Redeeming Rue AP4 by R. E. Butler Page A

future.”
    Pretty words, Rue thought, but she really didn’t think that anything was going to change as the sun rose.  Someone was going to die; she could feel it in her bones.  If she had her way, she would choose herself.  Dom could have a chance at a good life still, and James and John would move on and find new mates.  Ones who weren’t disfigured with a bounty on their heads.  Her heart ached, but she knew what she had to do.  She would throw herself on the mercy of her clan and hope that they would end her swiftly and allow Dom to live.
    It was the only way.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Dom’s whole body ached from being tied up.  The panthers who had come for him had used some kind of wire to bind him.  His hands were tied in front of him, the wire cutting into his flesh every time the vehicle he was in hit a bump on the road.  His legs were bound as well, and he was gagged and blindfolded.  But he still heard everything.  The people who had come for him knew he was Veruka’s son.  He regained consciousness when he was carried out of the hotel room, and he caught a glimpse of a woman who looked at lot like his mom, and he believed that was his grandmother.  Probably one of the men was his grandfather, the other males cousins or members of her clan.  They gagged him so quickly that he couldn’t ask them what happened to his mom.  She was a fighter, but he was afraid that she had been captured and killed already, and they were coming for him to put an end to him as well.
    He felt like a total idiot.  He’d encouraged her to see the ceremony, to check in on her family and finally get a chance to say goodbye, even if it was just her whispering the words to herself in the woods.  She had needed to be able to close the door on her past.  Years of nightmares were not fair.  He had thought this was a way to end her torment, but he’d probably just convinced her to skip along happily to her death.  She had told him that her people would kill them both if they ever found out she’d had a son, but he hadn’t really believed that.  Not if he was being truthful.  In his mind, people didn’t just go around killing other people for having kids with different fur coloring.  He loved his white fur.  It kicked ass.
    He’d never met another panther outside of his mom, but she said his shifted form was much bigger than any other panther males she’d known.  He liked being the biggest.  When she talked about moving them to Canada, he’d been skeptical, but then she had said they would call themselves white leopards, and he thought that would work and he’d finally get a chance to hunt and spend time in his shift outside.  There had to be a place somewhere where people didn’t care what others shifted into or the color of their fur, and that was where he and his mom belonged.
    He wished he could shift.  The bonds were too tight on his body, though, effectively holding him captive in his human form.  He hated the helpless feeling that coursed through him, but unless he got out of his bonds, he was a sitting duck.
    The van braked suddenly, and he slid forward painfully on the rough carpet he laid on.  He’d have given his left canine for a knife.  Or some kind of guardian angel who could come down and kick ass and set him free.  The back door swung open with a creak.  Someone grabbed his ankles and yanked him out of the back.  He groaned as his head hit the edge of the van and his body banged against the ground.  Defenseless to protect himself, his head and back had borne the brunt of the fall, and his head spun as pain rocked through him.
    He tried to roll to his knees and make a quick escape, but a swift foot to his stomach stopped him dead in his tracks.
    A hand fisted in his hair and gave him a rough shake.  “You’re going nowhere, sinner, but to the hell you deserve.”
    Two sets of hands lifted him halfway off the ground and dragged him.  The ground under his feet was rough and uneven with