Nope. His whole damn family and most of the town were just like him. Isa was trying very hard not to panic, but it was definitely difficult. At least Valens was giving her the time to process what this could all mean.
The weirdest thing wasn’t that Valens was a tiger.
It was how much she missed a man she had only just met. They’d known each other for a week and a half, but spending two days apart was torture. Isa sat on the back patio, trying to read or plan her next stunt, but no matter what she tried to do, she couldn’t focus.
Her thoughts kept going back to Valens. His gorgeous green eyes. His soft hair. The way he got so mad when she told him about her stalker. Because, yeah. Apparently, she was okay with his reaction now. Her. The woman who had given him shit about how Alpha he went when he learned of her stalker.
Fuck it.
She missed him. Ignoring another creepy message from her stalker, she pulled up Valens’s contact information and wondered if she should call him. As she contemplated what she would even say to him, something moving in the bushes a couple yards away caught her eye.
A blond, furry animal bigger than the average woodland critter slinked by low to the ground.
If she hadn’t just seen Valens shift into a tiger two days ago, she would have thought she was losing her mind. But she was sure it was a lion. Positive, in fact.
She connected the call with Valens, desperate to know if his streak of tigers also included a few lions.
“Isa,” Valens sighed, sounding so relieved. “I’m so glad you called. I’ve been going out of my mind.”
“Is anyone in your streak family thing a lion?” Her question was met with a loud silence. “Valens? You there?”
“Why are you asking me about lions, Isa?”
“I saw one.”
“What? Where? When?”
“Easy, there, tiger. You don’t have to shout. I’m sitting on my back deck, and I swear to god, I just saw a lion padding by through the foliage. If I didn’t know about shifters, I wouldn’t have believed it, but…”
“Get inside the house. Now.” He roared the words in command, and for a second, Isa contemplated giving him a hard time. She didn’t like being told what to do, but there was something in his voice. Real panic that made the hair at the back of her neck stand on edge.
“Is everything okay?”
“No. Definitely not. Stay inside of the house. Are Luke and Tarrah with you?”
“Yeah. They’re in the house. Why?”
“Keep them with you.”
“Is the lion dangerous? He’s not one of yours?”
“No. He’s not. I never stopped to consider that your stalker could be a shifter.”
Isa’s stomach dropped. Her heart beat fast and hard. She hadn’t even considered that either. It’s not like she was used to knowing shifters were real. “It’s not possible.”
“Lock the doors. Stay inside. I’m gonna get one of the streak Enforcers to keep an eye on the house, okay? His name is Elija. He’s a good guy.”
“Why can’t you come over?” Fuck, but she was sounding whiny to herself. She didn’t like it.
“Because I’ve got to get to the bottom of this. I don’t know what lion is out there on tiger land, but I need to warn my brother. I need to warn the whole town. Hang tight, daredevil. And don’t do anything dangerous.”
She scoffed. “I might jump out of planes for fun, but facing down a lion isn’t exactly my idea of a good time.”
“Good. Let’s keep it that way.” He hung up the phone before she could say anything else.
She looked down at her device and frowned before retreating into the house.
Her life, which had never been normal, had taken an even weirder turn.
By dinner time, Isa was sick of waiting to hear back from Valens. Keeping Tarrah and Luke inside of the house was a challenge. They both wanted to know exactly what was going on in the sleepy town that made it dangerous to leave the cabin.
Isa didn’t know what to tell them.
Especially not when Luke announced that he had an errand to run and had to leave. Isa tried to convince him to stay. He didn’t. There went Valens’s theory that Luke was into her. The man left even though she and Tarrah pleaded with him to stay.
Isa grabbed her phone and considered calling Valens. She hadn’t so much as texted him since their strange conversation. Oh, she wanted to. But she was also not the kind of woman who called up her boyfriend in a panic to ask him what she should do.
If there was danger outside her door, then she would stay put. She might be Daredev-Isa, but she wasn’t dumb. If Valens, who could actually shift into a tiger, was concerned about the roaming lion, then she should be too.
She was so anxious, she didn’t even have the brain space to be bothered by her stalker’s message. She read it but didn’t bother registering what it said. It was creepy and strange like it always was. So what else was new.
After trying to down some soup to settle her stomach around seven p.m., the doorbell rang. Tarrah jumped up in fright and covered her mouth.
“Take it easy, Tarrah,” Isa said. “It’s not like the lion can ring a doorbell.”
“Right. Sorry. I’m just nervous.”
“You’re fine,” Isa reassured her before answering the door.
Valens stood on the porch, looking like he’d spent the day in a tornado. “Hi,” he said before taking her in his arms and kissing her deeply.
“Hello, right back at you, Doctor,” she teased when he pulled away. “Is everything okay?”
“Not really. We need to go somewhere to talk.”
“I can’t leave Tarrah here alone. She’s a wreck.”
“Where’s Luke?”
Isa rolled her eyes. “He left.”
“I’ll have Elija come in. He can get to know Tarrah.”
She didn’t like that in the least bit. “I can’t leave her with a stranger.”
Valens shook his head. “You don’t understand what I mean. Elija saw Tarrah in town earlier this week.” He pitched his voice low as he whispered in her ears. “Tarrah is his mate. Giving them time alone to get to know each other is important. Think about how it is for us. We don’t want to be apart either. We like being together because we’re ma—” He stopped talking, his mouth gaping wide open.
Isa narrowed her gaze at him. “What? Mates? Like us?”
Valens snapped his jaw closed and pulled a stress ball from fuck knows where. He squeezed the thing so hard, she was sure he was going to flatten it to death. “I should probably have told you about that when I showed you my tiger.”
“Explain what?” she roared.
“Let’s not do this here. Let’s go to my place.”
Isa took a step closer to him, looking straight into his eyes to see what the hell was going on in that head of his. Valens wasn’t making any sense, and she’d be damned if she got into a car with a man who kept secrets from her.
She was nobody’s fool. Not anymore.
14
VALENS
“Explain yourself,” Isa roared. “Now.”