For Tiger, everything suddenly became very clear.

He saw Carly with her arms outstretched, pasting herself against the front of his bloody body. He heard Connor shouting and saw the men’s fingers move on triggers.

The tiger-girl’s wail cut through the noise and fired Tiger’s blood like a burning electric wire.

Save her …

There was no other option.

Tiger lifted Carly from her feet an instant before the weapons went off. She made the “Eep!” sound she liked to when he did something unexpected, and then she was out of the way.

Tiger kept turning after he let her go, kicking to sweep those closing in on him off their feet. He moved so fast that by the time the guns went off he’d destroyed their aim. Men ducked, cursed, and pointed pistols up or downward to keep bullets from hitting their fellows.

Once they regained their bearings, they’d shoot again, thirty men determined to take Tiger down.

Didn’t matter. Tiger trusted that Carly and Connor would get the tiger-girl to safety while he finished this.

He launched into his enemies, not holding back. He barely felt the bullets embed in his body, another dose of tranq entering his blood.

Carly’s touch had helped ease his initial pain and erase the drugs trying to seep through him. He was stronger for it, able to resist the barrage that came at him now.

Tiger’s most basic instinct was not to kill. He’d been made to help, not hurt.

But sometimes …

Carly yelled. Connor echoed the cry, the word sounding like Here!

Now more men were in the room. They also wore black, but the uniforms weren’t the same. The commander of the new troop had very short white-blond hair, light blue eyes, and a hard face. Behind him came three Shifters, all black-haired and blue-eyed, and all very pissed off.

“Tiger!” Walker Danielson’s voice sliced through his haze. “Stand down. We got this.”

The man in charge of the enemy soldiers snapped, “Who the fuck are you?”

“Major Danielson, Sergeant. This is my op now.”

Tiger wasn’t sure how Walker knew the man was a sergeant, but the sergeant came to stiff if angry attention and popped off a salute.

“Yes, sir.” The obedience was belligerent, but given.

“Tiger, lad …”

Liam Morrissey, followed by his father and his brother, the latter with the huge Sword of the Guardian sheathed on his back, waded through the hostile men.

Won’t be needing the sword today, Tiger thought dimly.

All three Morrisseys headed for Tiger, but Tiger turned his back on them and strode for the cage, coming down out of his tiger-beast as he went.

Connor at the cage became human again, his face draining of color when he saw his uncles and grandfather. “Oh, shite.”

Behind him, the young woman grabbed the bars, her cries escalating to shrieks as she tried to break them. Her distress beat on Tiger, the need to help her battering all else aside.

He reached the cage. Carly looked up at him in perfect understanding. The fact that she knew exactly what was going on without Tiger having to say a word made the ache of his injuries recede. She was the mate of his heart in the truest sense of the word.

Tiger seized the bars of the cage and pulled.

“Tried that,” Connor said. “The two of us couldn’t budge them. It’s some kind of Shifter-resistant metal or something.”

Tiger didn’t answer. He let go, closed his eyes, put both hands on one bar, turned sideways, and pushed.

The tiger-girl inside didn’t wait. She seized the bar and pushed with him, her wordless cries filled with determination.

Behind him, Walker barked commands. “Get that cage open,” was one of them.

“It’s sealed,” the sergeant said, sounding triumphant. “No one goes in or out.”

Tiger sensed the sea of bodies parting for Dylan Morrissey. That happened for Dylan. The older Shifter, who’d seen everything and been through so much, said nothing as he walked to them, only took hold of the bar around Tiger’s grip and leant his strength.

“Come on then, Sean,” Liam said. “We can’t let Dad show us up.”

Two more pairs of hands joined in, and then Connor’s. Liam’s voice sounded again, directed at Connor. “I’ll be talking to you later.”

Connor moaned. “Oh, man, I am so screwed.”

His chagrin agitated the tiger-girl, who snarled at Liam. Liam huffed a laugh. “Kill me later, sweetheart,” he said. “Let’s get you out of this first.”

Carly came to help, grasping the bars below Tiger’s grip. She couldn’t make a dent, and he knew it, yet she refused to stand and do nothing. Another thing Tiger loved about her.

The iron bar creaked, bent, and then broke. A sound like a thunderclap rang through the room, and dust and pebbles rained down from the cement ceiling.

Tiger ripped the pieces of bar away, and then started on the next one.

With the Morrisseys and the tiger-girl helping, the second bar broke more rapidly, the desert-dried rock above crumbling into a white rain.

Tiger reached in and yanked the young woman out of the cage. She shrieked and fought, her terror renewed. She wanted out, but she didn’t know who all these men were—men who had caged her, just as they’d caged Tiger once upon a time.

Tiger dragged the tiger-girl against him. She struggled and struck out, her blows on his wounded body hurting, but Tiger stood firm.

He put his hands around her face and tilted her head up so that she looked into his eyes. Tiger studied hers, yellow irises with flecks of deep gold, the eyes of a tiger.

The young woman at last stilled, staring at him in disbelief. Then she gave another cry, one of awakening, awareness, and hope.

She flung her arms around Tiger, and he gathered her to him. Her tangled and ruined hair was rough against his cheek, and she was shaking all over, but he held her hard, a grief he’d embraced for nearly thirty years loosening and flowing away.

He heard Liam’s intake of breath. “Goddess, what the hell is he doing?”

And then came Carly’s beautiful laugh. “He’s doing what’s only natural, Liam Morrissey. Don’t you get it? She’s his cub.”