Tempted by the Jaguar #3: Ramification (Riverford Shifters)

Author:Cristina Rayne [Rayne, Cristina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

***

“You look like you’re in pain,” Maxim commented the moment Hunter stepped into his office at the club.

Hunter’s scowl deepened. “Let’s just say that I would have been better off walking here.”

His friend’s nostrils flared as he neared. “I see what you mean. I’ll send a couple of my men to blast the inside of your truck with ozone. Until then, I’ll loan you one of mine.”

Hunter collapsed into a chair. “Thanks. I have a feeling I’ll be needed it a lot today.” He then fixed Maxim with a serious gaze. “Maxim, that wolf saw Ryder and Anna.”

Maxim had been leaning back in his chair in his usual casual sprawl, but at Hunter’s words, he sprang forward so quickly, a wild look in his eyes, that for a split-second he thought Maxim was about to lunge over the desk at him.

“When? Where?” his friend demanded. The desperately hopeful look in those pale blue eyes was heartbreaking.

“It’s not good. The lions have them, as we thought.”

Then slowly, excruciatingly, Hunter recounted everything Jack had told him. The more he talked, the more Maxim’s expression hardened until the tiger’s anger was all he could smell. He had been anxious to get rid of the smell of Kylie’s heat from his nose, but not like this. The sharp smell of Maxim’s anger was so strong, the look in his eyes so feral, that Hunter feared his friend was about to lose control of his tiger.

Then Maxim abruptly slammed both fists onto the top of his desk, making Hunter involuntarily hiss in reaction, and he realized just how much on edge he, himself, had become as he had talked.

“I’m going to shred every inch of flesh from those bastards’ bodies before ripping open their bellies with my fangs,” Maxim snarled, his voice so deep and full of rage that he sounded like a stranger.

In the twenty plus years he had known the tiger shifter before him, Hunter had never seen him even close to this pissed off.

“We will,” Hunter assured him just as fiercely. “Jack has promised the help of his clan, and I believe him.”

From the pinched expression on his face, Hunter could tell Maxim was putting tremendous effort into reigning in his fury. Maxim had always been the mellower of the two, which was saying a lot given Hunter’s general aloofness, and he was grateful for it. Now, more than ever, they would need his friend’s levelheadedness.

Maxim closed his eyes and drew in a final, calming breath before he said, “The wolf clans are the best allies one can have, so at least there is a sliver of good news in all that horror.”

“A few of my Elders will be meeting with the Parker Grove wolf clan Elders and Jack’s pack shortly. I wanted to stay for it, gather as much information before dropping such a huge bomb on you, but then Gaither brought up Kylie.”

Maxim nodded and sat back in his chair, though the rigidness in his body remained. “Given that you actually fought a shifted lion inside Riverford, I’m not surprised she was his main priority.

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