You’ve surprised me.”
“Let her go,” Blaise said, his upper lip lifting in a snarl. “You’ve been found out. It’s time to face up to what you’ve done.”
Caleb laughed with no humor. “I think not.
Your human girlfriend is my ticket out of here.
None of you will try anything as long as I have her.” He slowly backed away from the bed and the others.
“Why, Caleb?” Blaise’s father asked, stopping Caleb. “After all I’ve done for you.”
“All you did for me? Like taking my parents away so I could grow up with an aunt who hated me and mistreated me whenever she got the chance? I used you, took whatever I could get out of you. And don’t try to deny what you did. Tell them. Tell your precious family what you did to my father. My aunt knew because my mother told her before she took her own life.”
“I didn’t do anything. Your father, my brother, made the decision to abandon you and your mother himself.”
“That’s a lie. He never would have left my mom on his own. You knew he wanted to take your place as leader of our family group. You gave him the choice of losing his life for trying to force you out or banishment. He chose the latter.”
“Is that what your mother told your aunt? If it is, then it’s a lie. Your mother had…problems… when it came to perceiving the world around her.”
“Shut up,” Caleb said with a snarl as he tightened his grip even more on Harley’s throat, causing her to whimper with fear.
Blaise’s father held out his hand. “Stop, Caleb.
I’ll tell you the truth. Your mother was never my brother’s mate.”
“Bullshit. She wore his pendant. I remember her wearing it.”
“It wasn’t his. She had a human jeweler make a copy of one. There was no mating bond between your parents. When your mother became pregnant with you, my brother tried to make it work, even though she wasn’t his mate. But he strayed as a lot of males do when they stay in a relationship with a female who isn’t meant to be theirs. He found his mate. Your mother didn’t take it well. She plotted to kill your father’s new mate, and almost succeeded.
“My brother deemed she would always be at risk as long as he stayed in Anchorage. Not wanting your mother to learn where he ran to, he left one night and never came back. It was years later when he finally contacted me. Your mother was already dead, but my brother had made another life for himself and his mate. He thought you were better off being raised by your aunt.”
Caleb growled. “It’s still because of you I lost my family. As our leader you could have kept him from running. You could have ordered him back.”
“I wouldn’t have done that. It was my brother’s choice to make, not mine.”
Caleb took a step back, then another and another, dragging Harley along with him. She didn’t understand half of what had been said.
Family groups, mates and mating bonds weren’t a part of her world.
Fear rode her as Caleb continued to inch closer to the bedroom door. Her gaze latched on to Blaise, she pleaded desperately with her eyes for him to do something to save her. He followed, keeping enough distance between them so as not to have his cousin feel threatened. Taylor followed, as did their mother. Aspen stayed in the room with their father.
They made it down the stairs and to the foyer. Caleb kept his hand locked around her throat and an arm around her waist. He removed that one only long enough to open the door before he held her against him once more. He took a step outside, dragging her right along with him.
“Time to show you, little human, what a cougar shifter can do to your kind,” he growled into her ear.
Caleb shoved her away. The rest happened in a matter of seconds. His body blurred then shimmered and a cougar took his place. The big cat went to pounce on her, but Blaise stepped between them, shifting to a cougar as well and blocking the other. Caleb spun in midair before taking off at a run toward the back of the property.
Harley let out a whimper and crab-walked away from the remaining cougar. Her fear took over, her vision swam as she tried to scramble out of reach, but her legs refused to work, leaving her unable to get to her feet and run away.
The cougar that was Blaise would have chased after Caleb, but Taylor stepped in front of him. “I’ll go after Caleb. You have Harley to worry about.” Then Blaise’s brother turned into a cougar as well and took off at a run in the direction his cousin had gone.
Blaise turned to face her and took a few steps in her direction. Harley grabbed a handful of stones from the drive and threw them at him, hitting him in the side and head. “Stay away from me,” she cried. “Just stay away.”
Chapter Seven
Blaise hardly felt the stones hit him, he was so focused on Harley. Her first introduction to his world was not the best, by any stretch of the imagination. No one had expected Caleb to return to the house. He normally came to do his examinations only in the mornings. Obviously, their not allowing him to inject his patient hadn’t sat well with Caleb. He’d more than likely come back to try to convince them to change their minds or somehow sneak the shot in when no one was looking.
He reached for the magic inside him and shifted to his human form. As a cougar, there was no way he could verbally communicate with Harley. And right now she needed explanations, if she was in any state to listen to them.
“Harley,” Blaise said softly as he took a step toward her. “It’s all right. No one here is going to hurt you. You have nothing to be afraid of.”
She whimpered and managed to surge to her feet. Harley shook her head. “Stay away from me.
I don’t want you near me.”
“You’re safe with me. With my family. Taylor has gone after Caleb. We won’t let him near you again.”
“No. I can’t do this.” Harley quickly sidestepped around Blaise. “You’re not normal. I found cougar hemoglobin in your father’s blood. I was going to question you about it, but now I know why it was there. You’re cougar shifters?
That’s what Caleb called himself.”
“We are. We’ve been living among humans for a very long time without any of you knowing it. There aren’t that many of us. You might think we’re not normal, but we’re just a different species.”
“One that can change into a big cat whenever you want, and obviously fight off a poison that would have killed a human in a day.”
“That does have a lot to do with my dad still being alive. We don’t ever get sick, that’s why his illness didn’t make any sense to us. We also live longer than humans. We can see up to two hundred years before death takes us. My father is sixty-five. My mom is only a year younger.”
Harley backed up more. “They both don’t look that old. I thought they were in their thirties, which didn’t make sense because you’re twenty-
eight, or at least that’s what you told me.”
“I really am twenty-eight.”
“I can’t deal with this.”
She turned and took off at a run toward her car, which was parked in front of the garage. A wave of stark need washed through him when he saw she was trying to leave. He couldn’t let her go. He had to convince her to stay with him. He’d show her how good they were together, make love to her until she accepted him for what he was. He loved her and couldn’t let her go. He loved her.
Blaise caught up with Harley as she reached the driver’s side door and tried to yank it open.
He used his body to pin her against it, his erection pressing along her bottom. She cried out, her breath sawing in and out of her.
“Harley, please stay with me,” he said as he nuzzled the back of her neck. “I love you. I don’t want to lose you. We can work this out. Aspen is human. She was afraid like you when she first found out about Taylor, but she took his pendant from him and became his mate.”