Page 36 of Tiger Betrayal

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

And she didn’t know why she had looked up onto that specific tree branch, but she locked her eyes on something terrifying. Sitting on a mid-level limb was a panther.

A panther.

A mother-freaking panther. It was crouched on that branch, gold eyes trained on Stellan. Its coat was almost black, with a faint pattern of spots in the sunlight.

His brothers were Cats, but they were tigers. This was clearly not a tiger.

A chuffing sound filled the woods, and something was crashing through the brush now. Stellan jumped over the stream and charged right for the tree with the panther in it but turned at the last moment and clashed with something enormous.

It took her mind a second to register that there was a white tiger here.

The two tigers locked onto each other like they wanted to kill each other.

“Stellan!” Laramie screamed, terrified.

The orange tiger pulled off the fight and trotted back toward her a few steps and then rounded as the white tiger pursued him. He was right under the panther now, and the animal hissed down at the tigers.

Stellan flattened his ears and roared at the white tiger, whose muzzle was tinted pink from bleeding Stellan. The big cat’s side had big claw marks down it and was oozing.

Oh, these boys were dangerous in ways she hadn’t realized. They’d both injured each other horrifically so fast.

Stellan backed toward Laramie, and the white tiger with the blue eyes—Mars?—stayed right under the panther’s tree branch.

And then something that made no sense to her eyes happened. Stellan’s tiger turned and, with eyes full of fury, he exploded.

Just…exploded.

He was this huge, lithe, aggressive tiger, and then he was…Stellan. It had happened so fast, her mind couldn’t keep up…couldn’t understand.

He was on all fours, and then he was upright, human, naked, bleeding from the side of his neck.

Eyes the color of gold fire, he didn’t even break his stride as he approached and grabbed her hand. “I need to get you out of here,” he said in a voice that sounded like it belonged to a monster.

Every muscle in his body was tensed, and he looked even bigger right now. His grip was firm on hers as he led her through the woods. Adrenaline coursing through her veins, she jogged to keep up and focused on the rough terrain so she wouldn’t fall.

“Stellan!” someone called from behind them.

“Fuck you, Mars!” Stellan barked over his shoulder without slowing his pace.

“I’m sorry!”

Stellan jerked his head, shaking it and pushed them faster.

“What just happened?” she asked.

“My brother’s a fuckin’ secret keeper,” was all Stellan said.

The trip back to the RV went way faster than her hike out into these woods, because Stellan was pushing their pace.

At the edge of the woods, huffing and puffing, Laramie admitted, “My legs are burning.”

Stellan turned and picked her up, threw her over his shoulder while he barely broke his stride.

She looked down at his back, and gasped. The claw mark back there was already almost sealed up, and the edges looked like they were scarred already. It wasn’t even bleeding anymore.

“You heal fast?” she asked.