My claws extended, digging into the yellow carpet underfoot. Tadeu’s claws extended, too, his paws covering mine and pinning them to the floor while his hips flexed, and his cock continued spurting cum into my tight cheetah opening. I screamed again, this time a screeching cat sound that echoed through the high ceilings, wordless except for the urging in my mind.
Teeth.
Claws.
Speed.
Tadeu’s tiger teeth clamped onto the back of my neck, and I arched up and then down, bucking to get him off me. His hind legs crouched low as he maneuvered to keep his cock inside me until he’d filled me with every last drop of his seed. He clamped my skull between his powerful jaws, grinding his throbbing cock deeper still.
Tear.
Wound.
Kill.
The instinct to fight screamed through my every limb, and finally, my human hold snapped. My claws shredded the carpet as I shot forward, adrenaline, fury and pain striking me like lightning. I surged from under Tadeu, springing free and whipping around to face him. My body crouched low, my fangs bared as I hissed ferociously.
Everyone at the tables began to applaud now, even the ones who had been silent before.
I focused all my attention on Tadeu, but I could still feel the Tiger Court around us. Tadeu stalked forward on giant paws. I gave one more warning hiss, but he didn’t slow. I leapt at him.
My paw swiped his face like a slap, my razor claws slicing open his skin. He snarled and lunged at me, but I was quicker. Holy shit, I was fast. I leapt to one side, sliced into his shoulder with my claws, and darted away before he could turn his huge body. The next time I darted in, he was ready, though. He batted me out of the air so hard my body went flying over the tables, twisting and turning before slamming into one of the columns at the edge of the hall.
Pain obliterated all else for a second. When I opened my eyes, I saw a tiger hurtling for me. I rolled away just as he leapt. His body slammed into the stone so hard the hall shook, and a roar ripped from his throat. I dove in, clamping my teeth under his neck. I barely broke the skin, getting a giant mouthful of the thick ruff of fur around his neck instead of his jugular. Tadeu grabbed me between his front paws, pinning me to the floor. My hind claws raking along his underside, but it was no use. I was quarter his size.
He lifted his head and roared triumphantly, then opened his mouth wide, and his jaws dove for my throat.
Before he could rip out my throat for the second time, something zipped through the air and planted in the side of his neck. Tadeu’s massive head lifted, and he stared across the room at the offending royal. Swaying on his feet, he took one step before collapsing with a giant thud.
I scrambled away from him and onto my feet.
“I knew it,” Camila shrieked. I spun to face her, but she wasn’t talking to me. She was accosting Gabor, who sat beside her with a tiny pipe clenched in one fist.
A blow gun. He’d been the one to tranquilize Tadeu.
That’s when I saw that his other hand held Camila’s.
Confusion tumbled through my mind. Was he with her? Did he love her? And if he did, why had he saved me?
I loped toward them, stopping several paces back when the scent of his blood found me again. That’s when I saw that he and Camila weren’t holding hands in the way lovers did. She held his hand, but she had let a single ocelot claw extend. It pierced through his palm and out the back of his hand like a hook that held him to her. A slow trickle of blood had stained the table under their linked hands like it had happened a while ago, but neither showed the slightest sign of pain or pity.
Camila reached into her bag and tossed a few worthless coins across the table at me. They tinkled against the stone floor before silencing when they met the yellow carpet. “That was quite a show,” she said. “Although I hardly think it’s fair for you to get the amulet for something you’ve been desperately chasing since you were five years old.”
“All that wanting led to a marvelous show, didn’t it?” Shah Tiger said. “Now, let’s mingle.”
On his cue, everyone set down their utensils and pushed back from their plates. The shah stood, and then everyone else stood. I went to the dress I’d left crumpled on the floor and stopped. What now? I’d never shifted, and I wasn’t sure how to shift back.
I could already feel more of my human mind than I’d had during the fight with Tadeu.
I’m safe, I told the cheetah. Let me go.
A moment later, I felt him sliding back from my mind, resting at the edges how he had before. My body began to sink toward the floor, and for a second blackness swallowed me. When it receded, I found myself crouching naked on the floor, my hands helping me balance. I grabbed the dress and pulled it around myself, feeling more vulnerable and exposed than I liked. My hands were shaking, and my legs wobbled as I stood and tied the dress. Instead of feeling powerful for doing this impossible thing, I felt dirty and ashamed. I could feel blood and Tadeu’s sticky, hot cum trickling down my legs as I turned to search for the king.
I found him chatting to Camila, who looked as she always did—blonde hair twisted into an elegant updo without a hair out of place, tasteful powder blue wrap dress that matched her eyes and acknowledged the Tiger Court style without looking like she was copying it or trying too hard. She smiled serenely and sipped her water, her attention rapt on the shah.
Suddenly, all I wanted to do was turn and run away from this horrible place. Mom was wrong. The curse was wrong. I couldn’t do this, so there was no way that I was supposed to. I just couldn’t. It was impossible. I’d never make half the queen that Camila would, with all her polish and poise. I was a mess.
But it wasn’t over. I couldn’t leave until I had the amulet. I took a step forward on wobbling legs and then another, leaking cum and blood with every step. Camila gave a small, musical laugh and laid a hand on the shah’s arm. I’d just been fucked on the floor in front of his entire court. I didn’t want to mingle. I wanted to take a long, long shower the way I had after being with Shadow the first time. I didn’t want to be queen. I wanted to hide with my men and never have to face any of these people again, let alone chat and laugh with them like nothing had happened.
At last, I reached the king and my sister, who each stood with a guard flanking them. I couldn’t look at Gabor. Not after what he’d seen. It was one thing for him to know I’d fucked Shadow and Balam. It was worse for him to have seen security footage of me servicing Sir Kenosi. Seeing the live show was a whole other thing. I would never be able to look at him again. So, instead, I looked at the shah.
I had tried to prepare myself for what I would say on my way over, but I couldn’t come up with anything. I was ready for the king to refuse me the amulet because Gabor had interfered. I was ready for more games like Sir Kenosi had played, but I didn’t know how I’d convince him of anything. I had nothing left to give him.
“Ah, here she is,” he said, interrupting something Camila had been saying. “The star of the show!”
A few people around us turned and applauded. Camila gave me a death glare, but she shouldn’t have bothered. I already wished Sir Kenosi had left me dead.
“Go and fetch her escort,” the shah said to his guard, flicking his fingers toward the door. “A princess should never be without her escort.”
A guard disappeared out the door, and the shah turned to me and Camila. “Reunited at last,” he said with a gleeful twinkle in his eye. “You must be so relieved to have joined forces again.”
“We’re not allies,” Camila snapped. “She tricked you.”
“Ah,” the shah said, nodding. “Well played, Princess Itzel. This is the old way of the amulets. I do love the games.”
“She’s not the heir, though,” Camila said. “As you saw, she’s a cheetah, not an ocelot.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Shah Tiger mused, his gaze turning to me. “How did that happen?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I didn’t know I could be a shifter. I’m
the second child of shifters, so maybe I have some latent shifting ability even though I don’t have my own inner feline.”
“Fascinating,” he said, studying me more closely. “Why a cheetah, though?”
“I was gifted my mate’s cheetah when he died,” I said, hoping he didn’t know what that meant. In truth, I should have been an ocelot or a snow leopard, but since I hadn’t grown up with this kind of spirit animal sharing my body, I didn’t have either. It was an uneasy feeling to know he was in there, waiting to come out again. I vowed again to find some way to bring Kenosi back, to return his cheetah to him.
“Extraordinary,” the shah said, his eyes shining with… Admiration. He didn’t think I was a filthy whore worth only a handful of change. He was fucking impressed.
And Camila knew it. Her skin went pale, and panic flashed in her eyes.
“She obviously can’t be the ocelot queen,” she said quickly. “Since she’d not an ocelot.”
“True, true,” the withered old man said, leaning on his cane with one hand and reaching into his pocket with the other. He produced a purple velvet pouch with a silk cord and held it up, swinging it back and forth between us like a pendulum. “So, who gets the precious tiger amulet?”
Somehow, I had to convince this guy that I was more deserving of the throne than Camila. If even I didn’t believe it, why would he?
“I do,” Camila said, licking her lips nervously and reaching for it. “I’m the next queen.”
The shah snatched it out of her grasp with surprising speed and grinned widely. “Then do we get a second show tonight? You haven’t yet experienced the pleasure of a tiger lover.”
“No,” I said firmly. “The deal was one show for one amulet.”
“Then I guess it’s yours,” the shah said, dropping it into my outstretched palm. “I’m a man of my word.”
For a second, I was too stunned to move. It had been so easy. He had promised it, and he’d given it like the simplest thing in the world. A transaction. Which made me the whore Camila accused me of being. I’d fucked his prisoner, and he’d paid me with an amulet.
Just then, three men came running into the room, and my knees buckled with relief. Kwame scooped me up, catching me before I could fall. His ropy arms encircled me like a crown, as if I were already a queen. Shadow pressed in close at his side, offering me his silent strength. And Lord Balam took my hand, linking his thick, calloused fingers through mine without hooks or claws. It was the strong, gentle touch of a strong, rough lover. I barely held back the rush of tears that threatened as my shell-shocked heart filled with love for these men. My mates.
“I’m a cheetah,” I said, laughing through the blur of tears.
“For now,” Shadow murmured beside me.
I slipped the tiger amulet into his hand, squeezing his fingers before releasing it. Suddenly, my legs were shaking again. I had earned five of the seven amulets. There was only one more, and Camila would be queen. She had the seventh amulet already.
“Put it with the others,” I said.
Suddenly, someone shoved through the crowd around us, the fae and vampires, humans and shifters, men and women. But this towering tiger made my heart kick into top speed.
Tadeu stood before me, naked and enormous, his fists clenched and his eyes blazing with hatred. “What did you do to me?” he demanded.
Camila shied away, slipping behind Gabor’s shoulder, and my mates surged forward, blocking me from his reach, but no one else seemed at all frightened by this beast.
“What the fuck did you do?” Tadeu barked again.
“Nothing,” I said. “Someone shot you with a tranquilizer. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Not that,” he growled, his eyes narrowing with a poisonous glare. “This.”
He flexed his arm and pointed to his bicep, where a cat print glowed from his skin like the moon.
Thirteen
Gao Jetsun
Demigod, Snow Leopard Nation
“Your toe is twitching.”
I opened one eye. “What?”
“You have been tapping your toe all morning,” said the elderly monk, a smile creasing his wrinkles even deeper. “Perhaps you are restless.”
Restless.
I’d never been restless in my life. That was something for other men. Men like my father were restless. I was not that sort of man. I didn’t chase adventure. Everything I needed was right here on this mountain. Looking out over the valleys below and the peaks beyond, mountains formed by the colliding of tectonic plates millions of years ago, always brought a sense of peace. Even the addition of chasms torn during recent quakes, and trees bent and twisted by windstorms, were a part of the landscape I’d always known. I searched for the calm that always accompanied the timelessness of this view.
A deep, unwavering appreciation for the stark beauty of nature was a requirement up here, and that remained. But lately, a part of me had wanted—
That was it. I was not supposed to want. Part of the discipline of being a monk was teaching oneself not to want. Though our practice was somewhat different from our human counterparts, we all practiced peaceful nonattachment. I lived by that law. It was no wonder, after I’d seen the way it tore my mother apart. Her clinging, desperate attachment to my father had terrified something inside me even as a child. Later, I’d been disgusted by it. Now, I felt nothing when I thought of it.
I hadn’t thought of my parents in a long time. But lately, I’d thought of my father several times, though I still hadn’t been able to delve deep enough into my subconscious to find the reason. Maybe it truly was some sort of malady, the restlessness that my elder had suggested.
I stood and bowed to the man who sat behind me on the precipice jutting out on top of the cliff where we’d had our morning meditation. “I apologize for distracting you,” I said.
He cracked one eye open, peering up at me without changing his position. “Perhaps a trip down the mountain is in order,” he said. “Maybe you’re due for a change.”
Change? I didn’t need change. Nothing in the monastery changed. That was the beauty of this life. It was perfect as it was. It needed no changing.
“Perhaps,” I said to my elder before bowing and leaving his side.
“Change is the one thing that never changes,” he called after me. “We are always changing, whether we admit it or not.”
He was right, of course. I was no longer the eighteen-year-old boy who had committed to studying and becoming a monk. I wasn’t the man who, after ten years of practice and study, had been accepted in the Order of the Snow Leopards, the only all-shifter monastery in the world, and dedicated my life to the practice of physical, spiritual, and mental discipline. I’d grown older and gained knowledge, dealt with my childhood, and helped build the lab where our brightest minds worked to earn money to keep the monastery going. But my heart had not changed.
I was where I was meant to be, doing what I was meant to be doing. I was a man of science, magic, and religion. There was reason and order in all these things, though people often missed it. I lived by reason, practiced reason, studied reason. I liked the order of the monasteries, the unchanging, timelessness of them that matched the landscape. Everything here made sense. It had a purpose. It had reason. I had chosen the right path, and I had never strayed. I would never stray.
The old monk was right. Much had changed, both outside and inside me since I’d come to the mountain. Change was inevitable and constant. But he was also wrong. I wasn’t restless. I simply needed to focus. The heart of a man like me would never change.
Fourteen
Itzel
Princess, Ocelot Nation
For a moment of stunned silence, no one spoke.
“No,” I muttered, stumbling back against Kwame’s comforting hold. “Just no. I quit. Not fucking doing it.”
I was so done with this shifter mating shit. I wasn’t even a shifter. Not a real one. I’d borrowed an animal, but I wasn’t one of them. And there was no
fucking way I was taking this brute for a mate. Not even if he had been my first love, my childhood sweetheart, or the last man on earth.
“It can’t be him,” I whispered, shaking my head and backing away.
“This certainly is a show,” Shah Tiger crowed. “Just imagine, if I hadn’t asked for this exact pairing, you’d never have met your True Mate. I am guided by divine forces, indeed.”
“It’s not mine,” I blurted. “I already found all my mates.”
Four marks. Four mates.
Except… I’d never seen Sir Kenosi’s. My head spun, and I clutched Lord Balam’s fingers like they anchored me to this world. “It must have been Kenosi,” I whispered.
“He had to be your True Mate to give you his cheetah,” Kwame murmured. “And he died, so he must have been.”
“Well, wouldn’t you know,” Tadeu growled. “Fucking black widow.”
“What?” Kwame asked.
“I’m not the first man she’s claimed to love but murdered instead.”
“I didn’t murder Kenosi,” I said. “In fact, if anyone’s responsible for his death, it’s you.”
“Then who’s his True Mate?” Shadow asked. I’d seen all their marks, and Sir Kenosi had died for me. They were my mates. This savage tiger wasn’t my mate.
“Itzel,” Lord Balam said quietly.
“She is,” the shah insisted. “He was marked when he mated with her. That’s how these marks are given. If you have the mark, you should know that.”
Shadow hissed, and I was suddenly afraid my panther mate was going to go feral shifter on the crusty old king and kick his ass. Which would probably get us all executed, or at the very least thrown in prison for the rest of our lives while my sister traipsed off into the mountains to find the snow leopard amulet and got herself and Gabor killed.
I grabbed Shadow’s hand again, stopping him from doing anything murderous.
Hunted Princess: A Paranormal Dark Romance (Feline Royals Book 3) Page 10