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  RUNNING

  WITH THE TIGER

  A PARANORMAL SHAPESHIFTER ROMANCE

  BONNIE BURROWS

  Copyright ©2016 by Bonnie Burrows

  All rights reserved.

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  About This Book

  Cambria thought that she knew everything there was to know about the world and its secret community of shape-shifting tigers. But she was about to discover that what she knew did not even scratch the surface of reality.

  Having been trained to fight the battle for the “good guys” against the Tiger shifters, Cambria believes they are all evil and must be stopped.

  Her beliefs begin to change when a kind hearted WereTiger named Egan James steps out of the shadows and rescues her from a dangerous situation. Something he didn't have to do for her at all.

  Now Cambria must run with this handsome stranger or risk dying. But what was the true motive behind Egan's rescuing of her? Can she really trust a man who is meant to be so evil?

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PROLOGUE

  Cambria hurriedly packed her rucksack as the bedroom door groaned on its hinges. Angry words worked their way through the door, but thirteen-year-old Cambria was done being scared. And she was done being beaten.

  She shoved the last of her clothes into the bag and threw it over her shoulder. The pounding continued and both her parents screamed through the door at her, calling her every foul name imaginable. A single tear slid down her cheek and she swiped it away before quietly unlatching her window and sliding it open.

  She climbed onto her bed and perched on the window sill for a moment. It was a long drop from the second story window, but her door was beginning to crack under the force of their banging and she was running out of time.

  She slid out slowly until she lowered herself as far as she could, clinging to the sill with tiny fingers barely strong enough to hold her weight. Taking a deep breath, she counted to three and let go, letting her body go limp to absorb as much of the landing as she could in her loose joints.

  The ground came fast, and her feet hit the rain softened ground for an instant before she fell back onto her backpack and began tumbling down the steep hill behind her house.

  She wouldn’t call it home. Home was a place filled with love and free from fear.

  She let herself fall for a moment before trying to work her way out of it. But she hadn’t counted on the steep hill being so hard to fight when she’d first had the brilliant idea to jump from her bedroom window.

  After what seemed like forever, she finally moved just right, adjusting herself from somersaults to merely sliding down the grassy, wet hill. She reached the bottom and her momentum finally ceased. The sound of her bedroom door crashing down echoed through the air, and Cambria sprang into action.

  She crouched low, using the moonless night to her advantage as she quickly worked her way to the tree line. Her father bellowed her name into the night, but she was already in the woods and would be long gone before they circled back through the house and made their way down the impossibly steep hill.

  That was, if they cared to go after her at all.

  Panting, and trying to get her bearings, she placed her hand on a tree and bent double. She moved her body, paying attention to her joints and checking for any injuries. Surprisingly, she was unscathed with the exception of a nasty scrape on her elbow she’d gotten when she made contact with the wall on the way down.

  A shotgun blast pulled her out of her musings, and spurred her into action. They were coming after her alright, and it looked like they didn’t care whether she lived or died, as long as she didn’t get away from them.

  She stumbled in the dark, trying to keep her feet under her and be quiet. Listening behind her, she couldn’t hear them coming, yet, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Her parents were accustomed to living in the country and were avid hunters.

  Cambria’s heart raced, and it was hard to hear anything over the pounding of her own heart. But her life depended on her flight, so she pressed on, convinced that she would hear another shotgun blast and feel a searing pain in her back at any moment.

  The packed trail beneath her feet softened before giving way to sand. Cambria knew what this meant, and took a hard left, skirting around the large swamp beyond the trees. She’d spent the last year memorizing the trails in hopes of one day escaping the hell that was her life.

  It would do her no good to escape her parents’ clutches only to find herself in the jaws of a hungry gator.

  She stopped for a moment, listening intently. It was late fall, and the ground was covered with dead leaves. If they were following her, she would be able to hear them even though most of the leaves had been soaked soft by the recent rains.

  But she heard nothing. She started walking, watching the path in front of her. There was little light for her to see, but the light sand that mixed in with the dirt on this part of the trail made traveling a little easier.

  It was late when she’d last looked at her clock, nearly ten p.m. She had nearly five miles to cover before she hit the route 90, which led directly into Sanderson. From there, she would hop on a train if she had to and get as far away from Florida as she could.

  Her breathing slowed and her heartbeat softened as she walked. The rush of adrenaline after locking herself in her room and jumping from her window, was finally starting to decline. Gone was the frantic feeling she’d had when she first hit the forest, replacing it was a sort of calm that Cambria hadn’t felt once in her short life.

  She was free.

  Not wanting to celebrate too soon and risk losing sight of her goal, she admonished herself that she was not free until she was as far from here as she could get. And that was going to take some doing. Her parents were both raging alcoholics, so she’d managed to steal and stash a large sum of money since she first planned her escape a few months after her twelfth birthday. But six hundred dollars wouldn’t get her very far, and at thirteen, she couldn’t drive a car. Her options were limited, putting one more roadblock between her and freedom.

  Cambria heard a noise in the bushes, and she stepped to the side to put more distance between herself and the edge of the trail closest to the swamp. It didn’t sound like a gator, and no one had seen a bear in these woods for a long while. If it was anything, Cambria knew it would be a wild boar.

  She slipped her hand into her pocket, wrapping her tiny fingers around the large switch blade she had stolen from her father’s things. Whatever it was, she wasn’t going down without a fight.

  The rustle came again, and a large shadow bounded out of the trees and directly onto her path. Cambria screamed before she could stop herself, frightening the young deer standing a few feet from her and directly in her path.

  Cambria let out the
breath she’d been holding and slipped the knife back into her pocket. She stomped her feet in the dirt, trying to shoo the deer out of her way so she could keep moving. But the deer didn’t budge. It just stood there, staring at her.

  The hair on the back of her neck stood when she realized that the deer wasn’t staring at her, but over her shoulder. Terrified to find herself face to face with a bear-or worse yet, her father, Cambria turned. She was ready to fight to the death for her freedom. She was done being a victim.

  She wasn’t prepared for what stood before her, and she barely registered the silver cost and the large head before she passed out cold. She heard her body hit the ground but felt nothing. And her final thought was that she was going to be ripped apart and eaten alive by a tiger.

  Cambria jumped awake, startled to find herself in a neat cabin, daylight streaming through a nearby window. The bed she rested on was soft and comfortable, the heavy quilt tucked lovingly around her shoulders.

  She threw back the quilt and looked down at her clothes. They were still dirty from her tumble down the hill and her run through the forest. Her boots had been removed, but otherwise she was exactly how she had been in the woods, before she’d come face to face with a tiger.

  Footsteps fell heavily in the next room, and Cambria gauged the distance from the bed to the tiny window cut into the outer wall.

  It was too far. The door opened slowly and a tall, slender man with a long face peeked into the room.

  “I see you’re awake. How are you feeling?” He asked, walking towards the bed with a steaming mug in his hand.

  “I’m fine, I guess.” Her voice sounded weird. It had been so long since someone had spoken to her instead of at her. She didn’t quite know how to react.

  “You had quite a scare and you passed out. You’ve a nasty bump on your head, but I think you’ll be fine. Would you like to call your parents so they know you’re safe?”

  At the mention of her parents, Cambria’s breath caught. What was she going to say to convince this man that she couldn’t go back to them without him alerting the authorities? If the police were called, she’d end up right back where she started. She couldn’t take that risk.

  She looked him straight in the eye and told him that her parents were dead.

  “In that case,” he said, “welcome to the family.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  The air rushed out of Cambria when she hit the ground, but she kept moving. She army-crawled under the barbwire, careful to keep her entire body as low to the ground as possible. More than once, her curly brown locks got tangled in the wire, but she pressed forward. She had a time to beat, and stopping to worry about her hair wasn’t going to help her beat her best time.

  When she was able to stand, she ran to the vertical wall and grabbed the knotted rope that hung from the top. She shimmied up the rope, smiling to herself as she reached the top and flipped over and onto the ground. She dashed through the knee deep water hazard and back onto the dry ground to a table.

  On the table lay a dismantled assault rifle. This is where Cambria had choked before, and she wasn’t about to screw it up this time. She put it together, reminding herself to go slow and keep her hands steady. It would do her no good to move too fast and drop pieces as she went.

  The last piece clicked in and she ran to the next station, laying down on her belly and putting the rifle on the short tripod before lining up the sights. She squeezed the trigger and knew in that instant that she had pulled it too soon.

  She forgot to check the wind before firing. Her shot went wide and missed the center of the target, lodging itself in the outer edge of the wooden board.

  And just like that she’d failed again.

  A whistle blew and she laid her rifle down and stood to address her instructor. Gary, an older, portly man with thinning gray hair and horrible oral hygiene, waddled up to Cambria. His lips pulled into a snarl and he looked her over. She squirmed under his gaze. Not because she was ashamed of her run today, but because Gary was obviously undressing her with his eyes. Again.

  At nineteen, she’d lived with the men from the brotherhood for the last six years of their lives. Most treated her like an annoying kid sister, but only Gary, who was old enough to be her grandfather, looked at her like a man who was starved.

  It made her ill. After her uncle Laskin had rescued her from the woods, Gary was one of the first people she’d met. At thirteen and so scared, she’d latched onto anyone that showed her any love. She’d been so starved for any kind of affection from her parents that every hug, every smile had felt like a million bucks.

  As soon as Cambria turned eighteen, Gary’s attitude towards her changed. It had gotten worse and worse over the last year and a half, but Cambria wasn’t sure how to broach the subject with Laskin. Gary was his right-hand man, and the two were super close. Cambria was special to Laskin, but she wasn’t so sure that would extend beyond his friendship with Gary. This place was her home, and as much as she hated Gary, she wasn’t going to jeopardize that by complaining about his attentions.

  Gary pointed to the rifle, asking her to get into firing position again. Cambria wanted to protest, but her instructions had been clear; if she wanted to fight with the resistance against the shifters, she had to pass the course. Failing the rifle challenge wasn’t going to cut it.

  She laid flat on her belly, wrinkling her nose against Gary’s stench when he crawled onto his massive belly beside her and flopped around until they were hip to hip.

  She looked through the sights just as Gary put his arm around her, guiding her hand and looking over her shoulder into the scope. He was practically on top of her, and Cambria wanted so badly to let herself gag at the smell of him, but she fought it. Opening her mouth, she breathed softly, trying not to stir the air around him.

  His hand covered hers, curling over her trigger finger and guiding her ever so slowly. He adjusted the rifle and pulled the trigger. A large hole appeared exactly where the heart was on the target, and Gary rolled away to examine his handiwork.

  “Your turn.”

  Cambria focused on the scope, trying to ignore the way Gary’s stench hung in the air around her, even though he was now five feet away. She took her time, breathing slowly and focusing on the steps she’d been taught, over and over again.

  Smoothly, she pulled the trigger. To the right of the heart, but still in the lethal range, a giant hole appeared. Gary jumped up in the air, whooping with delight.

  “Great job!” He hollered and Cambria couldn’t help but grin. She had earned her place making rounds with the other foot-soldiers.

  She jumped up after securing the weapon, and smiled.

  “Finally.” She said, her voice heavy with relief. It wasn’t just about foot-patrol, though that was her main motivation for training. She was tired of being left alone with Gary to guard the house. At least in plain sight, his behavior was somewhat tolerable. In the house, out of the sight of anyone who might be patrolling the perimeter, he was even more pushy and inappropriate.

  “Finally?” He asked, and Cambria’s heart sank.

  “I finished. I passed.”

  “No. You failed. You have to hit the target on the first try. The enemy isn’t going to stand there and wait for you to get your shit together. You have to do it right on the first try.”

  “I can do it. Let me run the course again and-”

  “You know the rules. You have to train for another week before you can test again. We can’t have a bunch of newbies screwing everything up for us. We have the bigger picture to look at.”

  His smirk was too much, and Cambria was angry. He was happy that she’d failed, and he didn’t bother hiding it. The more they were in the house together, the more often he would “accidentally” rub her as they passed in the hallways. Or he would slap her ass “affectionately” and claim she was just one of the guys like she always wanted to be. She might be young, but she wasn’t an idiot.

  Shoulders slumped, she turned and stor
med away. Gary called after her, reminding her that she was to clean the gun for the next runner. But there wouldn’t be a next runner. Of all the younger recruits, she was the only one who hadn’t passed. Even Tom, who had been recruited just one short year ago, had passed her up in rank and skill.

  Defeated, she practically stomped back to the house, wanting nothing more than to go to her room and hide from the world. She was an absolute failure, and Uncle Laskin wouldn’t be happy when he returned later in the week to find she’d let him down again.

  He had such high hopes for her.

  She removed her boots by the door and banged the mud off of them before walking into the house and going straight for her room. It wasn’t so much a house as a glorified cabin in the woods, but it had been her home for the past six years.

  Since she was the only girl, she was the only one with her own bathroom and shower in her bedroom. Everyone else had to use the shower cabin, which was behind the main cabin and afforded little privacy. Cambria had taken a lot of crap from the younger recruits, but Laskin had shut them up right away. They could be jealous and act like fools all they wanted, but Cambria had been there longer than most, and she was Laskin’s sweet little angel.

  Cambria shoved her door open and slammed it behind her. She wasn’t a delicate little angel, and she’d wanted to prove to Laskin that she was more than just a girl. But she’d failed, as she always had. She was starting to wonder if she would ever be good enough. Maybe this time would be the time when Laskin decided that she wasn’t his sweet niece anymore and he would send her packing.

  There was no way she could live in the city among the shifters like some sort of ignorant barbarian. They were too dangerous, and the humans who thought otherwise were just deluding themselves. No, Cambria would work until she succeeded, proving that she deserved to be here just as much as any man in the compound. She would earn her spot fair and square, or die trying.