by Eve Langlais
“Did it never occur that maybe I sought revenge? After all, she did catfish me.”
“She lied about some things, yes, but it’s the other things she did that I didn’t understand. She did not have to share your bed or plan a wedding to accomplish her revenge. She obviously liked you. More than any other man she’d set her sights on.”
“She liked Simon enough to say yes.”
Again, the old lady snorted. “I manipulated her into that. Mostly because, despite her also watching you, she wouldn’t act. Neither of you was doing anything. I’m an old lady, I hastened the show along.”
“You blackmailed her on a fake deathbed to get her to agree to marry Simon, knowing I’d see it and swoop in.”
“It worked better than expected. You should have seen the tantrum she threw when your note arrived, informing her of the marriage. Natasha never loses control,” the matriarch confided. “Any man who can make her feel so strongly obviously means something.”
“She’s my mate.” It felt good to say it out loud finally.
“Perhaps. But I had to be sure you were worthy, hence the little tests, which you passed quite handily, I might add.”
The old lady seemed pleased with her actions. “The bomb at my house a few days ago could have killed her,” he growled.
“Bomb?” She frowned. “I never authorized any bombs. The last attack was the one on the rooftop with the blank missiles. Once I realized she was ready to defend you, I knew it was only a matter of time before you both came to me for your blessing.”
“Hold on, if you didn’t authorize the bomber at the house, and your son didn’t either, then—?”
Aunt Marni barged in, hair askew, blouse buttoned crookedly. “I think someone took Natasha!”
“What?” He shoved out of his chair. “Explain.”
Auntie held out an envelope. “This was found on the front step. Addressed to her dad.”
“You dared open Tigranov correspondence?” The matriarch rose from her chair with a regal tilt of her head.
But Dean didn’t care if she was insulted. He took the note his aunt pulled from the envelope and trembled as he read it.
Tigranov.
I have your daughter. If willing to negotiate for her, then kill her tigon husband as a gesture of good faith.
“Who would dare?” he roared as he let the sheet flutter.
It was Babushka who had a quiet reply. “I think I know who took her.”
Chapter Fifteen
Natasha squinted as the sack came off her head. She blinked as she focused on the figure that stood in front of her. “Simon?” But not the gentleman she’d come to know.
Gone was the designer suit and vapid expression. His boyish, curly, white-blond hair was slicked back. He wore combat pants, a tight turtleneck, and steel-toed, matte-black boots. To finish his ensemble, a holster with both a knife and a gun.
She went to move only to realize that she was bound to a chair. She rattled it on its four legs and growled. “Let me go at once.”
“No.” The firm reply was at odds with the Simon she recalled.
“Exactly what do you think you’re doing?”
“Getting the leverage I need to get what’s owed. You were supposed to marry me, giving me access to your father’s supply network. But, instead, you humiliated me by jilting me for a half-breed,” Simon seethed.
“Kidnapping me isn’t going to change that.”
“No, but not killing you in exchange for what I’m owed is a fair deal.”
“You won’t get away with it.”
“I already have. No one knows where you are. And they won’t be able to track you.” He swung open the door and showed her the swirling snow. “I have enough supplies for us to stay here for weeks. I figure it won’t take more than a finger or two, maybe a few recordings of your screams before your family concedes.”
“You really shouldn’t have done that.” She shook her head as the snow swirled inside the cabin.
“Your family doesn’t scare me.”
“It’s not my family you need to worry about. It’s my husband,” was her reply just as a streak of orange and black fur came bounding out of the snowstorm.
Simon had a moment to turn before the tigon pounced on him. In a moment, a very fluffy feline wrestled with a striped white tiger and rolled out of sight.
Meanwhile, she was stuck. She rocked the chair, back and forth until it hit the floor and jolted. Not enough to fully break, but it did loosen the ropes. She managed to scrape her hands free and push from the chair just as the two cats tumbled into the cottage, their tussling bodies slamming into the table and sending it with its supplies toppling into the fireplace.
She flattened against a wall as the men continued to grapple, their large cats snarling and snapping while smoke filled the air.
Wait, smoke? A glance over at the fireplace showed it smoldering as the things that had fallen into the hearth caught fire. The most concerning was the smashed bottle of vodka that acted as fuel and sent the flames zipping out of the fireproof hearth. The dry plank floor began to smolder as she scrambled out of the path of the slamming feline bodies. She flattened against a wall and patted herself down, looking for a knife, a weapon, anything.
Simon had frisked her well, removing all her toys.
“Dammit.” She’d gone away from the door instead of towards it and found herself trapped behind a growing wall of flame.
Seeing her dilemma, Neville suddenly released Simon and attacked the door.
She didn’t understand why until it toppled, and he dragged it to the blaze, creating a bridge through the fire.
She ran across, the heat nipping at her skin and clothes, and had almost made it across when Simon slammed into Neville, which in turn knocked into her, driving her back into the inferno.
Heat licked and singed. She dove forward but could still smell the burning and feel the scorching as the fabric on her body burned. She dove out the open doorway into the blizzard. She hit the ground and rolled, hearing the sizzle of cold snow on burning fabric. As she lay on her back, face to the sky, the chill of the snowflakes refreshed her blistering skin. She lay there for a moment, just breathing, only to startle at a crash.
She sat upright and caught the cabin folding in on itself as the flames eroded its structure. “Neville!” No one emerged from the flames.
Oh. No.
“Neville.” This time, she whispered his name, her throat thick with tears.
“I really wish you wouldn’t call me that.”
Chapter Sixteen
His statement was met with a hollered, “You’re alive.”
Scrambling to her feet, Natasha ran for him, slamming into his bruised frame. Not that he complained. He gladly clasped her to him. He’d been so worried.
It was why he’d raced ahead the moment Mrs. Tigranov told him that they could track Natasha.
“You chipped the girl?” his auntie asked.
“Don’t you love your family enough to always know where they are?” Natasha’s grandmother retorted.
They started talking rescue party and guns. He’d taken one look at the beeping dot on the map, memorized the terrain, then stripped.
His mate was in danger. He couldn’t sit and wait.
“Are you okay?” Natasha leaned back to check him over.
He offered her a crooked smile. “I’m not even close to using up my nine lives, baby.”
“Where’s Simon?” She craned to look past him.
“One minute, we were fighting. The next, he ran back inside the cottage.”
“He killed himself?” She glanced at the inferno.
“Probably because he knew he was screwed.” With the adrenaline beginning to wear off, he started to notice the cold. The blustery wind and snowflakes chilled his flesh. He could only imagine how his wife felt, her clothing damp and scorched almost through in spots.
He stepped back from her. “Let’s put on our fur and get back to your house.”
“Why not?”
“About the whole shifting thing… So, you might want to rethink the annulment because I might have neglected to inform you that I can’t actually turn into a tiger.”
“What do you mean, you can’t shift?” He blinked at her and thought of all the times she’d… Huh. “I’ve never seen you change.
“Because I can’t,” she grumbled. “Not for lack of trying. My brother and sister can, and while the doctors say I’ve got all the right genes, something inside me just won’t let the switch happen.” Her shoulders rolled. “And trust me, my family tried everything to get it to happen.”
“But you smell like a tiger.” Her scent was unique, though.
“Yup. And the doctors seem to think my kids will be fine. I know I should have told you before.” She shrugged. “I honestly thought my family would kill you, but now that they haven’t, you should know before you make any promises.”
He snorted. “Do you really think I care if you can sprout fur or not? I didn’t fall in love with an animal. I fell in love with you.” He dragged her close. “And I intend to be married to you until death do us part, baby.”
“You say that now, and yet…what if down the road, on a full moon, you get pissed I can’t follow you on a hunt?”
“Why wouldn’t you be able to follow?” His brow crinkled. “Are you planning to gain a lot of weight and stop moving?”
“No.”
“Then who cares if you’re doing it on two feet or four. I love you, Natasha Marika Fitzpatrick.”
“Tigranov hyphen Fitzpatrick.” She rolled her shoulders. “I should probably keep it given I am the heir.”
“So long as I can call you mine.”
He kissed her and would have kept on kissing her if the rumble of all-terrain vehicles didn’t disturb the snap, crackle, and popping of the fire.
In short order, she was driving a machine, while the original pilot sat bitch on the back. Her husband changed back into his fur, and they were off.
At the door to the house, too many family members awaited, all of them wanting to hear what had happened. Natasha wasn’t in the mood.
“I’m cold and dirty. And going to my room, with my husband.” Her challenging gaze dared anyone to argue.
When Daddy Tigranov glowered at Dean, he shrugged. He wasn’t about to pick a fight with his wife.
The fire in the bedroom proved more than welcome. But even better was the tub someone had dragged out to sit in front of it and filled with steaming water.
He sank into that tub, leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and exhaled. “This is paradise.”
Splash. His wife joined him, sloshing water over the sides before she grabbed him roughly by the cheeks. “Care to rephrase?”
He let himself gaze upon her, her teasing smile, the way her hair tumbled over her bare shoulders. “This bath is paradise, but you…with me? That’s heaven.”
He dragged her close for a kiss that spilled even more water onto the floor, not that they cared. Sex wasn’t the easiest of things to do in a narrow tub, but they managed. He ended up on his knees, with her bent over in front of him, gripping the edge of the tub while he slid into her from behind. His arm curled around her waist, kept her body curved into his. He leaned in and bit the lobe of her ear as he thrust into her, spilling his seed only when she climaxed with his name on her lips.
“Neville!”
He would take his real name any day over the barked, “Get up,” that came the next morning. Grandma woke him with a yell and a whack from her cane.
“Ow!” He glared.
“Get up. Out. Let’s go.”
“Go where?” He rolled from bed and avoided the Tigranov matriarch as she wielded her weapon.”
“Babushka! Stop it.” Natasha scowled as she clutched the sheet to her bare chest.
“No, you will stop it. Until the wedding. Ladies don’t fornicate out of wedlock.”
“But we’re already married,” Natasha huffed.
“Of a sort. I am aware of the pagan church you used. You will do it again. Properly and until you do, no more coitus. Get.” The last came with a jab in his direction that he dodged.
There was no changing Grandma’s mind, which Natasha grumbled about. However, having waited this long, Dean had no problem waiting a bit longer.
Her family had accepted him. The threat was gone. And he was about to marry the woman he loved in front of friends and family.
Since he had no living parents, his aunts gave him away with his aunt Marni leaning close to kiss him on the cheek and whispering, “Be happy, favorite nephew.”
He planned to because a tigon wedded for life.
Epilogue
The wedding turned out awesome. Lions on one side, tigers on the other. Given the amount of partying that went on at the reception, it was expected that they’d see more than a few hybrids in nine months or less.
The only tense moment came when the priest asked, “Is there anyone that can show just cause as to why this couple cannot lawfully be joined together in matrimony? Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
When it appeared as if cousin Isabella might open her mouth, the aunts, who’d chosen to sit behind her instead of with the lions, leaned forward, and Marni whispered something. Isa closed her mouth.
And they were wed, for a second time.
After a splendid wedding night where he took her in the limo, then the honeymoon suite bed, shower, and against the penthouse windows, they boarded a plane.
According to their social media posts, they were enjoying a romantic dinner on a beach in the south of France.
In reality, they were hunkered in tall grass somewhere in the wilds of Lithuania, waiting for some contraband cargo.
Natasha glanced at him. He wore his stripes, and in honor of their mission, she’d painted lines on her skin, too. Her eyes glinted with excitement. She smiled. “Ready?”
Always. He headbutted her as he rose. They were already moving as the wheels of the small propeller plane hit the pavement.
“Try and keep up.”
“Grawr!” was his reply as he loped by her side. As if he’d ever lose her.
He’d found his mate, and she was everything he’d ever wanted. Friend. Partner. Lover.
Meanwhile, after the reception…
The pinprick in Lawrence’s arm was like the smallest of stings. There and gone, not even worth his attention.
But perhaps Lawrence should have minded it because his senses clouded, his vision filmed over, and when next he regained consciousness, it was to find himself in a strange cabin in bed with a woman.
A human and—judging by the scent on her and the marks on her neck—his mate.
Lawrence’s story is coming next in When a Liger Mates.
Lawrence’s story is coming soon in When a Liger Mates.
Previous books in A Lion’s Pride, a USA Today Bestselling series:
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