Table of Contents
THE LION’S LOYALTY
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Thank you!
THE LION’S LOYALTY
Emilia Hartley
© Copyright 2018 by Blues Publishing. - All rights reserved.
The contents of this book may not be reproduced, duplicated or transmitted without direct written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
Chapter One
Van did his best to keep himself busy. He cleaned glasses. He scrubbed the bar top. He even tried to shampoo the rug. Nothing worked. Every few minutes, his gaze would go to the ceiling above. He could hear her footsteps, the way she paced. His beast wanted to drag him upstairs.
But that couldn’t happen. Not until he knew she was ready. He refused to court her until then. Which was only driving him wilder. Her scent permeated everything. He felt her presence around every corner. The only time he didn’t think about Carol was when he slept, and even then, he must have dreamt of her only to have the dreams slip through his fingers at the last moment.
She was his mate. He knew it down to his core.
The only problem was that anytime anyone approached her, she flinched. It broke his heart every time. Her pain was on the surface, for everyone to see, but he didn’t know the first thing about healing her. His hands were too blunt, too used to being fists. He always thought himself the most even tempered of all the pack, but in Carol’s presence, he felt like a barbarian.
“Those glasses can’t shine any more than they already do,” Dante snapped.
Van was tempted to throw the glass in his hands. He wanted to hear it shatter, to feel the release of his frustration in one destructive moment. Before he could do so, Dante plucked the glass from his hands and shoved it onto the rack behind the bar.
“Don’t break my shit,” Dante growled.
“I wasn’t going to break it.”
Dante leveled a knowing glare in Van’s direction. The tiger shifter was the alpha of their pack. Rightfully so. The man could see through everyone, even his second in command.
But he hadn’t been able to see through Carol’s disappearance. The barb of anger and hatred had been festering in Van’s chest for months. It started when he thought Dante had killed Carol for being unable to handle her beast. Van hadn’t understood why he felt so much anger toward his best friend. He only knew that Carol’s disappearance had hurt.
Now that they knew she’d been kidnapped, it was somehow worse. Dante had let everyone live under the assumption that he’d killed her. He’d let them think she was out of her misery, when she was very much alive and suffering. They could have been looking for her. They could have saved her sooner.
Instead, Carol had to save herself the first time. According to Rodrigo, she’d been hiding in an alley, nothing more than a trembling bag of bones. Then, it’d taken a human girl with more balls than brains to save Carol.
He thought that Lily’s bravery would have bonded them, that Carol would have made friends with Rodrigo’s mate. It would have helped her heal. But Carol only ever looked at Lily with sympathy in her eyes. Or was it guilt?
Lily was in a walking cast now. Her leg was healing just fine. Van probably should have cared more, but Lily was alright. She didn’t even seem traumatized by the ordeal. If anything, she used it as an excuse to rock a new haircut.
And yet, everyone had stopped to check in on the human girl. No one stopped to ask Carol how she was doing. They gave her a wide berth, like her presence was a plague. Van felt like he was the only one who wanted better for her. And that included Carol herself.
“She’s not going to come downstairs and throw herself in your arms because you stared at the ceiling all day,” Dante grumbled.
“You can fuck yourself,” Van shot back.
Before the exchange could escalate into a fight, the door burst open and Rodrigo forced his way inside. In his arms was a box filled with what looked like junk, but Van could tell from the smell that it had come from that cottage by the river. The scent of death and water clung to it and made his lion growl.
“I cleared the cottage out and brought everything I thought deserved further inspection.” Rodrigo dropped the box onto the counter.
Van glared at it, wishing he could set it on fire with the power of his personality alone. It didn’t work. The box’s contents were still in one piece. Rodrigo pulled out a laptop and a cord, plugging it into the outlet at the end of the bar. Van’s skin crawled. He didn’t want to know what was on that laptop, what kind of pain the doctors had recorded.
They weren’t any closer to figuring out what they’d been doing with the shifters. And Carol wasn’t talking. Any time they asked, she walked away from them.
The laptop made a noise, the fan humming to life, and the pacing upstairs stopped.
***
Carol clamped her hands over her ears. The memories rose and crashed into her every so often. They hit her so hard and fast, it was like she was right back there. She could hear their computer as if she were in the kennel again and the doctors were standing over her.
She shook herself.
This wasn’t the cottage. This was Dante’s bar.
The scent of beer and sweat seemed to fight its way through the carpet just to assault her nose. She scowled and marched to the window, throwing it open just for a breath of fresh air. Instead, she was greeted by exhaust.
Several motorcycles coasted into the parking lot, nothing more than blustering sound. Everywhere she went, her senses were on fire. If her mind wasn’t attacking her, then the world was. She didn’t know where she could find reprieve. For a short while, being around Rodrigo had been comforting.
Then he’d found himself a mate, and Carol felt like a third wheel. Worse, Carol felt responsible for Lily’s injuries. Had Carol been able to save herself, then Lily wouldn’t have been hurt. She wouldn’t be in a cast, her hair would still be long. It’d been such a simple act. All Lily had done was remove the liner in the bottom of the kennel.
Carol could have done that. If she had, she would have freed herself and no one else would have gotten hurt.
Carol couldn’t stand this apartment any longer. She hated the sloping ceilings and the smell of beer everywhere. Being outside might not be much better, but she wanted something else to hate for a little while. Hating the same walls got boring.
She thundered down the stairs, barreling for the door to the outside world. Only when she saw the man standing outside did she stop. His blue eyes were wide with surprise, framed
by delicate lashes. His long hair fluttered as he jumped back from her.
Van.
Her heart beat an erratic rhythm that felt too much like fear. She swallowed and leaned back, stuck in the stairwell. She didn’t want to go back upstairs, but she couldn’t bring herself to move past him. It only made her heart beat faster.
“Are you alright? Do you need anything?” Van blurted the words out all at once, so quickly that they seemed to trip over one another.
She pressed her lips into a thin line. No words would come to her. Not while her heart made such a thunderous sound in her head. She couldn’t think over it.
“Carol?” Van reached out for her.
She reeled back. Her shoulder hit the wall and the impact shook through her. She dropped her eyes to the steps beneath her, embarrassed at her own fear. He was pack. She should have felt safe with him. Yet, her beast growled and scratched at her like a rabid mutt. It wanted out, wanted to run.
That’s what she wanted to do once Van left. All she needed was for him to go away. She didn’t need his help, his tender words, his pity. Everyone threw so much pity at her. They looked at her with sad eyes, keeping their distance as if she might put a curse on them.
Before the doctors took her, she’d felt like she had lived on the fringes of the pack. There had been a sense of family that she’d been striving for. Now, she was a zoo exhibition. Everyone came to stare at the beast who couldn’t save herself from two humans.
But they hadn’t been the ones in the silver-lined kennels. They hadn’t been the ones whose blood had run like curdled milk when they were pumped full of drugs over and over. No one else in this pack would ever know what those months felt like, how truly afraid she was. How she would never be free.
“Carol?” Van repeated.
She snapped back to herself and sucked in a shuddering breath. Her memories had taken her again. They’d grabbed onto her and dragged her into a sea of anger and hate.
“Do you want to get out of here? I was on my way to check out a new food truck in town.”
Carol shook her head. Her beast wriggled and writhed, inching toward the surface. It wanted out. It wanted to run free. She could barely hold it back any longer. If Van stuck around, she would lose control in front of him and everyone would know once and for all that she wasn’t worthy of the pack. They couldn’t keep a shifter whose beast escaped her every time she was afraid.
Finally, she lurched past Van. He called out for her, but she didn’t stop. She didn’t slow down. She ran for the edge of the parking lot, the trees that lined the backwoods bar. Her beast seemed to lope towards the surface. Before she even reached the edge of the asphalt, the magic of the change rippled over her. Her bones rearranged themselves, muscles shifting.
Padded paws hit the soft earth. She continued forward. Nothing could stop her. No one would be able to catch up to her. The beast was free.
Chapter Two
“Follow her,” Dante said.
Van wasn’t sure when his alpha had appeared, but he was annoyed at the man. He turned on Dante. A growl rumbled his lips. He should have pulled back his temper. Especially in the face of their alpha, but Van didn’t have room for thought. Not when Carol was involved.
“You want me to steal what’s left of her privacy?”
Dante’s face was unreadable. If Carol had been found a month ago, Dante would have locked her in a cage in the basement until he thought she had found a semblance of control. Only recently had Dante realized the error of his ways. While Dante could be a good leader, he didn’t always know what was best for them.
“She needs alone time!”
Dante sighed and shook his head. “This isn’t about what she needs. Follow her and make sure she doesn’t contact anyone. That’s an order.”
Van felt his blood run cold. “Do you think she’s a traitor? Is that what this is about?”
Dante said nothing. His silence was implication enough.
“Carol isn’t going to do anything to endanger us. I don’t understand why you think she needs constant supervision. If you would leave her alone, then maybe she would be able to leave her traumatic months behind.”
“This isn’t about her. It’s about what we found on that computer. The doctors were in contact with someone. They fed their findings to this person and I need to make sure that person doesn’t come looking for us. And that Carol hasn’t turned her back on her pack for failing her.”
Van’s growl turned into a low roar as he spun away. No matter how much power Dante put into Van’s hands, he would always have to answer to Dante. He would always bend to his friend’s commands. Even when they seemed wrong.
Carol wasn’t going to betray them.
He tracked her scent to the edge of the parking lot and found her clothes in a heap. He knelt to grab them while scanning the woods around him. Carol was long gone. He sighed and stared at the clothes in his hands.
***
“Are you looking for these?” Van held up a pile of clothes.
Carol regarded him warily. The beast, miraculously, did not panic at the sight of the blonde lion shifter. If anything, her beast seemed more at ease in his presence. Any other shifter, any other time, the beast might have attacked. It had become a vicious thing in the past months. A wild creature she could barely hold back.
Yet, this smiling man erased every hint of aggression in her wolf.
“You look a lot better than the day Rigo found you. You aren’t the bag of bones that he called you.”
She stuck her nose in the air. Bag of bones? Her?
But she had been thin. It was only because of Dante’s charity that she’d managed to put on weight. Nothing tasted as good as a cheeseburger with maple bacon and sharp cheddar. She’d eaten one for dinner every night since her return. They reminded her of better days, days before she’d been bitten and changed. When her worst fear had been dudes asking her to smile.
Van set her clothes in front of her and turned his back. She could attack him. He wouldn’t see her coming. She would be able to clamp her teeth around the tender flesh over his kidney.
But he didn’t seem bothered by the vulnerability. He waited for her to shift and put on clothing, giving her more trust than anyone ever had in her life.
Before she’d been taken, Van had barely been part of her life. She knew him as Dante’s second in command, someone to fear should she fail to control her beast. Rodrigo had been her closest friend. They’d come to the pack together, both recently changed and struggling to handle what fate had given them.
Now, she wondered if she could have found a friend in Van before her mishap. If she had given him her attention, maybe she wouldn’t have been alone the day the doctors took her. Maybe she never would have been taken in the first place.
No, there was no point in wondering about anything like that. She couldn’t change the past. It was written in stone. All she could do was put it behind her. It was so hard to get past though. The story written in stone made moving forward nigh impossible. She felt trapped behind it. Especially when she remembered the voice on the computer.
The doctors had been in contact with someone. Someone who had found her interesting. Every time a shadow flickered just out of sight, she shuddered. There was no way of knowing if that person would come for her. She should have told the pack, but she didn’t think the person would bother them.
This was about her.
Because she could find no rest in this life.
“Well?” Van asked, voice still light and jovial. “Are you going to shift? We need to get going if we’re going to find that food truck.”
Carol would have rolled her eyes, but the beast clung to his words. It gave up control and peeled away, giving back her humanity. She knelt on the asphalt, heaving and gasping for air. The shift always hit her hard and fast. It was like fear had tripled the usual pace to keep her from being vulnerable. Yet, pushing it left her empty and aching after.
Her stomach growled.
Van peered over his shoulder. He didn’t turn around when he saw her naked body, though. Instead, his gaze clung to her like a man entranced. His lips fell into a small O of awe. She felt her heart flutter before covering her chest with her arms.
The motion seemed to bring Van back to himself. He spun back around and held his hands over the sides of his face like blinders.
“Let me know when you’re decent.”
Carol snorted. “Like shifters don’t see each other naked.”
The way he’d looked at her had been different. That was the look of a man who liked what he saw, who hungered for it. She didn’t know if she was ready for that. So, when she pulled her shirt over her head and joined him, she kept her distance.
“I’m not sure if I’m ready to go out just yet,” she said, trying to abandon him. She wanted to step away, but her feet were glued to the ground. She suspected her beast had something to do with it.
Carol was tired of fighting with her beast. It was exhausting. The constant battle of wills made her head ache and her skin tight.
“Well, you don’t have a choice in it. You’re obviously hungry. If you don’t go along with me, I’ll just come back.”
“I could get a burger from the kitchen again,” she reminded him.
“Don’t let him trick you into thinking that’s out of his generosity. He’s tallying that bill to hand to you when you start working again.”
Her stomach plummeted. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. When could she get a break? No one had told her that she would end up paying for the food in the end. If that had been the case, she wouldn’t have accepted any of it. She would have rather let her beast consume wild animals than let Dante drag her into his debt.
“I was joking…” Van said, pulling her gaze upward. His lips were twisted into an apologetic grimace, one hand extended like he wanted to touch her.
“What kind of a joke is that?” she howled.
The bar door opened, and Dante appeared. He glared at both of them like an ever- watching presence.
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