Captive Princess: A Dark Paranormal Romance (Feline Royals Book 2) Read online

  “They’re here,” he said.

  “Where?” I asked, looking around, my heart fluttering at the thought.

  “The swamp is full of them,” he said. “They’re all around us.”

  “Fuck,” I cursed as I spotted black forms slinking from the trees, materializing out of the swamp like shadows. Fear punched through my chest, and I swayed on my feet.

  “Gabor, let’s go,” I yelled, leaning down to see him lying on his belly, still in ocelot form, his nose to Camila’s. “There’s no time to talk sense into her. We need to get out—now.”

  He looked up, his eyes so intense and so like his human gaze that it startled me. I drew back a little, and after a second, he turned back to Camila and lunged at her throat. I stifled a scream as he grabbed her by the throat. She snarled and scratched, raking her claws through his fur, slicing open more crimson gashes. I winced, turning away as he backed from under the car, dragging the future queen of the Ocelot Nation by the throat. She dug her claws into the pavement and into Gabor, scratching and hissing all the way, until she was free.

  The first wave of panthers was climbing the chain link fence, sliding smoothly up it in a way that sent chills racing along my spine.

  “Where’s the amulet?” I demanded.

  “Grab her bag and let’s get the fuck out,” Lord Balam said. “I’m not anxious to die today.”

  “Not before Camila,” I said, but Lord Balam grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the waiting plane. Shadow fell in on my other side, marching me like a condemned man entering Father’s stadium of death.

  “Fuck your sister,” he said. “You’re getting on the plane.”

  I dug my heels in, but they dragged me forward. “Looks like some things run in the family,” Lord Balam muttered, glancing back over his shoulder.

  I was turned halfway around already, watching Gabor drag Camila from under the SUV. The first panther leapt from the fence, racing across the grass toward Camila.

  “No!” I screamed.

  Shadow dropped to all fours and shifted smoothly into his fur. “Don’t hurt her,” I yelled, grabbing the skin on the back of his neck and digging my fingers in. He yanked away and dashed back to join Gabor. Shadow grabbed my sister by the back of her neck like a kitten and charged toward us.

  “Up the ladder,” Lord Balam barked, boosting me halfway up with one push. I lurched to the top and tumbled in, Balam rolling over me. He hauled me up and pushed me into a seat, yelling for the pilot to go. The plane started moving, agonizingly slow and impossibly fast at once.

  “Camila,” I screamed, diving for the door. Lord Balam shoved me roughly back into my seat, but I was up in an instant, almost on his back as he blocked me and hung out the door. A second later, an ocelot appeared, her four legs splayed out as she gripped the doorframe, refusing to be shoved inside as I had.

  Shadow was behind her in panther form, and behind him, another ocelot wobbled down the runway, trying to keep pace as the plane picked up momentum. A swarm of black panthers closed in on him.

  “Gabor,” I cried, my heart seizing in my chest. He looked up, and for one second, our eyes met, just as Tadeu’s eyes had met mine in the moment before his death. A sob choked my throat, and I covered my mouth to hold it in.

  Lord Balam wrenched my sister in, hurling her back into the seats.

  Shadow hesitated, looking ready to pounce. Instead, he dropped from the ladder to the ground.

  “No,” I screamed, reaching past Lord Balam, finding nothing but thin air.

  Shadow grabbed Gabor, and together, they raced for the ladder, just a pace behind, then two, as the plane picked up speed. “They won’t make it,” I cried, tears bursting from my eyes.

  “You owe me for this,” Lord Balam said, and then he was a long, powerful jaguar flying out the door. He hit the ground, his huge form dwarfing Gabor as he closed his jaws around him. He raced the plane and grabbed the ladder, his back paws scrabbling along the runway for a second before he heaved himself up. Moments later, he was bounding up the ladder, heaving Gabor inside. Lord Balam landed on top of him, toppling into the cabin with the two ocelots.

  “Shadow,” I called, holding out an arm. The panthers pursuing us had closed in, falling in with him as he fell another step behind the plane. My eyes locked with his, and something twisted between us, a knowledge as certain as a goodbye.

  No.

  I refused to lose him.

  “Shadow, you can make it. I know you can.” My eyes burned into his, and a power swelled inside me, a feeling I’d only felt before when he’d chained me up and fucked me over and over all night. At some moment in that long night, I’d looked at him and realized he couldn’t help it. He would do literally anything in the world to have me, that he would die to fuck me just one more time. He’d made me helpless that night, but he was helpless to resist what I did to him just by living and breathing and being a woman.

  As the power coursed through me, Shadow paused, his body bunching, and he fell another step behind. But then he was soaring through the air, his powerful leap propelling him all the way to the ladder. He clung on, only to be joined by another panther a second later.

  “Pull up the ladder,” I yelled, and the ladder began to rise as Lord Balam obeyed my command. Shadow scrambled up a few steps, but the other panther sank his teeth into his hind leg. Shadow screamed in pain, a horrible snarling sound that filled the cabin and sent a stark flash of terror through me. What if the other panther got on the plane with us? I grabbed the pistol and tried to get a good shot, but Shadow was before the panther, and I couldn’t risk hitting him. They twisted on the ladder, the panther below Shadow losing his footing and hanging from Shadow’s legs. Shadow clung to the ladder, unable to let go and defend himself as the other panther ripped a chunk of flesh from his hip.

  Lord Balam reached down, his hands closing around Shadow’s front legs. He dragged him inside, giving me the perfect shot as the other panther’s head appeared through the door with Shadow’s back half. The bullet buried itself in his temple, and the panther jolted backward, disappearing instantly. Shadow scrambled the rest of the way in, and Balam reached out, slamming the door shut as the plane began lifted off the ground.

  Three

  “Why aren’t they shifting?” I asked, regarding the ocelots with suspicion. Since we’d taken off an hour earlier, Camila had huddled in the back of the plane, baring her teeth and hissing if anyone even looked at her. Gabor had crawled behind a leather couch and lay motionless. I wanted to check and make sure he was alive, but when I stepped in that direction, Camila snarled so fiercely I shrank back next to Lord Balam. The pilot had notified us that we were at full altitude, and that everything had gone smoothly since our rough start. Now we were flying above an endless expanse of blue with another one overhead.

  No way to escape if Camila lost her shit completely.

  “They heal faster in feline form,” Lord Balam said.

  I wondered if that included healing from mental trauma. Camila had escaped the brawl without so much as a scratch. Shadow sat silent as his name, clutching the armrests of the plush leather recliner that faced the back of the plane. Since shifting into human form half an hour earlier, he’d alternated between staring out the window and watching my sister with distrust. His wounds seemed to have healed, as had Lord Balam’s. The jaguar was bigger and stronger than the other cats on the plane and was apparently an excellent warrior. He’d barely spent ten minutes in his feline form before shifting back to human, fully healed.

  Lord Balam had patched up my shoulder to stop the bleeding, but the pain seemed to be getting worse, not better. I moved over to the chair next to Shadow, cradling my arm at my side.

  “I don’t suppose you have any magical healing potions,” I said, offering him a smile. I barely knew the guy, and what I’d known of him had been pretty scary, but he was in this with us now.

  He shook his head.

  “No, I guess you wouldn’t,” I said with a sigh, closing my e
yes and leaning my head back against the seat. “Considering you weren’t planning on flying to Africa today.”

  He shook his head again.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “I guess it was that or die. Not much of a choice.”

  He shrugged and turned back to the window. Okay, then. Apparently he wasn’t feeling chatty. I wracked my brain for something to say to him. I’d spent one night chained to his bed after drugging him. We’d talked a bit the morning he’d taken me back, but I didn’t know much about him. He’d been celibate before our night together, but I didn’t know why or for how long. He lived alone in the swamp and seemed to have trouble staying fully human, but I didn’t know why he was that way, either. Maybe he preferred a life of solitude.

  “I’m sorry all this happened,” I said, resting a hand on his forearm. “I know you were trying to do the right thing by warning me the panthers were coming after the amulet. You didn’t have to do that, and you didn’t sign up for this. When we get there, we can fly you back home.”

  “I can’t go home,” he said, his voice low and raspy. The sound of it still did strange things to me, even though I didn’t blame him for what he’d done to me while drugged. If I hadn’t forgiven him before, I would have now. If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t have known the panthers were going after the amulet until it was too late.

  “I’m sorry,” I said yet again, the word sounding worn out now. “I don’t know how to thank you for what you did. You gave up everything for us. You fought your own clan, and now… Well, let’s just say I understand how clan loyalty works. Our clans may not have anything else in common, but they have that.”

  A soft, incredulous exhalation was his only answer. I didn’t know how to relate to someone who wouldn’t talk. I didn’t know if he blamed me for this—I had given the amulet to Camila, after all—or if he was always so surly.

  “So, what do you want to do?” I demanded, frustration building inside me.

  He shrugged.

  “And you can’t go home because your clan thinks you’re a traitor.”

  “I am a traitor,” he said, swinging his head around to face me. “I killed someone back there.”

  “Me, too,” I said softly, sliding my hand down his arm to his hand. I covered the back of his hand with my palm, letting my fingertips rest between his knuckles. “I know it’s not the same for me. I didn’t know the person, and I’m not a panther. Thank you for helping us protect Camila. If it weren’t for your warning, she’d be dead right now.”

  “I wasn’t protecting her,” he said, casting a withering look at the pathetic ocelot hunched in the back of the plane. Her wild eyes moved to us, and she hissed, the sound filling the plane and making a shiver coil around my spine like a snake.

  When I turned back to Shadow, the intensity shimmering in his eyes fanned the flames of my fear even higher. I wasn’t sure which one terrified me more—knowing that he’d done all that, become a traitor to his nation, to protect me, or the fact that he was, essentially, my responsibility now. I already had one unpredictable, unstable person under my watch. Camila was challenging enough, and she was usually meek and non-violent.

  Shadow? I had no idea. I slid my hand from his, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. Had I read this all wrong? Did it actually speak to his mental state that he’d taken our side against his clan? I didn’t think he was weirdly obsessed with me or anything, but he’d killed one of his own people for me, a girl who had drugged him to get what she wanted. Maybe I shouldn’t be thanking him quite yet. We were about to visit the Cheetah Clan, a newly prosperous member of the Feline Nations. How would Shadow handle being thrust into a court full of wealth and privilege? And how would they react when I brought a half-feral panther into their territory?

  Gabor and my sister were naturals at putting on their cultured airs, and even I could play the royal part if needed. Lord Balam had a prestigious position in his own court, and because of his diplomatic role with other nations, already knew most of the royal families around the world. Until now, Shadow had lived in abject poverty and would quite possibly kill anyone who messed with me.

  Holy fuck. My life had just become a whole new level of crazy.

  Four

  I woke suddenly to the sound of snarling and screaming. For a second, I was unable to comprehend where I was or what was happening. The noise around us was horrendous, a constant drone below the commotion, and a dagger of pain pulsed in my shoulder with every heartbeat.

  I blinked in bewilderment, and then it came crashing back. The noise was the plane, and apparently Camila, who was dashing up and down the center of the plane, screeching like a banshee. Lord Balam, whom I’d fallen asleep beside, was shielding me with his body while Shadow crouched on the leather couch in panther form.

  “Don’t hurt her,” I cried, seeing him about to spring.

  She scrambled onto a recliner, her claws shredding the leather, and leapt to the front of the plane. The tiny metal door to the cockpit flew open, and Camila disappeared inside. A shout of alarm came from within.

  “Fuck,” Lord Balam yelled, dashing for the cockpit. If Camila attacked the pilot…

  Shadow leapt, knocking Lord Balam aside and racing into the cockpit before the shaman reached it. Shadow had been just waiting for a chance to take my sister down, and when he dragged her out of the cockpit by the back of her neck, I almost lost it.

  “If you hurt her, I swear to all the gods in creation I will make you suffer,” I said through clenched teeth. “Let her go.”

  He pressed her to the floor, and Gabor slid past me in human form, wearing the tightest pair of capri pajama pants I’d ever seen and a pink T-shirt that barely stretched across his broad chest and ended just above his belly button. Obviously he’d had to dip into Camila’s bag, the only one we’d saved from the SUV before the panthers arrived.

  Camila’s eyes squeezed shut, her lips pulling back to reveal her teeth as a horrible growling scream tore pitifully from her throat. Tears stung my eyes even as I held back, not wanting to get in the way. Gabor knelt at her side, his face set in its iron mask as he uncapped a syringe with his teeth, gripping her leg with one hand and stabbing the needle into her with the other. She lunged forward, her teeth sinking into his hand. He finished injecting her, biting his lips together against the pain of her bite. When he finished, he dropped the syringe, but she refused to unlock her jaws.

  Gabor stroked her head with his free hand, murmuring to her so softly it made the tears spill from my eyes as I stood watching what felt like an intimate, private moment. It was hard to believe this man was one of Father’s brutish henchmen or the guard who had held me up and told me to watch my best friend’s death in silence.

  Even the hardest man could be softened by love.

  I wrapped my arms around myself, my eyes flitting to the cockpit. Lord Balam still hadn’t emerged. Finally, my sister slumped to the plane floor, and Gabor drew open her jaws and extricated his mangled, bloody hand. Shadow picked her up by the scruff of her neck and deposited her unceremoniously on the couch. I quickly swiped my cheeks dry so they wouldn’t notice my emotional reaction to the horrible scene.

  “Don’t treat my sister like a commoner,” I said. “She’s a princess.”

  Shadow shifted smoothly, straightening and turning human in one motion. “She’s a danger to us all,” he snapped.

  I leveled him with my best stink eye. “Yeah, well, she’s going to be queen, so it’s our job to keep her out of danger.”

  “She’s no more fit to be queen than I am,” he said, turning away in disgust.

  I opened my mouth to protest, then looked at Gabor. He must have taken my look as needing help, because he fixed Shadow with a blood-chilling glare. “She’s my queen,” he said. “I will ask once that you not speak ill of her.”

  Tension crackled in the air between them, and suddenly, I was scared for Shadow. Moments ago, I’d had trouble believing Gabor was a man who would assassinate a threat to the king w
ith no remorse. Now, I didn’t believe he could be anything else.

  Lord Balam stepped from the cockpit and gave a grim shake of his head. My stomach lurched sickeningly.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I blurted in disbelief. “So, we all die anyway?”

  “I can land it,” Gabor said, breaking his stare-down with Shadow and pushing past Lord Balam into the cockpit.

  I nearly collapsed in relief, but Balam moved to my side, sliding a thick arm around my waist. Scraping noises came from the cockpit, and a body thudded to the floor. I shuddered, pressing myself against Lord Balam’s strong, solid form.

  Suddenly I wanted to kiss Father for his paranoia. Because he had made so many enemies, he required Ocelot palace guards to train in more than the art of cold-blooded murder. Of course Gabor knew how to make quick getaways in case anyone invaded our tiny, defenseless nation. For all I knew, he could perform spells of illusion to disguise Father should he ever need to escape right under the enemy’s nose.

  “How about that entrance exam for the mile-high club?” Lord Balam purred in my ear, his hand caressing the bare skin of my waist.

  “What’s the entrance exam?” I asked.

  “First I examine your entrance, and then I fuck it.”

  He was still naked except for his jaguar-skin cloak, and I was still in my bra after using my shirt for a bandage. My skin sang against his familiar warmth, my body craving his touch and what it did to me even as my mind was scandalized by his filthy words. He always gave me exactly what I needed—pleasure that obliterated all pain.

  When he took my hand, I let him pull me into the claustrophobic bathroom. I didn’t know if he loved me, but he was the closest thing I had since Tadeu’s death. Already, that seemed to be fading into a constant but distant ache. I would never forget Tadeu, my first love. But it had been an innocent, childhood love. So much had happened since then. So much had changed, and I was not immune to it. I’d never even seen a shifter in its fur when I knew him. I barely knew about the amulets, and I’d never been with a man. I would always cherish the purity of my love for him. It would remain forever simple and true.