The Cougar's Trade

by Holley Trent

  “Why did you come here?” Miles asked.

  “Because they wouldn’t look for me here.”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “You know.”

  Miles cut her gaze to Hank. He sighed, stood, and backed toward Tito, whose attention still flitted between the newcomers and the teen at their feet.

  “Do you mean your family?” Miles asked.

  Ralphie nodded. “Listen, I don’t want any trouble. I just want to finish my last year of high school without all the Cougar crap. I’m sorry for what I did, but Edgar made me. I know you don’t believe me.”

  Miles shrugged. “It’s not up to me to believe you. We don’t have a belief issue right now, but a trust one. What do you expect us to do with you?”

  “I dunno. I hoped Mason would figure something out. Don’t tell my folks I’m here. Please.”

  “Where are they?” Tito asked.

  “I dunno. I don’t wanna know. I ran as soon as my cousin turned her back. She would probably know where they are. They called her. You gotta remember, they left me here. They took off without me.”

  “That could have been part of the plan all along,” Hank said.

  Miles shook her head. “I don’t think so. Cougar or not, he’s a kid. Can you imagine yourself participating in such a scheme when you were seventeen?”

  Hank let out a breath and raked his hair back from his face. At seventeen, he’d been too busy hating life to think about ruining anyone else’s. He was the typically selfish seventeen-year-old upset at his hopes for his future being doused by the reality at the time. Go to college on a full ride and earn what some saw as a useless degree, or stay at home and help his father build his business. He’d given it a lot of thought, but the decision had already been made for him all along. For better or for worse, he still wasn’t sure, but he did know one thing. Few people were so unredeemable at seventeen that they didn’t deserve a second chance. Hank wondered if he’d ever have his.

  Miles, brow furrowed, moved back a few paces. “No. That’s not right.”

  “What’s wrong, Miss Miles?” Darnell asked.

  She shook her head and moved back a little more. “His…his expressions. I’ve been watching you all. Trying to make sense of your moods. Something’s wrong.”

  “Miles, Ellery just left,” came Hannah’s voice from behind them. “Can I talk to you about—”

  She didn’t have time to get out whatever she was going to say, because Cougars scattered like bowling pins and it was impossible to tell where the chaos started—to know where to look.

  Hank shoved Miles toward Tito and converged with Mason toward the newcomers. He didn’t know who was who, only that the four were now two against two and going at it in what Hank knew all too well was a fight to the death.

  It was exactly the sort of shit they were trying to keep out of the glaring, and why they’d closed themselves off to newcomers for so long.

  He tugged off his clothes, let fur overtake his skin, and dropped to all fours to get into the fray, and now he caught a hint of what Tito had smelled. Coyote, but only on one cat. They would have to sort the mess out later. There was too much going on all at once. Suppress, then question. His mother was out there somewhere, and kids, and his mate, and his mate was—

  With his fangs descended into the scruff on one big cat’s neck, he fixed his gaze across the pasture to Tito’s truck.

  Big cougar shaking small cougar.

  Miles. There’s Miles.

  Why is she screaming?

  He released his bite on the animal’s neck, and started shifting back to two legs. Was this a distraction to get him away from his mate? They couldn’t have her. Family over glaring.

  But there was another cougar on its side nearby, and Hannah in Miles’s arms with blood soaked through her shirt.

  It took a moment to make sense, and a moment for the suppressed cat at his feet to rear back up. Hank didn’t have time to defend himself, nor did he need to. A small brown woman snatched the cougar from the ground, and in her hands, it morphed.

  “Do not think everything is as it seems, Second,” she said in an eerily familiar voice. “You have learned that lesson with my Ear, sí?”

  The animal with the unusual scent went from coyote, to cougar, to man, to nothing, as did the one Mason tussled with.

  Mason shifted back and stood from his crouch, and the two stranger Were-cougars stood in wait behind him, bloody, but more or less upright. “What the fuck were those?”

  “Things I’d hoped not to see in this country.” She wiped her hands clean on her simple dress. “Every so often, I can intercede. This has gotten far out of hand. This old lady would like to have some peace.”

  She stormed toward Tito and the others, her energy familiar, but exponentially hotter. More powerful.

  Hank followed her, relieved that Miles was standing to greet her.

  “Am I right that she’s Lola Perez?” Mason asked as he ran alongside him.

  “Yeah. I think so. I guess she’s been in the glaring all along.”

  Oddly, that didn’t scare him as much as it would have a month ago. The goddess seemed to know what she was doing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Miles didn’t know how long she’d been sitting in the waiting room with her knees tucked against her chest and her face pressed against her knees. Time had no significance as she drifted in and out of sleep, fretted and raged. She felt nothing, and then the weight of the world.

  Her burden. She hadn’t been enough. She tamped down La Bella Dama’s mental protestations again and again. The lady had picked the wrong vessel to be her emissary, and Miles could accept she’d failed. Whether or not she’d be able to forgive herself for it was another matter entirely.

  At a gentle grazing of fingers across her shoulders that became a more substantial weight, she picked up her head and tipped it back to find Hank behind her, looking down. “She’s awake again.”

  Miles put her feet to the floor and tried to stand, only to fall back onto her seat. Her feet were numb, legs too wobbly after hours of being unused.

  He moved around the row of chairs and knelt in front of her. For a while, he just stared at his clasped hands. When she tried to stand once more, he pressed his palms to her knees. “Sit. She doesn’t want to be seen right now.”

  “She’s angry.”

  “No. Ashamed. I don’t mean she wants to keep you away. She just doesn’t want to be looked at.”

  “It can’t be that bad. I’m a nurse. I may spend most of my time in labor and delivery, but I’ve seen what violence looks like. I’ve cared for people who’ve been badly injured. It’s not going to shock me, whatever it is.”

  “I don’t know how bad it is,” he said softly. “No one has seen her except Mason and Ellery. Ellery convinced her to let Mason pour a little energy into her so she wouldn’t scar so badly, but that was after an hour of arguing. Ellery said she needs a little time.”

  “Sean doesn’t have time.”

  “I think we’re all aware of that, sweetheart.”

  Such a small, careless word, but for a moment, it made Miles think that perhaps all wasn’t lost between them after her stupid interference, but then he dropped his hands and clasped them. Of course he’d be disappointed in her. All he’d wanted in the first place was for her to stay put—out of the fray. But she had to go stick her nose where it hadn’t belonged. She should have let Hank and Tito deal with Ralphie, but she couldn’t help hoping the boy was being honest.

  “Don’t blame him. You were right to caution restraint. The boy did what he did out of fear. And you should interfere. It is your purpose,” Lola said, but even she seemed to have given up hope now. Miles just couldn’t muster up her usual optimism.

  “Do you want to go get something to eat?” Hank asked. “It’s late. You’re not doing Hannah any favors by starving yourself. I don’t think she’ll be upset if you get a hot meal and some sleep and come back later.”

  “I was too s
low,” she whispered. “I wanted to trust him.”

  He cringed and let out a long breath. “But you figured it out, and no one would have expected you to be able to in the first place. It’s not important right now. Everyone who matters is accounted for. We’ll deal with the Sheehans and the other shit later. Tito and Lola will deal with the out-of-towners for the moment. They thought they were helping us by being there.”

  “Helps that the Sheehans make enemies wherever they go.”

  Hank shrugged. “I think they all recognized each other and were waiting for the right time to get the jump on the others. Trust Tito to sort it out.”

  “What were those other things?”

  “Lola said they were shifters who don’t have a specific animal. She’d thought they’d been eliminated hundreds of years ago. Apparently, a few integrated with the Coyotes, and one of them might have been what Darnell got into that bar fight with last month.”

  “God, I invited them. I spread the word about the meeting.”

  “Yeah, you did, but stop trying to find ways to blame yourself. If I’m not blaming you, you shouldn’t blame yourself, either.”

  His open expression said he was being sincere, but she’d overstepped, and now there was a very good chance her friend would be sprouting fur and a tail soon. Of course Hannah would be angry, and Miles deserved it.

  “Miles, they would have found another way, trust me.” His voice was soft and soothing, but that seemed to ramp up her anxiety all the more.

  He pressed his hands to her cheeks and just looked at her, his green gaze penetrating, but tender. “Hey, princess, what are you afraid of, huh? It’s all right.” He stroked her jaw and under her chin, and she involuntarily breathed away her anxieties, as if he were compelling her to. Maybe he was. She didn’t really understand the psychic tethering between a Cougar and his mate, but it followed that if her touch soothed him, the same would work in reverse.

  “We’re a little shaken up, but that’s normal for Foyes. We’ll figure it out. One of the Washington State Cougars said Edgar offered them a lot of money to infiltrate us, and they refused it. They headed down here to suss us out, though, figuring Edgar would try something else. They didn’t really want to get involved because they’re dealing with their own glaring shit, but they didn’t want the Sheehans to pull one over on us, either. I guess their reputation preceded them.”

  “But Darnell…”

  “Shh. Don’t. Darnell is used to getting into fights, just not as a Cougar. He’ll be okay. He’s not mad at you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he had a smile on his face when he was brought in on that stretcher. I think he thought he was Superman. Ralphie went a little wild, but Darnell wouldn’t let him get close to you, did he?”

  She sighed. “He wouldn’t even let Tito get a swipe in, but it should have never happened in the first place. I made myself a visible target, and Hannah took the attack that was meant for me.”

  Hank furrowed his brow and gave his head a hard shake. “No. What makes you think that? Sweetheart, no one was gunning for you. No one would touch you because you have too many people watching your back. You can’t go anywhere in this town without Cougars and witches and, hell, even the rare demigod, getting in the way of trouble coming at you. No one would hurt you on purpose. It was a fluke. He saw an opportunity and took it. Hannah was convenient.”

  “You’re just trying to make me feel better so I’ll leave.”

  “Yeah, I want you to get up and come with me so I can get some food into you. I want you to feel better, but you should know me trying to improve your mood is making mine a lot worse.” He laughed, but it was as mirthless as she’d ever heard.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Making people afraid to hurt you was supposed to be my job. I thought people would see you, think of me, and decide you weren’t worth the confrontation. Instead, people regard you without thinking of me at all. I never expected that to happen. I never…expected to feel so bruised by it.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Have you ever seen a cat that didn’t have an excess of ego? It’s why we take so many stupid risks. We just assume we’ll land on our feet, and if we don’t—hey, we’ve got eight more lives to use up, right?”

  “You don’t really.”

  He scrunched his lips and shook his head. “Nah. We’re pretty durable, though. It’s why I sometimes wonder if you’d be better off as a Cougar yourself, and I always talk myself out of it because it’s not for you.”

  She agreed, but she wanted to hear his logic. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I guess for one thing, you’re probably the most compassionate woman I know. I never want you to be in a situation where that changes. Being Cougar would change that. You’d be more calculating, but less tolerant. All head, much less heart.”

  “My heart seems to get me in trouble wherever I go.”

  “And gets you out of a fair amount of it, too, huh?” He brushed the pad of his thumb along the side of her jaw and pulled up her chin as he stood. “You should never try to tamp down your openness and your willingness to connect to people. The Cougars need that. I…need that.”

  “You?”

  “Come on. You can’t tell me you didn’t think it once or twice. I can bottle up pretty much emotion that comes my way, and I’m just not the effusive sort. You probably think I don’t feel anything.” He pulled her to her feet, and she wriggled her toes in her shoes. Circulation had returned to her feet, and she took a few tentative steps toward the waiting room exit.

  “You feel,” she said. “I can tell you do. It took me a long time to figure out how you express yourself, though.”

  He chuckled—an honest, happy chuckle this time—and let himself be pulled through the door. “I suppose you don’t expect to ever get swept off your feet.”

  “I wouldn’t expect it.” She didn’t expect anything from him, actually, just respect. Just like the Foyes, she was learning to go with the flow.

  “I’m parked in the garage. Only four flights down. We can take the stairs.”

  “I could stand a little cardio right now.” The best medicine for her stress had always been movement.

  He stopped her in front of the emergency exit and put his back to the door. “This way. The front staircase is actually the long way around to the garage. Don’t worry. No alarm is going to go off. The sticker on the door lies.”

  “Oh.”

  He pushed it open, and she followed him through and down the first flight of stairs. At the landing, he turned, scooped her by the waist, and pressed her against the wall. Tilting her face up for her to look at him, he furrowed his brow again and shook his head.

  “Hank, what’s wrong?”

  “You should be swept off your feet. If I did it now—if I carried you the rest of the way—would it be corny?”

  She didn’t have an answer to that. She was too busy watching the color of his irises change from that neon yellow-green to their more human hue as his catlike pupils dilated and ebbed in the low light. Who would be able to think?

  “Would you even let me?”

  She closed her eyes so she could think. “Yes.”

  He positioned his hands as if to lift her, but she batted them away. “You don’t have to do that to make me feel better.”

  “I’m doing it to make me feel better. I’m calmer when you’re close. You make it easier for me to see through all the distractions.”

  “I don’t believe you. I think I stress you out more than anything.”

  “Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?”

  “He gets it,” Lola whispered.

  When Miles saw the woman again, she’d have to ask her how she did that. Was she hopping in and out of her head and seeing what Miles saw, or watching them invisibly?

  “Shouldn’t you be my first concern? I know we don’t have a typical relationship, but I’d like to try to give you something that resembles one at
least a little.”

  “I won’t have you upending your life for me. I’m just—”

  “Just what?” He scooped her up, and she hardly even protested before slipping her arm around his neck. She’d be lying if she said him holding her so close didn’t feel right, or that the careful embrace didn’t confirm to her that his sex had been as much about his need to touch and connect in a way he just couldn’t with words as it was about having a primal need met.

  He was domineering and aggressive and enthusiastic in bed, but he also had that Cougar curiosity. The way he watched her, awaited her responses, suggested he cared about his effects on her body and her mood.

  “Just…just a Southern girl who could do with a little less optimism,” she said as he descended down the final landing.

  “Someone should have some optimism. It has a far different flavor from ego, and I gotta say I like the taste of it a lot better.” He deposited her onto the front seat of his truck and reached for her seat belt. He stopped halfway through the motion and seemed to fixate on the track.

  “What are you thinking about, Hank?”

  “Just wondering what would have happened if me and Sean didn’t know to trade.”

  “I didn’t want Sean.”

  “I would hope you still don’t. You only get one Foye.”

  “I like the one I have.” Her mate. She wasn’t just his. He belonged to her as much as she belonged to him.

  “I’m glad you do. I wanted you for so long.”

  She didn’t realize her jaw had fallen until Hank tamped it up and bussed her lips with his own. “That surprises you?”

  “You wouldn’t even look at me.”

  “I didn’t want to let myself get attached to the idea of having you if you weren’t going to be mine. I didn’t want to be resentful over the goddess’s choice.”

  Lola made a harrumph before exiting. Miles could tell it was just for a while—a gentle mental swish of her skirts as she departed to see to other concerns and to give Miles some much-needed privacy.