Tangling with the Tiger: Lone Pine Pride, Book 5 (6 page)

Chapter Seven

Dominec scratched his chin against the shingles, not caring if Grace heard the sound of his fur rubbing against the roof above her head. It had been three days since he set his plan for the prisoners in motion. He could hear the distant roars of the mob that had gathered around the prisoner barn, but he couldn’t be seen there. Not if he wanted to have any claim to innocence.

He couldn’t violate his probation until he could figure out a way to get his hands on the Organization schematics Mateo was hoarding.

Every lieutenant’s tablet had a copy of the personnel files—the Organization’s dossiers on which shifters they were hunting, capturing and torturing today—but only Mateo had the schematics and he was still refusing to give Dominec a list. The last time Dominec had asked—demanded, whatever—the leopard had said something about giving Grace’s plan a chance to work.

So here Dominec was, eavesdropping—literally—on Grace in an effort to hear this brilliant plan. But she wasn’t talking. She’d barely been in her office at all the last few days—closeted up at the Alpha’s mansion with their pet Organization doctor and the Hawk—and when she was here, none of the other lieutenants came by to discuss plans the way they sometimes did.

Dominec stretched his paws. He hated inactivity. It gave his fractal thoughts too much time to spin around in his head. He’d been biding his time for
years
, damn it. Now that the Organization was in their crosshairs, he wanted to know what Lone Pine was doing to take the shot and he wanted to know
now
.

The last of the evening light played across the rooftops around him, but the sight did nothing to soothe him. The distant enraged roaring of the mob at the prisoner barn was music to his ears, but it wasn’t
enough
.

Dominec moved quickly, leaping off the roof. He crouched beside the porch and shifted form. Reaching between the slats, he collected the fatigues, boots and dark, long sleeved shirt he’d stashed under the porch. Dressing quickly—underwear was a waste of time, slowing his shifting speed—he ran through possible excuses for seeking Grace out.

She didn’t have a secretive nature and he’d seen her bristle whenever someone tried to manipulate her. Grace was a battering ram, coming at problems directly and at full speed. His best tactic may actually be to be straight with her and simply ask what he wanted to know—not a method he had a lot of experience with.

He circled to the front of the porch and clomped up the steps, letting his feet fall heavily to announce his presence. Her door was propped open as usual, revealing the clutter of couches she’d crammed into the space. Her desk was off to one side, not visible from his angle, but he heard the soft click of a laptop closing. By the time he appeared in the doorway, she was lounging back in her desk chair, one eyebrow arched expectantly.

“Dominec. To what do I owe the honor of your presence?”

Battering ram approach. “I want to know what’s going on.”

“Oh, just going over some reports. What’s going on with you?” A feline smile curved her lips.

He glowered. “The entire pride is buzzing. You learned something. From that doctor.”

“We learned a lot of things actually,” she said, rocking her chair with one foot. “That’s what happens when you don’t slaughter all the hostages.”

Agitation pulled at him with a thousand tiny claws. He tried to prowl the office, but the fucking couches were everywhere, interrupting his stride. “I want to help,” he snarled.

“You look like you want to kill someone.”

“Can’t I do both?”

Grace snorted, smothering a laugh. And he wasn’t even trying to be funny.

“I hate the waiting and playing nice,” he growled. “You know I’m useful. So use me. I’ll go crazy if I can’t do something.”

“
Go
crazy?”

Dominec bared his teeth, knowing it wasn’t his most sane look and Grace snickered, irritatingly amused. He was used to a certain degree of respectful fear, but Grace was
entertained
.

“Look,” she said, sobering. “I know you can be useful, when you aren’t murdering dozens of potential hostages, and if there’s a way for me to use you, I will. But right now you need to keep demonstrating to the Alpha that you have more control than a rabid badger. Cool?”

The growl built in his chest, his animal side protesting the restraint.

A creak on the porch steps had him spinning toward the open door, fangs bared, claws snapping out in a sharp, painful rush. That fucking cowboy lion Kelly Mather stood on the top step, hat in hand, eyes wary as he took in Dominec’s battle-ready stance.

“You okay, Grace?” he asked, caution in every word.

Grace rocked out of her chair and came to her feet in a rush. “Kelly? What are you doing here?”

She came around her desk so she could see through the open door as Kelly slowly approached, all lazy, rolling swagger.

“It’s seven,” he said. When that failed to elicit a response, he went on. “Date night? We’re having dinner?”

Grace’s expression went from blank to mildly annoyed. “Right. That.”

Kelly’s easygoing smile dimmed a few notches. “Yeah. That.”

And somehow Grace’s lack of enthusiasm made Dominec’s urge to shred Kelly’s face with his claws retreat.

“Sorry,” Grace muttered, moving back to the desk to grab her laptop case and sling it over her shoulder. “It’s been one of those days. Let’s do this.”

Kelly opened his mouth, but then his eyes fell on Dominec again and he swallowed whatever he would have said.

Grace followed his gaze. “Shut off the lights and close the door when you’re done having your temper tantrum, all right, Dominec? And don’t go through my stuff. My office doesn’t even have a lock so you know I don’t leave anything sensitive here.”

Then she was gone. Breezing out into the chill evening air with Kelly at her side.

The urge to savage something with his claws returned with a vengeance. What the fuck was she doing with Kelly? Was that soft-bellied excuse for a lion really what she wanted?

Dominec growled, feeling it pushing at him. That familiar anger. The itch to attack. The need to find that cool, steady place that he could only reach with blood coating his claws. All the agitation faded away when he was there, inside that bubble of icy calm.

It would feel good. Kelly wouldn’t know what hit him.

But Grace wouldn’t forgive that.

Dominec breathed. In and out. Fighting to keep it together. It was harder than it used to be. He’d let the monster out of its box last week during the raid and monsters never went willingly back into their cages. The door inside him that separated him from the beast hadn’t closed all the way.

If it had ever existed. Maybe he was the monster and his moments of lucidity were just the face the monster wore. Everything good in him had died with Micah. He might as well face the truth of who he was now.

His hands were partially shifted. Claws out and patterned fur across the knuckles. It would be so easy to attack Kelly. His blood would be warm and sweet.

Grace would kill him for doing it. But would that really be so bad? Whatever happened when they died, it had to be better than this. Maybe he would even see Micah.

But he wouldn’t deserve to. Not if he didn’t avenge him.

No. He couldn’t die yet. Not until he’d bled the Organization dry.

Keep it together
.

Dominec stripped quickly, leaving his clothes where they fell and shifted. Most shifters had less control in their animal form, but Dominec’s cat calmed him. Things were simpler in this form. The world no longer made of jagged memories and blood.

He didn’t bother with the lights or the door. Grace should know better than to ask such things of him. He bolted out of the bungalow and raced across the compound to the far eastern edge of the developed area where the training field had been built. Obstacle courses, rifle ranges, sparring circles. It was abandoned now, training for the day over.

The tiger threw himself into the longest, most challenging obstacle course. He’d heard the new recruits muttering about
American Ninja Warrior
—well those so-called ninjas could kiss his fucking ass. He might be a monster, but he was a monster with the course record. He’d always been fast and strong, but whatever the Organization had done to him had pushed him beyond even his own superhuman limits.

He reached the end of the course and didn’t stop to catch his breath, leaping back to the beginning to go again. And again. Until his muscles burned and his lungs ached and even his fucking
tail
hurt. He collapsed, panting white clouds into the chill air, and sprawled on his side, paws outstretched.

He listened to the night, his agitated thoughts finally giving in to the weight of physical exhaustion.

He would live a little longer for vengeance. And then, when Micah’s spirit could finally rest, so would he.

Chapter Eight

Dominec’s impatience was contagious.

Grace sat in the infirmary storeroom, inventorying the latest shipment of medical supplies, even though Dr. Brandt or Moira could easily have done the task. Moira, the pride’s bear shifter midwife, had already bustled past the open door once telling Grace to just leave it and she would get to it tomorrow afternoon. But Grace needed something to occupy her hands, while her mind traveled slowly toward crazytown.

After nearly a week of interrogation, they’d finally finished debriefing Dr. Russell. Mateo had identified a captive-rich target for Kye to strike next, but the prison was larger, with more security counter-measures and Roman was balking at sending such a small team to such a massive Organization base. So far in their strikes they’d been cautious—and lucky—and hadn’t lost a single shifter to either capture or death, but if they went after riskier targets, it was only a matter of time before things went wrong.

Grace understood that—which was why she’d drawn up a plan to enlist other packs and prides the same day Roman had asked her to. She’d volunteered to be the one to go to the Canadian wolves and had expected to be gone
days
ago, but Roman was dragging his feet. Roman—who had been seriously gung-ho about being aggressive against the Organization when he was the Alpha’s heir—seemed to have developed a massive case of over-caution now that he was officially responsible for nearly two hundred lives. He didn’t want to start a war with the wolves when they were already fighting the Organization.

Which she supposed was understandable, but it still chafed. She wanted to
go
. To
do
. To
act
, damn it.

She was doing what she could here, but there was only so much she could do. She’d spoken to the Hawk, tried to nudge him subtly toward taking an active interest in training shifter soldiers—since he had by far the most military and tactical experience of any shifter she’d ever met—but right now he was reluctant to take any time away from Rachel—convinced that she would be in danger as a former Organization doctor if left unprotected on pride lands.

And unfortunately, Grace couldn’t argue with that. Some shifters, like Mateo, saw Rachel as a downright Christ-like figure for all the work she’d done smuggling shifters out of the Organization facilities. But not everyone saw her that way. There were those who didn’t draw a distinction between her and the prisoners in the barn.

The riots at the prisoner barn had been getting worse. Grace had doubled the guards at Xander’s request—since the prisoners were officially his assignment. She’d tried to make sure the guards were loyal enough to do the job and keep the rioters out of the barn, but it wasn’t an easy thing they were being asked to do. To deny the Organization’s victims the justice they deserved.

The barn had been a temporary measure. They’d needed a better prison—and a more considered approach to the prisoners. Xander and Hugo had been interrogating them, but beyond learning what their individual jobs had been at the Organization, they hadn’t gotten much from them. They were all terrified. And with the constant roaring outside the barn, who could blame them?

Rachel Russell had volunteered to tell them which among the prisoners were the ringleaders versus which had been coerced into working for the Organization, but the Hawk had flat out refused to allow it, and Roman had also been reluctant to extend his trust of Dr. Russell that far.

Which left them with a barn full of unknowns surrounded by a mob of angry shifters. That couldn’t possibly end well.

Grace was surprised she’d never seen or heard of Dominec being among the rioters. She’d thought when she first learned about the disturbances that he had to have played a part in them, but she hadn’t been able to find any proof of that. Perhaps he really was taking his probation seriously.

Or he’d just gotten craftier about hiding his actions.

She had a feeling it was the latter.

The scarred tiger had always been trouble—but he’d been good about keeping his crazy on a leash for the last few years. He’d been an ass, absolutely, but never a violent one. And now he was…unpredictable.

She wasn’t sure what sort of message she was supposed to take from the fact that he’d left his clothing strewn around her office the other night. She hadn’t expected him to actually shut off the lights and shut the door, but the clothes had raised her eyebrows. If he’d shifted in her office with plans to tear it apart because she’d denied him, she would have understood that, but there hadn’t been a single claw mark.

He was an enigma, that one. And a pain in the ass.

But she’d rather be dealing with him at the moment than with Kelly.

Stupid Cowboy Casanova. He just had to go and ruin everything.

They’d had a good thing going. She liked him. He was pleasant and easygoing and
very
easy on the eyes. The perfect stress-release valve when she needed to unwind. But now he wanted a
relationship
and for her to invest her
feelings
and she suddenly felt guilty for the fact that all she wanted to do was use him for sex. She couldn’t sleep with him anymore with that lovely no-strings-just-fun feeling. It felt wrong and she was pissed at him for making it feel wrong. She needed a freaking release valve and he’d taken that from her, the bastard.

Which was why she was doing medical inventory to try to calm her agitation when she could be having a wall-banging, mind-numbing, meaningless sex-a-thon with a willing lion.

No more fucking Kelly. How dare the selfish bastard make
her
feel like a selfish bastard for not taking his feelings into account? He was a fuck buddy. He wasn’t supposed to have feelings. That was the freaking point.

Grace partially shifted one hand and slashed open a shipping box with one claw. Assholes. All of them.

“Hello? Dr. Brandt?”

The infirmary was deserted in the early evening. Brandt and Moira had headed out a few minutes ago to grab some dinner at the dining hall, but whoever was calling from the front of the infirmary evidently didn’t know that.

Grace dropped the inventory sheet on top of the open box of gauze to mark her place and headed toward the front as the woman called again. “Dr. Brandt? Are you here?”

“Hey, Kathy Cat,” Grace said as she stepped out of the back hallway into the large front room of the infirmary. Kathy was a lynx shifter. Older than Grace, but newer to the pride. She was one of the shifters that Rachel Russell had personally smuggled out of the Organization labs—and consequently one of the good doctor’s staunchest and most vocal supporters here at the pride.

“Grace, hi,” she said now with a tentative smile. “Is Dr. Brandt here?”

“Out getting dinner. Can I help you?”

“No. I just…” She bounced on the balls of her feet, another smile trying to curve her lips and Grace realized she wasn’t tentative—she was trying to contain herself. Something had made Kathy very,
very
happy.

“Kathy?” Grace prompted.

“Dr. Russell is going to help me get pregnant,” she burst out, as if the words couldn’t stay inside her any longer.

“Oh. Wow.” Kathy was pushing forty and mated to a bobcat. Cross-breed pairings were always tricky when it came to having kids, but Dr. Russell’s specialty at the Organization had been shifter reproduction, so if she said she could get Kathy preggers, she probably could. “Good for you, hon. But what did you need from Dr. Brandt?”

“He has records of all the stuff we’ve tried so far. I thought if we sent them out to Rachel at the cabin, she could look over my records and see what the next step is. And I just couldn’t wait to get started. As soon as she agreed to help, I came straight here—”

Grace’s hip buzzed and she reached automatically for her cell phone. “Sure, hon. I understand. Brandt should be back soon, if you want to…”

She trailed off as her brain registered the words on the text.

Overheard some guards talking. You should get to the barn.

It was from Parker. One of the newest, youngest and most eager new soldier recruits. He was a total apple-polisher, but he wasn’t inclined to make things up. If he’d heard something…

“
Shit
.”

Kathy’s eyes went round.

“Kathy, I have to go. Go to the dining hall. Find Dr. Brandt and tell him to be ready. He might have some patients soon.”

She didn’t wait to see if Kathy obeyed. Grace ran full out, cutting between buildings and forgoing the winding paths of the pride compound in favor of the most direct route to the prisoner barn. The roaring of the mob that had taken to aurally tormenting the prisoners grew louder as she approached.

Then the tenor of the roars changed abruptly, surging with the distinctive tone of triumph.

They were in.

“Fuck
.”

Grace ran harder, punching an emergency code into her phone. It would call the rest of the security personnel, but most of them would be on the perimeter. Too far to help. She loosed the tranq gun from its holster at her hip and partially shifted, pouring on another surge of speed.

The shit was officially hitting the fan.