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Mate.
Okay, so the beast inside had recognized her. It was the way with his kind. The animals could recognize potential mates. It was a physical thing. Genetics. Mates could produce children. Shifters couldn’t reproduce with just anyone. Their genetics were too complicated for that.
But the animals knew...they always knew.
It was survival of the fittest kicking in. The beasts inside were sure all about surviving. Propagating the species. But just because someone was your mate didn’t mean you loved them. Or that they loved you.
His parents were proof of that. And proof of just how screwed up and twisted the world could be.
When I tell her, she won’t let me touch her again. She’ll fear me, just like she fears that bastard out there.
Her stare was so steady. Her body so soft and warm against his.
Lie.The whisper came from deep inside. He could invent some sob story for her. Get her to keep trusting him. Get her to keep giving him her beautiful body.
Her fingers moved in the smallest of caresses against his heart.
Can’t lie to her. Not her.
“I joined Night Watch because the tiger needed prey.” Staying in control—when he wanted to hunt and fight every day, when the tiger wanted to roar and bite and claw—had been pushing him to the very edge of his sanity.
Night Watch had been,washis release. “I know just how dangerous theOtherare in this world. I know that humans can’t handle them. They don’t have a clue. And the bastards that cross the line, the ones that torture humans and kill them...they have to be stopped.” He knew too well the nature of the beasts hidden inside the façade of men. Too well.
“The ones I’ve hunted…” Mostly paranormals, though he’d been sent after a human or two in his time. “You don’t want to know what they’ve done.” Even he’d had nightmares. “I stopped them. I made a difference.” When he hadn’t been able to before. “You might not like my methods, but I get the job done.” Period.
“Making a difference...that’s important to you?”
You can’t change the past, boy. You got to look to the future.His grandfather’s words. Hard with grief. Jude had been twelve that day. And he hadn’t really understood what his grandfather meant.
But he did now. “Yeah, it’s important to me.” He inhaled, catching her scent and the lingering fragrance of sex in the air. Not the best time to tell her, but, hell, when was there ever a good time to say something like this? “Erin, my parents...there’s something you need to know about them.”
A frown pulled her brows low, and she eased to a sitting position beside him, dragging that damn sheet up with her. “What is it?”
Trust. He’d give her all of his. For the first time in his whole damn life.
Can’t look into those eyes and keep the truth back.“They were mates.”
A faint smile curled her lips. “Well, they would have had to be or you wouldn’t be here.”
True. But... “My mom didn’t love my father.” He’d known. Always felt the coldness there. But he’d seen the heat in his father’s stare every time his dad looked at her. “He was crazy about my mother though.” Crazy. Good word.
It was hard to tell this story with her watching him with those big, golden eyes. Hard to speak when he was scared spitless that his words would send her running away.
Not just one screwed-up asshole in her life—two.
“This story doesn’t have a happy ending, does it?” Quiet, tense. Her knuckles had whitened around the sheet.
He gave a hard shake of his head. If only... “Most of the talk in theOtherworld about the shifters who go fucking psycho, well, it’s about the wolves.”
She tensed a bit. “Did a...wolf do something to your family?” Her voice seemed stilted.
“No.” The wolves had hurt plenty of others, but not him. “The Lones are the wolves you know to avoid. For tigers, we have our own twisted bastards who love to kill.”
“Ferals.” A whisper.
They were rare, luckily, but every now and then, a tiger shifter gave into the bloodlust of the beast. When he did—and it was always a male, no one knew quite why—the hunger took him over. The only way to stop a Feral was to put him down.
“My mom didn’t love my dad. Never did.” Matings couldn’t force feelings. Nature didn’t work that way. “One day, she told him she was leaving him. She fell for a human. She wanted to start a life with him, and she wanted to take me with her.” His mother had loved him. He knew that. Never doubted it for even a single moment.
