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With a grunt, Darius pulled on the chain so hard the link connected to the anchor broke. A bright orange light flashed, blinding everyone for a few moments. Quinten jerked his head to the side, cursing and blinking to try and clear his vision.
A pained cry had followed the flash, but he couldn’t fucking see.
“Dare! You okay? What happened?” he called. He was starting to get some of his sight back, but there were still spots obscuring his vision. He could see well enough a second later to realize Darius was on the ground, hands covering his face and groaning.
Quinten started toward him, his legs unsteady for some reason, but a strong grip on his shoulder stopped him. He turned his head, ready to fire someone on the spot, but the look on his man’s face froze the words on his tongue. Following the younger guy’s wide-eyed gaze, his whole body locked tight at the sight of the collared man writhing on the dirty floor, mouth open in a silent scream as he clawed at his own neck.
“Jesus,” Quinten cursed, taking in the scene around them.
Most of the shifters in the room were still blinking and rubbing at their eyes. He glanced to his left and found Dominic with his whole body wrapped around his mate.
“Ginger, Dom, go check on Darius. Make sure he’s fucking okay.”
They both nodded and headed toward the wolf. Darius didn’t seem to be in as much pain as he had been before, but his arms were still crossed over his eyes, and his chest was heaving as he panted. Knowing that Ginger would help him however she could, he headed for the other man.
“Sir,” the wide-eyed guy behind him said, but Quinten ignored him.
He strode over to the corner of the room where the man was still writhing in pain, eyes squeezed shut and face red. There were bleeding scratches on his neck from where he’d scrambled frantically to remove the collar. Quinten’s heart clenched, the sensation shocking and unfamiliar.
Following his instincts, Quinten carefully knelt next to him. “You’re going to be okay,” he said firmly.
At the sound of his voice, the cat’s eyes popped open. That close, their glow was even more hypnotizing, sucking Quinten in and ensnaring him. He could see so much pain and fear but also curiosity, like the shifter didn’t know what to make of Quinten any more than he did of him.
Slowly, he extended one of his hands, ignoring some of his men behind him warning him. The jaguar never looked away. He kept his eyes locked on Quinten’s, his breaths ragged but his fingers stilling and curling into fists in front of his shoulders.
As soon as he laid his palm between the cat’s pecs, he felt a shock hit his skin and travel up his arm and into his chest, tripping his heartbeat.
The jolt was so hard he fell backward, landing on his ass a couple of feet away. His heart restarted a second later, but the rhythm felt… different. Somehow. He couldn’t explain it, but for a moment, it was like there was a second beat in his chest.
It was terrifying and overwhelming, but when it faded away, he missed it with an ache that throbbed behind his ribs.
By the time he climbed back onto his feet, feeling shaky and disoriented, he saw that the jaguar was unconscious, but one of his arms was extended.
In the same direction Quinten had fallen.
He stared at those outstretched fingers for a long moment and then turned and found Darius on his feet once more, Dominic and Ginger on either side of him. The wolf’s face was paler than normal, but his scowl was firmly in place. He wasn’t impressed with Quinten approaching the cat either.
“Don’t glare at me like that,” Quinten told him. “Are you good?”
Darius nodded once, but the frown on his face didn’t ease at all. Suppressing the urge to roll his eyes, Quinten turned to the rest of his men.
“Get him back to headquarters—and be careful.”
He forced himself to walk away without looking back. It felt like an itch between his shoulder blades, not having his eyes on the man, not making sure that he was being taken care of as gently and carefully as possible, but he forced himself to do it.
If getting out of a car after opening his own door was showing weakness, he couldn’t imagine how Darius would feel if he found out Quinten was so… intrigued by the jaguar. It didn’t matter anyway. Once they got the collar off him, they’d figure out who he belonged to and send him back home.
As he exited the warehouse, he ignored the way his fingers clenched at his sides, hating the idea of sending the man away.
Which was ridiculous. He didn’t even know him, and Quinten had an empire to run.
“So what you’re saying is you can’t remove it?” Quinten asked, running a hand through his hair.
Ginger and the other witches exchanged glances, and then she finally took a step toward him. He didn’t appreciate how nervous she appeared, like she was worried about giving him bad news, but he ignored it and paid attention to what she had to say.
“No. We’ve examined it and taken samples as best we can. We’re worried if we mess with it too much, it’ll hurt him again like it did before,” Ginger said carefully, her eyes drifting over to where the jaguar was still unconscious.
He was laid out on a couch in one of the rooms Quinten used to meet with his inner circle. It was in the same building as his penthouse, just one floor down. He owned the whole building and had renovated the two beneath his apartment to make them one multilevel one that they used as their headquarters. He did the work for Amato Imports down at his official office, but all of the things that he did that weren’t quite legal and had to do with the parahuman world he handled out of this one.
