Redeeming Rue AP4 (6 page)

John seemed to feel the same tension and said, “If you won’t talk to us here, then you’ll talk to us at the house.”

James let go of her shoulders as John tugged on her to get her to follow him.

“No!  No, please!  Not the house!  No!”  The sheer terror in her words brought James up short.  His cat howled in worry, and he reached out and put his hand on John’s arm and wrapped his free arm around the woman’s shoulders.  Tears scented the air, and she trembled hard against him.

John stopped pulling on her, and James felt that his brother was worried about her.

“Tell us who you are, sweetheart,” James said.

“Please,” John added.

She sighed in defeat and James grinned.  “My name is Rue.”

“Rue what?”

“Just Rue, okay?  And I wasn’t watching you.  I was just wandering through the woods and happened to see the lights from the party.  I was curious.”

Something about her words didn’t seem quite right.  He didn’t think she was lying, but she didn’t seem to be telling them the whole truth.  As a cop, he was used to ferreting out the truth from people, but he didn’t want to treat her like a criminal.

“All right, Rue.  My name is James Fallon.”

“I’m John Fallon.”

“Brothers?”

James hummed in agreement.  “Rue, please tell us what’s going on.  We’ll keep your secret, whatever it is, but don’t ask us to just let you leave because we can’t.”

Her fear seemed to diminish.  “You can’t?”

“Hell no,” John said.  “We followed you from our backyard.”

“How did you follow me?”

James smiled as she seemed to relax further.  “I felt you.  You were watching us.”

“Not you, exactly, I…oh hell, would you let me go, please?  I need to leave.”

“You’re not going anywhere, right now.  Tell us why you’re here and then we’ll decide,” James said.

“You won’t make me go to your house?”

“Not if you don’t want to.  Tell us why you’re here in the woods and watching our house, with masking scents on your skin and a wig.”

“I can’t tell you everything.”

“Something, then,” John urged.

“My family is there.”

“There?  In our yard?” James asked in surprise.

“I’m a panther.  I’ve been away from my family since I was a teenager, but I heard about a ceremony being held here and I just wanted to see them.”

“Why were you away from them for so long?  I thought that panthers stayed with their clans unless they mated into another clan?” John asked.

“I was,” she paused, like she was trying to think of the words to use, “asked to leave my clan.”

She didn’t speak again, and after a long moment, John said, “I need to get back to the party before they send out a search team for us.”

James said, “Rue and I will be right here.”

“We will?” she asked.

“Yep,” James said.

She let out an aggravated sigh, and a small light appeared on her wrist as she touched a watch and illuminated the dial.  “Fine, but I’ve got to be on my way in a half hour.”

“I’ll be back in ten minutes,” John promised and disappeared into the trees.

She turned back to face James.  “Do you always go kissing strange women in the woods?”

James chuckled.  “I could ask you about kissing two strange men, too.”

She harrumphed.  “You guys smell good.”

“I’ll take it as a compliment.”

She laughed lightly and then said, “James, I do need to leave soon. Will you really let me leave?”

He had no plans to let her go, at least not without him and John.  “We’ll talk about leaving when John gets back, all right?  Don’t worry.  You’re safe with me.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” she whispered.

Chapter 7

Gerarli stood near the edge of the woods as the party celebrating the bonding of his cousins to a she-mountain lion was in full swing.  He hadn’t minded coming to the party.  Visiting with his cousin Dag had been enjoyable, since they hadn’t seen him or his clan in many years, but he’d felt a strange presence in the woods during the ceremony.  His beast had become agitated, and he wasn’t sure why, but he had learned many years ago to trust his instincts.

Sending two of his men into the woods to investigate, he was now waiting for them to return.  The clan stood near him.  They were anxious, but he couldn’t soothe their worries when he didn’t know what was wrong.  Something was wrong in the woods.

Brul and Kyot slipped through the trees and came to stand next to Gerarli, breathing hard from exertion.  Kyot kept his voice low when he spoke.  “It’s as you suspected.  There is an evil presence in the woods.  The banished one whose name we do not speak is here.  She was watching the proceedings but was caught by two mountain lions.”

Brul made a disgusted face.  “They were kissing and touching her as if she was not tainted.”

Tania, the banished one’s mother, whispered, “Why is she here?”

“There is more,” Kyot said.  “She was hiding her scent with heavy chemicals and wearing a dark wig to cover her hair.”

“We need to find out what she’s doing here,” Faisal, the banished one’s father said.

Gerarli nodded.  “If she watched from the woods, she must have driven here.  Find the vehicle.”

Kyot and Brul stepped back into the darkness of the woods and stripped from their clothes, shifting into their panther forms.  Gerarli gathered their pants into a bundle and tucked a cell phone into the center, securing the bundle with a leather belt handed to him by Faisal.  Kyot took the belted bundle in his mouth, and they raced off into the woods.

If the banished one was in the woods watching them, she must have nefarious purposes.  She was not to be trusted.  Clearly he should have put her down when she was sixteen instead of allowing her to live.  It was a mistake he would not make again.

Fifteen minutes later, Gerarli’s cell phone buzzed.  “We found a vehicle parked on the side of the road on the other side of the woods.  It reeks of the same heavy perfume she used to cover her scent.  Kyot broke into the car and found a receipt for a motel.”

“We’re on our way to your location.”  Gerarli snarled and ended the call.  Turning to his clan he said, “We must deal with the banished one.  We will wait for her in her room.”

* * * * *

Domino woke up to the rattle of the hotel room’s door handle.  He hadn’t planned to fall asleep, but too much junk food and a slightly boring movie had taken their toll.  Rolling out of bed, he strode to the door as the handle rattled again.  He paused, looking at the dead bolt and the secured chain.  His mom wouldn’t just try to come into the room; she would have done their special security knock to let him know that it was her.  They’d had the knock since he was old enough to stay home alone after school.

He heard voices as the door rattled again.  Several men and at least one woman.  He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the hairs on the back of his neck rose.  He lunged for his phone on the nightstand as something heavy hit the door and it splintered the frame, cracking against the wall with enough force to bury the handle in the wall.

Four males raced into the room and two of them hauled Dom up by his arms.  One of them, a tall male with salt-and-pepper hair and a goatee, glared at him.  He fisted Dom’s hair in his hand and leaned down, sniffing.

“Get away,” Dom shouted, trying to get free of the larger males’ grip.

The older male wrenched Dom’s head to the side, fisting his hair painfully hard.  “He belongs to the banished one.”

“Help!  Someone help!” Dom yelled, hoping that someone in another room would hear him.  A meaty hand slapped over his mouth and nose so he couldn’t breathe.  His lungs began to burn, and his body trembled as he fought to breathe but was unable to pull air into his lungs.  As his vision darkened and spots danced before his eyes, he heard the older male say, “Leave a note for the banished one.”

A female voice said, “She won’t come.  She’s always been stubborn.  Look at how she sinned!”

Dom struggled, worry for his mom overriding fear of his own death.

“She’ll come or he’ll suffer needlessly before he dies,” the older male said.

Dom fell away into nothing, his last thought of his mom and the knowledge that he was going to be the cause of her death.

* * * * *

Part of Rue wanted to leave, to run back to her car and leave Ashland far behind, but the rest of her rebelled at the thought and wouldn’t allow her to move even one iota away from the tempting brothers.  While she and James waited for John to return, James told her that they were mountain lions, part of a pride that lived in the big house.  The bonding ceremony was for John’s daughter, Jilly, who was mating to twin panthers.

“Wyked and Fate?” she asked.

“You know them?” James asked suspiciously.

She swallowed against the lump in her throat.  For the majority of her life, she had never trusted anyone with her secret.  She wanted to trust James and John, but she was scared.  It wasn’t just her life that was on the line; it was Dom’s, too.

“Please don’t ask me, James.”  Silently, she begged him not to push her.

He let out an exasperated growl.  “You can trust me, Rue.  I won’t tell whatever secret you’re harboring.”

She wanted to trust him.  She almost did.  But too many years worrying over her son’s safety kept her lips zipped.

James sighed after a few quiet minutes.

She glanced at her watch.  “It’s been fifteen minutes.”

“He’ll be back.”

As if on cue, she heard the sounds of someone coming toward them.  She wasn’t sure how she knew it was John, but she wasn’t worried.  Her cat purred in her mind, and she pushed the aching thoughts away.  She didn’t want to think about what it meant that she was already feeling connected to the two males whose faces she hadn’t even seen.  She and Dom were leaving for the freedom of Canada, and nothing was going to stop her from giving her son the best life she could.

John joined them.  She inhaled and the spicy, sultry scent of the two of them made her mouth water and her heart pound.

Mine
, her cat purred.

Forget it
.

She opened her mouth to tell them that she was leaving, when John said, “Sorry it took me longer than ten minutes.  One of the clans took off suddenly, and Dag was aggravated about it.”

Her breath froze in her chest.

“Which clan?” she asked, her voice cracking as fear wove icy fingers through her.

John said, “They’re from the south.  I think the leader’s name is Gerlin or something like that?  There are so many panthers here I can’t keep them straight.”

“Do you mean Gerarli?” 
Please say no,
she thought desperately.

“Yeah, I do.  Why?  Do you know him?”

The world dropped out from under her and her knees buckled.  Only their hands on her kept her from falling.  “They left?”

“Quite suddenly.  Are you all right, Rue?” John asked, pulling her against him.

She pushed away from them both and raced off toward her car, pulling her cell from her pocket and dialing Dom’s number.  It went straight to voicemail.  They were just behind her, because she felt them close as she ran as fast as she’d ever run in her life.  She ignored the scrape of branches against her body, moving swiftly through the woods.  Her beast howled in worry, but she tried to stay positive.  The clan hadn’t come for her in the woods; maybe they only guessed that she was there and decided to leave.

Her car came into view, parked at the side of the road near the edge of the woods.  As soon as she reached the car, she saw the shards of glass that littered the ground next to the passenger window that had been broken.  Stopping, she took a deep breath and scented Gerarli and her parents, too.

“Rue?” James asked.

She shook her head at them and opened the door.  A sob caught in her throat as she saw the hotel receipt that she had absently tucked into the visor, sitting on the passenger seat.  She tried Dom’s cell again, and it once more went to voicemail.

Dropping to her knees, ignoring the glass that cut through her pants and into her flesh, she let out a howling cry of grief.

Hands touched her and pulled her off her knees, and she found herself pressed between the two males who had followed her into the woods.  She cried harshly, sobbing against James’ chest as they held her.

“I have to get to my hotel.  I think my son is in danger.”

“We’ll take you,” James said.  At her direction, John fished the keys out from under the seat and gave them to James.  They pushed her gently into the passenger seat and shut the door, and James got behind the wheel as John climbed into the back seat.

James looked at the hotel receipt for the address and started the car, pulling out onto the road and speeding away.  She leaned heavily against the door, worry and fear over Dom’s situation taking away her ability to speak.  James was already speeding so she couldn’t ask him to drive any faster.  John was on his cell speaking quietly.

James reached over and squeezed her knee.  “What’s your son’s name?”

She swallowed hard and let out a shaky breath.  “Domino.”

“I have three kids in their twenties, Ethan, Eryx, and Alek.  John has a son named Henry, and he just turned sixteen earlier this month.”

She nodded, staring out the window.  She prayed that Dom was safe, that the clan hadn’t gotten to him before she could get there.  At the same time, she cursed her bad luck for getting distracted by James and John.  If she’d just left, she would have been back before she was discovered.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” she thought.

“What, sweetheart?” James asked.

She hadn’t realized she’d spoken the words out loud.  Shaking her head, she folded her arms and began to pray in earnest that Dom would be safe.

James pulled into the hotel parking lot, and she directed him toward the room that she had rented.  Dread filled her as she got out of the car and headed toward the open door.

“Hold on, Rue,” James said, stepping in front of her.

John slid against the wall of the hotel and peered around the corner into the room.  Then he disappeared inside.  For what seemed like an eternity, Rue stood with James while John checked out the room.

“It’s clear,” John called.

She and James walked into the room.  She rushed into the bathroom and saw that it was as empty as the main room.  The TV was still on, their belongings lay on the dresser, and Dom’s phone lay on the floor, broken.

“I smell that male and his clan, but I don’t smell blood,” John said.

A folded piece of paper sat on the pillow; the piece had been torn from the notepad on the nightstand.  Her hands trembled as she opened it and read, “Banished one, come to the field at dawn and surrender yourself.  If you involve human authorities, your son will die painfully.”

Too stunned to cry, she sank to her knees next to the bed and stared at the words on the page.  She didn’t protest when James took the paper from her hands and read it out loud.

“What do they mean by banished?”

She blinked slowly, her eyes losing focus, and then she looked up at them.  For the first time, she realized she could see them.  She’d been so intent on what might have happened to Dom that she hadn’t even really looked at them since her binoculars had found them at the ceremony.  Now, she could see how handsome they were.  They shared facial features, but James had dark hair and brown eyes and John had dark blond hair and blue eyes.

Shaking away her interest in them, she stood and sat down on the bed.

John sat down next to her and slipped his arm around her shoulders in a comforting hug.  “Rue, it’s obvious that you need help, and we’re not going to let you face this alone.”

She looked at John, with his blue eyes filled with worry, and James, with his chocolate brown eyes filled with concern.  “How did you find me in the woods?  I was hiding in the shadows, and I had covered my scent.”

“I felt like someone was watching me.  When the ceremony was over, John said he was feeling the same thing so we followed an…instinct, I guess you’d call it, from our cats that led us to you.  The artificial floral scent you used was part of what we were following, too.”

John tipped her face until she was looking at him.  “You’re our mate, Rue.  We followed you because you’re meant to be ours.  Whatever you’re facing, it’s our burden to share with you.  Let us help.”

Tears burned in her eyes.  “I wish you could, but I have to turn myself in.  I might be able to spare Dom a slow death, but I don’t think mine will be pretty.  I’m such a fool.  I’ve killed us both.”