Tiglon by the Tail - Tia Fielding.pdf

(1175 KB) Pobierz
Tiglon by the Tail |
Tia Fielding
2
August—September
N
OAH
woke up from a restless, nightmare-filled sleep. He
had no idea where these nightmares came from; they were
too vague to be connected to any real events or fears he
could distinguish in his waking hours. In this particular one
there was always a storm raging, which was almost funny,
because he hadn’t seen a proper storm in Finland yet, and
he’d lived there for years and years now. The one thing he
knew about the dreams was they always appeared when
changes were happening around his usually stable life on
the Jarvela farm.
He got up from the bed, stretching slowly, and scratched
his stomach absently, noting the lack of morning wood while
the need to take a leak was still there. Stumbling over some
socks, he made his way to the bathroom he shared with
Anton, the resident teenaged fox. Luckily Anton was still
asleep, so they didn’t have to compete over who got to use it
first.
Sure, there was another bathroom down the hall, but he
couldn’t use that one because of the latest addition to the
farm—a stray cheetah the younger members of the farm
family had found. The cheetah was female and had been
seriously malnourished and barely hanging in there when
the boys had managed to get her to the farm. Nobody knew
why she was so terrified of men—even the boys who found
her and saved her—but there was a deep-seated fear in her,
Tiglon by the Tail |
Tia Fielding
3
and that made things a little more interesting around the
house, like making sure Anton and Noah had to cope by
sharing a bathroom.
Once he had peed and brushed his teeth, Noah pulled
on some camo shorts and a white tank top before walking
down the stairs into the kitchen. No one else was awake, it
seemed, so he started a huge pot of coffee and began to
make omelets for everyone.
It didn’t take long for sounds of the other males waking
up to carry into the kitchen. There were two houses on the
farm's land, on the opposite sides of the large yard. The
almost-modern style, two-story building where Noah lived
was the new house, as opposed to the old house closer to the
lake shore, where the wolf pack were the only residents.
Noah smiled when he heard the quiet bickering from the
master bedroom where the owner of the farm, Mikael, was
teasing his usually more serious partner Maxim.
Damn, Noah was happy Mikael had finally found his
mate. Having been single, just like Noah, for all the time he
had been running his family farm after his father’s death
about a decade ago, Mikael’s lively spirit had suffered a bit.
It wasn’t until Maxim stumbled into their lives that Mikael
had begun to live properly again.
The world was what it was, shifters having to stick
together because revealing themselves to the human public
wasn’t an option, and finding their mate was something they
all wanted, even though it was far from the life-altering event
many current works of fiction painted it to be. Instead,
finding one's mate was just like in human relationships, but
it also connected your animal sides; it made your inner beast
content. Technically Mikael was only half shifter, but his
Tiglon by the Tail |
Tia Fielding
4
mother’s heritage in him assured that his inner “half of a
tiger” had responded to Maxim’s full Siberian tiger in a way
that made Noah happy but also left him melancholic.
Noah had a feeling their newcomer cheetah was bonding
with their third resident female, a lynx called Lark, in a way
nobody had expected, but was yet to talk to anyone about it.
“Morning.” Mikael walked into the kitchen and rubbed
his newly shaved head as he yawned widely.
“Morning, coffee is ready.” Noah smiled and got a pat on
his shoulder and a mumbled “good man” in response.
Maxim came to breakfast with his curly mop of hair still
wet from the shower and looked much more perky than
Mikael.
They sat down to eat their omelets and drink their
coffees and talked about what needed to be done that day.
Eventually they had refills of caffeine, and then Mikael and
Maxim went outside to check on the horses and sheep, while
Noah began to make another batch of omelets for Anton and
the females upstairs.
He slid a mushroom and tomato omelet on a plate as
Anton came trudging down the stairs.
“Morning,” Noah said in a cheerful tone he knew would
annoy Anton.
“Shut up,” the eighteen-year-old said and reached for
his mug that had Fox from the TV series
The Animals of
Farthing Wood
printed on the side.
“Here’s your omelet, and after Zoya comes in and then
comes back downstairs, I’ll put some laundry into the
machine, and then I’m off for the morning. Your turn to
Tiglon by the Tail |
Tia Fielding
5
vacuum and hang the laundry outside.” Noah placed a glass
on the kitchen table and poured Anton some juice.
“Thanks,” the boy said and brushed some of his unruly
auburn hair from his eyes.
“You’re welcome.”
Ten minutes later Zoya came in like she did every
morning these days.
“Morning boys.” She kissed both of their cheek and
picked up the tray with the omelets—mushroom and onions
for Lark, sausage, mushrooms and herbs for the cheetah—to
take upstairs.
By the time she came back down, Noah had the kitchen
cleaned up again, and Anton was finishing his breakfast.
“Anything special going on up there?” Noah asked,
nodding toward the stairs.
“Well, apparently Lark did the trick Mikael used on
Maxim when he wanted to know his name,” Zoya said,
referring to Mikael pointing to keys from his laptop and
marking down which ones Maxim grunted at in his tiger
form before he was healed enough to turn into a human.
“And?” Anton turned to look at Zoya.
Zoya smiled brightly. “Her name is Shani.”
Anton grinned and Noah couldn’t help but whoop. They
laughed a little, relieved there was finally some sort of
progress.
Besides, knowing someone’s name made a difference.
Trust was easier to establish when you could call someone
by their given name.

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin