Page 28 of Tiger Born

He didn’t even have his keys, so he didn’t know what the tiger’s plan was with all of this. Piss him off even more?

He’d bought it for Misty, and meant to set it on her porch, but his resolve was hella shaky right now. He’d convinced Marsden to park her car and walked a few blocks to meet him in a tire shop parking lot so he didn’t get too close to Misty’s apartment.

And then he’d forced himself to drive home, sat in his truck for a damn hour trying to convince himself not to turn around and take care of her, and now here he was, standing at his truck door again with the lukewarm food dangling from his freaking claw.

He would try reasoning with the beast.

“Look, we had to take five showers and her smell still clings to us. Stellan will kill her—we will kill Stellan,” he said in a deeper voice on accident.

“No!” he reasoned with the monster. “We will not kill our own brother. We will stay separate from Misty, and everyone can live in peace—don’t want peace, want Rabbit.”

“Fffff,” he said in a strangled voice as he looked up at the clouds above, praying for patience. “Look, the way everyone lives is if we make the sacrifice—No—Yes, because it’s the right thing to do—Don’t want to be right, want to be evil—No! Evil is bad—Stellan gets to be evil—Stellan has a moral compass problem—Stellan is annoying anyway—Stellan is our brother!—Stellan eats steak sauce on his meat—Why would that have anything to do with what we are talking about?—I don’t know but it’s weird.”

His voice was getting scratchy from the growly words of his tiger. He cleared it and pinched the bridge of his nose. Maybe if he just hit himself over the head with a frying pan and knocked himself out, he could have some peace.

I want to be with her. The Tiger’s scratchy voice made him cough.

“We can’t,” he said tiredly. “It puts her in danger. You know how bad Stellan hurt our body yesterday? That could be her.”

The tiger went quiet inside of him.

He could feel the animal withdraw. Good. He could pout all he wanted to. Dame didn’t like it either, but he understood the logic of this decision. The animal just wanted instant gratification and didn’t care about consequences. He never had.

In a few days, when she was good and hurt by the way he’d left her, when she hated him, and had moved on, Dame was going to reactivate his account and message her a convincing note on why she needed to leave town if she wanted to stay alive.

And she would move away out of Stellan’s reach, and everything would be okay.

It was a good plan.

Inside the house, he heard his phone ding with a text. He sighed and headed in, and when he checked the message from Marsden, his stomach dropped.

Stellan is waiting outside the hospital where the Rabbit works.

Shit.

I’ll be right there. Send.

Furious, Dame ran to the bathroom and doused himself in cologne. He was going to have a raging headache from it in about two minutes but screw it. He had to mask Misty’s scent.

Dame drove like a bat out of hell to that hospital, barely pausing for stop signs. Twice he ran red lights.

He’d expected the tiger to be pacing in the shadows, but when he got there, he was shocked to see Marsden’s truck parked on the curb closest to the tree line, and Stellan sitting at a picnic table, his eyes trained on the hospital. He was in his human form.

What the hell?

Dame parked behind Mars and made his way to the open passengers side window. “How did you know he was here?” Dame asked.

Mars had such hatred in his eyes as he glared at Stellan. “I just had a feeling.”

Dame frowned. “What does it matter to you?”

“I don’t want her to die, asshole. Get away from my truck. My shift is over. You’re on the clock.” Marsden hit the gas and sped away the second Dame took his hands from the open window frame.

Dame stared after him completely confused. He was always on the clock.

Shaking his head, Dame made his way toward the picnic table that sat right on the edge of the trees. There was acreage beside the hospital, and this table had probably seen a million tears from people who were losing their loved ones in that building and needed a serene place to have a minute to themselves.

Now, it housed a monster.