by Celia Kyle
It took Harding a while to find her. After two days of being stuck in bed, he’d shoved aside the doc trying to keep him in the infirmary and then forced himself to his feet. It hadn’t been easy, and more than once he nearly fell, but eventually he’d made it to the elevator. Damn, that Millie packed a punch. Without Tess nearby, the pain was a constant drum in his body. It seemed only her touch could soothe him, but she hadn’t returned, and the doctor had been adamant about him staying on bed rest. Of course, the beaver shifter relented after a roar or two.
Limping past the living room, he ignored the grumbling and growling from a few women that his sensitive hearing picked up. Stone had already told him the women weren’t thrilled with his presence. “Not thrilled” seemed to be an understatement. The stench of hatred scored his nose when he strode past the living room and toward the elevator.
He had to find Tess, had to talk to the woman that, by all accounts, he should despise.
Alistair’s violence against shifters had seemed unending. The man had targeted so many people Harding cared about. No, not just “people.” Women. Alistair went after the pride’s women. Thankfully, between the members of the Prima’s guards and a Council tracker, they’d been able to return the ladies to safety.
Regardless of all that, even knowing that Tess was Alistair’s daughter, he couldn’t hate his mate. There had to be something more there, something that he needed to look beyond to find the truth.
Harding pushed through the lingering pain, shoving it aside at the prospect of seeing Tess. It’d only been two days, but already he was desperate to be with her.
He followed Stone’s directions through the forest, keeping an eye out for the inconspicuous markings that would lead him to one of her favorite spots. After six months of chasing the woman down all over the mountain, the gorilla had finally marked the path. Being a gorilla, Stone’s sense of smell wasn’t the greatest. At the moment, Harding’s wasn’t either. He wished he could chase her by her scent, but that cursed ache pounding within his bones made it hard to concentrate.
Damn, it was a long walk. As soon as they were mated, he’d tell Tess that she needed a new favorite spot. One that was much closer to the compound. Like inside.
The leaves crunched and broke beneath his heavy boots, announcing his every step as he neared Tess’s haven. He consciously made noise, giving her plenty of warning that someone approached. Stone had told him of her reaction to Jackie’s behavior, the feral way she responded to the woman’s words, and he didn’t want to frighten her into reacting to him. The twists and turns of her scent hinted at different things. With every inhale, he’d tried to sort through her flavors and still hadn’t come up with an answer.
Before long he came to the clearing she’d claimed as hers. She sat on a boulder not fifty feet from him, her legs drawn up and arms wrapped around her shins while she rested her chin on one knee. Those green eyes he ached to see once again weren’t centered on him, but were staring into space, seeing everything and nothing at the same time.
Harding approached slowly, hoping not to scare her. She hadn’t turned toward him, and there was no telling whether she knew of his presence or not. The last thing he wanted to do was frighten his delicate mate.
When he was mere feet away, she rested her cheek on her knee and trained those piercing eyes on him. She was quiet, the silence stretching between them with every passing second.
And suddenly he was tongue-tied. He had thought of nothing but getting to her, being in her presence. God, he was probably supposed to talk. As if there was anything more frightening. Hell, he would rather face her father than—
He didn’t want to think about her father.
“Do you know it all stops when you’re here?” Her words were a husky whisper.
“What stops?”
Tess shook her head. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. How are you feeling?”
Harding shifted and grimaced at the shot of pain that assaulted him. He wasn’t healing from Millie’s attack like he normally would, but Stone indicated that it was because of the way he was attacked. The woman didn’t really touch his body with her power. It was all in his mind. Until it worked itself out, his brain would keep telling him he was damn near dying.
“Fine.”
“Liar.” A grin played around her lips.
He grunted. He would admit nothing.
Tess eased over and patted a bit of the stone. “C’mere.”
Harding was too tired to deny her. He stepped closer and lowered himself to the hard surface, welcoming the chance to sit as well as be near his mate. The luxurious scent of honey wrapped around him. His cock hardened and everything in him screamed with the need to toss her to the ground and claim her.
Well, almost everything. There were still parts of him that realized that while he’d had years to move beyond his past, Tess had not.
And that kept him at her side and doing his best to be nonthreatening.
The sounds of the mountain surrounded them. The rustling leaves called to Harding’s lion while the trilling of the birds teased his cat’s senses. If they couldn’t have Tess, the least they could do was chase down a few forest animals. Like a squirrel. Or a rabbit. Since two of his fellow guards had mated a weresquirrel and a wererabbit, those had been taken off the menu, but here…
A snort tore into his thoughts. “Off the menu?”
He hadn’t said that out loud, had he?
“No, you didn’t.” Tess sighed, and her shoulders slumped. “Sorry. I let things slip. It’s hard to remember with you here. Everything is so quiet.”
Harding furrowed his brow. He hadn’t had the opportunity to review anyone’s files, so he wasn’t sure what “slipped.” “Tess?”
She turned her face toward him and closed her eyes. “Can I give you the short-ish version? You can read the long one in my file later. And if you don’t wanna hang around when I’m done, let me know before you run off. Things are silent with you here, and I’ll need to prepare and—”
He placed two fingers against her lips, jerking when skin met skin and a zing of electricity bolted down his spine. His cock throbbed in his jeans and the cat purred with the solid touch. Gentle caresses two days ago had been one thing, but this was firm contact. And he loved it. Her lips were downy soft beneath his fingertips, and he forced his hand away before the urge to trace them overwhelmed him.
“Just tell me. I’m not going anywhere.” Not even Stone and all of the other guards in the mountain could get him away from her. He’d never leave…unless she told him to go. And even then…
Tess took a deep breath, eyes still closed, and began her story. “Do you know what happens when a woman is Changed while pregnant?”
Harding didn’t have an answer for her. The mere idea that a pregnant woman would be put through such a thing boggled his mind. The Change was hard on a human, their DNA mutating and transforming until a beast came to be inside them. The first shift was painful, debilitating to some, and he couldn’t imagine what it’d do to a woman carrying a child. And what about the child?
“The child lives.” Tess answered her own question. “Except she’s got a bit of everything inside her.” A delicate, shining tear emerged from beneath her lashes, and all he wanted to do was pull her into his arms. “If her mother was telepathic, she inherits that ability. And if, after the Change, she’s a Sensitive, the baby gets some of that as well.” Tess’s nostrils flared slightly as she took a deep breath. “And once the mother is Changed, the daughter is fed a hint of her inner beast.” Tess opened her eyes, and the emerald green was replaced by an arctic blue that seared his soul. “And if the animal that bit her mother is Alistair McCain, she becomes his daughter.”
Harding couldn’t breathe, couldn’t force his lungs to draw air as the full weight of her words slammed into him. They poured into his veins and thumped through him with every beat of his heart. Her pain swamped him, wrapping around him like unbreakable chains, and tightened. She wasn’t Alistair�
�s daughter and yet she was. Her scent made sense to him now: the conglomeration of so many things, so much genetic history that merged to create the small woman before him.
He sensed her inner strength and the pain of her past that seemed to be a living, breathing thing inside her. How many years had she spent beneath Alistair’s thumb? How many men had—?
Tess shook her head. “Beatings only. That was one thing he demanded of his men. It was the line in the sand. One tried once, though.” A shudder overtook her, the pain a visible thing.
“Tess…” He wanted to touch her, comfort her and hug her tight. It would be better now. He’d fix everything. His ma— He cut the thought off before it fully formed. The last thing he wanted to do was frighten her with what he desired more than life itself.
Instead, he reached for her hand, moving slowly and giving her time to pull away. When she didn’t even flinch, he encircled her wrist until he held her gently. Several of her fingers were bent at odd angles, no longer straight and slim as God had intended.
First he traced her pinky finger, the first knuckle larger that it was supposed to be. “This one?”
“Does it need a reason?”
He ignored the choke in her voice. “No, those kind of people never do. I’m just trying to understand.”
Quiet descended and he thought she’d ignore the question. Then she didn’t. “I manipulated one of the men into calling the police. It took some smoothing over, but Alistair got the cops to leave.” Tear-kissed eyes met his gaze. “The man was killed. I got a broken finger. I was eight.”
God. Damn. That tore into his heart and ripped it to shreds, but that wasn’t the only story she needed to tell. He didn’t think Tess had ever released the pain, and he hoped that he could help her lance the boil.
“This one?” He touched her middle finger and it earned him a rueful grin.
“I learned what flipping the bird meant.” She raised her other hand. She had a matching set. “Alistair didn’t like it much. I was thirteen.”
The wrist beneath his hand was also damaged, bones uneven in their healing. “And this?” He let his fingers slide over the jagged ridge. “What happened here?”
“That was the once.” Had it not been for his enhanced hearing, he would have missed the words.
“And is he dead?” He couldn’t have withheld the growl if the world depended on his silence. He took solace in the fact that the male hadn’t succeeded, but the pain she’d had to endure through the years was too much for his lion to bear. The need to slice and rend flesh nearly overwhelmed him. The cat wanted out, wanted to hunt the one who’d hurt her.
“Yes.” A hate filled gaze met his. “Now, he is.”
A wealth of undercurrents lingered in her words, a feeling he couldn’t quite grasp drifting around him. He fought to sift through the emotions sliding over her features, but was unable to identify them.
That arctic blue lightened to near white, flaring in the waning light of day. “I don’t want your pity, Harding. You needed to know about me and my past, and now you do. Simple as that.” She bit off each word, pushing them past clenched teeth.
The scent of her anger brushed aside the remnants of her pain, and he welcomed the shift in emotions. His cat couldn’t stand their woman hurting.
Though, her being pissed they could deal with. Pissed didn’t push his lion to the point of breaking free. Plus, the cat hated handling confrontations with women. It much preferred the human half of Harding deal with angry females. The beast was for protection and slaughtering and the two-legged form got to deal with the rest.
His lion was lazy that way.
“Pity?” Harding glared at her. “I don’t feel pity for you.” He growled, his beast taking an interest in the conversation now. “Rage. Fury. Those are things I feel. Pity?” He shook his head. “I pity the men who ever laid a hand on you, those that caused bruises or even a single tear, because they won’t live past a heartbeat when I meet them. The men who broke bones are gone, but the rest can fall beneath my claw.”
Tess blinked and opened her eyes wide shook her head. “You can’t go after half of Alistair’s men.”
“They aren’t his men anymore. His brother handed them over and gave the Council most of Freedom’s land when your fath—” He cleared his throat. “When Alistair was killed.”
She gave him a rueful grin. “My ‘uncle’. Yeah, he gave you the men, but what about the women?”
Harding jerked back in surprise. “The women?”
“What, you thought that only the men supported Alistair? No,” she shook her head. “There are plenty of women in the organization who believed in the cause.” She lowered her gaze, focus distant once again. “Plenty of women who can hit just as hard as any man.”
*
Tess didn’t want to see any other emotion that might drift across his features, didn’t want to see his anger or pity or whatever else he felt. She even managed to add a few reinforcements to her mental walls to shut his thoughts out of her head. Pushing away from the rock, she prepared herself for stepping away from him, getting her head ready to be assaulted by everyone’s thoughts once again.
Harding tensed when she rose, but didn’t reach for her. Thank God. She wasn’t sure if she could resist his touch if he grabbed her. She had no doubt that she’d melt into him and beg him to hold her. It’d been a near thing when he touched her lips. That gentle connection had torn at her resolve. Electricity crackled between them with that caress, tying them together if for only a moment.
Tess didn’t need him. She needed to remember that. She’d survived for twenty-six years on her own. She’d been a leaf in the wind, drifting and flowing through life, doing whatever she had to do to survive.
She took one step, then another away from the boulder. Her shoes crunched and crackled as she walked over the dried leaves and twigs that littered the ground.
The distance between them stretched, pulling and tugging at her as if it were a physical thing. Like a rubber band that continued to lengthen and thin, threatening to break at any moment. Only it didn’t break. It kept on stretching, retaining the bond even as the distance grew.
When she reached the edge of the clearing, she heard him move, his tread heavier and loud. His steps mirrored hers, the crackle and crunch falling in time while she ventured back into the forest.
Only…only silence suddenly surrounded them. The birds quieted, the soft ruffle of bushes and trees ceased, and the forest seemed to hold its breath in anticipation.
With the distance between her and Harding widening, voices crept into her consciousness once again. Rage. Pure, potent, undeniable rage assaulted her. There were no words that accompanied the feeling. No, it was undiluted emotion.
Tess stilled, her heart beating a rapid tattoo as she waited along with the trees and animals. Something was about to happen. It could be something as simple as a predator, and she’d wandered too close to his kill or… She didn’t want to think about “or.” There’d been too many “ors” in her life, and she was done with them.
The speedy thump of Harding’s approach reached her, but even those sounds didn’t spur the forest back into movement.
“Tess?” He whispered. He was so close that the heat of his body enveloped her. His warm breath fanned her ear and cheek, and she was surprised that his nearness didn’t send her into a full-blown panic.
“There’s someone…” She kept her voice as low as possible, not even a whisper, but she knew Harding’s beast would allow him to hear her.
A warm, large hand enveloped hers, gripping her gently as he slipped past her. Pale fur emerged from his pores in a rapid, undulating wave, coating him from shoulder to wrist. Even more eased along his neck and dusted his jaw. There was no telltale crunch and crack of bone, yet his cheeks became sharper, his mouth elongating while deadly fangs grew past his lips.
Harding tugged her along, pulling her in his wake as he slowly traversed the forest, weaving amongst the trees. He didn’t take her
normal route, instead traveling deeper into the thickening trees, all the while his gaze scanning the surrounding area.
Tess’s heart thumped harder and harder, pumping adrenaline-laced blood through her body, the life giving fluid pulsing within her veins. The sound drowned out everything else surrounding her, making her deaf to the world. She fought to keep her steps light, placing her feet exactly as Harding had done, matching him move for move.
His beast was ruling him now, the animal no longer lurking beneath the surface. And yet the rage pouring off him wasn’t directed at her. He didn’t turn on her, strike her, sending her flying to the ground with a bleeding lip and a new bruise. No, she easily sensed that his wrath was directed at whoever stalked them.
Every so often, Tess would hear the low brush of cloth on cloth, or the snap of a twig. Something that indicated they were still being followed.
This was no natural predator.
Suddenly, they turned northeast instead of continuing their westerly course.
“Harding?” She kept her voice low, barely above a whisper.
“Compound’s too far. There’s a cave in two hundred yards.”
Right. She knew that. Apparently, Stone knew about it too and had told Harding. What else had the gorilla told him?
Harding led her around another bend, their feet flying over the ground and eating up the distance between them and the cave. Then they delved into a thick cluster of bushes and emerged into the small cavern.
The moment they stepped inside, he released her and reached behind him. A few shifts of muscle and a tug and his hand emerged, handgun in his grasp.
Tess yanked her gaze from what he held and focused on the man, the beast, before her. The pale, almost pure white fur now coated his face. Part of her wanted this nightmare to end so that she could reach for him, trace the lines of his shifted body, and see if the hair was as downy soft as she imagined.
Even with his face distorted as it was, she thought him beautiful. The white fur matched the pale blue of his eyes, so alluring yet deadly. The hair on his head had grown, lightened and lengthened until there was no doubt as to what he was.