Chapter Three #3
“Sounds like a lonely life. Why can’t you?”
“It’s not allowed.”
“Who makes the rules?”
“Cats.”
“Why the rule?”
He leaned back and rested his hands on his hips. This was the first time he’d ever talked to a woman about this. “Do you want babies someday?”
“Yes.”
“Eighty percent of our babies would be stillborn. They wouldn’t even look human. You would have to mourn animals you can’t get to air.”
“Oh my gosh,” she whispered in horror. “The twenty percent?”
“Would be born human, but the eyes stay.”
“What does that mean?”
“They stay gold and unnatural. It’s like the animal gets frozen inside of them. They’ll have an urge to Change for their whole life and won’t be able to. They call them Half-Cats. It’s cruel to have one. We aren’t the same species, Misty. Our kind doesn’t mix. Not ever.”
“But you were human before you were Turned?”
He nodded, but there was this sick pit in his stomach. Talking about this made him angry all over again. He scratched his jaw and asked, “Can I help?”
The microwave beeped and she shook her head. She was quiet the rest of the time she was preparing his food—a huge bowl of stew and three leftover sirloin steaks her Uncle had cooked on the grill last night. She offered him potato salad, but he passed. It was the red meat his body needed.
As he ate, she perched on the chair across from him, watching him eat. After a couple of minutes, she said, “Is that how you feel about women?”
He put a pause on scarfing his food long enough to glance up at her. He swallowed the bite. “What do you mean?”
“You feel like a relationship is only for procreation?”
He frowned and went back to eating. “Weird way to put it, but yeah.”
“That’s sad.”
Dame inhaled and leveled her with a look. He took the bait. “What’s sad?”
“Just because you can’t have babies doesn’t mean you can’t find your life partner and fall in love.”
He snorted and shook his head, repeated, “Fall in love. That’s for movies.”
“You don’t believe in it?” she asked.
“No,” he said easily. He truly didn’t. “I don’t think Cats think the same way as you humans.”
“Is that what you’re called? Cats?”
“Yep. Shifters are all Cats. There are jaguars, tigers, panthers, cheetahs, and lions. There’s even a cougar or two left. The blanket term is Cats though.”
“I’m thinking about getting a cat,” she said, a teasing smile stretching her lips.
“Subject change?” he guessed.
“You’re sweating bullets talking about love. I figured I would throw you a bone.”
“I appreciate it,” he said with a chuckle. “You probably watch romances. I could watch shoot-em-up movies all day. If there is romance in it, I turn it off.”
She laughed. “You are so damaged.”
“Amen,” he said around a bite.
“For the record, I like shoot-em-up movies too. I’m a cool girl.”
“You don’t have to sell yourself to me. I’ve been following your Instagram for years. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“I still don’t understand that part. What happened? How did you get hurt. Did Stellan find me?”
“Stellan was there because of me. I fucked up,” he admitted and cut into his second steak. Already he was feeling better, and his scars were starting to itch, which meant healing had picked up the pace again.
Gah, he was going to send her Uncle Tim a bottle of good whiskey as a thank you. He didn’t know it yet, but he had a fan in Dame.
“He’s going to know where you work now,” Dame gritted out. “That’s a problem.”
“Is he the one who did that to you?” she asked, gesturing to his chest.
“He and Marsden.” He shook his head. “We’re all off our rockers right now.”
“Why?”
“Our mom died.”
Her mouth fell open and the smile faded from her eyes. He watched them turn stormy in an instant. “Oh my gosh,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was complicated. We are all back in town for the funeral. It was a few days ago.”
“Dame,” she whispered, covering her mouth. “What the heck?”
“I am my brother’s keeper, okay? Stellan is my responsibility.
Marsden left soon after the Turn. He bounced and Stellan was spinning out, and I was trying to figure out how to be this…
this…thing.” He swallowed the lump in his throat and pushed back from the table.
He’d lost his appetite a little and needed a break.
He huffed a sigh and crossed his arms over his chest, but it burned like hell and he flinched and rested his hands on his thighs instead.
“We didn’t have much to do with Mom, Stellan and me.
A call every once in a while. She was local, but we didn’t visit much, and she didn’t ask. ”
“Why not?”
“Long story short, she thought my dad was fixed, he wasn’t, she never wanted a baby, should’ve never been a mother, and all the sudden she’s pregnant with triplets.
Parenting wasn’t her calling.” He offered an empty smile.
“Raising us ripped apart her marriage to my dad, and she blamed us for it. She settled for our stepdad a couple years later, and he was brutal. There was never a bond to our mom. She just fed us sometimes.”
“Geez.”
“Anyway, me and my brothers had to put on the funeral, and the reading of the will, all that stuff. Marsden came to my house, we had a big fight, Stellan Changed first, Marsden went second. I tried to break them up and…” He shrugged, wincing away from the bloody memories.
They’d been in a hundred fights, but this one had been the worst, by a lot.
Marsden hadn’t been involved in years. “I’ll be all right. ”
“So, you came to the hospital?”
This was dangerous territory. “I needed help. I knew you were a nurse at that hospital. That’s all it was.
No more no less.” He couldn’t tell her how much he’d clung to her social media posts over the years.
What a beautiful distraction seeing snippets of her life had been.
He couldn’t tell her how he felt about her.
“No more no less,” she repeated, but there as a suspicious glint to her eyes. “Why did you say it like that?”
“I needed help,” he repeated. She didn’t need to know how invested he was. It would only make things worse.
She stared at him with a frown that said she didn’t believe him.
“Look, I don’t know any nurses but you. I saw you in the scrubs the first day we met, you posted selfies from the hospital, I figured you could work your way around sutures, or fuck, give me a blood transfusion if you needed to.
Plus, I figured I could convince you to help me since I’d saved you before.
I don’t know why I did it.” Lie. “I was bleeding out and hurt and I made a mistake. My brothers couldn’t quit hunting me when I was injured, and I led Stellan right to you.
He probably picked up your scent from the second he was around your car. You were the one that got away.”
“Oh my gosh,” she murmured. “How many people has he killed?”
“Zero, and I’m pretty damn determined to keep it that way. Like I said, he has a tiger problem. In his right mind, he knows right and wrong. When he’s the animal though, it’s different. He’s different. He’s…volatile.”
“And hunts women.”
“His tiger doesn’t give a shit if you’re a woman, a man, a honey badger, a notebook, or an asparagus.
You escaped him. And then you were smart enough to immediately move houses and set your profiles to private, and he sucks at the internet even more than I do so he never figured out your name, or how to hunt you online.
And I wasn’t about to tell him. You’d done well to get away.
I just…messed up and put you in his path again. ”
“Well, now what?”
“Now I need to heal up enough so I can take him. I’ve been fighting that asshole off bad decisions since he was Turned.”
“Is he evil?”
“No,” Dame said tiredly. Though sometimes he wondered.
“He’s really big,” she murmured. “And fast.”
“He’s lethal, for sure.”
“Okay, this is the part where you tell me it’s going to be okay and I don’t have to be scared, right?”
“No, you should be scared.”
“What the hell?” she uttered.
“Maybe quit the hospital and get a job somewhere else. Maybe move out of the state.”
“Dame! Are you serious?”
He scrubbed his hand down his face tiredly. “You’re right. Look, I just need to heal up and then go tackle him and Marsden. He’ll be gone soon and I just have to deal with Stellan.”
She canted her head and her eyes softened again. “This is a lot.”
“I know and I’m sorry.”
“No, I mean it’s a lot on you.”
He frowned and dropped his gaze. She was being understanding and it was doing something strange to his insides. “It’s okay.”
“Do you have to be with him all the time?” she asked.
“No, he has certain days he allows himself to Change. We prepare leading up to it. I stay with him then. I just have to keep him out of trouble when he’s the tiger.
When he’s the man, he’s okay. Well, mostly.
He works and has his own place and has most of his mind.
Kind of.” Dame threw his hand up in the air.
“He’s tolerable fifteen percent of the time. ”
“Fifteen percent of the time isn’t that much.”
“Well, I’d probably enjoy him more if he wasn’t such a prick when he Changes. It’s not exactly how I planned to spend all of my Tuesday and Friday nights.”
“I’m off on Friday nights.”
Dame perked up. “Is there any way to get your shifts changed to where you don’t work on Tuesdays either? You’re fine the other days.”
“God, this is so weird. You’re asking if I can I change my work schedule, so I don’t get eaten by a tiger? Seriously?”
Dame puffed air out of his cheeks and relaxed back against the chair. “Yeah, you’re right. Fuck, I can’t believe I led him to you. It was the blood. He wasn’t going to pull off me when I was weak.”
“He sounds like a psychopath,” she said, and there was a nervousness to her voice.
“His animal is,” he agreed. “You could meet the man, and he wouldn’t even recognize you.” Dame shook his head. “His animal is completely separate from his human side. The second he kills a human, there will be a bounty on his head.”