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“I hope so.”
“Hi, Romeo, what’s up?” Tera asked.
“Can you do a location spell? I need to find someone.”
* * *
Ashley wokefrom a dream that was a mishmash of the nightmares she’d had after her sister was killed and the meet up with a tiger in the woods. The wolf who’d killed her sister in her nightmares had always had black fur and blood-red eyes, with fangs like daggers and a howl that scared the shit out of her.
In those nightmares, she’d always been chased by the wolf, always running for her life.
But last night, as she’d collapsed on the too-hard bed, she’d dreamed that a tiger had saved her from the wolf, had stood between her and the dripping fangs, and saved her life.
She sat up in bed, pushing the pillow behind her to cushion her as she leaned against the slats of the headboard. Her heart was still pounding, her fear bitter on her tongue, and her cheeks wet with tears, but she actually didn’t feel so bad. Not like she usually woke from her nightmares, stricken with grief and scared to death.
She had no idea what the sexy tiger looked like in his shift, but in her experience with wolf shifters, they tended to be larger than their natural counterparts, so she imagined that he was bigger than a regular one.
They could also have unique colors. She’d seen wolf shifters that were solid black and solid white, some with beautiful grays and browns mottled together. But she’d never seen a tiger shifter, and she wanted to see hers.
Damn it. When had she started to think of him as hers? That made zero sense. She didn’t even know the man! And the few minutes of interaction they’d had were him leading her through the woods and planning to hold her captive in the king’s home.
Pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes, she exhaled slowly and tried to change her train of thought. She was supposed to be figuring out how to help Brent take out the tigers, not dreaming about one of them. If Brent knew she was thinking about a tiger in any way that wasn’t destructive, he’d pitch a fit.
He preferred his people to have a laser focus when it came to destroying shifters, and she’d never had a problem like this before.
She needed to steer far clear of that particular tiger, but that seemed like an impossible task if she was supposed to infiltrate the tigers and figure out how Brent could take them out.
Brent’s goals with shifter groups stemmed from a simple idea: kill the leaders and as many others as possible, and the rest would scatter.
It had worked with the wolves. He’d killed the alpha and a dozen or more of his high ranked men, and the rest of the pack had fled to save themselves. It had felt good to get the wolves out of that town, to know that an alpha wasn’t going to let his people get away with terrorizing humans the way the wolf who’d killed her sister had been let go with only a slap on the wrist.
Natural urges, she’d been told.
Wolves couldn’t help themselves sometimes, and human law didn’t apply to them.
That was bullshit.
But she’d had her vengeance, thanks to Brent, watching as he’d destroyed the wolf who’d killed her little sister. She’d thought she would be relieved or even happy when he breathed his last breath, but she hadn’t.
His death hadn’t made her feel better, hadn’t eased the ache in her bones that not being able to see Kerry or talk to her or hug her had left her with. A constant ache so deep that nothing touched it. She was numb now, forging ahead to destroy shifters so they couldn’t cause other people grief like she’d been burdened with.
The only thing in the last five years that had made her feel anything but the painful emptiness of the loss of her loved one was standing in the woods last night and being found by one of them.
Sexy. That’s what she called him in her head now. She didn’t know his name, so she’d nicknamed him.
Because she couldn’t seem to get him out of her head. Something about that tiger made the ache in her heart ease, and she didn’t know what to make of it. How could a few minutes of interaction make her feel something so intensely?
And she doubly didn’t know how to help Brent and his people destroy the ambush.
What if Sexy got hurt or killed during a fight? What if she had to watch him die?
She shook the wayward thoughts away and rubbed her neck.
She’d never felt so torn about her duties before.
No matter how she looked at things, she was screwed. She just didn’t know how to avoid seeing Sexy again, and she didn’t know what it meant that she reallydidwant to see him. In the daytime, when she could memorize his features for a fantasy later.
Closing her eyes, she reminded herself that shifters and humans weren’t meant to mix. Brent had been preaching that since he started Humans Against Shifters, and she’d agreed wholeheartedly after Kerry’s death. Clearly humans couldn’t handle an out of control shifter, so why would any human in their right mind want to be around one, especially in a romantic way?
