“I mean you have another little one.” Tiger pointed at her abdomen. “Soon.”
Another chorus of What? rang around the kitchen, and this one Carly joined. Janine blushed as red as Althea’s wine.
“How did you know?” Janine asked, stammering a little. “I’m about two months. I was going to tell y’all—I got the message when we were driving, but I wanted to wait until we were with Simon.”
Althea and Zoë abandoned Tiger to surround Janine with hugs, kisses, and exclamations of delight. Carly’s mom left the sink, gave Carly a quick hug on the way, and went to Janine.
“Congratulations, Janine,” Carly said, warming all over. Another addition to the family, another niece or nephew to cuddle. Janine deserved the happiness.
Carly saw Tiger watching her. She knew what was going on in his head—if she ran with him, she’d have to leave her sisters and Janine’s new baby. She’d likely never get to see the newest Randal-Johnson.
The lump in her throat was hard. Carly lifted her untouched glass of wine to her lips, tears stinging her eyes.
“Carly is also having a little one,” Tiger said.
Althea’s and Zoë’s voices shut off with a snap. All eyes turned now to Carly.
“Oh my God,” Althea said. “Ethan’s? What a mess. I thought you were on birth control.”
“I am,” Carly said, her body numb. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
Tiger rose from the couch and walked to Carly, putting his hands on the kitchen counter and looking over it to her. “The babe is mine. But it’s there. Only a day old.”
Carly tried to answer, but her mouth wouldn’t work. Tiger seemed to know things he couldn’t possibly, so she didn’t scoff at him, tell him he was wrong, that it was too soon to know.
She looked at the wineglass she’d raised and quickly set it down.
“If that’s true, you’d better get off birth control right away,” Janine said. “It could damage the baby, and you.”
“I’m not . . .” Carly stopped. She and Tiger had been having wild and wicked sex, making love more often in the last two days than she had with Ethan collectively over two years.
Shifter sperm, especially Tiger’s, was probably stronger than a human’s. Even if her birth control was meant to keep eggs from falling where they could be fertilized, she wouldn’t be surprised if one of Tiger’s sperm had found one and dragged it out of hiding.
The girls had gone back to talking to Janine, perhaps thinking Tiger was joking. Carly knew he wasn’t. Tears slid from the corners of her eyes, and Tiger reached out and brushed one away.
* * *
At five A.M., Tiger had silently slid open the window of the guest room, preparing to climb out, when he heard Carly’s whisper, felt her touch.
“No.”
“I’m going.” Tiger’s answering whisper held a hint of growl.
“And I’m coming with you.”
Carly. Tiger briefly closed his eyes. If he left her behind, she and his cub would be safe. Liam would protect the cub—Tiger trusted him for that at least.
And if he left Carly behind, Tiger might never see his cub. A fist around his heart tightened.
He remembered the glimpse he’d had of his son—a tiny mite wrapped in a blanket, with a thin down of black hair on his head, touched with the faintest brush of orange. The surge of pride and love Tiger had felt had never been equaled, nor had the surge of grief when they’d told him the cub hadn’t survived.
That Carly was pregnant, he had no doubt. He saw the glow inside her. A Shifter cub, not a full-blood human, not the offspring of the dickhead Ethan. The cub was Tiger’s.
“I’m coming with you,” Carly said stubbornly. “I have money, you don’t. I know how to travel and live in the world. You don’t.”
“I will run as a tiger, hunt.”
“Oh, sure, because no one will notice a Bengal running through the Texas flatlands. You have transportation? I don’t call that thing in the garage transportation.”
“Walker is waiting for me.”
Carly seized his arm. “Wait. What? You can trust him? How do you know he’s waiting?”
“We arranged it while you were sleeping.”
“That’s it. I’m definitely coming. I even packed.” She reached into the shadows beside the bed and pulled up a shoulder bag to go with her purse. “Let’s go meet Walker.”
Tiger stopped arguing—this was taking too much time. He would let Carly come with him until he could convince her to go back home. Play it by ear, he’d heard Connor say. How anyone could play an instrument with their ears, Tiger didn’t understand, but Connor had explained that the saying meant decide as we go along. Tiger was good at doing that.
Carly smiled her triumph when Tiger nodded, closed the window, and gestured for her to follow him out of the room and downstairs. Janine and Carly’s mother had gone home long ago, and Althea and Zoë were fast asleep in their respective rooms—Tiger could hear their quiet breathing behind the doors.
The house was dark except for a night-light in the kitchen. Althea hadn’t set the alarm so they could open windows to the softer air of the night, and now the door opened and closed without a sound.
Slinging Carly’s bag over his shoulder and taking her hand, Tiger led her down the walk to the street, keeping to the shadows of trees and shrubs. The night was pleasantly cool, the humid highs of the afternoon gone.
If Tiger hadn’t been planning to hide for the rest of his life, the walk would be pleasant. Carly’s warmth stretched to him from her hand, and the new life inside her called out to him.
Carly didn’t speak. She didn’t look back either, or cry. She was resilient, his mate.
At the bottom of the street and around the corner lay a twenty-four-hour convenience store. Tiger scanned the lot with its few cars, and the man who was crushing out a cigarette and walking inside. Tiger didn’t see Walker, but Walker, like Shifters, knew how to keep out of sight.
Tiger kept Carly in the shadows as he looked around, but he didn’t scent Walker. He smelled the musty smell of humans inside the store, the tang of exhaust as cars went by, the dregs of the man’s cigarette, and the sudden, sharp smell of fear.
Beside him, Carly gasped. “Oh my God, that guy’s robbing the store.”
Tiger looked to where she did, and saw the store clerk taking things out of the register with quick, jerky movements. The man who’d put out the cigarette was now holding up a long weapon.
Carly hissed in frustration. “And damn it, you crushed my cell phone.”
Tiger silently lowered the shoulder bag to the ground. “Stay here.”
“Tiger,” Carly whispered frantically as Tiger pulled on the baseball cap over his hair and started across the small parking lot. She didn’t follow though. She was that sensible.
Tiger kept to the sticky shadows of the building, walking through noisome trash until he slid inside the front door. The clerk saw him but made no indication.
Tiger moved noiselessly up behind the lanky man holding a shotgun. Why did humans like guns? Did they fear so much to fight close to?
He stood right behind the robber, who never heard or sensed him until he felt Tiger’s body warmth. Then the robber jerked, and the gun went off, but not before Tiger had grabbed the weapon and yanked the barrel to point upward. The clerk dove behind the counter, and the slug lodged in the ceiling.
Tiger jerked the weapon out of the robber’s hand and snapped it in two. At the same time he kicked the robber’s feet out from under him, sending the startled man to the stained floor.
The robber started up, a knife in his hand, so Tiger broke his hand. Screaming in pain, the man collapsed to the floor again.
Tiger broke the shotgun into a few more pieces and poured the bullets onto the man’s chest.
“You can call the police now,” Tiger said to the clerk.
The clerk climbed up from behind the counter and leaned on it. “Thanks, man,” he said, gasping. “I tho
ught I wasn’t ever going to see my kids again.”
“Go home and hug them,” Tiger said. “You should work somewhere safer.”
The clerk shrugged, giving him a scared smile. “No choice.”
“There’s a bar just outside Shiftertown. Go there and tell Liam to hire you. Tell him Rory sent you.”
“Liam. Right.” The clerk was wide-eyed and terrified.
Tiger looked at the robber, who was holding his hand and spewing curses and threats. Tiger leaned down, carefully raised the man’s head by his hair, then thumped it against the floor with just enough force to knock him out. Then he walked out of the store.
Carly waited for him where he’d left her, her eyes wide with worry. “Tiger, don’t do that. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
Tiger looked her over. “I think you are too young for them.”
“I don’t mean . . . Never mind. I hear sirens. We need to leave.”
“The clerk called the police. I think he will be all right, and maybe find a safer job.”
Carly studied him, one hand on her hip, which gave her the sexy, saucy look. “You know, if you go around saving everyone in the world, you’ll never stay off the radar. I mean,” she added hastily as he started to ask what she meant, “you’ll be found.”
Tiger frowned at her. “But those people would be safe.”
Carly drew a breath to answer, then she shook her head. “Tiger.” She touched his face, her eyes filled with something he didn’t understand. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Raise our cub.”
She gave him a worried look. “You can’t possibly know I’m pregnant. Janine, yes, if she’s already two months gone, but it doesn’t work that way.”
Humans, who’d invented everything from traveling to the moon to cures for deadly diseases, could sometimes be so blind.
Tiger pressed his hand to her abdomen. “I know. You hold our cub.”
Carly’s eyes filled with sudden tears. She pulled Tiger down to her and kissed him, the kiss slow, warm, and loving.
Tiger drank in the sensation of her lips and tongue, the taste of her, her warmth. He eased away, smoothing her hair.
“Walker is here,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Walker picked them up in a dark blue SUV that looked as though its best years were behind it. His gaze fixed on Carly as Tiger climbed into the backseat and pulled Carly in beside him.
“You didn’t say anything about bringing her,” Walker said.
“She didn’t give him a choice,” Carly said, slamming the door and fishing for a seat belt. “Is this your SUV? If anyone finds out you’re helping Tiger, they’ll be looking for it.”
“I bought it today,” Walker said. “Used, for cash. You can thank me later.”
“I’ll thank you now.” Carly leaned against Tiger. “Where are we going?”
“Away.” Walker put the SUV in gear and pulled from the dark curb where he’d halted. “There’s water in the cooler, and enough food for a couple of days. Sandwiches and chips and stuff. I figured he wouldn’t remember to pack food.”
“Tiger didn’t pack anything,” Carly said. She closed her eyes, happy for the downtime.
“I don’t need anything,” Tiger said.
His chest rumbled pleasantly, and Carly snuggled into the vibrations. He was an incredible man—an incredible Shifter. Strong and sometimes terrifying, but he’d gone inside the store to help the clerk without a second thought. Before that, he’d pulled Carly from a wrecked car, then kept bullets from hitting her. She’d come out of the incident without a scratch.
And his reward for being so amazing? People shooting at him and wanting to Collar him, cage him, test him, torture him.
Well, not on Carly’s watch. She’d find a place to keep him safe where no one could hurt him.
The cynical voice inside Carly, the one she kept silent most of the time, told her that things would not be that easy. Tiger was right about the trouble she called down upon herself for going away with him or even helping him get away. She might never see her family again.
Carly suppressed that dart of pain. She’d help Tiger, and deal with the rest of her life later.
Walker was talking to Tiger. “My commander ordered the hit on you, I figured out. To see what you’d do, and to see how well you’d heal. I told you that I got curious when I read up on the Area 51 experiments and then found a new Shifter wandering around. I reported to my lieutenant colonel, because it’s his command, and unfortunately, he got interested.”
“Why unfortunately?” Carly asked.
“Because he sees Tiger as his ticket to promotion and a way out of the Shifter Bureau attachment. If he’s found a new weapon—a person who can move with stealth and survive enemy fire—he’ll be a hero. He’s the one who wants Tiger found, imprisoned, and tested, and he wants to breed more of him.”
“Breed.” Tiger’s word held anger.
“Yep. Breed. You heard me.”
“He would take the cubs.” The rage in Tiger’s voice was fierce.
“And have people cut into your brain and maybe shoot you full of holes again to see how fast you can heal.”
“He must not touch the cubs.” Tiger pulled Carly closer, his arm as strong as iron.
“That’s why I’m driving you away,” Walker said. “I’ll face my court-martial like a man.”
Carly thought about everything Tiger had told her Walker had told him. Every single person she’d met wanted to control or use Tiger in some way—even Liam, talking about putting a real Collar on him. And now they were trusting Walker not to take them right back to his commander.
Tiger didn’t seem worried, though. And because Tiger had been right about pretty much everything since she’d met him, Carly decided she would need to trust him. Not that she had much choice right now.
Walker and Tiger fell silent as Walker navigated the dark streets out of town. Carly leaned against Tiger, worn out and worried, but warmed by Tiger and his arm around her.
* * *
Walker drove them a long way west, where Tiger had never been. When he’d come to Austin, Tiger had been flown in a private cargo plane by a man named Marlo, a friend to Shifters in the Las Vegas Shiftertown.
Flying had been an interesting experience. Tiger had seen mountains rippling below him, then flatlands neatly sectioned into fields, and precise circles of green Marlo said came from circular irrigation systems. Those had dissolved into squares of brown dust with narrow roads that ended in dots. Oil wells, Marlo had said in answer to Tiger’s questions, pumping the veins of West Texas.
This drive took them farther south and west, ever west. By the time the sun came up behind them, they were in a wide plain of nothing. Brown land with tufts of brown grasses and scrub stretched as far as Tiger could see, the green hills of Austin and the river country far behind. The sky was clear overhead, not a cloud in it, and already the temperature was climbing.
Tiger didn’t mind. He looked from horizon to horizon, drinking it in. He loved seeing anything new, loved the amazing variety of the world.
Carly lay against his side, sleeping, her feet tucked up on the seat. The mate bond that connected them shimmered in the sunlight. Carly couldn’t see it, but Tiger knew she could feel it.
Another bond stretched between the two of them and the new life inside Carly. Tiger let out a protective growl. The Shifter Bureau could never get his cubs.
Tiger would not let his cubs—anyone’s cubs, for that matter—live through the hell he had. No cages, no needles, no shocks, no experiments. He might die trying to save them, but that didn’t matter. He would make sure his cub would live and grow up like the other cubs in Shiftertown—safe, protected, happy.
As the sun climbed, Carly woke and stretched. She gave Tiger a quick kiss on his cheek, then rummaged in the cooler Walker had brought and pulled out a bottle of water, droplets of moisture clinging to it. Carly offered it to Walker and to Tiger, who both declined, the
n she opened the bottle herself and drank.
Tiger watched her lips purse over the bottle’s mouth, her throat move in her swallow, her eyes close as the cool water slid over her tongue. Tiger clenched his fist and made himself only watch, not touch.
Carly waved her hand in front of her face. “I bet it’s already ninety out there. Been a while since this truck’s AC has had a tune-up, I’m guessing.”
“Probably,” Walker said. “Open the window.”
“I might. When I’m hot enough to put up with swallowing half the dust of Texas.”
Tiger hadn’t noticed the temperature, but Carly was perspiring. He’d never had to worry about another person before. If he let her stay with him, would she be cool enough where they ended up? Or warm enough? Safe enough? Comfortable? Happy? Would their cub be?
Carly rested her head on his shoulder again. “You look like you’re thinking deep thoughts.”
“I want to take care of you,” Tiger said. “Hoping I know how.”
Carly patted his arm. “Don’t you worry about that. I’m very good at taking care of myself. I’ve had a pretty good sleep, Walker. I can drive when you need a rest.”
“Thanks,” Walker said. “I’ll take you up on that in a little while.”
“I’m not tired,” Tiger said.
“Mmm.” Carly slanted a glance up at him. “You know how to drive?”
He hesitated. “Connor was teaching me.”
“I see.” Another pat, this one on his chest, and she left her hand there. “I think Walker and I should handle it.”
Tiger liked that she didn’t move her hand from over his heart. She leaned her head on his shoulder, continuing to drink the water, her tongue coming out to wipe it from her lips.
Tiger leaned to kiss her, licking the moisture from her mouth. She smiled when they broke apart, and the need inside Tiger threatened to choke him.
They drove on. Tiger checked behind them constantly, as did Walker. No cars followed, no flashing lights appeared, and no police vehicle they passed, waiting for speeders, paid them any attention. Walker drove calmly, not going too fast but also not being overly cautious, which would also attract attention. The man would make a good Shifter.
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