by Maddy Barone
Her pride would never allow him to court her now. He watched with tear-blurred eyes as they hustled Olivia quickly away from him. For one moment, his mate looked over her shoulder at him, but at the direction of her elder, she turned away from him, giving him only her back. Defeated, he let his head sag to the ground and wept.
Dawn had passed long ago over the eastern hills when Devlin found him. In his half-cat form, he didn’t heal as fast as his pride mates, but faster than his human form would heal, so the broken bone in his lower leg had only begun to knit and the slashes in his skin were barely closed. Devlin leaped the last few feet to him and crouched over him, whiskers quivering while he gave him a thorough visual examination before shifting back to human.
“Kit,” the other man said sorrowfully. “How long have you lain here?”
“Two hours. Maybe three.” The tears he’d thought he’d run out of leaked again from Kit’s eyes. “They took my mate. Her pride—her family came and took her away from me.”
Devlin smothered a curse and carefully stroked a hand over Kit’s wounds and the broken leg. “How badly are you hurt?”
His leg didn’t hurt nearly as much as the burning hole in his chest. “My body will heal. My heart will not.” Kit began to shift back to human, but Devlin stopped him.
“No, you’ll heal faster in your cat form. You need to get strong again so you can go after your mate.”
“I can’t.” Despair dropped his head back to the ground. “The one she called Dad said he would kill me if he saw me.”
“So don’t let him see you,” Devlin advised. “Can you sit up?”
Kit did, wincing as newly healed skin split again. “You think I should take her back?”
Devlin propped him up. “That didn’t work very well the first time. Do you think Olivia will accept you the second time?”
“No.” He hung his head, pain from his broken heart slicing like claws through his chest. “She said she wanted me to be a civilized human.”
“Then that’s what you should be.”
Kit clenched his teeth closed over a moan of pain when Devlin heaved him up over his shoulder. His head, hanging down Devlin’s back, throbbed. “I’m not civilized, or a human.”
“Then learn to be.” Devlin began walking carefully back toward their pride. “Do you want your mate or not?”
“Yes.” Could he learn to be what she wanted? The idea circled his mind, dodging doubt and yearning. “But I don’t know how,” he confessed.
“Justin will help. He and his human mate can teach you.”
For the first time since his mate had turned her back and walked away from him, a spark of hope flared. His pridemate, Justin, had found his mate among humans and had left the pride to live with her human family. Yes, Justin would help him. He and his human mate would teach him how to be a civilized human. Kit hated the idea of being tamed, but winning his mate was worth it.
Kit closed his eyes against the early morning sun and took a deep breath. He had to concentrate on healing so he would be strong enough to go to Justin. Kit had a mate to learn to court. He would not fail.
Chapter Seven
They had run for several hours past dawn before her dad called a rest break at a stream. Olivia waddled off to find a bit of screening brush to hide her while she peed. Being carried made her tired. Or maybe it was just the fact that she was worn out. When she emerged from her hiding place, she all but tripped over her dad.
“Dad! Can’t a girl have a little privacy?”
“Not yet,” he answered quietly. “We’re not letting you out of our sight anytime soon.”
She followed him back to the others. Her brothers and Colby, in wolf form, lapped water from the stream. They looked up at her, water dripping from their muzzles, before shifting back to human.
Parker advanced on her, scowling. “What were you thinking, going so far from the house?” he demanded in a low, furious voice.
She opened her mouth to snap back at him, but to her horror, her face twisted in a fight against tears. Taylor shot his brother a withering glare. “Good going, dog breath,” he muttered.
Colby, looking as alarmed as a wolf warrior could, patted her tentatively on the shoulder. “It’s alright, cuz. You’re safe now.”
Her father wrapped an arm around her shoulders. His light blue eyes had looked down at her with fierce concentration. He wasn’t an emotional man, but she recognized his concern. “Can you tell us what happened?”
She shook her head, struggling to subdue her tears. “Not yet. I want to wait until we’re home.” She swallowed. “I want mom.”
Her male relations exchanged glances. “Okay,” her dad said. “Just tell us if you’re okay.”
“I’m okay. I feel … good.” Actually, her emotions were so confused and tangled that she wasn’t sure exactly what she felt. Happy to see them, relieved to be rescued, and oddly worried about Kit. She couldn’t say any of that though, so she just tried to smile.
“All right. Get some water. We’ll get you home as soon as we can.”
Olivia and her menfolk reached the ranch over twenty hours later. It would have taken longer, but her dad, brothers and cousin took turns shifting to human to carry her while the others ran as wolves. They were fast and strong, but not as fast or as strong as Kit. He had carried her all the way himself.
She brushed her hair out of her eyes and stared over her dad’s shoulder at their back trail as he carried her. She had to stop thinking about Kit. He was her kidnapper, not a friend she should miss. Determinedly, she faced forward into the rising sun where the outline of the hills above the ranch could be seen through the glare of the sun. Faintly, muffled by distance, she heard the clang of the ranch bell. They had been seen. Home. She was almost home. Mom would be there. Suddenly she was drowning in a desperate need to see her mother.
Her mom was on the ranch porch, flanked by Red Horn and Matt. Out of nowhere, great gulping sobs rushed to Olivia’s throat. No matter how hard she clenched her teeth or blinked, they escaped. As she struggled out of her father’s arms, she caught sight of the horrified helplessness on his face. It bordered on panic and might have been amusing at another time, but right now, all she wanted was her mother. Her brothers morphed back to human and she heard Taylor growl that they should have killed the woman-stealing son of a bitch who made his sister cry.
Olivia wasn’t sure who moved first, but she and her mom met in a fierce embrace at the bottom of the porch stairs. Her mother’s eyes were wet, but Olivia was bawling uncontrollably.
Red Horn and Matt hurried forward and hovered helplessly for a minute before looking past them at her dad. “What happened?”
“Not now,” he said. “Parker, Taylor, head out and run a perimeter guard. Your cousins will spell you in an hour.”
“Olivia?” Her mother forced her face up and looked steadily into her eyes. “Are you hurt?”
“No-ho-ho-o,” Olivia wept, gasping the word through shuddering sobs. “I’m alri-hi-hi-hight.”
Her mom dug hard fingers into her shoulders. “Were you raped?”
Matt and Red Horn leaned closer, teeth bared, all but quivering to hear her answer.
“No!” she wailed. “He-he-he-he said I was his mate. He said … He said he loved me. We didn’t have sex.”
Her mother gave a small grunt. It was all but drowned out by Red Horn’s snarl.
“You were stolen by a wolf?” her cousin demanded.
“No. He was a mountain cat.” Her sobs subsided to soft sniffles. “Sort of.”
“Sort of?” asked Red Horn.
Colby strode closer in human form. “He looked like a man, but his face was a cat’s, and he had fur all over.”
“Not always,” Olivia whispered. She closed her eyes, and she saw Kit’s battered body lying on the rocky ground, bleeding from their attack. Would he heal? Matt and Red Horn peppered her with questions while her mom held her firmly by the shoulders.
“His name was Kit,” she said r
apidly, wanting the questions over with. “I was riding—” She shot a glare at her brothers, who hadn’t yet obeyed their dad to start a patrol of the ranch perimeter. “Yes, too far from the house!— and he scared my horse. I was bucked off and walking home when he found me. He said I was his mate, and he took me to his place. He was part of a clan—pride, he called it—with about a dozen and a half men, and three women, and some children. They were mountain lions. Two of the women didn’t like me, and they tried to cause me trouble. Kit would have fought them all to save me. He didn’t hurt me. He took me because he didn’t know any better. He doesn’t understand how civilized people behave. I don’t think any of his pride do. He didn’t hurt me, but he wouldn’t let me go, so while he was sleeping I left. Dad and the boys found me and brought me home.”
She took a deep breath and avoided Matt and Red Horn’s feral stares. “If you want to know the rest you can ask Dad.” She stepped back from her mother’s arms. “We travelled nonstop, barely even stopping to eat and drink. I’m tired and hungry and dirty.”
Her mom looked her over carefully, her face neutral. “Matt, would you pump water for a bath and get it heated?” She looked over Olivia’s head, asking a silent question of her mate.
“She’s right. We stopped to eat only a couple of times. I reckon we’re all hungry,” her dad said.
Her mom nodded. “Okay, we’re going to need more breakfast. Red Horn, you get that started. Bring a plate in to Olivia’s room as soon as it’s ready. Boys, you head out like your dad said. Matt and Red Horn will spell you in a bit.”
Only a few minutes later, Olivia was sitting at the desk in her bedroom with a plate heaped with scrambled eggs and ham. She ate her way steadily through it, keeping her head down. She didn’t want to face any more questions, and she knew her family had them. Her mom came in to her room carrying soap and a stack of towels. Her dad followed her mother in and said something to her in a voice too low for Olivia to hear. Her mom kissed him and murmured that she would take care of it.
Hm, I’ve been reduced to an ‘it’, Olivia thought to herself, feeling inexplicably wretched. She forced herself to eat the last scrap of ham, but it was hard to force down past the lump in her throat.
“I’ll take your plate,” her dad said in his usual quiet voice. When she stood up to hand it to him, he bent and kissed her forehead. “You’re safe home now, girl. I love you.”
He father seldom said the words. He didn’t need to, because she knew he loved her. Hearing them now made her gulp back more tears. She threw her arms around his neck. “I love you too, dad.”
He hugged her back for one long moment, before Colby grunted a warning and pushed past them carrying the metal bathtub. He set it on the floor in the middle of her room, and Matt and Red Horn came in with buckets of water.
A hot bath in her room was a luxury compared to the outdoor shower they usually used, or the washbowl of lukewarm water she normally made do with in the winter. She watched the men parade in and out with buckets of hot and cold water. When the water in the tub was a good ten inches deep, Olivia’s mom shooed the men out and closed the door to give Olivia privacy. She didn’t leave though. In fact, after Olivia stripped and got into the tub, she knelt beside it with the washcloth.
Olivia hunched over in the tub, “Mom, I’m not five. I can do it.”
“I want to,” her mother said simply. She dipped the washrag into the warm water and rubbed soap into it before stroking it over Olivia’s back. She paused. “What’s this?”
Olivia craned her head around to try to see her shoulder. “What’s what?”
“This.” Her mother ran the cloth over her shoulder blade. “You said he didn’t hurt you.”
“Ouch!” She flinched. “Oh, that.” Memory bloomed of her first meeting with Kit, when he had stood in front of her and slammed her into the rock wall. “That was an accident. He backed me into the side of the mountain, and I scraped my shoulder on a rock.”
“Uh-huh.” Her mother sounded carefully non committal. “Looks like it happened more than once.”
Silence went on a little too long. “I guess,” she said at last.
Her mother swept the washrag over her back for a minute without speaking. The rag paused over the bite marks on her shoulder where it met her neck, and Olivia refused to think of Kit biting her when he had her pinned beneath him. Her mother continued washing in a silence that made Olivia uncomfortable.
“I have some idea of what you’ve gone through,” her mom said finally. “I’m sure you children have heard some garbled version of what happened to me when I first came here.”
Water sloshed when Olivia jerked. “Yeah,” she said cautiously. “I heard that you were stolen and raped. Before you met dad.”
“It’s true. When the plane I was on crashed, some of us volunteered to go find help. We didn’t know that we had jumped through time from the year 2014 to 2064, and women were valuable.” There was a bitter note, not quite suppressed, in her mom’s voice. “My partner and I were captured and put up for sale. Four men bought me, and three of them raped me. They tied me to a bed and raped me. So, you see, you can tell me anything, Olivia.”
The water was warm, but Olivia wrapped her arms around her chest and shivered. She shook her head. “I…”
From the corner of her eye Olivia could see her mother’s hands clenched over the rim of the tub. “I want to know, baby. I need to know you’re all right. I can keep it to myself if you’d rather your dad and brothers didn’t know the details.”
The last few days swirled in a confused jumble in Olivia’s mind. “He didn’t rape me. He didn’t hurt me on purpose.” Hadn’t she already said that multiple times? She had a feeling it wasn’t what her mom wanted to know. “His name is Kit. He’s a mountain cat, like our family are wolves. Kind of. He can’t turn completely into the cat. It’s like he gets stuck halfway. The rest of his family — he calls them his pride — can turn completely into cats. He stole me because I’m his mate. But his people aren’t like us. They… They don’t have regular mates. There are a couple dozen men, but only three women. I think the women have sex with all the men. I mean, they share.” She shook her head, remembering Tricia lying back with her bottom half bare, demanding that Kit service her. “Kit said he would only have sex with me because I was his mate, and he wouldn’t let any other man be with me. He did protect me, mom.”
Her mom walked on her knees along the tub to sit beside her instead of behind her. “So, does that make him a good guy?”
Her mother was so careful not to put any emotion into her words, but Olivia felt condemnation below the surface.
“No, not a good guy!” she burst out. “But maybe not completely evil either. Just before he was born some men came and massacred his family. His mom died giving birth to him too early. I don’t think there were any adults left to raise them. Maybe that’s why they’re so messed up. They didn’t have anyone to teach them what was right and wrong. So it’s not all his fault.”
Her mom continued to look bland. “Did he pressure you for sex?”
“No… kind of… He carried me for hours. I fell asleep before we got to his cave. He lives in a cave, a small one, apart from the rest of his pride. Like he’s an outcast, even from them. When I woke up he was…” Her voice choked and tears seeped from her eyes again. She clenched them shut so she wouldn’t see her mother’s face. “I told you sex is different for them. When I fought him, he thought it was part of, I don’t know, foreplay? But once I made it plain to him that I didn’t want to have sex, he didn’t even try to persuade me. He backed off and said he would wait until I wanted it.” She opened her eyes to gaze at her mom, oddly desperate for her to see that Kit wasn’t completely evil. “See? He’s not all bad. I bet I could have convinced him to bring me back home in a day or two.”
“But you weren’t with him when your father found you,” her mother pointed out.
“No. When he fell asleep, I ran. Dad and the boys found me just as Kit
caught up with me.” She sighed. “They hurt him.”
Finally, emotion entered her mother’s voice, a tart note that stung. “What did you think they would do? Throw him a tea party?”
The water was getting cold. She shrugged. “Well, that’s the whole story. You can tell dad anything you want.”
“All right, Livvy. One more question. How do you feel about him? This Kit?”
She swallowed. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I think I should hate him, but I don’t. He wasn’t mean to me. I don’t love him, either,” she hurried to say. “I’m just so confused.”
Her mother handed her the washcloth. “That’s understandable. You’ve been through a difficult and confusing time. Finish your bath. Give a yell when you’re done and we’ll empty the tub. Then you deserve a nice long nap.” She leaned forward to kiss Olivia’s hair. “I love you, baby. I’m so glad you’re home safe with us.”
Olivia finished her bath, tears dripping into the water. She would get over this. She was safe at home, and she would never see Kit again.
Half an hour later, after the boys had removed the tub and she had crawled into her bed, she tried to sleep. She curled on her side, her usual position for sleep, but she couldn’t relax, so she tried stretching out on her back. That didn’t work either, so she rolled onto her other side. She was in her own bed, in her own room, but her mind refused to settle. She forced herself to lie still, peering over the edge of the bed to count the loops in the braided rug her mom had made for her floor. At around three hundred loops, she heard her parents talking on the porch several yards from her window. Their voices were low, but she could hear most of what was said.
“She’s all right,” her mother said. “You were right; he didn’t rape her.” Her words turned into a mumble for a minute before clearing. “She’s conflicted.”