“We’ve got a problem.”
The sun beat down on his head as Isabela rushed around the front of the car to come to his aid. She thought he was still as weak as a newborn kitten, and he let her believe so. Her black hair glistened in the sunlight, her eyes so dark he’d been lost in them since he awoke in the hospital bed, bruised and bandaged, unsure of what had happened to him.
“Let me help you, Javier,” she said, her voice as soothing as her touch. “You try too hard to push too much. You must let your body mend.”
She’d been saying that to him for the past four days. When he told her he was checking himself out of the military hospital despite recommendations to the contrary, she’d protested and tried vehemently to change his mind. When that hadn’t worked, she’d demanded he let her drive him home and at least help get him settled.
Her unorthodox insistence might’ve surprised a few at the hospital, but he’d known she would. He’d counted on it. From the moment he opened his eyes and saw hers, there’d been a mutual, undeniable attraction. He’d known she was his, and in turn, his brother’s. Although Juan had yet to meet her. It might require time and patience, but they would claim her as their own.
Javier allowed Isabela to believe his bones were still broken, that the pain was unbearable. It would be for a normal human, but the Montero brothers were not normal. There had been pain, a lot of it the first two days after the chopper crash. Excruciating pain as his bones knitted together, repairing themselves. Today, not so bad. In another week or so, he’d be as good as new, reason enough why he’d needed to get out of the hospital—before the doctors realized he was healing too fast and called for tests.
Tests he could not allow. Only his self-appointed caregiver—and soon-to-be mate—would become privy to his family’s secret...in time.
For now, he would isolate himself in his home and wait out the medical leave the army demanded, then get a release in the prescribed six weeks so he could return to active duty.
The door to the house opened as they stepped onto the front stoop.
“So, you’re the angel who put my brother back together?” Juan asked with a smile that had made other women swoon.
Isabela glanced from Juan to Javier and back. “I am seeing double.”
“Isabela, my love.” Javier wrapped his arm around her in a much more intimate hold, showing her he didn’t need her physical support to stand. “This is my brother, Juan. He’s prepared supper for us.”
She turned her head to stare at him, then raised an eyebrow at the same time her lips curled into a sensual, seductive smile. “You planned this.”
“We have much planned for you. Do not disappoint us.”
Her nostrils flared, and her pupils dilated. “I think you should be the ones who must not disappoint me.”
Javier slowly came awake with the memory of Isabela’s impudent grin playing in his mind’s eye, an ache in his heart and a rage boiling deep in his gut.
His limbs were too heavy to move. His heart thudded in his ears and echoed a piercing pain in his thigh. His throat was dry, his nose filled with the pungent scent of bleach and antiseptic.
“He’s waking up,” a female voice, soft and unfamiliar, whispered.
“If he’s like Kelan, it’ll take a few minutes for him to gain his senses,” a different woman’s voice answered. “And if he’s like Kelan, he’s gonna be pissed.”
Who was Kelan?
Something rattled. Metal-on-metal.
“He’s not going anywhere.”
Had he been in a car wreck?
The last thing he remembered, he’d been speeding up Highway 2, heading for Seattle. He struggled to recall more, but a pounding headache hindered his effort, and he gave up with a painful shake of his head.
He tried to move his sore leg, and a growl ripped from him.
“Hey there. You’re okay,” the first woman said.
“You’re okay,” mimicked what sounded like a parrot, the harsh voice stabbing his throbbing skull.
Without moving another muscle, he opened his eyes and stared at a blurry vision of two women on the other side of a fence. A door, he realized as his vision cleared, seeing the latch and the padlock that secured it. He let his gaze move from them to his environment. He was surrounded on three sides by chain link that reached the ceiling. He saw a garage door, two man-sized doors and a wire mesh cage holding a white, head-bobbing cockatoo.
It looked as if he were in a dog pound, but that didn’t make any sense. He sucked in a lungful of air
-A scent hit him, and he tensed, causing more pain in his leg and head.
A shifter was nearby.
Not Durchenko, though. This was a scent he hadn’t experienced before. Lighter, sweeter than the stinking snow leopard he’d been tracking for over two years. Another deep breath and he picked up more, a lingering fragrance of at least two others...fainter...not present, but definitely shifter in origin.
Where there were shifters, there was danger. He snarled.
“Knock it off,” the tawny-haired woman said. “I know what you are, so you can stop with the wild kingdom act.”
She knew what he was?
He didn’t move as he fought to regain his strength, to assess the damages to his body and any potential threat to him now.
Where in hell was he and how had he gotten here in his cat?
“Come on, talk to me. Tell me your name.” She poked her fingers through the links to grasp the fence. “I know you can.”
And where was the origin of that damn scent? A shifter was near. The sweet scent was far too strong to be residual. He scanned his surroundings again, finding only the two women peering curiously back at him from the other side of a goddamn fence.
He hated cages. A growl of frustration rumbled from his chest.
The petite talker frowned at him. “I know you’re in pain and angry. That’s obvious, but I can help you whether you believe it or not. So are you gonna tell me your name?”
The other woman stood close to the first, silent and observant. She stared at him as if he were a lab experiment. Much taller than the tawny-haired beauty, she was bigger built, her dark hair pulled back into a severe chignon, wire-rimmed glasses perched on her prim nose. The petite, vocal one, however, was stunning. Her hair flowed in a thick mane around her shoulders. In her big, hazel eyes he saw much more than emotionless, scientific curiosity. Excitement mixed with a dollop of feminine pique.
Neither woman appeared to be a threat to him, but then again, he was trapped in a cage. Another growl rumbled like thunder in his throat.
“Come on,” the beauty pleaded, squatting to his level, albeit safely on the other side of the fence.
“We mean you no harm. I want to help you.”
When her scent hit him again, he shuddered and his gut tightened.
A female shifter? Unheard of. He took another breath to be sure.
In the twelve generations he could trace his family history, never had a female been born. He’d heard tales of their existence but believed them nothing more than legend, the wishful dreams of lone males unable to ensure
