Freeing the Feline

by Lacey Thorn

  “Ready?” she asked.

  He nodded, and they made their way carefully up the stairs. Either the fates were with them or Diane had called up to warn everyone to give them some privacy, because they didn’t run into anyone on the main floor or on the way up to their second-floor bedroom. Clara tossed his stuff on the floor inside the door and stripped his shirt off before he even had the door completely shut.

  “God, I need a shower,” she exclaimed, and he got his first look at her back.

  “Shit,” he thundered, walking over to her and taking in the tiny bruises marring her perfect flesh. “What did I do to you? And why are these not healing? Does it hurt?”

  “Everything I wanted and more,” she said. “That’s what you did. I’m sure they have healed a bit. They’re pretty light, Logan.”

  His face must have shown how much that comment hit him because she cupped his face and held his gaze.

  “I swear. You didn’t hurt me.”

  She grabbed his hand and tugged him into the bathroom, turning him to face the mirror. He’d been so focused on her then Diane walking in on them and discussing things, that he hadn’t once taken stock of himself. He’d noticed some scratches but not thought much of them. Now he realized there were a lot of them. He also had some bruises of his own.

  “Damn woman! What did you do to me?”

  “Everything you wanted me to,” she said with that sexy purr of hers.

  “Not a dream, huh,” he said, shaking his head and reliving every moment he thought he’d only dreamed. “Standing up?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Clara groaned. “You were fucking amazing.”

  “Guess that explains why my thighs are sore.”

  She laughed. “Mine, too.”

  She leaned in the shower and started the water while he grabbed towels. She was already sighing beneath the spray when he placed them on the towel bar.

  “Are you sure I didn’t hurt you?” he asked again when he joined her.

  “Logan,” she whispered, leaning back into his chest. “You’re my mate. The only way you hurt me is if you leave me.”

  “Never,” he swore. “I know this has all been really fast, and there’s so much we still don’t know about one another. But I’m looking forward to spending the rest of my life learning all of those things.”

  She turned in his arms and snuggled close while the water washed over them both. “Me, too,” she whispered. “Me, too.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Everyone was assembled and waiting for them when Clara walked in with Logan. Her thoughts raced in her head, and she said a little prayer for her Uncle Thomas as well as Gideon, Ariel and Griffin. God, what if… She couldn’t even complete the thought.

  “Good to see you both,” Tah said by way of greeting. “Have to admit, I was a little worried last night when we left you.”

  Logan looked a little embarrassed, so Clara spoke up. “We’re great. Logan seems to be back to himself this morning. Do you have any results yet, Diane, on what he was given?”

  “A lower grade form of the feral cat fever virus,” the Professor answered. “I spent most of the night researching, pulling information from every source I could think of. What this looks like is that somebody took a full-strength strain of this virus and has been watering it down. It will cause similar effects in shifters, though obviously at a higher level. There’s no record of it being used on humans that I can find.”

  “And Dillion is the one who had it?” Clara asked.

  “Yes,” Reno snapped. “I saw the bastard shoot what he didn’t get into Logan into Zane.”

  “But you didn’t see the needle before he put it in Zane?” Clara wanted to know.

  Reno shook his head.

  “Why does it matter?” Abby asked.

  “Because that means we don’t know how much Zane got and how much Logan got,” Diane answered.

  Clara nodded in agreement. “Exactly.”

  “So we go beat it out of the little shit who knocked me out and make the rat bastard tell us,” Vic grumbled from the couch.

  “How did he get to you?” Logan asked.

  The other woman compressed her lips in a tight line of disgust. “I ran into Lydia and had my attention on her. I didn’t even hear him come up behind me. Then boom. Lights out. Next thing I know I’m waking up with Amia leaning over me.”

  “When I found you guys, Amia and Lydia were yelling at each other,” Clara said.

  Amia snorted. “Good old Lydia wanted to shoot me, to rid the world of Marcus’s foul spawn.”

  “That woman is batshit crazy,” Reno said.

  “Are they both still in the storage rooms you said you were taking them to?” Clara asked.

  “For now,” Tah nodded. “We don’t have any other place to put them at the moment.”

  “What about the room I was in?” Clara asked.

  “I won’t have her on the same floor as my mate,” Reno said with a deep growl.

  Clara nodded. “Understood.” She blew out a heavy sigh. “Let me start with telling you guys a little about Dillion. If there’s anyone more hell-bent on revenge than Lydia, it’s him.”

  “Why?” Abby asked.

  “His entire family was wiped out by hunters. He was the only one hidden when they got there. But he heard everything while his parents and two sisters were tortured and murdered. My uncle found him a short time after. We don’t know how long he was on his own.”

  “Jesus,” Tah muttered, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “The more I hear of these hunters, the more I question if the answer isn’t to just go in and kill them all.”

  “At what cost?” Clara asked, then waved her hand, not willing to get sidetracked on that discussion again. “Let me finish. Dillion has been obsessed with revenge since I’ve known him. He stayed with a family of shifters near us after the murders. He’s always in and out of my Uncle Thomas’s shop. Dillion’s three years younger than me.”

  “So how did Dillion get his hands on a vial of this stuff?” Diana demanded, and Clara understood the other woman’s need for answers.

  “My uncle travels a lot. He finds not just people but things. He’s been attacked several times by hunters. One group of them gave him a dosage of the fever,” Clara answered.

  “What happened to him?” Diane asked. “And how the hell did he manage not to get killed?”

  “He doesn’t really talk about it. Except for when he was given the drug. I was just a toddler at the time, but I can tell you what I’ve heard. He tore himself off the wall and killed every single one of them in the room with him. The hunters didn’t realize what it would do to a shifter. He was able to find his way back to us and brought a pretty good supply of it with him. He planned to study it.”

  “How did he fight the effects of the virus?” Diane demanded.

  “He was mated,” Clara answered.

  “How does that make a difference?” Abby wanted to know.

  “Mated shifters are linked to another person. That means in times of great crisis, we look to them as our strength. We connect at a primal level. Soul-to-soul. So when we are stripped back down to that primal level, we look for that which soothes us. Our mates. It’s instinct to find our mate,” Clara said and noticed the way Diane paled a little. “Mates are the only ones to calm us in those moments. They are also the only ones safe. A shifter will never harm his or her mate. Never.”

  “I know that,” Abby said, smiling at Tah.

  “So what about Zane?” Reno questioned.

  “Not knowing how much he was hit with…” Clara said with a shrug. “All we can do is wait and see. If he had a mate, it would be a different story. She would be able to find him and bring him back. But without her…” She shrugged again.

  “So are you thinking Dillion got a hold of some of those vials?” Logan asked.

  Clara nodded. “That’s all I can figure. I know Uncle Thomas has questioned over the years if he was missing some. A vial here or there, never enough to make
him think someone was deliberately stealing it, or at least not that I remember. And now. God, now I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Do you think this could have something to do with why your uncle is gone?” Vic asked.

  “It could. I knew something was wrong. My uncle doesn’t normally stay gone for longer than a week at a time. Then Lydia said Gideon left to search for him, taking Griffin and Ariel with him. Gideon grew up with my dad and uncle. He’s…” She searched for a way to describe him. “He’s a different cup of tea.”

  “What do you mean?” Amia asked.

  “He’s a loner. Most of us tend to be social. Gideon doesn’t like groups. He prefers to keep to himself,” Clara said.

  “Sounds like a guy after my own heart,” Vic muttered.

  “So you don’t think he’d go searching for your uncle?” Tah asked.

  “No, he would,” Clara confirmed. “But he’d go on his own. I could see him maybe taking Griffin with him if he absolutely had to, but he’d never take a woman with him.”

  “Why the fuck not?” Vic demanded.

  “Because he feels women are to be protected at all costs,” Clara said.

  “That’s not such a bad trait in a man,” Abby said. “Tah does that.”

  “You think Dillion and Lydia might have done something to them?” the Professor asked.

  Clara nodded. “My uncle’s mate is dead. The other three are all unmated. If he shot them with this stuff.” She shook her head, and Logan stepped over and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his chest and rubbing his hands up and down her arms to comfort her.

  “We got a problem,” Finn said as he entered the room. “Two of them actually.”

  Clara felt extremely bad that she hadn’t even noticed that Finn and Murphy hadn’t been in the room.

  “What is it?” Tah asked.

  “That little asshole is driving me fucking crazy,” Finn stated bluntly. “He’s shifted and is ramming into the door. He’s either going to knock himself out or I’m going to open the fucking door and knock him out.”

  “Let him beat his head on the door!” Diane exclaimed, bringing all eyes to her. “After what he’s done, he can rot for all I care,” she said.

  “As good as that sounds, we do need answers from him,” Clara said, breaking the stunned silence. Diane was not one to normally make blood-thirsty statements. “We might not want him to hurt himself too badly before we get them.”

  “Fuck,” Tah said. “What did he shift into?”

  “Looks like a cougar,” Finn said. “Nothing I can’t knock the fuck out.”

  “Was there any of what Lydia used left in the bullet you pulled out, Diane?” Tah asked.

  “Already on it,” Diane said.

  “I’ve been analyzing it, trying to see what exactly it is,” the Professor said and rubbed his eyes. “I could really use some more eyes down in the lab. The amount of work we’re doing is much more than two people should try to handle.”

  “I’ll help out any way I can,” Abby said.

  “Not right now,” Tah countered, earning a glare from his mate.

  “He’s right,” the Professor intervened. “You need to concentrate on the baby right now.”

  “There’s one more thing,” Finn said.

  “Shit!” Reno said. “What else?”

  “It’s the woman. Lydia?”

  “What about her?” Clara asked, tensing up. No matter how hard she tried, she could never forget the woman who had walked in the first day. That had been a woman devastated by leaving her daughter behind, and one willing to take on a fatherless shifter. Clara would have sworn Lydia was starting to heal when suddenly she started growing angrier and angrier.

  “She’s not looking so good. I’d swear she’s going through some type of withdrawal,” Finn said.

  “Oh, my God,” Clara said as things clicked together in her mind. “What if Dillion’s been drugging her all along? For years? Right under our noses?”

  “Dillion?” Amia asked. “You think he’s been drugging my mom?”

  “Her sudden surge back to anger, her need to kill all hunters, all Blanes, even you,” Clara said. “It all started right around the time Dillion arrived. Jesus! Why didn’t I ever notice that? Why didn’t my uncle or Gideon? She and Dillion aren’t in the same room are they?”

  Logan shook his head. “Those rooms are too tiny to even hold one person, much less two.”

  “If he’s been giving her doses of the virus to feed her anger… Over that extended period of time… We’re talking years here,” the Professor mused. “She might never recover from it.” He stood up and pointed to Finn. “You come with me. I’ll need blood samples from her. Diane, check and see if we have anything on hand that might help with detoxification.”

  “I’ll help,” Vic said and crossed the room to go with them. She stopped in front of Clara. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for my part in what happened with you. I saw an opportunity, and I took it. My mistake. I take full responsibility for it. I’ll understand if you want me to leave.”

  “I don’t have the right to ask anyone to leave,” Clara said, a little shocked.

  “You’re a mate,” Vic stated. “You have every right.”

  Clara shook her head. “I still wouldn’t. In your place, I’d have done the same thing.”

  Vic smiled and shook her head. “No, you wouldn’t have. You’re too kind-hearted for that. Abby told me what you said. You want to believe we don’t need to become the beast. I say fuck it and embrace the beast. I fight to win.”

  “The end justifies the means,” Clara quoted.

  “I always did love Machiavelli,” Vic said.

  “I like you,” Clara quipped.

  “You’re all right, too,” Vic agreed.

  Clara took the hand Vic held out. The woman had a firm handshake. Then Vic turned and left the room without another word.

  “I’m glad that’s settled,” Abby said. “I know it was bothering Vic.”

  “How could you tell?” Clara asked.

  Abby laughed. “She may seem hardnosed, but you’ll figure her out the more you get to know her.”

  “I’m honestly going to look forward to that,” Clara stated.

  “Logan, I’m going to want you in the lab giving blood as often as the Professor requests. Until we know for sure that this feral fever is out of your system, I want you to stick close to the house,” Tah interjected.

  “We can’t afford for you to pull me off rotation,” Logan argued.

  “We can’t afford to have you out there if that stuff is still churning away inside you. You could hurt someone. I know you don’t want that,” Tah told him.

  “You’re right,” Logan admitted.

  “I can stick with him,” Clara offered. “We were supposed to be put on rotation together anyway. It would make even more sense to keep us together now. If anything happens while I’m with him, I’ll call one of you to cover for us and head back to the cabin with Logan.”

  Tah looked up and rocked his head back and forth for a moment before nodding. “That makes sense. We do need everyone we have.”

  “That reminds me,” Logan said. “Clara had a really good idea.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Tah asked, glancing at her.

  “I just mentioned to Logan that you take a lot of the responsibility for things on yourself,” she said.

  “I’m the head of the pride,” Tah said. There was no arrogance in his statement, just a declaration of fact.

  “You are,” she agreed. “And as such, your primary focus should be on the protection of the pride. You could set up a council of sorts, a group that you trust to oversee the other areas. That way you’re not pulled in a million directions. Plus, it gives others in the pride a sense of value. Shifters have been doing it for years.”

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” Abby mused. “It’s a brilliant idea.”

  Tah looked fixedly at Clara, to the point she wanted to squirm. Then he b
lew her away by walking over and hugging her to him. “It is a brilliant idea. Thank you. And welcome to the pride, little sister.”

  Clara blinked rapidly, not wanting to cry in front of everyone. But they had no clue what it meant to her to be embraced and welcomed by Tah, to have him call her little sister.

  “I think she’s a little choked up,” Logan said.

  “Thank you,” she finally managed.

  “We’ll do our best to find some way of searching for your uncle and friends,” Tah promised. “I don’t know when, but we’ll do our best.”

  “I understand,” Clara said, and she did.

  Zane was gone. Finn was still without a memory of where he’d been and what had happened. Lydia might have been getting slowly poisoned over the last few years and regardless, she was focused on killing Amia at the moment. And Logan might or might not have more of the virus in him. There was so much going on here. She would have to accept that it could be a while before she could go in search of her uncle or the others.

  There was knock on the front door and they all jumped. Who the hell was knocking on the door?

  “Stay here,” Tah ordered Abby. “You two keep an eye on her.” He pointed to Amia and Clara then he, Logan and Reno stepped into the hall in front of the door.

  “Who are you and how the hell did you get here?” Tah demanded of whoever was there.

  “Walked right in,” a familiar voice said. “Did you expect your alarms to keep shifters out?”

  Clara turned and walked out in the hall, a grin wide on her face. “Orsai!” she called.

  “Well, hello there, baby girl. It’s good to see you again. Thomas here?”

  She shook her head as she went to step forward, but Logan grabbed her and Tah and Reno both stepped in front of her.

  “What are you doing here?” Tah asked.

  “I heard my nephew was here,” Orsai said. “I came to find him.”

  “Orsai?” Reno said. “This is the guy you said taught you everything. The one we couldn’t find, we’d have to wait for him to find us?”

  “Consider yourself found,” Orsai said with a sparkling white smile bright against the ebony of his skin.