Chapter Twelve
There was no way Misty was going to get back to sleep after Dame had said the L-word.
She couldn’t stop smiling. The house smelled like coffee, and she guessed he’d made a quick cup before Dame had gone out to switch places with Mars.
She just had to figure out how to use the coffee maker. This thing looked a little complicated and she was used to the old school pot Uncle Tim had gifted her years ago.
She was wearing one of Dame’s T-shirts, and it hung down to her knees, and she’d tied her hair up in a messy bun to keep it out of her face while she tried to figure out this coffee maker rocket science.
She filled the water tank, pushed the button, and slid a clean mug under the spout.
A roar rattled the house, and she gasped and hunched down.
Another roar sounded, and a second in a lower voice.
Two tigers.
The house felt very empty all of a sudden.
Another roar sounded and her adrenaline was climbing. Misty jogged to the door and locked the deadbolt, then backed away slowly as her heart pounded in her chest.
“You know that lock wouldn’t keep me out,” a soft voice sounded behind her.
She startled hard and spun around.
Stellan stood in the kitchen, leaning on the counter like he’d been there all along.
The roaring outside was deafening.
“W-where is Dame?”
Stellan’s eyes were pure gold. “Cage,” he said in a bored tone.
Shit, shit, shit!
Terrified, she lunged for her purse next to the door and pulled out her handgun. She slammed the clip into place and cocked it like she’d practiced a hundred times, and she aimed it at him.
He perked up. “Well, that makes the game more interesting. Are you a killer, Rabbit? I don’t think so.” He stalked closer. “I think you’ll wait too long to pull that trigger.”
“Stop right there,” she said, and damn the shake in her voice. She aimed the gun right between his eyes and blew out a steadying breath.
A strangled sound wrenched from him, and Stellan pitched forward. The gold faded from his eyes, and the color darkened to brown. He looked around and at her. “No. No, no, no, you can’t be here! You have to run!” His eyes darted to the gun and then back to her. “Do it!”
“W-what?”
“Shoot me now. Do it fast before he comes back!”
“I…” she shook her head. “Dame…”
“Will live! You want to save him? Then save yourself!” He crawled toward her, his face strained.
“Please,” he choked out. “Misty, please. Save yourself. I can’t hold him!
” His eyes flashed gold, then brown. He slammed his fist onto the ground and looked up at her, pleading.
“Pull the trigger.” His eyes rippled through a string of color changes, and his face was strained as he ground out a pained sound and writhed against the ground.
In an inhuman voice, he choked out, “Save yourself.”
He was trying to buy her time.
The dark side of Stellan was right. She couldn’t kill him. She wasn’t a killer. Not when there was good that still existed in him.
A whimper clawed its way up her throat as she unlocked the door and threw it open, slammed it closed behind her and bolted for the trail that would lead to the barn. She had to get to Dame. She had to unlock the cage!
She pushed her legs at a dead sprint, ignoring the pain as her bare feet hit traction on sharp gravel rocks. Huffing breath, she pumped her arms and reached the tree line. The roaring in her ears was matched by the roaring in the barn.
Behind her there was an enormous crash, and she turned just in time to see Stellan’s massive tiger sailing through the front window.
“Dame!” she screamed frantically. “Dame, help me!”
She could see the barn, but that tiger was so fast and gaining on her with every stride.
She pushed her legs as fast as she could.
Stellan was right behind her. She could feel him!
With a scream, she pulled the gun and fired a round at him.
A short roar bellowed from him, and he slowed enough for her to put a few yards between them.
She had no idea where she’d hit him, only that it hadn’t done enough damage.
This was it. This was the end. The hunt was going to end with the Rabbit in the tiger’s mouth.
A roar sounded from in front of her, and with tears burning her eyes, she saw a monstrous orange tiger round the corner of the barn, followed closely by a white tiger that was just as big.
Dame! Mars!
She ran as hard as she could, but she couldn’t get away from Stellan, he was right on her. She knew he was about to leap, and she couldn’t do anything about it.
Stupid, slow, human body!
Time slowed as the powerful Cats bunched their muscles and leapt through the air, right for her.
She dropped. It’s all she could do.
Misty dropped to the ground and slid across the gravel as the tigers collided with Stellan above her.
Shocked, Misty skidded to a painful stop and looked up to see a brutal war. She’d seen a fight like this before, half a decade ago between Dame and Stellan’s tigers, but this one felt different.
This one dragged on and had a violence to it that she’d never witnessed in her life. Even after Mars had pulled off Stellan, Dame didn’t. It was two orange tigers locked in a battle to the death, and a sadness washed over her for her part in all of this.
They were brothers.
Whatever happened here would echo through their lives forever.
The darker one was on the ground, and he wasn’t moving anymore. He wasn’t fighting back.
Mars’s white tiger paced in the background, his frost blue eyes on the war, his tail twitching in agitation, his ears flattened as he snarled at the others. His fur was matted with red, and his ear was cut badly. His mouth was bloody, and it contrasted with that white fur.
Dame latched his teeth onto Stellan’s neck and dragged him a few yards, but he wasn’t moving. His limp tail made a trail through the dirt.
Mars let off a short roar, and another, and another.
Dame dropped Stellan and joined in, pacing, tail twitching, furious gold eyes on Stellan’s body. Mars made a short charge at him and they both tensed and swatted at each other with their enormous paws. It was a short skirmish and then they were circling Stellan.
He was ripped up. It was bad. His underside was mangled, and his face was covered in red. His gold eyes blinked slowly, and he angled his head down to look at her. His pupils were so small, nothing more but pinpoints. She would never forget the way he looked in the halo of light from the barn.
A tear slid to her cheek and she looked away. It was all too much.
Dame’s tiger approached her and nearly knocked her over by rubbing its enormous head against her.
He sniffed at her forearm. It was bleeding from sliding into the gravel, and the pads of her feet were all cut up. She would be picking pebbles from her skin for an hour.
He ran his tongue across her forearm and she winced.
A low rumbling sound emanated from him before he sauntered to the tree line and began his change back.
Mars was already back in his human skin.
He sat next to his brother, shoulders rising and falling with his heavy breath, and his blue eyes rimmed with tears.
She’d never witnessed a more heartbroken look on any man. Not until she saw Dame’s face.
The boys didn’t have clothes but that didn’t matter out here.
Dame fell to his knees and his eyes held a thousand ghosts. Such sadness filled the clearing as Dame and Mars sat with their dying brother.
“I love you, brother,” Dame whispered.
Mars dropped his head, and Misty could see two tears drop to his thighs.
Oh, her heart was breaking for them.
She dashed her knuckles across her damp cheeks, and stood, then limped over toward him.
“Too close,” Dame warned. “He’s still alive.”
Oh, she knew. The labored rise and fall of his ribs said as much.
“I can save him,” she told them in a small voice.
Dame shook his head. “What?”
“I can save him, like I saved you.”
Dame and Mars exchanged a glance. “If you save him, he will find a way to kill you.”
She shrugged. “Then I’ll move away. I’ll keep everything hidden, and you can keep your brother. I have to hurry though. He doesn’t have much time.”
“But your life—”
“Isn’t worth more than his,” she whispered. “His death would be on my hands, and he was right. I’m not a killer. Help me get him inside.”
“Misty, he’s—”
“Let me try,” she said sternly, inviting no more argument.
Mars was already standing. “Where? Barn or house?”
“House. I need good light. Do you have a medical kit?”
Mars nodded and bolted for the path that led back to the house.
Misty knelt beside the tiger to assess the damage. It was so bad. There wasn’t any part of his underbelly that was unmarred. Dame had done the same as Stellan had done to him those weeks ago.
“He can’t Change back,” Dame explained.
“Then I’ll do my best as he is.”
Stellan opened his mouth exposing his long, sharp canines, and Dame flinched and pulled her back. He was just panting though. Already, his eyes were taking on a glossy look.
Mars was back with the truck, and the boys loaded him into the bed while she climbed in the back seat.
Mars drove them all back to the house and the guys dragged that enormous tiger inside and laid him down onto the kitchen table.
It was large and sat eight people, but Stellan’s limbs still hung off the ends, and his head was hanging off it completely.
She didn’t know how to do this exactly. She was no vet, but she had learned how to speed up the Cat healing from her time sewing up Dame.
Her bedside manner and her instincts kicked in, and she ordered Dame and Mars around and they retrieved everything she needed them to, and if they didn’t have it at the house, they found something that worked.
Mars had told her Cat’s didn’t get infections, and well, that made this a hell of a lot easier than it would’ve been.
She turned her mind off and got lost in her work as Dame and Mars stood right beside her, blocking her from Stellan’s paws in case he came to.
And that was how she spent the early morning hours of the worst day of her life, knowing with every cut she healed, Stellan would be that much closer to finishing his hunt. She would always be the Rabbit, but at least she could live with herself, however long that life lasted.
She was going to have to leave here.
She blinked back tears and kept working.
“Babe,” Dame whispered.
“I’m good. I’m good.”
She would have to leave Uncle Tim. Leave the safety of weekends at his house. She would have to leave her job here, and a system she was comfortable in. She would have to go far enough away that she could go into hiding.
She had to pull a bullet from Stellan at the end. It had lodged in his back. The second she removed it, his skin started closing the seam of the injury.
His breathing was steady, and he was tensing as she worked on him.
Dame and Mars didn’t leave her side for even a moment, and she knew they would take the brunt of Stellan’s claws to keep her safe if he came to.
Dammit, why couldn’t she stop crying?
Because she was sealing her fate. She was saving the one who hunted her, and she would never be safe again.
She was trading her life for his. She had to. She couldn’t let Dame’s heart get broken just because she was the stupid Rabbit.
She was going to miss Dame so much.
So much.
A sob took her lungs and tears streamed down her cheeks. She wiped them on her shoulder and kept working. It wasn’t fair that she’d finally found her person, and they couldn’t be together. It just wasn’t fair.
Dame’s attention stayed glued to her. He touched her and comforted her. Brushed her arm, gripped her hair at the nape of her neck, touched the arch of her lower back.
His heart was in his golden eyes.
Stellan was mending.
She was doing it.
She was saving him.
It was a good thing for a healer like her, but deep down she knew…
Saving his life would end hers.