She’d seen too many other shifter women in a mess. Most didn’t make it out. She had to find a way.
“Flamme, even for you, I don’t know if I can do this. I thought it would be one time with him and then it became something else because we were so scattered and afraid of Franco. I shouldn’t have come here, but he was chasing me and he had others close by.”
She dropped her forehead into her hand and rubbed at her temples. She couldn’t leave now, not with Franco’s men watching the place. Not unless . . . Her head went up. She could go out the garage and into the tunnel, the one Sevastyan had driven them through. She would end up at Mitya’s. She could text one of her workers to come get her and text Ania that she had an emergency at her home and one of the workers was there to pick her up. The timing would have to be perfect so Ania wouldn’t have a chance to call Sevastyan. Once she was back at her house, she could protect herself.
She took a deep breath. “That’s plain bullshit and you know it. Franco and Sevastyan are not the kind of men you can fight by locking yourself in your studio and pretending they’re just going to go away. If you do this, you’ll have to take the first flight out of here. You’ll have to set that up as well. Have someone pack a bag and when they pick you up, drive you straight to the airport. You’d have to fly out immediately. That would only be the first step. Sevastyan might let it go, but Franco likes to chase. The hunt is half the fun to him. You might need help in disappearing. Who to go to? And if you go, what about Shanty? The woman coming in from South Africa with her children?”
She was up again, pacing across the room. She had to work her entire escape out step by step and then implement it. She was extremely good at planning. She had planned dozens of flights for men, women and children from other countries, taking them out from under the noses of hunters and bringing them to safety. Surely she could do it for herself.
But if she did, then she’d have to leave a shifter woman with children, one counting on her, out there alone. She’d have to shut down the only underground abused shifter women had available to them because in the end, she’d have to use it for herself. That would be so selfish. She had made such a mess of everything because of her runaway hormones.
She was disciplined. She could surely figure out a way to fix this without ruining everything she’d put in place. When a shifter male abused his mate, he was more brutal and crueler than could be conceived. She’d seen that over and over. She wasn’t about to let it happen to her, nor was she going to let others down because she had been so careless in a moment of weakness. She’d find a way out.
SEVASTYAN signaled to Kirill and Matvei to separate. The two leopards went up and over the roof of the house in order to come down on the back side of it to get to the heavier brush where they could more easily conceal themselves. Sevastyan’s leopard, a big brute of a male, a vicious fighter, was scarred and deadly. He had thick white fur scattered with large, widely spaced black rosettes over his head, back, legs and tail.
In the advance sketches Flambé had sent to him for consideration, she had included plants that would help his leopard blend in with more natural cover. Kirill and Matvei both had larger Amur leopards with the same wider spaced black rosettes, but their background fur was creamier colored rather than a stark white. Sevastyan hadn’t thought in terms of needing cover for the leopards other than the trees and heavier brush. Flambé had included color to match their actual breed of leopards. She had also tried to give them as many varied shades as possible, knowing the leopards, although shifters, preferred the cooler weather.
He spotted the first of Franco’s spies. The leopard had eyes on the windows of the master bedroom where Flambé was staying. A prickle of uneasiness went down his spine. He turned his head slowly, very carefully, just enough to bring her bank of windows into his sight. No