“He came to me as part of my treaty with the local RTMC chapter,” Brooke told me, her voice lilting up in a sing-song child’s voice, “so they can have autonomy in my territory. He made an arrangement with his President, so another of the bikers will be sent to me this month. Mad Dog asked me if I preferred bear or turtle, and I told him I love the taste of bear.”
She looked away and then looked back to me. “I have something I’d like to tell you, but it feels as if doing so will break a confidence, even though I looked in Squatch’s head for the answer, and didn’t ask him.” She pulled one of her legs up under her. “I’ll tell Sasquatch what I’ve told you, and if he has a problem with it, I’ll need to make you forget. If you’d rather I wait until I’m certain I can tell you, let me know. I made a promise not to mess with your memories beyond making you forget where the home was you stayed at when I first took you in, and I do not wish to break my promise to you.”
“Tell me, please. I’ve grown to trust you.” She seemed displeased, and I smiled. “I know you said not to, but I also know you can see in my thoughts to understand why.”
“Sasquatch chose not to come to me again because he figured out you must be one of the rare tigers of legend, and he was trying to protect you. He knew I’d see his thoughts and he didn’t want to risk giving away the fact a rare, possibly valuable tiger was living in my city.”
Hot tears filled my eyes, and I tried to keep them at bay but my emotions were too much. Squatch had tried to protect me and I didn’t even know. Other than the old ones, not many know that rare tigers exist. For the most part, it’s something one has to remember.
“Mad Dog figured it out and explained it to him.” Back to the adult voice. “The club’s president has made it a point to learn all he can about a wide variety of subjects.”
The child vampire leaned forward a little, and one of her twisted curls flipped over her shoulder and bounced. “I find myself in an odd position. Sasquatch called asking for me, leaning on the personal relationship we’ve formed when I’ve fed from him. He asked me to look for you in my territory. He feels enough of his seed is in you that I can use the blood-connection I have with him to find you.” She leaned back. “He isn’t wrong about that. If I’d never fed from you, I’d still be able to find you, using my connection to him. His essence is strong within you.”
“Is there a way for me to keep my life here, with him?”
“I don’t know. This brings us to the complication I mentioned earlier. I have a working relationship with the Amakhosi, and he is over all cats in North America. If he would step in, he could order your family to leave you alone.”
She put her hand to her blond hair, just above her ear, and pushed it to her back again, so it wasn’t around her face. “Unfortunately, knowing him as I do, I don’t believe he’ll act as we’d prefer. He’s a total misogynist when it comes to ruling his lions. I see no reason for him to side with you instead of your father, particularly since the genetics would provide for a potentially healthy line of golden tigers. However, it’s possible you can come at him from another angle. You’ve met Ember?”
I nodded. “Dementor’s girlfriend.”
“She’s close to the Dragon King, who’s close to the Amakhosi.” She shook her head. “Now that you’re thinking of her, I can see that you’re more acquaintances than friends, so she may not be able to help. However, Dementor and Sasquatch are close, so it’s possible we can work it from that end.” She took another breath. “As I was saying earlier, Sasquatch has asked me to find you. This puts me in an untenable position. I have not responded to him yet, but when I do, I don’t wish to lie to him. If you’ll be taking one of the easy options, I can tell him you are safe but can no longer live under this identity and must leave. If you’re going to try to get help from His Majesty the Amakhosi, then we should enlist Sasquatch’s help.”
“Your people still have my phone.”
“You can’t safely use it. Your family will look into your new identity, now that they know it, and will use every possible means to track you to your next identity.”
A door opened and the gazelle walked in with a box containing the same kind of phone mine had been. “Purchased through one of our corporate accounts,” the gazelle told me. “You’ll appear to be an employee. Please do not log onto your email or any social media site. Also, do not check voicemail for your other phone. You can’t in any way be Natalie James or Kitty again.”
I accepted the phone from the gazelle with a nod, and she turned and left.
“She isn’t aware of the Amakhosi option. If we pull it off, you’ll be able to pick up with your old phone. For now, you are Rita Butler, but it’s a temporary name placeholder until a new identity is purchased for you — depending on where you choose to go, should you need to leave.”
“I can call Squatch from this phone without putting me or him at risk?”
“No. I need to call him. If his people stop looking for you, your family might abduct one of his brothers and torture the information out of them. It isn’t likely they’ll give you up, but let’s not put the bikers into a position to be harmed by your family.” She lifted her phone, spent a few seconds finding Squatch’s number, and connected the call with speakerphone.
He answered with, “Thank goodness, Brooke, I need your help. Me, not my brothers. I can’t offer a favor from them, but I can offer one from me. Multiple favors from me.”
“We can’t have this conversation over the phone. Come to the coterie house. Make sure you aren’t followed. Do not bring your phone. Do not arrive via motorcycle.”
She disconnected before he had time to respond.
Chapter Sixteen
Squatch
I went to the country club in a roundabout way, so I could be certain I wasn’t followed. The extra ten minutes to get there about killed me, but no way did I want her looking in my head and seeing that I’d cut corners with safety. She trusts me with information about her coterie house, and it’s important I protect that trust.
I drove my truck through two acres of woods to wind my way up her driveway and to her house. I exited my vehicle and strode to the front door, which opened as I neared. A tall, skinny, wraith of a man motioned me in, exactly the type of butler you’d expect to invite you into a vampire’s home.
“Madame is expecting you.” He walked to the wall under the flying staircase, put his palm to it, and the walls shifted. “Someone at the base of the stairs will show you the way.”
Right, because the second sub-level of this place is a fucking maze. Brooke has another office on the third floor — one with two walls of windows and a beautiful fucking view. Why was she underground?
I made it to the bottom of the stairs, and the male snake-shifter was waiting for me. I nodded to him, but he didn’t acknowledge me at all. He merely turned and started walking.
I followed.
After a dozen seemingly random turns and several minutes of walking, he finally stopped by a door and motioned towards it. I turned the knob, stepped in, and was floored by the scent of my kitten.
She stood and ran to me, and I caught her mid-air. I looked up and met Brooke’s gaze.
She loves you and you love her. It would be so much easier to relocate her to Australia if this weren’t the case.
“Brooke says you know what I am!?” Her voice cracked, and she squeezed me, her small arms around my neck, her legs around my waist.
My gaze was still on Brooke, and I asked her, How did you know?
I needed to know why Mad Dog was making arrangements for someone else to feed me. I sat in a car near your clubhouse and read everyone’s thoughts one night. I immediately knew who the stripper named Kitty was, since I arranged for her to get the job in the first place.
I shifted Kitty so I could walk and hold her, and stepped to the loveseat at an angle to Brooke’s chair. I sat with Kitty in my arms and held her.
“Is there a game plan?” I asked with my voice so Kitty could hear as w
ell.
And it was Kitty who answered instead of Brooke. She listed a bunch of options that would take her from me, and then told me that Brooke had an idea for how to get the Amakhosi to force her father to back off and let her live her life.
“It isn’t just her father,” Brooke said. “Three ambushes are looking forward to her offspring, and hundreds of tigers are involved. He’ll have to make them all happy.”
“Three?” Kitty asked.
“Your mother’s ambush has been promised your fifth cub.”
Every muscle in my body tensed, and I had to push my wolf down. “Explain.” It came out as an order, and I forced myself to add, “Please.”
Kitty moved and readjusted until she was sitting beside me, leaned against me.
“At one point, our kind was down to seventeen tigers. We’ve built back up to nearly three hundred, but there was a chokepoint, genetically, that we haven’t recovered from. Too many cubs are born with birth defects, and yet, our elders won’t allow any of us to have babies that are impure. We must only mate with those of our own kind.”
She went silent, and Brooke picked up the explanation. “They sent a few of their teens to college to learn about genetics in the nineties, and then kidnapped one of the top geneticists in the field five years later, when they realized a simple degree in the field wouldn’t be enough. The scientist was released after more than a decade in captivity, but the tigers have blackmail material, so he still works for them.”
Kitty’s scent and expression told me she hadn’t known about the kidnapped scientist, and I wondered if Brooke had known about this before or after Kitty had come to her. Likely after.
“This scientist,” Brooke continued, “along with the genetically trained tigers, were responsible for matching partners up for most of Kitty’s generation. She’s a direct product of gene manipulation, as is the young man she’s been matched with in Texas. Kitty has five brothers, but she’s the only offspring with the correct markers. Same with the boy in Texas. It’s believed that their children will be born without any of the markers that lead to birth defects. Their children will be able to mate with a large percentage of the available tigers of the opposite sex without worry of cleft palate, scoliosis, or any of the other maladies afflicting their kind.”
“We have several tigers who are now experts in the field. I didn’t know they’d kidnapped someone to get a head start.” Kitty’s inhale seemed shaky, but she’d re-centered before she exhaled, and it was smooth. My kitten was so fucking strong.
“I was a virgin before I escaped.”
I scented that as a lie, and I looked down at her, wondering what was up with that. She’d never lied to me before.
“Vaginally, I was a virgin. I’d been trained in oral and anal sex, so my family could be certain I’d know how to pleasure my assigned partner — so I wouldn’t bring shame to the family.”
Before my anger could fully take hold, Brooke continued with the explanation.
“Except for descendants of a few lines, intense gene testing is frequently done before tigers are allowed to have sex. The concept of romantic love and attraction is forbidden in the ambush. Couples are put together based on science. Most tigers are fine with this, since they don’t mate for life. Kitty, as you can imagine, wasn’t okay with it.”
“My family is...” Kitty shook her head, stood, paced. I could see the tiger. Pissed and uncomfortable. I missed her warmth, but I understood she had too much energy and needed to move.
“We’re kind of like the Kennedys — royalty in a society that prides itself on not having royalty. The fact that I ended up being the first genetically clean of our kind, and the fact I’m kind of the princess because I’m my father’s daughter, made me something of an icon. A thing and not a girl just trying to grow up and figure out who she is. Who she wants to be. I wasn’t allowed much of an education since I wouldn’t be getting a job. I’d be too busy having babies, after all.”
I could hear the frustration and anger in her voice, but I could also feel and smell it in the air. The room reeked of her resentment and bitterness.
“The boy I was matched with is younger than me. Having sex with him was going to be all kinds of wrong. He’s been allowed to fuck people in the throat and ass, but never a pussy. So, we’d both be kind of virgins, but not really.”
“It’s possible the Amakhosi will order her to go home and have babies,” Brooke said. “It’s also possible he’ll decide to stay out of it. I think there’s a slim chance he’ll take her side and tell the ambush to figure something else out.”
“Even if he steps in, I can’t see my father ever letting this go. I’m his property. I belong to him. He’s never going to just let me be who I want to be if he knows where I am.”
She sat in a chair, crossed her arms, and met my gaze. “My name is Valentina Olivia Aurelio, and I am a golden tiger, also known as an aureum tiger. In the wild, golden tigers have cinnamon in the place of the black. However, our kind are varying shades of gold, brass, and copper. My hair as a human has these colors in a specific pattern, and it’s why I can never be seen without my hair dyed. I was born in my mother’s ambush, on the shores of Lake Ontario, not far from Niagara Falls, and I was raised in my father’s ambush, near the Waccamaw River and the Atlantic Ocean, in South Carolina.
“Waccamaw River?” Brooke sounded as if she had an idea. “The Dragon Queen was raised near the Waccamaw River.”
Kitty nodded. “Yes. My father is friends with the old Swan King. I met her a few times as a child. She’s older than me. I went to a couple of balls at the Swan Castle, and she was kind to me.”
“How did that work?” I asked. “The other supernaturals knew of your family? Tigers don’t usually live in ambushes, right?”
“In the wild, a mother and her cubs is known as a streak of tigers. Like herd of horses or gaggle of geese. Lions gather in prides, but tigers are usually solitary. In rare instances, tigers form a group, and this is called an ambush of tigers. Our kind live in ambushes.”
“But no one knows what kind of tigers you are?”
“No. They don’t even know there’s a group of tigers living in the area. We limit the number of us who go out into society. My father has a home outside the ambush he can invite people to, should he need to entertain. Mostly, only the boys who are destined to go to college are allowed to venture past our walls. Father took me to the ball for political reasons. I had specific things to talk to the other children about, to try to gain information.”
She blew out a breath and sat in a chair, her arms crossed over her chest. “For decades, the cubs born with birth defects were killed as soon as the defect could be seen — at birth for those with cleft palate or severe scoliosis. For those with defects that show up later, it was especially heartbreaking for the families. Our ambushes have always been little fortresses, in case we were discovered, but once it became necessary to make sure mothers couldn’t leave with their cubs under any circumstance, security was tightened even more. The balls were a special treat, and it’s possible I’d have never wanted so badly to escape if I’d never seen the world outside our walls.”
A possible plan formed in my head, but I didn’t dare get Kitty’s hopes up. I tried to project the facts as I knew them to Brooke. I started with Ember’s background, and the fact that there’s a therapist who specializes in supernaturals who’ve been in some kind of captivity, and who have baggage they need to work through as a result. I added in the bit about her also being a therapist who works with people in the BDSM lifestyle.
And then I showed her the coup de grâce. This therapist is in a relationship with the Amakhosi.
Brooke sat back in her chair and smiled. I decided to say what I was thinking out loud, since I knew she could hear it in my head. “That smile is just creepy on an eight-year-old’s face. I know you can’t help it, but you have to understand why it’s so unsettling.”
Her smile grew a little bigger. An eight-year-old excited about the
prospect of chocolate sprinkles on her ice cream. “I’m aware, yes.” She turned to look at Kitty beside me. “Your wolf may have come up with a solution. Would you be amenable to sitting down with a therapist and going over your life history? Telling her the traumatic bits with your uncle?” She rolled her eyes. “She isn’t likely to arrive without her friend Kendra in tow, so I can only tell you that I want you to do this because we need to be certain what you feel for Sasquatch is true, before we go to battle with an entire subspecies of tiger.”
And I’ll need to wipe your memories of why we’re bringing her in, Brooke told me.
I sighed. I didn’t want my memories fucked with, but I knew she was right. You have my consent, though I ask that you restore those memories once everything is finished.
If I can do so without risk of a political firestorm, I will.
She met Kitty’s gaze, and I knew they were telepathing as well.
Chapter Seventeen
Kitty
I didn’t want to do this, but Brooke had convinced me it was important. I rode to Chattanooga on a small plane, and thank goodness it was owned by a vampire and wasn’t a commercial one, because I shredded a portion of the seat, and bent the arm. It took everything in me to keep from turning to tiger in the plane and destroying everything.
I didn’t know how I’d get back to Birmingham, but it would not be in the belly of a plane.
Which means when I first met Kirsten, I was a wreck.
“Oh, you poor thing. Will you allow me to touch your arms? I can help you settle, but I need your permission.”
I nodded, and she grasped my wrists with her soft, human hands.
And just like that, I felt better. It was as if she’d replaced my energy with that of someone else.
“What did you do?”
Squatch (Rolling Thunder MC Birmingham Book 4) Page 13