Taming the Lion Page 4

  “And how is life in the wilderness, Patricia Marie?”

  Patch shot Lila a killing glare at the use of her awful full name and tossed back her shot, the kick of the alcohol jerking through her.

  “That good, huh?”

  Patch shrugged. She loved her job. It would have been great, if she hadn’t been going into heat. And if she wasn’t about to be imprisoned at the pride. “The season is winding down. This is usually when I would disappear on my own for a while, until the winter work starts up, but with the bogeyman out there, it looks like I’ll be hanging around here instead. Forgive me if I don’t jump for joy.”

  Lila twirled a fingernail through the condensation on the bar. “He isn’t forcing anyone to come in. It’s all voluntary.”

  “It’s a warning I’d be stupid to ignore. I know better than anyone how quickly we can be taken.”

  Beside her, Lila went unnaturally still. Her friend had never really known what to say when Patch brought up her parents. No one did. It was always awkward. Even among best friends it seemed there was no easy way to talk about tragedy.

  “Do you think these disappearances are related?” Lila asked softly. “Could the same people have taken your parents?”

  “They could be. No way of knowing.” Another pair of shots appeared on the bar, courtesy of Whiskey, and Patch reached for one, Lila mirroring the action. When the burn had subsided again, Patch spoke. “I hate that it’s still happening and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  Lila’s hand slid over, as if she would take Patch’s, but she didn’t. “Roman will come up with a plan.”

  “He’s not in favor of coming out to the humans?”

  Lila shook her head. “He wants to get together a hunting party and take the fight to whoever is abducting us. Says we aren’t predators for nothing.”

  Patch bared her teeth in a smile. “I always liked Roman.”

  Lila eyed her. “I used to wonder if you more than liked him.”

  Then why are you marrying him? That sense of irrational betrayal was back—and along with it a piercing embarrassment that Lila had known about her crush. Her face heated. “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s your husband we’re talking about.”

  “Not yet he isn’t.”

  But he would be soon enough. New Year’s Day. Only three months away.

  She should be happy for her friend—and maybe she would have been able to at least feign joy if Lila had seemed even remotely excited about the match. Instead Lila seemed hunted. Edgy. Which was about as far from normal Lila behavior as it was possible to be.

  Lila sprang off her stool and called to Whiskey for a bucket of beer. “Come on,” she said, tugging at Patch until she rose. “Let’s go for a walk. I wanna get out of here.”

  “I thought the whole idea of coming to the Den was to be sociable and flirt with the world. Isn’t that what you told me?”

  “You should never listen to anything I say. I don’t know what I’m talking about.” The bucket of beer appeared on the bar. Lila called out her thanks to Whiskey, who was already walking away, and snatched up the bucket. “Come on. Please? We’ll do a little bachelorette party. Just you and me.”

  The look in Lila’s eyes was almost manic. For a second Patch was tempted to refuse her. She didn’t want to do anything related to a bachelorette party because she didn’t want to celebrate the wedding—but from the look on Lila’s face, neither did she.

  What the hell was going on here? Had Lila tried to object to the engagement and been overruled? That didn’t seem likely—Lila wasn’t the objecting sort. But why else did she look so frantic at the idea of marrying Roman, something she’d always reacted to the same way you might react to someone saying the sky was blue?

  Only one way she’d find the answers to those questions.

  Patch let her friend pull her out into the night air, following as Lila headed north, away from the main compound.

  Chapter Five

  “He looks dead.”

  “Still breathing.”

  “How can you tell?” the low, male voice countered.

  “How can you not?” came the acidic feminine reply.

  Roman ignored the barely audible back-and-forth, focused instead on the body collapsed in the clearing below them.

  Roman had stayed in human form, along with Xander and Grace, who were at his side arguing about the vital stats of their subject, but Kye had shifted, the snow leopard climbing high into the branches above them and leaping from tree to tree for a closer look.

  They’d picked up four more soldiers at the pride boundary who were now taking flanking positions in animal-form, but so far there had been no hint of ambush. No stray scents carried on the breeze, no odd silences in the natural sounds of the forest at night. If the humans were here, they’d gotten much more sophisticated at hiding their presence.

  Roman checked his watch. Everyone should be in position by now.

  A flick of his fingers silenced the soft bickering and sent Xander and Grace into motion. Roman dropped out of the tree they’d used as a vantage point, careful to control his descent so his substantial weight made not a sound. They moved stealthily through the night shadows of the forest until they reached the clearing.

  They paused there, but when there was still no hint of human activity in the area, Roman gave the signal and they moved in.

  Grace reached the body first, kneeling to take a pulse, a curt nod affirming life. Xander guarded their backs as Roman studied the figure.

  Male. Emaciated. Dark hair, olive skin, and sharp, hawkish features—which made a certain kind of sense, since his scent screamed bird of prey.

  “Raptor?” Roman murmured as he crouched beside Grace.

  “I think so. Don’t meet many bird shifters.” She lifted her fingers from his wrist and jerked her chin toward his ragged clothes. “Why didn’t he shift?”

  They’d have found him naked as the day he was born if he’d fallen from the sky. Which meant he’d come on foot. Why hadn’t he flown? “Maybe he’ll tell us when he wakes up.”

  “We’re taking him then?” Xander asked. “Even with the smell?”

  Roman didn’t need to ask which smell—the harsh chemical taint underlying the bird shifter’s scent set his nerves on edge. The raptor may not be bait, but he’d definitely had a run-in with someone who’d drugged him. Perhaps the drug was why he hadn’t shifted.

  Roman could see Xander’s paranoid inclinations firing up and spoke up before the other lion could suggest chemical brainwashing and Trojan horses infiltrating the pride. “We’ll keep a guard on him until we know he can be trusted. I think we can handle one bird.” He touched the unconscious man’s shoulder, surprised by how delicate the light bones felt under his hand. “Grace? Is it safe to move him?”

  “Safer than leaving him out here. Doc’ll probably be pissed if we don’t use a backboard, since we don’t know for sure why he collapsed, but my guess is exhaustion and dehydration. No sign of spine trauma, so let’s get him the hell out of here. This place is giving me the willies.”

  She wasn’t the only one. They were too exposed out here. He’d feel better as soon as they were back on pride land—back where they knew they could rely on the masking technology that had kept pride shifters from being spied on by satellites so far.

  Roman bent and lifted the bird shifter. He was disturbingly light—either as a byproduct of his avian ancestry or his half-starved state. They moved quickly through the forest, the soldiers fanning around him, weaving through the trees in tense silence, leaving the stillness that always trailed apex predators in their wake.

  When they passed the boundary into the pride lands, a near-audible sigh of relief went through the group. A few minutes later, the border guards they’d collected sheared off, leaving Roman to go the rest of the way to pride’s main compound with only Xander and Grace flanking him, and Kye a pale shadow through the night, his belly low to the ground.

  Roman kept up the rapid pace, but now
instead of stern and silent beside him, Grace’s crooked smile flashed. “In a hurry to get back to your bride, sir?”

  “Who wouldn’t be?” Xander called from the other side. “Lucky bastard.”

  Roman cringed and kept running. They all called him lucky. Not for the reasons he really was lucky. Not because the Alpha had seen something in him when he’d arrived at the pride as a too-big-for-his-age fifteen-year-old kid with a chip on his shoulder. Not because he’d been accepted and trained, his life given purpose and direction.

  No, they thought he was lucky because he’d get to go home to Lila. Which made him feel like even more of a heel because he didn’t share their enthusiasm. She was a great kid. Sweet and easygoing. He was lucky, damn it.

  But that didn’t mean he wanted to rush back to her.

  When the bird shifter was safely in the hands of the pride doctor and they knew he was likely to be fine once he was rested and hydrated and the unknown drug in his bloodstream had a chance to work its way through his system, Roman didn’t rush straight to the Lion’s Den to meet his fiancé. Instead he strategically forgot he was supposed to see her there and volunteered to do an extra run along the northern perimeter.

  But when he got to one of the hidey-holes scattered across the pride lands and began stripping off his clothes to shift, a stirring of guilt gave him pause. He bunched his shirt between his hands, tempted—so tempted—to take his lion form. Life was simpler as a cat, more immediate—though the human concerns never entirely went away.

  In that form, the feel of the dirt beneath his paws and the brush of the breeze against his fur would be more important than any vague dissatisfaction about his future mate. He would race along the boundary, muscles bunching and pulling with powerful rhythm. To the lion, there was no awareness of heir or successor. He was king here, strong enough to rule and rule he would. No human would dare threaten this place, this land that called to his most primal feline instincts.

  He wanted nothing more than to call on his feline strength, put down his head and run, but duty called, and Roman had never been able to deny that particular master.

  Only a complete ass abandoned his fiancé on the night of their engagement.

  Grimacing, he pulled his shirt back over his head. His betrothed awaited.

  Chapter Six

  It was a gorgeous night, clear and calm with just a hint of fall’s chill in the air. The kind of night that was made for running through the woods in blissful solitude. Patch sighed. Solitude. No telling when she’d have that again.

  Lila at her side, they walked in silence, each sipping their beers.

  Stars sprawled across the sky, the constellations seeming cluttered with too many points of light. The heat of summer had passed and now the air was sweet and cool, the breeze a gentle kiss against her face without the icy edge of the winter snows that were just around the corner.

  Her heat was quiet now, maybe tamed by the perfect night, maybe thrown into a tailspin by her ridiculous emotional upheaval.

  And it was ridiculous.

  It wasn’t like she’d had a shot with Roman anyway. Even if he hadn’t been promised to Lila, anything between them would have been impossible—even for a fling. She wasn’t the kind of woman men fantasized about. She was capable and outdoorsy and athletic. She was one of the guys.

  Men didn’t want her. Roman wouldn’t have wanted her.

  And even if he had, she was a cougar and he was a lion. And not just any lion. The one slated to take over as Alpha—a role he’d be challenged for until the challenges eventually resulted in his death if he had any sort of permanent understanding with a non-lion. Accepting mountain lions sharing their air and their land was one thing—sharing the Alpha’s bed was something else entirely. The Alpha’s mate led the Hunts. Patch had never even been on one—since they were traditionally reserved for lions. Cross-breeding might be a milder taboo than it once was, but it still wasn’t widely accepted. And for the Alpha? Forget about it.

  But no matter how many times she told herself that, it didn’t change the fact of that stupid adolescent crush she’d never managed to outgrow. He was still the first man who’d ever made her heart race.

  The one who had always been meant for Lila.

  “You don’t have to marry him, you know.” She wasn’t sure why she said it. She already knew how the argument would end.

  “I don’t have to. But I will.”

  Why? Patch wanted to scream, but instead she accepted another beer from Lila, handing over her empty bottle. What good would screaming do?

  “Do you think that makes me a coward?” Lila’s voice was soft in the night. “Because I’m always doing the easy thing, trying to make everyone else happy?”

  “Is that always the easy thing?”

  “I don’t please people because I’m scared to be myself.”

  Patch couldn’t tell which of them Lila was trying to convince, but she didn’t need convincing. She’d seen Lila bend over backwards to do what was best for the pride. She’d watched her subvert her own wishes and even her own temperament to try to be more what the future Alpha’s mate was meant to be. Not out of fear, but out of a fierce sense of loyalty and duty. Patch loved the pride, but she never would have been able to cut out pieces of her own soul in an attempt to be what they needed of her. Not like Lila had.

  “You aren’t a coward, Lila.” Far from it. If anyone was the coward here, it was Patch—always running away from the truths she didn’t want to see. “Where’s that coming from?”

  Lila shook her head, not meeting Patch’s eyes. “It’s nothing. Just something someone said.”

  “Well, someone is an ass. It takes a brave woman to sign on to be the Alpha’s mate.” A much braver woman than Patch would ever be. Not that it would ever be offered to her.

  Lila drank her beer and sighed. “I don’t know why I’m not more excited. I get to plan a wedding. And force you to wear a dress loaded with ruffles and flounces.”

  Patch wasn’t fazed by the taunt about girly dresses. She would wear whatever the hell Lila wanted her to wear, if it made Lila smile on her wedding day. Since the odds were good nothing else was going to be able to put a smile on her face on New Year’s.

  She should let it go. Lila had made her choice—or let it be made for her. It wasn’t Patch’s place to question that decision. If not your place, then whose?

  She should keep her mouth shut, and yet she heard herself saying, “You don’t love him.”

  Lila didn’t bother to deny it. “I don’t see how that matters. My parents don’t love each other. It’s never been a problem for them.”

  “You aren’t your mother.”

  “No. More’s the pity.”

  Patch glared. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.” Lucienne Fallon was hard ice and regal poise where Lila was soft, caring and a gentle, welcoming smile. “I just meant that you’ve always wanted to be in love. Ever since we were kids.” Patch couldn’t imagine Lila’s mother had ever been the kind of girl who dreamed of being swept away by her Prince Charming. It just wasn’t in her nature, but Lila was all fairy tales. The pride princess.

  Roman should have been her Prince Charming—he certainly had the biceps for the job—but he’d always treated her more like a sister. For years, the age difference had made any sort of a relationship between them all but impossible—Patch might have thought he was almost magically attractive, but when they were fifteen, twenty-three had seemed unbearably old to Lila. Everyone had expected them to fall into one another’s arms when she was of age, but by then their pattern of distant sibling-like affection had been too well established to be budged.

  Perhaps they could still fall in love… Patch’s stomach clenched at the idea.

  “Maybe I’ll fall in love with Roman,” Lila said, echoing her thoughts. “He’s very…”

  Patch could think of a thousand adjectives. Sexy. Dominant. Responsible. Ripped. Commanding. Strong. Smart. Honorable. Glorious. Lust swirled in her abdomen.


  But Lila, when she finished her sentence, sounded deflated. “He’s a great man.”

  Patch couldn’t argue with that. Roman would make her a wonderful husband. A wonderful Alpha. And Lila deserved the best.

  In a burst of motion, Lila spun and threw her beer bottle. It exploded against the fence post marking the edge of the elk enclosure in an eruption of glass. Patch gaped at the uncharacteristic tantrum, but before she could even ask what had prompted it, it had passed.

  Lila’s shoulders slumped and she groaned. “Crap. I should clean that up.”

  Patch caught her arm when she moved toward the mess. “You aren’t cleaning up broken glass at night with your bare hands. We’ll get it in the morning.” She pulled a red ribbon from Lila’s hair and tied it to the fence post—both so they wouldn’t forget where the mess was and so others would be warned not to step there—though the shifters would doubtless all be able to smell the beer-scented glass marking the ground. “There. X marks the spot.”

  She picked up the bucket and handed Lila a fresh beer, taking the last one for herself. She really ought to be feeling buzzed by now—two shots of lion’s milk and how many beers in the last hour?—but instead of woozy, she felt warm, her skin tight, like the alcohol was somehow feeding straight into her heat.

  Shit. She’d forgotten that alcohol could make the hormonal swings worse.

  “Sorry,” Lila murmured as they walked on. “That was juvenile.”

  “You’re allowed to be upset.” Patch wouldn’t mind shattering a few bottles herself. Maybe it would be cathartic. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I shouldn’t be upset,” Lila growled. “I’m just so annoyed with myself that I’m not happy. I’m supposed to be happy, damn it. This is what I’ve been waiting for all my life, isn’t it? For years I’ve been complaining that I’m going to be the oldest virgin in the world because none of the other members of the pride will so much as kiss me lest they offend Roman by getting their scent on me. I’m finally going to have someone who is obliged to sleep with me—”