Midnight Wolf (Shifters Unbound #11)(23)

“Which is why we need to fight them,” Tamsin said, sitting up straight. “Get ourselves the hell away from Shiftertowns, Collars, rules, Shifter Bureau. You know it.”

Angus sent her a glare. “If you start the freedom-fighting Shifter shit in this car, I’m throwing you out. While it’s still moving.”

“So you don’t want Shifters to be free?” Tamsin asked, eyes wide.

“I didn’t say that. This is where Gavan and I disagreed. His stupid rhetoric and raging only got Shifters killed. Including cubs. Is that what you want?”

“No,” Tamsin had to admit. “But . . .”

Angus swerved toward the side of the road, gunning the car as he did so. “I mean it. I’ll tell Haider you fell out trying to escape. Nothing I could do. Got it?”

Tamsin took one look at the fury in his eyes and realized she’d touched a nerve. A terrible, raw nerve that brought up a lot of pain. She glanced at the side of the road rushing past her and made her decision. She shut up.

New Orleans, even in the morning, was a busy place, with tourists flocking to Bourbon Street and Jackson Square, hoping to get a glimpse of the stereotype of life in the Big Easy. Were there really voodoo priestesses and scantily clad ladies, Dixieland jazz bands going full blast?

For the tourists there were. Tamsin remembered coming here with Glynis, walking arm in arm through the hot nights, eating fabulous shrimp and crawdad concoctions in every restaurant they entered, dancing to the bands set up in the middle of the street.

That had been a long, long time ago, before Shifters were outed. Tamsin and Glynis had pretended to be human tourists, no shifting, no teeth and claws.

“Except this one time.” Tamsin had started telling Angus the tale as soon as they hit the main streets of the city, as though the stories had taken over her tongue. “A guy and his friends tried to pick us up. Four of them, and two of us. They wouldn’t take no for an answer. So we let them chase us into a dark alley—seriously dark, no lights back there at all. Glynis changed to her bobcat form and just stood there, snarling. One guy had a flashlight, and he shone it over this tough-looking wildcat with yellow eyes and bared teeth. While he and his friends stood there gibbering, I ran behind them and started biting their asses. They were screaming bloody murder. We’d never seen anyone run so fast . . .”

Tamsin trailed off, laughing, but tears gathered in her eyes and threatened to spill out.

After a period of silence, Angus cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about what happened to her.”

Tamsin wiped her eyes. “Hey, it wasn’t your fault. It was Shifter Bureau who gave the authorization for un-Collared Shifters to be hunted down.”

“They killed my brother too,” Angus said quietly.

Tamsin knew that. Gavan Murray had been caught, arrested, interrogated, and executed. His secrets were supposed to have died with him.

She flipped her hand. “There you go.”

Angus growled. “Sweetheart, I’d love it if the whole pack of Bureau agents disappeared, Shiftertowns vanished, and these stupid Collars were off our necks. But we have to be careful. Not long ago, a group of Shifters got so desperate to be free they made a deal with the Fae. You hear me? The Fae. They went from one slavery to another. I tried to help bring these Shifters back home, but most of them didn’t want to come. They wanted to stay in Faerie and be the Fae’s Battle Beasts. How fucked-up is that?”

Tamsin frowned. “Your brother never had anything to do with the Fae.”

“I know.” Angus’s voice rose to a shout. “It’s an example. It’s what can happen.”

“Sure, what can happen if you’re stupid and gullible.”

“Exactly,” Angus snapped. “And who is being taken to Shifter Bureau now instead of puttering at home in her Shiftertown?”

“Under a curfew, wearing a Collar,” Tamsin pointed out.

“Taking care of her family!” Angus said, voice hard. “That’s what we do. We take care of the people we love so when shit happens, if another Shifter-Fae war comes, if Shifter Bureau moves against us, we can be there to defend them.”

Tamsin thought of her mother and flinched. She could be with her now, if she’d meekly taken the Collar and moved with her to her Shiftertown. But then, some clans and families had been split up. There was nothing to say she’d have been housed with her own mother.

“I couldn’t have prevented Glynis’s death,” Tamsin said, “if that’s what you’re accusing me of. Glynis made a run for it when Shifters were being rounded up by Shifter Bureau, interviewed, and ‘processed.’ I wasn’t with her. I couldn’t do a thing.”

“Did I say that?” Another glare. “Quit putting words in my mouth. I meant in general. We stick together. We help each other.”

Tamsin flushed. “You know what? You’re a shit. I’m sorry I kissed you.”

“I’m not.”

Tamsin opened her mouth for more hot words, but they died on her lips. “What?”

“I’m not sorry you kissed me.” Angus stretched, pushing his hands against the steering wheel. “It was a good kiss.”

Tamsin tried to think of a snide retort—she had one for every occasion—but nothing came to her. She could only say faintly, “It was?”