The Shadow's Leap [Mates of the Jaguar 1] (Siren Publishing Menage Everlasting) Read online

  Mates of the Jaguar 1

  The Shadow’s Leap

  Taylor isn’t ready for a mate, but then she finds herself with two that she doesn’t know what to do with. They are adamant that she is theirs, even when her leader says she is to mate with the jaguars’ leader instead. Can she defy her uncle at the expense of her Leap? If she refuses her uncle’s bidding, another leader my take over her Leap and kill all of the males. If she agrees, she loses her true mates.

  Marco and Rubio have waited years for their true mate and don’t plan on losing her once they find her. They appeal to their leader to allow them to claim their mate. In doing so, they could be condemning their shadow to living in the jungle with a drug cartel using them to do its dirty work.

  If there is a third option, can they agree to take it? Will Taylor risk her Leap in order to claim her mates?

  Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Shape-shifter

  Length: 30,012 words

  THE SHADOW'S LEAP

  Mates of the Jaguar 1

  Marla Monroe

  

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  THE SHADOW'S LEAP

  Copyright © 2017 by Marla Monroe

  ISBN: 978-1-64010-324-5

  First Publication: June 2017

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All art and logo copyright © 2017 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

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  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Marla Monroe has been writing professionally for nearly thirteen years. Her first book with Siren was published in January 2011, and she now has over 75 books available with them. She loves to write and spends every spare minute either at the keyboard or reading. She writes everything from sizzling-hot cowboys, emotionally charged BDSM, and dangerously addictive shifters to science fiction ménages with the occasional badass biker thrown in for good measure.

  Marla lives in the southern US and works full-time at a busy hospital. When not writing, she loves to travel, spend time with her feline muses, and read. Although she misses her cross-stitch and putting together puzzles, she is much happier writing fantasy worlds where she can make everyone’s dreams come true. She’s always eager to try something new and thoroughly enjoys the research she does for her books. She loves to hear from readers about what they are looking for in their reading adventures.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Landmarks

  Cover

  THE SHADOW'S LEAP

  Mates of the Jaguar 1

  MARLA MONROE

  Copyright © 2017

  Chapter One

  “Damn them!” Marco snatched up the small limp body of a human child and ran with him toward home. “Grab the other one, Rubio. Diaz and Miguel are covering us.”

  Marco watched as his twin scooped the child lying crumpled on the ground into his arms. The poor thing had been lying less than five feet from her mother’s butchered body. His brother would have no way to know if the child was alive or not until they reached their home. At least they wouldn’t end up as some scavenger’s next meal.

  As soon as they reached the outskirts of their community, Marco slowed down and adjusted the child in his arms to a more comfortable position. It was possible he was doing more harm to the young boy with how he’d carried him away from the fighting. He prayed that he hadn’t.

  Rubio swung open the gate to their back veranda where they often watched the shadow’s young. Several pallets of soft grasses lay scattered near the house beneath the shade of the awning for when one of the young needed to rest.

  He and his brother gently laid the two human children on the pallets. Both were covered in blood, but Marco hoped it was the children’s madre and not theirs.

  “The female is breathing, brother, but she has a serious cut on her arm. It’s almost to the bone. I’ll be right back.” Rubio ran into the house.

  Marco knew he would bring back supplies to tend to the children. The little male child he’d managed to save didn’t seem to have any cuts but had a nasty bump on his head where someone had hit him with something heavy. He prayed there would be no brain injury or swelling. They were well over an hour from the nearest hospital. In the wilds of the Central American jungle where they lived, the law of the jungle still lived on. Only the strong survived, and when someone was injured, more than likely they would die. Marco didn’t want that for these young.

  His Shadow, the name for a jaguar family or group, lived deep in the rain forest where they had thrived for many hundreds of years. That was before the deforestation and the influx of cartels, drug lords, and the crooked military. Now innocents were slaughtered when his Shadow refused to do their dirty work.

  “Here, brother.” Rubio handed Marco the box of medical supplies. “How is the little male child?”

  “He has a cut and a large knot on his forehead, but I don’t see any other cuts on his body. Head wounds bleed a lot, and some of the blood on him is probably his madre’s, as well.” Marco used some gauze and saline to begin cleaning the blood and dirt from the male child as Rubio did the same for the little female.

  “She needs stitches in this arm. We need to take them to our healer. We can’t care for them here, and I want back out to fight those bastards. I don’t think I can take much more of this carnage, brother.”

  “Neither can I. We’ll leave them with the healer and return to help transport the injured into Suchitito once the fighting is over. I want the blood of the one who cut down the females. He used a machete, so he should be easy to find.” Marco finished cle
aning the young male’s wound before picking him up and carrying him close to his chest as if he were spun glass. His brother did the same with his bundle.

  He followed Rubio to the hut where their healer, Carlos, lived. He was a good deal older than they were but still moved as easily as one half his age. The healer met them at the door when Rubio called out from a few yards away.

  “What are you bringing me?” He looked down at their burdens. “Put them over there.”

  They settled the young on a soft bed in the back of the main room of Carlos’s home. He immediately began checking them over.

  “The bastards are warning us again that if we won’t fight for them they will continue to kill the innocents in front of us. They killed their mother and nearly got them before we arrived and attacked them.” Marco pulled the soft blanket away from the male child’s face and head. “He doesn’t have any other injuries that I could find except his head. He’s been unconscious since I picked him up.”

  “Hmm.” Carlos looked him over then moved to the female child. “And what have we here?”

  “They nearly cut her arm in two. I’ve wrapped it, but it needs stitches and a good cleaning.” Rubio unwrapped the bandage so that Carlos could see.

  “Pigs! To do this to children. They should be drawn and quartered.” Carlos had little patience with those who harmed females and their young.

  “We agree. Do you need our help? We’d like to return to fight with the others.” Marco waited for the healer’s nod.

  “Go and wipe them out. I can care for these two young. I’ll call for Maria to help once they wake. Hurry before the fighting is over and you get no revenge in their madre’s name.”

  They nodded and stripped as they left, shifting to their jaguars on the run. It wasn’t as fluid or painless as when they had time to flow into their cats, but they didn’t want to take the time. Once they rid their territory of this group of drug lords another would soon pop up, but what choice did they have?

  Jag, the Felix of their Shadow, had talked about taking over the entire territory and killing anyone who attempted to start up another drug business in it, but that would require more males and more effort to keep the area free of the bastards. Plus, it would put their females and young in greater danger than they were already in.

  As soon as they reached the edge of the fighting, Marco felt a bullet whiz past his ear. This was new. They rarely fought with guns when engaging them. They didn’t want to kill them. The cartels needed them as muscle for their operations. Another bullet grazed his shoulder. Rage burned with the adrenaline pumping through his bloodstream now. He charged the bastard with the gun and took him down in one leap.

  One down, but I still need to find the one with the machete if the others haven’t already gotten to him. The young deserve justice for the loss of their madre.

  Marco looked up to see Rubio stretched out on a limb in a tree, his focus on a male with two knives as he chased a young human male of about fifteen or so years. His brother let the young male pass then sprang from the branch to take out the bastardo as he passed beneath the limb. Marco didn’t need to stick around to see if his brother killed him or not. That was a given. He needed to find the one responsible for the mutilation of that poor female and her young child.

  A loud guttural scream cut short from behind him only verified what Marco had already known. Rubio didn’t miss. Marco swiped at a human carrying a large knife, but it wasn’t the one he wanted. The dirty male went down without even seeing what hit him.

  He continued chasing after one human piece of trash after another then, finally, just a few hundred yards away, stood his target. He had a female by her hair with the machete at her throat. He was yelling at Jag and Diaz that unless they agreed to patrol their drug warehouses to keep anyone from stealing their merchandise, he would slash her neck so that she bled out slow.

  “She’ll die a painful death if you don’t agree to my terms, animal.” His stilted English was nearly impossible to understand. Why he spoke in English and not Spanish, Marco had no idea.

  The bastard lowered the blade and made a quick small cut to the woman’s chest just above her heaving breasts. He heard her indrawn breath, but she didn’t whimper or cry out. He respected her strength and vowed he’d do what he could to save her.

  While Jag and Diaz tried to negotiate with him, Marco circled around behind the man, using the fighting going on around him to mask his approach. He knew the moment Diaz spotted him. He didn’t let on, but the quick shift of the male’s right hand was all he needed to know that they would provide an opportunity for him to strike.

  All it would take was one quick bite to the man’s skull and he’d crush it, stopping all movement from the bastard so he wouldn’t slash the female’s throat as he fell. He’d aim for the part just above the cervical spine. It would give the female the best chance of escaping without injury.

  Marco froze not ten feet from the male human and his prisoner. Jag threw up his hands and yelled, “Fine! You win. Release her and you have our word we will fight for you as long as you are in charge.”

  Marco had to fight to keep from chuffing in amusement at Jag’s play on words. If he had his say, the male’s days of being in charge were limited to the next ten seconds or less.

  “Espléndido!” He dropped his arm and took a step back but then swung the knife in an arc that would decapitate the poor female’s head if he didn’t manage to catch the man’s arm instead of his neck.

  Marco leapt, managed to grab the male’s arm, and snapped it clean off, stopping the machete from digging into the female’s neck. Instead, the male screamed, running around with most of his arm missing. Marco left the female to Jag and Diaz. He had wounded prey to chase down. It didn’t take long. The idiot hadn’t stopped the blood flow, which would have been the smart thing to do. Instead he’d run around pumping it out faster until he’d collapsed at the base of a tree.

  Standing over him, Marco’s brother dripped saliva from his fangs onto the dying man’s face. The big cat opened his mouth wide and growled. The low guttural sound, along with a loud hiss, would even frighten other large cats. If possible, the man grew even paler.

  While Rubio terrorized the human piece of filth, Marco walked over him to sit next to the human filth and took a nice long lick of the adrenaline-laced blood from what was left of his arm then smacked his lips and cleaned his muzzle with his tongue. That and his brother staring down at him with a mouth full of teeth were the last things he saw before he died.

  Marco stared at his brother and nodded. They’d done it. Not only had they avenged the poor humans but they’d wiped out an entire cartel. Unfortunately, they both knew that another one would fill the empty void within a week or two. Their only recourse was to either take over the territory or move.

  Their Felix was trying to find somewhere in the United States to settle where they wouldn’t have war lords or cartels trying to bully them into being their muscle. Finding territory was proving to be more difficult than Jag had first believed. Most of the shifters in the US didn’t want a shadow of jaguars anywhere near their door.

  He and his brother had no idea how everything would turn out, but they did know that something had to change and soon. He, along with many other males, was slowly going insane watching the carnage over and over again. That the humans hadn’t yet targeted their females and young was the only thing that kept the jaguars from eliminating any human male they encountered. It was just a matter of time though. Eventually they would take that step and damn them all to hell.

  “We’ve stopped this one, brother.” Rubio had changed and was attempting to wipe some of the blood off of him with a large leaf he’d picked up from the ground.

  Marco remained in his jaguar form. He didn’t want to be human for a while longer. Though his human side didn’t do such atrocious things, he needed to be free of him for a little longer.

  Instead, he chuffed at his brother to let him know that he agreed. Rubio steered awa
y from their community toward one of the tributaries of the river where he could wash off before returning home. Neither one of them wanted to carry any part of the carnage into their home. It was a sanctuary for them. One that they hoped to someday bring their mate to live.

  “Come on, Marco. Time to get this crap off of us. I can’t stand the stench of it.”

  Marco dove in ahead of his brother and swam around beneath the water before coming up for air. Rubio had dived in right behind him and was even now treading water while he rubbed at his hair to clean the blood from it. It was too bad that when they shifted back to their human side the blood didn’t disappear. Instead it coated their bare skin.

  “How long do you think before the next one shows up?” Rubio wasn’t looking at him now. He still concentrated on cleaning his long hair.

  Marco sighed and allowed the change to flow through him. In the water it was a little more difficult as he sank before he was able to function, but when he broke the surface again, he still didn’t have an answer.

  “Not long enough, brother. Not long enough.”

  Chapter Two

  “What do you think?” Marco leaned back against the wide Kapok tree, lifting his arms up the tree’s trunk in a satisfying stretch before relaxing back into a comfortable slump.

  “I wish we could settle in Louisiana. Florida would be okay, but I prefer the wilder areas in the swamps.” Rubio tugged on the clouded leopard’s scruff then rolled the cat over to rub her belly. “I’m fucking tired of watching them parade women and children in front of us as reminders that they’ll slaughter them if we don’t play their games.”