The Tiger’s Ambush

by Tate James

  “Well, this is unexpected,” Caleb’s sarcastic voice snorted from somewhere in the direction of the demolished door. Neither Austin nor I bothered trying to spring apart like we were guilty. Why bother? It was pretty damn obvious what we’d been doing, and I already knew from Caleb’s not so subtle hints that he fully supported his brother and I getting together.

  Caleb’s smug grin faded from his face as he took in the scene in the room, and his nostrils flared.

  “Shit,” Austin swore, untangling from me and leaping from the bed to grab his pants. “Princess, get dressed quickly. Caleb, wait at the bottom of the stairs.”

  Caleb seemed to barely register his twin’s orders, as his wide eyes took in the copious amounts of blood splattered all around the room—both mine and Mr. Gray’s.

  “Now, Caleb!” Austin shouted, and Caleb’s attention snapped back to us as he nodded slowly.

  “I’m going to wait at the bottom of the stairs,” he murmured and quickly disappeared back through the ruined door.

  “What was that about?” I asked, frowning after Caleb then turning back to Austin curiously.

  “Nothing,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Cal can explain later. Here.” Austin tossed my ball gown over to me, and I shimmied back into it, sans underwear, and he deftly zipped it up. Good thing it was already a bright hue of scarlet, as it hid a lot of the blood and gore that had ended up soaked into the soft layers from the mess that was my former nemesis.

  Austin hurried into the small attached bathroom and ran a wash cloth under water before handing it to me.

  “Try and get as much blood off as you can,” he murmured. “Just until we can get back to the hotel to shower properly.”

  He retrieved his torn shirt and pulled it back on while I scrubbed some of the rust-brown marks from my skin.

  “Ready?” he asked, holding out a hand for me to take.

  “Wait.” I picked up the full skirt of my dress and picked my way through the chunks of gore to what remained of Mr. Gray’s corpse. It was really just arms, legs and a head, with a soupy pool of blood and entrails between. The rest of him lay splattered around the room. Bunching my dress in one hand to avoid dipping it in the bloody soup that was his liquefied insides, I crouched low and yanked my Ban Dia ring from his pinky finger.

  “Is that—?” Austin remarked, and I nodded.

  “Yep,” I confirmed, snatching my beautiful, red satin stilettos from where they’d been tossed and sliding the ring onto my left ring finger. “Fucking bastard used it to hit me.”

  Austin paused me in the doorway with a gentle hand on my waist, and I turned to look at what we were waiting for. He raised an eyebrow at me and nodded to the room that was splattered wall to fucking wall with blood.

  “They wanted your blood for something. It’s too dangerous to leave so much of it lying around.” He drew a sort of symbol in the air, then recited a string of words in another language. At the end of his spell—if that was the right word for it—there was that same pop of magic, and every smudge, smear, and puddle of blood in the entire room burst into a blue flame, searing in one hot burst, then dying off and leaving crisp, blackened patches in lieu of blood. Including Gray’s corpse.

  “Let’s go before Caleb loses it,” Austin said quietly, wrapping his hand around mine and tugging me down the stairs to where his twin waited.

  As I followed, I let my fingers tighten on his. For all I knew, the second we reached the others, everything would fall back to the way it always had been between Austin and I. Hell, maybe I’d imagined the connection we’d just had thanks to some sort of trauma induced delirium.

  Either way, I wanted to savor this moment of nearness with him while it lasted.

  28

  The gods—or god or whatever the fucking higher power was—must have been smiling down on us because the three of us made it back to the hotel without any further disasters. Caleb had assured me that Cole, River, and Vali were already back there with Wesley, Lucy, and Elena, but that was the extent of the information I’d been able to get from him.

  Austin had hot wired a car for us to borrow and shoved me into the passenger seat while he drove. Caleb, meanwhile, sat in the back, pressed almost hard against the door—possibly as far from me as he could be without riding on the roof—while he stared out of the window for the entire drive.

  The front of the mansion had been chaos as we’d left with people flocking around like fucking lemmings, like something exciting or disastrous had happened. It was too soon for them to have found the destroyed, burned out room, so it had to have been something else. Something, I suspected, that had to do with what had kept the guys detained while I was tortured.

  “All right, one of you start talking,” I demanded, sweeping into our hotel suite in a flurry of red chiffon and tulle. My other four boyfriends sat around the living room looking very somber and more than a bit pissed off. Evidently I’d just walked into the middle of an argument.

  “Where are the girls?” I frowned, looking around and not seeing Lucy or Elena.

  “Lucy fell asleep on her computer about ten minutes ago, so Elena took her to their room. Your friend wouldn’t budge until she knew you were okay and on your way back, but be prepared for a whole lot of Lucy in the morning.” Wesley grimaced and I fought back a smile. I knew my bestie too well; she wasn’t asleep, she was giving me time to sort out whatever had happened tonight.

  “Well?” I prompted, folding my arms underneath my breasts and glaring River down. Despite the fact that there were two badass, lethal as fuck dragon shifters in the room, there was no question who was Alpha, so yeah, he was copping the brunt of my frustration.

  “Princess, go and shower. You need to get the rest of that blood off your skin.” Austin spoke the words quietly in my ear as his hand stroked down my back. “Please.”

  Glancing between his serious face and Caleb’s tightened jaw, I decided not to argue. Nodding, I shot a warning glare at River so he knew full well this wasn’t over with before heading through into the bathroom adjoining the master bedroom.

  To my surprise, I found the jet tub already full with hot water and almost overflowing with jasmine scented bubbles.

  “I figured you’d need it,” Wesley said, appearing in the doorway and leaning against the frame. “I hope that wasn’t too presumptuous of me?”

  “Wes,” I breathed, a lump forming in my throat at the incredibly thoughtful gesture. “Thank you. Will you?” I gestured to my zipper and presented my back to him. Being able to zip and unzip one’s own dresses was a skill I never had mastered, so thank god for six handy guardians to always help me.

  Wesley’s fingers brushed my skin as he slid my zipper down, and I let the dress pool at my feet, stepping out of it totally naked, caked in blood and bodily fluids.

  “Sweetheart,” Wesley whispered, his voice cracking with emotion as I turned to face him. His eyes raked down my body, taking in the dried stains of my own blood, and his brow furrowed.

  “I’m fine, Wes,” I assured him. “Are you joining me? You have some explaining to do of your own.”

  “Ah, yeah, I guess I do.” He ran a hand through his hair and blushed.

  “Come on then.” I stepped into the huge tub and sank under the bubbles. “Strip down, get in, and start talking.”

  He sighed but tugged his shirt over his head and slipped out of his loose jeans, giving me an eye opening sight of totally naked Wesley before he, too, disappeared under the bubbles down the opposite end from me.

  Picking up a neatly folded washcloth from the little ledge, I coated it in soap and began washing away the evidence of my own torture while I waited for Wesley to speak.

  “Okay, so I really don’t know much,” he began, and I narrowed my eyes at him. “Yeah okay, I still know more than you, so here goes. Nothing really happened immediately after the accident, so it didn’t really click as to what was happening straight away. I mean, nothing obvious, like Cole and Vali turning into freaking dragons.�
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  “Uh-huh yeah, those were pretty obvious signs. So what did happen?” I tried to keep my voice light, but I wanted to fucking shake him. Why were my guys keeping secrets all of a sudden? Since when did we do that?

  “Well, to be totally honest, it actually started a while ago, like before we even met. I used to have these... crazy vivid dreams about a beautiful redheaded girl. When the guys brought you back to the house that first night, after the first failed kidnapping, it was like I’d seen a ghost. You’d been haunting my dreams for months, and then there you were...” He ran a wet hand through his hair, causing it to spike up in all different directions. “The next time was when we shared that dream when you were at Vali’s compound in Nevada. After that, nothing. So I just chalked it up to a bleed of your magic or something.”

  “I can see how you’d come to that conclusion.” I pondered. “But then what?”

  “Ah, well, a few days after the car crash, I started having visions. Seeing things or eavesdropping on conversations that there should have been no possible way for me to witness.” He skimmed a hand through the bubbles, piling them up on his hand and inspecting them.

  “Like... how? Give me an example,” I prompted, throwing my pink-stained washcloth out of the bath and sinking down deeper, rinsing my hair out in the sweet-smelling water. Head propped on the bath ledge, my legs extended and tangled with Wesley’s in the hot water.

  “Um, like nothing super specific; at first when it happened, I didn’t really know what was happening. One second I’m looking at my laptop, and the next I’m sort of like... following you.” His cheeks flushed, and he ran his wet hand through his hair again.

  “Me?” I repeated. “How so?”

  “Uh, just like when you’d be walking across the lawn or out for a run with Cole or something. It took me a couple of tries to figure out how to direct the vision where I wanted it, and even then I was limited to locations.” He scooped up another handful of bubbles and blew them at me. “I’m embarrassed how long it took me to work out that I wasn’t seeing visions, but rather I was borrowing the eyes and ears of birds.”

  “Birds?” I squawked, much like a parrot myself, and Wesley grinned.

  “Yeah. Crows.” He met my stunned gaze and nodded.

  “Oh come on,” I whispered. “That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “You don’t believe in coincidences, remember?” he pointed out. “Anyway, my best guess is that somewhere in my family line there was a supernatural of whatever flavor I’m meant to be that wasn’t as affected by the plague.”

  I nodded slowly. “Explains why you started having those dreams before we met... And then when I healed you, it just...?”

  “Undiluted me? Uh, yeah. Something like that. I don’t know; it’s still a working theory.” He shrugged his muscled shoulders.

  “So that’s how you could send your thoughts to me? What sort of supernatural would that make you?” I chewed at my lip, running through my sparse knowledge of all the different magical creatures in my mind. Quickly it became apparent that I’d need to brush up on my supernatural knowledge.

  “I think I was able to communicate like that because you were in and out of consciousness, like how we shared that dream. But... I don’t know. More testing will be needed. As for what that makes me? I haven’t a clue.” He reached out and grabbed my hand, tugging me toward him and turning me so I sat between his legs, my back to his chest and his fingers twined with mine in the water. “But I guess we can find out together?”

  “Absolutely!” I enthused, and a happy warmth fluttered in my belly. “I’m sorry I caused all of this, but is it selfish of me to say I’m not sorry you’re changed? If it means you’re harder to kill?”

  “Not selfish at all, sweetheart,” he chuckled, kissing the back of my neck. “It just shows you care. Now, I wanted to ask you something else.”

  “Mmm,” I hummed, leaning back into him and feeling his hard length resting between us.

  “Not that,” he laughed. “But when we get back to Seattle, if you’re still up for celebrating my birthday, I wanted to know if you’d like to go out for dinner or something? Just us, I mean.”

  “A date?” I asked, spinning to face him, kneeling in the deep bath between his legs.

  “Yeah. I sort of thought, now that I’m your boyfriend”—he grinned—“we might go out like a normal couple? Just, in between people trying to kidnap or kill you.”

  “Wes, that’s...” I trailed off, leaning forward and kissing him tenderly. “Yes, I’d love to go on a proper date with you. Tomorrow night? After we get back?”

  “Sounds perfect,” he whispered, cupping my cheek in a warm, wet hand and bringing my mouth back to his for another kiss. “We better get out before one of the dragons bursts in here with their fire blazing. Fuck knows they’ve done enough of that tonight.”

  “What?” I frowned, climbing out of the floral-scented water and wrapping myself in a towel.

  “You’ll see. Come on, I’ll let them explain it.” Wesley sighed, like he’d caught the kids drawing on the walls or something, and held out a fluffy robe for me to put on. “I’ll brush your hair out while they tell you what went down tonight.”

  My eyes narrowed, I looked around at my guardians suspiciously. They definitely hadn’t told me the full story.

  “Okay, so far that sounds totally reasonable,” I said slowly. “Gray managed to separate you all, tranq you, and then keep you locked in a bunker underneath the garden. I’m not seeing any reason for these long faces, and yet you all look like you’re expecting me to be super pissed off. So what gives?”

  “Don’t ask me.” Austin shrugged. “I realized you were in trouble almost straightaway. It just took me a while to figure out where they were keeping you.”

  “Fucking brownnoser,” Caleb muttered under his breath while rubbing soothing circles on the palm of my hand with his thumbs. I was a damn sucker for hand and foot massages; it was half the reason I got mani-pedis sometimes.

  “Okay, I’ve had a really fucking long night, and I need to go and take about sixteen more showers to feel clean again after having that slimeball’s hands on me, so can someone please just spit it out.” Now that we were sitting still, the events of the evening were catching up with me, and my mind was threatening to shatter into a million pieces.

  “That’s not a nice thing to call Austin,” Caleb murmured, trying to bite back a naughty grin and failing miserably.

  “Caleb,” I groaned, jerking my hand from his and whacking him with a pillow. “Literally cannot believe you just made a joke at a time like this.”

  “They do say laughter is the best medicine.” He winked. “So hopefully you’re going to find this funny...”

  Caleb raised his eyebrows at River, who looked like he might be almost mad... which was crazy-worrying in itself, given how in control he always was.

  River said nothing, instead flicked on the hotel TV with the remote he’d been gripping since Wes and I had stepped out of the bathroom. Burning with curiosity, I looked to the screen to see what could be so important that he needed to—

  “What the fuck?” I swore, my jaw dropping in disbelief as the news replayed a looped iPhone video of what looked suspiciously like two huge ass freaking dragons bursting out of a topiary garden and rocketing into the sky where they disappeared from view.

  The headline banners running across the screen debated if it was a hoax or CGI or if dragons were real, and my stomach clenched painfully. My eyes were glued to the footage as the news station played it over again and again until finally River shut the screen off and folded his arms.

  “One of you two overgrown lizards better start talking, and fast ,before I lose my fucking shit over here,” I warned them, feeling a tremble set into my hands. Not totally sure if it was from anger, shock, fatigue or just sheer overwhelming I-faced-my-demon-and-won relief, but either way, I tucked them under my armpits to hide them from sight.

  “So, there’s not really much to
tell,” Vali began, a bit hesitantly. He and Cole had both been dodging eye contact with me for the entire time River and Caleb had been “explaining,” and I was beginning to see why.

  “The video footage of two flesh-and-blood fucking dragons all over the news begs to differ, Vali!” I screamed, giving over a bit into outraged, angry shock. It was a new mix of emotions I was trying out, and it suited this situation to a fucking tee. Cole and Vali had been caught on camera… as dragons. If we thought things were difficult before, I could only begin to imagine the circus that the world’s media might start after this.

  “Look, it just... happened.” Vali ran a hand through his shoulder-length dark hair like he was frustrated.

  “Vixen,” Cole said in a quiet voice, looking up to meet my gaze finally. “We could feel what was happening to you. We could feel your fear and your anger and your pain.” The raw emotion in Cole’s eyes made my skin break out in gooseflesh and my trembling increase. How had it totally slipped my notice that they would have been feeling everything I’d gone though? Jesus fucking Christ, I really was a selfish bitch.

  “We couldn’t keep the dragon under control, and after we shifted, we didn’t want to accidently barbecue River and Caleb so...” Vali shrugged his broad shoulders, and I noticed he was in one of Cole’s black T-shirts.

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath and rubbed the bridge of my nose with my eyes tightly shut. “So what happened after you, ah”—I waved my hand at the TV—“took off?”

  “We knew we had to get out of sight, so we got as high as possible before heading back here. We landed on the next building over, just in case anyone saw us, but it was still pitch black out, and there has been nothing on the news other than that one short clip.” Vali filled in the missing information while Cole’s eyes burned holes into me.

  Lips pursed, I nodded slowly while I turned this all over in my mind. Logically, I knew this whole magic underworld wasn’t going to stay hidden forever, but was it too much to ask for someone else to be the ones to expose it?