Humans, who’d invented everything from traveling to the moon to cures for deadly diseases, could sometimes be so blind.
Tiger pressed his hand to her abdomen. “I know. You hold our cub.”
Carly’s eyes filled with sudden tears. She pulled Tiger down to her and kissed him, the kiss slow, warm, and loving.
Tiger drank in the sensation of her lips and tongue, the taste of her, her warmth. He eased away, smoothing her hair.
“Walker is here,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Walker picked them up in a dark blue SUV that looked as though its best years were behind it. His gaze fixed on Carly as Tiger climbed into the backseat and pulled Carly in beside him.
“You didn’t say anything about bringing her,” Walker said.
“She didn’t give him a choice,” Carly said, slamming the door and fishing for a seat belt. “Is this your SUV? If anyone finds out you’re helping Tiger, they’ll be looking for it.”
“I bought it today,” Walker said. “Used, for cash. You can thank me later.”
“I’ll thank you now.” Carly leaned against Tiger. “Where are we going?”
“Away.” Walker put the SUV in gear and pulled from the dark curb where he’d halted. “There’s water in the cooler, and enough food for a couple of days. Sandwiches and chips and stuff. I figured he wouldn’t remember to pack food.”
“Tiger didn’t pack anything,” Carly said. She closed her eyes, happy for the downtime.
“I don’t need anything,” Tiger said.
His chest rumbled pleasantly, and Carly snuggled into the vibrations. He was an incredible man—an incredible Shifter. Strong and sometimes terrifying, but he’d gone inside the store to help the clerk without a second thought. Before that, he’d pulled Carly from a wrecked car, then kept bullets from hitting her. She’d come out of the incident without a scratch.
And his reward for being so amazing? People shooting at him and wanting to Collar him, cage him, test him, torture him.
Well, not on Carly’s watch. She’d find a place to keep him safe where no one could hurt him.
The cynical voice inside Carly, the one she kept silent most of the time, told her that things would not be that easy. Tiger was right about the trouble she called down upon herself for going away with him or even helping him get away. She might never see her family again.
Carly suppressed that dart of pain. She’d help Tiger, and deal with the rest of her life later.
Walker was talking to Tiger. “My commander ordered the hit on you, I figured out. To see what you’d do, and to see how well you’d heal. I told you that I got curious when I read up on the Area 51 experiments and then found a new Shifter wandering around. I reported to my lieutenant colonel, because it’s his command, and unfortunately, he got interested.”
“Why unfortunately?” Carly asked.
“Because he sees Tiger as his ticket to promotion and a way out of the Shifter Bureau attachment. If he’s found a new weapon—a person who can move with stealth and survive enemy fire—he’ll be a hero. He’s the one who wants Tiger found, imprisoned, and tested, and he wants to breed more of him.”
“Breed.” Tiger’s word held anger.
“Yep. Breed. You heard me.”
“He would take the cubs.” The rage in Tiger’s voice was fierce.
“And have people cut into your brain and maybe shoot you full of holes again to see how fast you can heal.”
“He must not touch the cubs.” Tiger pulled Carly closer, his arm as strong as iron.
“That’s why I’m driving you away,” Walker said. “I’ll face my court-martial like a man.”
Carly thought about everything Tiger had told her Walker had told him. Every single person she’d met wanted to control or use Tiger in some way—even Liam, talking about putting a real Collar on him. And now they were trusting Walker not to take them right back to his commander.
Tiger didn’t seem worried, though. And because Tiger had been right about pretty much everything since she’d met him, Carly decided she would need to trust him. Not that she had much choice right now.
Walker and Tiger fell silent as Walker navigated the dark streets out of town. Carly leaned against Tiger, worn out and worried, but warmed by Tiger and his arm around her.
* * *
Walker drove them a long way west, where Tiger had never been. When he’d come to Austin, Tiger had been flown in a private cargo plane by a man named Marlo, a friend to Shifters in the Las Vegas Shiftertown.
Flying had been an interesting experience. Tiger had seen mountains rippling below him, then flatlands neatly sectioned into fields, and precise circles of green Marlo said came from circular irrigation systems. Those had dissolved into squares of brown dust with narrow roads that ended in dots. Oil wells, Marlo had said in answer to Tiger’s questions, pumping the veins of West Texas.
This drive took them farther south and west, ever west. By the time the sun came up behind them, they were in a wide plain of nothing. Brown land with tufts of brown grasses and scrub stretched as far as Tiger could see, the green hills of Austin and the river country far behind. The sky was clear overhead, not a cloud in it, and already the temperature was climbing.
Tiger didn’t mind. He looked from horizon to horizon, drinking it in. He loved seeing anything new, loved the amazing variety of the world.
Carly lay against his side, sleeping, her feet tucked up on the seat. The mate bond that connected them shimmered in the sunlight. Carly couldn’t see it, but Tiger knew she could feel it.
Another bond stretched between the two of them and the new life inside Carly. Tiger let out a protective growl. The Shifter Bureau could never get his cubs.
Tiger would not let his cubs—anyone’s cubs, for that matter—live through the hell he had. No cages, no needles, no shocks, no experiments. He might die trying to save them, but that didn’t matter. He would make sure his cub would live and grow up like the other cubs in Shiftertown—safe, protected, happy.
As the sun climbed, Carly woke and stretched. She gave Tiger a quick kiss on his cheek, then rummaged in the cooler Walker had brought and pulled out a bottle of water, droplets of moisture clinging to it. Carly offered it to Walker and to Tiger, who both declined, then she opened the bottle herself and drank.
Tiger watched her lips purse over the bottle’s mouth, her throat move in her swallow, her eyes close as the cool water slid over her tongue. Tiger clenched his fist and made himself only watch, not touch.