Mountain Lion Read Online Free PDF Page A

something that would necessitate calling in the very top of the shifter enforcer food chain.
    Dragons.
    But they’d have to approach that later. Carefully. After he knew for sure what they were and weren’t doing up there.
    “We raised horses up there. Mustangs. I was happy with that part of it,” she said, twisting her hands. “But then my dad found out there’s a certain… audience looking for female cats to breed. And he thought I should probably do that.”
    Wyatt felt his stomach tighten into a knot. All the while he’d been living this privileged life with his ranch and his money, she’d been terrorized by the people that should have been keeping her safe.
    “I fought it at first,” she said. “All my life, I’d only known my dad as a cruel person, and the other men in our camp weren’t much better. But I learned to fight back. Protect myself. Not that it was always enough, as they were shifters and I was mostly human.”
    “I see,” Wyatt said, curling his hands into tight fists and forcing himself to keep a calm tone. “So then what?”
    “Then they brought someone by. My dad said he’d bought me. He wanted to breed.” She let out a little sigh. “At first I didn’t think he was so bad. He was handsome. Dressed nice. Like you.”
    “Okay,” Wyatt said uncertainly.
    “But he wasn’t like you. He was cruel, mean. After the first few visits, he started getting insistent. I tried to tell them I wanted nothing to do with it, but he said he wasn’t going to wait anymore for something he paid for.”
    Wyatt felt his teeth grind together. “I see. How far did he go?”
    She shook her head. “Don’t worry about that. I fought him, and he beat the tar out of me. That’s how I got away. He beat me so bad they thought I needed time to heal before breeding. So it bought me time. My father said it served me right for fighting, and they left me in the barn, thinking I was unconscious.”
    “But you weren’t,” Wyatt said, a weird mix of sheer rage at her captors mixing with admiration for her tenacity brewing inside him uncomfortably.
    Men who could hit women. Men who could hurt them. Men who would attack them.
    No wonder she hated men. No wonder she hated being touched. No wonder she looked at men like they all deserved to be eliminated from the planet.
    “These men,” he said. “Are they going to try to find you?”
    She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I was an easy catch. When I first escaped, I wasn’t too far from them, and I didn’t see anyone leaving to chase after me. My guess is Lyle will go buy someone easier to deal with, and my dad will be glad to be rid of me, since I couldn’t even shift, which always disappointed him. He could have gotten more for that.”
    “I’ll need both of their names,” Wyatt said.
    “Why?” she asked, her eyes widening as she shrank back in her chair.
    Wyatt sighed. “There are shifters who take care of things like this. Stop them. They need to be reported.”
    “I don’t… What if they…?” She shook her head. “I don’t know if I can deal with that right now. If they know I told, they might—”
    He came around the desk and knelt in front of her, reaching up to push back her hair so he could look straight into her eyes.
    “Val, I promise I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. Or anything happen to you. But we have to bring them to justice before they hurt someone else.”
    “There were no other women in camp,” she said. “I was the only one they tried to mess with.”
    He sighed in relief. “All right. I’ll try and wait until you’re ready, then.” He bit his lip, reluctant to take his hand from her hair.
    Her eyes were wary, and he pulled back and got to his feet. “You don’t have to worry about that, Val. I’m not going to make a move on you,” he said.
    She blinked at him, pretty blue eyes confused and intent. “Why not?”
    “Because you don’t want me to,” he said. “And because you aren’t really my