Tempted by the Jaguar #1: Transformation (Riverford Shifters) (4 page)

Kylie was over the arm of the couch and halfway to her bedroom before she
heard Hunter‘s surprised curse, immediately followed by the thump of his shoes
hitting the floor heavily as he had likely leapt over the back of the couch as
well. Screw stalling. She had heard enough. His implied threat was all the
answer she needed. There was no way she could trust any of the shifters. She
had to get out of there!

Earlier, she had purposely opened her window while she had been alone
in her bedroom in case she had to make a run for it. Her window faced the
courtyard of the apartment complex, but more importantly, the small building
that housed the manager’s office was only about fifty yards away. If she could
just make it out the window, at the very least, Hunter would not dare shift in
such an open place where anyone looking out their window could see him. With a
pursuer only on two feet, Kylie had a better chance of making it to that office,
and maybe the humans inside, by their presence alone, would protect her.

Why,
why
had she not escaped earlier while she’d had the chance?
No amount of information Hunter
might
have provided her should have been
worth the risk of having no escape at all!

With speed driven by panic, Kylie made it through her bedroom door,
intent on diving through the window, when what felt like a battering ram hit
her squarely from behind, sending her crashing to the carpet with a cry of
dismay. She opened her mouth to scream for help, but a large hand clamped over
her mouth before she could utter a sound.

Still unwilling to give up, Kylie tried to bite him, but Hunter just
pressed his hand harder against her mouth and adjusted his body until his full
weight stretched out flat across her back pinned her completely to the floor.
She tried to buck him off, to thrash her arms and legs, but she wasn’t able to
move her body more than a millimeter or two off the floor no matter how hard
she strained up against him.

“I’m sorry, but I really can’t let you leave,” Hunter said into her
ear, his tone genuinely apologetic, damn him. “I know you’re scared and
confused, but please just calm down. Let me help you, Kylie.”

Kylie went limp beneath him, angry and feeling utterly defeated. After
a tense, silent pause where neither one of them moved, Hunter cautiously removed
his hand from her mouth, but he made no move to get off her. He was right not
to trust her, she admitted grudgingly to herself, but that acknowledgment did
nothing to lessen the bitterness welling up within her.

Things had been going so well these past twelve years after the agony
and sadness of
that
night. College was great, and she had a circle of
friends that she really cared about, as well as Paul. She had finally started
to feel a sense of safety after none of the things she had feared all her life
had occurred. Now, because of one sick bastard, that sense of safety had been
thoroughly shattered, and Kylie despaired of ever regaining it.

“I don’t want anything to do with all this craziness,” Kylie finally
said into the heavy silence.

Hunter sighed, his breath warm against the back of her neck, making her
involuntarily twitch.

“You can’t go back to living as just a human,” he said gently. “Even
now, the scent of your jaguar is getting much stronger. Other shifters will
smell it and know you are one of us. It’s dangerous for you to be left as you
are now, ignorant of everything a shifter life entails, for both you and the
shifters of this city. I could see it in your eyes last night, in your scent,
when you faced off against me while we were both in jaguar form. The cat was
almost completely in control, and that is something you can never let happen
again.”

“You make it sound as if I’m possessed by some sort of cat spirit, a demon…”

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing as sinister as that,” Hunter assured her. “You
see, we shifters have dual souls. Our human souls are naturally stronger, so I
guess you can say human is our default state. Only a bit of the animal is
allowed to seep through into our consciousness, to rule our instincts, but last
night when I looked into your eyes for the first time, I couldn’t see anything
that was human. It’s a wonder that your human soul was able to come back to the
forefront at all.”

Kylie closed her eyes, remembering her close call with the teenager in
the street. She suddenly felt as exhausted as she had last night.

“Are you saying that I won’t be able to keep the jaguar from coming out
and taking over my mind?”

“I’m saying that without our help, my clan I mean, that very
possibility will hover over you every day for the rest of your life.”

Hunter rose from her back and climbed to his feet. Kylie slowly pulled
herself up onto her knees and looked up at the hand he held out to her.

Instead of accepting it, she raised her eyes to his face. “Can you
promise me—can you promise me that if I go with you to see your elders, your
clan won’t lock me up somewhere like some kind of prisoner?”

“We haven’t had a Returner in our clan for over a hundred years,”
Hunter said with a smile. “The last thing those old pussies would want is to
alienate a new potential clan member.” His expression turned wry. “Especially a
female one.”

Kylie stiffened. “If they think they can make me marry one of you—”

Hunter’s sharp laugh cut her off. “The elders may wish they could
dictate all hookups within our clan, but trust me, if they ever tried, every
single one of us would just give them the finger. No, what I meant was that the
ratio of jaguar males to females in this city is three to one, so any addition
of a lovely lady is always welcome.”

Her shoulders relaxed slightly, and she slowly reached up to accept his
hand up. Still backed into a corner, Kylie really wanted to trust him, but it
would take more than a charming smile and a gorgeous face to break through
years of always second guessing everyone’s motives. She glanced over at the
open window, and she abruptly felt Hunter squeeze her hand tightly. A warning.

With a weary sigh, Kylie turned her attention back to Hunter and
deliberately pulled her hand from his grip. She was a little surprised that he
let her without any real resistance.

“What now?” she asked.

He regarded her thoughtfully. “I need to explain a few more things and
then I’ll take you to speak with the elders,” he said.

A sudden, loud knock at the door had Kylie nearly jumping out of her
skin and Hunter turning towards the door with what was unmistakably a low growl.

“Are you expecting anyone?” Hunter demanded, his entire body visibly
tense.

A relief like no other instantly washed through her being, nearly
making her knees give out. “Yeah, my—”

“Morning sweetie! It’s me,” Paul’s soothing baritone called through her
front door.

Kylie automatically started to move towards the door. He had used the
code word, the one signifying that it was safe to open the door. However,
before she could take more than a couple of steps, Hunter grabbed her arm.

“Don’t answer that,” he whispered warningly. “If it’s your boyfriend,
you can just call him later after all of our business is settled.”

Kylie shook her head even as she strained against the hand wrapped
around her arm. “I don’t have a boyfriend. That’s my dad, Paul.”

Kylie saw Hunter’s nostrils flare as he stared hard at the front door.

“As I thought,” he murmured. “He’s human.”

“He’s here to pick me up for lunch,” she lied. “My car is in the
parking lot. He’ll think something’s up if I don’t answer the door.”

Hunter flashed her a skeptical look even as his hand tightened around
her arm. “He’ll just think you left with a friend.”

Kylie shook her head. “I would never bail on my dad without calling him
first. The only time I didn’t was when I was in a car accident. He’s somewhat
of a worrywart, so he’ll just think the worst.” She clutched at Hunter’s arm
and did her best to make her eyes pleading. “Let me answer the door,
please
!
If I suddenly become unreachable, he’ll freak out and come looking for me. He
might see something he’s not supposed to, and I don’t want him to get hurt
because of me!”

When he still looked unconvinced, Kylie added, “The best thing right
now is for me to go to lunch with him and pretend that I wasn’t nearly tortured
and murdered by some sick bastard last night, much less that I turned into a
freaking jaguar! You can follow us, and afterwards, I’ll go with you wherever
you want as long as you promise me that you’ll leave my dad out of all of
this.”

“Kylie!” Paul called again, his voice tinged with anxiety. He pounded
on the door three more times in rapid succession.

She grabbed his free hand urgently. “
Please
…”

Hunter looked over at the door once more, before he slowly nodded
without a word and released her arm.

Kylie closed her eyes briefly in relief. “Thank you,” she whispered
sincerely.

More pounding sounded, and she hurried over to the door before Paul
decided to break it down. She sensed more than heard Hunter retreat into her
bedroom.

“Coming Dad!” she called cheerfully, and the pounding abruptly ceased.

She never called Paul “dad.”

“What did I tell you?” Paul scolded as soon as she opened the door.

“I know, I know,” Kylie said apologetically as she stepped aside to let
him in, “but this time I swear I was ready. I must’ve just dozed off for a
minute at my desk waiting for you.”

Paul’s pale blue eyes surreptitiously swept the whole room as he
entered the apartment. Taking advantage of her back being turned to Hunter’s
potential spying, Kylie gestured towards the bedroom with her eyes.

His eyes narrowed. “You’ve got to stop pushing yourself so hard,
sweetie. Studying is important, but making time for sleep is even more so.”

Kylie looped her arm through his and laughed. “But I always make time
for lunch. Let’s go. I’m starved.”

As they headed for the door, Paul abruptly paused and said, “Don’t
forget your keys.”

Her eyes followed his hand as he pointed down to the floor at her keys
and cell phone, both still exactly where she had dropped them after collapsing
earlier.

“Oh! They must’ve fallen out of my backpack when I came in last night.”

Truthfully, she had forgotten all about them. The last thing she needed
was for Hunter to go through all her contacts and old texts.

After leaving the apartment, neither one of them said another word
until they were inside his car and out of the parking lot.

“A shifter was there,” Kylie said to his unspoken question, “a guy
named Hunter Rivera from the local jaguar clan. He’s following us right now.
That’s the only reason why he let us leave. I convinced him that we had a lunch
date and that it would be better to go about my day normally.”

“He’s the one who saw you?” Paul guessed.

“Yeah. After I called you, I barely made it into my apartment before
passing out. He literally sniffed me out and barged into my apartment just as I
had finally become conscious again.”

“I’m so sorry, Kylie,” Paul said, sounding stricken. His hands gripped
the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. “There was
fog this morning, and my plane was delayed for almost three hours.”

Kylie reached over and squeezed his upper arm. “You’re here now. That’s
all that matters to me,” she said, her voice rough with emotion.

Paul swallowed thickly and flashed her a tiny smile. “I’ll drive us
towards downtown. The lunch hour traffic should give you enough time to tell me
everything. We’ll decide what to do from there.”

For the next twenty minutes, Kylie recounted the whole terrible
episode, the terrifying realization that her abductor likely planned on using
the scissors to cut more than her clothes, even confessing about how close she
had come to attacking the teenagers she had stumbled upon afterwards. By the
time she finished, Kylie was shaking so badly that she wrapped her arms around
herself in an effort to control the tremors. Listening to Paul’s words of
comfort also helped soothe her wounded soul.

“Mom and Dad never once told me that holding on to their humanity while
in their shifted forms was so hard,” Kylie remarked softly.

“For them, I don’t think it was,” Paul replied carefully. “Although he
rarely did so, whenever Alan would shift in front of me, I never felt as though
I was in the presence of an animal. I think it was because no matter what he
did, I could always see the human in his actions.”

She hugged herself more tightly. “I’m scared, Paul. Hunter says that he
only wants to help me, but he also says that he came after me because I broke
some major shifter law by shifting in front of that psycho.”

Paul glanced at her sharply. “What exactly has he told you?”

“He says that I have to go with him to talk to the elders of his clan,
but it sounds more like I’m a criminal about to be put on trial!”

Paul sighed. “I hesitate to say you were lucky after everything you
went through last night, but you were extremely lucky that piece of scum took
you into a jaguar’s territory. From what your father told me, the jaguar
shifters of this city are good people, if a little bit solitary.”

“What are you saying? That I should actually
let
Hunter take me
to his clan’s elders?” Kylie asked incredulously. “What if they ask me to
shift, and I can’t do it? Or worse, what if I screw up and they find out the
truth about me? I have
no idea
how I shifted in the first place! It just—happened.
Wouldn’t it be better for me to run? I know you don’t know where either my
dad’s or mom’s clans are living, but now that I’ve shifted, shouldn’t I try to
find them?”

“Kylie—” Paul said, the hesitancy in his voice making her stomach
clench in dread. “I didn’t tell you this because I didn’t want to needlessly
worry you, but I’ve recently discovered that several Sniffers have managed to
infiltrate the city.”

Kylie sucked in a sharp breath. “How many?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” Paul replied grimly. “Karen said that word on the
street was that there were at least four confirmed and a dozen more suspected.
There’s no way that a shifter leaving the city with a human would go unnoticed,
and I’d sooner cut off my left leg than let you try to leave alone. At this
point, the best course would be to integrate with the jaguars, to let them act
as your shield while we both try to gather more information. Up to this point,
we’ve only had access to information coming from Riverford’s cougar shifter
clan. Adding the jaguar clan as allies would be a major boon. Lord knows we
haven’t gotten any closer to finding out what happened to your parents over the
past few years.”

“If the lions have actually managed to sneak their people into
Riverford under such a careful watch, then don’t you think the jaguars will be
doubly suspicious of a ‘human’ like me suddenly shifting for the first time in
adulthood?” Kylie asked. “Hunter insinuated that this is something that doesn’t
happen very often. They’ll start to dig deeper into my past. Even without the
suspicion, you know how important bloodlines are to shifters. I’m not so sure
we should risk that level of scrutiny.”

“Better the jaguars than the lions,” Paul said firmly. “You did say
that Hunter fellow told you all the various shifter clan elders in the alliance
were informed about you and that Hunter was instructed to bring you in. I can’t
imagine something as serious as a breech of secrecy would be discussed beyond
that level of hierarchy. If you present yourself before the jaguar clan elders
willingly, then we can use that to our advantage. They must believe that you’re
a—forgive me—Deadend. Given the various social stigmas associated with that
word, I don’t think they’ll see anything wrong with you asking them to keep that
part of your history a secret. Let them spread a partial truth—that you are a
shifter that revealed yourself to a human in order to save your life.”

Paul reached over and grasped her hand, giving it tight squeeze. “This
could be a good thing, sweetie.”

Kylie flashed him a tiny smile. “I imagine Hunter expected lunch to end
with a lengthy car chase. He’ll be thrilled.”

“It’s too bad, though,” Paul said with a sigh of—regret? “I’ve always wondered
if participating in a car chase was as much fun as the movies made it look.”

Kylie couldn’t tell if her adoptive father was joking or not.