His voice attracted the tiger’s attention. She met his eyes, hers once again glowing green in the faint light. His own eyes, he knew, would still be yellow. The beast inside him, more restless than usual after killing the vampire in Missoula, had refused to calm with other predators in the barn.
The fight to get the tiger back in her cage had not helped. He rubbed his thigh again.
As soon as the big cat looked away, Asil closed his eyes. There had been enough blood tonight. Some of it his own. He would need to have control of his beast for a few hours yet.
The tiger came to her feet, every muscle tense. He heard it, too, the approaching footsteps of two people. The big cat glanced briefly at Asil before returning her attention to the door. He couldn’t tell if she thought they were the greater threat or if she knew them.
His contact had had no idea who she could be.
“Poachers are not such trouble as they once were,” she hadtold him. “We are better at taking care of our own, and technology makes all things easier. I don’t know who she could possibly be. We have not lost anyone that I know of for at least the last ten years. Hopefully she can tell us more.”
“If you share what you learn with me,” Asil had invited, “I will give you what we find out.”
“You say that they were going to kill our tiger as a sacrifice in some sort of sex magic?”
“I did not say that,” Asil clarified carefully. “Magic is not my métier. I am certain that I was supposed to die. I had the impression that they wanted to save the cats for something bigger.”
He had smelled the bloodlust in the room when he’d walked in. They already had their other intended victim—he was pretty sure the woman was a victim, even though she didn’t think so—in chains. They had not been happy when he refused to put them on. They had been a lot less happy when he freed the tiger.
“I will consider keeping you informed,” she lied, and they both knew she was lying.
Her refusal was not unexpected, but giving her the option salved his conscience for keeping some things from her. One of hers had been involved—but the incident had occurred inhisterritory. In his Alpha’s territory, he reminded himself, though it was mostly the same thing.
A wave of sound—wailing wind and thundering helicopter—heralded the opening of the barn door. Asil opened his eyes as a man and a woman came in. They were bundled up in long coats that covered them from head to thigh.
The last one in shut the door, and the sound of the idlinghelicopter was cut by half. Their attention was all on the tiger, who lowered herself and backed away from them.
“Do you recognize her?” the woman asked, presumably of her companion.
“No,” he said, then looked at Asil for the first time—though Asil knew they had been aware of him from the start. His eyes widened, though, as he took in Asil’s face.
Or maybe it was that Asil was sitting cross-legged on the floor, unconcerned that two predators had entered his space. They would be wondering if he was stupid, hurt, or just that confident. He bit back a smile as he watched the young man’s hackles rise.
With an outrage that Asil judged had as much to do with Asil’s beauty and perceived insolence as actual indignation, the man exclaimed, “You left her in a cage?”
Unlike the woman, whose accent was pure California, the man’s English was heavily accented. He was young, this boy, truly young, because unlike the werewolves’ magic, the tigers’ curse did not slow their aging. He carried himself with the arrogance of a prince—Asil did it better.
Asil stayed on the floor, arms folded while he considered how to answer.
It would have been much easier not to put the tiger back in the cage. The barn door would not have restrained her any more than it would have him. Tigers could and did survive in the wild. But she was no Siberian tiger to find the Montana winter comfortable, and she would not have survived the rifles of the ranchers who protected their livestock with a “shoot first, then sort it out later” view of predators. Without the cage, she would not have waited here peacefully for her rescuers.
Asil had driven her back into her cage while he was still mid-shift, destroying his favorite slacks and a good pair of shoes. Not to mention the bloodstains on the very expensive green silk shirt that had looked amazing against his skin. He didn’t care much about the wounds, but he was bitter about the slacks.
He could have explained that he had put the tiger in the cage for her own protection. He chose not to.
“Yes,” Asil agreed mildly. “I left her in the cage.”
The woman gave an impatient huff and shoved the man’s shoulder hard enough that he staggered. “Quit being a jerk. He went to a lot of trouble to find us. Would you have done the same for a wolf lost in our territory?”
She didn’t wait for him to reply.
“My little brother apologizes,” she told Asil with a charming smile while her eyes lingered on his face a little too long. “He would like to tell you thank you, but his English is not good enough. It makes him grumpy, so he acts like an arrogant ass. I am Nura and this is Hamza.”
“I am Asil.”
Her smile widened. “We know who you are.”
She peeled herself out of her coat as she talked, tossing it on the bloodstained floor with the carelessness of someone who never had to worry about buying a new coat. Underneath she wore a salwar kameez, a thigh-length silk tunic over loose silk pants. White ankle-high snow boots should have looked odd with the desert garments, but they did not.
