by Reina Torres
“But not me. I stood there, staring at him like I didn’t have two brain cells in my head. He waved the gun at me. He yelled at me to get away from him. I just stood there like an idiot.”
Devlin set a hand on her shoulder and leaned in to take a long deep breath of her scent. His tiger purred in the darkness.
“And there was my mom. She knew I was going to get myself shot or worse. Before the man could pull the trigger, she was there.” She swallowed hard and he could see how much it pained her. “I know I saw what happened, but I can’t remember much after that. Flashes of pictures in my head. Sounds, like the bullet firing from his gun. The spinning lights from the police cars. And when my father came to see me in the hospital I couldn’t look him in the eye. I couldn’t tell him all the awful things going on in my head.”
“Hey,” Devlin tucked her closer against his body and she felt him thickening against the curve of her hip, “you know it wasn’t your fault, Paige. That man-”
“Was just like the woman today, someone lashing out at the world and I was just the one that caught her attention. If you don’t blame me for my mom’s death, then you can’t blame yourself for today.”
“Maybe not for your attack,” leave it to his mate to show him a different way to look at it, “but I wasn’t there to stop it, Paige. I wasn’t there to keep her from hurting you, and-“
She shifted in his arms, pressing her lips against his. It stopped the argument, at least his argument.
He had his hands full with his wife, full of his wife, and he made good use of her distraction, enjoying how she became the aggressor and how she tugged at her clothing, trying to remove it with her one good hand.
He let her try, but when she grumbled against his lips and gave him a pointed look, he helped her out of her clothes and then devoured her, piece by delicious piece.
Chapter Nine
When Paige opened the door to her father’s office she stopped short just inside. “Jameson?”
Looking up from her father’s desk, the Chief of Staff held up a few fingers to hold off her question as he spoke on the phone.
“Yes, yes, Mr. Stone. Thank you again for your support. Yes, I’ll let the mayor know that you’ll be standing with him as we work through these issues. Thank you, again.”
When he set the phone down he leaned back in the chair. “Good to see you, Paige.” She felt his gaze travel down her arm and the loose sleeve that covered her down to her wrist. “Looks like you’re feeling better.”
She nodded slowly. “Better.” For some reason she didn’t want to tell him that her wound had all but healed the next morning. And for a moment, she wished that she’d put the bandage back on for show. Instead, she kept her arm extended careful not to attract his attention. “What was that call about?”
He seemed a bit shocked at the question. “The call?”
“Yes, the call with Council Stone. What is he working on for my father?”
Jameson’s smile was a little too tight for her comfort.
“All of the changes that your father is making in our government, in our laws. It has to go through the Council. Having their acceptance. Having their help will go a long way to making this transition seamless.”
“Seamless?” She couldn’t help the sound of a scoff in her laughter. “We have protestors in town. At least, so far, I’m the only one who was hurt,” a sobering thought washed over her, “was I?”
“Were you what?”
“The only one to get hurt?” Even saying the words felt like another physical hit. “Are other people being attacked?”
There was something in the way he sat there, silent and watchful.
“What do you know?”
Jameson set his hands on the top of the desk and used it to get to his feet. “You think you understand all of this, don’t you? You think you’ve got your education and your connections and that’s going to make it all fall into place like a puzzle. What did you think would happen when you married a mongrel?”
It wasn’t the words that staggered her, it was the anger behind the tone, the look in his eyes.
There were so many things she could have said, but she struggled to find the right ones and swiftly gave up the ghost. “You don’t like shifters.”
“Like them?” He swept a hand out toward the windows. “I don’t like a lot of people. I don’t care one way or the other if they exist. If they give me a problem doing my job? Then we have an issue.”
“And just what is your job? When you signed onto my father’s campaign, I thought it was just because you believed in him.”
That seemed to take him by surprise. “You don’t think that’s all of it… now. You changed your mind?”
She thought about the question and then shook her head. “To be honest, I didn’t think about you much. Running for office was about my father. He wanted to do it to make a difference in the community. When you signed on to help, to be honest. I was so happy that someone believed in him.”
“I still believe in him, Paige.” He gestured to the phone. “Day in and day out, long, sometimes sleepless nights. I do what I do for the office, Paige.” He leaned down and rested on his knuckles. “All of this drama that you brought into the city, all of the backroom deals and public protests. Everything that’s distracting us from the real change that your father wanted to be made in Sylvan City come from this three-ring circus.”
“This ‘drama’ as you put it, wasn’t my choice. I was just standing there near my father. And remember, Devlin came to save us when no one else could. We may not have chosen for shifters to be in the public eye, but they are now.
“And we have to learn how to accept them as part of our community. That’s what we need to do, circus or not, it’s our circus.”
Her first visit on her list was Cage Gamble. It wasn’t hard to find the man and his business. When Devlin had mentioned the jaguar’s name in passing, she’d remembered it. A simple internet search on her phone was all it took to find that he owned a popular fighting venue in an older industrial area of Sylvan City. Of course, that was just a nice way of saying that people went there to either beat people up for money and applause, or they went to pay money to watch bloodshed.
Neither option sounded very good to her at the moment, but it was the place to start her search. If memory served her correctly, Cage was one of the men who had come to talk to Devlin the night they married. If he was, then he’d be able to give her another location or name to continue on.
It reminded her a little of the descriptions of French Resistance spy networks. It might just be that hard as well. So far, the shifters had lived under the radar, using their anonymity as their first line of defense.
As she turned down a side street in one of the industrial areas of Sylvan City, she leaned forward to look through the windshield. The warehouses on either side of the street all looked alike to a certain extent. Aluminum siding walls mixed in with cinder blocks painted in a handful of dull colors made the whole area look like a study in tints and tones of beige.
One more turn and she saw some color variety up ahead. The dead end at the end of the street had its own style which she was grateful for. She was one more nameless warehouse away from believing she’d gotten herself lost.
The end of the road was just that, the end of the road. Somewhere on a city planning map stuffed in a filing cabinet, the road continued on, likely heading for the parkway, but somehow the crew had gone half a block in the direction and then had stopped right there. Sitting on one side of the road was Jock’s Gym. The main structure had been altered from a warehouse. A couple of big picture windows and an extra door on the side leading to the parking lot. Built next to the side of the warehouse was a diner that had seen its best day back at the birth of the Mother Road, Route 66. Even though there were at least three distinct layers of paint on the outside of the two-story brick structure, it looked warm and sound enough to keep out the rain and snow when it fell, but there were only a few customers in
side.
Her destination was just on the other side of the street. The warehouse was actually two buildings connected by a patch between the two once individual structures. The main entrance had an awning over it, clean but worn and a sign across the top half of the wall. Six Guns.
“Odd, I’d guess it was a shooting range.” Turning her car into the side parking lot that ranged to the sidewalk, she picked the first available stall and pulled in.
A door just off the parking lot was locked, a CLOSED sign behind the glass, but she’d seen the street side rolling door open a few inches from the ground. She walked along that edge to one of the two doors smack-dab in the center of the wall.
Taking in a breath to gather her courage, she lifted her hand to knock at the door.
The door opened into the warehouse and Paige took an instinctive step back, the man in the entry was one of the shifters that had come to Devlin’s house after their marriage.
He didn’t seem as surprised to see her as she was to see him.
“Hello, Mrs. Kerr.”
The purr in his voice was telling.
“Hello, Mr. Gamble.”
She looked past his shoulder and saw the rows of chairs around an octagonal stage with caged walls around a fighting floor. “So, your name is more of an occupational title? ‘Cage?’”
His smile was almost more than just a twist at the corner of his lips. “That’s one way to put it.” He leaned to the side to look behind her. “Where’s your mate?”
A hot rush of something akin to anger rolled through her. It shook her from her head through to her toes. “Whoa.”
Cage narrowed his eyes at her. “What’s that?”
She laughed and tried to shrug it off. “It’s nothing, I just felt…”
“… just felt what?” Now his tone was concerned.
And she didn’t blame him. She was too.
“I’ll talk to Devlin when I see him, but I’m not here to talk about my mate.” She was surprised at how easily it rolled off of her tongue. “I’m here to find out how things are going with you… and any others like you that you know.”
Again, an almost smile. “That’s a mouthful of nothing.” Still he stepped back inside and gestured for her to follow him.
Paige didn’t think twice. She walked into the warehouse and blinked a time or two to let her eyes get used to the yellowish light that came in through the panels in the ceilings, letting in some of the light from the sun. “This is some kind of fight club?”
She heard the scuffing sound of his boots on the cement floor. When he moved into her line of sight she saw another curious look on his face.
“You’re going to make me guess what that expression means? I’m really not good at this kind of stuff.”
He shrugged. “You know you’re not supposed to talk about Fight Club.” His rough scratch of laughter was almost funny. “But yes. We host fights. It’s a brutal practice but profitable.” She saw the real curve of a smile on his lips. “Tell me what you want to know.”
“I know you’re a shifter and a jaguar.”
“That I am, tired of your tiger?”
Something inside of her growled. A low curl of sound that crawled up her throat and into the very air around them. “You keep your fur under-wraps and everything else you have.”
Cage’s cool regard heated under her gaze. The corner of his upper lip curled up as he uttered a long, slow hiss. “Something’s different about you. What is it?”
“Nothing.” She stepped away from him and her hand found the back of a folding chair. “I need to- whoa-”
She felt his hands on her, under her arms, lower her down to the chair. He was helping her and yet something curled up within her making her skin tight and her body flare with heat like a furnace.
“Paige?”
She heard the concern in his tone, but she couldn’t reconcile the feeling to the instinctive fear and frustration that rolled through her. “I don’t feel well.”
She felt like throwing up but there was nothing in her stomach.
Cage was already dialing his phone with one hand, his other hand settling on her shoulder. “You sit still.”
The call was answered, a scratch of sound. “Gamble? What are you calling me for-”
“Paige is here. She’s-”
“I’m on my way.”
When the call ended, Paige turned to look at Cage and ended up almost doubled over with a wave of nausea that almost blinded her.
Cage’s phone clattered to the floor and he placed a second hand on her shoulders.
“So hot.” She felt her skin burning and reached for the floor. “Cool,” she looked up at him and saw concern, but she also saw danger, everything felt so strange, “need cool.”
Compulsion drove her down toward the floor.
She felt Cage try to hold her up and normally she would be grateful, but at that moment she only felt anger.
“Let me go. Or help me down.”
Cage’s animal hissed in reply, but he helped her down to the floor, going down on his knees to ease her descent.
As soon as her palms touched the cement she sighed, and when her cheek pressed against the floor she almost sobbed in relief.
Somewhere above her, Cage was talking. Well, mostly he was swearing a blue streak about something. And after a while she felt oddly at ease, as if the chaotic tumble of his words was some kind of buzz that calmed her nerves.
And then he was there.
“Babe,” Devlin laid his cheek on the concrete floor, just a few inches in front of her face, breathing in her scent, “what happened?”
Paige covered his hand with hers and he struggled not to pull his hand away. It was hot to the touch, like a branding iron, not that he’d had too much experience with those in the past.
Without rising, he sent a look toward Cage. “What happened exactly?”
Cage shrugged. “I hope it wasn’t my crappy humor.”
Paige gasped a little. “A little, but not really.” She sighed. “It was strange. There were just little things. Things he said and something inside of me was angry.”
“What is she talking about, Cage?” Devlin’s tiger was ready to take a bite out of the jaguar. “What did you say to my mate?”
“I made a stupid crack about fight club, but I don’t think she’s seen the movie. It fell flat.”
Devlin’s tiger was pacing inside of him. “Like you said, it was stupid, but I don’t think the joke made this happen.” He lifted his hand and brushed her cheek with his knuckles. “She’s burning up.”
“Devlin?”
He smoothed his thumb over her bottom lip and she touched it with the tip of her tongue. She sighed, a sound that made Devlin’s skin catch fire and his body went hard under his clothes. “Paige, babe… this is not the time.”
“Cage asked me if I was tired of my tiger and something inside of me changed. Ah!” Her back bowed and Devlin picked Paige up into his lap, smoothing her hair back from her face.
Devlin bared his fangs at Cage. “You said what?”
“It was a joke!” Cage sighed. “Just an off-handed comment. I had no idea… What’s happening to her?”
“I don’t know!” Devlin passed his palm over her face and she turned her face to follow it, drawing in his scent and nuzzling her nose against his skin.
“Hmmm… you smell so good.” When she turned back to look at him, her eyes flickered green where they had been brown and a purr rolled through her chest. “Mate.”
Cage got up on his feet. “Okay, this is so not my thing.”
Devlin shifted her in his lap and used his thumb to lift her upper lip.
Cage moved away from them both. “You want me to call someone? This isn’t something I’m guessing you want 911 to answer.”
Devlin shook his head. “No. Not an ambulance. I don’t think we need this right now.”
Cage paced away and then came back. “I’ve got a doctor that’s used to shifter stuff. Someone I use for my
fighters when things go ‘off the rails.’”
Feeling the way Paige was squirming against him, her hands grabbing at his uniform, Devlin was really starting to worry. “Call him. Have him come out to my place.”
Getting on his feet was easy, carrying Paige as she was trying to rub up against him like a kitten, that was hard. So was he, if he was being honest about it.
He ignored Cage’s laughter as he walked back out to his cruiser. “You going to tell me what my mate wanted with you in the first place?”
Cage shrugged and opened the passenger side of the cruiser. As he watched Devlin set her gently inside, he leaned on the top of the door, making the car sag with his weight. “She came to ask me if anyone’s been getting hurt. Anyone of ‘my kind.’”
Confused, Devlin looked at her. “Paige?”
As he buckled her in she trailed her hand up and down his arm. “I was worried if other people… other shifters and their mates were being attacked. I wanted to know so we could protect them.”
“Well, as far as I know, my cats are all fine. All of them are alive and accounted for. Some of my fighters come from different species, I’ll ask around.” Cage shook his head. “But being worried about the furries? If that isn’t the cutest thing ever.”
Devlin glared at him. “Don’t mock my mate!”
Cage shook his head. “I’m not mocking her, Dev. Actually, I was admiring her. You certainly got lucky when you found her.” Cage’s phone buzzed and he lifted it up. “You’re in luck. The doctor’s over at Boone’s house, checking on one of the boys there.”
“Tell him to meet us-”
Paige reached out her hand and touched Devlin’s arm. “We’ll go there. We can check on the bears.”
Cage let out a long sigh. “If people start acting like her, we’re going to be regular out in the open folks before too long.”
He leaned down to look at Paige in the windshield and gave her a wink that had Devlin’s tiger begging to rip out the jaguar’s throat. “And Dev? The doctor is a she… just so you know.”