Once Upon a Tiger (6 page)

Chapter Seven

When night plunged her room into darkness, Alexis finally left her bed. She pulled on a flannel shirt and a pair of sweats and went to stand on the porch, letting the wind carry the smells of the night to her—dry soil, pine, beech and maple, the tempting perfume of a deer sneaking past the edge of her territory, the crisp combination of fish and damp rock from the river, and a faint tiger musk beneath it all. Her land.

Victor came up behind her, resting his hands on her hips. She leaned into him, smiling at his continued nudity. She really didn’t want him dressed again until they had to leave and confront the elders.

A confrontation it would be, too. Alexis had spent her spare moments during the day considering how best to deal with them and had come to a simple conclusion. She didn’t run, and she wouldn’t run from the elders either. In fact, after twelve years of faithful service, they owed her. She’d earned the right to pick her mate outside the conventions of the Mate Run. She would not allow them to treat her this way.

Her life. Her rules. She’d lived this way since her parents were killed, and she wasn’t about to change.

They should have known better anyway. What the hell they’d been thinking when they sent Nick and the others here, she couldn’t guess. She dropped her head back against Victor’s shoulder and frowned up at the star speckled sky.

“You don’t suppose they
want
me to kill Nick or one of the others, do you?”

With a hand on her chin, Victor turned her face toward him and frowned.

“I was just thinking. The elders know me. They know what I’m capable of. They’ve
used
those skills for years now. They must know trying to force my hand would result in a fight. Do you think they want me to kill someone?”

Still frowning, he shook his head and shrugged at the same time.

“If they did, they could have just said.” She’d had to kill before. It was always a last resort, but that’s what the Trackers were for: to hunt, capture, and kill if and when necessary. Her uncle had drilled the discipline of the post into her from the time she went to live with him. She didn’t kill easily, but she did kill. If they wanted someone dead, why not just send her after them? Why this pretense?

“Unless the tiger they want dead hasn’t technically broken any laws,” she said. “If he hasn’t earned a death-sentence, I wouldn’t go after him. Neither would any of the other Trackers.”

She stared into the trees. She could sense the others, just barely, but there at the very edge of her territory, between the distant highway and single dirt road winding through this part of the mountains. They’d crept in closer when the sun set but hadn’t started an all out approach on her cabin yet. Could they smell the change from that distance? As soon as they got close enough, they’d know she’d been with Victor. Would it make things worse or better?

Victor took her hand and led her back inside. He gestured to the couch, then went into the kitchen and made them both cups of tea. She loved tea so she was grinning when he handed her the mug.

“Good choice.”

He smiled, set his mug on the coffee table and disappeared into the bedroom, returning with his notebook.

Why do you think they’d want one of them dead?

“Why else send them here, without giving me any other advance notice, knowing how angry I’d be?”

Have you considered one of the elders might want you dead?

No. The thought never occurred to her. She was a breeding-aged female and much too valuable to have killed. Allowing her to work the dangerous job of a Tracker had pushed their tolerance. They’d insisted she be trained more thoroughly than any other Tracker. She was the best now, because of their caution.

Maybe that was the problem. Did they worry they couldn’t control her? Had she become a liability without realizing it? Was she more dangerous than she was valuable as a female? Given the state of their species, she found it very hard to believe. They needed every single female to mate.

She groaned. She’d just talked herself around to exactly the thing the elders were trying to make her do. They
needed
her to reproduce. So it didn’t make sense that any of them arranged for her death.

“If Elizaveta thought any of the other elders wanted me dead, she would have raised more of a fuss.”

Victor shrugged in agreement.
Maybe it’s exactly as it seems
. He screwed his mouth up into a half-frown, hesitating, then nodded to himself and wrote.
Why were you allowed to become a Tracker? Why did you want to be one?

Ah. That. “You know my parents were killed?”

An accident
.

“No. They were murdered. It was kept very quiet. Another tiger, who loved my mother and was jealous of her relationship with my father, cut the brakes on their car. They never had a chance.”

He risked killing you!

His hand actually trembled when he thrust the note at her, and rage filled his normally controlled expression.

She gripped his fingers with one hand and shook her head. “He arranged the ‘accident’ when he knew I wouldn’t be with them. He wasn’t crazy. Just jealous.”

She let go of his hand and sipped her tea, trying to calm the sudden jump of her pulse. A hard knot of anxiety squeezed her stomach. She didn’t talk about this. Ever. Not since she was a child. But she wanted Victor to know the truth.

“My uncle, my mother’s brother, was a Tracker. He asked permission to go after the murderer and was allowed to do so by a majority vote. Ten elders to two. Elizaveta took me in while he hunted, in case he didn’t come back. Under our laws, she adopted me so I would be protected. I’m still technically her daughter, though she treats me more like a granddaughter.”

Victor smiled and took a gulp of his tea.

“My uncle caught the murderer, brought him back to the elders, and was given permission to execute him. Then he retired to raise me. He was my only living blood relative. My father lost his two brothers before I was born—poachers in Russia. My mother only had the one brother. I didn’t have grandparents. It was just the two of us.”

He trained you?

“Yup.”

How old were you?

“When my parents died? Ten. I was fourteen when he finally agreed to start my training. I begged him. I wanted to be the kind of tiger he was, the kind who could protect the ones I loved and take revenge when I couldn’t keep my loved ones safe.”

Elizaveta allowed it?

Alexis chuckled. “She encouraged it. I’m still not sure why. She fought with the other elders to allow me to work as a Tracker.” She stared down into her mug. “Took her a few years. In the meantime, I trained. I had to demonstrate my skills before they’d allow me to take the oath.”

Victor edged his notebook into her peripheral vision. She glanced at his question.

Demonstrate how?

“They had me fight,” she said. “Four of the other Trackers, none of whom were on my side, which ensured they didn’t take it easy on me.”

What happened?

“I’m a Tracker now, aren’t I? I won.”

He raised his brows, and she rolled her eyes.

“Okay, I beat them badly. Four males in their prime, and I sent them packing.” Her grin of pride should have embarrassed her, but this was Victor and he’d know she was proud of her skills even if she tried not to show it. “The dissenting elders didn’t have much of an argument afterward. I was allowed to take the oath.”

You were only nineteen
.

She nodded. Her age was part of the legend that grew up around her. Most didn’t pass their training to take the oath until their early twenties. But then, most of the other Trackers had less reason to go into the job than she did.

She swallowed the last of her tea and set the mug aside. “As it turned out, my first job was to bring Elizaveta’s son before the elders. Ivan…”

She shook her head and stood. When Ivan lost his mate, he went insane. The old story still broke her heart. His three young sons, after just losing their mother to a suicide, then had to lose their father for eight years to confinement. If Ivan hadn’t been Elizaveta’s, if he weren’t so obviously driven mad by his mate’s death, he would have been executed. After twelve years, it was still the hardest job she’d ever done. Because she understood Ivan’s pain, and her heart ached for his boys.

Needing something to do with her hands, she went back to the kitchen and set the kettle to boil again. She wasn’t thirsty anymore, but a second cup of tea felt necessary. She looked back at Victor. “You want another?”

He shook his head.

She occupied herself with putting a fresh tea bag into her mug. Finally, she had to speak into the silence. “So, that’s my story. A lot of death and heartbreak got me here.”

He rose and stalked to her, his gaze steady. When he took her in his arms, she felt comforted, and comfortable, but not pitied. It made her love him more. She couldn’t take him feeling sorry for her. Especially given what he’d been through. She didn’t want his pity. She’d become what she was because of her history. While she’d have rather grown up with her parents around, she didn’t regret the life she’d lived since or the person she was now. There was no need for anyone to feel sorry for her.

She did want him to know the truth of her past, to understand, and because he was Victor, he did.

Once she’d finished making her next cup of tea, she said, “Let’s sit on the porch. It’s a nice night. Might as well wait for them in the open.”

The other males were circling closer, moving in very slowly. They’d make their way here before the night was out. She wasn’t going to cower inside waiting for them.

Victor disappeared into the bedroom long enough to put on some jeans, then joined her on the porch, sitting next to her in one of the two wooden rocking chairs. She contemplated just how sexy he looked in jeans and no shirt. Despite all the time they’d spent in bed, she wanted him again. Heat coiled in her stomach, her muscles tightening with delicious tingles. His scent drifted around her, mingling with her own essence, the perfect combination humming through her body.

She rolled her head, loosening her neck muscles, and focused on the woods instead of Victor. He’d know exactly what she was thinking, but at the moment, they couldn’t give in to the chemistry between them. She had to keep her hands to herself. Continuing to stare at him would only make it harder to do.

Chapter Eight

The night wore on with no movement from the other males. Sometime after the clock inside announced it was one a.m., Alexis got up the nerve to broach a topic she was incredibly curious about.

“May I ask you something?”

Victor rolled his head against the back of his chair and raised his brows.

“It’s just…given your past, what those human men did to you…do you hate humans?”

He shook his head, his mouth soft and relaxed.

“How can you not? How do you keep from being bitter? I still hate the man who killed my parents, and he’s been dead for years.”

Do you hate all tigers because of what that one did?

“Of course not. But…the viciousness of the attack on you and your mother, how do you let that go without hating? Or do you still hate those men?”

He stared into the woods for a long moment before he finally started writing.

I don’t hate all humans. Those three men were evil. Evil exists—in humans and in tigers—so I can’t blame an entire species for the wickedness of some. I’m not bitter because I have no reason to be. I’m alive. My mother’s alive. I have a great job, a few good friends. And I spent the day in bed with a spectacular woman. My life is good.

She twisted her mouth in a half-smile, half-grimace at the “spectacular woman” part. “Was it so easy to let go?”

He shook his head.
I was bitter for a while but I grew up. I realized I had too many good things in my life to let the hate fester. The only one it hurt was me. Those men did enough damage. I couldn’t let them do any more
.

“That is entirely too healthy,” she said. He smiled wide and his shoulders shook with a silent laugh.

She enjoyed the sight of his pleasure, then asked, “How do you feel about Elizaveta’s research? You don’t hate humans, but could you mate with one?”

Tigers could only reproduce with other tigers. That was one of their biggest problems. Or so it was widely believed. There was a legend among them of a couple in antiquity—a human woman and a male tiger—who not only managed to reproduce but had many children both tiger and human. Most of her people believed the myth was just that, an old romance tale with no basis in fact. The population crisis they were now facing had driven some to consider maybe the myth had a grain of truth. Maybe their salvation was in finding humans capable of breeding with tigers.

The feelings on this topic were strong on both sides—vicious supporters and equally vicious opponents. Some of those opponents thought it was an abomination to even consider reproducing with humans. Others simply thought it would dilute their species and leave them even weaker than they were now.

Elizaveta thought their only long-term hope was to find the genetic descendants of that ancient couple. She was spending a considerable amount of her fortune on genetic and genealogical research.

Alexis wasn’t entirely sure where she herself stood on the subject, and she hadn’t had her life irreparably damaged by humans. How would Victor feel about it?

I think we can’t afford to discount anything that might help us survive. I worry Elizaveta is tilting at windmills though, and even if she’s right, there will be a lot of conflict over any tiger/human pairing.

He pulled back the notepad and wrote more, so she remained silent so he could finish what he had to say.

And no, I wouldn’t mate with a human. Because you’re the only one I’ve ever wanted.

Alexis sucked in a deep breath. She blinked rapidly. That wasn’t the answer she’d been expecting, but it filled her with so much emotion she didn’t know what to name any of it.