Read Online Tiger Bound by Doranna Durgin - Free Book Online Page A

didn’t need to ask where —the tug of it called to him, and he headed barefoot through the house as if he’d always lived there, into the kitchen and through it to the open door along the south side of the house.
    The little room might once have been a pantry or a long, narrow breakfast nook. It held a stack of dog crates at one end; the largest crate was full of amiable dog. And in the other end, a high, padded table stretched lengthwise, with just enough room to move around all four sides.
    Katie stood clutching the far end of the table, just as frozen as the woman had described.
    The woman moved up behind him now—but not too closely, not this time. “We’d just finished with Rowdy,” she said, and the dog waved his plumy tail at his name. “And she made a funny noise, and she...” The woman made an expansive gesture, visible in the corner of Maks’s eye. “This. Do you know—?”
    “No,” he said. “And yes.” He closed his eyes, taking a quick scan of power in the room, the house, the yard. Looking not for specifics, but signs of Core intrusion. Finding nothing—not even the amulet he knew to be lurking.
    He did what he should have done earlier, placing wards around the house. Not the usual intricate knots and energy labyrinths, but with his hands raised, palms out...a little push of his inner strength outward, he created a circumference through which Core individuals could not pass undetected and Core workings could not pass at all.
    The woman made a startled noise. From the porch, the cat yowled and fled, knocking over a crockery flowerpot on the way.
    Katie gave no sign at all.
    Maks eased past the table, and then between Katie and the wall, closing in behind her.
    The woman moved up to the doorway, watching with both concern and no little wariness. “What did you—”
    “Ssh,” Maks said, paying little attention to the woman, speaking only to Katie. Fine tremors shivered through her frame; the energy of it reached out to touch him, trickling to raise invisible hackles. It invoked his silent snarl—a tiger’s gesture of lifted head, just a hint of a lifted lip.
    He pushed his way past it, settling his hands at the base of her neck; they curved gently to cup her shoulders, his fingers marking the graceful curve of collarbone. He looked again into the energies surrounding this place—hunting for any sign of attack—and found only that which seemed to resonate from Katie herself.
    He had little experience in saving others from themselves.
    But if nothing else, he was a creature of instinct. He moved closer to wrap his arms around her, hands resting flat against her slender, toned midriff, damp heat trapped beneath his palms. He pulled her in against his body, ignoring the quick flare of reaction...expecting it. A man’s body, doing what it would. He focused instead on the energy remaining deep in the center of himself, that which he had not yet pushed out to protect the house—and he sent that out, too.
    Right through her.
    She gave a little cry and flung her head back, banging his chin and very nearly his nose, brown and cinnamon hair brushing his face. For an instant, she seemed to push back at the forces he’d sent through her—pushing back at him, with glimpses of glinting metal and splashing blood, a blur of startled green eyes, a muted roar and a cry of pain. It rocked him, and he released the faintest undertone of a snarl. Then she gave way, going limp in his grasp—head drooping, legs wobbling.
    “Ssh,” he told her again, a not-quite usual rendering of the comforting sound he’d heard from his dying mother’s lips long before he’d ever heard it in its more customary form. He lowered his head, his cheek against the side of her face. And so he stood, holding her—holding her up, and holding her close.
    From the doorway, her friend drew breath to speak, stopped her words on the edge of sound, never quite voicing her concern or question—never quite intruding.
    Katie stirred;