by Kyle, Celia
Tess shook her head. “Beatings only. That was one thing he demanded of his men. It was the line in the sand. One tried once, though.” A shudder overtook her, the pain a visible thing.
“Tess…” He wanted to touch her, comfort her and hug her tight. It would be better now. He’d fix everything. His ma— He cut the thought off before it fully formed. The last thing he wanted to do was frighten her with what he desired more than life itself.
Instead, he reached for her hand, moving slowly and giving her time to pull away. When she didn’t even flinch, he encircled her wrist until he held her gently. Several of her fingers were bent at odd angles, no longer straight and slim as God had intended.
First he traced her pinky finger, the first knuckle larger that it was supposed to be. “This one?”
“Does it need a reason?”
He ignored the choke in her voice. “No, those kind of people never do. I’m just trying to understand.”
Quiet descended and he thought she’d ignore the question. Then she didn’t. “I manipulated one of the men into calling the police. It took some smoothing over, but Alistair got the cops to leave.” Tear-kissed eyes met his gaze. “The man was killed. I got a broken finger. I was eight.”
God. Damn. That tore into his heart and ripped it to shreds, but that wasn’t the only story she needed to tell. He didn’t think Tess had ever released the pain, and he hoped that he could help her lance the boil.
“This one?” He touched her middle finger and it earned him a rueful grin.
“I learned what flipping the bird meant.” She raised her other hand. She had a matching set. “Alistair didn’t like it much. I was thirteen.”
The wrist beneath his hand was also damaged, bones uneven in their healing. “And this?” He let his fingers slide over the jagged ridge. “What happened here?”
“That was the once.” Had it not been for his enhanced hearing, he would have missed the words.
“And is he dead?” He couldn’t have withheld the growl if the world depended on his silence. He took solace in the fact that the male hadn’t succeeded, but the pain she’d had to endure through the years was too much for his lion to bear. The need to slice and rend flesh nearly overwhelmed him. The cat wanted out, wanted to hunt the one who’d hurt her.
“Yes.” A hate filled gaze met his. “Now, he is.”
A wealth of undercurrents lingered in her words, a feeling he couldn’t quite grasp drifting around him. He fought to sift through the emotions sliding over her features, but was unable to identify them.
That arctic blue lightened to near white, flaring in the waning light of day. “I don’t want your pity, Harding. You needed to know about me and my past, and now you do. Simple as that.” She bit off each word, pushing them past clenched teeth.
The scent of her anger brushed aside the remnants of her pain, and he welcomed the shift in emotions. His cat couldn’t stand their woman hurting.
Though, her being pissed they could deal with. Pissed didn’t push his lion to the point of breaking free. Plus, the cat hated handling confrontations with women. It much preferred the human half of Harding deal with angry females. The beast was for protection and slaughtering and the two-legged form got to deal with the rest.
His lion was lazy that way.
“Pity?” Harding glared at her. “I don’t feel pity for you.” He growled, his beast taking an interest in the conversation now. “Rage. Fury. Those are things I feel. Pity?” He shook his head. “I pity the men who ever laid a hand on you, those that caused bruises or even a single tear, because they won’t live past a heartbeat when I meet them. The men who broke bones are gone, but the rest can fall beneath my claw.”
Tess blinked and opened her eyes wide shook her head. “You can’t go after half of Alistair’s men.”
“They aren’t his men anymore. His brother handed them over and gave the Council most of Freedom’s land when your fath—” He cleared his throat. “When Alistair was killed.”
She gave him a rueful grin. “My ‘uncle’. Yeah, he gave you the men, but what about the women?”
Harding jerked back in surprise. “The women?”
“What, you thought that only the men supported Alistair? No,” she shook her head. “There are plenty of women in the organization who believed in the cause.” She lowered her gaze, focus distant once again. “Plenty of women who can hit just as hard as any man.”
* * *
Tess didn’t want to see any other emotion that might drift across his features, didn’t want to see his anger or pity or whatever else he felt. She even managed to add a few reinforcements to her mental walls to shut his thoughts out of her head. Pushing away from the rock, she prepared herself for stepping away from him, getting her head ready to be assaulted by everyone’s thoughts once again.
Harding tensed when she rose, but didn’t reach for her. Thank God. She wasn’t sure if she could resist his touch if he grabbed her. She had no doubt that she’d melt into him and beg him to hold her. It’d been a near thing when he touched her lips. That gentle connection had torn at her resolve. Electricity crackled between them with that caress, tying them together if for only a moment.
Tess didn’t need him. She needed to remember that. She’d survived for twenty-six years on her own. She’d been a leaf in the wind, drifting and flowing through life, doing whatever she had to do to survive.
She took one step, then another away from the boulder. Her shoes crunched and crackled as she walked over the dried leaves and twigs that littered the ground.
The distance between them stretched, pulling and tugging at her as if it were a physical thing. Like a rubber band that continued to lengthen and thin, threatening to break at any moment. Only it didn’t break. It kept on stretching, retaining the bond even as the distance grew.
When she reached the edge of the clearing, she heard him move, his tread heavier and loud. His steps mirrored hers, the crackle and crunch falling in time while she ventured back into the forest.
Only…only silence suddenly surrounded them. The birds quieted, the soft ruffle of bushes and trees ceased, and the forest seemed to hold its breath in anticipation.
With the distance between her and Harding widening, voices crept into her consciousness once again. Rage. Pure, potent, undeniable rage assaulted her. There were no words that accompanied the feeling. No, it was undiluted emotion.
Tess stilled, her heart beating a rapid tattoo as she waited along with the trees and animals. Something was about to happen. It could be something as simple as a predator, and she’d wandered too close to his kill or… She didn’t want to think about “or.” There’d been too many “ors” in her life, and she was done with them.
The speedy thump of Harding’s approach reached her, but even those sounds didn’t spur the forest back into movement.
“Tess?” He whispered. He was so close that the heat of his body enveloped her. His warm breath fanned her ear and cheek, and she was surprised that his nearness didn’t send her into a full-blown panic.
“There’s someone…” She kept her voice as low as possible, not even a whisper, but she knew Harding’s beast would allow him to hear her.
A warm, large hand enveloped hers, gripping her gently as he slipped past her. Pale fur emerged from his pores in a rapid, undulating wave, coating him from shoulder to wrist. Even more eased along his neck and dusted his jaw. There was no telltale crunch and crack of bone, yet his cheeks became sharper, his mouth elongating while deadly fangs grew past his lips.
Harding tugged her along, pulling her in his wake as he slowly traversed the forest, weaving amongst the trees. He didn’t take her normal route, instead traveling deeper into the thickening trees, all the while his gaze scanning the surrounding area.
Tess’s heart thumped harder and harder, pumping adrenaline-laced blood through her body, the life giving fluid pulsing within her veins. The sound drowned out everything else surrounding her, making her deaf to the world. She fought t
o keep her steps light, placing her feet exactly as Harding had done, matching him move for move.
His beast was ruling him now, the animal no longer lurking beneath the surface. And yet the rage pouring off him wasn’t directed at her. He didn’t turn on her, strike her, sending her flying to the ground with a bleeding lip and a new bruise. No, she easily sensed that his wrath was directed at whoever stalked them.
Every so often, Tess would hear the low brush of cloth on cloth, or the snap of a twig. Something that indicated they were still being followed.
This was no natural predator.
Suddenly, they turned northeast instead of continuing their westerly course.
“Harding?” She kept her voice low, barely above a whisper.
“Compound’s too far. There’s a cave in two hundred yards.”
Right. She knew that. Apparently, Stone knew about it too and had told Harding. What else had the gorilla told him?
Harding led her around another bend, their feet flying over the ground and eating up the distance between them and the cave. Then they delved into a thick cluster of bushes and emerged into the small cavern.
The moment they stepped inside, he released her and reached behind him. A few shifts of muscle and a tug and his hand emerged, handgun in his grasp.
Tess yanked her gaze from what he held and focused on the man, the beast, before her. The pale, almost pure white fur now coated his face. Part of her wanted this nightmare to end so that she could reach for him, trace the lines of his shifted body, and see if the hair was as downy soft as she imagined.
Even with his face distorted as it was, she thought him beautiful. The white fur matched the pale blue of his eyes, so alluring yet deadly. The hair on his head had grown, lightened and lengthened until there was no doubt as to what he was.
Lion.
King of the jungle.
But she hadn’t ever seen a white lion before. Not even when her father was alive and collected the outcasts of every shifter species.
The rapid clicks and slides of the gun in his hand brought her back to their situation. Harding racked the slide, chambering a round, and handed it to her.
“Can you use it?” His words were garbled when pushed past his feline lips.
Tess nodded. “Well enough.”
Which wasn’t a lie. She could point and shoot with the best of them. Hitting things was another story.
“Good.” He snared her wrist once again and tugged her toward the mouth of the cave. “I don’t want you in danger, but you need to watch for anyone coming at you. You’re protecting yourself, Tess. That’s it.” He took two steps, but paused when she spoke to him.
“What about you? Don’t you need a gun?”
Harding shook his head and raised one hand. His fingers reshaped, digits contorting until claws emerged. The midnight black of those deadly nails clashed with the pure white fur that now coated him. His body grew, chest expanding, muscles thickening, as he prepared to leave her.
“I prefer an up close and personal approach.” Harding grinned.
“Be careful.” Fear for him choked her throat. This one thing proved to her that he wasn’t like the men who’d abused her over the years. Those cowards had reveled in destroying lives with guns. They hid in the shadows and shot others, even women and children, with their bullets.
A flash of surprise coated his features, but it was gone as soon as it’d arrived. “You care.”
“I care.” Of course she cared. Stupid man.
Harding gave her a jerky nod and then disappeared through the bushes. He loped down the low hill and slid into the forest once again. No tension marred his gait. He was simply a man with deadly intent.
Tess sighed and gripped the gun tightly. “I care, Harding. I already care too much.”
* * *
Tess’s words carried him into the forest, dogging his heels and sticking to him like glue as he disappeared amongst the shadows.
I care, Harding. I already care too much.
It was a start, a good beginning to their eventual mating. They had a few obstacles to overcome first, but he had no doubt that it’d end with his teeth sliding into her shoulder as they made love for the first time. God, his cat wanted to fuck the woman into the mattress—or the ground—but he knew they’d come together slowly. Tess deserved nothing less.
But first he had to handle whoever had followed them. He hadn’t been worried at first, the presence of another on the mountain not surprising him in the least. There were at least twenty-five people living in the compound, and then there were the hikers. Sure, Freedom, and now the Council, owned half the mountain, but it wasn’t like they could fence off their portion. The land was beautiful, so it figured that others would have the same opinion.
Except this person… The first obvious hint had been the quieting of the forest, but Tess’s reaction had woken his beast. The lion roared to the fore, hunting for the source of their mate’s fear. It pushed against, and broke, Harding’s mental bindings. Fur had burst through his skin while bone and muscle reshaped his face. But most of all, his senses grew until he could hear every heartbeat in the forest. He could zero in on the unmoving buck and the frozen squirrel as well as the quiet birds resting in the trees.
But there was a single echoing thump that drew his beast’s attention. It rose above the other sounds as if daring Harding to follow. He tipped his head back, searching through the scents that soaked the air, hunting up the identity of the interloper. Decaying leaves, wet grass, and dying trees reached him, yet it remained elusive.
The person wasn’t gone though. While the intruder’s scent was indefinable, the heavy flavor of hate was ever present. It stung his nose and teased his cat.
Harding flexed his fingers, enjoying the feel of his claws and anxious for them to meet the person who contained so much hatred for his mate.
He ventured further into the forest, no longer retracing his steps, but choosing a different path through the trees. He hoped to circle behind whoever followed them. He could hear the uneven crackle and snap of twigs and branches off to his left. Unfortunately, the wind still wasn’t blowing toward him, gifting him with the person’s scent.
He traveled further and further down the mountain, ears open for the occasional scuffle and shift of his prey. The person continued on a predictable path, following his and Tess’s steps of only moments ago. The trick would be eliminating the threat without actually eliminating the threat. He needed to ensure Tess’s safety, so “capture but not kill” was a necessity.
When the other person’s pace increased, so did Harding’s. He closed the gap between him and the intruder. It’d be any moment now, any second he’d be within pouncing distance and his prey none the wiser.
Any…second…
Except a heavy crack split the air, the echoing sound startling the animal life around him. The birds took to the air while animals bolted. Harding dropped into a low crouch and waited, listening for anything. The sound came from a distance, nowhere near him, and a bullet hadn’t struck nearby.
Another crack, immediately followed by two more and his pulse froze, blood stilling in his veins.
Tess.
Harding ignored his prey, rushing forward and zigzagging his way around trees and vegetation as he made a beeline for Tess. It had to have been her. The direction was right, as was the distance. Fuck, he shouldn’t have left her alone. He should have rushed her back to the safety of the compound before beginning his hunt. It was his cocksure attitude that put her in danger, and now she would suffer for it.
His beast lent him power and strength, spurring him on with every flex of muscle. Yet he was still too slow for the lion.
He tore his shirt from his body, shredding the fabric with ease, and yanked at his pants, ripping them to bits. A small release of his restraint had the cat bursting free. His shoes fell away as, between one step and the next, a massive white lion appeared.
A jolt of speed sent him flying across the forest floor, paw
s barely touching the ground before he took another stride.
Another two shots, another burst of energy until the mountainside became a green and brown blur. He ignored the rapid retreat of his prey, the stumbling, bumbling stomps that took his target out of reach. He had only one thought: Tess.
Harding burst through the vegetation, claws digging into the rocky ground while his gaze swept over the situation before him. A single woman faced off against Tess. Fur and fangs made her face unidentifiable, yet the scent wove true. Jackie circled his mate, snarling as she moved round and round. Tess still clutched the gun, hands tight around the butt and finger near the trigger. Clumps of dirt showed that she had merely shot at the ground in warning, but it was easy to see the shifter wouldn’t be denied his mate’s blood much longer.
Before Jackie could move another muscle, Harding jumped in front of Tess, easily soaring over the shifter’s head and landing with a near noiseless thump. The instant his claws met earth, he released a mountain shaking roar. He spread his maw wide, exposing his four-inch fangs as they dripped with saliva, while his rage was voiced to one and all. The woman dared growl in response, so he rose to his back legs and struck out at Jackie, claws barely missing the female. He wouldn’t have truly injured her, but she didn’t know that. Fear was an intense motivator.
Mine. He snarled. All mine. The cat roared, his beast stealing more control as the seconds passed. The more the female shifter challenged his claim, the angrier his lion became. He swiped at Jackie, catching her shirt with the tips of his claws and rending the fabric with ease. How easy it’d be to tear through that pretty skin…
Jackie gave him one last growl and then ran, hissing and spitting the whole way. Harding remained tense and vigilant as he watched her go, the cat unwilling to lose focus for even a moment. The threat still lingered, lurking in the woods. True, the most immediate one was gone, but she wasn’t whom he’d been hunting moments ago.
Small fingers sifted through his mane, clutching his fur with desperation, and the curvaceous frame of his mate slumped against his back. Wetness seeped through to his skin, and he took note of Tess’s waning terror. Relief coursed through her now, his mate thankful that he’d come when needed. He always would. Always.