Page 29 of A Cougar's Kiss
“Fuck!” Gold yelled and pushed through the gate.
Keller was right behind him. Kyss, Jordin and Zion ran through the gate as well. Only Shya remained standing on the path leading to the house. But Keller couldn’t turn back to see why, he couldn’t stop to try and figure out what she did or didn’t know or why it even mattered at this point. His plan had been shifted and now there were three humans on his property.
“Cops are coming,” Kyss said about two seconds before he heard the sirens.
They were close.
“We either need to get these bodies out of here or prepare to be interrogated or even shot on the spot.”
Keller looked at Gold, the closest thing he had to family, a two-hundred-and sixty-five-pound black man on the outside and vicious jaguar on the inside. He was right, standing here in front of three dead bodies was not good.
“Let’s move ‘em. Now!” Keller yelled. “Take them around back and put them in the basement.”
It seemed like a simple order, given in the heat of the moment because there really were no other options. But the second Gold and Zion went to the first two bodies, Kyss and Jordin to the other one, there was a sound. An unfamiliar growl that had his head jerking up and his gaze going immediately across the street.
There were trees there, thick lines of trees, which was one of the very reasons he’d selected this location. In the dark copse of those trees were glowing red eyes. On first thought Keller figured it was a wolf because as far as he knew there were no feline shifters with red eyes. Without a second thought he moved around the bodies and broke out into a run. The eyes disappeared as he burst through the trees, but its scent was strong.
Keller ran fast and hard listening to the rustle of the leaves on the ground as the red-eyed animal moved ahead of him. The breeze from their combined speed made the weaker limbs bend and more leaves rustle with the gust of air. He jumped over fallen logs, pushed through low-hanging branches. He would not stop, not until he found it. Instinct said it was the one who had killed those people and dropped the bodies off for him to find. Why?
He’d ask that question right after he stomped the bastard back into human form. Sounds echoed through the space, howls, growling, moans like someone was crying out. They all mingled in his head a mixture of fear, rage, pain and blood circling the air. He should have shifted, that would have made him move faster, made him deadlier than he was in human form. But it could also get them both killed, and Keller didn’t want the shifter dead—at least not at this moment—not until he could get the information he needed.
He pushed his human body to its limits, until he could feel the burn in his thighs and chest and when the scent had him rounding a curve heading toward the swamp, he followed it coming to a stop only when he caught a glimpse of those red eyes again. His feet skidded across the dirt-ground because the animal was standing still once again, hiding in another thicket of trees.
“Who are you?” Keller asked it the moment he stopped. “Why did you kill those people?”
The eyes continued to stare at him, nothing more, just stare. He thought about asking another question, then figured to hell with this bullshit, he would hunt now and talk later. But the moment Keller leapt into the air prepared to run head-on into the beast he was knocked back by a wall of black smoke that felt as if it were made of steel when his face slammed against it.
Another growl, loud and long ripped through the air as Keller fell to the ground. On his hands and knees, he tossed his head back and roared in response, letting his claws tear through his fingertips and his own rage bubble to the surface.
“Keller!”
The voice stopped him from shifting. He froze the moment he heard it, fear slicing through the pit of his stomach at the thought that she would be anywhere near this beast.
“Keller! Stop!”
His head snapped in the direction of the voice and he saw her through the glow of his cougar’s eyes, he saw Shya standing there.
She continued talking. “We should get inside. The police are pulling up and they’re gonna want to talk to you about the blood on the sidewalk. Gold said there’s a private path that we can use to get back into the house without them seeing us. We should go, now.”
She was talking fast, the sound of her heart thumping wildly in her chest and yet her eyes were so calm, her voice steady.
He stood up slowly, keeping his eyes on her. There was no use looking back to where he’d seen the eyes, but he knew they were gone. “It’s this way,” he said, his voice sounding much gruffer and more unstable than hers.
Walking in the direction of the hidden path he heard her begin to follow him and refused once again to look back. Why was she here? Because he’d asked her to come. But why had she agreed? She’d told him because she wanted to do more than she was ever allowed to.
“Why were you listening to Rome’s meeting and showing up in places you didn’t belong? What were you planning to do with all the information you were gathering?”
She took a second, digesting his questions, he supposed, but she eventually answered.
“There were rumors, whispers that had been growing louder about Uncle Rome, my dad and their friends making the wrong decisions for the shifters. People were calling them cowards.”
Keller’s name should have been tops on the list of people saying the same. It was no secret he hated the decisions Rome had made for their kind. At least until that recap of a press conference he’d seen a short while ago.
He was moving fast on purpose wanting to make her keep up, to make this harder for her than anything else she’d ever done, just to see if she would break or stand. He really needed to know if Shya Delgado could stand.
“They made them hide,” he ground out the words as he took them across the street at the end of the block a distance away from the flashing lights on top of the police cars.
“Uncle Rome said it was to keep them safe. He said in the months and then those first few years after the Unveiling shifters were being killed by the hundreds daily. He didn’t want any more lives to be lost so they needed to regroup.”
“For twenty years?”
“However long it took to come up with a better solution,” she replied. “I heard my dad telling my mother that one time. She questioned why they weren’t doing more either because she hated hiding as well, but Dad said it made sense, that he and Uncle Rome were taking all things and emotions into consideration.”
“And this is what they came up with?” he asked when they were walking through another wooded area, this time as part of his property. “They’re going to bring all the shifters above ground under the pretense of some government agreement and pray that no deaths occur?”
“What’s your plan, Keller? If you’re going to question and complain about everything the current leadership is doing, what’s your plan beyond the safe houses? How else do you think Shadow Shifters can come back above ground and prosper?”
He turned to her at those last words, stepping right up to her face. “We should have never been kicked out!” He took a deep breath and tried to turn away, but he ended up close to her once more. “We should have stayed and fought for all those shifters that they killed, for my mother who died in a human hospital because they had no idea how to save her and for my dad who was killed when he went to avenge her death! We should have fought for all of them!”
