The Shadow Billionaire's Fated Kitten

"Some stray must've gotten in here. Get rid of it." Beckett Hargrave wiped his hands like he'd touched something rotten. Then he slammed the door. He'd thrown me into the mud.

My back leg split open, one bright red line down the fur. Inside sat the woman who was allergic to cat hair. The one that got away. Three years, I hid what I was.

Three years, I was nothing but a sweet little cat curled up in his arms. And he threw me out like trash. For her. I dragged the bleeding leg through the rain, one inch at a time.

A black umbrella stopped over my head. A pair of expensive leather shoes. "You're a mess, kitten.

Come home with me." Later, chewing salmon in my new house, I heard the Hargrave heir had gone half out of his mind looking for a cat. Chapter 1 "You're shedding too much.

Don't shift back into a cat for a while." Beckett peeled off his suit jacket and dropped it in the trash. No hesitation. Not even a look. I was midgroom.

I put my lil paw down and pretended I hadn't been licking it. Nobody had touched my coat in so long it had knotted into mats. He'd changed.

He used to pick me up the second he walked in. Brush me out. Notice my claws had gotten long, and go find the clippers without me asking.

Now he sat down on the couch with his eyes locked on his phone. The corner of his mouth kept lifting. He was happy about something, and the something wasn't me.

When I jumped up beside him, the screen went black. That sweet smell that came off him turned bitter, fast, the way it always did. "Didn't I tell you to stay human?

I've got a partner coming around. She's allergic." I lifted a front paw so he could see. The nails had curled past the pads.

He hadn't cut them since the day he stopped touching me. "Kitty, you can turn into a person and you still need me to trim your nails? Isn't that a little lazy?

It's time you learned to function like a human being." His phone lit up. He checked the screen, stood, and took it in the other room. I watched his back.

My tail dropped and stayed down. Three years ago he found me hurt and carried me home. He took care of every last thing. He used to take me out in a carrier.

He'd put a hand on my head and say it soft, like a promise. "Whatever other cats have, our Kitty gets. Whatever other cats don't have, our Kitty gets that too." I believed him.

So I gave him back the only thing I had, which was being the sweetest, most obedient cat that ever lived. Everybody envied him. One in a million, they said. Then.

He got drunk one night and wrecked his car. He came home bloody and barely upright, and he looked so pathetic that I shifted. First time.

Right in front of him, if he'd been awake enough to see it. I wiped his face. Got him into bed. Found the antiseptic and cleaned him up. Made him a pot of chicken and rice soup.

He sobered up and saw a girl sitting on the edge of his mattress, and his whole face went slack.

I held the bowl out to him. "Your very own kitchen fairy worked very hard on this." So what happened? Where does a person go cold? The litter box, gone. The cat tree, taken apart.

Even the scratching post, gone. And after that. Was it my turn? "Kitty, something came up with my partner. I need to go get her. You…" He stopped. "Never mind.

Just sleep outside tonight." I looked at him. I didn't say anything. He was done coaxing me. "Kitty. Behave.

I've still got to clean up all this hair you leave everywhere." I got down off the couch and walked out. I didn't turn around.

Chapter 2 He called a cleaning crew before the door even shut behind me. They stripped that house down to the baseboards. Then he came in with his arm around her waist.

I'd seen her picture. Naomi Vance. The one that got away. Her face was flushed and her eyes weren't tracking.

She had one hand hooked behind his neck and she kept squirming into him.

Then she started sneezing. "Beckett, do you…" She stopped to sneeze again, eyes streaming. "Do you have a cat?" He held her upright and scanned the room.

His eyes found me in the corner. I hadn't meant to come back. It was raining. The wind had picked up. And there was nowhere in a gated community for a cat to sleep.

I went out to look. The HOA guy and a security guard came at me with a catch pole and a net, and I ran the whole way back. And then this.

I sat in the corner and made myself as small as I could get. Head down.

He had me by the scruff a second later. "Ugh, why is there a cat in here!" Naomi clapped a hand over her mouth, sneezing into it, coughing. "Probably a stray that wandered in from the neighborhood.

I'll throw it out." He opened the front door and threw me.

The HOA guy was standing right there with the net. "What kind of HOA lets strays walk into a house like this?" "Must be a resident's cat that got out, sir.

I'm sorry for the trouble." "Look at it. Filthy coat, nails out to here. That is not somebody's pet." I landed in a puddle. The mud went straight through my fur to the skin.

I sat there in it. The whole time, he never once looked at me. I used to be a resident's cat. Now I was a stray. My back leg hurt. I didn't stop for it.

I went over the curb into the landscaping and ran, no direction, rain coming down sideways. I ran until the leg wouldn't let me anymore.

When I stopped, there was a shard of glass in it, and blood coming out fast enough to thin in the water. The sky went dark, and the rain kept getting worse.

I limped and let it hit me and had nowhere in particular to be. I'd been a stray before. Three years in a human's house was a place I stayed for a while, that's all. Then.

Head down, I walked into something and stopped. The rain quit landing on me. There were black leather shoes in front of my face. I looked up. Suit. Umbrella.

A man standing in the middle of the road like he'd lost his mind. He picked me up. Sharp eyes, narrowed at the corners. I knew that face. Beckett Hargrave's archrival.

Julian Ashford. "Do you know what a stray cat is supposed to mean?" He ran a hand over my soaked head. "Come home with me, you filthy little thing." Humans change.

Humans turn on you. I wasn't doing this twice. So I let him have it. Every filthy word a cat knows, right in his face, at volume.

I swore at him and fought him at the same time, twisting to get out of his hands. The harder I fought, the more the leg bled.

All I did was make it worse, and wear myself out, and none of it got me anywhere Chapter 3 My claws were hooked into the front of his shirt. Through the fabric, into skin.

He didn't let go of me for a second. This guy doesn't flinch. A cat cannot win against that. The rain came down harder, loud enough to fill the whole street.

Then the door shut and all of it stayed outside. My fur was plastered flat to me. Even the air moving through the room made me shake. He hadn't come out of it any better.

His shirt had a tear down the left side and a mess of pulled threads down the right. Soaked through, all of it. And in places, blood had spread out under the wet. I'd done that.

I put my head down and gave him one small meow. Sorry. He'd just been the one standing there when I needed something to take it out on. People change and people turn on you, sure.

But I remembered him now. There's one of those outdoor shelters the humans put out for strays, and I'd seen him at it. Topping off the food.

Fixing the automatic feeder when it jammed. Cleaning the whole thing out. More than once. Maybe he just saw a cat sitting in the rain. Maybe that's all this is.

While I was busy thinking about all that, a towel came down over me, huge and soft. He worked around the leg, pressing the water out, drying me off. "This is going to hurt a little.

Hang on." He caught my back foot. Everything in me wanted to kick, but I knew what he was doing. The glass came out of my leg and I took it.

Then the cotton ball hit the wound, soaked in antiseptic, and I was done taking anything. Both front pads spread. Every claw came out and had nowhere to go.

So I just sat there and screamed. "Mrrrow! Mrow mrow mrow mrow!" Beckett Hargrave. This is his fault. If it weren't for him I wouldn't be sitting in a stranger's house bleeding.

If you don't want a cat, say you don't want a cat. Don't do all this. Don't wreck a cat's whole heart on the way out. Just wait until I'm better. "Okay. Okay.

It's over." He kept his voice low and kept saying it. I kept swearing anyway, furious and sorry for myself in equal parts.

Which is why I didn't notice he'd carried me straight into his bedroom. By the time I ran out of insults, I was somewhere no cat is supposed to be. A human's most private room.

He set me down on the rug. Then, right in front of me, he stripped off every wet thing he had on. Directly in front of me. My eyes were already round. They got rounder.

Beckett never let me in his bedroom. Even after I could take human form, I only went in when he was drunk enough to need someone. He never changed clothes in front of me. Ever.

The most I ever got was a tie pulled loose and two buttons. This one didn't treat me like company. Three moves and it was all on the floor. He was built.

The claw marks I'd left across his chest actually worked on him, in a way I did not want to think about too hard. Wide back. Stomach cut in clean lines.

Nothing on him that wasn't doing a job. Turns out a beautiful man is the fastest cure for grief. He picked up a cotton ball and bent his head to work on his own chest.

I dragged my bad leg across the rug until I was at his feet, and stretched up to get a closer look at the damage. "Getting a good sense of how sharp your claws are?" I put my head down.

My nails were still out, still long, still not cut, and something in my chest went tight and sour.

Chapter 4 I flattened out right there on the rug and tucked both paws under my chest where he couldn't see them. I'd seen how long they were. Every time I took human form I saw.

I just never cut them myself. What cat with a person of her own cuts her own nails? You're supposed to be talked into it. Fussed over. Held still while somebody does it for you.

So I left them. Let them grow. Let the coat mat up too, while I was at it. He came back in pajama pants, crouched down next to me, and rubbed my head. Then he fed me a dried minnow.

That was a good minnow. I sat there in my grief and chewed. And then I was in the air again. Snip snip snip. He had one whole paw done before I understood what was happening.

I stopped chewing and looked up at him. He looked back, gave me a small nod, and in the time it took me to blink, snip snip snip, the other front paw was done too. "Good girl.

Best cat there is." He said it while he started on the back feet. I sat on the blanket and watched him concentrate on my toes, and I meowed at him. "What's wrong?" I meowed again.

Nothing was wrong. There was just something rising up in my throat and the only thing I could do with it was make noise. "Am I hurting you?

I'll go softer." When the nails were done he brought out a little comb and worked through my coat. It had been so long. Somebody holding me like I was worth the trouble.

It was late by the time he went to bed. The rain hadn't let up at all. Even with every window shut you could hear the wind going.

I shifted back into a girl, and the bandage on my leg tore right off, because a girl's leg is not a cat's leg. I looked at the man asleep in the bed.

Then I went straight to the bay window and cranked the handle open. Rain blew in and hit my face. He's a good person. I'm still not doing this twice.

I had one leg up when my ears caught the change in him. His breathing had gone heavy and fast. Is he running a fever?

Back when I was on the street, an old clinic cat told me about this once. Humans are fragile in stupid ways. They get rained on, they get sick.

They get scratched by one of us and don't clean it, they get sick. Their brain cooks and afterward they can't talk right. He got rained on and scratched by me. That's both.

A cat with any conscience at all cannot leave a man to cook. So I pulled the window shut and went over to the bed. The closer I got, the louder the breathing was.

I put my hand on his forehead. Hot enough to burn a paw. He really was sick.

His voice came out rough and half formed. "Water…" I went for the water pitcher and poured him a glass, warm. I was going to shake him awake. Then I remembered something.

Back when Beckett didn't know I could turn into a person, he was decent to me. It was after he found out that he started running hot and cold and wouldn't stay steady.

This man dried me off and cut my nails and cleaned my leg.

And we're still strangers. "You're a good person, but I'm still leaving." I set the glass on the nightstand and decided to use what my kind can do, and call it even for saving my life.

Chapter 5