pain ran like fire through every nerve. Fucking Collar. Ellison could control the Collar when he fought in the rings at the Shifter fight club, because his brain knew then that he didn’t really want to kill the Shifter against him.
But these humans had threatened a cub, and Ellison wanted them dead. The Collar sensed his need to kill and went to work trying to stop him. The Collars evened the odds, in spite of the gunman’s broken wrist, and the net had started to tangle Broderick.
Olaf ran back and forth between the men, growling up a storm, grabbing legs and heels, biting.
“Shoot him!” One of the net men yelled. “Grab that damned bear, and let’s get out of here.”
“He broke my arm!” the gunman shouted back.
“Sixteen million! Think about sixteen million.”
Sixteen million dollars? Did they mean for Olaf?
Screw the Collar. Ellison slammed his body into the human’s again, letting his Collar’s sparks strike the man’s flesh. The man screamed, another bone or two definitely breaking.
Broderick fought and writhed, but the net, which appeared to be barbed in places, had closed around him. One of the men dropped his end of the net and dove for the rifle, coming up with it and the dart full of tranquilizer before Ellison could stop him.
And then the tunnel filled with noise, a roaring sound with death in it. The man who’d grabbed the gun executed a practiced roll, got to his feet, and shot the tranquilizer dart straight at the giant tiger that hurtled in from the darkness end of the tunnel.
The tiger was so big that he broke off pieces off the wall as he charged. The dart hit Tiger in the chest . . .
. . . and didn’t slow him a step. The rage in Tiger’s eyes escalated to madness as he kept on coming.
The man trying to contain Broderick dropped the net and fled. The first gunman squirmed out from behind Ellison and ran up the tunnel toward daylight, staggering and cradling his broken arm.
The man who’d shot the tranq at Tiger stood frozen in stark terror. Tiger was going to kill him.
Tiger had killed once before, Ellison knew, though the Shifters were keeping it quiet. Not Tiger’s fault, Liam had said. Human scientists had created Tiger to be a killing machine, and Tiger didn’t yet know how not to be.
But if Tiger were arrested for killing a human, the Shifter Bureau might find out who Tiger was and what he was, and take him away. Back to a lab, or maybe they’d just outright slaughter him. And Liam and the rest of Shiftertown would pay for harboring him.
Ellison morphed back to his human self, landing panting, upright on his feet. “Run, you idiot,” he said to the remaining man. “I can’t stop him.”
The human remained rooted in place, staring in horrified wonder as Tiger unfolded from the giant Bengal and became a giant human, his eyes still yellow with fury. The dart stuck out of Tiger’s muscled chest, and Tiger contemptuously yanked it out.
“Leave. The cub. Alone.” The words were guttural, harsh, inhuman.
The man blinked, gulped a breath, and finally turned to flee. Ellison grabbed the tranq rifle out of the man’s hands as he ran by. Ellison raced after him but stopped inside the shadows of the culvert while the man sprinted after his friends into the bright light of morning.
Ellison watched him scramble into a waiting high-end SUV, a cage obvious in the back. The vehicle squealed away, leaving the faint bite of exhaust in the warm spring breeze.
Tiger ran a few steps past Ellison and stopped, not bothering to keep his large, naked body out of the sunlight. “You let them go.” He turned back and bent his angry gaze on Ellison. “They were going to hurt the cub.”
“No, they were going to steal the cub,” Ellison said. He leaned against the cool tunnel wall to catch his breath. “I don’t know what that’s about.”
“I would have killed them first.”
“I know.” Ellison gathered his courage and reached to place his hand on Tiger’s formidable bicep. “If you’d killed any of them, hell would rain down on Shifters, and you’d be captured, and possibly killed and dissected. Connor’s trusting me to keep you out of trouble, remember?”
Tiger jerked away from Ellison’s touch. “They can’t hurt the cubs.”
Tiger was ferociously protective of all cubs—he’d lost the only one of his own, the humans wrenching it away from him before he could properly know it or say