A Jaguar's Kiss

TWELVE

It was hard to take in. Hours later, as Natalie entered the huge, two-story indoor mall just outside the town’s limits, she felt as though she had been sucker punched with the information.

Saban had answered all her questions, he had even offered to take her to Sanctuary to allow her to discuss some of the more advanced effects of the mating heat. Nothing dangerous, he had assured her. There was nothing life threatening in being a mate. Why, hell no, just an advanced life span and only God knew what problems in the future. Not to mention mentally defective, in her opinion, Council scientists and soldiers drooling for a chance to slice into a body verified as a mate, Breed or human.

It amazed her at odd times, the destructiveness that men could force on each other. The horror and cruelties didn’t exist in the animal world. It was survival of the strongest there, and in some ways, that was how the Breeds saw living now. Survival of the fittest.

Did nature see it that way as well? Was that the reason for the mating heat? The reason for the advanced life span once mated? She knew that women, Breeds and those who were married or mated to feline Breeds, conceived quickly without the hormonal treatments Dr. Morrey had worked up. But after the first conception, it then became much harder to conceive. And Saban had told her that the Wolf Breeds had had an even harder time of it until only recently, when their doctors had detected additional hormones, so far unknown, within one of their mates.

The whole mating process was confusing as hell, but according to Saban, the one constant in it all was the emotion the mates shared. So far, in over eleven years since the announcement of their existence, a mating had always resulted in love. And the look he had given her as he related that information had been filled with heat, emotion, and the unvoiced question she wasn’t ready to answer yet.

Yes, she loved him, and knowing it terrified the hell out of her.

As they neared Sally J’s, Natalie checked the watch on her wrist surreptitiously and glanced around at the crowds mingling from store to store. She had ten minutes to meet Mike on the other side of the store.

The restrooms were on the other side, with two entrances and exits into them. She was hoping she could enter from one side and move quickly to the exit on the other side, beside the doors that led to the outdoor parking.

Five minutes. That was all she was giving Mike, and she intended to do that talking. Enough was enough. They were divorced, they had divorced for a reason, and she wasn’t going to turn the new life she wanted for herself into an international incident. Which was what it would become if he became the first recorded non-Breed to die from jealous rage.

She trusted Saban, she did, with her own life. But Mike’s, she wasn’t so certain of.

“I’m going to the ladies’ room.” She paused by the entrance. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

She had to force herself to tamp down nervousness, to hold back fear, which she was terrified was damned near impossible. But after one narrow-eyed look, Saban nodded slowly before leaning against the wall with all the resigned patience of any put-upon male.

She almost smiled.

Moving into the ladies’ room, she picked up her steps, walked quickly past the stalls, then out of the exit on the opposite side of the curved room. It was only a few steps to the outdoor exit through two sets of double doors and onto the sidewalk that surrounded the mall.

Mike was waiting for her directly across the small road, arms crossed over his chest, his expression causing her chest to clench with a spurt of familiar panic. He was angry. Mike wasn’t always rational when he was angry. He didn’t care if he caused a public spectacle of himself or her, and he rarely listened to reason. She almost turned and walked back into the mall.

Instead, she glanced at her watch then back at Mike, a silent declaration that she wasn’t walking over there. At least this close to the doors, there was a handy escape route if one of those Council soldiers was lurking around the mall.

She looked around just to be certain and saw no one suspicious. The parking lot was busy, the traffic fairly thick.

She watched Mike curse before he moved across the street, his shoulders thrown back, his expression pugnacious.

“We couldn’t do this in the shade?” He sneered. “You always have to be difficult, don’t you, Natalie? Big-time Breed teacher has to call all the shots.”

“I can go back inside, and we can forget this,” she retorted. “Saban’s waiting just inside the doors, Mike. Make this fast.”

“I want you to come home. Dammit, you have no business here. You’re my wife.”

A sharp, amazed laugh left her throat. “Drop it, Mike. We both know this has nothing to do with you wanting me back and everything with losing control of me. I’m not your wife. I’ll never be your wife again, and if you don’t get that through your thick skull, then you’re going to end up dead.”

“Siccing that rabid animal of yours on me, Nat?” Disgust filled his voice. “How can you let that thing touch you?”

Natalie wanted to roll her eyes but knew it would only make this little fight run longer.

“Mike, I agreed to meet you so you’ll see this isn’t happening with me.” She tried to keep her tone soft, gentle. Sometimes it worked. “Our marriage was over the first year; I just didn’t want to admit it. Now, let it go, and go back to Tennessee. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

His lips flattened, his face flushing with anger.

“Don’t you see what those Breeds have done to you, Natalie?” He pushed his fingers through his hair as fury flashed in his eyes. “They’ve done something to you. They drugged you.” He reached for her, his teeth clenching violently as she jumped back. “Look at you, you can’t even stand to be touched by anyone but that bastard fucking you.”

“Stop this, Mike. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and it’s not a discussion we’re going to have. You need to leave. I didn’t want you before I came here, and I don’t want you now.”

His nostrils flared, a telling sign. Only at his most furious had Natalie ever seen that. Those were the times he had wrapped his hand around her neck and pounded the wall beside her head. When he had smashed furniture and spent hours accusing her of screwing every man they both knew.

“You’re my wife.” He advanced a step, and in his eyes Natalie saw something she had never seen before. A fury so violent she knew Mike would never keep his control.

Had he truly been working his way up to this over the years? How had she not seen it, not suspected that he would retaliate like this the moment he knew he was no longer a part of her life? Forget the divorce, the bimbo; he had still controlled her. She hadn’t dated, she hadn’t sought out friends, because she knew Mike, and she knew he wouldn’t have tolerated it.

And she hadn’t even suspected she knew until now.

She stepped back warily toward the doors now, wishing she hadn’t slipped away from Saban, that she had just fought it out with him, made him at least let her try. She would have been safe. Or safely in her bed screaming in pleasure as Saban argued his side. Either one would have been preferable to this.

“They drugged you, Natalie. The doctors that talked to me after you left told me all about it. This drug their bodies make. It makes you addicted, dependent.”

Oh God. Oh God. She looked around frantically, knowing what was going on, certain Mike had set her up.

She turned to push through the entrance doors into the mall, to run, to escape back to Saban.

“You fucking bitch, you’re not running back to him.”

Natalie almost screamed as his hand locked over her upper arm, pulling her back as she scrambled to grab the handle to the door, to get away from him.

The pain, though not as severe at first, became mind-numbing as he dragged her back. She felt his arm lock around her waist, his chest against her back as she clawed at his flesh, guttural whimpers leaving her lips as she tried to scream for Saban.

She heard screams, but they couldn’t be her own. A haze of pain covered her eyes, filled her brain, and with it came terror.

Mike was cursing, raging. She could hear tires squealing and she knew, oh God, she knew he was taking her away. Taking her away from Saban and the dreams she hadn’t known she had.

“You bastard!” Fury, rich with terror and mixed with adrenaline, spiked through her mind.

Her hands curled back, her nails clawing back at Mike’s face as she tried to tangle her feet with his legs, throwing him off balance.

They hit the street as horns blared and a siren began to scream through the air. As she rolled to her stomach, she felt hands grab her ankles, pulling at them, trying to drag her back as she kicked, screaming, trying to roll, fighting for release.

There were too many voices. Too many hands touching her, and a second later she froze in a terror so thick, so horrible it nearly stopped her heart.

A feline roar of rage split through the chaos of sound as she heard the rapid, staccato bursts of stunners and bullets ripping around her.

One last kick, and she was free of the manacles at her feet. Crawling to her knees, she lifted her head, fighting to see. There were people everywhere. Black uniforms surrounded her. Someone was screaming from behind the barrier of enforcers, and she swore it sounded like Mike’s screams.

“Saban! Oh God, Saban!”

“Stay the hell where you are!” The growling roar from her right had her twisting, searching for him, her mind still dazed, the pain of Mike’s touch still ripping through her senses.

But he was there. Through the blur of tears and pain, she saw him, then she felt him, one arm curling around her and pulling her into the mall as the gunfire behind them suddenly ceased.

His eyes were blazing into hers, filled with rage, his expression twisted with it. “If you wanted him that fucking bad, I would have readily released you,” he snarled. “Now keep your goddamned ass here, and I’ll see if I can save the son of a bitch for you.” He turned around, stood aside for the two female Breed Enforcers who crowded into the small area. “Watch her and keep her here if it means shackling her to the fucking door.”

Shock froze her, parted her lips on a cry, and left her staring at his retreating back as he left her sitting there between the street entrance and the mall entrance.

She curled her arms around her waist, and as she fought the pain and the need for his touch, she laid her head against her knees and let the tears fall.

She knew what she had done. Without meaning to, certainly without desiring to, she had betrayed her mate.