Claws?
Something wasn’t right about Ivy. She had mutated into a freaking beast. Her face looked misshapen. Her mouth elongated into a muzzle. All her extremities were covered in fur.
Panic set in. She scrambled away. She had to get away from her. Ivy became a monster.
But the snow made it hard to flee on foot. She stumbled again as she tried to run. The snow beneath her feet gave way and Vanessa found herself sliding down the trail. She avoided a collision with a tree. Narrowly. Using the fall as leverage to put distance between her and the crazed woman, she ran in the direction of the house. She screamed as loudly as she could, calling out for Quinn.
Ivy’s dogs chased her, closing the distance between them in no time. She screamed in terror. One of the dogs bit her arm and shook her violently. The other got a hold of her boot. She tried to fight back but it was a futile attempt.
When she about to give up hope, three tigers leapt at her. This time, she freaked out even more. Were there tigers in Aspen?
The biggest of the three tigers pounced and yanked off her attacker. The dog howled in pain. The tigers were totally decimating her dogs. She didn’t see Ivy but a fourth dog ran away. Wolf? Were they really wolves? Nothing made sense anymore.
The tigers had saved her from the wolves’ attack.
But that wasn’t the most shocking part of all of it. The real surprise was when the biggest tiger suddenly transformed into the man she knew intimately in the past few days.
Quinn.
“Vanessa, you’re hurt,” he said in dismay.
She immediately fainted.
Chapter Five
“A shifter?”
Vanessa sat on the examination table, clutching her bandaged arm. The doctor had just finished suturing and dressing her wounds and left. Quinn was with her, fully clothed and silent. Even then, his simmering anger was still palpable.
What had happened to her in the last hour was still rather blurry. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that Ivy had attacked her out of jealousy, or that Ivy turned into a werewolf. Or that the man she was dating was not completely human. She hadn’t been hallucinating when she saw a tiger in her bed.
After the doctor finished treating her, Quinn began telling her the truth about himself, and his family, about the underground world where things that bumped in the night weren’t just products of fevered imaginations. It totally blew her mind.
Curious. How was it possible a man could become both human and animal? Could it be that the anomaly in human evolution existed all along? Or were mutants like in X-Men?
“So shifters really exist,” she repeated
“Yes.”
“Tiger shifters and werewolves. What about vampires? Do they exist as well?”
“I believe so.”
“Sparkly vampires or the Dracula-kind of vampires?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met one.”
“How about elves? Do they exist too? Do they look like Lord of the Ring-type kind of elves or are they funny looking, like the ones that bake cookies in a tree? You know, like that commercial.”
Quinn came to her and held her hand. “Vanessa. Focus. We’re having an important discussion here.”
“I’m sorry. This is so freaking amazing. I had no idea cryptids existed.”
“You don’t seem upset that I’m not entirely human. I imagined the worst.”
“Upset? No.” Vanessa waved him off. “You should know me better. I think you’re very cool. What are you, Bengal? I imagine from the stripes. You fur patterns are very vivid.”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t Bengals from India? I thought you have Latino blood in you.”
“My paternal grandfather came from Assam. My mother’s family came from Chernogolovka, Siberia.”
“Ah. No wonder. Your brothers are shifters too?”
“Yes”
“What about your mother?”
“My mom came from of pure-blooded shifter family.”
“And your dad?”
“Same.”
“How about your extended family? Any of them married to a human?”
“Some. I have a half-blooded niece and a few first cousins.”
“Can they transform?”
“Transmutation genes in mixed blood don’t start until they hit puberty. But for full-blooded shifters, it triggers immediately. Weretiger babies are quite the handful. One second you cradle an infant and the next you are trying to wrangle a willful cub.”
“Oooh, that is so cute. Do you have any infant relatives we could visit?”
Quinn looked relaxed for the first time since he saved her. He seemed relieved. “No relatives, but I know a shifter couple that just had a baby.”
“Can we visit?”
“Once you get better. Not in the condition you’re in now. You’re pretty banged up.”