Loving the Tiger

  Loving the Tiger

  By E A Price

  Copyright ©2016 by Elizabeth Ann Price

  All rights reserved. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

  Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  It cannot be stressed enough that no tiger shifters were hurt in the making of this story.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  One

  The roar of the crowd buzzed in his ear. Once upon a time the shouting, screaming and braying for blood bothered him, but not anymore. Now it was little more than an annoyance, little more than the hum of a fly.

  Dried sweat and the blood of his last opponent seared his skin. The rhino had been tough. He looked down at the wash of red over his body. Not tough enough his beast thought with grim satisfaction.

  Vaguely, he recalled there was a time when he feared what was about to happen. A time when he was weak and pathetic, but that didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered were the fights, the blood, the rush from taking his opponent down. Showing his opponent, showing them all he was dominant - that was all he cared about. His tiger snarled, eager for the start.

  Was there anything before now? Before the anger and need to cause pain was everything to him? He could only remember the fights – the need to fight, to draw blood. To kill.

  His tiger prowled, wanting to get out, wanting to be free. He banged his fists against the bars. He would start the fight in his human form, and end it as his tiger. Neither of them would be denied.

  The guards, his keepers, jeered at him, poking him, prodding him with stun guns – trying to rile him up. They needn’t bother.

  “Make me proud, boy,” sneered the fat man. The one in charge, the one he hated more than anything.

  The tiger roared, and the fat man hooted with laughter as he waddled away. One day, he promised himself. His clawed fingers curled into fists. One day.

  The cage opened, and he hauled himself through it, hurling himself at the lion shifter already stalking the ring. The crowd exploded into enthusiastic cheers of joy.

  He howled and snarled as he wrestled and batted at the lion. His opponent was good – big and strong, a good match for him, but he would not win. None of them could win against him. None of them wanted the kill as much as he did.

  He allowed the lion to swipe at him before he burst out of his skin, a shock of burnt orange and black stripes exploding into life, and the lion knew he would not win.

  Anger coursed through him. Anger at what, he didn’t know. Anger at everything, at everyone – the lion, the ones who kept him in the cage. He’d just always been angry.

  With just a few gouges, the other male fell. The crowd screamed at him to end it, and he would, but not because they wanted it.

  The tiger flexed his massive jaws, barely noticing as the crowd erupted in surprise as people started yelling, “SEA, nobody move!”

  Darts pricked his skin and darkness engulfed him.

  *

  “Can you tell me your name?”

  He snarled in his throat, pulling at the chains. Silver – just like in his old cage. They said they were saving him, funny how he seemed to be in more chains, restrained with even more efficiency than his old captors ever managed.

  “Where are you from?”

  He strained against the silver, preventing his shift, trying to break through it. His tiger yowled in frustration.

  Judging by the lack of worry on the face of the lion shifter who sat across from him, he wasn’t likely to make it. Fucking lions. For some reason, he hated lions. He’d fought enough in the ring. Maybe that was it. They liked pitting him against lions; they liked to see two cats fighting.

  “What can you tell me about the people who captured you?”

  He snarled, and the lion sighed.

  “Do you know how long you were there?”

  His eyes flickered to the yellow of his beast. He didn’t like their questions, didn’t like them testing him, taking his blood. Didn’t like the whispered words he heard behind his back.

  Fuck, he almost preferred the old cage. Life there was easy. Feeding and fighting. And now and again they even allowed him time with one of the female fighters – shifters half as crazy and horny as him. He didn’t have to deal with these questions to which he had no answers.

  The male tried a few more questions while he roared and snarled before finally giving up and leaving.

  Good fucking riddance.

  Alone in the sterile room, he calmed and considered the questions. What was his name? The tiger. That’s what they always called him. And worse when they taunted him, hurt him. Cut him if he refused to fight. Refused to feed him if he made the fights too quick, too merciful. He didn’t do that too many times.

  He’d learned to survive by fighting, and the darkest part of him enjoyed it. But what would he do now if there were no more fights? Everything that happened before the cage was a blank, a black hole of nothing, but how could he learn how to live again?

  Who was he?

  *

  Two weeks later

  Juliet twisted in her seat, ignoring the interested leer of the lion shifter agent. Male shifters were either disgusted or turned on by vampires. Some disliked the thought of dead creatures; others were intrigued by the idea of a female who could beat them to a pulp. She wasn’t interested in either perspective, only in bringing down the head of the shifter fighting ring.

  They’d only been made aware of the operation a year ago when a gazelle shifter tried to provide them with any evidence he could give to mitigate the fact that he killed his wife. Thankfully he spilled the beans before they promised him anything or he realized that there really were no mitigating circumstances for killing your wife for the insurance money.

  He told them of an underground fight club where shifters fought to the death.

  It was true. Shifters were being abducted, but not so many that it appeared unusual. Plus, given the animal natures of shifters, it wasn’t so unusual for them to disappear. Everyone just assumed they went feral and ran off. They were tortured and forced to fight, to kill each other.

  Juliet’s team shut down one fight club, but it was just one of many, and no one they questioned seemed to know the full extent. Whoever was running the show seemed to compartmentalize the whole thing. They needed to head of the snake if they were going to get rid of this for good.

  Juliet had just moved to Los Lobos from Serp
ens City, leaving behind a boss who thought vampires were the absolute scum of the earth and a hopeless undead ex-boyfriend who seemed to model himself from the lead in Dracula Dead and Loving It. She was determined to prove her worth, and bringing down this fighting ring would do it.

  Some people thought vampires were cold and unfeeling – and yes sometimes she could be. In spite of the woman’s cries that she had five children to feed, Juliet mercilessly fired her cleaner after she found out the woman was systematically stealing her dinner service. Seriously, the woman was taking it a plate at a time. Only came to light when Juliet attempted to throw a dinner party and they had to eat out of breakfast bowls.

  But Juliet had compassion for any creature ripped away from their life and forced to serve another. It hit very close to home and what happened to her several centuries ago.

  “What about the people who were there that night betting on those poor creatures to rip each other apart? Surely they can tell us something – at least tell us how they heard about the fight club,” she asked Director Lobell. The head of the Los Lobos SEA was an aging caracal shifter. He didn’t seem quite as outraged by the situation as Juliet, and the supercilious lion agent assigned to the case was no help.

  “Agent Leo” – the lion, hah! – “has tried to speak to all of them. They all lawyered up and put out a statement that they had no idea it was illegal, they thought it was all above board.”

  “Pfft,” Juliet huffed. “How can they possibly think jabbing shifters with cattle prods and having them kill each other is legal?”

  “We can charge them with illegal gambling but it won’t come to anything, and we’ll be buried under lawsuits. We already have a number threatening to sue us for harassment and excessive shows of force when arresting them.”

  “Bullshit,” rumbled the lion.

  The director nodded his head. “It is, they wouldn’t win the lawsuits, but they are successfully deflecting what are basically minor charges of illegal gambling.”

  “Minor?” hissed Juliet.

  “Minor compared to kidnapping shifters and forcing them to fight. Ultimately they’ll say they had no idea the place was unlicensed; they didn’t know the shifters were killing each other, blah, blah, blah.”

  Juliet licked her tongue over her fangs in irritation. “What about the victims?”

  “We found thirteen. One died of internal injuries in the hospital; he reacted badly to the drugs fed him by the guys in charge.”

  Yes, apparently they’d been fed all sorts bought from black market witches. Drugs to make them forget their past lives, drugs to make them heal quickly, drugs to make them even angrier…

  “Nine were on missing person lists. A couple of them have already been deemed safe and gone home, but most are still in the rehab center. All but one have started remembering who they are, and we think that as long as none of them display any violent tendencies, then they can go home soon, too.”

  “And the last one?”

  Agent Leo shifted in his seat uneasily. “The tiger - Siberian tiger actually - he hasn’t shown any improvement, and his violent tendencies haven't abated. The one guy who actually talked to us told us that the tiger had been at the fight club for as long as he worked there – which is over a year. All the others have only been there for a couple of months at the most. He’s… big – to put it mildly, and strong. According to our guy, he was a top earner. Who knows how long they had him. He isn’t talking, and he doesn’t seem to remember anything.”

  “What about missing persons or running his DNA?”

  “Nothing. Means nobody missed him, and he never broke the law... or at least he was never charged with anything.”

  Juliet nodded. Tiger shifters – especially Siberians - tended to be solitary creatures. Most prides, of which there were few, were mostly Sumatran or Malayan tigers – the smallest of the tiger breeds. A lone male Siberian tiger wasn’t unheard of.

  “What will happen to him?”

  The director’s eyes shuttered. “He’s tried to attack five orderlies at the rehab center. If he hadn’t been chained, he would have killed them. If we can’t trust him to control himself, then he’ll need to be terminated.”

  Juliet gaped at him. “But he’s a victim.” Wasn’t she supposed to be the cold-blooded monster in that room?

  The director gave her a mild look. “He’s also an unstoppable predator weighing in at almost nine hundred pounds when shifted – largest male we have on record, more than a hundred pounds heavier than the largest recorded wild Siberian. What if we let him go and he shifted and killed someone – a female or a child?”

  “That would be bad,” she murmured.

  “We’d be buried in lawsuits!”

  “I meant bad for the hypothetical people he killed,” she said dryly. “Have the victims given us any information about their captors?”

  “Not much,” said Leo. “Those who could remember told us about their abduction, but they were drugged and groggy. They don’t remember anything odd until the abduction.”

  Juliet flipped through the file on the tiger and a wave of sympathy assailed her. He could have been kept for years. He had numerous scars all over him, some of which the doctors judged to be three years old at least.

  Fury stole through her as she looked at the photos of the tiger – all blurry because he refused to sit still. Being at the mercy of another was horrific, and she wasn’t about to let him lose his life after everything he had been through.

  *

  He scented the female before she entered; the small creature confidently strode into the room. She was little more than a child in size, yet her expression was as regal as a queen.

  The tiger huffed at her scent – the sweetness of her was undercut by the scent of dead flowers. The tiger paced, ignoring the unimpressed look on her face.

  “Shift,” she commanded in a no-nonsense voice.

  The urge to do so, to take on human form was strong, and it took every ounce of control to hold back. What was this creature?

  She shook her head and tapped her foot. “I don’t have all day. Shift.”

  He growled as bones cracked and his limbs shrank. “What the fuck?” he croaked, his voice throaty from disuse.

  The small woman smiled showing all her teeth, two of them pointed. “Vampire, but I’m not here to suck your blood.”

  “You can try,” he rasped.

  “And here I thought you weren’t talkative.”

  “Not to that fucking lion.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “I’m flattered that you’d want to talk to me.”

  He rose to his full height and her dark eyes skimmed his body, a look of amusement on her face. “I hear you don’t much care for clothes either.”

  He couldn’t remember the last time he wore any. Didn’t need any to fight or fuck – and those two things were pretty much all he did.

  “Have you been able to remember anything of your life before the fight club?”

  He didn’t reply, and pity flashed over her face. He growled at her, and she sighed.

  “What are we going to do with you?”

  *

  Six months later

  “We have found you a place with a pride of Sumatran tigers,” Juliet told him with a mixture of apprehension and happiness.

  “Sorry to see me go?” he rumbled, almost playfully.

  The last six months had been long and arduous. All the other fighters from the club had gone home to their families – even the last lion shifter he faced. But not him. In spite of everything they tried – therapy, spells, potions, pills – he couldn’t remember anything. They supposed that after all the years he was captive, the drugs they gave him had changed him forever. He didn’t dwell on that too much – what was the point? Whoever he was before, that guy was long gone. He was probably a pussy grumbled his tiger, and he had to agree with the beast.

  Juliet had tried to reach out to Siberian tiger groups, but none of them claimed him as their own. He may never hav
e belonged to one. He may not even have been born in that country.

  The strange, little vampire had tried her best to help him, visiting him almost daily. He told her all he could, everything he knew – mostly to get her to shut up because her chatter could be incessant. She admitted that they were still looking for the person in charge of the fight clubs, but she feared they might never be caught. She was confident the clubs were closed, but it angered her that she would not get the one responsible. Strangely, it seemed to bother her more than him. After six months wandering the empty corridors of the rehab center, perhaps he had just become numb. The only reason he had to exist – the fights – was gone, and he didn’t know what to do.

  Juliet frowned. “The alpha of the pride doesn’t even want to meet you beforehand.”

  “Wonder what he’s up to,” he muttered absently.

  “I imagine it’s more likely that the new director is giving him money to take you,” she said in amusement. “I don’t think he’s happy with how many of the staff at the rehab center have quit since you took up residence.”

  “Most of the inmates leave quickly too,” he commented, not at all unhappy about that.

  “Yes, you seem to be good motivation for them to get well.” Juliet hesitated for a moment. “I wanted to meet this alpha before you did, but the director doesn’t want me to.”

  “Probably afraid you’ll scare him off.”

  “More likely he doesn’t want me to realize how bad of an idea this is.”

  “I won’t go.”

  “You don’t have much choice,” she said softly.

  Yep, the new director, wasn’t pulling any punches. He wasn’t improving, and the director wanted rid of him. The options were to join a pride to try and rehabilitate him or go to prison where he really could be kept under lock and key. They certainly didn’t trust him out on the streets on his own, but it seemed like they had found an alpha willing to take responsibility for anything crazy he might do.

  “I wish I could do more for you.”

  He shrugged, and his tiger huffed. What else was there?

  “Have you thought of a name yet?”

  “No.” So far, the tiger or that big, angry bastard had seemed to work.