Royal Guard Tiger (Shifter Kingdom Book 2)

by Zoe Chant

  Even as this distance, Tristan thought he saw Pete’s gaze flick to the scars Peter’s claws had left.

  But this would be different, whether Tristan knew how to show it or not. As long as everyone, including Tristan, had judged Peter right, he would behave differently this time, even if Tristan was stone-faced as ever about it.

  Then there was no more time to think or plan.

  Poppy tugged the black scarf from where it covered her hair, folding it neatly before she tucked it into her bag. Without saying more, she turned away.

  Tristan turned on his heel to follow, several steps behind. He stopped once he was near enough to see Daniel. Poppy had her raincoat off and folded it over one arm, waving to Daniel in a big, ostentatious gesture with the other.

  “There you are!” She called out. “I’ve been looking and looking for you!”

  “This is where I told you to meet me,” Daniel snapped, moving toward her in long strides. “Come on, let’s get to security, the flight’s leaving soon.”

  “Hmm,” Poppy said, moving gracefully to stay out of his reach. “Where are we going, exactly? Where’s my boarding pass? I’ll need that before I can go through security.”

  “I told you where we’re going,” Daniel said sharply, trying to herd her further inside. “Come on, we’re going to be cutting it bloody close as it is.”

  “I want my present first,” Poppy said, standing her ground. “I mean, I assume that’s for me, it’s not really your color.”

  “You can have your present when you’ve earned it,” Daniel snapped, keeping a firm grip on the pink bag. “Now come on, we need to get in line for security.”

  “Not without my boarding pass I don’t,” Poppy repeated. “And definitely not until I know where you’re planning to take me, and why.”

  Daniel’s hand shot out, Poppy jerked back a half-step, and Tristan, moving faster than either of them, stepped in between his mate and the man who would dare to touch her against her will. He caught Daniel’s wrist in a hard grip and held it immobile. Just that. Nothing more, though his tiger roared for it.

  Daniel looked startled for a second, and then his features twisted in a sneer. “You again. What the fuck do you think you’re—”

  He looked past Tristan to Poppy as some degree of understanding dawned. “You lying little—”

  Tristan adjusted his grip, tightening his hold and twisting just a little, enough to stop Daniel from saying something Tristan would be happy to make him regret. He saw Daniel register the pain, and Tristan’s strength, and there was a flicker of some recognition in his eyes.

  “You.” And then Daniel seemed to go berserk, lunging in at Tristan with a howl of rage, the arm Tristan wasn’t holding on to going back for a punch. Tristan was aware of quite a number of running footsteps, toward them and away from them both, and things happened very fast after that.

  *~*~*

  Chapter 8 - Poppy

  Poppy was happy to leave the actual fighting to people who knew what they were doing with it. She had a pretty good pointy elbow for breaking an unwanted grip, but when it came to throwing punches she knew she was out of her league.

  Also, Tristan looked really good. For a second it seemed like Tristan would just make Daniel back down again, but then Daniel threw a punch and things got chaotic. People were screaming, other people were running—Poppy looked around for Daniel’s guys and saw two of them rushing in, along with Peter, Tristan’s fellow secret-agent, and airport security, plus a blond man in a suit followed by two guys in what looked like police or military uniforms...

  Poppy’s first instinct was to slip away, blend into the crowd and avoid getting mixed up in this. But she had started it—and it wasn’t over yet, because she still didn’t know what was in that bag.

  Daniel had dropped the bag when he tried to punch Tristan. The fight was turning into a brawl—the guy in the gray jacket tried to jump Tristan from behind, but Peter was suddenly right there, getting in his way and getting punched before he could get a firm grip on the guy.

  No one was watching Poppy. No one else seemed to have noticed the pink bag. It got kicked a little further away from the men fighting as more uniformed men rushed in, and Poppy circled around and picked it up, backing away to the shelter of a pillar before she pulled out the bouquet and tissue paper that filled the top of it.

  There was silky underwear below that, a bunch of it, looking cheap and in colors that might have looked good on Sasha but wouldn’t do Poppy any favors. Probably all Sasha’s size, too, Poppy thought, absurdly annoyed. She pushed the lingerie to one side, trying to see what was below that.

  Her hand brushed something solid, wrapped up in cloth and paper, and her breath caught.

  Not a bomb, and not drugs, and not stolen jewelry. She knew that, even if she didn’t know how she knew. What was in the bag was worth more than money; she could... she could feel something there, something almost magnetic, in the way it seemed to draw her hand to it.

  It needed her.

  Poppy didn’t think. As if she’d practiced it a hundred times she flipped her raincoat over the bag to hide it, pulling up the wrapped-up objects—there were two or three, bundled carefully together. She shrugged her bag off her shoulder and moved the wrapped-up objects into it under the cover of her coat. She folded the raincoat on top, between the straps of the bag, and then stood and returned the bag to her shoulder, wrapping her arms around her waist and peeking out from behind the pillar toward the fight.

  It was pretty well over now—Daniel and his two guys were face down with their wrists bound in plastic zip ties, and Tristan and Peter and the blond man in the suit were talking to the airport security people.

  Tristan turned and met her eyes, as if he’d known exactly where she was the whole time. He looked perfectly calm, his hair maybe a little more unruly than it had been, as if nothing had happened. Peter, beside him, was flushed pink and gesturing wildly.

  “Poppy,” Tristan said softly. “Come here, they need to see the pictures on your phone.”

  Only two of Daniel’s guys had shown up. They had to find the third one. Poppy nodded and hurried over, aware of the weight of her bag on her shoulder all the time, aware of the stolen things that needed her, needed to be protected.

  She pulled up the pictures and handed over her phone to Tristan. He put one arm protectively around her, so that her shoulder bag was tucked between them. That was all right, then. Tristan would help her keep them safe. She leaned into his shoulder, feeling the aftershock start to arrive. Tristan was talking in a language she didn’t understand, and then—

  “Poppy? Poppy, look at me—she needs to sit down somewhere quiet.”

  “The embassy car,” someone said—the blond one in the suit, Poppy realized. He had a little pin on his lapel, the flag of Denmark. “It’s just outside—we can sort out the rest of this without the young lady.”

  Tristan turned, guiding her back out of the terminal building. Poppy was vaguely aware that an assortment of people in uniforms were flanking them—she hoped Tristan wasn’t in trouble—but then there was a long black car and Tristan was guiding her inside, following her in. The door closed, and they were alone.

  “Well,” Tristan murmured, brushing her hair back behind her ear. “That was quite a start to the day, wasn’t it?”

  Poppy nodded. She ought to tell him why she’d done it, ought to tell him about the things in her bag—she had to protect them—but right now she was shaking, and Tristan was protecting her, and the things along with her. So maybe that was enough for right now.

  “That’s it,” Tristan murmured, cuddling her close. Poppy breathed in the scent of him and tried not to be aware of anything else. “Catch your breath. You’re safe now.”

  *~*~*

  Eventually, when Poppy had pulled herself together a little, she and Tristan went back into the airport, this time to a security office. With Tristan on one side and the Danish embassy official—Poppy hadn’t caught his exact title—on
the other, everyone was polite to her, listening intently while she explained about Daniel being a bad news ex of Sasha’s, and Poppy interfering because she was worried that he had some ulterior motive for luring Sasha away to Paris.

  “Istanbul, as it turns out,” one of the airport security guys said, shaking his head. “He had two one way tickets. You were right not to go anywhere with him, miss. We saw from the texts on your phone that he was still trying to get the other young lady involved as well, so we’ll be checking up to make sure she’s safe and see if she knows anything further that can help our investigation.”

  “Oh,” Poppy said. She opened her mouth to say that she didn’t think it had really been about what they seemed to think, but then she would have to explain about the... the things in her bag. They would take them from her, and they wouldn’t understand. Poppy didn’t even understand, really. She just knew.

  She was distantly aware that this was crazy, but the instinct not to volunteer anything to the police, to get herself away, was stronger. They asked her a few more questions about Daniel and Sasha, promised to return her phone as soon as they could, and asked her to stay in London for the next few days so that they could contact her if they needed to ask follow up questions.

  And that was it. It was really over; she went back out to the big embassy car with Tristan and the man from the embassy, and they drove away from the airport. Poppy leaned into Tristan’s side and tried to ignore the feeling that nothing was over at all, that it was only just starting.

  *~*~*

  It was somehow surreal to arrive back at Tristan’s posh hotel again after all that. She’d never really seen it in daylight. It was only midmorning now, though Poppy felt like an entire day ought to have gone by in the airport.

  The hotel room was pristine again when they entered, Tristan’s suitcase now neatly positioned on a luggage stand by one wall, Poppy’s discarded dress from the night before hanging in the closet. Poppy didn’t even want to guess what they’d done with her underwear—probably hand-washed it and put it away in a drawer with a scented sachet.

  She peeked into the bathroom and saw that her hiking pack was now likewise resting on a luggage rack, while all the stuff she’d dumped out had been laid in tidy formation on the bathroom counter. Her bunny’s head poked out of her fleece, which had been rewrapped around it so that it looked like a swaddled baby.

  Everything seemed to be where it was supposed to be, but Poppy still had to do something about whatever she had stolen from Daniel, whatever it was that she was supposed to protect when she didn’t even know what it was.

  “Poppy?”

  She turned to see Tristan standing near the connecting door to Peter’s room. She didn’t think Peter had come back from the airport with them, though she honestly wasn’t sure she would have noticed unless he was sitting in Tristan’s lap.

  “I have to make a phone call,” Tristan explained. “Work, you know. They’ll know I called out the embassy liaison, and they’ll want to know why.”

  “Oh.” Poppy felt her face heat. “I’m so sorry, Tristan, I didn’t mean for you to—”

  Tristan shook his head. “You’re safe, that’s all that matters. I promise, I didn’t do anything I’ll be in trouble for. But I have to report in. I hate to leave you, but...”

  Poppy shook her head and gestured behind her. “I think I’m going to try out this gigantic bath. Maybe you could join me once you’re done making secret agent phone calls?”

  Tristan gave her one of his tiny smiles and nodded. “As soon as I can.”

  He stepped through into the adjoining room, closing the door firmly behind him, and Poppy stepped into the bathroom and shut the door, dropping to her knees and setting her shoulder bag down, yanking out everything else to unearth the wrapped-up objects at the bottom.

  It was a single package, wrapped in a blue silk scarf. She pulled it into her lap, gently tugging the folds of cloth free.

  The scarves fell away to reveal three paper-wrapped shapes. Poppy frowned down at them in her lap. Even though she couldn’t see them yet, they seemed mismatched somehow. She touched each one in turn with the palm of her hand, and realized that two of them had the magnetism she had sensed, drawing her touch to them, while the other was inert, lifeless.

  She unwrapped that one first, and stared in bemusement at a statuette of a bear, a little bigger than her two fists together. It was made of some unpolished crystal, almost colorless. It had the cool density of stone or glass, and it was competently made—she could see the bear’s claws and teeth, and little marks to indicate the way the fur lay. She could see that it was hand-made, nothing that came from some souvenir factory, but there was no guessing how old it was. Given how Daniel had acted and all the cloak-and-dagger, she had to assume it was terribly old, and therefore terribly valuable.

  Still, she couldn’t help knowing that it was the least important of the three. She wrapped it back up in paper, settled it in her lap, and carefully unwrapped the next object.

  Her breath caught as she stared down at the tiger in her hands.

  Technically it was a carving of a tiger, much like the carving of the bear. This one was shaped from a pale amber-colored crystal, slightly clouded.

  It didn’t feel like the bear at all, though. It felt like the statuette was just a mask over the reality of an actual tiger. The weight of the massive beast, the heat and power of it, all was somehow balanced in her palms on a bed of crumpled paper.

  She wanted to touch it, to stroke her finger down the smooth line of the back, shallowly incised with a tiger’s stripes. She somehow knew that she would feel fur, and the motion of the tiger’s breathing. But she felt too that it would be... rude, or something worse than that. Sacrilegious, to pet a tiger—especially this tiger—as if it were a housecat. This was no one’s pet, nothing tame. This was a tiger.

  No. The tiger.

  And it was watching her. She felt its attention, heard a low growl that almost took the shape of words.

  With shaking hands, Poppy wrapped the tiger back up in paper, thinking frantic apologies to it for caging it so. She lay it in her lap beside the carving of a bear that had no real bear inside it. She didn’t even dare to unwrap the third statuette. She could feel the weight of it without that, and she didn’t think she could withstand the presence of a... a lion, or whatever the next thing might be.

  She looked around the bathroom, a little surprised somehow to find herself still in the same place she had been a few minutes before—or however long it had been, while she held the tiger in her hands.

  Tristan would come looking for her soon. She still had no idea what the statues were, but at least now she knew what she had to research—where had the statues come from, when were they made and by whom? If she could figure that out, she could take them home where they belonged.

  She wrapped them up again in the blue scarf and slipped them into her pack, hiding them with her clothes. She put the rest of her important stuff back into the pack while she was at it, letting that thought rattle around in her head.

  She needed to take them home where they belonged. She still didn’t know how she knew that, why she felt it so strongly—she didn’t know what the tiger had been trying to say to her—but at least it was a goal, something she could figure out how to do.

  They came from somewhere. They were old, and important—magical? Mystical? Had they been worshiped, somewhere? Why was the false bear with the real tiger and lion? Had they been looted by archaeologists or treasure hunters from their native home? If she could find out where they came from, she could take them back to where they were supposed to be.

  For now, though, she closed up her pack and slipped out of her clothes. For now she was going to run a bath and wait for Tristan to come and find her.

  The tiger and lion and bear were safe for now, and she would take them home as soon as she could. As soon as she had any idea where that might be.

  Home. She shook her head and sat down on the edge of
the huge tub. I’ve never belonged anywhere. What do I know about going home?

  She would just have to figure it out.

  *~*~*

  Chapter 9 - Tristan

  Tristan took a moment, after he shut himself in Peter’s empty hotel room, to drag his thoughts away from Poppy to what he had to do next.

  What he had told Poppy was not untrue—the involvement of the embassy staff would be reported to the Captain of the Guard sooner rather than later. Tristan had briefly reported in the night before, telling Magnus that Poppy had been located and was safe for the time being, so the news that some incident had occurred involving Tristan and Poppy wouldn’t come as a total shock to Magnus.

  But Tristan owed a report to Signy, who had sent him in search of her sister, and Kai, his oldest friend. He had a lot more to tell them than just a mission update.

  He didn’t know how to say it and make it sound the way it should, the way it felt, but there was no more time to put it off.

  He tapped Kai’s name and listened to the phone ring—only twice, and then Kai said, “Tristan? What’s happened?”

  Tristan closed his eyes, the corners of his mouth twitching up just a little. “Nothing. Nothing bad, anyway. But I need to tell you what’s been happening—you and Signy, if she’s near.”

  “Of course,” Kai said, and Tristan heard the soft sounds of two people sitting down close to each other—snuggling, almost. He felt his distance from Poppy acutely and forced himself to focus.

  “Tristan?” That was Signy. “Is everything all right?”

  “That depends on your definition,” Tristan replied slowly. “And whether it includes the prospect of having me as a brother-in-law.”