Victor didn’t argue. He needed all the help he could get. Racing back into the house and out the front door, Victor leaned into the wind. He was smelling the air and trying to find any trace of his one and only love.
Nothing.
He couldn’t shift quite yet but his senses were coming back. If he was careful he might still be able to find her trail. After circling the fortress eleven times getting further out as he went from the fortress and still not picking up any scent he nearly ran into Nora who was standing still and looking upward.
“What are you doing?”
Nora pointed up toward the roof. She was about right there, I think. What if she jumped. How far could she make it?”
Victor followed her gaze upward. He tried to follow what he thought her trajectory might be with his eyes and landed short of the forest. “Nora, you’re a genius. I’d kiss you if Ian wouldn’t tear my face off.”
“Anything for you, Victor. You stood with us when no one else did. We won’t ever forget that.”
“You want to help me? Convince Darian that he needs to let me be the one to watch her when I bring her back.”
Nora nodded even though he saw the way her chin trembled. Nora was still afraid of the alpha, but she was coming along well. She would talk to him even if she was terrified because she’d meant what she said. She would have his back no matter what and so would Ian.
Victor swallowed hard realizing that this was the first place that felt like home since he’d been cast out from the family pack and shifter community that used to live in the low hills of Oregon.
He started into the forest inhaling deeply, searching for her scent. That sweet spicy flavor of hers was distinctive. Not something anyone could forget once they smelled it. He wouldn’t miss it, at least that was what he told himself.
Victor fisted his hands as the hours ticked by. She should have had to walk across the ground at some point.
Nicole, where the hell are you?
“I will find her,” his wolf prompts. It couldn’t hurt, after all, it was his wolf who found her when they were playing hide and go seek as kids. The shift from his human form to his wolf began and it was slow since the tranquilizer was still wearing off.
The slow rotation of his joints hurt to the point of making him break out in a sweat as the last of his bones shifted into place. Then there was the slow stretch of his snout, then his tail. His silver fur came faster and he nearly collapsed on the floor with relief that the slow shift was finally done.
Within himself he leaned back, allowing his wolf to take the lead. The wolf was eager to find Nicole. Victor didn’t have the heart to remind him yet that Nicole would not allow him to make love to her. She didn’t like his touch and in fact, hated him so much that she was willing to make the very dangerous leap off the building rather than be kept safe with him.
“I will claim her for us and she will forgive us anything. She is ready to take us into her body. We will give her pleasure-”
I will give her pleasure and I will claim her. You get her tigress. The woman is mine.
The wolf picked up his feet moving faster. He wasn’t sharing his thoughts but he was working and that was all Victor needed to know. If they were finding Nicole then he was good with it. Though he wished there was something that he knew to say that would soften her heart and make her at least begin to soften toward him.
His wolf was heading back for the fortress.
Find Nicole, Victor commanded his wolf through thought.
“I am.”
Victor was nearly ready to push forward and take control again. He’d already searched these parts of the woods. If Nicole was there then he was suffering serious side effects from the dart.
His wolf froze. His triangular silver ears stretched and he held his breath. When a happy feeling of warmth and joy washed over him, Victor knew his wolf found her.
Where is she?
“Look up. The tigress is in the tree.”
Victor forced the change so he could take back his human from and climb the tree. As soon as his front paws lost the fur and stretched into fingers he started up the tree. She was sitting precariously on a single branch in a straddling position that was dangerous. She could fall so easily if she leaned one way more than another.
The broken branches up higher in the tree told him how hard she fell. It was a miracle she’d stopped herself where she had. He could see long red scratches on her face and arms. There was even a blossoming red stain on her dress at her left shoulder.
Victor climbed faster, doing his best not to shake the tree and trigger her to fall. Her face was turned to the side and up against the trunk of the tree. There was blood on her cheek but the cut was already closed and healing.
How can being around me be so bad that you would take a risk jumping so far like that, Nicole?
The branch she was sitting on was bowed, much too small for her weight. The trunk of the tree was getting thinner too. Every foot he gained upward was causing the tree to sway. There were another ten feet to climb before he would reach Nicole.
Victor knew that as much as he wanted to zoom up the tree and get to Nicole, he couldn’t rush. The tree bending and swaying was only going to get Nicole hurt.
She matters more to me than anything I could ever want, more than anyone. I may have failed her in the past but I’m not going to fail her again.
He inched up the tree at a painfully slow pace. When the tree began to lean too far to the left, Victor stepped onto the right side of the tree and leaned out away from the trunk to pull it back. The tree leaned too far toward him, it caused Nicole to be nearly laying on her stomach.
“Dammit, shit,” he breathed clutching the trunk and hugging it with his legs as continued to bow putting him upside down. Nicole was still three feet above him but if he reached upward he might be able to catch hold of her ankle.
The sound of the tree breaking as the fibers of the wood began to snap made the decision for him. Victor reached out and swiped his hand through the air missing her ankle by a centimeter. The trunk tipped lower and broke just under his left-hand hold.
Victor jerked the toppling trunk toward him and stretched with his right-hand catching hold of Nicole’s ankle. He roared in pain as her body was nearly pulled from his grasp. Victor took hold of her ankle with both hands, holding them both up with his legs squeezing around the tree.
He was hanging completely upside down and struggling to hold onto Nicole. The top half of the tree that broke away was caught on Nicole’s dress and ripping it away but not fast enough.
Victor held on roaring as he strained to keep hold of her and watching the white material tear away at her shoulder seam. The sleeve ripped free and the tree top plummeted to the ground, breaking other trees on the way down and busting up into smaller chunks.
Nicole suddenly jerked in his grasp. “Shit,” she screamed. Her arms flailing next to her long rich brown hair hanging and pointing toward the ground far below. “What the fuck, Vic?” Nicole gasped when she found he was the one holding her by her ankle.
“I have the same damn question, Nic,” he growled through clenched teeth. His veins were bulging in his face, neck, and through his arms as he strained to keep hold of her. “Grab onto the trunk. I’ll swing you over.”
“Upside down, and drugged? Thanks. You’re a real freaking hero.”
Victor laughed. It was crazy for her to find a reason to be mad at him in their current position. “All you have to do is hold on until I climb down to you. I’ll carry you down once I reach you.”
“Swing me, already,” she shouted sounding a bit hysterical.
He sucked in a deep breath, his hands squeezing her ankle tighter as he curled his body inward to create momentum. Nicole screamed as she swung away from the tree.
“Tell me when you have a good hold and I’ll let go.” She was swinging back toward the trunk now. Her hands outstretched in front of her. “You got this Nicki,” he said just like he had a thousand time
s in their youth.
Her fingers wrapped around a branch thick enough to hold her. “Got it,” she said in a much calmer tone.
“Hold on,” Victor commanded and forced himself to let go of her ankle. He watched as her body dropped, her feet swinging down and landing against the trunk of the tree. “Shit,” he sighed with relief and nearly let go of his hold on the tree with his legs.
“Way to break the tree I’m freaking sleeping in, Vic,” Nicole said sounding just like the young woman he fell in love with her dry sense of humor.
He reached back behind him and found the trunk, holding on tightly before he let go with his legs. When his lower body swung down, Victor was careful to make sure that he didn’t hit Nicole. “You still holding on?” he asked as he started downward.
“Yeah.”
She didn’t look up. Just held tightly to the tree. It worried him to think she might fall asleep again. “Keep talking to me. Don’t fall asleep.”
“I’m trying not to. Tell your pack to stop shooting me, why don’t you?”
Victor skirted around to the other side of the tree before continuing downward. “Why did you run? You could have killed yourself with that jump, dammit,” he yelled.
“I can’t be around you. I had to go. Don’t you get that?”
“No. I don’t get that. You are the person I want to be around most in the world. I don’t understand how you can just flip a switch and no longer love me after all we’ve been through.”
Nicole grumbled an answer that sounded like she was falling asleep. Victor slid down the tree, ignoring the cuts and pokes. Reaching around he took hold of her waist. Her tired aqua eyes blinked at him and the corners of her lips turned up in a tiny smile.
It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Her lids dropped and her head fell backward, hanging as she fell asleep. Victor picked up her limp body with his arm at her waist and brought her around to the side he was climbing. He pinned her against the tree with his body so he could hold her and resituate her and carry her safely.
Victor put her legs over his, and her arms over his shoulders. Nicole nuzzled her face into the curve of his neck. Victor closed his eyes wishing she was awake, wishing she was choosing to be close to him like this again. The climb down the tree was like a soothing balm to his soul, and to his wolf.
Nicole wrapped around me. This is my happy place.
He slid to a sitting position on the floor with Nicole still in his arms. His shaft was hard but it wasn’t painful like it was before. With her warmth pressed against him, everything seemed to feel good.
“I’m trying not to fall asleep,” Nicole said sleepily, tightening her arms around him. Her body pressed closer to his and he groaned and the exquisite feel of her soft breasts pressed against his chest.
Nicole opened her aqua blue eyes. They grew wider as she pulled back looking at him. “What happened?”
“I carried you down.”
“Why are you still holding me then? Let me go.”
He didn’t loosen his grip on her. “No. I’m not letting you go. I shouldn’t have ever let you go. Not back when we were kids, not when I was kicked out of the pack, and not now. We’re going to solve this mess between us because I can’t keep living without you in my life.”
Nicole pushed at his chest and he dragged her closer. She was as weak as any human and stood no chance of free herself at the moment. “There isn’t anything that can be solved unless you can travel through time. Can you do that? Can you go back to the moment when I needed you the most and you weren’t there?”
“What moment?”
Her blue eyes welled up and she tried again fruitlessly to free herself. “I realized that I was wrong to do what my family asked by taking a tiger shifter to my bed to get me pregnant when I was in love with you. I knew it was wrong the entire time and you’re right I was afraid. After they kicked you out for killing Shan, they picked another.”
“Who?” Victor couldn’t help his body tightening readying to spring to kill whoever dared touch her.
“It doesn’t matter because I told them no. I told them that I would only mate with you.” Her voice quivered as she looked him in the eyes. “My grandma pleaded with me to change my mind. I didn’t and they kicked me out of the family and the pack. They left making sure I would not be able to track them.”
Victor tried to brush the strand of hair from her face but she shoved his hand away. “I’m sorry, Nicole.”
“Sorry?” Her eyes shrink to slits as she glared at him. “Why didn’t you come back for me? I waited years for you to come back and....” Her voice choked on a sob as she lowered her face from his view.
His fingers slid under her chin, lifting her face. “Tell me.”
“I finally realized you weren’t coming back. You didn’t really love me like you said. I gave up. I gave in to my tigress.”
Victor’s arms tighten involuntarily around her. “For how long?” giving in to her spirit animal for too long is as good as dead. Knowing he could have lost her terrified him.
“Too long. I was long past coming back, I was sure of it.”
Victor’s heart ached with so much sorrow that it sapped the strength right out of him. “What brought you back?”
Nicole looked into his eyes hers were still angry but she answered him anyway. “The Tigress was hungry, starving actually, she was going to eat a group of children playing in my forest. I tried so hard to break free and just when I thought it was too late, I shifted.” Her bottom lip quivered.
Victor gathered her close again smoothing down her hair. He knew what this meant. It meant that every time she shifted from that point on, her tigress could decide not to let her out. It meant that she’d given away the leadership role in her body.
She cried clutching at his shirt. “Why,” she sobbed. “Why did you abandon me? You said you were coming back.”
Knowing what she went through he knew he had to tell her the truth. It didn’t matter what she thought of him in the end. At least she would know that everything he’d done had always been to protect her.
“When I accidentally kill Shan and they banished me. They ran me more than fifty miles from our forest. I was going to follow them back at a distance, I couldn’t go anywhere else when I knew where you were. The party sent to run me off kept warning me they were going to kill me if I came back. That didn’t bother me, nothing was going to keep me from you. I decided if they came at me I would fight them.”
Victor swallowed hard as she drew back and looked at him with her eyes open to him for the first time in years. He saw just how shattered she was, how much pain she was in and it was because she thought he didn’t love her.
Victor continued feeling sick inside as he drudged up what he’d tried to bury. “The pack of wolf shifters came out of the West, the Shasta mountains.”
“The Herod pack?” Nicole asked her body stiffening in his lap.
His heart sank when he could see she knew who they were. “They surrounded the party that drove me out, and me.”
“They started torturing us wanting to know where our pack was located. They wanted to claim more land and wanted to become more powerful.” Victor could see in his mind his pack brothers being tortured to death. One by one until they got to Duane. Victor’s lips curled at the memory of the coward spilling the secret of the pack, the white tigers.
“Duane told them about the Tigers.” Victor’s jaw clenched. “They didn’t even start torturing him yet. I lost it. I was so enraged it was a million times worse than when I fought Shan. Ten men had already died keeping our pack secrets safe and he was going to let their deaths be in vain? He was going to put you in danger to save his own skin?”
Victor lowered his gaze trying to forget the sound of Duane’s backbone snapping at Victor’s hands.
“Tell me, Vic. I need to know.” Nicole shivered in his lap.
“I killed Duane before he could tell the Herod pack where you and the others were.�
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Nicole didn’t say anything, her blue eyes rounded bigger and she waited. She wanted all of it and Victor knew it had to be told now that he’d started.
“The alpha of the Herod pack, Demitrus, he was impressed by my...strength. He controlled his pack with his glove that allowed him to use silver. Demitrus was bloodthirsty and he saw in me a killer. I let him see the worst in me, not because I was afraid to die, but because I was afraid he would find you.”
Nicole stood up and paced in front of him. “So, you joined the Herod pack?”
“Yes.”
Her hands shook as she covered her mouth with them and continued to pace.
“He tried to find our pack many times but finding us over fifty miles from our home, it made it impossible for him to guess and I refused to help him telling him he killed all my pack. I told him that Duane was a coward trying to sew a tale to buy himself more time. I told him that I killed Duane because I wanted to be the one to get more time.”
“And Demitrus, he believed you?”
Victor shrugged. “I don’t know. I doubt it. Every time I tried to go anywhere on my own he sent Herod pack members with me or to tail me. I couldn’t bring them to you. I couldn’t risk leading them to your doorstep.”
“How did you get away then?” Nicole growled. Her cheeks were red.
He didn’t know if she was hating him worse for being a murderer, which he was, or if she wasn’t believing anything he was saying. “I didn’t escape the Herod pack. The Rizer pack wiped them out. You’ve seen Ian’s scars on his face. Those are from the Herod pack, from Demitrus.”
Nicole nodded jerkily. She was no longer pacing. Her body was rigid as she looked back at him. “How many years ago did they free you from the Herod pack?”
“One month ago.”
“Years? Years you spent with the Herod pack? Killing people?”
Victor met her accusatory glare. “Only when it was my life or theirs.”
Nicole covered her face with her hands that were red with dried blood. “In all that time you never escaped? Never could come for me?”
“No. I didn’t come for you until Demitrus was dead and when I got there, you were gone. The pack was gone. I heard that some were killed and that you were the new world’s, Princess Anastasia. Did she escape execution or did Princess Nicole get smuggled into another land? I returned to the Rizer pack thinking I would repay my debt to them while I researched the stories about the white tigress that roamed freely. I was determined to find you.”
Love for you Alone (A Rizer Pack Shifter Series Book 5) Page 6