Lie. The whisper came from deep inside. He could invent some sob story for her. Get her to keep trusting him. Get her to keep giving him that beautiful body.
Her fingers moved in the smallest of caresses against his heart.
Can’t lie to her. Not her.
“I joined Night Watch because the tiger needed prey.” Staying in control—when he wanted to hunt and fight every day, when the tiger wanted to roar and bite and claw—had been pushing him to the very edge of his sanity.
Night Watch had been, was his release. “I know just how dangerous the Other are in this world. I know that humans can’t handle them. They don’t have a clue. And the bastards that cross the line, the ones that torture humans and kill ’em…they have to be stopped.” He knew too well the nature of the beasts hidden inside the façade of men. Too well.
“The men I’ve hunted”—mostly paranormals, though he’d been sent after a human or two in his time—“you don’t want to know what they’ve done.” Even he’d had nightmares. “I stopped them. I made a difference.” When he hadn’t been able to before. “You might not like my methods, but I get the job done.” Period.
“Making a difference…that’s important to you?”
You can’t change the past, boy. You got to look to the future. His grandfather’s words. Hard with grief. He’d been twelve that day. And he hadn’t really understood what his grandfather meant.
But he did now. “Yeah, it’s important to me.” He inhaled, catching her scent and the lingering fragrance of sex in the air.
Not the best time to tell her, but, hell, when was there ever a good time to say something like this? “Erin, my parents…there’s something you need to know about them.”
A frown pulled her brows low, and she eased to a sitting position beside him, dragging that damn sheet up with her. “What is it?”
Trust. He’d give her all of his. For the first time in his whole damn life.
Can’t look into those eyes and keep the truth back. “They were mates.”
A faint smile curled her lips. “Well, they would have had to be or you wouldn’t be here.”
True. But…“My mom didn’t love my father.” He’d known. Always felt the coldness there. But he’d seen the heat in his father’s stare every time he looked at her. “He was crazy about my mother though.” Crazy. Good word.
Hell. It was hard to tell this story with her watching him with those big, golden eyes. Hard to speak when he was scared spitless that his words would send her running away.
Not just one screwed-up ass**le in her life—two.
“This story doesn’t have a happy ending, does it?” Quiet, tense. Her knuckles had whitened around the sheet.
He gave a hard shake of his head. If only…“Most of the talk in the Other world about the shifters who go f**king psycho, well, it’s about the wolves.”
She tensed a bit. “Did a…wolf do something to your family?” Her voice seemed stilted.
“No.” The wolves had hurt plenty of others, but not him. “The Lones are the wolves you know to avoid. For tigers, we have our own twisted ass**les who love to kill.”
“Ferals.” A whisper.
They were rare, luckily, but every now and then, a tiger shifter gave into the bloodlust of the beast. When he did—and it was always a male, no one knew quite why—the hunger took him over. The only way to stop a Feral was to put him down.
“My mom didn’t love my dad. Never did.” Matings couldn’t force feelings. Nature didn’t work that way. “One day, she told him she was leaving him. She fell for a human. She wanted to start a life with him, and she wanted to take me with her.” His mother had loved him. He knew that. Never doubted it for even a single moment.
His grandfather wouldn’t let him doubt it.
“I could see the pain in my dad’s eyes, but what could he do? Not like you can make a tiger stay.” Not when the tiger wanted to be free, and his dad had loved his mother enough to let her go. “She went to the human. She was going to send for me as soon as she was settled but—”
But she’d never gotten settled, and he’d never seen her again.
He glanced away from Erin’s eyes. Had to. “A Feral attacked her human. She jumped in to try and save him—and the Feral killed them both.”
Jude heard the swift inhalation of her breath. He didn’t look back at her. Not yet. This screwed-up story, on top of the hell that bastard was putting her through—
Oh, yeah, she’ll be running. Moving that sweet ass as fast as she can, dammit.
But she deserved the truth from him. Especially if the beast inside was right.
“When my dad found out, he broke.” No other word for it. His father had shattered before him. “Blamed himself. He thought if he’d just been able to make my mother love him, she would have lived.”
“You can’t make someone love you.”
No, you couldn’t. His father had even told him those same words the night his mother left to join the human, but the grief had wrecked his mind.
His father loved his mother so much that when she slipped from the world, he’d seemed to slip away, too. “He went after the Feral.”
Her hands reached for his. She unfurled the fingers he’d clenched. Lightly traced the marks made by his growing claws.
Jude took a breath and caught her scent. He closed his eyes. “He never made it back from the hunt.”
His grief had made him weak, and the Feral had been too strong.
Silence.
Too heavy. Too thick.
His father had been too consumed with rage and grief.
And his old man had left him alone. With the same rage and grief gnawing at his soul.
An image of those twin boys flashed before him. When he’d seen those boys tonight, he’d seen himself.
“When’s Mom coming back?” Stupid. He’d been twelve. He knew about death. Fucking knew. But he’d asked and asked Grandpa Joe. “Where’s Dad? ”
Asked and asked.
And broken when his parents never came home and he saw those coffins days later. His mother’s wooden coffin had been covered with red roses.
Because she’d loved red roses, too. Just like Erin.
Just like Erin.
“How old were you?”
He flinched at her voice. “Twelve.”
“Where did you go?”
Not the questions he’d anticipated. “My grandpa Joe—my mom’s dad—took me in.” Grandpa Joe had been his anchor, and when he’d finally let loose his own grief and rage, his grandpa had been there.