Once Upon a Tiger (4 page)

“You felt the others?” she finally asked, breaking the tension.

He nodded.

“I think they’ll wait until nightfall before coming back. There are humans still in the woods, not within my territory but near enough to be at risk. Phoenicia isn’t that far away. Nick and the others will wait until they can come at me in their shifted forms.”

He agreed with another head bob.

“So, this is a good time to talk, so to speak.” She frowned and finally met his gaze. “I’m sorry I’m so awkward. I’m…not sure how to do this.”

He raised his brows in question.

“How to have you here while I’m in estrous,” she murmured. “How to…resist the instincts.”

That he understood. Again, his inability to talk worked in his favor. He didn’t have to reveal his own difficulties with this situation. At least not verbally. He had no doubt she could smell his desire, but he couldn’t make matters worse with a slip of the tongue.

“So, what we need to discuss…” She shoveled in a mouthful of food and frowned. Finally, she sighed and looked up from the spot on the couch she’d been studying. “Will you get into trouble with the elders for being here? I know if I have to kill one of the others, it’ll go bad for me, but if you do…?”

He half-smiled, set his plate aside and wrote his answer.
Since I’m the only one who knows the full security systems at their U.S. and Russian compounds, I should survive.

She snorted softly.

Beyond that, if I have to kill it will be because they broke the rules of the Mate Run. I won’t get into trouble.

She didn’t look convinced.

Elizaveta knows I’m here. She supported my decision. She’ll make sure whatever happens here doesn’t ruin me…more than I’m already ruined.

He grinned as he showed her the note, meaning the last line as a kind of joke, but she didn’t smile back.

Okay. Bad joke.

She met his gaze, her expression soft and curious. “We’ve never spent enough time together to talk about why you don’t…can’t talk. I know the stories. Are they true?”

Depends on the story.

Chapter Four

“The attack?” she asked, her voice soft.

Victor sighed.
True
, he mouthed.

He’d made a mistake. At four years old, he’d been a silly, adventurous cub with no sense of danger. He managed to get away from his mother’s watchful eye while they were on a trip in Montana. He raced into the forest, shifted to his tiger without paying attention to who or what was around, then went for a run. That childish escapade led him into the hands of some very mean men—evil men with knives and guns who had a lot of hatred for a child who shifted from human to tiger.

“Your mother saved you?”

He nodded. His mother had nearly died saving him.

She was shot and stabbed repeatedly yet still managed to tear the three men to pieces and get me to a doctor,
he wrote. If not for his mother, he would have died.
She still limps.

And because she killed humans in tiger form, even though they weren’t men who were missed, she ended up in confinement for five years—the extenuating circumstances and the fact she was female meant the elders could avoid inflicting the ultimate punishment of death.

Alexis shifted against the couch cushions, her robe parting across her legs. The flash of pale skin snagged his attention, turning his mind to other, more pleasant thoughts and away from the guilt he always felt when he thought of his mother. He frowned when she pulled the robe closed and kept them on topic.

“I’ve heard the doctor was able to repair all the damage to your throat. You breathe and eat just fine.”

He nodded.

“Then it is a choice? A psychological issue?”

He shook his head. Then wrote,
I physically can’t talk. The surgeon operated while I was tiger. He thought I would be okay. But I was young and scared. I rushed the shift back to human. And from that moment on, I couldn’t speak.

“Did they try more surgeries? What did your mother say?”

One more surgery, while I was human. But my mother was afraid to inflict too much more trauma on me at such a young age. Doctor agreed. He attempted to fix the vocal cords, but they were no longer normal. He’d never seen it before and didn’t know what to do. We assume the shift after the surgery made some damage permanent.

When she looked up from his note, he shrugged. He knew a lot of the tigers thought he didn’t speak because he chose not to—that he had elective mutism. They viewed this as a psychological defect marking him as weak, damaged. He didn’t bother trying to change their minds. He knew it was a futile battle.

“Can you make any noise at all?”

A weak, wheezy huff. Very faint. Not the kind of thing I’d want other tigers to hear.

“Ah. Okay.”

He smiled, knowing she’d understand.
Sometimes, it’s stronger to be silent.

“And scarier. Your silence is very intimidating.”

To the ones who don’t think I’m weak for falling prey to a psychological defect?

“No. No one knows what you’re thinking. I think all of them are intimidated. They can only judge your mood and thoughts by your scent. Otherwise, they don’t know what you might do.”

He’d gone to a lot of effort to cultivate that reputation so he wasn’t about to argue against it. The tiger world could be cutthroat and dangerous, despite their laws meant to keep things civilized. Any signs of weakness made life difficult. So, damaged as he was, he ensured the others knew he wasn’t actually weak.

“Were the years in confinement with your mother difficult?”

She asked so quietly, he might not have heard her if his hearing wasn’t so acute.

He’d had to spend the years of his mother’s confinement with her as he’d had no one else to look after him. Especially with all the physical help he needed while he healed. His father had abandoned them when she’d given birth to a boy, and that side of the family never claimed Victor. His mother was the last of her line. It was just the two of them, but confinement hadn’t been the worst part of his childhood.

Easier than after. We had each other. I got to study, read a lot. We had time to run and even play. Things got harder when she was released. Trying to live among our people again was unpleasant.

She nodded. “The Chernikov boys went through that…are going through it.”

He had a great deal of empathy for the boys at that moment. Tigers were never gentle with those they thought vulnerable. He’d re-entered the wider world of their community just as he turned ten and had to do a lot of fighting before the other young males finally left him alone.

Even now, a few occasionally tried challenging him, but his position as head security technician for the elders deflected a lot of the overt aggression. That and the fact he was a vicious bastard in a fight.

Alexis glanced down at her empty plate. “Oh. Guess I was hungry.”

The run.

“Thanks for that, by the way. I needed to work out the kinks.”

The others might think it was a different kind of run.

“I don’t give a damn,” she said, and launched off the couch, taking her plate into the kitchen. She faced him from over the island, her hands pressed against the countertop. “Makes me edgy, having all those males just beyond the border of my space. Females don’t run in their own territory.”

She pushed off from the counter and grunted in irritation. “They’ve got me cornered. Cornered makes me want to fight.”

He jotted a note then crossed to show her.
We could leave. Go somewhere you’ll feel less under siege.

She raised her brows and nodded. “Hadn’t thought about that. This is supposed to be my safe place, the place I hunker down and ride things out without worrying about the others intruding.” She started pacing the length of the living room.

He leaned against the kitchen island, watching and waiting for her to work through her thoughts. He loved that she thought out loud with him so he didn’t have to ask. He loved even more watching her move, all that contained grace and strength like a live wire sparking in the confines of the cabin. Her robe swung around her legs, giving his imagination a lot of delicious ideas, most starting at her ankle and working up the inside of her thigh, and farther.

“Where could we go?” she asked.

Her question brought him back to the present, forcing him to blink away the lovely fantasy he’d been constructing.

“They’ll follow,” she continued. “But maybe if we stay on the road? We could go into a city…” She shook her head. “No. Not the way I’m feeling. Too twitchy. Don’t want to make a scene. Hmm.”

She stopped and faced him, her shoulders slumping. “It doesn’t matter what I do, though, does it? Even if I get through this estrous without killing someone, there’s still the next. And the next.” She punched the air and started walking again.

“Fuck. Until I get pregnant, they’ll keep coming. To get pregnant, I need to fuck…someone. And when I get pregnant, I’ll have to stop being a Tracker. That was always the deal, you know. Once I start having children, I won’t be sent out anymore. I can train other Trackers, the way my uncle trained me. But I can’t
be
one anymore.”

She paused again, and this time when she faced him, a surprising tear dripped down her cheek. The sight of that moisture sent panic shooting through Victor’s body. Alexis didn’t cry. She couldn’t cry. He’d never survive if she cried.

“I’ve been fired.” She sniffled and swiped away the tear with an irritated jerk. “Without even asking if I was ready to start a family. Without telling me to my face that my services were no longer required.
Bastards
.”

Flopping onto the couch, she sucked in a deep breath and let it back out with a groan. Her lost expression hurt his soul. Alexis never looked so defeated. She was too strong, too sure of herself. His heart ached seeing her like this, a physical pain that pushed him to ease her sorrow in whatever way he could.

“Now what, Victor? What the hell do I do now? I’ve been a Tracker since I was nineteen. It’s all I ever wanted to do after…”

He saw her hard swallow from across the room. Her pain drew him, an echo of his own, and he couldn’t stay away from her any longer.

He sat next to her and pulled her close, hugging her tight. Having her in his arms was torturous, yet also settling. She felt right, the way he’d always imagined. They fit.

Her breath came in a shaking gasp, but to his relief she didn’t actually cry.

She pressed her hand against his chest and looked up. For a moment, he lost his balance in the deep blue depths of her eyes. He could live here, in this place and time, for the rest of his life, and die happy.

“Thanks. I’m sorry. This is a little more than I was expecting to deal with. I haven’t made a plan for life after being a Tracker.” She smiled, though it wobbled at the edges. “Guess I’d better start, huh?”

He nodded and she laughed. The sound made him smile. When he was sure she wasn’t going to fall apart, he picked up his notebook again.

Do you want to stay or go? Going will give you time to plan
.

“But going is running. The kind of running I don’t do.” She straightened. “Let them come at me here. If they get killed, it’s their own damned fault.” Jutting out her chin, she said, “I’d just be defending my territory.”

We can make that argument
.

She snorted. “We, huh?”

I’m here to help. As long as you need me
.

“And there’s the next problem,” she murmured.

He frowned in question.

“Two more days of estrous. And the only man I want is sitting next to me on my couch.”

Chapter Five

Alexis watched him watching her, waiting for her to say or do more. He held perfectly still, and she knew he wouldn’t push her. He wouldn’t expect anything she wasn’t willing to give.

For him, she was willing to give a lot, though. Only to him.

And, yet, if they went to bed and she got pregnant, would they be allowed to mate? She wouldn’t have run. He wasn’t allowed to run. More broken laws.

What if she did run? She could simply go long enough for Victor to catch her… No. Still the problem of him being forbidden. The answer wouldn’t be that simple.

Hell, she wasn’t even sure she was ready to have children, yet the only way out of the Run for her now was to be pregnant and mated. She’d avoided thoughts of family and a future. As a Tracker, death was always an option. She’d had to go after more than one insane tiger in the past. Insane meant unpredictable. Unpredictable could mean death.

She hadn’t considered a family because she’d honestly never thought she’d have one. Now she had to consider it. Seriously. She thought of the Chernikovs, of the youngest boy, Mitch, only six months old when his mother committed suicide. Alexis had been sent for his father a few months later, but her every protective instinct had kicked in when she’d seen the boys. She’d taken them in, adopted them—if unofficially—and helped raise them. She loved them deeply.

How much more would she love children of her own?

The idea of her own baby actually grabbed her by the heart and squeezed. Tight.

Huh. Who knew? She did want children. She wanted the family she’d never let herself imagine. She wasn’t sure she was ready for it, but she did want it and that was something.

But if she were to have children, she wanted them with Victor. She couldn’t imagine creating a family with anyone else.

The realization buzzed through her like an electric shock.

It couldn’t work.

She didn’t care.

It would work because it was the only option.

“Fuck the elders,” she murmured. Then leaned close and kissed him.

Victor remained motionless for several long, torturous moments. She smelled his lust mixing with the scent of hers. The combination made her head spin. The need she’d tried to keep at bay took over. She pushed him back on the couch and crawled on top of him, pressing her body hard against his as she coaxed his mouth open with her lips.