Tempted by the Jaguar #3: Ramification (Riverford Shifters)

by Cristina Rayne

  “I suck at being a shifter. First it was the jaguar heat, then this.” Kylie laughed humorlessly. “I couldn’t even stay out of trouble for longer than a few hours at a time. It’s probably best that I go back to being a human permanently.”

  Paul frowned, his disapproval practically radiating off him. “You have the rest of your life to make that decision.”

  “I doubt it,” Kylie replied with a weary sigh. “Life seems to enjoy taking all our choices away—or forcing them.”

  Without taking his eyes off the road, Paul placed his hand onto Kylie’s shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze. “I’ll see to it. I promise.”

  His words only made Kylie want to cry again, not for herself, but for him and the heavy burden her existence placed on his shoulders.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Hunter’s mind raced a million miles-a-minute as he watched two men from his clan hoist up the stretcher the injured red wolf had been placed onto earlier, tubes of blood and saline already feeding into two IVs that had been inserted into the underside of both pale forearms. The medical team that had been sent had managed to stabilize him enough to move him, and Needles had been optimistic about his chances. Hunter had never been so glad to see the overzealous doctor in his life, thankful that Gaither had called for him particularly.

  Finally, a huge clue regarding his missing brother had fallen into his clutches. He might be alive. His chest ached painfully at the thought. After a year of fearing the worst, to have that fear so unexpectedly given even a tiny hope of being lain to rest was jarring.

  He should have been beside himself with joy, with relief. He should have been at the very least calling Maxim to tell him to follow them to the hospital. His best friend had just as much riding on the information the wolf shifter could provide them once he had regained consciousness as Hunter did.

  He bared his teeth. So why was his jaguar roaring for him to chase after Kylie right now? To do so would probably be the stupidest thing he had ever done in his life, including his inordinately stupid decision to sleep with her. He damn well knew that.

  Yet, as he stood watching his clan brothers and sisters prepare to move the injured stranger out of the forest, he was having a tough time keeping himself from shifting. Even now, he could feel small, rebellious spasms across the muscles of his body as he held himself rigid.

  A Polyshifter…

  She could have lied. She could have continued to feign ignorance as she had when he had told her about Deadends and Returners. Instead, she had looked him straight in the eye and admitted it, standing there looking so strong and challenging even though she had been utterly naked in more ways than one.

  Kylie had to have known that her admission could have very well ended with his teeth at her throat, so why? Hunter scowled. Nothing about the whole mess made any sense!

  Why in the hell had she revealed her true nature by shifting into a lioness in the first place? Was it just a colossal fuck-up on her part? Caught out, did Kylie hope that the truth would somehow salvage things, that it would muddy things enough for him to drop his guard in regards to her again?

  Hunter felt a growl forming deep within his chest. Was that whole string of events—from finding Kylie attacking that piece of human scum in the forest to finding the half-dead wolf to her shifting into something other than a jaguar—just part of some grand plan of infiltration by the lions?

  Or did she hide the truth because she was scared that I would react badly, that we would all react badly to such a dangerous secret? Was she actually hiding from everybody…including the humans who adopted her?

  “Why the hell didn’t you call me, you asshole?” a familiar voice abruptly growled behind him, causing Hunter to jump and hiss in startlement as he whirled around.

  “Maxim! What the hell are you doing here?” Hunter demanded.

  Maxim looked at him incredulously. “You’re seriously asking me that? Imagine my surprise when Lana called me half an hour ago to report a bunch of jaguars—Needles among them—scrambling out of Riverford Regional towards an ambulance and a certain someone’s name and the words ‘bleeding heavily’ being mentioned among their urgent chatter…”

  Hunter grabbed his upper arms. “Did you tell anyone else about this?”

  Maxim snorted. “Of course not. I jumped in my car and probably broke every traffic law trying to get here. When I pounded on your door and no one answered, I followed my nose to you here.” His eyes darted towards the retreating group. “Now that I know you aren’t the one bleeding out in that stretcher, mind telling me what the hell happened here? And where’s Kylie?”

  At the mention of her name, a mixture of anger and pain surged through him, but he ruthlessly stamped it down. Now was not the time to deal with that messed up shit.

  “Not here,” Hunter said, giving his friend a minute shake and gesturing towards the others with his eyes. “They’re taking him to my clan’s private clinic. If you’ll drive, I’ll tell you on the way.”

  His eyes narrowing, Maxim merely nodded and followed Hunter out of the forest.

  As soon as they had climbed into Maxim’s black Mercedes, Maxim raised an eyebrow pointedly before Hunter could even settle into the leather seat.

  Hunter sighed, suddenly feeling more tired and lost than he had in a long time.

  “She’s a Polyshifter, Maxim.”

  “Kylie?” Maxim asked in disbelief. “You have got to be shitting me!”

  Hunter didn’t think he had ever seen his friend so stunned.

  He sighed and closed his eyes. “You and maybe the lioness who attacked us are the only ones who know right now.”

  “Lioness?” Maxim echoed in alarm. “I think you need to start at the beginning.”

  The ambulance started to drive away, and Maxim diverted his attention for a moment to pull in behind it in order to follow.

  “Kylie and I spent last night together,” Hunter admitted after a long pause. “After Jennifer left, we got to talking, and well, I suppose I’ve done dumber things—though at the moment I’m having a hard time thinking of any.”

  “I doubt that very much, my friend,” Maxim remarked dryly. “So you slept together. Given where I just found you, I take it you followed my suggestion and took her on your early morning patrol of your territory.”

  Hunter chuckled humorlessly. “We never even got that far. We’d barely been walking for a few minutes when we both caught a whiff of blood in the air, and the wolf you just saw my clansmen spirit away dragged himself into view. How he ended up in my part of the forest looking like roadkill is anyone’s guess, but believe it or not, that’s not even the question I’m itching to ask him the moment he wakes up.”

  He turned in his seat to completely face Maxim. “Before he passed out, that wolf said my brother had sent him to find me.”

  The car swerved for a couple of seconds as Maxim looked at him sharply. “What the fuck?”

  Hunter ran his hand through his hair in agitation. “My thoughts exactly. Here was the first real lead I’ve had about my brother in over a year and the man was on the verge of bleeding out right at my feet! I called for help, then Kylie and I tried to stop the bleeding as best we could. However, it wasn’t long before we were attacked by a lioness. The damned bitch came out of nowhere.

  “The way she moved—she had to be one of their assassins. I literally came within an inch of having my throat ripped out. I managed to kick her off me before I shifted, but I was nowhere near her fighting level. I got knocked senseless for a few moments, and that’s when it happened.”

  He bared his teeth in renewed anger. “I told Kylie to run, but she didn’t. Instead, she shifted—into a lioness.”

  “Did she attack you?” Maxim asked quietly.

  Hunter yanked on his hair viciously. “I wish she had. Then I wouldn’t be so—”

  He cut himself off before his tongue could betray any more of his turmoil. Damn it! They were almost at the clinic. The last thing he needed right now was to have
his head messed up with thoughts of Kylie.

  “While I was semi out of it, she faced off against the assassin,” he continued curtly. “The lioness shifted back into a short-haired, blonde woman, spat some vitriol at Kylie, and then ran off.”

  “I see.”

  Hunter couldn’t read his friend’s expression. “And…?” he prodded.

  “Where is she now?” Maxim asked, ignoring his question.

  He looked away. “I don’t know.”

  “You must be joking…”

  “She stood right there in front of me and admitted she was a Polyshifter without so much as batting a fucking eye. My head was already spinning from both headbutting that lioness’s thick skull harder than I should have and a dying wolf shifter mentioning my brother out of the blue. I didn’t know what the hell to think. Plus, my clansmen were probably only a few minutes from arriving, and there was no mistaking the stench of lion coming off her.”

  “Fuck…you let her go, didn’t you!” Maxim exclaimed, shaking his head.

  “I did,” Hunter replied hotly, his eyes daring the other man to give him shit about it.

  Which of course he did.

  “Damn it, Hunter!” Maxim growled. “I can’t believe you let the best chance we’ve had ever to maybe find out something about a real Polyshifter just waltz on out from under your nose! If she’s hidden herself so well from everyone until now, I wouldn’t doubt she could do it again, and better, now that she knows for sure her cover’s blown! She could be well on her way to the border by now!”

  “No matter what she may have been able to tell us, there’s no way we would have been able to trust it. You know that we can’t trust any Polyshifter.” Hunter paused and then continued with a grimace, “…and because of what happened between us, I can’t trust myself to be objective. Right now I’m more dangerous to the Riverford clans than she is.”

  “You fell for her that hard?” Unlike before, there wasn’t even a hint of judgment in his voice, which made Hunter feel worse.

  “She deceived me. She deceived us all,” Hunter said, unable to keep the hurt from his tone.

  “Yes,” Maxim agreed matter-of-factly. “However, I wonder about the reason. I understand why you didn’t want to hand her over to the Elders, but you should have at the very least brought her to me to question. If she is truly an innocent in all of this—”

  “—then I might very well have sent her straight into the lion’s den.”

  That ominous sentence hung thickly in the air as they pulled into the parking lot of a group of generic-looking office buildings that were co-owned by all the jaguar Elders. Maxim followed the ambulance to the back of one of the central buildings where a group of people in scrubs were already waiting to receive them.

  “I fucked up big time, didn’t I?” Hunter said grimly as Maxim slid the car into an empty parking slot.

  “Go on inside,” Maxim said, pulling his phone from a pocket inside his sport coat. “You need to make sure you’re there the moment that wolf opens his eyes. Let me worry about Kylie for now. One way or another, I’ll make sure we learn the truth.”

  Hunter hesitated for a few more seconds before giving himself a mental kick in the ass. What the hell was he doing angsting about his love life of all things? Maxim, himself, was a reminder that more than learning what had happened to his brother was at stake here.

  “Her adoptive father’s name is Paul Moore,” he said as he opened his door. “He’s a doctor here in Riverford and smelled human—though now I’m not so sure we can trust what our noses tell us about anyone associated with Kylie. You might want to start there.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Paul had barely lifted a hand to knock on their friend, Karen’s, front door when the door abruptly swung open and Karen waved them inside with an urgent hand before either of them could say a word.

  “It’s bad,” the cougar shifter said grimly as she quickly shut the door behind them.

  It was a testament to how frantic their friend was that she didn’t bother to comment on either Kylie’s state of undress or the fact that she no longer smelled like a shifter of any kind.

  “I would make a joke about the Men in Black invading the city, but from what my son and some of my friends and associates have been telling me, that’s not far from the truth. We were dead wrong about how many from the lion clans have managed to sneak into Riverford.”

  “What are we talking about here? Sniffers? Special Ops?” Paul demanded as Kylie’s heart dropped into the pit of her stomach.

  “At this point, it’s hard to say,” Karen replied. “Mitch and a couple of his friends drove out of Riverford along the southern highway right after you called me, and he said there were a couple of SUVs parked along the right shoulder right outside the city limits with a couple of men looking under the hood of one. Nothing too suspicious there, right? Except I just got off the phone with a friend who reported seeing the exact same setup along the city’s northern exit. I reported it to the Elders, but it may take a while for them to contact a few shifters on the force to send them packing.”

  It took every ounce of restraint Kylie had to keep from dropping the F-bomb, something she tried never to do in present company. Dammit! She had to get out of Riverford before—

  “Hunter and I were attacked by a lioness this morning in the forest behind my new apartment building, so leaving by foot is definitely out of the question, too,” Kylie told Karen. “She was probably one of their assassins.”

  Karen’s eyes widened to almost comical proportions as she grabbed Kylie by the shoulders. “One of those bastards actually saw you?”

  “And got blood on me. Unfortunately I didn’t realize it at the time, and I shifted in order to help Hunter fight her off. The lioness was not amused to find a lioness siding with a jaguar. She seemed to think I was a rogue from one of the lion clans, and I’d rather not disabuse her of that assumption.”

  “Then…that means your jaguar friend—”

  “He wasn’t very amused, either,” Kylie cut her off, hating the bleak note she couldn’t quite keep out of her voice.

  Karen’s eyes softened. “I was wondering why the only jaguar scent coming from you was faint and male. I suppose there’s no reason for you to continue on pretending to be just a jaguar now that a prominent member of the jaguar clan has learned your secret. It’s lucky that you inherited your father’s ability.”

  Kylie nodded. “Being human is safer. My father always said that being able to revert back to one hundred percent human was rare even for a Polyshifter. Beyond the lion clans, I’m not even sure if that little factoid is even known. No one looking for us will look twice at a couple of humans. I’ll just have to be careful to keep my face covered for those that have seen it.”

  “Provided we can even leave the city,” Paul said. “Our best chance would be to leave the moment the shifters in the police department clear out anyone suspicious along the northern highway. I’m starting to think that maybe you shouldn’t drive us after all.”

  “Or we can ride in the trunk for at least part of the way,” Kylie offered, even though the thought of being confined in that suffocating darkness so soon after that hellish night made her mouth go dry and pulse speed up with a surge of fear.

  “Absolutely not!” Paul exclaimed. “After what you’ve already gone through, I wouldn’t ever—”

  “I can’t be sure that Hunter won’t come after me,” Kylie interrupted pointedly. “I saw it in his eyes, Paul. The suspicion, the betrayal, but most of all, the uncertainty. I’ve never mentioned Karen to him, but everyone at the hospital knows you two are friends. Why make it easy for him to follow our trail? It’s my fault that Hunter’s even in this predicament, and the last thing I want is to force him into another situation where he has to choose between me and his duty to his clan.”

  “Then we’ll bring Mitch along, too,” Karen suggested, “make it seem our trip to Dallas is just a normal family weekend outing.”

  “There
’s no need to involve your son any more than you already have,” Paul said. “I would never forgive myself if something happened to him. I hate even having to ask this much of you.”

  “Like you, I swore to Alan and Grace that I would do everything in my power to keep Kylie out of the lions’ hands.” Karen’s expression suddenly turned stern. “You don’t need to do everything yourself, Paul. The same goes for you, too, Kylie. This is no time to be stubborn.”

  Paul crossed his arms against his chest. “All right. You both have brought up good points.” He turned to Kylie. “Why don’t you go upstairs and change while Karen and I hash out the finer details. Hopefully we’ll have a better idea of our path forward by the time you come back.”

  Kylie looked down at herself and grimaced. Yeah, if Karen was going to call Mitch to join them, then she definitely didn’t want him to see her barely dressed as she was.

  She reached down and picked up one of the duffle bags at her feet. “I’ll be right back.”

  Looking at the dirty and pathetic state of her feet, Kylie decided to take a quick shower. Lord knew when she would have the chance for another once they left Riverford.

  After removing Hunter’s jacket, she carefully folded it and stuffed it into the bag once she had taken out a pair of jeans and a simple blue blouse. She knew she should probably just chunk it into the trash. Keeping it with her would only serve to rub salt into the wound that had opened up in her heart, and right now when her mind needed to be clear and sharp, she just didn’t need that particular weakness to distract her.

  “You’re so stupid,” she muttered, her voice sounding more weary than disgusted as she had intended.

  What she had shared with Hunter was over. The sooner she accepted that, the sooner the hand that was currently brutally squeezing her heart could let go.