“That would be wise. But having the protection of our laws will make the precaution less necessary. I promise you.”
“So Vlad keeps telling me. You’ll forgive me if I don’t take that promise as gospel.”
“I expected nothing less.” Elizaveta finally looked at Vlad. “You’ve chosen a strong mate. I like her. She will do well in our community.”
“The threats to her,” Vlad said, “what of those?”
Elizaveta frowned. “You mean the debate over how she should choose a mate?”
He nodded.
Elizaveta waved a hand. “That is a debate we will have to take to the community at large for future reference. But she is fully human and outside our jurisdiction. As you said. We cannot demand a human adhere to our rules simply because she is capable of producing a hybrid. It’s not practical or enforceable. Unfortunately, some of the other elders are not practical. So the debate will happen. But it will not affect Rose.”
“Why not?”
“She is already mated. It is not an issue.”
“The comment that I forfeited my claim when I left her?”
“Might have been a problem if you hadn’t returned to her, and if she didn’t want to keep you. If she doesn’t keep you, then other tigers might attempt to woo her. She will have the choice. She could leave you for another human, too. That’s the way with relationships, no? But she is not ours to order about.”
“You think Zoe is, though,” Rose put in.
“Ah. That is a different and more complicated issue. She is, in fact, one of ours. Her ability to shift makes her situation easier to fit into our current laws. She is a tiger shifter—unlike her aunt who is a human hybrid. But because she is a hybrid, the absolutes of her position are debatable.”
Rose shook her head. “This is too much. I just wanted her out of pain. I didn’t want to throw her into this…world.”
“Such is the way of life. We must deal with situations we would rather not, and people we might not like.”
Elizaveta opened her mouth to say something else, then paused, frowning. Vlad turned his full attention to Zoe’s room just as Elizaveta glanced at the door. The sound of shuffling steps brought him to his feet. He could sense a tiger in that room.
He was across the hall, slamming through the door in a blink, Elizaveta just behind him.
The window was open. The room was empty.
Zoe was gone.
Chapter Fifteen
Panic gripped Rose so tight she thought she might throw up. “Where is she? What’s happened?”
Vlad glanced at Elizaveta, who was staring out the window. “A tiger was in here. He took her.”
Rose’s voice went to full screech. “How did this happen? Who was it? How did he get her so fast? Where have they gone? Was it one of your brothers?”
Elizaveta stormed into the hall past them, her voice booming down the corridor. “Trackers! Now!”
Vlad took Rose’s hand. “Not one of my brothers. I don’t recognize the scent. He moved at tiger speed, very fast to get in and out before we noticed.”
“You did notice, though. You both felt something wrong.”
“I heard shuffling and felt a tiger in here just before coming through the door.”
A group of four large men stalked into the room and began sniffing around. Behind them, an actual tiger walked in, going right to the window. The tiger looked about, sniffed at the sill, and then leapt out the open window.
Rose gasped. “That’s a three-story drop.”
“Not that difficult for us.”
“How did the kidnapper get in? The window was bolted from the inside…” She paused. They’d locked it before the meeting. She hadn’t checked it again when they’d put Zoe down to nap. But they were on the third floor. It should have been impossible to get in here that way.
“Three stories aren’t beyond our ability to jump up to—even in human form. Someone obviously unlocked the window while we were in the meeting. The rest would have been easy.”
“But Zoe can’t make that jump. What if he hurt her getting back out?”
“She could survive that jump all on her own,” Vlad said. “But she wasn’t on her own. He would have had to hold her. So she wasn’t hurt during the jump.”
“We have to go after him. We have to get her back. Vlad.” Panic made her so desperate she could barely think. She went to her closet and pulled down the borrowed hunting rifles she’d stored there. She stared at the 9mm pistol, then pulled it out as well. She needed everything she could get.
“If anything happens to her…” She couldn’t think it. She couldn’t even allow the idea to form. If she did, she’d fall apart. Zoe needed her strong now.