Declan - Heart of a Tiger (Royal Taiga Streak #1) - J.R. Loveless Page 0,1

collar on a couple of the cubs he’d abducted, but something happened to them over the course of several months and they wasted away to nothing. Eventually, Carl stopped trying to prevent the others from shifting with a collar and just used threats and beatings to prevent them.

He'd once made the mistake of asking what he was, one he'd paid for dearly with fresh bruises, broken bones, and a scar over his left eye, a wound which had nearly taken his eyesight. Since then, he'd never broached the subject. The only things he knew of his mother were the awful words his father called her when drunk. Sean had no memory of her and knew she'd either died or left before he could remember. He liked to fantasize that she'd been a beautiful woman, a woman with a kind heart who'd passed away, because there was no way she'd have left him behind to remain with a man the likes of Carl McNeely.

There'd been others, ones who'd disappeared over the years, ones who hadn't been "good little boys and girls". Sean shuddered as he remembered the ones who hadn't made it through his father's beatings and sexual assaults. He'd been the unlucky one to bury their bodies out behind the house whenever one didn't make it. He tried to help the others, to keep them from angering his father, taught them how to stay out of Carl's way, to do the right things and complete their chores without mishap. The ones who struggled the most were the youngest cubs. They didn't tend to have the coordination of the older shifters. Whenever one of them made a mistake, Sean took the heat, claiming the mess as his own. On the days he could walk, he walked with a limp, a bone never set properly after a particularly bad beating. Oh, he healed faster than a human, but being unable to shift, he couldn't draw on his inner animal to heal himself and it still took days to heal something which would only take minutes or hours if he were able to take on his animal form. Thankfully, the bruise on the newest addition's cheek would heal quickly once the boy shifted.

"My name is Sean and... this... this..." How did he answer where they were? They were in his father's house, prison, hell. Gods, what did he call it? "What's your name?" he asked instead of answering the other question.

"Ronnie." Ronnie stood and looked around, shivering at the cages, and he scented the air. "You're all shifters, too. What does he want with us?"

"My father-"

"Your father!" Ronnie squawked, spinning around to gape at Sean. "That bastard's your father?"

Sean couldn't quite keep the corner of his mouth from curving up. Somehow he figured Ronnie's parents wouldn't approve of the boy's language. "My father doesn't like shifters."

Ronnie raised a brow, crossing his slender arms over his chest. Sean tried to guess what kind of shifter Ronnie was. He'd learned no two kinds of shifters smelled alike and Ronnie didn't smell the same as any of the others who'd come through the house before. Dark brown hair with light eyes, Ronnie didn't stand but around waist high on Sean, who was five foot eleven. "Where did you come from then?"

Sean shrugged a slender shoulder. "I've never really known the answer to that."

"How long have you all been down here? I can smell the forest outside, we're still in my streak’s area. I know it."

None of the others spoke, fearful Sean's father would return, and they always allowed Sean to explain the way of their world to the new arrivals. Sean sighed into the waning light and drew his knees to his chest, the clothing he wore was dirty and tattered, the jeans barely enough to be called that while the shirt, several sizes too big or perhaps just from his being half-starved, hung off his shoulders, moth-eaten in multiple places. "Some of us a couple of years, others longer."

"You've never tried to escape?" Ronnie demanded, mouth turned down at the corners, eyes roaming the room for possible exits.

Sean didn't really know how to answer the question without scaring the boy. Others had tried. The ones who'd been semi-successful were buried in the backyard. "The house... it's in a place where there are no neighbors. No one to hear anything or see anything. Father... Father chose this place on purpose. He doesn't allow any of us out of the house. Those of us he allows upstairs