Page 5 of Catch a Tiger

But the universe had never been kind to him.

It barely rang once before the witch answered the phone. “Hello, Alpha.”

“Morgan.” The main floor of his spacious house was dark, but he didn’t need lights to see with his tiger’s eyes.

It painted everything in silver, thanks to all the windows letting the moonlight in.

“It’s late,” she murmured in that sleepy, sex-soaked voice that got so many people all twisted up over her.

Samuel fucking hated it. The sound had always made his goddamn skin crawl, but that wasn’t her fault. She just sounded like someone he used to know when she did that.

“I’d appreciate it if you could drop the theatrics, Morgan.”

A sigh. “You’re crankier than usual.”

Thank all the gods she sounded irritated instead of seductive. “I’m in a bit of a bind.”

“Then call Selene,” Morgan spat. “She’s your new favorite witch, isn’t she?”

He picked up a vase and threw it against the wall, the sound of glass shattering settling some of his rage.

“I don’t have a favorite,” he purred, stepping on the glass just to hear it crunch under his feet. “If I had to pick, I’d say maybe Jessica James is my favorite. She’s just so…”

“Chaotic,” Morgan supplied. She chuckled then and he imagined her shaking her head at him. “You hate chaos.”

“I do.” Keeping everything orderly was the only way to keep that psycho buried down deep.

“Then why her?”

“I have a thing for cowboys.” He stopped at the wall that was nothing but glass, staring out at the forest surrounding the house he had up in Northern California. It was too dangerous to be anywhere near San Francisco right now. “How is she?”

“Busy.” He could hear the sound of Morgan tapping her nails on the table through the phone as she thought.

“Any day now, Morgan. I have things to do.” He didn’t dare check the security footage just yet.

Samuel had to trust that his second and third respected the monster he hid from the rest of the world enough not to disobey him, because the alpha magic wouldn’t always work on them.

“How bad is it?”

His fist went through the bulletproof glass before he could stop himself, and the entire wall shattered. Winter wind whipped around him, whispering sweet promises of salvation in a language he didn’t understand.

It was pointless to ask the strongest seer to ever exist how she could possibly know what he kept so vigilantly hidden from the rest of the world.

“If I tell you, will you keep my secrets?” he asked, his voice deceptively calm as he watched the lacerations across his knuckles heal. The pain barely even registered and he bit back a disappointed sigh.

“I have my own reasons for keeping your secrets,” Morgan admitted, her tone sharp. “No one will learn it from me.”

He dropped his hand and considered the forest that towered over his house and land, the trees like dark sentinels keeping his orderly world separate from the chaos he buried down over and over and over…

“I’m going to lose them.”

Mylo and Rune.

His salvation.

“I had to collar and cage him tonight,” Samuel explained, feeling comforted by the bone-chilling breeze that kissed his bare skin, ruffling the shirt playfully. “With silver and hell-forged iron, and it still might not be enough.”

Silence hung between them, but surprisingly, it didn’t make his fury rise.

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