Page 32 of Tiger Betrayal

Laramie watched the sideview mirror as they pulled out of the parking lot. She was absolutely not afraid of what Craig would do to Stellan. She was afraid on Craig’s behalf. Stellan was powerful. Much more powerful than she’d realized. He hadn’t even flinched when Craig put all of that force into his punch. Likely, Craig had broken his hand on Stellan’s jaw, and for Stellan, his face looked completely normal.

“So,” she said softly as he drove. “The Cat stuff makes you really strong?”

“Do you want to see,” he asked suddenly. There was a grittiness to his voice.

“See the cat?” she asked.

“I need to Change.”

She nodded. “Okay. Will I be safe?”

“I would never hurt you,” he said glancing over at her with such earnestness in his golden eyes. “Never. I can’t.”

And she thought about it. He was worked up, and needed some kind of relief, and she did really want to know about the hidden side of his life. So she said, “Okay. I want to see.”

“Good. There is just one rule,” he said as he pulled a sharp right onto a road that would lead out of town.

“What rule?”

“No matter what, you can’t run.”

Chapter Thirteen

“Where are we?” Laramie murmured as Stellan pulled down a long, winding gravel road.

“Dame’s territory. He won’t mind if I Change in the woods behind his property. It’s why he bought this bigass place.”

She crumpled up her breakfast sandwich bag and set it in the cupholder. He’d insisted she eat two, and that had been fine with her because she was truly starving after the strange morning.

The house on the property was gorgeous. Small, but perfectly clean, tidy, and every detail of it looked high-end. It looked like a home that belonged in some magazine, and especially with all the trees as the scenic backdrop to it.

She was in awe as he took a left at a divide in the gravel drive and drove him through some heavily treed woods toward a huge red barn.

Beside the barn was an RV, and this is where he parked, in a gravel space directly beside it.

“Does this belong to Dame too?” she asked as Stellan got out.

“The RV belongs to me.”

He made it to her door as she was sliding out of his truck, and he caught her hand and helped her get to the ground. She thought he would let her hand go, but he didn’t.

She looked up at him, and his eyes were glowing a molten color, and there was a soft snarl that was rattling his chest.

“It’s not for you. I’m not angry. Just close to the Change.” He shook his head, almost apologetically. “It used to be way worse.”

“Your growl is not a bad thing,” she assured him, hating the uncertainty in his gaze. “It doesn’t scare me.”

He tugged her by the hand to his RV and opened the door, then let her climb the stairs and stand inside.

It was clean, the bed was made, and a pot was sitting on the small two-burner stove, ready to heat up food.

“I got this years ago,” he said softly. Stellan had stopped at the doorway and was leaning on the frame, propping the swinging door open. “I couldn’t be too far away from Dame for a while, but I was tired of living with him. I wanted to live alone, so I bought this thing and parked it out in the woods. He jutted his chin toward the forest behind the RV. I was living deep for a couple of years. Then I got an apartment. I wanted to be independent.”

“Independent from your brother?”

He nodded. “He had to watch over me for a while.”

“Were you sick?” she asked.