Chapter Three

 

 

She was his mate. His mate!

He didn't know whether to be thrilled or utterly dismayed. He couldn't tell if she liked him at all. At this of all times, his ability to read people seemed to have completely deserted him. He'd never met anyone as inscrutable as Tessa Davelos.

Surely she must feel what he was feeling, or something like it: the tug in his chest every time he looked at her, as if a fishhook had been set behind his breastbone and was pulling him steadily, inexorably toward her.

Did Dad know?

He couldn't have. Shifters couldn't recognize each other's mates. At least Ben didn't think so. He couldn't. Maybe dragons could. And his dad was definitely the sort who would interfere in his kids' love life ...

But, no. She was his mate. They were fated to meet. If it hadn't been here and now, it would have been somewhere else.

Also, she was marked for death by dragons, and she didn't even believe dragons existed. That was going to put a definite damper on the relationship.

"Please take this," Melody muttered between her teeth, thrusting her unhappy kitten in his direction.

Ben took the kitten absently and let him settle down with the little girl-kitten already snuggled to his chest. His panther purred, contented at both the unexpected presence of his mate and of an armload of cat-children. The kittens purred back.

Apparently dragons were not nearly as much to their liking. He noticed a ripple of discontent among the cats as Melody trailed him, and he followed Tessa, through the room full of cages.

Tessa worked briskly and busily, scooping out catboxes and spooning wet food into bowls. After watching for a minute, Melody picked up a cat litter scoop and went to work. Ben would have liked to, but his arms were full of kittens and every time he tried to put them down, they started crying.

Which probably wasn't helping impress his mate that he was either good mate material or good protector material. He couldn't even boss around a kitten, for pete's sake.

On the other hand, cats were famously hard to give orders to. At the moment, most of the cats in the shelter—aside from the kittens, who apparently had decided he was their new mom—were regarding Ben and his panther with wary respect, shaded with a certain element of "What are you looking at, asshole?"

"I can't believe you just told her," Melody muttered out of the corner of her mouth. "What's wrong with you?"

"What did you tell her?" he whispered back.

"That the mob's after her."

"Oh yeah, that's plausible."

"More plausible than dragons!" she shot back.

"I can hear you whispering over there," Tessa said loudly. She straightened up, bag of cat litter in one plastic-gloved hand and a sack of waste in the other. She was utterly gorgeous, scruffy hair and oversized T-shirt and all. She should be a painting: Woman holding cat litter no. 12. Her skin was a beautiful caramel color, her hair dark mahogany brown. Ben just wanted to rest his eyes on her forever.

Instead he forced himself to look away, gaze drifting to one of the cats, who stared back, unimpressed, as if to say, You're not doing a very good job of this so far, buddy.

"This isn't an easy thing to explain, Ms. Davelos," he said.

Tessa tossed the bag into a bin. "Well, so far, you're not even trying to explain."

She had a point. He looked back at her, meeting her deep chocolate-brown eyes. She looked wary, and he was suddenly aware of how much of her defensiveness was a facade. She was worried, scared, and all he wanted to do was put his arms around her and tell her that everything was going to be all right.

Which was the one thing he couldn't do. She was human; she didn't know about fated mates. She didn't know him. As far as she was concerned, he was some weirdo who showed up out of nowhere and started babbling about dragons.

And how much reassurance could he offer her? He couldn't take on a dragon and win. In a head-to-head fight, a panther was going to lose.

One thing at a time, though. First he had to get her on board with the idea that the threat was real.

"I know it sounds crazy," he said. "All I can tell you is, dragons exist. And that mark on your doorframe—is it just here, or at your home also?" Maybe they weren't after her; maybe the target was someone else at the shelter, a fellow shifter—

"It's at her home too," Melody said. "Beside her apartment door."

"Kids," Tessa said. "Gang symbols."

Ben shook his head. "That's a dragon symbol. They've marked you. But why? The only reason why dragons would come after you like this is if you've trespassed against them. And they wouldn't call out an assassin for a minor offense. It must be something extreme. But from what you've said, you didn't even know that dragons existed until today."

"I still don't know that dragons exist," Tessa said. "You haven't provided a shred of evidence."

Ben glanced at Melody. She gave her head a tiny shake. Great. Not that he'd expected her to agree to shift in front of a human. Dragons were even more secretive than most shifters. Still, it would've been nice to get a little help here.

There was only one other thing to do. It was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. But he had to get her to take the threat seriously. His mate's life was at stake.

"I can give you some evidence," he said. "Not about dragons, exactly. But it ought to help. Are there any cameras in here? Any kind of monitoring?"

Tessa frowned. "That's an ominous question if I ever heard one."

"Just tell him, Tess," Melody said.

"There's a kitten webcam in their cage." Tessa pointed to it. "We're far outside its field of view right now, though, and it doesn't pick up sounds. Look, I'm giving you a lot of trust here, buddy, not to just kick you out the door. The fact that you're Mel's brother is the only reason why you're still in here at all." But there was something odd in her voice, a slight hitch as if some part of her wanted to insist otherwise.

"This'll be quick," Ben said. "I'm going to need to take my clothes off. Are we likely to be interrupted in the next few minutes?"

"... wait, you need to what?"

Ben set down the kittens carefully and began to undress.

 

***

 

Tessa stared as Ben shrugged out of his jacket. She darted a quick, baffled glance at Melody, but her best friend merely looked exasperated, as if taking his clothes off in public was something her brother did all the time.

"What are you doing?" Tessa's voice rose to a startled squeak. Under the jacket he was wearing a shoulder holster, the leather strap cutting a sharp line across pecs that were defined even through his shirt. He carefully unbuckled the holster and hung it on the door of an empty kennel, out of reach of animals or children.

"I could do this without stripping, but I'd ruin my clothes and have nothing to wear afterwards." He unbuttoned his shirt. As Tessa got her first glimpse of his firm, muscular chest, her higher brain functions started to shut down. "You can look away if you want. I wouldn't do this except I really need to convince you, and I can't think of any other way."

Tessa told herself she could stop him. She should stop him. All she had to do was say the word and, she thought, he'd stop. And they were getting closer to the shelter's opening time. Other employees and volunteers would arrive soon. Her supervisor might walk in on this.

He stripped out of his shirt, and at that point, she couldn't have looked away if she'd wanted to. The bag of cat litter in her hand dropped to her feet, all but unnoticed. Oh God, he was built. Not heavy and overmuscled, but she preferred her men a little bit on the lean side anyway, well defined and strong.

Melody turned away with her hands over her face. "We are never talking about this, Ben. Ever."

"Go guard the door, would you?" Ben suggested with a hint of laughter in his voice.

Melody fled the room.

Ben leaned down to untie his shoes, stepping out of them one at a time, and tucking each of his socks into its respective shoe. The precision intrigued her; most men would've just carelessly dropped their socks on the floor. More distracting, however, was the long curve of his spine, the hint of the top of his ass above his waistband when he bent over ...

He dropped his pants and stepped out of them. Tessa's throat was dry as he hooked his fingers into the waistband of his boxers.

"You can look away," he reminded her.

She didn't look away.

The boxers followed the pants, and then he stood naked before her.

He was gorgeous. Now she could see why he moved with such supple grace, with those chiseled muscles and not a speck of extra fat on him anywhere. His chest was lightly furred, dark curls trailing in an enticing line across his flat abdomen, down to the area that she was resolutely not looking at—well, maybe a peek wouldn't hurt—

She had to be blushing like a sunrise as she jerked her gaze upward to meet his gray eyes. To her surprise, he was blushing a little too, but then he smiled. "I hope this doesn't shock you too much," he said.

And changed.

Tessa let out a tiny shriek and jumped backward.

It happened almost instantly, though not quite; there was a flowing moment of transition, and she got a brief impression of ink bleeding into his pale skin, of Ben bending forward, and then—

And then the man was gone, and a glossy black panther stood where he had been.

He was the biggest cat she'd ever seen. Certainly the biggest one she'd been next to. This was the jungle prototype of the little house pets in the cages, several hundred pounds of wiry muscle under a coat of gleaming black fur. He was all strength and wildness in a cage of muscle, and her own lack of fear surprised her. Beyond the initial shock, she felt nothing but wonder.

Yellow half-moon eyes gazed into hers, until she was distracted by the sound of a room full of cats going nuts.

As always with cats, there were as many different opinions as there were cats in the room. Some of them were hissing and snarling, puffing up their tails like raccoons. One big, dominant tom cat was clawing at the bars of his cage, trying to get to the panther. Others merely licked their paws and affected a nonchalant air: Oh, a panther? Must be Tuesday. Some rubbed on the bars in an attempt to get him to notice them, purring and making little mewling sounds.

The kittens had gone absolutely wild, fawning on him in raptures of delight. Tessa could hear their tiny purrs from where she was standing. Ben became aware of this and looked as confused as a panther could look, staring down at his miniature fan club in feline bafflement.

Tessa's cat-rescue-trained instincts made her hurry forward to remove the little cats from the big cat—you didn't just put strange cats together like this, especially when one of them was huge! ... Except, he wasn't a cat, not really, was he? Somewhere in there, he still must have Ben's human mind. And he didn't seem to mind the kittens at all. After his initial moment of surprise, he rubbed his big head against them, knocking some of them over. The kittens didn't seem to mind in the slightest; they were rubbing on him so vigorously that they kept knocking themselves over, then scrambling back to their tiny paws for another go at it.

It was the most adorable thing she'd ever seen. Tessa was laughing so hard she could barely speak. "Come on, you silly little things, stop bothering the nice man—er—panther." She picked up a kitten in each hand. They mewed in distress, struggling to escape and go back to their panther lovefest.

Suddenly there was a naked man on hands and knees on the floor, with kittens rubbing all over his wrists. The kittens tumbled all over themselves in shock, and Ben straightened up quickly, reaching for his pants. He cleared his throat. "So."

"So," Tessa echoed. The laughter had died in her throat and now she was just standing, looking at him, with a kitten in each hand.

"Now you know why I was willing to accept that there are dragons after you." He spoke quickly, looking down and concentrating on dressing—avoiding her gaze, she thought with a spark of regret. "There is real magic in the world, Tessa. It's not always friendly."

Tessa opened her mouth to reply, but just then Melody's voice floated down the corridor to them. "Oh hi! No, I just stopped by to visit my friend Tessa. She's back in the cage room—"

"One of the other volunteers is here!" Tessa looked around wildly, with her hands full of kittens. "Put your shirt on!"

"I am!" He looked up from toeing into his shoes and gently removed a kitten from his laces. "Will you let me explain the rest of it?"

"Not in front of my co-workers! They'll think I'm nuts."

"You are in grave danger, Tessa. I don't want to leave you."

"We'll—we'll tell them you're a volunteer, then," she said quickly. "You can fill out the paperwork and help me this morning, and then ... I guess when we get a chance, you can explain the rest to me, and we can figure out what to do next. Okay?"

He smiled, and it was all the more panty-melting now that she'd seen what he looked like with his clothes off. "Okay," he said.

Spending the morning with him wasn't going to be a hardship in the slightest.

Danger, Tessa, she warned herself. She didn't need to be giving her heart away to anyone, no matter how hot he was, no matter the impossible magic that he brought into her world.

If she needed a reminder of how uncertain life could be, all she had to do was touch her chest, where a simple crystal pendant on a silver chain—one of the only things she had left to remind her of her dead parents—rested against her skin beneath her T-shirt.

Life was uncertain and terrible. Things could happen in an instant ... like a car crash. She wasn't going to trust this Ben Keegan guy, no matter how convincing he was.

And she certainly wasn't going to fall in love with him.