The other woman stood close to the first, silent and observant. She stared at him as if he were a lab experiment. Much taller than the tawny-haired beauty, she was bigger built, her dark hair pulled back into a severe chignon, wire-rimmed glasses perched on her prim nose. The petite, vocal one, however, was stunning. Her hair flowed in a thick mane around her shoulders. In her big, hazel eyes he saw much more than emotionless, scientific curiosity. Excitement mixed with a dollop of feminine pique.
Neither woman appeared to be a threat to him, but then again, he was trapped in a cage. Another growl rumbled like thunder in his throat.
“Come on,” the beauty pleaded, squatting to his level, albeit safely on the other side of the fence. “We mean you no harm. I want to help you.”
When her scent hit him again, he shuddered and his gut tightened.
A female shifter? Unheard of. He took another breath to be sure.
In the twelve generations he could trace his family history, never had a female been born. He’d heard tales of their existence but believed them nothing more than legend, the wishful dreams of lone males unable to ensure the continuance of their bloodlines.
Yet, here one was...
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “Do you remember what happened?”
He chose not to respond and continued to stare at her face and those delicate fingers still clutching his cage. He wasn’t sure whether she was being brave or ignorant of the risk she took with that small gesture.
“You were shot by a hunter,” she revealed, “but he called me when he realized he’d mistaken you for a bear. The bullet passed through your right hind leg. I had to clean and bandage the wounds, but you’ve also got a fractured femur. X-rays show it’s a fracture, not a complete break. That’s the good news. Bad news is you’ll have to stay off that leg for a while, but aside from a couple of scars, you’ll be good as new in a week or two.”
“Good as new,” the cockatoo said, its head bobbing. “Good as new, squawk!”
Javier hissed at her, baring his teeth.
“We should call Kelan,” the taller woman said, her expression showing the first signs of worry. “Axel should know about this too.”
“No,” the beauty said. “No, please, Beth.” She stood and took the other woman’s hand in hers. “Please don’t tell them yet. You know Axel will freak. He’ll probably demand we drop him out in the woods somewhere...far from here.”
“But—”
“Please. He’s wounded and in no condition to protect himself.” She licked her lips and glanced at him. “I’ve never met another of our kind. Don’t let my brothers mess this up.”
Our kind? Brothers?
There were more of them?
His heart began to race along with his thoughts. Though he’d heard tales of others, mostly bedtime stories he’d learned as a child, Javier had found evidence of only one outside of the Monteros. How many were there in the world? He’d traveled to dozens of countries and four continents tracking Durchenko, but he’d never come face-to-face with another shifter.
Until now...
“He’s probably a rogue,” Beth whispered.
“Maybe, but shouldn’t we try to find out before we condemn him? Let me have a couple of days. I’m begging you. Just a few days before we let Axel know.”
Beth licked her lips, showing her indecisiveness. “He could be dangerous.”
“Which is why he’s in the cage...for now.” The beauty dropped Beth’s hand and turned back toward him, gripping the chain links of the door. “You’re not dangerous, are you?”
“Oh sure, he’ll just admit he’s as harmless as a kitten, and you’ll believe it.”
The beauty ignored her companion’s sarcasm and continued to look him in the eye. “I’ll keep you safe. Keep your secret. We’ve done it for generations.”
Her pretty eyes pleaded her case, and Javier contemplated speaking to her. But he wasn’t ready to take that chance. Never had he revealed his cat to anyone outside of blood kin, save Isabela. This woman seemed sincere, and to meet and speak to one of his kind who wanted to protect not kill...
But her brothers were dangerous, at least to him. She’d admitted as much in her attempts to keep the other woman from exposing his presence. The beauty might be sympathetic toward his plight, but the males in the area were another matter. They would kill him. They could scent him as surely as he scented this one.
He would keep quiet and plan his escape. These women could not hover over him forever...and the pretty one wished to keep him a secret. With a little luck, his escape should prove to be simple.
He pulled back his lips and snarled.
“Fine.” She sighed. “You’re not helping, you know. But have it your way.”
“Your way. Your way. Your way,” the bird screeched, making Javier cringe.
The pretty one turned away and picked something up off a table near one of the doors. She opened a small latch at the base of the gate and shoved in a chunk of raw meat.
“There’s your dinner. I wouldn’t try shifting with the cast on. It’d hurt like hell and probably do more damage.”
With that, she and Beth shut the door firmly behind them.
“Like hell,” the bird repeated. “Like hell.”
Shut. Up. Javier had no idea if he could communicate with birds as he did humans while in his cat, but he tried.
“Like hell. Like hell.”
Apparently not.
He dragged himself the few inches to the water bowl just inside the gate and lapped up the cool, soothing liquid.
Three days and he’d make his escape. Sooner if he could manage it, cast or no cast. Shifting would still hurt, but at least his bones would be knitted enough to support his weight. He hoped.
Provided the tawny-haired shifter woman convinced Beth to not tell her brothers about him. If they knew there was an injured shifter in their midst, they’d kill him.
Survival of the fittest.
He glanced at his leg. The bird was right. He was in hell.
Chapter Three
Heidi slipped a bowl of fresh water through the small door at the base of the gate then picked up a platter and sat in front of the cage. For the next several heartbeats, she stared at the big black cat who watched her with those beautiful amber eyes.
“You have two choices this morning, big guy.” She pulled the tinfoil cover off the platter. “I have an inch-thick T-bone steak cooked medium rare, six scrambled eggs and a half loaf of buttered toast.” She looked up from the massive feast in front of her and grinned. “You can have this if you talk to me. If not, you get another raw roast. I don’t feed the average cat a gourmet breakfast.”
He stared at her unblinking.
She set the platter of food next to her on the floor. “It’s going to get cold. And I won’t reheat it for you.”
She knew she wasn’t wrong about him. There was too much human intelligence behind those exotic eyes. Besides, Beth’s test on the blood sample proved it. Humans—and shifters like the Falke men—had forty-six chromosomes. A normal cougar, or jaguar, had only thirty-eight. This massive, gorgeous animal was a shape-shifter whether he admitted it or not.
If she’d had even an inkling of doubt, it had gone up in smoke last night when she got home. Kelan and Reidar had scented something strange on her and Beth, their mate, though in human form they seemed unsure of its origin. She and Beth had rushed to take showers before mealtime, but both men still acted strangely all through dinner. And her fathers had looked at her with questions in their eyes. She’d played dumb and hadn’t offered any information. For now, they’d let her have her secrets, but that wouldn’t last long.
She had to make sure Beth steered clear of the jaguar, and Heidi would need to shower more often with stronger soaps and shampoos if she w
anted to have any chance of avoiding detection for as long as possible. And she’d have to stay away from all her brothers while they were shifted. With their senses heightened in catamount form, not even bleach would be able to completely mask another shifter’s scent.
Sometimes Heidi hated the fact she still lived in her childhood home with her two fathers, two of her six brothers and now her sister-in-law.
She hated that she didn’t have her brothers’ gifts, their keen senses, their abilities to shift, their...almost everything. She’d been odd girl out in a family of incredible catamount shifters and the youngest of the seven. She’d give almost anything to be able to change form and run through the forest with the freedom they had.
Most of all, though, she longed for a mate of her own. One with whom she could have little shifter babies. There was only one way that could happen, and until yesterday she’d thought it a complete impossibility. Unlike her brothers, who could pair up to mate with a human woman, as a lone catamount female, she could only produce children with a full-blooded male shifter. Aside from her own flesh and blood, that left out the entire male population of Leavenworth and probably all of Washington, if not the United States. Male shifters weren’t exactly easy to come by.
This beauty before her wasn’t a cougar, but he was a feline shifter. The closest she’d ever come to a lone male of her kind. And that made him extraordinary...a find worth protecting. Worthy of getting to know better.
She wanted—needed—to hear his story. Where was he from? Were there others like him out there? If so, did any of them need a mate?
“Why won’t you talk to me?”
“Talk to me. Squawk.”
The cat shifted his gaze from her to Paco and back. His ear flicked, and he shut his eyes.
“You can trust me, and Beth too. I swear it. I just want to get to know you.”
The jaguar sighed, his chest heaving, and flopped onto his side.
“Awfully passive aggressive, there, kitty. You know, it’s Sunday, and I have no patients. I can sit here and talk at you all day. Wouldn’t it be nicer to have a conversation and a hot breakfast than pretend you’re just a jaguar who happened to be running around the wilds of Washington State? You’re thousands of miles north of where any jaguar should be roaming.”
He tipped his head back, looking at her upside down, blew out a breath and raised a huge paw to scratch his ear.
Heidi pressed her lips together. She had learned enough growing up in a house full of men to know when one was just screwing with her.
He’d eaten the hunk of roast she’d left in his cage, so he didn’t have the aversion to raw meat her brothers had. If he was a rogue, and if he’d been living alone in the woods, he might be more wild cat than human.
What if... The thought made her eyes burn with tears. What if he didn’t know, or couldn’t remember what it meant to be human? Like a child raised by wolves.
“Come on, big guy. Talk to me,” she begged, fearful that her speculation might prove true.
In her family’s catamount line, children didn’t gain their ability to shift until puberty. Was it possible that other shifters were different? What if he’d been born a cat? What if he couldn’t speak telepathically?
She leaned forward, practically pressing her face to the mesh cage. “I can’t let you go if you don’t talk to me.” She gripped the chain links. “A cage is no place for a shifter, but you can’t go free. You don’t belong here. You’ll just get shot again by someone else. Someone who won’t care enough to call a vet. Someone who’ll tan your hide and hang it on a wall as a trophy. Do you want that?”
The jaguar rolled onto his stomach, lowered his head, and his ears went back in a sign of agitation.
“God, come on. You’re half human. You must know that.”
But maybe he didn’t. The Falke family went back many generations, but no one knew the origin of their species. Her ancestors, a pair of male cousins—supposedly the last two catamounts left alive after their secret had been discovered—fled Germany and wound up here. They had been two of the founding fathers of Leavenworth, but their lineage hadn’t been strong until now. Until her fathers had mated and produced seven healthy offspring. Now her eldest pair of brothers had three brand new babies. The Falke family was growing, expanding, gaining strength with each generation. But from where did they originate? Not even her fathers knew for sure.
Was this beautiful creature a new beginning?
“What the hell am I supposed to do with you?” Heidi opened the door at the base of the gate and shoved the platter of food through.
“Do with you. Do with you. Squawk.”
The cat flinched, his tail curling and slapping the floor in obvious agitation.
“Hush, Paco.” She stood and went to the cockatoo’s cage. “I think your squawking hurts his ears.”
“Big ears. Big ears.”
Heidi opened the bird’s cage, extending her arm so he could climb on. He bobbed his head and took a tentative step off his perch, but then hopped on and scurried up her arm onto her shoulder.
The jaguar still stared at her, not moving toward the platter of food. “I’m going to go catch up on some bills. I’ll check on you later.”
“Later, dude,” Paco said.
The jaguar hissed, which made Heidi laugh. But her humor quickly fled as she left the garage and headed for her office. At her desk, she pushed the pile of bills to the side and opened her laptop. Tapping her fingertips, she waited for the computer to boot up, while Paco danced from foot to foot on her shoulder and plucked at strands of her hair.
She brought up Google as soon as the window loaded and typed in jaguar facts. Skipping over everything related to cars, she went to work reading up on the elusive, endangered cats.
* * *
The rest of Sunday was much like the morning. She brought the jaguar fresh water and cooked food. The breakfast platter had been licked clean, except for the bone from the steak, which made her wonder about him. A big cat in the wild would have chewed that measly little bone right up with the meat.
She spoke to him, tried to coax him into communicating with her, but either he was the most stubborn male she’d come across, or he didn’t speak. From everything she’d learned about jaguars online, she knew to be leery around him. They were known to be sneaky, tricky, very smart and dangerous. They were also a huge part of Mayan myth, which she found interesting but of little use to her.
Most of it was of little use because the obstinate cat was not a typical jaguar. He was a shifter, a frustratingly mulish and mute shifter.
She was in Leavenworth, Washington with a two hundred and fifty pound jaguar she couldn’t hand over to any zoo, because somewhere along the way a genetics test could be run on him quickly and easily, just as Beth had done.
She guessed she had one more day before Beth gave in and spilled the beans. She was a good sister-in-law, but Heidi had no doubt where the woman’s loyalties were. She was the mate of catamounts. That alone took more courage and devotion than most women possessed. She wouldn’t lie to her mates for long, even if it was only a lie of omission.
A big, huge, furry lie of omission.
Monday morning, Heidi had little choice but to figure out a solution to her dilemma. As she pulled into the clinic’s driveway, she spotted Shirley Taggart standing outside an SUV with The Leavenworth Echo signage all over it.
“Oh, no.” Beth leaned forward and stared out the window as Heidi drove past the reporter.
Shirley headed their way. Heidi had gone to school with the woman, ace reporter for the Cascade High Chatter and now lead reporter for the local newspaper. She was a nosey one who wrote good, sometimes groundbreaking news stories, but also a lot of gossip column type stuff.
Heidi’s stomach clenched. A reporter on her doorstep right now was not a good thi
ng.
She stopped the Land Rover in front of the clinic’s door. “Say nothing.”
“Duuhhh.”
Heidi snorted. She didn’t have to tell Beth how dangerous this was. Not only to that jaguar inside the clinic, but also to their own family. She’d told Beth her thoughts on the cat, her fears he might not even know what he was. Beth had begged her to talk to Axel or her fathers, but Heidi hadn’t been ready. Now she would give anything to have her dads at her side to help her deal with this. Even Axel would be welcome, because he’d scare the shit out Shirley. He had in the past when it came to Falke.
“Go ahead inside,” Heidi said, handing Beth the key ring from the ignition that also had the clinic keys on it. “I’ll face the firing squad.”
Beth nodded. “Good luck.”
They opened the doors simultaneously and stepped out. Beth ran for the cover of the porch, while Heidi straightened her shoulders and put on a very confused expression as the reporter came toward her, micro digital recorder held out.
“Good morning, Dr. Falke,” Shirley said in a very professional tone that made Heidi scowl. They were definitely on first-name basis. “Could you confirm that an injured black panther is being treated in your clinic?”
Heidi changed her expression to one of surprise. “I’m sorry, but there is no black panther here, Ms. Taggart.” There was no such thing as a panther. The term was a misnomer referring to black jaguars and black leopards. She snickered. “No pink panther either.”
“I saw the pictures.”
“Of a black panther?”
The reporter nodded and held her recorder higher.
“A picture of one in my clinic?”
“Well, it was in the woods,” Shirley hedged, and Heidi shrugged.
“Can’t help you.”
“What about the video on YouTube? Ritchie Handleman said you brought the wounded panther back to this clinic. Is it in there? May I see it?”
Falke’s Renegade Page 3