“You don’t deserve to live,” X said dropping the man’s wrists and reaching for his neck. “You sick, dirty, bastard!” he roared over and over again.
And then it was dark, the scent of blood filling the air. X opened his mouth to breathe and choked as liquid filled him. The taste was acidic and made him heave. He tried to stand but sat back quickly as the room swam out of control. His heart pounded, echoes ringing in his ears.
“X, it’s just a dream. It’s just a dream,” he heard a female voice whispering.
Hands touched his shoulders, wrapping around his waist as she hugged him from the back. She continued to tell him it was just a dream, rocking slowly back and forth as she held him, comforted him. Nobody had ever comforted X before. Ever.
He opened his eyes slowly to the darkness of the room and remembered where he was, who he was with. Caprise was right. It had been a dream. A stupid fucking dream that he had all the time, one that even with death on his hands did not cease to haunt him. His skin rippled, the cat struggling to break free. It wanted to run, to roar, to kill this ugliness inside once and for all.
But she held him too tight.
“Dreams aren’t real. They can’t hurt you,” she was saying to him. “You wake up and they go away. Everything that happened in the dream goes away.”
Her voice sounded distant even though she was right there with him, holding him so close he could feel her heartbeat as if it were his own. X rested his elbows on his knees as he sat on the side of the bed. Just when he was about to turn around to tell her he was fine and make a graceful exit to the other room to get his shit together, she spoke again.
“I have dreams,” she said quietly. “I have them all the time. Sometimes they’re fine and I don’t remember them.” She took a deep breath. “And sometimes … sometimes, I just can’t forget.”
A part of X wanted to acknowledge he had the same experience, that they were two of a kind. But that wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t. He remained silent and still.
She continued, “I can’t forget and remembering hurts. It hurts too much.”
Her voice hitched like she might be crying and X shot up off the bed, breaking their contact.
“I’m going to the kitchen to get a drink. You want something?” he asked, the coarse, bitter sound of his voice echoing in the darkness.
He didn’t turn, didn’t want to see her sitting vulnerably on the bed looking up at him. He just didn’t.
After a few silent moments she said in the barest whisper, “No. I’m fine.”
“Good,” he bit out. “So am I.”
But as he stalked out of the bedroom X knew that wasn’t true. They were both liars and cowards.
They were two of a kind.
Chapter 15
X had just checked the clock on the microwave, wincing only slightly to learn it was just a little after one in the morning. The roaring sounded a second before there was a light knock at the door. His instincts were momentarily torn. The roaring was coming from outside. There was a cat out there, a big, hungry cat from the sound of its cry.
Caprise was still in the bedroom and someone was at the door. With a curse a he moved to the door, pulling it open, ready to cut loose on whoever the fool was on the other side at this hour of the night.
“You hear it, too?” Bas asked the moment he saw X.
X nodded. “What the fuck is it and how long’s it been out there?”
“Just before you arrived,” Bas said. “It’s a cat no doubt.”
“You’ve never had cats out here before?”
“No,” Bas replied as they both headed to the patio. They looked out into the dark, heard the roar again, and knew it was calling for them. This was no ordinary cat; it was a shifter.
“Let’s go get the bastard,” X said.
“My thoughts exactly,” Bas replied.
“I’m coming,” Caprise put in.
X spun around at the sound of her voice. “No the hell you’re not.”
“You don’t control me, Xavier,” she said with quiet authority. “I can go wherever I want.”
“You two are tiring me out,” Bas said with a light laugh. “This is serious, Caprise. You could be hurt.”
“Or I could help. Now are we going or are we chatting? That cat out there sounds like he’s ready to play,” she snapped.
Bas shrugged. “She’s a
X looked at her again. Her eyes were already the melted honey orbs of her cat, thin black slits against an almost luminescent background. She’d slipped on some pants and a tank top, hardened nipples pressing through the material. Her sharp teeth were visible when she spoke, clawed fingers at her side.
“Let’s go,” he said finally and moved past her out the door.
“These buttes drop off dramatically in some spots,” Bas said from the head of the group.
X was traveling directly behind him, with Caprise only about two feet to the rear. That’s exactly where he wanted her to remain. Close enough for him to protect her at all times. If anything happened to her out here …
“The cat’s this way,” X said, more to refocus his thoughts than to add to the conversation.
“Right” was Bas’s reply. “There’s two guards ahead of us a couple feet. The minute he’s spotted we’ll know.”
“What the hell’s he doing out here is what I want to know,” X stated.
“He’s a Rogue. What do you think he’s doing out here?” Caprise retorted.
X didn’t bother to turn back and look at her. She was a shifter, she would know a Rogue when she scented one. He just wondered if she realized how easily she was slipping into their lifestyle, despite her reservations about it.
“We haven’t had Rogues in Perryville,” Bas said, his anger apparent. “They’ve been doing some trafficking in New Mexico, but no sightings here.”
“Until now,” Caprise added once more.
A loud roar, followed by a human scream, stopped their words. Bas shifted first without preamble. He was a golden cat, from his dusky gray eyes that had transformed to look as sparkly as a red-gold coin and his fur that was picture-perfect yellow-gold with the most perfect black-and-brown rosettes. But that was the end of the picturesque jaguar. When he opened his mouth, roaring a message to all in hearing distance, there was no mistaking his lethalness.
X didn’t hesitate another second but ripped through his own clothes with a shift that cracked bones and stretched muscle until his six-foot-long almost black cat was running up the rocky terrain behind Bas. His rosettes were black, blending in with his coat without close inspection. His eyes were a muted green, his night vision excellent, instincts on point as he ran the unfamiliar terrain.
Rogues were near, there was no doubt, and blood had been drawn. All bets were officially off.
Caprise watched the two cats in front of her. She witnessed the seamless shift from human to beast and felt a tugging deep in her stomach. All around she sensed activity. From behind there were more guards still traveling in human form, running as fast as they could to catch up to them. Beyond there was Bas and X, sleek jaguars using their clawed paws to grip the hardened red rock that formed the buttes they traveled between. It wasn’t easy; this wasn’t the jaguars’ natural terrain. Then again they weren’t natural jaguars.
She continued on foot, feeling the movement inside her but ignoring it. One of the guards had slipped her a gun as they’d left the shelter of Bas’s resort. He had no idea if she knew how to use it or not; nobody did really. But Caprise had trained extensively during her time away. She held an eighth dan black belt in tae kwon do, had mastered shooting on an open and enclosed range in her first year’s training, and had taken boxing classes for
