Wild Cat

“What’s up, mi ja? Something worrying you?”

Cassidy turned from the window and looked at him. “Diego Escobar, I reject your mate-claim.”

Diego’s hands jerked on the steering wheel, then he quickly righted the car. “What?”

“I reject the mate-claim. I’ll make it public when we’re finished here tonight.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I thought you said you didn’t want to reject it.”

“I didn’t. But that was me being selfish.” Cassidy folded her arms, closing herself off. “I want you so much, Diego. I love the way you talk and how you move, and the way you don’t back down from any Shifter, not even Eric. I love the way you protect your mom and your brother. I want you with every piece of my heart.” She stopped, eyes soft. “But you’re not Shifter. It’s not fair to you.”

His chest felt tight. “Does it matter that I don’t give a damn?”

“No. The female’s decision is final.”

“Well, too bad. I’m not ready to accept that decision as final.”

Cassidy gave him an exasperated look. “Diego, humans who pair with Shifters are rejected by human society. I’ve seen it happen; I’ve lived a long time, and it’s always the same. The humans have to live with the Shifters, and they become neither one thing nor the other. Not accepted by humans and not truly accepted by Shifters.”

Diego clutched the wheel as Xavier took a hairpin turn in the dark. “You want to let me worry about that?”

“I’m trying to explain that it will be hard on you. Very few humans stay with Shifters, for a good reason.”

Diego sucked in a breath as Xavier swung around another corner, revealing a vast dark abyss beyond the road. No lights up here, and no guardrails.

Diego started to sweat. “Can we talk about this later?”

“I wanted to prepare you before I announced it.”

“Do me a favor and keep it to yourself awhile. Give me time to convince you to change your mind.”

“Diego, I’m not telling you this for the hell of it. I’ve thought this through. I want you to have your life, not one screwed up by Shifters. I care very much for you. That’s why I’m rejecting the claim.”

Diego kept his gaze riveted to the road. “You’re damn right it’s not fair to me. How about the way I feel about you? That it’s like all the light leaves the room when you walk out of it? That I wake up every morning just happy I know you?”

Cassidy had tears in her voice. “I mean that I don’t want to look at you every day and know that I destroyed your life.”

“Destroyed my life. Right.” Diego cranked around another bend and pressed his foot to the accelerator to make it up the next hill. “Let’s see, you helped me bring down the men who killed my partner after two years of me trying to find them. It was your contacts and resources that got me down to them to finish it. Not to mention, we’ve had the best sex I’ve ever had in my life, and I’m happier than I’ve been in a good long while. How is that destroying my life?”

She gave him an anguished look. “I’m trying to get you to understand. I destroyed Donovan, which is why we’re out here tonight. I’m trying to make up for what I did to him, and I don’t want to have to do the same for you.”

Diego shook his head. “You only get so much guilt, Cass. If you’re saying that if you hadn’t become his mate, he’d still be alive, I don’t agree. You can’t know that. Those hunters might have found him anyway, no matter who he was mated to.”

“I can know that,” Cassidy said. “You don’t know the whole story of why he was up here that night. He came because we had a fight. Donovan lived for fun. Dangerous fun. He liked to tease humans, test how far he could push his boundaries. He’d go places he wasn’t supposed to, talk to people he wasn’t supposed to, see how far he could walk the edge.”

“A daredevil.”

“Exactly. He’d thought I was too, which is why we hooked up in the first place. But he started resenting me being dominant to him, resenting me asking him to be careful. He thought I was too much Eric’s second and not enough his mate, and he was probably right.”

“So that night, he basically said, Screw you, Cassidy, I’m going out alone?”

“The ban on hunting un-Collared Shifters had been lifted. Hunters were going out all excited, wanting to bag a Shifter. Eric and I told Donovan to stop going for his runs up here, that it was too dangerous. I begged him to stop, and when he wouldn’t, we commanded him, as his leaders.”

“Which I bet did not go over well.”

“No. That night, Donovan stormed out. He went out to a bar with some of his friends, and sometime later gave them the slip. I didn’t know anything about him not still being at the bar until Eric got a call from the human cops that one of our Shifters had been killed.” Cassidy dragged in a breath. “And the kicker was that the cops blamed Eric for letting Donovan run around loose.”

Stupid, stupid. Diego had read in the file that Eric had nearly been arrested, though he’d paid no attention to the incident at the time. Shifters hadn’t been his department, and he’d been wrapped up in Jobe’s death.

He understood Cassidy’s guilt, but he’d come to realize that everyone was responsible for what they did. Diego shouldn’t have led Jobe into the situation, but Jobe should have waited for backup, even if Diego died.

“You blame yourself,” he said. It was natural that she would.

“Donovan wasn’t a fool, but I treated him like one,” Cassidy said. “I’m a dominant female, which means I have the instinct to protect, even when another doesn’t want to be protected.”

“Cassidy,” Diego said, choosing his words carefully, “what he did wasn’t your fault. It was Donovan’s fault for being an idiot. I’m sorry, I know you loved him, but why the hell did he go out running around when he knew it was so dangerous? Alone? What, he was thumbing his nose at you? What an asshole.”

“Diego.”

Her tone held rage. Well, too bad that he pissed her off. Diego wished Donovan Grady was here right now so he could punch him.

“Let me tell you a story,” he said. “When I was fifteen, Xavier started running with gangs. Small stuff at first, just being a lookout, then the next thing I know, he has guns in his dresser drawers and he’s learning how to make explosives for Enrique. I lit into him, thought I could force him to get out of it by yelling at him. No, Xav keeps on, because he’s got a lot of rage about how my dad was killed, and his plan was to go up against the gang whose members shot our dad in the robbery and kill them.

“I went to Enrique and told him to keeps his claws off Xavier, to help me keep him from doing something stupid. Enrique’s sister had just run away, and I thought he’d understand my need to protect my brother. But Enrique, he’s happy to have Xavier work for him, because he wanted kids all fired up to kill members of other gangs. So, what does he do? Instead of just telling me no, Enrique grabs Xav and holds him hostage. The only way he’ll let Xavier go is if I let Xav stay in the gang. If I say no, Enrique will have his goons beat up Xav. These were big men. They’d have killed him.”

Cassidy listened, stricken. “What did you do?”

“I told them if they let Xavier go, I’d let Enrique’s boys beat me up instead. Enrique was all for it. He hated me. He even let me fight back. I gave pretty good, but I went down. Then they tied me to a chair, tortured me, and tried to get me to beg for my life. In the end, they let me go and Xav too, because they said I had balls. But Xavier hated me for it. He said I’d made him look weak, that I shouldn’t have interfered.”

“But you couldn’t have done nothing.”

Diego looked over at her. Her eyes glittered in the darkness.

“I know. What I’m trying to explain is those who need the most protecting are the ones who resist it the most. Xavier was stupid about it, and so was Donovan. Xav has an excuse-he was thirteen. Donovan was an adult, should have known better.”

Cassidy sat up straight. “Should have known better, should he? And who was the fully grown human male who attacked a fortress full of feral Shifters by himself?”

“I had Shane and Marlo for backup. You deliberately got yourself captured by the ferals so you could protect Xavier.”

“You’d have preferred me to stand and watch them drag him away? They’d have killed him.”

“I know that. You have the instinct to protect. So do I. If I get myself killed because of it, it has nothing to do with you.”

Cassidy glared at him. “This is your argument for why we should stay together?”

“I’m saying you can’t break up with me because you think you caused the death of your mate. You didn’t. Those