Trusting the Tiger: BBW Tiger Shifter Paranormal Romance (13 page)

She shook Jack’s shoulder desperately as a shadow fell over her. “Jack, listen to me. Focus on my voice. The amount of tranquilizer you’ve got in your system – it’s too much, it’ll kill you. But your tiger might be able to deal with it. Jack, you have to transform. Trust me, you have to shift
now
.”

Jack’s eyelids flickered as he tried to fight the drug. His breath was slowing, as though his lungs were straining to work against a great pressure.

<
Toni, run!
> he urged her, but it was too late.

De Jager dragged Toni upright and pulled her around to face him. She recoiled as he leered at her, but he gripped her arm so tightly she couldn’t move away.

“The mysterious Antonia Parker!” he crowed triumphantly. “Speaking of bonuses … I can’t think what my employer would do with you, sweetheart, but I’m sure one of his pet scientists will find you an interesting data point.” He leaned in closer. “You and your niece and nephew.”

Toni almost retched as de Jager drew her closer to his face.

“Don’t you dare touch them!” she snarled. Silently, she shouted out to Jack to wake up, to fight the drugs, but there was only silence behind her. Even the long, dragging sound of Jack’s breath had grown quiet.

Toni sobbed and threw her full weight at de Jager, hoping to knock him off balance. But he was ready for her, and threw her to the ground. Toni hit the dirt and lay there, stunned.

“I’d offer you the same deal I offered our friend here, but I get the feeling you’d suspect I wasn’t being entirely truthful with you,” de Jager said conversationally. They might have been exchanging small talk at an office party.

Toni’s mind was racing. She glanced across to Jack. He hadn’t moved, or shifted. Her heart lurched in her chest. Desperate, she held on to the connection she still felt between herself and the man she had fallen so quickly and deeply in love with. Focusing with all her energy, she sent her strength to Jack, willing him to fight the drugs that were coursing through his body – to be strong, to survive—

Toni’s vision swam, and she never saw de Jager’s boot swinging toward her. Pain burst along her side as he kicked her to the ground.

“I asked you a question, you damn freak! When I talk, you listen!”

Toni spat out a mouthful of dirt and glared up at de Jager. She had seen her sister and parents hiss and spit when they were enraged in cat form, their glossy coats puffing up to make them look bigger. In this moment, Toni understood what that must feel like. If she’d had hackles, they would have risen. If she’d had a tail, it would have been puffed up like a banner.

Instead, since she was a human, she made do with spitting all the profanities she could think of. She pushed herself onto her knees, ready to launch herself at de Jager, and then froze as he lifted the pistol and pointed it at her.

Behind the barrel of the gun, de Jager’s mouth twisted into a greasy grin. “Not so fast, sweetheart. You just—”

<
Don’t you dare touch her!
>

A black and orange flash rushed past Toni and smashed into de Jager. She had barely a moment to realize it was Jack before he sent gun and man flying in different directions with a single sweep of his powerful paws.

Toni was used to cat shifters, but a tiger was something totally different. She slowly stood up, taking in the scene in front of her. The tiger – Jack – was bigger than a normal tiger, reaching as high as Toni’s shoulder even on all fours. Muscles bunching under his striped fur, he stood over de Jager, dwarfing the cowering man. A growl ripped from his throat as he padded forward.

“You wouldn’t dare, you filthy brute,” hissed de Jager. “You think I’m the only one who took on your contract? I might have tracked you down first, but if I turn up with my throat torn out you won’t be able to move in these woods for our people. You and those fucking kids won’t stand a chance.”

Jack lowered his head. Toni heard his voice inside her mind, although he kept his golden eyes fixed firmly on de Jager.

<
So, he’s got allies, but none nearby, or he’d be threatening us with them to save his own hide.
>

“Right,” Toni agreed, not trusting herself to mindspeak without blasting the whole forest. Her adrenaline was spiking, filling her body with nervous energy. She looked back across the clearing at the sniper, who was beginning to groan softly.

So she hadn’t killed him after all. She wasn’t sure whether she was more relieved or annoyed that this meant he was still a problem.

She looked back at their would-be captor in time to see his eyes slide across the ground to his gun. It must have been ten feet away from him. Toni couldn’t tell whether he was stupid, or desperate, enough to go for the weapon with four hundred kilograms of growling tiger standing over him, but she briskly walked over and picked it up anyway.

>

“Backpack,” Toni confirmed. She didn’t want to talk too much with de Jager listening in.

<
Good. Don’t bring it out unless it’s absolutely necessary. This is all going to look crazy enough without … hey!>

Jack punctuated this last, silent exclamation with a sharp growl. De Jager was slinking backwards toward the van. The vehicle wasn’t likely to do much damage against Jack’s supernatural bulk at this distance but if de Jager could get the engine running, he might escape. Toni pointed the gun at him.

“Stop moving!”

De Jager laughed, but Toni could see the whites around his eyes. Even if he was trying to hide it, he was afraid.

She knew that Jack was thinking the same thing; if she let her attention slip toward him, then she could almost start to smell de Jager’s fear as well as see it, just as Jack could.

Interesting. She tucked that thought away for later.

De Jager licked his lips. “You know … the deal I mentioned. Let’s change it up a bit. I can tell my employer this whole contract is a dead end – nothing in it – I’ll make sure they leave you alone…”

“And leave you free to hunt down other shifters?” Toni cried out. “Jack, stop him!”

De Jager lunged for the van door. Jack had started moving before Toni’s warning left her lips. He leapt forward in one smooth movement and struck de Jager to the ground. He lay still.

“Bastard!” Toni shouted. “What kind of monsters does he think we are?”

<
It was a trick
> Jack reminded her gently.

Toni punched her hands into fists. To her surprise, there were tears in her eyes. “Did he think we would really take him up on that offer? Let him go free to attack other innocent shifters? I’d rather die!”

She felt warm fur under her hand. Jack was standing next to her; she realized she was shaking, and put out her arms to steady herself on his solid bulk. “I’ve done everything wrong this weekend. Even if he killed me, I couldn’t let him hurt anyone else.”

Her shakes turned into uncontrollable sobs. Everything that had happened that weekend seemed to wash over her in one unforgiving tide. Her failure to protect the twins. Her failure to contact her sister, to let anyone know what was going on. Even Jack had almost died because of her. Toni shut her eyes tight in a hopeless attempt to stem the flood of her tears and wrapped her arms around herself.

There was a soft, organic noise, Jack laid a human hand on her arm. She let him pull her toward him, into his warm embrace. He smelled like dirt, and sweat, all the tangible reminders of the tragedy they had only just avoided – but behind that, she sensed his own, personal smell, warm and animal and pure. She flung her arms around him and held on tight.

“I thought I had – I thought I was going to lose you,” she mumbled into his chest. “When I saw de Jager shoot you – if I hadn’t distracted you, if I hadn’t made such a mess of things—”

“Don’t regret anything you did today, Toni. You saved my life.”

Jack gestured toward the shooter Toni had knocked from his perch, who moaning in a way that suggesting he wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon.

“I should never have left the house without telling you what I was doing. If you hadn’t found me, who knows where I would have woken up. Or not woken up.”

He rubbed his shoulder absently, and Toni saw three small red marks where the shots had struck him. The puncture wounds looked old, almost completely healed over. She passed her own hand over them protectively. “That much tranquilizer should have been enough to kill you. I thought it had. I thought for sure that it knocked you out. What happened?”

Jack lifted her chin in both his hands, staring deep into her eyes. “You did, my love. My brave, beautiful Toni. I don’t know how you did it, but everything was going dark, and then I heard your voice. You told me to be strong, and suddenly I was. I could still feel the drug pulling me down, but I could fight it. I could protect you.”

He pressed his lips against Toni’s in a lingering kiss.

“I love you, Toni. And I’ll never stop protecting you.” A smile flickered over his face. “So long as you promise to keep protecting me, too. I can’t believe you ambushed the guy who was meant to ambush me! How did you find me?”

Toni felt a smile begin to grow on her own face. “You haven’t figured it out yet? I might not be a proper shifter, Jack, but some shifter things I
definitely
understand.” <
My love. My mate.>

Toni saw the shock of happiness sweep across Jack’s expression – and felt, too, the rush of joy that filled his heart. It filled her heart, too.

“I might not be able to shift, but I think today proves that I don’t need to be a shifter to – to be worthwhile,” she said, stumbling over the words.

“Toni, I—” He frowned, as though something had suddenly distracted his attention. Toni couldn’t hear anything; then she let her senses slip sideways to piggyback on Jack’s keener ones, and realized immediately what he had picked up on.

“Damn! I mean, obviously, good,” she said, quickly correcting herself. She caught Jack’s eye and blushed. “Look, you hear it too, right?”

“At least three vehicles,” Jack confirmed. “Here comes the cavalry.” Cavalry with sirens: for them, not de Jager and his accomplice.

Toni giggled. “This seems to be a habit with you. You do something heroic, but by the time someone else turns up all you’re doing is standing around with no clothes on.”

Jack swore and dove back to where his clothes lay in a shredded heap on the ground. His tiger was significantly bigger than his human form, and when he had transformed, the garments hadn’t put up much of a fight.

He picked up the remains of his shirt and looked at them hopelessly.

“I seem to recall the last time this happened, the person who turned up was very understanding about my nakedness,” he grumbled playfully, trying to match up split seams. “That’s probably less likely to be the case today.”

“Here,” Toni said, fishing his trousers out of the pile. “These are ripped, but if you use my belt…”

Between them, they managed to get Jack looking slightly presentable before the police cars roared into the clearing. The cops had followed the same road de Jager had come in on, and his van was soon surrounded by flashing lights. Doors swung open and Toni braced herself to answer an onslaught of questions, but the first person to leap out of the back of a car and toward her was no police officer.

“Ellie!” Toni gasped, then looked beyond her sister to see a heavyset man struggling to extricate himself from the same car. “And Werther! What are you two doing here?”

Ellie flung her arms around her little sister. “I got your message last night – all your messages – and we came as fast as we could. We got to the twins just as the police arrived, and you know there is no way we were going to be left behind.”

She squeezed Toni even more tightly, and Toni realized with a shock that her sister was crying. “Oh, god, Toni, I am so glad you’re okay.”

Werther finally managed to heave himself out of the car and walked sedately up to the trio. The reason for his trouble getting out of the passenger seat was clear – Lexi and Felix, both in human form, were clinging like monkeys to his back.

A police officer in what looked like a hastily-donned uniform ran up to belatedly flank the father and his children as they trampled over what was, after all, a crime scene.

“Toni,” Werther said, reaching out to squeeze Toni’s shoulder reassuringly.

Solid and reliable where his wife was fleet-footed and frenetic, Werther had the same sleepy green eyes in human form as he did as a Norwegian forest-cat shifter. He bore the weight of his twin children with apparent ease, and ignored the officer by his side the same way.

“And you must be Jack.”

Toni watched the four closest members of her family silently look over the tall, muscular man – wearing little more than rags – who was standing protectively beside her, his arm still around her waist even as Ellie claimed her own hugs. A silent understanding passed through the group.

<
Well,
> Ellie said, smirking, as the twins grinned and Werther blinked calmly. <
Welcome to the family, Jack.
>