“Anytime,” Tiger whispered. Another cool breath of her slid through him, another kiss, and Tiger fell into a vast well of sleep.
* * *
Liam Morrissey’s anger climbed another ten notches before he hung up his cell phone and slammed it to the kitchen counter. He’d walked out here alone to take the call, but Dylan had followed him, ostensibly to retrieve a beer from the refrigerator.
“Who the hell blabbed to the council?” Liam asked, fists on the counter. “Dad, did you?”
Dylan shook his head in his quiet way. “I’m not leader anymore, lad. I don’t talk to the others without your knowledge.”
“I know. Sorry.” Liam’s edginess about Tiger had him looking for something to attack, but lashing out at his own father wasn’t the answer. He reined in his temper, or tried to.
Dylan’s stoic look made Liam feel even more ashamed. His father had accepted the changeover in leadership without a fight. Dylan had known it was time on that fateful day, even if it took away a large part of what he was. Liam hoped he was half as calm when it was his turn to step down.
“They want to meet,” Liam said. “All of them.”
“That was Eric?” Dylan asked.
Eric Warden led the Shiftertown in Las Vegas. His mate, Iona, had first found Tiger. Eric had helped Tiger escape, and then Liam had offered to let Tiger live in Austin, under his supervision.
Liam had questioned that decision every day since he’d made it. Not because he didn’t think Tiger deserved a fair shot at life, but because he hadn’t learned enough about Tiger to satisfy himself or the informal council of Shiftertown leaders that he was safe.
During his leadership, Dylan had begun the council, which was simply a gathering of the Shiftertown leaders off the radar to discuss common problems and help each other find solutions. Shifters being the way they were, these sessions often degenerated into volatile arguments, but leaders had come to know they could call each other when problems might affect more than one Shiftertown.
Eric had phoned this afternoon to say the Shiftertown leaders wanted to meet about Tiger. They’d heard about him getting shot up by the human Ethan and rampaging in the hospital room. Liam had relayed that Tiger had been shot again today, this time deliberately by an unknown assassin.
Or maybe Carly had been the target. Who the hell knew? Ellison had been out cold at the time, so he couldn’t report on what had happened.
Maria, Ellison’s mate, had glared at Liam in pure fury at the accident scene, as though he ought to have prevented Ellison from getting shot. The shot had gone into Ellison’s leg, missing anything vital. If the assassin had planned it that way, he was a hell of a marksman.
Eric hadn’t been happy at the news of the second shooting, and finished by saying that the other leaders wanted a talk as soon as possible. They’d picked Dallas as the meeting place, because it had no Shiftertown but was close enough to Austin that Liam could get back quickly if needed.
“So the shites are wanting me to leave Tiger in this state and trek up to Dallas so we can sit around a table and talk about him? I don’t have any idea what’s going on with him. Tiger’s insisting Carly is his mate—what’s going to happen when she says no, and he won’t take that for an answer?”
“We’ll deal with it when the time comes,” Dylan, ever practical, said. “You can’t miss the meeting, son. They’ll send trackers down here to drag you there if necessary. You can’t blame them for worrying about Tiger.”
“I’m worried about Tiger. You think I’m not? How in the hell did he survive that, and then start to cure himself? What the f**k did those humans pump into him?”
“It’s getting on for time to find out.”
Liam shook his head. “Eric blew the lab to smithereens. We’ll never find anything in it now.”
“But people will remember.” Dylan touched his forehead. “It will be inside their heads. We find out who worked on the Tiger project, and we ask them.”
“Revealing his whereabouts and putting him in more danger.”
“We’ll just have to ask in a way they can’t refuse.”
Liam wasn’t sure what his father had in mind. Dylan had a ruthless streak that Liam had never found in himself—maybe Liam’s mum, Niamh, a mischievous lady but one with a heart of gold, had bred it out of him. But then, Dylan had had to hold the family together through good times and times of peril, times of near starvation and grief, and then bring them to America to take the Collar and live in a Shiftertown. The decisions Dylan had made would put ruthlessness into anyone.
At least Liam’s dad had found happiness again with Glory. Glory was a strong woman who didn’t mind sharing her opinions, but Dylan needed someone who wouldn’t take any shit from him. A lesser woman would be crushed by him, and Dylan knew that. They were happy together, which made Liam happy. His dad had gone through too much.
“Go to the meeting, son,” Dylan said. “Sean and I can hold the fort.”
“But can you hold Tiger?”
“Can you?” Dylan met Liam’s gaze with his, not looking away. Dylan might not be Shiftertown leader or leader of the Morrissey clan anymore, but that didn’t mean he’d weakened.
Liam scrubbed his hand over his face. “I don’t know, Dad. He does what I ask him, but I know it’s not because he’s submissive to me. He obeys because he chooses. The day he chooses not to, I won’t be able to stop him.”
“Then we’d better find out everything we can. Find out how to stop him, if that’s even possible.”
Liam punched his fists into the counter. He wished Kim were home, but his wife had a job that was important to her, and he didn’t want to pull her back home every time he needed a hug. He’d save up the need for when they were alone tonight, when he’d open her businesslike blouse button by button, slide off her skirt, indulge himself in the scent of her . . .
“I hope we don’t have to stop him permanently,” Liam made himself say. “I like Tiger, and he’s good with the cubs.”
“He is, aye,” Dylan said. “But he’s something we don’t understand. And if it happens one day that he’s not good with the cubs . . .”
“We’ll deal with it when the time comes,” Liam said, echoing his father’s words. He bent his head and studied the patterns on the counter, the old wooden surface stained with generations of coffee mugs and his daughter’s juice from this morning. “Shite, but I hate going to Dallas. I always get lost on those freeways.”