Black Surrender

by Lorie O'Clare

  “Olivia? Ran’s mate?” she asked, smelling confused.

  Of course she would pick up on that question first.

  “And you got your ass kicked on your first hunt?” she purred, and ran her hand up and down his arm, making a show of a mother consoling her cub. “You poor baby.”

  He growled again, glaring at her, which made her grin broadly at him. Anna pointed at the computer.

  “Hurry. Answer the questions. We have half an hour.”

  A few choice comments came to his lips but he clicked reply and typed out the answers.

  Ran. Rafe. I was an asshole. Anna suppressed a giggle when he clicked send.

  “Fast enough for you?”

  There was such a mischievous glint in her eye he grabbed her, ready to drag her on to his lap and show her how to respect her mate.

  Anna pressed her hands on Rafe’s shoulders, resisting his desire to pull her closer. Rafe glanced around them, the fake wood cubical they sat facing with the computer on the desk built into the walls offered an illusion of privacy. Anyone who wanted to overhear them would easily be able to do so. Rafe didn’t smell any other jaguars in the library. Everyone near them was human.

  “Why were you an asshole to Olivia?” Anna whispered, moving her lips against his and looking up at him through her long lashes as she purred softly.

  Rafe looked down at her, not sure discussing details of his past with Anna was such a good idea. The last thing he wanted to deal with was a jealous female and prayed since she hadn’t shown signs of it yet, Anna wasn’t as prone to panic the moment another female looked at him. “Let’s just say I deserved the slap she gave me,” he grumbled, paying close attention to Anna’s scent.

  The computer let him know there was a new email for him and he let go of her, willing to let the howling of any female from his past drop. He stared at the screen, waiting for the email to open, and Anna leaned against him, doing the same. Maybe she’d figured it out that some things from their past were best left alone. He would attack his littermate when he saw him again for asking such questions after Rafe had said Anna was with him. There wasn’t an ounce of doubt in his mind Ran did it on purpose, grinning like a mischievous cub as he did.

  This email was a lot more personal.

  Rafe,

  This is Ran, and Raul is with me. We’ve howled for John Hunter and have heard he will be joining us soon. We will share these emails with him. Find a phone number. We will go into the human town and call you.

  “There was a payphone outside,” Anna exclaimed, sliding her chair back.

  Rafe glanced at the clock hanging on the wall across the room. The library would close in twenty minutes.

  “We need to know it will receive phone calls,” Rafe stressed, not at all cool with Anna running outside to sniff out human phone booths. He wasn’t positive no one would be running after them, although it seemed if they were, they would have easily picked up on their scent coming down the mountain, and Ouray was a small town.

  “Stay here,” he decided, wishing they didn’t have to separate but Anna would be safer with so many humans around than if she were alone outside. “I’ll be right back with a phone number to give our littermates.”

  In spite of returning to Anna less than five minutes later, Rafe’s insides warmed at the welcoming smile she gave him as she held her hand out to him.

  “That was easier than I expected,” he informed her when he took his seat in front of the computer and Anna snuggled up to him once again. “I heard the payphone outside, not too far down the street, and watched a human answer and talk to someone on it. Fortunately, the human wasn’t long on the call.” Rafe clicked respond then typed the public phone number into the email. “It should take them about an hour to get to Puerto Jimenez. I’m guessing they will buy a phone card to place a long distance call.” He added in the email they would be at that phone number in one hour and wait for their phone call.

  “What do we do for an hour?” Anna asked when they walked outside the library and she hugged herself against the evening chill.

  Rafe wrapped his arm around her and steered them away from the few humans who trudged across the library parking lot to their cars. One thing they wouldn’t do was spend any more time around humans than necessary. Rafe had never cared much for the stale smell that wrapped around their species.

  “We’ll have to guess on the time,” he said, and they crossed the street. Rafe led them back the way they’d come into the human town. “But we’re going to need lodging for tonight. If we can gather enough wood, I can make us a makeshift den for the night.”

  He didn’t have to explain to Anna that he meant up in the mountains. After reaching the spot where they’d initially resumed their human form, Rafe took them a bit deeper into the trees until he found the best spot to block them from the elements and human curiosity.

  “What kind of wood?” Anna asked, watching him as she grabbed her shirt then pulled it over her head. She looked very satisfied with herself when she brushed hair from her face and caught him staring at her nipples. “They howl of your carpentry skills,” she purred, her gaze turning sultry as her scent ripened.

  Rafe had no problem giving her a moment of female satisfaction and drooling over her naked body as she stripped. “There’s a type of satisfaction I can’t describe when I create using wood. My sire refused to have human furniture. He said it never quite lost its stale stench. He never much cared for building the furniture, but his littermate had the skill and passed it on to me.”

  “Soft pelts hide the smell,” she purred then stretched in front of him, completely naked with her clothes tied around her waist.

  “You focus on firewood. I’ll gather the type of wood I need to make our den.”

  Anna was ready to change when he began undressing. It was odd how sharing the small bit of information about his past and a personal love he had for building things from wood created an urge to share more about himself with her.

  “We’re going to make a fire?” she asked, her words garbled as she began transforming into a jaguar.

  Rafe grinned, embracing the change and shook his head. Anna tried to make a face at him but already her nose and mouth had altered in shape. There wasn’t need for a fire in their fur, especially when they were trying to keep a low profile. They would eat their kill raw, create a den that would serve well enough to keep the elements at bay and wrap around each other for warmth. Fire was a human tool.

  * * * * *

  He was rather proud of them when less than an hour later, by more than a few minutes, they were once again walking toward the payphone he’d found earlier.

  “I don’t see how you’re going to transform all those large branches you dragged to that clearing we found into something resembling a den,” Anna pushed, curious to know details on the building of their temporary den. “If you explain, I can help when we go back up there. It’s going to be dark, and I don’t want to feel useless.”

  “I’m sure I can think of something for you to do,” he drawled, looking down at her when she shot him a harsh look.

  He tried to tousle her hair, and Anna growled at him then slapped his arm away before he got his fingers into the strands. A human couple passed them, glancing curiously, but then making a show of dodging their heads down against the wind and hurrying past them. Humans were masters at avoiding strangers, which made it easy to walk through their communities. As much as humans didn’t want their kind around, none of them would stand up to a jaguar and yell at them to turn around and go back the way they came.

  Rafe grabbed her arm then used his strength against hers to force it down. He slid his hand around hers and clasped their fingers together, enjoying her warm, small hand in his.

  “If I were in my flesh, I could make us a lean-to or even a teepee-type lodging. But in our fur,” he continued, keeping his voice low and focusing ahead of them as he shared the plans he had in mind. “I’ll move the large branches I found so they lean against the cli
ff. Rocks will hold them in place, at least for the night. The smaller branches will fill the gaps and block the wind for us for the night. It won’t be pretty.”

  “So as soon as this phone call is out of the way we’ll return up the mountain.”

  “Yup.” He watched her look around them.

  Anna smelled nervous and he would have asked her about it, but as they neared the pay phone, Rafe heard it ringing. Letting go of Anna’s hand, he broke into a trot, reaching and grabbing the receiver in mid-ring.

  “Hello,” he said, sounding winded. Anna was next to him, pushing between him and the plastic container that housed the phone. He held the receiver so she could hear. “Hello?” he repeated, hearing a lot of static on the line.

  “What’s your favorite fish?”

  The question threw Rafe and he stared at the square buttons on the payphone as he thought he recognized Raul’s voice.

  “Trout,” he said after a moment, and Anna looked up at him, her brow wrinkled.

  “What did you call your favorite fish as a cub?”

  This time Rafe smiled. “That red-lined fish,” he said then whispered to Anna. “Rainbow trout.” She leaned into him, stretching so she could hear through the receiver too. “What is this all about?” he demanded.

  “We’ve been contacted several times, once in an email that claimed to be you telling us to run the laws and traditions up to Colony. When we ignored that, knowing you wouldn’t have created a new email address and then argue that it was done to protect your whereabouts, a couple of male jaguars showed up in Guarida, claiming to have come here from Colony to start new litters, and gave us a message from you, asking us to call you. We ran into town, just as we did today, but the male on the other end of the phone line did a piss-poor job of imitating you.”

  “I’m one of a kind,” Rafe drawled, making light of the situation but understanding now why they challenged him with questions no one else would know about him other than his littermates.

  “That’s why we needed to confirm you are you since all we can smell on this phone is the smell of way too many humans who’ve used it recently,” Raul explained. “Oh, and it’s good to hear from you finally.”

  “Would have been sooner if I hadn’t been a bit busy.” He wrapped his arm around Anna when a cold night wind attacked them. It seemed as if darkness surrounded them suddenly, taking away what daylight had been left. “Are the laws and traditions safe?”

  “Yes. What have you heard?”

  Rafe began explaining their adventure since leaving Guarida, skipping details he could share with his littermates later. Instead he focused on the politics, what they’d heard howled and how terrible things were smelling around Colony.

  “What’s going on down there?” he asked once he’d brought Raul up to date.

  “Other than John Hunter trying to convince most litters here that you need to be shunned?” Raul drawled.

  Anna stiffened, her scent growing spicy as she shot Rafe a panicked look.

  “He’s with us and wants to talk to his littermate,” Raul said, and there was an eruption of static possibly caused by John Hunter growling in the background. “Just a minute,” Raul was saying when his voice crackled through the static. “The howling you’ve heard about the laws and traditions are consistent with what we’re smelling going on down here. Someone has been sniffing around the gathering den and we thought we’d caught them but they managed to get away.”

  Rafe instinctively glanced around, keeping his hold secure on Anna as he looked over her head at the dark, quiet street in front and behind them. “Raul,” he growled, his better judgment insisting he keep his voice low. “There are jaguars intent on stealing the laws and traditions. In fact, as I stand here right now, there is an incredible amount of males, females and cubs habitating a large cave outside Colony. I’m not sure how long they’ve been there. We were only there one night. But they have run from their dens to here because they believe they are going to see the laws and traditions.”

  “They aren’t from Colony?” The static disappeared and it was easy to hear the shock in Raul’s tone. “There aren’t supposed to be jaguars living outside Colony. Remember how shocked we were to learn a small group of litters lived down here?”

  “I know.” It was a common fact their litter grew up accepting, as did all the litters Rafe had known his entire life. Colony existed as a cloistered area, specifically chosen for the jaguars to keep them away from other species and at the same time give them the type of environment their litters needed to survive successfully. Rafe had always believed the government had something to do with the location of Colony, but now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember where he’d first heard that howled. “Possibly it was another Kalusian lie. But jaguars have definitely been existing outside of Colony, lots of them.”

  Raul didn’t say anything. Not that Rafe expected him to, especially if his mate was with him. Today she might be a VicMoran, but once she had been a Kalusian.

  “That reminds me,” he said, squinting into the darkness as he sniffed the air. They appeared to be the only one on the street. “When Natasha first pulled Anna and me off the truck that we’d been hauled up here on, she howled loudly to her trained males that they’d captured the wrong jaguars. I wasn’t able to find out for sure, but she was rather upset she didn’t get the VicMoran and the Kalusian.”

  Raul grunted. “We’re both VicMorans,” he pointed out.

  A small pause followed and Rafe looked down at Anna, who was nestled against his chest and glanced up at him, offering a small smile, as he stroked her hair.

  “John wants to speak to his littermate.”

  Anna’s smile disappeared.

  Chapter Twelve

  Anna stared at the receiver in Rafe’s hand when he pulled it from his ear and held it out for her. She wasn’t ready to talk to John, to hear his accusations. Obviously he’d run off the deep end since she’d been gone, apparently finding just cause to blame Rafe completely for her absence. His hatred probably stunk to high heaven, which made her grateful the first conversation she would have with him since leaving Guarida would be on a telephone. Nonetheless, it wasn’t hard to picture how difficult it would be to breathe the air around him as he stood among the VicMoran litter. John wouldn’t hesitate to blame their flesh and blood for her disappearance to their faces either.

  Anna took the receiver, sucked in a breath and forced the smile back on her face. She’d never been happier in her life, regardless of what brought them here, than she was now, running alongside Rafe.

  “Hi, John.”

  “Anna! Fucking tail. Anna,” her littermate breathed, his voice sounding as if it came to her through a long narrow tunnel. “How are you? Where are you?”

  “Fine. We’re fine.” She managed a small laugh. “We’ve been raced through a crazy ordeal, but I’m not harmed and I’m safe. We’re in Ouray.” The connection sucked, which was probably for the best. She would keep this conversation short and allow Rafe to announce their mating to John once they saw him, which, according to the written laws, he was supposed to do prior to mating with her. “This is the first time we’ve been able to use a phone. We’ve been in the mountains since we got here.”

  “There are still some litters in Colony I believe I can trust. I’ll see if they can be reached and, if they can, I know they will agree to escort you back down here immediately.” The phone made some loud crackling sounds as if popcorn were bursting to life in her ear. “Where is VicMoran?”

  “There’s no need to find any litters in Colony,” Anna said, keeping her tone relaxed and fighting to stay calm. It was hard not to anticipate John exploding any moment and growling every obscenity he could think of about Rafe. It would take time for John to calm down, shift his way of thinking and smell the truth of how things were. He would need that time before they announced their mating. “John, I’m fine.” She paused only for a moment and looked into Rafe’s eyes as she spoke. “Rafe and I are here tog
ether. He isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Anna,” John growled, his voice turning into a low rumble, making it harder to hear over the long distance. “I know you’re not a virgin.”

  “John.”

  He continued, his tone flat. “This isn’t a casual meeting in the mountains or the forest. I know you’ve done that. We all have in spite of how our laws are howled.”

  In spite of him giving the small concession that he didn’t expect perfection out of her when he was as imperfect as any of them smelled, Anna tensed, bracing herself for the pending argument she swore she smelled regardless of the geographical distance between them.

  “Jaguars will still pass judgment on you, whether you want them to or not.” John’s knowing tone was more than irritating. “Return to your den and we’ll put this behind us. I will howl by your side. You know that, Anna. Just as I did before.”

  Anna closed her eyes, focusing on her breathing. No one brought up the day she had learned what true pain was like. Yet more than likely the VicMoran litter stood within earshot of John, and he knew that. If she responded, Rafe would demand to know what she was talking about. She ordered the memory from when she was a cub, and the scars that went along with it back into the black void somewhere deep down in her subconscious. Their running today had nothing to do with the horrendous ordeal she’d endured when she lost her virginity.

  At the same time, although they hadn’t howled about it, Anna knew Rafe wouldn’t want their mating announced over a human telephone in a long-distance phone call. “If you believe me dishonored, there’s no reason why you should smell of shame too.”

  “Anna,” John said, sighing and probably smelling spicy enough to make Rafe’s litter’s eyes water. “Are you going to try to make me believe nothing has happened between you two? I saw you kissing him outside our den,” he reminded her.

  “I’m not going to howl about this into a telephone.”

  Rafe’s gaze looked compassionate although his body was hard as steel. His muscles bulged even more than they normally did and, although he didn’t smell of anger, when Anna inhaled, she no longer smelled the night smells around her. Instead, the air smelled stale. Not of jealousy but with a sour edge as if Rafe didn’t trust John. She had a feeling the two males closest to her in life would take a while before they were able to be amiable around each other. Maybe it was for the best right now that there was so much physical distance between them.