Redeeming Rue AP4 Read online

  “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.”

  Chapter 8

  James snarled angrily. “What do you mean? We’re not going to let you be killed, or your son. John and I are both cops. They can’t kill you. It’s against the law.”

  Rue pulled her chin free of John’s grasp and looked at James with a snort. “If they think for a moment that I’ve ratted them out to the police, they’ll take off faster than you can blink, and Dom will be tortured.”

  James looked at John, who in turn looked at him helplessly. James didn’t like feeling impotent.

  He asked John for his cell phone and John handed it over. Scrolling through the contact list, James found Dag and dialed the number. “Hi Dag, it’s James. Can you and Hanai meet us at the diner in town? Don’t tell the kids, please. We’ll be there in an hour.”

  “You’ll explain what’s going on?” Dag asked.

  “I promise.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  James handed the phone back to John and pulled Rue to her feet. He reached for the brunette wig she wore and she flinched, but then she seemed to resign herself to him taking it off. He tugged the wig off her head and was surprised to see that she had white hair. It was the purest white color he’d ever seen. Her hair was pinned, and as he began to pull out the bobby pins, John went over to the door and closed it. Someone had broken through the door. The deadbolt had been ripped away from the wall, and the security chain hung loosely against the door.

  Combing his fingers through her hair, he rubbed a silky lock between his forefinger and thumb and looked into her bright green eyes.

  “We need to know everything, Rue. We won’t let you go through this alone.”

  John joined them. Rue dropped onto one of the beds, and he and John sat on either side of her. She was quiet for a moment, and then she began to talk about her clan, led by Gerarli. She’d had a good life, until she shifted into an albino panther on her sixteenth birthday and had been attacked by her own family, chained up, branded, and banished.

  Her story tugged on his heartstrings. She’d survived nearly insurmountable odds. A teenager, all alone in the world, relying on a few kind strangers to help her along. She’d suffered because of her clan’s backward thinking. Her clan believed her mutation was because of a sin or evil she’d brought to them.

  “I was forbidden from returning to the clan or having cubs. They must have seen me and tracked down my car.” Her shoulders slumped in defeat.

  “I don’t get why you having white fur is such a big deal. There are anomalies in every shifter group. Heck even humans have unusual traits that pop up from time to time, odd eye and hair color, an extra toe. Nothing to kill someone over,” he said.

  “My clan is very traditional and resistant to change. In their minds, I’d done something that caused my shift to create white fur, and the fact my naturally dark hair turned white, too, was viewed as being derived from evil.”

  She was torn up emotionally and mentally, and right now she drooped from exhaustion. James stood and pulled her gently to him. Cupping her face, he studied her bright green eyes fringed with thick lashes. She had a straight nose and high cheekbones. The lips he had kissed repeatedly were lush and parted slightly as she stared at him.

  His thumb traced the lower swell of her bottom lip. “We’re not letting you go through this alone. We’ll figure it out.”

  She tried to shake her head, but he held it steady. “You could die.” She gripped his wrists.

  “No one is dying today or any other day.” John stood and placed his hands on her hips.

  “You don’t know me. You have a family. You can’t risk yourself for me. They could kill you if they believe you’re helping me.”

  James withheld the snort. Her clan might think they could go around killing people just because they happened to be different, but they had another thing coming. It was true Rue was a stranger to him and John, but he felt a soul-deep connection to her because they were mates. She was beautiful and she was theirs, and no one was going to take her from them, or take her son from her.

  “Go take a shower,” he ordered. She gaped at him in surprise, and even John looked at him as if he’d grown a second head. James chuckled and gave her a warm smile. “There’s no need to hide anymore, Rue. We know who and what you are, and honestly, my cat can’t stand the artificial scent. We have time before we need to head to the diner to meet Dag and Hanai.”

  “Okay.”

  She grabbed some clot
hing and a zippered bag from a suitcase on the dresser and walked into the bathroom. When they were alone, he looked at John.

  “This is all kinds of fucked up,” John said.

  “She has to be wrong. What kind of person would kill someone for having white fur or forbid her from having a kid?”

  “Panthers are different. Dag will help sort things out.”

  “What if he believes in the same stuff as her clan? They’re related.”

  “No way. He’s the kind of guy who would never hurt anyone in his family. Besides, you’re the one who called him to meet with us.”

  True.

  “It was a gut reaction.” And he did trust the male who had been spending a lot of time at the boarding house helping with the ceremony. The panthers were very protective of their own kind, but he knew they didn’t know Rue’s entire story. Things were rotten in her former clan. They wanted her and her son to die, but he wasn’t going to let her pay for whatever sins they believed she had committed with her blood.

  * * * * *

  Rue scrubbed at her skin with the bar of soap provided by the hotel and a scratchy washcloth. She washed her hair twice, using up the entire bottle of miniature shampoo. As she lathered her skin a second time, she pondered her future. The two males outside were talking about her. She could hear their low voices but didn’t know what they were saying. They were probably thinking like cops and planning to say she wouldn’t be going to her death if she met with her clan. She wanted to believe that, but she didn’t see a way out of her predicament. If she didn’t go to her clan, they would torture Dom, and she absolutely wouldn’t allow that.

  She felt like a failure. Since the moment she took a pregnancy test and discovered she was carrying a forbidden child, she had taken every precaution she could think of to keep them both safe. Staying to the north, never shifting outside, never sharing their secret. Her curiosity had gotten the better of her, and now they were as good as dead.