Free Trusting the Tiger: BBW Tiger Shifter Paranormal Romance by Zoe Chant Page B

scream that echoed through her mind, and was suddenly cut off.
    Toni’s breath caught in her throat. < Lexi! Felix! > she called, only just remembering to use mindspeak and not scream their names aloud. Beside her, Jack froze, his grip on her wrist tightening.
    “I—” Toni stammered, words failing her. Neither of the children responded to her silent cry, though she was positive it was their scream she had heard. She felt herself go pale, skin prickly and cold. She pulled her hand out of Jack’s grasp and dropped the bike. “I’ve – I’ve got to go.”
    Toni broke into a run. She barely knew what direction she was running in, but her legs pushed on, leaves and gravel crunching under her feet. She burst through the trees into open ground and just had time to recognise the clearing with the bike ramps and jumps before she collided with Karen.
    The blonde woman’s face was wracked with worry. “Toni, I—”
    “Where are they?” Toni gasped. Inside she was still calling out, < Kids, where are you? Just shout out, let me know you’re okay! >
    Karen’s eyes flickered from Toni’s to a point behind her and she felt, rather than heard, Jack run up to stand at her shoulder.
    Karen ran a hand through her hair and grimaced. “Toni, there you are. I don’t want to worry you, but I’m not sure where Felix and Lexi have gotten to…”
    Jack put one hand on Toni’s shoulder and she shrugged it off, mind racing. God, she was so stupid. How had she ever thought she could spend a day apart from the kids and they would stay safe? She should have known that no human babysitters would be a match for the two shifter children. And now—
    She called out to the twins again, desperately hoping to hear an answer, any answer.
    Nothing.
    Something had happened to them. She didn’t want to think what. She couldn’t.
    “I have to go,” she stammered. “I have to – have to call—”
    “Toni, calm down. Listen to me.” Jack had both hands on her shoulders and was looking down into her eyes.
    Toni realized she was hyperventilating, her pulse racing. She tried to control her breathing.
    If Lexi and Felix couldn’t even mindspeak to her…
    Toni felt herself crumble as the evidence lined up in front of her. If Lexi and Felix were ever in real danger, no matter what the risk of revealing their shifter identities, they would transform. There were few places they couldn’t escape from in cat form. And, human or cat, they would still be able to call out to her. 
    Unless someone already knew they might shift, and took precautions to prevent their escape that way.
    Toni clenched her fists until her fingers stung. Stung like they’d been burnt.
    De Jager. And that thing , whatever it was, that he’d been so intent on when she first saw him. He had to have something to do with this.
    With growing horror, Toni looked back on the events of the previous evening in a new light. De Jager must have been in the campground the whole time. But he’d only approached her after he’d seen her with the twins.
    After Felix had been mindspeaking with her.
    Could the device de Jager had been using – Toni’s mind reeled – some sort of tracker that picked up on mindspeak? And – he must have deliberately dropped it in front of her. The way it had stung her … it had looked like a burn, but it had felt as though it had scraped skin off her fingertips where she touched it.
    Skin. Blood. DNA.
    Toni gulped.
    Of course. He wouldn’t have been able to go up to the kids, but an adult, a related adult, was fair game. Toni’s shifter genes weren’t active, but they were still there . All those doctors’ visits when she was young had proved that.
    After picking up on Felix’s mindspeak, and her defective DNA, de Jager would have had enough evidence to figure out who the shifters were in their little trio.
    And if he had the technology to do all that … Jack had said de Jager was a hunter. He wouldn’t want to leave shifters any advantage. If