Mate, I repeated to myself. It was still hard to believe that I had a mate. It had taken some time to digest but I had finally accepted it. It’s why I was hell bound and determined to find Koroleva. She was my mate. I didn’t want anyone putting their hands on her. If I had it my way, I’d lock her in a room with me so no other man could look at her beautiful face and body.
A familiar scent filled my nose and brought me to a halt.
Koroleva.
I quickly sniffed around for the direction it was coming from. Her scent was faint. I took off in a sprint allowing my sense of smell to guide me. When I was away from people and buildings, I shifted and continued my search. Her scent grew stronger the further from town I ran.
Soon, I found myself outside a tall chain-link fence with barbed wire on the top. Inside the fence were several large warehouses. I had never noticed the warehouses before, but then again, I had been on a different mission.
“Hurry up and move the trucks inside!” a man called out, in the distance. An engine started followed by several beeps indicating the vehicle backing up. I watched as one of the warehouse doors opened and a semi-truck proceeded to back into the building.
“What are you sneaky fuckers up to?” I wondered out loud.
After being an enforcer for the Council for nearly a decade, I knew when there was some shady shit going down. From the tall fences, barbed-wire, upped security, blacked-out SUVs, and a shit ton of semi-trucks this whole scene screamed shady-illegal shit.
Koroleva’s scent hit me like a ton of bricks. A shadow lurking by one of the warehouses caught my attention. When I saw a white leopard sneak into an open door, I knew it was her.
Without thought or reason, I took off along the perimeter of the fence until I found an open, but guarded gate. I crouched down next to the guard shack and took an assessment.
Inside, two guards were sitting on their asses and bitching about how they always got stuck with the shit jobs. They mentioned some guy named Billingsworth and how if the guy didn’t pay them as good as he did, they would have told him to fuck off a long time ago.
The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t put a face to it nor could I remember where I had heard it. Since meeting Koroleva, I hadn’t been in tune with my enforcer skills. It was like I was a cub again learning how to stand on my own two feet.
“Ten more minutes and shift change,” one of the guards yawned.
“Thank God. The fight’s on tonight,” the other one said, standing from his seat and stretching.
If the guard change was soon, it meant I needed to make my move fast. The fewer eyes the better. The two guards on duty seemed easy to get around. There wasn’t a guarantee that the next guards would be.
I squeezed between the guard shack and the fence as I wiggled my way to the open gate. Looking around one more time to make sure no one was looking, I sprinted in the direction of the warehouse Koroleva had gone inside.
Several guards were walking around outside the warehouses. I found myself lurking in shadows and sprinting from one object to the next. This place was more like a compound then it was an industrial area.
When I finally made it inside the warehouse, I once again snuck around in search of Koroleva. Her scent was strong. It called to me. I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise as my adrenaline began to pump through my veins.
A faint growl brought me back to my surroundings. It was coming from the far end of the warehouse.
Koroleva! I shouted in my mind and took off in a dead sprint across the warehouse. My paws barely touched the ground. My heart pounded so hard it felt like my heart was in my ears. I found it difficult to hear the noises around me.
A primal urge rose inside me. I needed to find Koroleva. If even a hair on her head was out of place, all these mother fuckers would pay.
“Gotcha!” A man growled as something fell down over me, darkening my surroundings.
I hissed, growled, snarled, and clawed at what appeared to be a cloth of some kind. I sensed several people standing around me. The item that I was draped in began to cocoon my body. They were trapping me inside.
“Who the fuck let the stray in here?”
Stray? I’m not a fucking stray.
Part of me wanted to shift out of my ocelot form. I worried about what they’d do if they found a wild cat. However, on the other hand, I knew it wouldn’t matter what form I was in because these guys meant business.
I had been too focused on Koroleva and finding her. Everything I had been taught and trained to do had gone out the window, and now I was fucked.
“What the fuck are we supposed to do with this thing?” a guy asked in a heavy Italian accent.
“How the fuck should I know?” another guy snorted. “Do I look like animal control to you?” A few of the others laughed at the man’s joke.
“Both of you shut the fuck up,” a man snarled. His voice sounded familiar, but my senses were fucked up from the various chemicals that were on the drape over me.
My head spun as I fought the urge to toss up my dinner. What the fuck was I wrapped in?
“It’s just a stray right?” a guy in a deep voice asked.
“That wasn’t no fucking stray. That looked like some sort of bobcat,” a guy with a nasally
