Pride of the Cat I: Untamed

Pride of the Cat I:

UNTAMED

By

Madelaine Montague

( c ) Copyright by Madris DePasture writing as Madelaine Montague, 2024

Cover Art by Jenny Dixon, 2023

ISBN 978-1-60394-

Smashwords Edition

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

Chapter One

Dominic narrowed his eyes at the group that had stopped at the bars to peer in at them. They couldn’t speak when they were in cat form--which would have been dangerous even if they were able to. But they had developed a cat language to communicate in that form--crude--simple--but better than nothing when they spent 99% of their time in cat form--their natural skin--Siberian tiger, to be precise.

Which they had since they had been captured as cubs and then shipped across the great water to a jail for animals.

Hair like mother.

Xavier lifted his head and slitted a look in that direction. Not. Always say yellow hair like mother.

Anger flickered through Dominic. Yes. I remember.

Not remember. Mother hair red like mine.

Dominic decided to ignore that. They were the same age--from the same litter. His memory was as good as Xavier’s.

Which meant that neither of them had a very clear memory of their mother--not in human skin. They had only been a few weeks old when the hunter had killed their mother and taken them to sell them. They had grown up in the place where they lived now.

He could not say that it was a good place, but the humans were not cruel. They could not hunt--were not allowed to, but they were fed and given water. They had a pretend place that was not much like the lair he remembered or the way home wood had looked, but they could watch the humans for entertainment when they came by. And they had learned much about their ways just from watching.

The humans did not speak the language of their mother, though, and it took them a very long time to begin to understand it and they still could not pronounce the words like they should--like the humans did.

Because they could not practice without the risk of getting caught.

Nice. Round. Much meat.

Tink eat? Or fuck? She hab mate.

Dominic got up and went off to sulk.

If Xavier was not going to play the game, there was no point in listening to him.

The female the humans had thrown into the pen with them came loping up when he reached the water hole and he whipped around to meet the charge.

She swerved at the last moment and made a pretense of only coming to quench her thirst.

She hunkered down, though, and twitched her tail at him in invitation.

She was in heat.

The humans had brought her from somewhere else for them to breed her.

Which was why they had decided it was time to make a break for it--something they had been plotting almost since they had arrived and still had not implemented.

It was not that he had no interest at all in fucking her. He was horny and she was handy--and in heat--and he might have considered it if it was just fucking.

She was not one of the people, though.

And she was in heat and he was not about to risk getting a cub on her and allowing his child to grow up in the same prison that he had spent his life in.

Or allow a feline to rear his cub.

He and Xavier--they were neither feline nor human but they were both and something else. If he could not find a mate among his own kind, though, he was leaning more toward a human woman.

In point of fact, he had had his eye on their doctor since she had come to work at the animal prison. He found her … appealing--in all the ways that counted.

Meaning he did want to fuck her.

Not necessarily to breed her, but to fuck, yes.

Xavier did not like her.

He hated the dart she used to knock him out and the things he endured at her hands when he was not able to fend her off.

Truthfully, he did not like that either, but he would fuck her if he got the chance. He definitely would.

He was almost ready to fuck the toothy, psycho bitch with the long claws, in point of fact--that snarled at him and threatened to rip his throat out one moment and wagged her pussy in his face the next.

Because she was in heat and she had brought it to his attention that his dick was not just for pissing.

He shook the thought.

It would not be safe to stay now that the humans were trying to breed them. They could not do that and leave their young to the life they had had.

They could not take the tigress with them if they bred on her.

And the humans would begin to wonder what was wrong with them if they refused to breed the female.

Then they could be looking at being put down and cut up for study.

Maybe they would try more times to breed them with other females--but now that they realized they were mature enough to breed--or had simply decided they wanted to breed them--it would become increasingly dangerous to refuse to accept any female tiger.

Xavier groused that they were not ready. Their chances of pulling it off were low, very low.

Even he did not think they were ready, did not believe that they had learned enough to pass without notice among the humans, but they had little choice now.

He knew that.

Xavier knew it, too.

* * * *

Dominic and Xavier were both angry as they left their enclosure. Arguing was frustrating at any time--any kind of discussion was--due to their limitations and the electronic ‘eyes’ the humans used to watch them. But the argument went beyond frustration.

Dominic wanted to find a mate. Or at least a female to fuck.

He had been wanting to fuck for a very long time now.

He just had not understood that was why he was so miserable until the humans had brought the female tiger.

Now, he could hardly keep his mind off of the throbbing thing, and he was certain that he would be able to once he had emptied his balls so that they were not pounding like an aching tooth.

Xavier wanted to go home--cross the big water and find the mountain of ice where they had been born. There, he had insisted, they would find their own kind and then they could choose a mate that was suitable for them.

Dominic had no argument with that part of Xavier’s plan. He just did not see that it would be a problem to stop only a little while to take care of his problem when they had been stuck in their prison for years now.

They had discussed what they would do for days.

Until the humans had come and taken the female out of their enclosure.

They knew then that they had run out of time to act. If they were not quick, the humans would be back with their darts.

It was no great feat to get out of the enclosure since it had been made to keep beasts in and they could take human form. The locks were a little bit of a challenge, but they were stronger than ordinary humans and that was soon done, as well.

The dilemma came when they had left the enclosure.

There were ‘eyes’ everywhere. They had not actually been outside before in their memory and they had not known they would be watched all the way through the place.

Should they escape in beast form, they wondered?

Or would human form work better?

They settled near a cage that held birds to argue over it and finally decided the beast form would be best. The humans would know they were gone, after all, and the beast form would allow them to leap great distances, run fast, hide.

In human form, they had only human skins--none of the colorful skins they wore over their natural skin--and that alone would attract attention.

They would keep the beast form, they decided, until they were outside of their prison, beyond the electric eyes that watched.

Then they would find skins to cover their bare human skins and no one would know they were the beasts who had escaped.

They both still had reservations, but they finally agreed that would work the best as far as they could see.

And it did until they were outside. As dark as it was, though, they knew even human eyes would see that they were not covered and then they would know something was not right.

They slunk into the shadows to consider possibilities.

The humans had skins they put over their skins. It seemed only reasonable that they would keep that with their other things inside their lairs. They had only to find where the human lairs were.

Unfortunately, they were certain they could not afford to expose themselves as they were, and there was very little they could see from the darkened allies.

When they reached a break, however, where some sort of thing on wheels dashed past in both directions, they saw a human carrying something and