needed legal counsel for. He’d just made up some sales contracts for Tracey and her mate for the sale of a couple of their horses. Larry had his leather briefcase in hand and was just saying goodbye to Tracey before he returned to town. Everyone loved that the lawyer was great about making house calls even! He was truly enjoying being here with a whole town of cougars.