CHAPTER 6
“What really happened?” Talon rounded on her the moment the door had closed.
Maya’s eyes leaped to it, and then down to the pile of clothes on the floor. Clothes the snow leopard had left behind. His scent surrounded her, teased her senses in the most delicious way, together with the memory of the feel of his fangs against the nape of her neck. She shook that memory away, not strong enough to withstand its tempting whispers right now.
Her brother took a step towards her, but she refused to look at him, couldn’t while she was trying to figure out the answer to that question herself, denying the one that kept coming to her. There had to be a different reason, something not so crazy.
Not so painful.
“Sherry said you became aggressive and tried to attack her in the bar when you first arrived.” Talon’s words ran over her like an icy torrent, sucking the heat from her blood and leaving her cold. She had foolishly hoped Sherry wouldn’t mention it to her brother, that she would have put it down to them both being a tigress because she was new to their world and didn’t know any better. Her brother moved another step closer, narrowing the gap between them. “It isn’t like you, Maya… so I need to know what’s happening between you and that snow leopard.”
Gods. She wasn’t really sure of that herself.
She had caught the emotions that had flashed across his handsome face when she had told Talon that she had merely needed to fight, and that she was fine now. She hadn’t meant to hurt him with her words. Or had she? Had she wanted to drive him away?
To protect him.
Or to protect herself?
“Tell him,” Grey whispered at her side, and she lifted her eyes to meet his.
The gentle look of affection in them warmed her, chasing some of the chill away, and eased her heart. He was right. She needed to tell Talon what had happened, if only so she could relieve some of the weight on her chest and breathe again. She was closest to Grey, but she was close to Talon too, had sought comfort from him before, and he was knowledgeable in the way of both tigers and hellcats, far more so than Grey. When Talon had first learned of their mixed blood, he had researched hellcats, had learned all he could about them.
Maybe he would have answers for her.
The thought of learning what her behaviour meant terrified her though. Why was this happening to her now, when she had never felt such fierce and consuming urges before?
She had never felt the need to fight the females at the pride for territory.
But she couldn’t shake that need here.
She swallowed hard, linked her hands in front of her chest, and fought for the words, to push past the fear that Talon might react badly and put it all out there and trust that he would help her, would be as gentle with her as Grey had been when she had bravely told him.
“I need… I’m so confused, Talon. I don’t want to hurt people.” She silently cursed the way her voice warbled, always hated it when she sounded weak, even in front of her brothers.
She blamed the way everyone treated her for that hang up, coddling her as if she was some princess and fragile, and not the tigress she was inside. Her brothers always viewed her that way, couldn’t see the female she really was, or how they drove her mad with a need to escape.
Sometimes, that need became so intense she could only obey it.
How many times had she snuck out when everyone was sleeping, heading high into the mountains that surrounded the old pride village?
Her brothers would have killed her if they had discovered what she had been up to and had caught her.
Gods, it had felt good though. It had felt glorious to run wild in her tiger form, to do reckless things like leaping broad crevices in the rocks with the threat of a long fall into the valley or hunting the huge stags that shepherded their groups of does around the forest.
She had even run into Kincaid’s wolf pack once, had snapped and snarled at them as they had growled at her.
It had been exhilarating.
She had felt alive.
But when she returned, she felt something else.
Trapped.
With each adventure, the hatred she had for her confinement grew.
Sometimes, she wished she hadn’t been born into her family.
Gods, it was wrong of her. She loved her brothers, all of them, with all her heart, yet she couldn’t stop herself from resenting Talon because of his freedom and Byron because he held the key to her cage and kept her locked in it.
All she wanted was to taste that freedom and to break that cage.
“Maya,” Talon whispered, earnest and tender, and she looked at him and dashed away the tears on her cheeks.
More came as she caught the soft look in his eyes, the pity and the love.
She didn’t want to cry.
She sniffed, scrubbed the new tears away, and crossed the room to him. She checked the wounds on his chest, focusing on them, and on helping him, giving her fingers a task to complete while her mind whirled, thoughts spinning through it so quickly she wasn’t sure whether she was coming or going.
She loved her brothers.
She did.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” she whispered to his chest, and traced the lines of the ink that covered his left pectoral, losing herself in the design like she had so many times before. She had asked Talon if she could have a tattoo once. He had laughed, and then bluntly told her no.
Maybe she would sneak away from Underworld and get one.
“I know,” Talon murmured, his hands coming down on her shoulders. “You’re afraid… you don’t want to do this.”
She glanced up at him, and then back down at his chest. “I do.”
“You don’t need to lie to us.” Grey moved closer, and some of her strength faded, the tempting thought of just letting her brothers be strong for her stealing it away.
“I’m not afraid of what I’m going to do,” she murmured and poked at a wound, one long slash that darted across Talon’s chest. He didn’t even flinch. The cut was deep, but it was healing. She lifted her eyes to meet his amber ones. “I’m afraid of what I might do.”
He rubbed his thumbs across her shoulders and sighed. “So tell me what you’re feeling… and I’ll do my best to help.”
She nodded.
Sucked down a deep breath.
“I feel so out of control. I need to fight… and it frightens me. When it seizes me… I can’t stop myself, Talon.”
He pulled one hand away from her, scrubbed it over his mouth and then pushed his fingers through his short black hair. “Do you just need to fight, or is there a reason you want to fight?”
She averted her eyes, pulled her courage up from her toes, and pushed the word out. “Territory.”
He tipped his head back and muttered, “Fuck.”
Indeed.
“Grey brought me to the room because I needed to do something.” She twisted the front of her t-shirt into her fists, battling that need. It was weaker now, background noise, but it was still there. It wouldn’t be long before the urge seized her again. “I thought I might feel better if I took out that aggression somehow.”
Talon huffed. “That isn’t going to happen. You’re not going to stop feeling this way until—”
“Don’t say it!” she snapped, her entire body tensing as she squeezed her eyes shut, as if she could block out reality and make it go away by doing such a thing.
Both of her brothers sighed.
Talon’s hand cupped her cheek, and he slowly raised her head, but she refused to open her eyes and look at him.
“Maya…”
She shook her head. “This doesn’t change anything. He doesn’t change anything. I heard him talking to the other snow leopard… about females. He wouldn’t be interested in me… and I’m promised to another.”
“You’re promised to a bastard,” Grey bit out.
She flicked her eyes open and scowled at him, but she couldn’t deny it. The reports on the male she was promised to were dire, frightening in a way. Although they had all come through Talon and Grey, so she felt certain they had embellished whatever rumours they had heard in an attempt to put her off going through with it.
“He’s not the gentle boy our parents knew.” Talon caught her shoulder again, holding it firmly this time.
“But he is the male our parents promised me to. I’m bound by a pride pact to him, and I have to do it… to honour them.” She shirked his grip. “I’ve known about it my entire life and I’m willing to go through with it.”
Or she had been.
Until she had met the snow leopard.
August.
Life was too cruel, bringing her mate into her path now, when she was on her way to Siberia.
Talon’s face grew darker, the black slashes of his eyebrows drawing low over his bright amber eyes, forming a crinkle above his nose. She didn’t like that look. Never had. Whatever he was about to say, he hated it.
Despised it.
“It’s starting to sound a lot like you’re doing some messed up version of tiger tradition…” he sneered, his voice a low snarl that sent a cold tremor through her. “Sacrificing yourself for the sake of someone stronger… but you’re not fucking weak, Maya. You’re strong and you don’t need to do this! Byron can go fuck himself.”
Her instinct was to shrink back a step in the face of his fury, but she held her ground, rooted her feet firmly to the floor and refused to give in to that desire. Because it would make her look weak, and her brother was right.
She was strong.
“I’m not following tradition.” She kept her tone even and measured, calm in the midst of the storm crossing Talon’s face now, a tempest born of his feelings about the traditions of their kind, and the grief and guilt that still haunted him after what Jayna had done, sacrificing herself so he could live. She wanted to comfort him, but he would see it as an act of submission, would believe she was listening to him at last and would do as he wanted. “You are right, Brother. I am strong… and it is taking all of that strength to do this for the sake of the pride and our alpha… our brother.”
That tempest grew fiercer, flaring in his amber eyes and turning them gold.
She dropped her gaze to his bare chest again, because she couldn’t bear to look into them and see that anger, that pain, and know she was the cause of it. It would wreck her, tear down that strength she was clinging to in order to do this, and push her closer to giving in and doing as her heart really wanted—running as far as she could from Pyotr, the alpha of the Altay pride, and into the arms of a snow leopard.
“I’ve heard things about him.” Talon’s tone was so dark that it chilled her, and she couldn’t stop herself from looking at him, and watching that darkness cross his face, destroying all the light that normally shone in his eyes when he looked at her. He looked like a different male. A stranger to her. She had never seen him so angry. She shook her head, silently begging him not to tell her. He denied her. “The alpha you’re going to wed… he’s done terrible things, Maya. Terrible things. Shit I don’t even want to tell you because I don’t want you hearing it. His pride is brutal, and he leads them to it. They wiped out one of the neighbouring tiger prides for no godsdamned reason other than to fight. He is not a good male… and I know that if our parents were alive, they would have broken this off regardless of the damage done to our pride’s reputation and standing within society.”
His words were little more than a snarl at the end, one that told her exactly how he felt about what she was doing and the male she was going to wed.
And exactly how he felt about Byron.
Talon blamed him for what she was doing. Grey did too.
Didn’t they know they were only making this harder on her?
She didn’t want to go to Siberia, but if she didn’t, the pride would be put in a difficult position, and Byron would be vulnerable. He needed this alliance. The pride needed it.
It wasn’t uncommon for tiger prides to fight each other over territory, and she had heard about the battle between Pyotr’s pride and the other one when it had occurred three years ago. The other pride had moved too close, encroaching on the Altay pride’s territory. She was sure that was the only reason Pyotr had sent his males to war. The tiger council hadn’t punished the Altay pride for it, and they would have if the attack had been without reason and had therefore broken the law.
Talon was just trying to frighten her again.
“The snow leopard—”
“Don’t!” She cut Talon off, couldn’t bear hearing him talk about August, not when she was wavering, on the verge of falling. She needed to be strong, needed to do what was right for the pride.
It was hard though.
Made all the harder by meeting August.
She craved him, even when she knew she shouldn’t. She wanted him, even when she was promised to another. Every instinct she possessed said to make him belong to her.
She couldn’t.
He didn’t want to belong to anyone.
She had heard it in his voice when he had been talking to Cavanaugh, when he had been speaking of all the conquests he’d had and how much he had enjoyed them. He didn’t want to be tied down to a single female.
She knew a little of snow leopards.
Unlike other shifter species, they could only find their mate within their own breed.
Which meant whatever urges he felt towards her, he thought they stemmed from lust, and he was fine with that.
He viewed her as another potential conquest, a beauty he could bed and discard, another one night stand for his records.
That left her cold inside.
He would never understand, would never come to view her as anything more than just another female, because she wasn’t a snow leopard. She would never be special to him, not as the female snow leopard was to Cavanaugh, or the elf was to Kyter.
Not as Sherry was to Talon.
She didn’t want to be just another notch on his bedpost.
She cursed her hellcat genes.
Without them, it wouldn’t be possible for her to be August’s fated one, and she wouldn’t be feeling this way, hurting from just thinking about him, pained by only the thought he might not want more than one night from her, but still drawn to him, still filled with a need to be with him, to take the plunge and risk her heart just so she could know what that was like.
It tore her in two, left her shaken and unsure what to do.
No.
She curled her fingers into fists at her sides.
She knew what she had to do.
She was promised to another, and if she didn’t go through with it, her entire pride would be in danger again.
Her brothers would be in danger.
If her sacrifice could keep them all safe, then she would do it.
She would go to Siberia.
She would become Pyotr’s bride.