by T. S. Joyce
She scrabbled for anything to use as a weapon but she was pinned to a patch of dirt empty of rocks or sticks.
A black SUV sat idle on her lawn, and another man in slacks and a button down polo stood watching her fight to live.
She kicked and clawed and struggled and in desperation to breathe easier, she bit the man’s hand. An inhuman bark of pain came from his throat. Rearing back, he backhanded her so hard she couldn’t hear anything but a ringing in her ears. The man wore a ring and warmth trickled from a painful gash below her eye.
And then he disappeared.
He was launched backward and landed with a sickening thud twenty yards away.
Logan lifted her upright and pushed her behind him. “This isn’t how it’s done, Mark. You’ll mishandle an innocent for a challenge? She doesn’t know anything!” His voice had taken on a growly quality she didn’t recognize. “You’ll have your challenge because you fucking asked for what I’m about to do to you.”
The man stood with inhuman grace, and a feral grin stretched his face. Slowly, he removed his shirt, and all along his torso were the same crisscrossed patterns that decorated Logan’s chest.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” she whispered in horror.
Logan pulled off his shirt and shucked his pants. “I have to fight this man. It’s best if you don’t watch.”
“What about that one over there,” she said, pointing to the man near the SUV.
“He’s just a witness. He won’t hurt us.”
A long and unfamiliar roar left the challengers lips and turned her blood to ice.
“Muriel,” Logan murmured, gripping her shoulders and searching her eyes. “Don’t hate me.”
Turning, he dropped to all fours and a massive lion exploded from him.
Chapter Ten
Muriel’s eyes flew wide.
Logan wasn’t a grizzly bear. He was a fucking lion shifter.
Long, lithe lines of muscle flexed with every step he took. Giant paws bigger than her head pressed into the soil. His tail twitched in a feline expression that could only mean extreme agitation, and his mane was dark and thick. He gave her his profile as he curled his lips back over impossibly long white canines at the witness, who still hadn’t moved.
The man who’d attacked her dropped to all fours and changed into a lion with darker fur and a black mane.
Logan was still hurt. Even from here she could see the injuries on his chest and stomach weeping, turning his fur red. He’d probably ripped every stitch changing into his animal, and now he had to fight another predator.
The dark cat lunged, but Logan leapt at the same time and caught him around the neck. Biting, clawing and tumbling, they fought amid grunts of pain and bellows of fury. She couldn’t keep up with them as they circled and connected again.
What was she supposed to do? Just stand here and watch Logan get hurt? Her hands were still caked with drying clay and her heart was trying to jump into her throat. She was one small bear in the midst of three alpha lions.
The fight barreled off into the woods and Muriel followed them.
“Easy,” the witness said, jogging beside her. “We shouldn’t get too close. They aren’t human when they are fighting like this. They’ll attack you.”
“Oh, now you care what happens to me, you prick? You didn’t give two shits when your friend was backhanding me, but now you’re chivalrous. Fuck you very much.” Shoving past him, she squinted through the shadows as a lion stood over the limp form of the other.
Relief flooded her when she saw it was Logan’s lighter mane and fur on the victor.
The witness beside her ripped his shirt off and dropped to all fours, and fury raged through her. Logan said he wouldn’t hurt them, but the stranger was changing to attack him before he could recover. He wasn’t a witness at all, but another challenger.
Unable to hold back her bear, she let her animal have her body, and searing pain ripped her apart as she sprouted black fur and six inch claws. Her muzzle elongated and long curved teeth pierced her gums.
The other challenger had leapt onto Logan’s back, but Muriel was right behind and neatly slapped him end over end through the brush. Barreling down on him, she raked her claws across his face and chest, and roared her fury.
He was trying to hurt Logan.
She’d kill him. She’d kill everything.
“Muriel!” Logan’s voice came through the fog of bloodlust. “Muriel stop!”
Confused, she pulled away from the bloody, matted lion under her.
Logan stood naked with crimson running rivers down his chest. “He’s my brother.”
She shrank back into her human form and her lip trembled. Panting, she muttered, “Your family is even more messed up than mine.”
Logan’s brother shifted back and groaned in pan as he clutched at a claw mark down his face. That was going to leave a scar, but for the life of her, she couldn’t conjure any guilt.
“Serves you right for attacking me, you dick,” Logan growled out. “She had every right to kill you. You were supposed to serve as witness and you broke pride law by challenging tonight. Leave here and tell Shira I’m done playing her games.”
“No,” Muriel said in a voice still pitched low from the quick changes. “Tell Shira he’s mine.” She didn’t know what was going on, but Logan obviously didn’t want whatever was happening with this Shira woman, and if that bitch wanted him, she was going to have to come through her first.
Logan’s brother turned his blazing gaze on him. “You’re sure you want me to tell her that? She’s going to lose her shit if she finds out you’re trying to claim a bear.”
“How do you claim a mate in a pride?” Muriel growled out. She was on uneven footing with the different rules here.
The man’s nose twitched and he bared his human teeth. “A bite.”
“Ha.” Of course it was a bite. Like the one Logan had given her without her knowing how big a deal it was. Furious, she spun and lifted her hair, exposing the teeth marks on her neck. Over her shoulder, she said, “Now get the fuck off my property.”
Logan pursed his lips and stepped out of immediate clawing range from her. “I’d do what she says,” Logan murmured. “And take your dead with you.”
Muriel stomped through the woods and toward her pottery shop. The equipment was still running in there and she needed to assess the damage that asshole had done to her table of finished pieces.
Logan followed at a distance, proving he had some brains after all. Right now, she felt like clawing his face to match his idiot brother’s.
A sob escaped her as she saw the piles of shattered plates scattered across the floor. That challenger must’ve pulled the entire thing down as he chased her out the door. She turned off the wheel and tossed the water dangerously close to Logan’s bare feet. His chest was maimed, again, but he’d heal. Or not, but right now she was too pissed off to care.
“You lied to me,” she gritted out as she rinsed her tools.
“I didn’t lie, I just omitted the truth about what I really am.”
“Same thing, Logan. Don’t dance around on a technicality. What do you want me to say? Oh, congratulations on skirting the truth, I’m no longer mad? You could’ve told me!”
“Would you have saved me if I did? Would you have brought me into your house if you knew I was a lion? Would you have…” His voice cracked and he bent down and picked up a glass shard and chucked it into the woods outside the door. “Would you have slept with me if you knew I wasn’t like you?”
The honest answer was she didn’t know. She’d known other shifters existed, but she’d never thought she would actually meet one. “You didn’t give me the chance to make that decision for myself. How could you claim me without my consent, Logan? After everything you know happened to me with a forced pairing, you made this grand gesture to your people that I wasn’t aware of.”
“I shouldn’t have done it. I know it was stupid, but I’ll never get the chan
ce to pick, and I wanted to choose you. I never wanted you to see me like that, how I really am. I knew you’d do just what you’re doing now and pull away from me, then the mate I wanted would no longer be an option.”
She ran the back of her hand across her damp lashes and hissed at the pain when it ran across the cut under her eye. That entire side of her face was throbbing in rhythm to her racing heartbeat. “Who’s Shira?”
Logan bent down and began picking up the biggest broken pieces. “In lion prides, it’s matriarchal. Females rule our world and males are replaceable. Most of the males are rogues, living on the outside of pride life until a female wants to have a cub. That’s where the challenges come in.” He was very busy cleaning her pottery room and avoiding eye contact with her.
“So Shira is ready to have a cub? Why would she be mad that you are off the table if she has all these males fighting for her?”
“Because I’m on a winning streak.”
“How many challenges?”
“Muriel,” he gritted out.
“How. Many?”
“Fifteen. Sixteen after tonight. Shira is the new leader of the Portland pride and she feels she has something to prove. And she wants the strongest lion to father her child. I came here to seek sanctuary from the bears because I knew she wouldn’t risk a war with these clans. Lions are even rarer than your kind. And just look at what you did to Zachary tonight. You’re a submissive black bear and you would’ve killed him if I didn’t ask you not to. Thank you, by the way, for defending me.”
“Why don’t you want to do your duty to the pride and give her a child?”
“Because,” he said, lifting his feline gaze to hers. “I hate her. We grew up together and I couldn’t stand her then. She was always putting everyone beneath her and now that she’s in charge, she’s even worse. I don’t want a child with her because I don’t think she would be a good mother. And she’s not the mate I want. You are.”
It was so much to take in at once. Maybe it was too much. She couldn’t just skate over the part where he marked her without her permission. And he’d kept a really important part of himself a secret. And yeah, they’d just met yesterday, but it felt bigger than two strangers having a one night stand. It was different for shifters and he’d forged a bond with her in the shadows of some pretty deep secrets.
“What am I supposed to tell my people?” she asked. “If I keep a relationship with you, I’ll be shunned. I won’t have any choice but to be a rogue forever. I’m fine with it now, but eventually I wanted to pick a clan and be a part of my community again. How can I do that with a lion as a mate? You should’ve told me before you bonded to me.” She slid down against the wall and pulled her knees to her chest like they could protect her from the battering emotions threatening to overwhelm her.
He was quiet for a long time. The only sound was the clatter of dry clay as he swept up the mess. When the table was upright once again and everything straightened, he turned and rested his hands on his hips. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorrier than I can even express to you. I messed everything up and for selfish reasons. Everything just felt so normal with you. So easy, and I could see myself here with you. I got overwhelmed with how nice it was to feel like I belonged, and I fucked it all up. I took it too far. I shouldn’t have marked you, I just thought you would never find out what I was, so you’d never know how much it meant to me. My options are to die at the hands of the challengers she sends me, or give into Shira and get her pregnant. I didn’t want to do either of those, so I thought I could beg protection from the bears here. I hadn’t expected you. You saved me and when I started to get to know you, my animal chose. I should’ve kept my head though. The bite doesn’t mean anything to your people and doesn’t bind you to me. It was just a stupid thing I did because it would feel like you were secretly mine until I lose a challenge. That’s how I wanted to go. It was wrong, and I’m sorry.”
Everything he admitted to, every apology, softened her heart. She could understand being on the outside and wanting something different. How much did him being a different breed of shifter matter? Sure, their relationship would be dragged through the mud if the bear clans had anything to say. She was a viable breeding female and this just wasn’t done. “Can shifters mix?”
“You mean, can they mate?” he crouched down and rested his elbows on his knees.
“No, I mean. Well, Bron and I tried for children. It’s the only reason we slept together. I did these ovulation tests and we did our duty. There was a lot of pressure and it never happened, and it was a source of concern for the other bears in our clan. I always thought if I found someone, it wouldn’t be so scientific when we tried to see if we could have kids. Are kids even an option for us?”
His throat worked as he swallowed hard.
“I’m sorry,” she rushed. “This is way too soon to talk about this stuff.”
“No. It’s not, actually. If we’re talking about trying to be together, we should know exactly where we stand and what we have to lose. We could have a child, but we wouldn’t know if it was bear or lion until its first change. You might not continue your bear shifter lineage.”
“But if I’m not broken, we could have a child?”
He shuffled closer and pulled her into his lap. “Dammit, Muriel, I never want to hear about you being broken again. You aren’t. And yes, I could get you pregnant if and when we ever decided to have cubs.”
A wry smile crooked her lips and she giggled at the absurdity of it all. “This freaks you out, doesn’t it? Big bad biker blowing through town. Day two and you’re having to answer baby questions.”
A deep chuckle rattled his chest and he kissed the top of her head. “It scared the shit out of me with Shira. With you, it feels as natural as breathing. I like it, in fact. It means you’re still considering not chasing me away.”
“Why did you come back?”
“I did leave. Made it all the way outside of town and was sitting at this burger joint up the highway, feeling gutted at the way we said goodbye. I knew the best thing for you would be to keep going and not to look back. To never call you or check up on you. But I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t strong enough to leave. I came back to tell you everything. Those assholes just blew my speech wide open before I could say it like I practiced in my head.”
“When you said Shira’s name in your sleep, I was so angry. Bron used to do that with Samantha’s name and it always made me feel empty for days. I thought it was happening again.”
“I was having a dream about Shira, yes, but it was a nightmare. I dreamed she was coming for you and I was trying to stop her. And now that you showed Zachary the mark I made on you, it might come true. I think we should talk to Bron and keep him in the loop. I don’t know if me leaving would solve anything now. Once the pride finds out you’ve been marked by me…I just can’t stand the thought of leaving you alone to deal with that.”
“Good,” she said, relaxing against him. “You shouldn’t be running anymore anyway. This is where you’ll make your stand, by me. And lion, werewolf, hyena, mosquito shifter, I don’t care. It won’t be easy, but I’m willing to try if you are.”
His heartbeat was racing against her cheek and she smiled at his reaction. “Don’t tease me, woman. I’m all in. Are you saying you want to try for something with me?”
“On one condition.”
“Name it. Anything.”
“Don’t lie to me or withhold information from me anymore. It’s going to be hard enough for us. We have to stay a united front. No more hiding from me.”
His dark eyes searched hers like he couldn’t believe what she was saying. “You have my word. Now can I clean you up and take care of you?” He eased her back and brushed a gentle finger under the cut by her eye. “I hate what Mark did to you. He was an asshole for roughing up a woman like this. Watching you bleed has been killing me. Does it hurt?”
“Feels like I’ve been hit by an eighteen-wheeler,” she admitted. “He didn’t hold back
.”
“I saw.” Logan’s voice had gone dangerously low. “I don’t usually kill the challengers Shira sends me, but he deserved what he got.” Hooking a finger under her chin, Logan lifted her mouth to his and sucked gently on her bottom lip. Easing back, he murmured, “I want to run a bath and clean you, then I’m going to feed you and bed you until you scream my name, knowing what I am.”
She ran a light fingertip down his temple, near his glowing amber eyes. How could she have ever thought those belonged to a bear? She would have to tell the clan about Logan and she’d have to hear more grief for her choices, but she was tired of trying to choose wisely for other people. She wanted to choose Logan for her, because he made her happy. He made her feel safe and cared for.
And right now, remaining a rogue seemed like a fair trade if she could keep the man she was falling in love with.
Chapter Eleven
The bed squeaked and Muriel cracked one weary eye open. Logan sat on the edge of the bed, pulling his boots on.
“What time is it?” she asked, lifting the hem of his sweater and rubbing the smooth skin of his back.
“Seven,” he murmured in a sleepy voice. “I called Bron and picked up that position he offered me. I have to meet them at the job site in half an hour.”
“You couldn’t wait a day?” She pouted. An entire day laying around doing the fun stuff he did to her last night sounded just right. “Besides, it’s the weekend.”
He laid beside her and pulled her close. His chest had only needed butterfly bandages after his fight, thanks to an impressive set of lion shifter healing abilities, and this morning he was acting like his injuries didn’t hurt at all.
“I have to start making money. I know those broken plates were income for you and I’m going to pay for them all. I have some savings, but I can’t just freeload off you, woman. If I’m going to settle here, I need to pull my weight. It doesn’t feel right not helping out. I told Bron what happened last night and he’s sending Samantha over here to keep you company today while you work. He said he’s calling someone named Reese too. He said she’s a trained fighter, so I feel better about leaving if I know you have someone here. I put my number in your phone. Call me if you even get a weird instinct that someone is watching you, okay?”
