Chasing His Puma (Big Bad Bunnies Book 3) Read online

  "She's eight," one of the women whispered.

  "Quiet, Jo—argh!" Riggs' order was cut off again as Brock tightened his grip. Doc didn't bother to rebuke him. She kept her gaze trained on the woman who had just spoken.

  The woman bit her lip, glanced at Riggs, and then looked over at the dead bodies of skunk shifters who had been experimented on and killed. Damn it. The baby was orphaned, on top of everything else. Fury coiled in Doc’s chest.

  "And why did you all let a child—a child who had just been experimented on no less, one of your own, an eight year old who was so terrified she actually managed to shift—be completely unprotected?"

  The shame coming off of most of the group was palpable.

  Most of them.

  "Because she's unnatural," said an older woman, about the same age as Riggs, straightening up. Doc snarled at her, her puma coming through and the woman shrank back.

  "You're unnatural," Doc snapped. "And in case you hadn't noticed, several 'unnatural' creatures helped save your sorry asses. Which you didn't deserve considering how willing you were to throw a child to her death just for being different. And we'd do it again, even though we now know you don't deserve it. So chew on that, Cruella."

  The woman opened her mouth and then closed it, looking at a loss for words. Good, maybe she'd realized just how much of a twatwaffle she was being. A sudden ripple went through the small cluster of skunks, like a school of fish reacting to the approach of a predator.

  "Some good points, Doc," said Eli, his voice cool and calm as he came up beside her. He looked around at the shifters, the very embodiment of stern authority, making Riggs pale in comparison. "Congratulations, you're rescued. You're all also under arrest for child endangerment."

  This pronouncement was met with a lot of pointing fingers—most of them pointing at Riggs. At Eli's gesture, his soldiers were already moving to start herding the skunk shifters out of the building to take them back to Lakewood. Doc turned away from the group of assholes, stroking the baby skunk’s fur. She seemed to have actually fallen asleep in Doc's arms.

  "Take her to go get checked out with Dr. Tran, between the two of you I’m sure you can figure out what they did to her," Eli said in a low voice, patting Doc on the shoulder. He glanced down at her hip, which was still bleeding sluggishly. Of course, now that she was reminded it was there, it started to hurt a lot more. "And yourself, too. The rest of them look like they're doing just fine."

  "Thanks," she said, happy to get away from the group of assholes.

  Chapter 12

  As Doc walked off with the skunklet in her arms, Brock kept his hold on Chief Butthead. The man could breathe, but barely.

  "Let... me... go..." It was obvious he was trying to sound authoritative but mostly he just sounded like he was gargling.

  Brock grinned at him, pulling him closer and enjoying the way the man's eyes widened with fear. "Sorry asshole, I'm one of those unnatural creatures. And just like the little skunk you abandoned, I didn't have a choice about it. So, you'll have to excuse me if I don't feel like listening to you right now."

  "As much as I sympathize with your position, I do need you to let him go," Eli said dryly, making a motion to one of the other guys to come take the skunk shifter off Brock's hands. The older man looked relieved to be led away, massaging his throat as he went. "We'll deal with him back at Lakewood."

  "What are you going to do with the kids?" Brock asked. None of them were being separated from their parents but they all looked upset after hearing the adults were being arrested and a few were crying.

  Eli sighed. "As much as I would like to make an example of all of them, it sounds like they were put in a hard position. Protect their own or be shut out of the surfeit’s protection entirely. The ones with kids are going to get a lot more leniency from me than the others. Integrating with the rest of society will be good for them, now that they can."

  Grunting, Brock watched them all being led away. He wasn't feeling super sympathetic for any of them except the kids.

  "I want to keep exploring," Eli said, catching his eye. He tilted his head in invitation. "Come with me?"

  As much as Brock wanted to go find Doc and see what was going on with the little girl skunk, he knew they would be safe. Scouting out the rest of the building and seeing if there was any more helpful information here was too important to ignore. "Sure, let's go."

  On their way out of the room they also picked up Tomas, one of Eli's team leaders and a grizzly shifter, and Brice to go with them. Everyone else was either taking care of the wounded, rounding up the skunk shifters, the prisoners, or the bodies of the fallen. Brock was not particularly sad to leave the room and its stench of sickness and death, especially since Doc had already gone back outside.

  The first four rooms they searched were empty other than the furniture, it was in the fifth room that something finally happened.

  Unlike the other rooms, which were set up like labs, this one looked more like a command station. There were computers set up around the room, file cabinets, desks, and a huge projector screen on the far wall. The walls were painted a boring grey and there wasn't even a motivational poster to break up the monotony. Less than thirty seconds after they entered the room, the projector screen flickered to life.

  All four men immediately jumped into action, spinning so their backs were all together and no side was left blind. Eli was left facing the screen while Brock and Brice were on either side of him and Tomas guarded Eli's back. Just in case it was a trap.

  "Hello, little brother."

  Brock recognized the voice immediately and he tensed—beside him he could feel Eli doing the same. The last time he'd heard that voice he'd been half-delirious with pain while being dragged through the forest by the traitor and his former teammate, Joe. His bugaboo growled in his head, hackles raising. Not turning to see the screen and actually look the man in the face was a struggle, but he wasn't going to let himself be distracted.

  "Aiden," Eli said coldly. "What do you want?"

  "Can't I just want to say hello to my baby brother?" Aiden asked. He sounded cheerful. Fucking psycho.

  "No."

  "Eli, we should get out of here," Tomas said. "This is probably a trap. He's trying to stall us."

  "Oh don't worry," Aiden said, his cheerful tone turning slightly sinister. It grated on the senses, like carousal music being played in a minor key. "I'm not going to kill you now, Eli. That would ruin the fun. I just wanted to see your face when you realized this facility is totally worthless. A good distraction though, isn't it? I knew you'd come rushing in, even for useless skunks. You take your leadership role sooooo seriously. Too bad you fell for it. This isn't where the real prize is."

  Suddenly, Eli whirled around, making Brock jerk towards him at the abrupt movement. He stalked away from the screen where his brother was still gloating. Barely glancing at Aiden—he looked so much like Eli it was disconcerting, Brock turned to follow his leader.

  "Hey, I'm not done talking to you! Eliiiiii..."

  The door slammed shut behind them, thanks to Brice. Eli continued stalking down the hall, moving fast.

  "Eli? What's wrong?" Tomas asked, jogging slightly to catch up to the irate polar bear shifter.

  "He said this was a distraction," Eli growled, his pace increasing. "So what was he distracting us from?"

  The real prize.

  Lakewood.

  Dr. Montgomery.

  The bugaboo let out an unholy roar.

  ******

  After slathering some antibiotic on Doc's hip and checking to make sure the cut wasn't deep enough to require stitches (which was pretty rare for shifters, since they usually healed fast enough usually only lasted a day or two at most), Dr. Tran turned her attention to the baby skunk. The tiny shifter had remained fast sleep while Doc was being looked over, so it was pretty easy. She’d even slept through her vaccine shot.

  “She seems healthy,” Dr. Tran said, gently touching the baby shifter with gent
le fingers. Even though Doc had been told the little girl was eight, she was so tiny that it was hard to think of her as anything but a baby.

  The cars had been pulled up next to the facility into a large semi-circle and both prisoners and the skunk shifters were being loaded into them. Although she supposed the skunk shifters were now effectively prisoners too. She doubted Eli would actually imprison any of them—except maybe Riggs as an example, which he richly deserved. What kind of leader left a child to die just because she was a little different?!

  “Hmm… interesting,” Dr. Tran said as she peeled back the skunk’s lip. “These… do these look like viper fangs to you?”

  “What?” Doc leaned forward to get a better look. As both of them bent over the baby, for the first time she could smell just a hint of the dusty, musty scent of snake. Then she saw the teeth Dr. Tran was referring to… definitely not skunk teeth. “Oh my goodness… do you think they actually managed to replicate Dr. Montgomery’s work? Is that why she shifted?”

  Dr. Tran worried her lower lip between her teeth as she straightened up, looking up at the night sky in thought. “We need their notes.”

  Doc started to stand, and sank back down again as the little skunk sighed and squirmed. She couldn’t go running back into the building with the baby… but she didn’t want to hand off the little creature to someone else either. Was it possible to get attached so quickly?

  As the small, furry body snuggled in and her puma's purr began to sound like a lawnmower in her head, she knew that yes… yes it was.

  Ohana. It means family. It means no one gets left behind.

  Man she was so fucked.

  “I’ll go let Eli know,” Dr. Tran said. “If they were able to duplicate some of Montgomery’s work, we can’t leave anything behind and we need to make sure they didn’t send anything out.”

  Because otherwise The Company might become unstoppable, able to turn humans into shifters and shifters into crazy hybrids, and their goals were definitely not aimed at anything good. Doc hugged the sleeping skunk—dammit, she really needed to find out the little shifter’s name—closer. Poor little thing. The baby snuggled in closer, sighing in happiness. She seemed to know she was safe and protected now.

  Yeah, Doc definitely wasn’t going to be able to just put her down or pass her off to go back into the building. She was already feeling more than a little attached, which might not be a good thing. Her puma growled in her head at the idea of anyone trying to come between her and the abandoned child.

  Definitely more than a little attached.

  Dr. Tran was almost at the building when Eli came storming out, Tomas, Brock, and Brice hard on his heels. As Dr. Tran skidded to a stop in front of Eli, he came to a halt as well, although Doc could tell by his body language that he was more than a little impatient—as were the other shifters. When he realized exactly what Dr. Tran was saying to him, he focused on her pretty quickly, and then he looked torn.

  Looking up at the sky, as if appealing the heavens for answers—or maybe patience—Eli shook his head. Then he refocused on Dr. Tran and turned to Tomas and started barking out orders.

  Doc watched as Dr. Tran and Tomas headed toward the main compound building, gesturing and calling over some of the other soldiers to join them, while Eli hightailed it over to his vehicle. Seeing her, Brock changed course and headed straight for her, his expression serious.

  "What's going on?" she asked, keeping her voice low so as not to disturb the little skunk still slumbering in her arms.

  "We think this might have been a distraction to draw us out of Lakewood," Brock said, looking grim. "Eli's brother showed up on one of the monitors for a live streamed chat and he taunted us about taking this worthless facility and losing the real prize. I think maybe they were going for Montgomery."

  Even as her worry and concern for the others at Lakewood rose, Doc couldn't help but feel a thin sliver of triumph.

  "He doesn't know," she whispered.

  "Doesn't know what?" asked Brock, obviously confused since he had no idea what she could be talking about.

  Doc looked up at him and hefted the baby in her arms. "Something they did on this little one was successful."

  Immediately Brock's expression cleared as he realized that the facility must not have been able to get word out to Aiden. Which meant whatever Dr. Tran, Tomas, and the others recovered from inside hadn't been sent on to The Company. Otherwise, Aiden wouldn't have thought the research being done there worthless. He hadn't expected them to succeed—and hadn't been informed when they had.

  "Is that why she's still in that form?" Brock asked, peering curiously down at the skunk's small form.

  Doc noticed he didn't reach out to touch the baby and she felt her heart sink a little. She and her puma already considered the little skunk hers, she realized. But how would Brock feel about that? They’d just started dating, could she really ask him to date a suddenly single mother? But she wanted to keep the baby skunk already.

  She shook the feelings away, because she was already getting ahead of herself. She didn't even know if she'd be allowed to keep the little girl, even if her heart was already crying out to.

  "Maybe. Although it also might just be because her animal still feels the need to protect her. It's unlikely she has any control over her shift, which means it will be up to her skunk when she shifts back." Poor little thing.

  Brock didn't get the chance to ask any more questions because Eli was already shouting for everyone to load up. As he passed by, Brock caught his eye and Eli shook his head.

  "No one's answering their damned phones, I don't know what's going on," he said, his voice clipped and curt. "We're moving out, now, except for those with Dr. Tran. And we're all going back to Lakewood."

  Hugging the little skunk shifter close, Doc felt her heart constrict. No one was picking up at Lakewood at all?!

  ******

  Lakewood was... not in devastation exactly, but it wasn't pretty. There had obviously been a lot of fighting because Lakewood had definitely not been left undefended. Which was precisely why Eli had called in extra backup to go rescue the skunks.

  As smart as Aiden was, he either didn't really understand exactly how well connected his brother was or he thought his brother wouldn't ask for help for some reason. Maybe because Aiden wouldn't ask for help if he needed it? He was clearly a sociopath and narcissist.

  They still hadn't been able to get any calls through—somehow The Company had jammed the cell phones on site and cut the landlines—so the first they had any clue about what was happening at Lakewood was smoke curling above the trees as they drove up the long road. Leaning forward in the passenger seat, Bethany had started cursing up a storm when she'd first caught sight of it.

  Eli had pulled everyone off the road about a mile away and spread out through the woods, coming in cautiously because they had no idea what was going on.

  The fight was already over though, and The Company hadn't exactly lost but they hadn't exactly won either.

  The Bunson siblings and their mates all stood around a headless corpse in the middle of the parking lot, still dressed in a lab coat. Their emotions were scattered. Anger. Frustration. A sense of having something snatched away from them. But also a sense of peace.

  Inside his head his bugaboo was calm, almost serene. The fight was over, the bad guys defeated for now, the creature was happy with their night's work. Especially with this particular corpse laying at their feet, even if they hadn't been the ones to put it there.

  A few feet away, Eli was receiving an explanation from Gunnar, the alligator shifter who had made the kill. He was injured but standing, refusing to sit down or go inside until he'd made his report to his alpha—much to the muttered consternation of the nurse who was doing her best to patch him up.

  "They focused all their attention on getting to him, it was a direct assault," Gunnar said, gesturing to the body. "Once they hit the basement door I knew we weren't going to be able to hold them off, not if t
hey were really determined. Take a lot of them with us? Sure, but eventually they'd break through. So I took the kill shot then. They came through, and man they were pissed when they saw him down, but they just chopped off the head and retreated. Didn't seem to care much about the rest of us."

  Brock looked up as he heard Eli sigh. The alpha looked both relieved and disappointed.

  "You did the right thing," Eli said, clapping Gunnar on his uninjured arm. The grumpy alligator looked relieved.

  Considering how valuable Dr. Montgomery had been when it came to the vaccines and especially to curing any smaller shifters who were already sick, Brock supposed he understood the disappointed side of Eli. Tilting his head, he looked down at the body again. Mostly he was just pissed he hadn't been the one to do it.

  "Seems anticlimactic," grumbled Bethany, kicking the dead man's foot.

  "Bethany," Steele snapped as he yanked her away from the corpse. "Don't play with the dead body."

  She rolled her eyes. "I was kicking it, not playing with it. Did you think I was about to do a puppet show or something?"

  Looking up, Brock saw that Thor had been passing by close enough to hear Bethany's statement and was now eyeing her warily. He couldn't help but smirk at the reindeer shifter's consternation. Since there were several women in the herd who were obviously soldiers he wasn't entirely sure why Thor was so taken aback by Bethany. Maybe because she obviously hadn't been charmed by him. Or maybe it was the bunny thing. Or maybe just because she was so petite and delicate looking.

  "Are we all really needed here?" Brock asked. He wanted to go find Doc and see how she and the little girl skunk were doing. Since Lakewood had been cleared, Doc had said she was going to take the skunk baby back to the room she and Brock had shared last night so she could be away from the noise and dead bodies. The rest of the skunks had already been taken inside to a large room where they were being well-guarded—not that any of them seemed particularly brave or violent.

  Steele looked up at him and then glanced around and shrugged. "I don't think so." He looked down at the body. "Montgomery's not getting any deader. If you're done staring at him, I don't see why you can't go get some shuteye."