Page 15 of An Unexpected Claim

“You aren’t really my type,” he said in his smooth voice, calm and friendly, as if he was recommending a restaurant. “But you’ve given me no choice. Besides, you’re two for the price of one.”

I gasped while my fingers worked at my throat, trying to pry his hand away without pushing his claws deeper into my skin. When he increased the pressure, just slightly, at my stomach, I’d had enough. I put my fingertips in the soft area between his digits and extended my claws. With my other hand, I punched his biceps tendon on the arm threatening my cub, causing the reflex to kick in and bend. At the same time, I twisted my body so that as his arm retracted his claws only left scrapes on my hip, narrowly missing my stomach.

The evil asshole let out a blood-curdling scream that rang in my ears as he released me. I sucked in deep, raspy breaths in between harsh coughs. He shook his hand, trying to dislodge my claws, but I’d extended them directly into the muscle, sending them deep. Grasping his wrist with my free hand, I used it as leverage to kick him in the groin, sending him stumbling backward so that when I released him, my claws tore his flesh.

I immediately shifted and let my cat out to fight. He glared at me as he did the same and then I was facing the scowling yellow eyes of a big-ass black wolf. He had quite a bit of size on me, which was unusual. I was small for a black panther, but I was still pretty evenly matched with most wolves. This guy had a good fifty pounds on me, but I’d always been quick and had outmaneuvered plenty of my giant instructors at school.

My panther moved to circle him, and he stared at us as he did the same. After a beat, I feinted right before swiping a paw over his face and leaving a nice, bloody gash on his nose. He growled menacingly and my girl responded in kind.

Red and blue lights flashed in my peripheral as sirens blared. I hadn’t noticed at first because sirens were basically white noise in the city. But they were traveling down the road that this alley crossed and there was an ambulance, which had a much higher-pitched, harder-to-ignore siren. The wolf and my panther were momentarily distracted, but he managed to refocus faster than her and in the next second, he had her pinned to the ground. He raised a claw and snarled, drool oozing from his mouth and landing in her fur. Pissed at herself for letting him get the upper hand—claw or whatever—my panther swiped again as she hissed and spat angrily. She was a special breed of Jaguar and at the top of the food chain. We were not often threatened by other shifters, so the fact that this wolf had managed to get the drop on her made her livid.

Suddenly, the sirens and lights came to a stop at the mouth of the alley. He growled in their direction as we heard doors slamming and people shouting, giving my girl a chance to shove him off and roll away. But his yellow eyes swung back to her and he pounced, pinning her again, but on her stomach this time, so his paws landed hard on her upper back. Then his claws dragged down from neck to hindquarters.

He tore through the muscles, creating deep wounds. I screamed inside my panther and she emitted a similar sound as we nearly blacked out from the pain. Still, she fought like hell to get him off of her. Then they both froze as the shouting of people rose in volume; they were headed right to us. The wolf grunted, but then his weight lifted, and she was free, but my panther and I could barely move from the pain.

My wounds would have been much worse if I’d been human, but while they hurt like a motherfucker, I’d heal. I was pretty sure. Although, if the slashes were as deep as they felt, it would take longer. And as a lone shifter, I didn’t have a pack link, or a mate, to draw energy from.

My gut told me that the only reason the wolf had taken off without injuring me further was because he’d assumed I’d die. But I told myself I just needed to find somewhere to rest where I could stay in my panther form. Not easy to do in a bustling city. I couldn’t exactly wander into my apartment building—a big black cat with deep, bleeding gashes on her back. I couldn’t let any human find me in panther form. They’d call animal control.

Shit, with these injuries, they’d probably put me down.

I closed my eyes, and my cat began to withdraw, allowing me to the surface, but with every second of the shift, we were in excruciating pain. It didn’t matter whether it was my human side or my panther who was hurt, we shared the injuries. Which meant that once it was complete, my human body sported the deep wounds and I screamed in agony because the pain was so much worse in this form.

Someone dropped to their knees beside me and started asking me questions, gauging my grade of awareness. I answered as best I could, but when cool air hit my wounds as they cut away my shirt, I couldn’t focus anymore, and tears streamed from my eyes.

“Holy shit,” the person next to me whispered. No doubt they thought I couldn’t hear their comments, but my shifter hearing didn’t miss a thing. They checked my pulse, breathing, and blood pressure, then yelled, “I need a trauma transfer board!” I winced when their elevated volume caused the pounding in my head to become sharp stabs.

My confidence in my healing ability faltered.

Pressure on my back ripped another scream from my throat as they applied bandages to minimize the bleeding. It hurt like a motherfucking bitch.

As multiple footsteps ran up to me, I felt a pinprick in each arm. They spoke for a few seconds, but I had begun to feel a little sluggish and didn’t bother to listen. Several hands lifted me and set me on a board before strapping me in and placing an oxygen mask over my face.

Being imprisoned or strapped down—unable to move—was uncomfortable for humans, often panic-inducing. But for shifters, who are half animal, it was a living nightmare. My panther was freaking out, but thankfully, she understood enough not to push for freedom for fear of increasing my pain. Still, hysteria bubbled up inside me and I fought to keep it contained. The effort exhausted me and the next thing I knew, I woke up in the back of an ambulance.

Chapter Eight

Peyton

Ipassed out? Whoa. It was definitely worse than I’d thought. I shut my eyes again and whimpered at the feel of hands probing my back. When I opened them the next time, a female paramedic sitting opposite me met my gaze, her brown eyes brimming with sympathy. She took my hand and introduced herself as Kathy before softly asking me a few more questions. My responses were carefully worded because I couldn’t exactly explain that I was half animal, I needed to shift, then find a place to curl up and rest undisturbed.

“Peyton?”

My eyes flew to Kathy, wondering how the hell she knew my name. If I ever had to do something humanish like go to a hospital, I used a pseudonym to avoid follow-ups, which would make things even more complicated. Especially if they looked at my blood close enough to see that there were minor differences from normal human blood.

Wallet. Shit.They had to have searched me for identification while I was unconscious.

“Are you allergic to anything?”

“No.”

A minute later I shouted obscenities at myself for saying something so stupid. They’d hooked up an IV before securing me on the stretcher. I hadn’t noticed the medicine trickling into my bloodstream at first, but now I felt the effects in my system, making me uncomfortable. Medications were essentially useless for shifters, unless they were specifically designed for us. If we had to pop an aspirin every once in a while, to keep up appearances, it was no big deal. But being pumped with high amounts of heavy drugs—such as the blood pressure medicine and painkillers being administered to me—put our bodies into healing mode.

It fought to expel the medicine, essentially seeing the foreign substance as a sickness or disease. The harder the body fought, the more uncomfortable we were, and eventually, it could become extremely painful. Considering the agony I was currently experiencing, adding the meds only made things rougher. But worst of all, they made it difficult to shift.

I glared at the bag full of medicine, wishing I could telepathically make it explode or something. But after a minute, my hard stare aggravated the pain in my head and everything around me blurred. Kathy kept changing my dressing, indicating that I was still losing copious amounts of blood. Between that and the meds, I was seriously woozy.

At least I knew none of this would hurt my baby. Shifter babies were even more immune to drugs and sickness than fully grown adults, and since it was pretty much the size of a peanut, it wouldn’t experience the pain. I thought about telling them I was pregnant, but it wouldn’t stop them from giving me painkillers. Plus, the pregnancy wouldn’t show up in human tests for another month or so. Shifter blood already made doctors scratch their heads with our odd DNA sequences and all that stuff. These were all reasons why we tried to stick to doctors who were, or knew about, supernaturals. It wasn’t always possible though,i.e., my current situation.

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