Jennifer Ashley - Tiger Magic

Carly screamed. She ripped off the mask and tried to scramble from the stretcher. The EMT, a strong Hispanic man with muscles almost as big as a Shifter’s, pushed her back down. “No, you stay here. ”

“Did they get out?” Carly yelled. “Did they get out?”

“I don’t know. We’ll find out, okay?”

Carly clutched the padded sides of the stretcher, staring at the building until her eyes ached. Ellison and Spike were on the ground, human now, leading Cherie and the cubs to the parking lot. Other Shifters had arrived, Liam and Dylan, Sean and Ronan. Ronan ran for Cherie, now a human girl again, and caught her in his arms. He led her away, snatching the blanket a fireman brought them and wrapping it around her.

Cubs: one, two, three, four, five, and Cherie. Six. The rest must be inside with Tiger.

Carly scrambled off the stretcher again, holding the mask to her face. She could barely see through smoke and tears, or through the crowd of people and emergency vehicles. All she could make out was that the small community center was now a flaming wreck, collapsing on itself, with Tiger and the cubs inside.

Shouting sounded at the front of the building. The rest of the med team started that way, running, running.

Smoke billowed from the front door, and people scattered. Through the opening, parting the smoke and haloed by flame, ran Tiger. His fur was blackened, body moving fast, children clinging to his back.

He stopped as the medics ran forward, Tiger dropping flat on his belly so the kids—three of them—could drop from his back. The medics swept them up, and Liam and Dylan surrounded the kids and EMTs.

Only three cubs.

Carly threw down the oxygen mask and darted away from the EMT, running, stumbling, toward the entrance and Tiger.

Tiger was already climbing to his feet as she sprinted forward. “Olaf!” she yelled. “Where’s Olaf?”

She had to stop as coughing wracked her, more gook in her lungs coming out. Ronan released Cherie and pushed her at Sean.

Tiger had turned for the building even before Carly had shouted about Olaf. Another explosion lit up the world, the community center now nothing but flames surrounding a shell.

Tiger ran right into it.

Carly collapsed, sitting down hard on the ground. Tiger’s body was outlined in flame for a brief instant, then he was gone.

There was no longer any up or down, backward or forward. There was only flame, and the melting floor searing Tiger’s feet, his fur burning. Trying to see was useless, so Tiger closed his eyes.

Numbers whirled across the insides of his eyelids—coordinates, angles, distances. Every piece of data about the building as it had stood condensed itself into formula, and danced before him.

Tiger had known exactly when Olaf had fallen, but Tiger hadn’t been able to stop his forward momentum to snatch him up. The other cubs had been falling too, sliding, coughing. Tiger had put on a burst of speed to take them to safety.

The new explosion complicated things, but Tiger moved unerringly through the flames, eyes closed, stopping at the small limp body of the polar bear cub. He reached down and gently picked up Olaf by the scruff of his neck.

Then Tiger turned and ran. Fire tried to stop him. It burned him, his fur singeing with an acrid stench, his sinews melting. But Tiger kept going.

The door wasn’t where he’d left it. Tiger closed his eyes again, relaxing his mind, letting the numbers come. Why they were there, and how Tiger understood them, he didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. With the strings of numbers to guide him, Tiger ran directly to the last door in the building that existed and out into daylight.

A giant Kodiak bear caught Olaf as he fell from Tiger’s numb grip. The Kodiak turned into Ronan, who lifted the unconscious Olaf into his arms and ran with him toward a medical team.

Tiger collapsed. His lungs were liquid, his coat gone, fire dissolving his skin. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t make a sound.

He heard Carly’s voice— my mate —and dragged open his eyes. He saw Carly, her hair scraggly and singed, her clothes burned, blood on her arms and legs. But she was safe.

Tiger let out a sigh. Carly was too far away from him, but she was safe.

Tiger focused then on his immediate surroundings, and found the barrels of a dozen automatic weapons pointed at his head.

Tiger groaned. He couldn’t move. He lay supine in his human form, chained down, too exhausted to shift to the tiger.

They’d chained him like this in the hospital, and before that, in the research facility where he’d been made. Only this time, there was no leaping up in rage, no breaking the chains. Tiger was weak, and he was dying. But then, he’d been burned to death today.

Was it still today? Or had days and nights passed? Tiger had no idea.

The cubs were safe. Carly was safe. Nothing else mattered.

At one point, men in white masks came and drew blood out of Tiger’s arm, and scraped skin cells from his armpit, the only place he hadn’t burned.

Most of his skin was gone. Tiger was surprised he could see or hear, but those senses seemed to function, though his left eye, when he pried it open, showed him nothing but a milk-white fog.

He had his sense of smell too, because he could smell himself, and it wasn’t good. Taste, he wasn’t certain, except for the dry sourness in his mouth. They gave him no water but pumped fluids into his veins through an IV.

Tiger definitely had his sense of feeling. He was in excruciating pain.

He wasn’t sure who was keeping him prisoner this time, but it must be Shifter Bureau. The men who’d come for him had looked like they were from Walker’s unit.

But it no longer mattered. Carly was safe. His cub was safe. Tiger had seen the magical threads of the mate bond shimmering between them—intact and still strong.

More time passed. More blood, more skin cells taken, a change of the IV drip bag. Tiger couldn’t make his mouth work to ask what the white-coated medics were doing to him or why.

He drifted to troubled sleep. The next time he opened his eyes, two researchers were standing over him. Past and present melded, and Tiger started to think he’d dreamed being released from the research lab, and everything that had happened since.

“A couple more samples,” one said. “Then he’s done.”

“Done?”

“Terminated. He’s beyond saving.”

“Shame,” the other man said. “Would have been interesting to study him.”

“Orders are orders,” the first man said. “But we can dissect him. See what’s inside.”

“That’ll work.”

Tiger wanted to leap up and onto them, to tear them down. But he lay inert, his body refusing to obey.

He needed Carly. Wanted her so much. She hadn’t been a dream. Carly was very real.

Tiger fought to rise, to get out of this place before they killed him, to get to Carly, but he managed only to fall asleep again.

He saw Carly, her red lips and wide smile, her sexy legs, the way she closed her beautiful eyes when she leaned in to kiss him. The position let Tiger see her soft breasts behind the neckline of whatever dress she wore that day, made him want to cup her in his hands, lick her, close his mouth over her breast. She made such pretty noises when he did that.

Carly, he tried to say. A faint croak issued from his throat.

Tiger forced the name out. “Carly.”

“Sorry, my friend.” He thought Walker leaned over him. “I’m not as pretty. But now I know what you are.” The man wore a look of triumph. “Or at least, what you’re for.”

Oh goody, Tiger wanted to say in Connor’s most withering tones. I’d been so worried about that.