The Tiger's Innocent Bride

by Reina Torres

  Shoving a finger into Devlin’s chest, the shorter one wasn’t ready to drop the issue. “You can’t hide behind your whore-”

  The whole room lost its oxygen. Not a single man took a breath as Devlin’s eyes changed from a light brown against white to amber and black.

  To his credit the man in the suit realized the danger he’d put himself in and tried to pull his hand back.

  But that wasn’t going to happen.

  Devlin’s hand trapped the man’s finger against his chest, bowing the digit until he could feel a raw tension just under the skin. Just a tiny bit of pressure, the lightest movement of his hand, and the man’s finger would break, snap in at least two places, maybe more if Devlin felt like it.

  “You are speaking… about my wife.”

  The deadly calm in Devlin’s voice was belied by the hot puffs of breath against the man’s face.

  The smaller man looked from side to side, his face a pale white above the drab grey of his suit. “Will someone get this mongrel off me?”

  The sergeant was the only one to speak. “You just don’t know when to stop, do you?”

  “I work for the Federal Government,” he gasped, “Get him off me!”

  Even the man’s partner hesitated at his side.

  The sergeant held up his hands in surrender before fixing his eyes on Devlin. “Just don’t kill him or spill too much blood, Officer Kerr. Unless you want to grab up a mop.”

  Devlin was fighting his tiger as much as his own rage, but he managed to clear his eyes of the tiger’s influence before he addressed his Watch Commander. “Yes, sir. I understand what you’re saying.”

  The sergeant’s smile was genuine, and Devlin could almost feel the other officers in the room relax just the slightest bit.

  With a hot breath seething between Devlin’s clenched teeth he released the man’s hand. “It is because of my wife that I’m not going to kill you right now. Make no mistake, my wife is a pure and loving soul. If you choose to say anything like that, ever again, I will find out about it. And you will pay for the insult.”

  Cradling his hand against his chest, the man tried to muster up a glare through the wince of pain that was stuck on his face. “Are you threatening me?” He looked at his partner, knowing better than to look for help in the room, but his partner didn’t quite meet his eyes. “I want it on the record that this… this-”

  “Careful, Mister.” Markham and his partner had moved closer to Devlin.

  “This officer,” he spat the word sending an arc of visible spittle into the air, “threatened my life.”

  “And we all heard you call his wife a nasty name,” a female officer that Devlin recognized as Officer Helen Davis stepped out of the group and gave the man a cold glare. “If he needs someone to hide your body, I just might help.”

  The skinny suit grabbed at his partner’s arm. “Let’s just go.” He handed Devlin the card he’d reached for earlier. “My apologies for his comments. This whole,” he waved the card in a vague arc of movement, “situation has a lot of people unsettled. We really do need to talk to you… soon.”

  Devlin gave him a stiff nod of his head. “I’ll call you.”

  The two men walked out of the building and Devlin didn’t know what to expect from the other officers.

  Having a circus in the reception area wasn’t fun for anyone, but given the other two rings outside the front doors, Devlin was ready for someone to try to throw a punch at him.

  More than half the room emptied out moments later, with many of those throwing daggers at him with their eyes, or mumbling curses under their breath, not realizing that Devlin could hear them all.

  Then again, maybe they wanted to be heard. They certainly had their opinions about him.

  Yet, it was the officers that had stayed that got his attention. Almost a dozen uniformed officers made their way to him across the old linoleum covered floors. None of them were shifters. Human, every single one, but when they held out their hands in greeting even though he’d already met them and worked beside them, he shook each hand in turn, knowing that they were almost meeting him for the first time. Now he had no secrets from them and that felt good. That felt really good.

  Chapter Eight

  Out on patrol with his partner, Officer Gary Chin, he’d had a rather uneventful day. Oh, they’d answered their fair share of calls, criminals had crimes to commit regardless of what was going on in the rest of the world.

  And the knife wielding tweaker didn’t care if Devlin could sprout fur or fang if he was standing between him and a fix. Only a diehard few of the paparazzi were still hanging on behind their patrol car at 4pm when the call came in.

  Gary was behind the wheel when they pulled a U turn, burning up their tires on the asphalt.

  For a few heart-wrenching moments, Devlin considered ditching the car and his skin and heading to the Mayor’s mansion as his tiger, but Gary’s voice kept him calm… -ish.

  That, and a text from the Mayor kept both sides of him in check.

  Paige is fine. She says be careful

  When Devlin heard the crack of his phone case in his palm, he dropped the phone to the seat beside him.

  “She’s okay,” he spoke to no one in particular, “her father said she’s fine.”

  Gary nodded and dodged through an intersection with white knuckles hands on the wheel. “I’ll get us there, Dev, give me a minute.”

  Devlin fairly vibrated with worry. “I know.”

  Gary spared him a glance. “I know the feeling.”

  Nodding, Devlin watched the world zip by.

  “I got a call when my wife was seven months pregnant. She passed out at work and they rushed her to the hospital.” Gary huffed out a breath. “It was touch and go with her for a bit, but in the end, they were both fine. That’s what happens though, when you love your wife more than life itself.”

  Devlin’s instinct was to correct Gary’s assumption. They were married yes. They were mates. But love?

  His thoughts dissipated as the gates loomed up ahead.

  If anything, the crowds had almost doubled since the last time they’d left her father’s house. But this time the police and private security guards had a better handle on the crowds, keeping the driveway open.

  Gary pulled in and shot up the driveway to the front door.

  Before the car had even come to a complete stop, Devlin was out the door and running for the steps. The housekeeper had it open before he got to the entry and pointed him toward the formal living room.

  The doors bounced off the wall, but Paige didn’t even turn her head. She knew the sound of his footsteps, leaned toward the heavy weight that sat beside her on the couch, and turned her face up to kiss the face that leaned down toward her with a growl deep in his throat. “What happened?”

  She smoothed her hand over his forearms and felt the tight-flex of his muscles under his skin. Paige tucked her head down and found the thick column of his neck with her lips.

  Paige breathed him in and felt tears finally fall onto her cheek and curve around to soak into the t-shirt he wore under his uniform.

  “Baby, can you tell me?”

  When she lifted her other hand to touch his cheek, he turned his head and froze.

  Paige winced. She had forgotten to keep her bandage hidden from him. “It’s not,” she gasped in a breath, “it’s not as bad as it looks, Devlin.”

  Her husband looked up and saw her father and another man sitting nearby. “Tell me.”

  The doctor looked like he was about to have a heart attack so her father spoke up. “Paige was helping me all day with the City Council and answering questions from a couple of federal agents who said,” his tone sharpened, “you had been less than helpful-”

  “What does that have to do with Paige’s injury?” Devlin pulled her onto his lap and held her gently in his arms. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

  She shook her head. “I was meeting with a group of community leaders, answering questions
about you and what you’ve told me... and shown me about shifting and your tiger.” She flushed. “Not everything, but what you and I had talked about. We were just starting to make headway when I leaned over to give a pen to one of the ladies from the Sylvan Civic Center and someone saw your mark.”

  Devlin cuddled her closer, and Paige wondered if he needed her to be near him as much as she needed him near her.

  “She just changed before my eyes,” she explained, “not like a shifter changes. It was like she went from concern to rage in a heartbeat.

  “I don’t know where she got a pair of scissors, but they weren’t the kid safety scissors, they were shears and wicked sharp. All I remember is putting my arm up to stop her and then that’s all I remember until I came to in here-”

  “Came to?”

  She felt Devlin shake and was thrilled that she was sitting on his lap to keep him still. “They’d already bandaged my arm,” she tried to soothe him.

  “What about your head?” He looked over her shoulder. “Did someone take her for an X-ray? An MRI?”

  The doctor shook his head. “She said she was fine.”

  “Damnit.”

  Before she knew what he was up to, Devlin was on his feet with Paige held carefully in his arms.

  Her father’s doctor came running after them. “I was already here talking to her father, so I did the exam.”

  “She was unconscious. When that happens, you need to check for a head injury.” Devlin crossed the foyer and she saw another officer standing near the door. When he saw them coming, the officer lurched for the knob, twisting it open a moment later.

  Paige turned to catch that man’s eye and noticed his smile as Devlin carried her out the front door and under the portico.

  Letting the door go, the officer jogged down the steps to open the back door of the cruiser. “Usually you’re supposed to carry her ‘in’ over the threshold not ‘out.’”

  “Yeah, well, Paige and I haven’t really done things in the usual order.”

  That got a laugh from her right before she wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, so she wouldn’t fall as he got into the car.

  The officer shut the door and jogged around to the other side of the car and slid into the driver’s seat. “Well, that was an ‘Officer and a Gentleman’ moment if I ever saw one.”

  Paige felt Devlin sigh as he lifted his hand to touch her cheek and lay her head against his shoulder.

  She eased into the odd position in the car. “Sounds like your partner is a romantic.”

  Looking up to meet her eyes in the rearview mirror, Gary shook his head. “Romantic enough to watch movies with my wife online.”

  “Smart man.” Paige brushed her fingertips over the front of Devlin’s uniform. “Aren’t you still on duty?”

  Devlin put his hand over hers and held her fingers still. “The Watch Commander put us on this call.” He lifted her hand in his and brushed a kiss over her fingertips. “What happened to the woman who did this to you?”

  She heard the sharp edge in his voice, felt the odd crawling sensation that seemed to roll under his skin and wondered if that was his tiger. Was the animal so very close?

  “The private security guys that my father hired have her isolated somewhere in the house to ask questions.”

  “Did they give you any pain meds?”

  She shook her head and smiled. “They don’t do much for me. Oxy didn’t even touch my pain levels after surgery a few years ago so I just grin and bear it.”

  There was a growl deep in his throat. “Don’t say that.”

  “Say what? The thing about Oxy?”

  “The grin thing.”

  “What?” She laughed and felt some of the ache in her arm ease up. “The grin and b-”

  Another growl answered her, and she laughed again. “Ah… is that a shifter thing? Get all jealous when the little woman talks about another species?”

  She felt something nudge her hip and felt Devlin’s sudden in drawn breath before he whispered in her ear. “There’s nothing little about you, Paige, and I’m glad.”

  “Really?” She felt an odd satisfaction that she was having this kind of effect on him. “You better hope your partner doesn’t hit a big bump or pothole or you might be singing a different tune.”

  “I can handle it.”

  She drew in a breath of her own and swore she could almost feel the heat rising off his skin. “Well, keep that in mind because you’ll likely spend all night checking in on me if this is anything like the last time I hit my head,” she saw the narrowed look in his eyes. “It wasn’t anything really,” she rushed to explain, “when my mom and I were car-jacked she fell against me after she was… anyway she fell against me and I hit my head on the side of the car… or maybe the ground. I can’t remember. But that night my dad sat with me in the hospital and even though he tried to stay awake to check on me, the nurses came in like clockwork and I just made sure he didn’t fall off the chair they’d set up for him by the door.”

  For a moment she sat there in silence, until the car turned down a street and she had to grab on to Devlin for support.

  “You know,” she tried to shrug off the old memories, “I should probably sit in a seat and put on my belt.”

  His answer was to hold her tighter and press a kiss to her forehead. “I’m not about to let you go yet.”

  She sighed. “A little possessive, hmm?”

  “Realistic,” he grumbled at her, “I leave you alone for a few hours while I go to work protecting the city and you end up hurt.”

  Gary turned the car down the back street of the hospital toward the Emergency side-entrance.

  “You can’t stay with me all of the time, Devlin.”

  Just as the car brake was set, Devlin nipped at her neck with his teeth. “I can damn well try.”

  Devlin watched his wife sleep beside him before he turned to look at the clock on the bedside table. It had been a whole six minutes since the last time he’d looked. Six minutes that felt like six hours.

  Concussion.

  Hairline fracture.

  The words made his skin crawl and his heart contract painfully.

  While they’d done the MRI at the hospital, Devlin had a conversation with the Mayor and his hired security head. The woman, they’d determined, was a crackpot. One of those end of days, apocalypse whack jobs who had a tin foil hat in her purse for just those moments when the aliens came down hunting for snacks.

  And Paige?

  Well, the woman considered her a werewolf or something. The shears had been silver, meant to kill Paige before she could ‘change into the devil and eat the innocent.’ The woman had won herself a seventy-two hour hold at the nearest sanitarium. At the very least.

  She’d been attacked and nearly killed because of him.

  Her life had turned into a circus because of him.

  Devlin felt a hand skim over his knuckles, fingers gliding between his. Lifting his gaze, he saw Paige looking at him with an odd quizzical expression in her eyes. “Hey.” He leaned over and brushed a kiss on her forehead. “You need your sleep.”

  “You mean before you have to wake me up to check me again?” Turning on her side she gave him a wincing smile. “What’s wrong?”

  His eyes were focused on her face, realizing just how close he’d come to losing her again.

  “Nothing.”

  She squeezed his hand in hers. “You’re lying to me, Dev.” She sighed and brushed a kiss on the tips of his fingers. “You’ve got something going on in your head.”

  He forced a smile on his lips. “Nothing, babe.”

  She groaned and shifted her shoulders and suddenly he was all over her. He pulled his hand from hers and gentle traced his hands over her shoulders, her arms, and then back up to her face, smoothing his fingers over her skin and into her hair.

  “Are you in pain?”

  She giggled and his shoulders slumped in something like relief. “Are you trying to kill me?”
/>   “Nope, but if you want to kill me, you’ll apparently have to get in line.” Lifting her arm, she cast her eyes to look at the bandage on her arm. A light red stain was showing over her injury. She set it down again and met his eyes. “There’s something in your head and you’re not sharing. I thought we were supposed to share those things.” She took a long deep breath. “Isn’t that the point of being your mate?”

  He shook his head. “I’m supposed to protect you. I’m supposed take care of you, not get you killed because you’re with me.”

  “This ‘mate’ thing is a pain.”

  Devlin felt something akin to panic rise up in his chest, and his Tiger started to pace inside and shove against their link. Neither of them liked her tone or her words. “You’re not leaving me.” Even as he said the words he felt a stab of fear right through his heart. Maybe it was best…

  He answered the feeling on instinct, a conflicting line of thought from his tiger pushing him to act. And oddly enough the tiger won from deep inside of him.

  Devlin shifted on the bed, leaning his back against the headboard, gently lifting her until he had her sitting between his legs, his arms wrapped around her body, her head leaning back on his shoulder. “I won’t lose you.”

  He felt her tense in his arms, felt her shift slightly against him to cuddle deeper into his embrace.

  “You won’t,” she sighed and started to drift back to sleep, “because I won’t let you.”

  “I never said you would.” She lifted her hand and looked at the bandage. “When it happened, I wasn’t thinking about blaming you. I still don’t. You didn’t make that woman lose her mind and attack me.”

  “She attacked you because of me. Because of what I am.”

  Paige settled against him, her luscious body fitting against him perfectly. “She attacked me because she wanted to. People get mad, they act out. They beat people, they abuse them, they even kill them over… anything. My mom was killed because someone needed our car. They waved a gun at her, but she was smart. She kept her wits about her and stepped away like he said.