Page 13 of A Cougar's Kiss
Chapter 5
“I’m not late,” Shya said when she ran into the clearing eighteen minutes later, her booted feet splashing water from the puddles on the ground.
Kyss groaned and rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“You already know I’m not the kidder in this group.” Keller wasn’t sure what he was at this point, but he walked toward Shya anyway.
“No. After Decan defected, I actually thought you might be the brains in this group,” Kyss said with a shake of her head, the long silky black tail of her hair swishing behind her.
“Decan didn’t defect, he got reassigned.” Gold stepped from behind the Tracer and corrected her. “And he’s still on board with our mission. In fact, he and Nisa have been helping in their own way.”
In the only way they could as part of the Assembly leadership. What they were about to do was important to every shifter on this earth, Decan and Nisa knew that as well as Keller. Communication between the four of them—Decan, Nisa, Gold and Keller—had continued even after the new Central Zone FL was installed in his plush suites at their zone facility. After Gold was released from the medical center, he was given an STT team to lead more recognizance throughout the tunnels in search of locations where rogues and shifters who weren’t registered in the database could be slipping in and out of Oasis.
Nobody ever really knew what Kyss was doing or where she was going to do it. The cheetah was the sneakiest and most informative unregistered shifter Keller knew at the moment, which is why he, Decan and Nisa had decided to keep her close.
As for why he was taking Shya with him, he also wanted to keep her close. Not because he thought she might be dangerous to their mission, but because he didn’t want the remnants of said mission adversely affecting her. Should he care? Probably not. She was nothing to him. Just a really pretty shifter who he’d thought about touching for way too long.
“We’re doing this now with or without your sarcasm, Kyss.” He’d prefer without, otherwise he’d be tempted to break the sassy cheetah’s neck.
“Fine,” she snapped and slid down off the hood of the truck where she’d been perched. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Warn us about what?” Gold asked.
“About the fury of not only the Assembly Leader, but her fine ass daddy as well.” With that Kyss climbed into the front passenger seat of the Tracer and slammed the door.
Shya had remained a few feet from the vehicle, the strap of a black duffel bag swung over one shoulder. Keller met her gaze as he moved closer. “You don’t go back from this. If you’ve been doing what I think you’ve been doing all this time, this is the next step. If you’d rather go back to the safety you’ve known all your life, now’s the time to say so.”
She’d put on some type of white band to hold her hair back from her face and silver stud earrings were in both ears. Her face was free of any make-up and prettier than any other woman he’d ever seen. But she wasn’t built like a warrior, a little on the short side, much slimmer than most shifters and she’d never been trained to do anything other than sit in her room and read. She was a liability to their mission there was no doubt about that. But after last night and hearing what she’d confessed to him a little while ago, there was no way he could leave her here. Not now.
“There’s no safety in hiding,” she said with a grim look.
He would have never guessed that Nick Delgado’s daughter would speak or act the way she did. The bold admission she’d made to him last night, the passion he’d barely seen revealed during their short interlude were both things that he would not have believed of her if someone had reported it to him. Still, in some weird kind of way, it all fit. Everything she said and did fit into a very enticing package.
He yanked the back door open keeping his grip on the handle because his traitorous fingers wanted to touch her again. “Get in,” he snapped before circling the vehicle and climbing into the backseat beside her.
Seconds later Gold was behind the wheel and they were on their way to what would change the face of the Shadow Shifters forever—to start the rebellion.
* * *
Where were they going? What would happen when they got there? What would happen when her parents found out she was gone?
All very good questions that she probably should have asked before climbing into the Tracer with Keller and his gang. That’s what they seemed like, a gang of defectors on their way to do what exactly? It didn’t matter what the specifics were, Shya knew it was against Rome’s wishes otherwise they wouldn’t have met up in a tunnel that wasn’t listed on the Holodeck. She’d checked the board that she wasn’t supposed to have but had swiped from the training center months ago when they were bringing in a class of new recruits. The boards now carried by all guards aided them in the logistics and planning of strategic missions. It also had—according to the security level of the guard to whom it was assigned—unlimited access to the Holodeck and all its maps of the tunnels, blueprints of all of the bunkers, plans for the vehicles they used, the weapons that had also been specially enhanced for the shifters, the genetic breakdown of each tribe and so much more.
Of course, she had no security level, but she’d spent years watching Nisa practice what Uncle X had taught her on the computers. While Nisa thought Shya was simply sitting in the background reading a book, Shya was also learning. That’s how she’d bypassed the security walls on the board to gain access to all its information and how she’d managed to break into those confidential files which she’d downloaded to her board and created her own encrypted password for.
What she’d planned to do with the information in those files, she hadn’t figured out yet, but it was enough of an accomplishment that she had them and nobody—now, except for Keller—knew that she was the one who stole them.
“You won’t get a punishment this time.” The words came quietly just as they’d wafted through her mind. “When my father realizes I’m gone and that you are too, he’ll want you dead.”
“I’ve had a bounty on my head for a very long time. I wear the threat like a crown.”
“Or like a weight on your shoulders,” she quipped. “Vengeance can be just as heavy as fear.”
“And what about naiveté? How much damage does living in a closed-off world cause? Better yet, living in a bubble inside of a closed-off world?”
His questions were sharp, spoken with just the right bit of irritation to slice clean through her psyche. If she weren’t already used to being told nothing was expected of her because in the grand scheme of things, she was a nobody, Shya might have been offended.
“I cannot help the situation I was born into and I don’t make the rules for Oasis.”
