Taming the Lion Page 3

  “Lila? Is something wrong?”

  Lila looked at her sharply and didn’t even try to pretend they were still talking about the pride. “Nothing new,” she said with a soft bitterness.

  Patch opened her mouth to push the issue, but movement on the stage cut her off.

  “Here we go,” Lila said into the last hum of conversation before a hush fell over the room.

  The Alpha was calling the meeting to order, simply by standing front and center on the stage and letting his presence wash out over the crowd. Patch had seen him do it a thousand times—pull that mantle of authority onto his shoulders like an invisible cloak and suddenly seem to be standing taller than any man in the room, stronger than even a bear shifter. She wondered if the new people were awed, if the sight of that strength comforted them as it had her the first time she’d seen him speak as Alpha.

  Of course, she’d been ten years old, achingly alone and terrified of her own shadow after her parents had vanished. The experience of joining Lone Pine as a mature shifter was likely quite different. Other cats used to an independent life might feel stifled by the wash of authority pulsing out of Gregory Fallon as he stood on the stage.

  “Thank you,” the Alpha said when silence reigned. He didn’t raise his voice, and yet his words carried, rolling through the room on that same invisible tide of strength. “I would like to begin by welcoming our new arrivals—may you find the home you seek at Lone Pine—and by thanking everyone for attending tonight. I know you will all be wondering what this is about, so I’ll get right to the point.”

  Patch sat forward in her chair, coming to attention. The Alpha wasn’t known for getting straight to the heart of a matter. He liked to hang back and let everyone say their piece before he made his decrees.

  “Some of you may have heard rumors about what’s happening in the south. We don’t yet know the extent of the truth in those stories, but this is what we do know—the Three Rocks Pride in West Texas has sent out a pair of ambassadors who are working their way north, visiting other shifter prides, packs, flocks and herds and outlining a plan for shifters of all kinds to band together and reveal ourselves to the humans.”

  Gasps of outrage and shock rippled through the room, accompanied by growls and snarls, but the Alpha just spoke over them, his voice easily carrying over the rumblings. “They say they were attacked by a group of human scientists who are intent on running tests on shifters, using our own code of secrecy to keep us from running to the human authorities for protection. The Three Rocks lions claim that same organization is responsible for the rash of shifter disappearances in the south.”

  There was no shock or outrage at this announcement—that rumor was not a new one. Patch herself knew exactly how common it was for a lone shifter—or even a pair like her parents—to disappear. They’d been living in Colorado at the time, but the disappearances were not limited to the Rocky Mountain territories.

  “These Texas lions were still in Utah at our last report, but we expect the ambassadors to arrive within the month. As the largest pride in the country, other shifters will be looking to us in this matter. I won’t rush to judgment until we have all the facts, and your concerns will be heard, but for now, with the disappearances increasing and the Three Rocks lions stirring things up in the south, I’m afraid I must ask our nomads and outliers to come live within the protections of the pride lands.”

  Patch’s hiss of protest was lost in the louder rumblings from the other shifters in the room. The Alpha may have phrased it as a request, but they’d all heard the pulse of power behind the words, the subtle push of command.

  The Alpha went on, but the words sounded like a buzz in her ears, little snatches breaking through. Strongly encouraged…avoid risky situations…restrict yourselves to the confines of the pride lands. Not that it was really such a strict confinement, with the hundreds of acres that belonged to the pride, but her every instinct rebelled against being trapped here with all these other shifters.

  It wasn’t just the crowding—and even with hundreds of acres and housing for two hundred it would feel crowded to cats accustomed to miles of wilderness all to themselves. No, it was worse than that. The heat.

  Not that any of the other shifters would try to do anything to her that she didn’t want, but that she would be far too close to temptation, she wouldn’t be able to resist satisfying her urges in the most primal way if she was here, close to him.

  Him. Patch shook away the thought, averting her eyes from the stage so she wasn’t tempted to look at the mountain of muscle standing just behind the Alpha.

  She wanted to run. Just shift and run and run and run until mountain rocks pressed against the pads of her paws. But no one knew better than she did how quickly an unsuspecting shifter could disappear.

  The Alpha held up a hand to quiet the rumblings of discontent rippling through the hall. “I know this will be a sacrifice, but until we know more, I feel it is necessary for the safety of our pride.” The Alpha paused to smile. “And now for some good news. While we’re together seemed like the perfect time to begin planning an event I know many among us have been anticipating for years.”

  Patch frowned. He couldn’t be talking about handing the pride over to Roman. Not when things were so unstable.

  “I am delighted to be able to announce something that is a cause for great personal celebration, and hopefully gives our entire pride equal joy. The wedding date between my daughter Lila and my heir Roman has, at long last, been set. This New Year’s we will have more than another year to celebrate.”

  Patch sucked in a breath, the words hitting her like a blow. She’d known this was coming, of course she’d known, but that didn’t erase this sudden, jarring sense of shock.

  Why hadn’t Lila said anything? Had she not known?

  Patch looked to her best friend, wondering if she would see her own shock reflected on Lila’s face, but the golden lioness was composed, calm, gazing straight ahead, hands folded motionless in her lap. Too composed. “Lila?” she whispered, hearing the plea in her voice.

  Please say it isn’t true. Please turn to me and laugh and say it was all a horrible joke.

  But Lila jerked and her perfect “public” smile flashed over her face. She rose without a word and stepped past Patch into the aisle, gliding smoothly toward the stage without a backward glance. Roman stepped away from shaking the Alpha’s hand to help Lila up, her slim fingers disappearing in his grip. They faced the audience, smiling perfectly, holding hands, doing everything right as the pride cheered the happy event—and something inside Patch cracked into two pieces. Something in the vicinity of her heart.

  “The Lone Pine Pride is stronger than it has ever been,” the Alpha called out, his voice ringing with authority and pride. “This is our future.” He gestured to Lila and Roman—tall, golden, a matched set of perfect lion genetics. “We don’t need to fear anything that comes. Lone Pine will thrive.”

  It was only the truth, but Patch couldn’t cheer. Not with the blood rushing in her ears and her pulse throbbing. Her heat. It must just be her heat. She rose and slipped up the side aisle. She may be trapped on the pride lands for the foreseeable future, but she could escape this hall. Even if she couldn’t escape the irrational twist of need and betrayal in her gut.

  Chapter Four

  Lila’s hand felt weird in his. Her fingers were so slim and soft and they didn’t hold onto his so much as lay there inoffensively in his grasp. Roman kept shifting his grip, trying to find some way of holding her that felt natural and right as the pride elders showered them with congratulations.

  Passive. She was so damn passive. Which only drove his own need for action to a fever pitch. The more she stood there—gracious and accepting at his side—the more he wanted to run, to fight, to do. Anything. Everything.

  He shifted his grip again.

  Beyond the crowd of well-wishers, the rest of the pride milled uneasily. Not everyone was carried away on a tide of nuptial bliss. Many faces we
re wreathed with worry or irritation. Roman needed to be out there, soothing fears and annoyances, not up here as a useless figurehead.

  He saw Hugo moving through the room, his slow lumbering gait a reflection of the bear within. He stopped to talk with a leopard here, a lynx there—soothing fur that had been rubbed the wrong way by the Alpha’s authoritative announcement. The bear wasn’t officially part of the pride hierarchy, but at heart he was as much a lieutenant of Lone Pine as Roman was—maybe more so, since he’d been lumbering through the pride smoothing the way since the day Gregory Fallon came to power.

  Something tickled his arm and Roman almost swatted it away before he realized it was a lock of Lila’s hair. His supposed beloved. The woman whose hand still lay in his like a dead fish.

  Had any couple ever had less natural chemistry than they did? She was a beautiful girl. No man in his right mind would complain about sleeping with her, and yet the idea of ripping her clothes off and having his way with her left him totally cold.

  Perhaps their attraction would build over time. That could happen, couldn’t it? Maybe the first time he kissed her, he’d be swept away on a tide of lust and wonder how he could ever have thought her a sexless mass of ribbons and perfume.

  He needed to stop thinking of her as an empty shell, devoid of substance. Hell, even if she was just the perfect package with nothing inside, she was still a symbol to the pride, where tradition and perception were as important as reality.

  Roman forced himself to smile and graciously accept congratulations after congratulations. As if he and Lila were as happy about this as the pride elders wanted to believe. As if it was a love match.

  Though for all he knew, Lila was happy. He looked down at her and she tipped her head to the side, smiling up at him in a way that could have been adoring—he couldn’t read her eyes. God, he hoped she wasn’t in love with him. That would somehow make this much worse. If they were both coming into this as a political match, he could handle it. But if she thought this was love…

  Movement at the back of the hall caught his attention. He recognized Xander—one of the pride’s lieutenants, who shouldn’t have been at the meeting at all since he was in charge of wrangling the sentries along the boundaries of the pride lands tonight. The muscles in Roman’s shoulders jumped in instinctive reaction.

  Something was wrong. There was no other reason Xander would be here.

  “Roman?” Lila asked softly. She must have sensed his sudden tension.

  He ducked his head closer to hers, trying to look apologetic rather than piercingly relieved. “I may have to sneak away. Would you mind if I excuse myself? I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t important—”

  “No, of course not,” she said quickly—too quickly? “The pride comes first. I told Patch I’d have a drink with her at the Den anyway. I shouldn’t keep her waiting.”

  Patch. He mentally placed her. Lila’s shadow. A slim cougar shifter with clever, all-seeing eyes. They were the two sides of a coin, those two. Patch dark, athletic and direct while Lila was everything fair, feminine and yielding. They always seemed more complete together, as if Lila were somehow more compelling with Patch as her foil.

  “Excellent,” he said. “You go meet her and I’ll find you at the Den when I can.” That’s what a doting fiancé would say, wasn’t it?

  He dropped a chaste kiss on her lips—to the gratified sighs of the pride matrons—and wasn’t sure who was more surprised by the move, Lila or himself. He patted her hand on his arm awkwardly and slipped out of her grip, leaping down off the stage before he could fail at another display of affection.

  Greg and Hugo had already ushered Xander out a side door and Roman signaled to two more of the pride’s security personnel to join him as he followed. Most of the pride was still loitering around the front of the building, discussing the upheaval to come as all the outliers moved onto the pride lands, but the area beyond the side door was empty, save the small knot of soldiers and lieutenants clustered around the Alpha.

  “What’s wrong?” Roman asked as he joined them.

  “Roman, good,” the Alpha grunted—that one word confirming he’d been right to ditch Lila and come. “The sentries beyond the northeast border have spotted what appears to be an unconscious shifter.”

  Roman read the Alpha’s face easily. “You think he was coming here for sanctuary but didn’t make it.”

  “I do, but we can’t ignore the possibility that this could be an ambush. If there were humans kidnapping and experimenting on us, an unconscious shifter makes perfect bait.”

  And the Alpha couldn’t risk himself by investigating in person. But Roman wasn’t Alpha yet. “I’ll go. Xander, Grace, Kye—you’re with me.”

  The Alpha nodded. “Be careful,” he commanded. “I’d hate to have to explain to my daughter that her wedding is delayed because her fiancé didn’t watch his ass.”

  Would she really mind? “Will do, sir.”

  The Alpha gave him a sharp look at the sir, but didn’t stop him when Roman took off toward the northeast boundary at a light jog, Xander, Grace and Kye keeping pace beside him.

  Patch’s escape had been doomed from the start.

  Everyone had seemed to want to congratulate her—as if she were just an appendage of Lila. Which, in the eyes of the pride, wasn’t far off the mark.

  The non-lion shifters, the ones who didn’t feel comfortable crashing the leonine contingent crowding around the stage as the meeting broke up, had all seemed to hone in on Patch, asking her to pass on their congratulations to the Happy Couple. For many of them, that was as close as they were comfortable getting to brushing the fur of the almighty lions that ruled the roost. Other shifter breeds might be allowed into the Lone Pine Pride, but no one ever forgot that they were outsiders, allowed to remain at the lions’ sufferance.

  Waylaid by all the well-wishers, Patch had barely cleared the door of the hall and taken two steps toward freedom when Lila herself came sprinting around the corner of the building, her eyes bright and a little feverish, blond hair flying out behind her like a banner.

  “Patch!” Her kitten heels sent up little puffs of dust as she skidded to a halt.

  Patch didn’t bother asking how she’d caught up with her. Lila had always been ridiculously fast, as well as the perfect specimen of femininity—Patch’s pretty and perfect polar opposite.

  “Aren’t you and your fiancé supposed to be making nice with the elders?” Her voice came out sharper than she’d intended, but the sense of betrayal that Lila hadn’t said anything refused to ease.

  “Some urgent thingy. Roman had to run off and be official. Which means I am free to go to the Den. You have to come celebrate with me.”

  Patch had never felt less like celebrating. She wanted to say no. She started to say no…but then she really looked at Lila. Bright eyes, fierce smile—she looked like she was forcing the enthusiasm through gritted teeth, determined to be happy, as if that determination was the only thing keeping the panic away.

  Patch wanted to be selfish and run. She wanted to be bitter and petty and blame Lila for all of it. She really did, but this was Lila. So she mumbled something vaguely affirmative and let herself be dragged toward the bar.

  The Den, or Lion’s Den as it was properly called, was the shifters-only bar located right in the heart of the pride’s main compound. At best, it could be described as rustic and filled with character—chipped tables, unstable chairs and kitschy décor defined the place. It boasted a juke box, a microscopic dance floor and a few slanted pool tables, but it was always packed, and walking through the door always felt like coming home—to the only home where a shifter could have a drink, a dance, a flirt, or maybe a fight, without having to worry about going furry in front of dozens of humans.

  Patch expected Lila to set a course for the dance floor and start gathering admirers to her like bees to honey, but the lioness headed instead toward the shadows at the end of the bar and hitched herself up on a stool. Patch followed, taking the
spot next to her and holding up two fingers for Whiskey—the statuesque tigress who had told Patch that Lila was in for a treat with Roman and who ruled behind the bar at the Den.

  Whiskey slid a pair of slim shot glasses filled with milky liquid in front of them without a word and went back to mixing drinks at the other end of the bar. The cloudy shots were the bar’s signature drink—an import from Turkey known as lion’s milk that tasted of black licorice, burned all the way down, and could take the drinker from zero-to-trashed in record time.

  “What are we drinking to?” Patch asked warily, gingerly pinching the shot glass between her thumb and forefinger.

  “To matrimony.” The slightest bitter edge sharpened Lila’s voice. She downed her shot and gasped for air, eyes tearing.

  Patch didn’t follow suit, drawing patterns on the bar with her shot glass instead. If Lila was bitter about marrying Roman, why was she doing it?

  Patch had a thousand questions, a hundred whys tripping through her head, but one kept drowning out the others.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  It wasn’t the news. She’d expected the news. It was the fact that she’d found out about her best friend’s wedding from the Alpha at an All Pride Meeting.

  Lila shrugged, not quite meeting her eyes. “It was only decided this afternoon. I tried calling you, but it went straight to voicemail and it seemed like the kind of news that shouldn’t be left on a message.”

  Damn. She should have returned the call. If Marcus hadn’t been intent on putting his tongue down her throat because of the goddamn heat—and no other reason, as he’d been very eager to point out—maybe she would have thought to call Lila back. “Sorry, I was probably out of range. Work stuff.”