Page 38 of Tiger Born

“The locks are all in place?” Dame asked.

Marsden nodded. “I’ve checked them three times.”

He turned and she gasped at the huge cut across his jaw.

“It’s fine,” Marsden muttered as he passed by them and made his way to a sink near the sliding doors.

The second Mars had moved out of the way, she saw him—Stellan.

He wore a pair of jeans and nothing else. No shoes, no shirt. His arms rested on the bars, feigning a relaxed posture, but his eyes bore straight into her like daggers, and every muscle was tensed in his body.

A feral smile took his lips. “Hello, Rabbit. I almost got you tonight, didn’t I? It was close.” His voice sounded strange. Empty. Guttural. Wild.

“The tiger has pushed Stellan back. He’s been messed up for weeks.” Dame offered his caged brother an empty smile. “You’ve been a delight to deal with.”

“We can finish it,” Stellan said. “Just let me out. I’ll make it quick, I promise. She won’t suffer.”

Chills rippled up Misty’s arms. Stellan was terrifying.

“Over my dead body, brother,” Dame growled.

“That can be arranged. Come on. Let me have her, and then it’ll fix all of this.”

“Fix what?” Marsden asked. “You? Nice try.”

“It will. I promise.”

“Dude we can hear lies,” Dame murmured, pulling a chair up for Misty. He held it steady as she sat in it. “Cunning as a coyote. Let me guess the next strategy. You’re going to tell us a story about how Rabbits help reset broken Cats. And if you have her, you’ll be fixed and we can all go back to our normal lives. I’ll be free of babysitting your animal, and you’ll be so well-behaved for the rest of your life, and we can all ride off into the sunset together.”

“I’m not riding anywhere with any of you,” Marsden assured them as he held a towel to his bleeding face.

“That thing looks filthy,” Misty pointed out. “You’re going to get an infection.”

“We don’t get those,” Marsden enlightened her, and crouched down on the other side of her, studying the man in the cage. “I still can’t understand how it was you that got so fucked up. You were the best of us when we were human.”

Stellan shrugged his shoulders, eyes never blinking, never leaving Misty. “Just lucky, I guess. Can you smell her? She smells so good. A little tainted maybe by Dame’s scent, but that’s okay. We all make bad decisions sometimes.”

“Especially you,” Dame pointed out.

Stellan’s smile chilled Misty to her bones. “Especially me,” he agreed. He didn’t sound like he cared at all.

Something was so wrong with him. So dark.

Dame and Mars didn’t seem scared of him at all, but they had tigers inside of them to protect them if he got out. Misty had fragile skin, dull teeth, blunt nails, and a handgun in her glove compartment of her car, fifty yards away.

Marsden looked at the bloody towel. “Why do you always go for the face, man?”

“Because you’re vain. It’s a weakness,” Stellan answered coldly.

“I can stitch it,” Misty offered.

“Waste of time,” he muttered.

“By stitch, I mean staple it together for a few minutes and give your skin a chance to seal together and make the scarring less.”

He frowned. “You sound like you have experience with our kind.”

“Just with Dame,” she murmured. “And that one,” she said, pointing to Stellan. “Years ago.”