Taming the Lion Page 18

  “You agreed to do this. You gave your word.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry isn’t good enough,” he said, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. “We need you to honor your promise.”

  Lila started to say something—probably another apology—but Patch spoke over her. She had no trouble meeting his eyes, her gold-flecked gaze blazing. “Let it go, Roman. Lila is in love with someone else.”

  “Well, so am I, but the pride comes first, doesn’t it?” he snapped.

  Her jaw dropped, eyes widening. It wasn’t exactly the way he’d planned on confessing his love to her, but nothing with Patch had ever conformed to his plans.

  “Lila.” Her father stepped forward, his voice firm. “You know how this will look. It will be seen as a rejection of my choice for heir.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Patch said, finding her tongue again. “One or two people might take it that way, but everyone knows Lila, they adore her, they believe her. If she says it’s true love and she and Santiago are all lovey-dovey at each other, no one is going to think less of Roman. He’ll be the bigger man and wish them well, then begin courting some appropriate lioness. Holly. Or Jasmine, maybe.”

  Roman glared at her. He hadn’t missed the way she was handing him off to any lioness who would have him. “You have it all worked out, don’t you?”

  “It wasn’t hard to work out,” she snapped.

  “And if I don’t want to date another lioness?”

  “You’ll look like you’re nursing a broken heart. Which is romantic for a week or two and after that it starts to look like wallowing and gets pathetic in a hurry.”

  “Patch,” Lila gasped.

  “Pathetic,” he growled. Patch sure did have a flair for calling him names when no one else would dare.

  She turned to her best friend. “Lila, are you going to marry Roman?”

  “Of course not,” the blonde blurted, then her eyes flicked to him and she flushed. “No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “Is there any chance you’re going to change your mind?” Patch pressed.

  “None,” Lila declared, leaning against Santiago so their shoulders met.

  “We’re prepared to run away if we have to, but I’d rather not do that to Lila,” Santiago put in.

  Patch turned back to Roman. “There you have it. That’s the situation. Your fiancé isn’t your fiancé anymore. So now you just need to decide how you’re going to deal with that.”

  Roman met her blazing eyes. Why was Patch doing this? She couldn’t think if Lila was out of the way they could be together. No. There wasn’t a single spark of hope in her eyes. And she’d practically forced the idea of another lioness down his throat. She wasn’t on his side in this. She was on Lila’s.

  But she was also right.

  This wasn’t the fifteenth century. They couldn’t force Lila to marry him if she’d decided she didn’t want to. He didn’t want her to marry him if it was really going to make her miserable. He’d thought she was just as content doing her duty as he was, but apparently Santiago had changed that.

  Which left him where, exactly?

  Roman looked to the Alpha. “Greg?”

  The Alpha met his eyes and must have read his concession there. “Well, shit,” he muttered. He turned to the trio against the wall, pulling on his invisible mantle of authority. “Lila, Santiago, you’ll keep this quiet until we decide how we want to handle breaking the news to the pride.”

  “They need to come out before Roman is seen with anyone else,” Patch put in. “Lila’s beloved. You don’t want it to look like Roman threw her over.”

  The Alpha fixed the cougar with a hard stare. “We’ll all keep our mouths shut about this until we can agree how best to inform the pride. Am I clear, Patricia?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We all have a lot on our plates right now and the pride is in enough upheaval as it is. We’ll let the illusion of the engagement stand for the next few days. I am confident we can trust your discretion.” He stared down the three against the wall until they all mumbled affirmatives. “Good. That will be all.”

  The trio stood to leave and Roman moved to intercept Patch, but the Alpha’s low command stopped him. “Roman. My office.”

  As the others dispersed, he cast one last look over his shoulder at Patch’s retreating back, and then followed the Alpha up the stairs to his office. As with everything else in the house, the Alpha’s office was designed to impress and intimidate. The desk was a slab of black marble that looked like it had been there since the dawn of time and the rest of the house had been built around it. Roman took a seat on one of the long low lounges that curved in front of the desk—ostensibly so shifters could be comfortable sitting there in any shape, but also so whoever approached the Alpha would be forced to look up at him as they petitioned.

  “I’m sorry about this situation with Lila.” The Alpha dropped into the chair behind his desk with a beleaguered sigh. “I’ve never understood where she got that fanciful streak from.”

  “If it was going to happen, better it happened now.” Roman shrugged philosophically. “All things considered, maybe it’s for the best.”

  “A jaguar.” Greg grunted.

  “Santiago is a good man.”

  “I know. Makes it harder to hate him.” The Alpha waved a hand, wiping the conversational slate clean. “But that isn’t why I called you up here.”

  Roman nodded, leaning forward to brace his arms on his knees. “Preparations are going well. With the schematics from the hard drives we know exactly where any captive shifters are likely to be held within the facility. It’s a small installation, but from the number of cells, we expect there could be as many as eight captives at that location. One incursion team will focus on freeing them while the other team recovers as much intel as possible from the operations center. A microwave pulse should knock out surveillance systems for the length of the operation and each of our people will be firing tranquilizers—so if all goes according to plan, the bastards will wake up with headaches and everything missing and no record of how any of it happened.” Provided Dominec didn’t go off the rails and start killing every human in sight, which wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Roman had his reservations about allowing the tiger to be part of the mission, but no one else had half the practical military experience he did. He was too valuable to leave behind.

  “That’s all good. But that isn’t why I called you up here either.” The Alpha rocked forward in his chair, folding his hands on top of the massive marble desk. “I understand you’ve put Kye in charge of the team.”

  Roman tensed at the hint of censure in the Alpha’s voice. “He’s the best for the job.”

  “He’s a leopard.”

  “And the best for the job,” Roman repeated, fighting to keep his temper from rising. Greg couldn’t seriously be objecting to Kye leading the team.

  “Did you offer him a position as a lieutenant of the pride?”

  Roman felt a muscle begin to tick along his jaw. “He’s a valuable asset to the pride. He deserves a position that reflects that.”

  “He’s a leopard,” the Alpha repeated.

  “I’m aware of that, sir. He’s also damned good at what he does and a far sight better at what he does than two of the last three lieutenants we’ve promoted past him just because they shifted into the right kind of cat to suit our traditions.”

  “I know that,” Greg said, still exuding calm. “Which is why I encourage you to use him to the best of his abilities. But we have to work within the traditional hierarchy of the pride as much as possible.”

  “Why? Is it traditional to allow non-lions into the pride at all? Is it traditional to pick your own successor or court alliances with other packs and prides? None of that is traditional, but that didn’t stop you because it was the right thing to do. And so is this.”

  “We’re walking a fine line, Roman,” the Alpha argued. “We ha
ve more members than any other pride in the world and less in-fighting and challenges for control than anyone else. We can only maintain that peace by knowing which traditions we can flaunt and which ones are sacrosanct. It’s a balancing act—one you will need to be able to manage when you take over the pride—but the lion hierarchy needs to stay in place. The non-lion members are too independent to fully integrate.”

  “So we keep them as second-class citizens.” Just like Patch had accused.

  “I know it doesn’t seem fair to overlook shifters like Kye—but the sanctity of the hierarchy is the only thing keeping violent power struggles from breaking out at all levels of the pride. You think I didn’t want to make Hugo my second years ago? The pride would riot.”

  “You’re wrong, sir. Maybe twenty years ago, when you took control of the pride, the idea of having a bear as your second was too revolutionary to be considered, but a lot of us have grown up in this pride, grown up side by side with other shifters and I think it’s past time they got the same treatment.”

  “That would be the fair thing,” Greg acknowledged. “But you’re going to need to get over this naïve need for fairness before you can be Alpha, boy. Sometimes the right thing for the pride isn’t right or fair. Sometimes it’s what needs to be done. Can you sacrifice your own desires for that?”

  “You know I can,” Roman growled, bristling at the boy. Hadn’t he been willing to give up Patch for this pride? Because they weren’t ready for a cougar Alpha’s mate?

  But who was to say they weren’t ready for a non-lioness at the top? Roman believed the Alpha was wrong. Believed it down to the core of his being. He’d always bowed to Greg’s wishes in the past, accepted his greater wisdom, but this wasn’t wisdom. This was a fight he wasn’t ready to walk away from, though he wasn’t going to be able to convince Greg today.

  “I won’t promote Kye.” Yet. But things were changing. Roman was going to make sure of it.

  Patch was convinced he needed another lioness now that Lila was out of the equation, but maybe this was a sign. An opportunity. Fate telling him to follow his heart and not take no for an answer. Maybe the universe was finally giving him a shot at more than just duty and honor. Maybe he was getting a chance at happiness.

  If he could just convince his lover to take it with him.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  A loud, continuous knock rattled her door in its frame.

  Roman. From the death glares he’d shot her when she was part of Team Lila when Lila and Santiago had made their stand, Roman had quite a large piece of his mind he’d like to give her. And the way she felt right now, she’d be happy to shove it right back at him.

  But when she jerked open the door, fully prepared to give the jerk on the other side the riot act, it was Lila, not Roman, standing on her doorstep, holding two buckets of Lion’s Den beers.

  “We’re celebrating,” she declared. “And this time I mean it. Come on.”

  “Lila…” She had never been in less of a mood to celebrate.

  Lila fixed her with her rarely used glare of mulishness. “Patricia Marie Fontaine. I just found out I get to marry the love of my life rather than live a life of misery in a loveless marriage. I haven’t seen you properly in a million years, I’m in love, and I want to gush to my best friend. So get your coat if you want one, because we are going to have a real bachelorette party this time, just you and me and more beer than either of us should really be drinking. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  And so Patch found herself back in that damn clearing, with that damn tree, her twitter-pated best friend and two buckets of beer.

  “I’ve missed you, Patches,” Lila said with a sigh, clinking their bottles together.

  “I was hiding from you,” she confessed, admitting it to herself as well. “I felt so guilty because I had feelings for your man.”

  “You love him.”

  Patch jerked, sloshing beer all over the back of her hand. “No, of course not. Nothing like that. I just have…you know…feelings. Like lust and stuff.”

  “Lust and stuff,” Lila repeated, nodding sagely. “He is vaguely attractive. In a sort of Neanderthal way. Not as hot as Santiago, of course, but, you know, for a lion he’s not bad. Tolerable to look at. Hardly any warts at all.”

  Patch glared at her. “I know what you’re doing.”

  Lila grinned impishly. “Is it working?”

  “No.” But she was smiling as she said it. Thank God for Lila. An hour ago she hadn’t felt like she’d ever smile again.

  “So…you and Roman, huh?”

  “It was nothing. It’s over.”

  It had to be. Roman wasn’t going to marry Lila—but he was still just as off limits as ever. He needed a perfect lioness wife. Holly. Jasmine. Judith. All of them tall, blond and beautiful. As uniform as the freaking Rockettes.

  “Why are all lionesses Heidi Klum clones? Why can’t one of you be short and round and swarthy?”

  “Inbreeding, I imagine,” Lila said conversationally, swigging her beer. “I blame the Lion of Judah.”

  Patch snorted. “Excuse me?” She’d heard of the Lion of Judah—you didn’t grow up in a shifter pride without knowing the origin myth—but she’d never heard him blamed for inbreeding.

  Lila waved her beer expansively. “And lo, there was a great battle, and God’s most faithful were all, Oh shit, you guys, we are getting our asses handed to us, we’d better pray like hell.”

  “You can pray like hell?”

  “And God looked down upon His bravest fighters and saw that they were woefully outnumbered. So He waves His magic wand—”

  “God has a magic wand?”

  Lila rolled her eyes. “He’s God. He can have whatever He wants. And in my story He wants a magic wand. So He waves it, and upon the battlefield His most faithful are transformed into fearsome beasts.” She waved her claws.

  “Fearsome,” Patch acknowledged dryly.

  “A great mountain of a man with a brown beard grew fur all over his body and became the bear. A mighty blond warrior’s hair began to grow until it was a great mane and lo, he was the lion. A wise, silver-haired monk received a silver pelt and became the first wolf.”

  Patch snorted. “Has anyone told the wolves they’re supposed to be monks?”

  “And so the first shape-shifters were born.” Lila bowed, story complete. “And ever since, looking exactly like your animal was supposedly a sign that you were blessed by God and revered by man—or at least, that’s how it started. So we self-selected to propagate those traits and voila! Inbreeding.”

  “And it never bothered you that your origin story doesn’t explain how there came to be female shifters or how hawks and cougars and all the other breeds came into existence?”

  “Maybe God had some extra mojo left in His wand. Ours is not to reason why, Patch.”

  “I don’t think that last quote is meant to apply to religion.”

  Lila shrugged and drank.

  Patch had never really bought into the religious history the lions took for granted. She’d never even heard the origin myth until she came to Lone Pine and by then her skepticism was firmly in place. She knew she could shift. She left the how and the why up to scientists and theologians. But those beliefs had shaped the pride. Her pride.

  “You think people who care that much about tradition—that they all inbreed to look as much like their animal halves as possible—are ever going to accept a cougar with their future Alpha?” A dark-haired non-cougar-looking cougar, no less.

  The words were hard, defensive, but Lila’s reply was soft. “Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t know what I want. And since when has what I wanted mattered anyway?” Patch asked bitterly. “I want to know what happened to my parents. I want to live in a world where shifters don’t have to be afraid of vanishing if we go for a walk by ourselves. I want lollipops and candy canes to grow on trees, but that isn’t realistic, is it? This pride is never going to accept a cougar as Alpha�
��s mate. A woman who may never give their Alpha cubs because she doesn’t want to have children and even if she changed her mind those children might never be able to shift or might, God forbid, shift into mountain lions.”

  “They might not mind. You could adopt—like you were. Roman could pick his own successor—”

  “You honestly think the lions would accept a cougar ruling over them like your mother does? Some bitter lioness would start bitching about whose pride is this anyway and before you know it we’d have a civil war on our hands—the lions trying to kick all the rest of us out and Roman being killed first of all because he let it happen.”

  “Is that what you’re scared of? That if you’re with Roman it will somehow hurt him?”

  “How can it not? He’s the one who’ll be challenged if they want to get rid of me. He’s the one who will kill himself trying to protect me. I don’t want that. I’ve never wanted that.” She already had enough guilt that her parents had been taken when she had escaped—she didn’t need Roman on her conscience as well. “It’s easier to be alone,” she whispered.

  She’d learned that a long time ago. She hadn’t wanted to feel at home at Lone Pine in the first place, hadn’t wanted to be friends with Lila, hadn’t wanted to care about Roman, hadn’t wanted any of it because when you needed anything beyond your own company, you left yourself liable to watching them all be ripped away.

  When you loved people, you opened yourself up to the risk that your whole world would fall apart.

  Was that what she was scared of? Hell yes. She was fucking terrified.

  Her relationship with Roman had been founded on the fact that it had an expiration date. It was a fantasy, which made it safe. She couldn’t keep him, so it had been okay to let herself want him. Maybe even to let herself love him a little bit. Because it hadn’t been permanent.

  Now if she tried to be with him, she would just put them both at risk. If anything happened to him because of her, it would shred her all the way down to her soul. Better to give him up now, because it would hurt too much if he was taken away. Better if it was her choice.