Night of the Tiger Read online

  Night of the Tiger

  Doranna Durgin

  From the moment she sees tiger shifter Scott O’Brien, Marlee Cerrosa can sense his aura of power, his alluring strength, and the gleam of something wild in his eyes. She also feels his returned interest in her—until he learns she’s a prisoner of the Sentinels and an accused traitor.

  Marlee expects him to reject her, but instead he asks for her assistance in tracking down a mole in their base. If Marlee can help him, Scott can offer her redemption—and perhaps even a future together….

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter One

  Coyote!

  Marlee knew it the moment she saw him, human form or not. The man coming down the Sentinel headquarters hallway was a full-blooded shape-shifter—his eyes sharp, his presence full of strength and purpose and charismatic intensity. He stalked directly toward her, clearly on his way from the tactical dispensary, a heavy gear bag over his shoulder and a frown forming at the sight of her.

  Marlee ducked hastily into the employee gym—the room where she’d been headed in the first place, here in the sleek, clandestine subfloor levels of Sentinel Brevis Southwest, regional operations for the desert climes. She didn’t want to deal with the coyote’s sharp gaze, his questing nature—the sudden bloom of awareness as he realized who she was.

  And he would, because of what he was. What they all were, the full-bloods. Not that it ever showed on the outside, but Marlee Abril Cerrosa knew it in her heart: this man was coyote.

  The gym door closed gently behind her, enclosing her in that familiar cool space—weight machines lining the wall, free weights in an extruded corner nook, and a row of cardio options. Brevis took the fitness of its field and support agents seriously.

  Of course, Marlee was neither. Not any longer.

  Metal crashed from the free-weight nook; a muttered curse followed.

  Marlee found him in an instant, sitting on a weight bench in cutoff sweats and no shirt, the smattering of hair on his chest a dark rusty blond to match unruly hair above. Tiger. Bengal tiger.

  Irritation tightened her mouth. She’d come here in midmorning because so few others ever worked out at this time; she could count on a solitude free of knowing looks and silent accusations.

  And then he stretched, his private disgruntlement turning to a wince as he worked his arm and shoulder, twisting his torso…revealing a splash of scarring.

  Marlee’s irritation gave way to guilt. She’d learned to judge the age of such things—to recognize those injuries from the Core D’oìche attack.

  The injuries she’d caused.

  Arrogance. As if she had such power. As if she’d done more than feed minor pieces of information to the former Atrum Core Prince, Fabron Gausto, or plant a computer virus or two, thinking them to be insignificant and low-level tinkerings.

  No, she hadn’t even known. She’d been taken in by the Atrum Core; she’d been used.

  Sometimes Marlee thought her ignorance made it even worse.

  Oh, hell—the Sentinel had seen her. He didn’t quite release the stretch as he gave her a distracted nod—and then he looked again, sat up a little straighter, seemed a little larger.

  And there it was. That which had always terrified her: the tiger, looking back at her.

  How the field Sentinels ever blended into outside society at all, she didn’t know. How this man could even try amazed her. The gleam of wild in pale hazel eyes, the subdued brown streaks in rusty blond hair tapered short at his nape to obscure them, the barely quiescent aura of power—it all shouted of his otherness. It was an alluring strength, a charismatic strength…but never a comfortable strength. Not for a moment.

  Especially not with his obvious flare of interest.

  Heat prickled on Marlee’s cheeks and neck, tingling down her spine; she had a sudden, uncomfortable awareness of every sensitive spot on her body.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally managed to say. And then, before he could ask why—before he could figure out why—she gave him a reason…if not the true reason. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

  “It’s a big room,” he said, and he was still eyeing her. “Until now, not one of my favorite rooms.”

  Hell, he was interested.

  And Marlee’s body was as treacherous as the rest of her—shifting uncomfortably, so aware of her isolation and her loneliness. Aching to leave before he understood who she was, aching to stay just a moment longer…

  “You must be staff?” he said, finally releasing his stretch—only to reveal another slashing scar across one broad pectoral.

  “Between assignments,” she managed to respond, understanding now why he was here, and how that was her fault, too. She’d seen it before—that first wave of healing field agents sent out too soon after Core D’oìche—so desperate was the situation here at Southwest Brevis, so thin were their agents on the ground. And so great was the need in the field, where the Atrum Core had wasted no time taking advantage, wreaking subtle chaos in their centuries-long quest for power and pushing all the ancient boundaries of their ageless cold-war battlefield with brevis regions around the world. Core D’oìche had merely been another of that power-hungry faction’s strikes against the shape-shifting Sentinels and their mandate to protect the earth and its people.

  And, not ready, the Sentinel field agents had been vulnerable, and so many of them had simply come right back again, newly hurt.

  “Hey,” he said, tipping his head just a little, “don’t worry about it. We’ll come back from this—and we’ll beat the bastards while we’re at it. We always have.”

  Not always. Marlee panicked then, understanding that he’d misread her—he’d thought that she, too, had somehow been displaced by Core D’oìche. He didn’t realize she had instead been one of the bastards.

  But she managed to say, “I’m counting on it,” and didn’t have to fake that truth. It was her only possible redemption, whatever became of her life here. She faced years more of haunting these hallways—simply because she wasn’t someone they would ever dispose of, and she wasn’t someone they trusted to go free.

  She could blame her sudden chill on that thought, or she could blame it on this man’s unwavering attention. Either way, she didn’t think when she crossed her arms beneath her breasts, warming herself.

  The bracelet slipped along her wrist—the fine metal bracelet that might have been unimaginative jewelry…or might have been just what it was: a monitor. It kept her out of certain areas; it recorded her entry into other areas. It keyed to an alarm that would sound if she put so much as a foot out of this building to breath fresh air. Real air.

  His gaze flickered to the bracelet. She knew the exact moment he realized who she was.

  Marlee Cerrosa, the traitor. The lightly blooded Sentinel working Southwest Brevis IT support, who had nearly gotten their consul killed, who had helped the hostile Atrum Core prepare for the recent and devastating attack during the night of Core D’oìche.

  Marlee Cerrosa, permanent prisoner—no escaping brevis and no escaping herself. No matter that she’d cut her dark hair boy-short to match features gone delicate with strain, or that she’d spent endless hours in the gym, watching her olive complexion turn pale with the lack of sunlight and trying to feel strong and safe amidst a people whose unrelentingly untamed nature turned their lives into secrets.

  The Sentinel came to his feet in a surge of energy, hands fisted at his sides, his intensity all turned to anger. Startled, Marlee took a step b
ackward; her heel stubbed over a the leg of a weight machine. She caught the metal frame, steadying herself—lifting her chin as if she could convince either of them that she wasn’t frightened.

  It didn’t stop him from coming closer, three long strides that proved there wasn’t a thing wrong with those long legs. “You should be afraid,” he said. “What the hell are you even doing here?”

  “Living,” she snapped. “As best I can. Until I can prove myself again.”

  He didn’t back down for a moment, standing right there within reach, the recent scars livid and the Core D’oìche scars only minimally less so, these several months later. “What makes you think you can ever do that? After the price we’ve all paid because of you?”

  She knew her chin trembled; she hated it. “It wasn’t just me,” she whispered. She wanted to say I never understood. They used me, they made me, they broke me. “I did what I could to fix it.”

  “Too late,” he told her, inexorable, and never mind that she’d ultimately saved the life of their consul. “Too damned late.”

  Her fingers tightened around the steel frame, but she didn’t take another step back. Wouldn’t. Her newly honed muscles gave way to watery knees—at his nearness, at his presence. The scent of him surrounded her, a combination of sweat and the faintest hint of something woodsy she couldn’t swear wasn’t simply part of the tiger. She made her voice come out, no matter that it lacked strength. “What do you want from me?”

  That stopped him—if not in the way she expected. He didn’t step back—not physically, not emotionally. But he took a breath, narrowing his eyes. “You want redemption?” he said, his voice hard with scorn. “Then prove it. Put yourself on the line for it. Earn it.” And then he smiled, ever so slightly, nothing of humor in it at all. “Help me find the mole who’s still setting us up.”

  Chapter Two

  This is a mistake.

  Scott should have known better than to relax, to let himself feel…to respond to the woman now beside him when he’d first spotted her in the gym.

  Because nothing was normal these days, and nothing was right. Not with brevis—infiltrated by moles and traitors—and not with Scott O’Brien himself.

  It certainly wasn’t right to discover this woman had been the cause of all the things wrong with him now. The badly healing muscle of his shoulder, the freshly scored muscle of his chest…

  The way he’d lost his tiger.

  Marlee Abril Cerrosa. He’d heard of her, the mixed-blood tech who’d betrayed them all; he’d known she was here, under house arrest within brevis HQ. He hadn’t expected her to be small, or wickedly fit beneath those Latina curves, or delicate of feature beneath that dramatically short hair.

  He hadn’t expected her to be vulnerable.

  He sure as hell hadn’t expected to feel like an ass for bringing her down here to brevis medical—mostly as an excuse to get her down onto this floor, but, yeah…to face what she’d done, too.

  Her toasty complexion had gone pale; her face strained. Her chin trembled now and then, as if she barely managed her game face at all.

  Here, where so many of the victims of Core D’oìche lingered.

  They didn’t know who she was. They thought she was Abril—they thought she’d come down from tech support to dispense a fresh batch of games, DVDs and e-reading devices loaded with books. And still, after she waved an ostensibly cheerful goodbye to those scarred and haunted Sentinels, she came out of the lounge to close her eyes and lean flat against the hallway wall, as if it might even hold her up.

  Scott did that instead, closing a hand around her arm; he regretted it when she flinched—and then felt a swell of anger, hard and pounding in his chest. “You needed to see that.”

  She made a visible effort to relax in his grip—to not care about his proximity—and probably didn’t know that the flutter of the pulse in her throat gave her completely away.

  A tiger noticed such things. Along with her scent, and the small details of her posture. This one wants to run.

  But he was surprised when she said, “I probably did need to see it.” She took a deep breath. “Until now, I’ve only seen pictures. Or…like you. In the gym.” She opened her eyes—a rich shade of brown, sad and worried. “I’ve never understood…the injuries…”

  He knew that one without thinking. “Core workings, released through amulets. Energy with claws.” And he understood the faint puzzlement on her expression, too, because Core amulets and Core workings emitted an ugly taste of corrupted energy readily discernible to most Sentinels. It shouldn’t have been possible to take them by surprise at all. “Half of them were those new silent amulets, but either way…full-bloods aren’t clones. Not all of us can track amulets. So we never saw it coming.” The anger beat at him from inside. “Tell me you know at least that much about the agents you were working against.”

  Her quick resentment surprised him—the way her mouth firmed as she seemed to grow just a little taller. She shook off his arm. “Maybe you don’t know as much as you think you know. Maybe the way you are right now is one of the reasons the Core was able to work me.”

  “What the—” Scott stopped, waiting for the physician and healer team to pass by and garnering only scant glances; he knew from the tone of the conversation that they were at odds over someone’s treatment—and he knew from experience that such arguments happened all too often in the aftermath of Core D’oìche. He moved closer to Marlee, one arm thrust against the wall. The bad arm, and it let him know it; he pushed back at it—felt what was left of the tiger snarl at it. But when he spoke again, he kept his voice low—remembering that they were in public, here on the medical floor. “What the hell,” he said, “are you talking about?”

  “That,” she said, scorn lacing her voice. “You and your tiger—and the wolf and the bobcat and the jackal we just left. Instead of taking responsibility for your strength, you use it to get what you want—you don’t even know it. The rest of us are just here to disregard, or to bully if we get in your way—or even sometimes when we don’t. The Core is treacherous, but they aren’t wrong—if you didn’t have someone looking over your shoulder, who knows what you’d have done with the rest of us by now.”

  Scott glowered at her, not even hearing the words at first—knowing only that this woman who had done so much harm thought she could justify herself. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t I?” she snapped, bitterness lacing those words. “What happened to me when I was young and bullied? Months in a cast, that’s what. Months of rehab. What happened to the young full-blood who tried his claws out on me? A slap on the paw, that’s what. A few days of restrictions and a few visits to a counselor. His life went on…mine didn’t. Not for a long time. And by then, the Core had found me, and started whispering in my ear.”

  Disbelief joined with anger. “An accident?” he said, and he didn’t back off one bit—because if he did, he would be acceding her point. The one about how he was using his very presence to ram home his anger. “You did all this because of some childhood accident?”

  But Marlee Abril Cerrosa had apparently had enough of full-bloods, regardless of their strength. She stiff-armed him in the chest with enough force to gain herself some space, following it up with another shove as she stepped away from the wall. “You jerk,” she said. “Looming over me like that, and then dismissing the moment that changed my life just like that. Well, you know what? You asked for answers. It wasn’t an accident. And it wasn’t right that it was treated like one. That has to be part of the deal, if you don’t want the rest of us to look for ways to feel safe. You have to be more careful, you have to be more thoughtful, and you damned well have to keep your hands to yourself!”

  He hadn’t touched her. He hadn’t come close. But he felt the first stirrings of guilt.

  No, not just guilt. Admiration. She was terrified—of that he had no doubt. And her words stung. “We put ourselves on the line,” he said, his voice low and ragged
. “Every day, we’re out in that field, taking the hits—from the Core, and from the rest of the world. Sentinels. We protect this earth, and we protect the rest of you along the way.”

  She produced the world’s smallest violin with her thumb and forefinger. “Hooray for you,” she said. “Do you think we’d need it, if the Core hadn’t once been so alarmed by the very nature of what you are?”

  “And you,” he shot back at her. “You’re one of us, whether you like it or not. But you still could have opted out—lived outside brevis activity altogether. Light-bloods have that choice. The rest of us don’t.” The rest of them were, by default, regional field agents in the age-old conflict with the Atrum Core.

  “I told you,” she said, her voice brittle and tight. “The Core got hold of me early. Between your kind and their kind, I wasn’t left with any choices at all.”

  He snorted. “You had your choices. You’re a grown woman.”

  “I was a child,” she said, and now she stalked him, stepping forward so he had to move back. “I was a little girl, and the Core filled my head with fear and whispers. Where was brevis then, tiger? Who protected me from the bully, and who protected me from the Core? Don’t you talk to me about choices. I’m doing the best I can.”

  He found himself without a response. He found her words landing hard…and sticking. She had been a little girl….

  And she had been unprotected.

  And that wasn’t right.

  Not that she was done. “I’m not one of them,” she said. “I never meant to do anything but balance the scales. I never knew anything about Core D’oìche and I never knew about the silent amulets. I’m just a damned good systems tech who probably won’t ever have a normal life. But at least I take responsibility for my screwup. I deserve to be here, no matter how little choice I had along the way.”

  “You—” he said, and then stopped, facing too many choices—and too many questions. And then her words finally hit him—the significance of what she’d said earlier. His anger gave way to a keen curiosity. “How did you know?”