“Why didn’t you shift?”
Kyla slowly raised her eyes at the question. Lindley breathed hard. Blood from the fight marred his face and arms. His eyes were bright and wild with his lion. He was absolutely terrifying and stunning in his power.
“Why, Kyla?” he demanded again.
“Because I’m not allowed to fight back.”
He growled, long and low. The noise of it rattled through her, vibrated her insides, shook loose something deep inside herself.
“Not anymore,” he snarled. “Do you understand me? You raise hell if someone tries that shit again.”
Stupid, fearful beast. If she’d been captured and returned, she would have faced punishment for fleeing. She’d tried to resist, too. Adding the weight of her claws wouldn’t have changed what waited for her back home.
“Why didn’t you let him take me?” she asked quietly. “You wanted me gone.”
Lindley prowled closer, still rumbling with a growl. He dropped his hand right in front of her, fingers twitching. “No way in fuck am I handing you over to them.”
Cautiously, Kyla lifted her eyes. Bright copper still watched her. His jaw was still set in a hard line. She slid her palm against his and sank into the warmth that flared between them.
He pulled her to her feet, not dropping his eyes. “We’re going to find Sage and get her back.”
For the first time in a long, long while she felt something fill her chest.
Hope.
Chapter 8
Lindley eyed the light under his door. He could practically count the steps it would take to carry him across his frigid living room and into the bedroom. He knew what he’d find, too. Kyla hunkered down in his bed, warm and cozy under his blankets, mingling her scent with his.
It was wrong. All wrong.
He braced himself for the slash of claws from his lion. The beast snarled and paced through his head, exactly how he’d done when he’d turned his back on Kyla earlier. Nothing had changed in the few short hours since he’d settled her unconscious form under his blankets. Her sweet scent and sweet face would still be safer elsewhere.
Maybe the other lionesses would take her in. Linnea, Maya, and the others rescued at the same time Trent pulled his hero move to save Hailey were figuring out how to live their lives outside of the Jasper pride. They had a place in the middle of Bearden, too, so they were safer than a ranch on the edge of enclave territory.
For now.
Lindley scowled. With what Kyla told him and what Sage had frantically whispered in her phone call, Jasper and his father were working to rebuild their support within their bullshit consortium of lion prides and put their plans into motion. They wanted war with humans. They wanted an enclave of their own.
The threats never ceased.
A pissed off growl rattled in his throat. He should leave. Trent and the others would be waiting for him.
Except... He glanced at the light under his door again. He couldn’t disappear without giving his unwanted reminder of the past an update.
He knocked softly on the door. Movement rustled on the other side, then stilled. He imagined Kyla jerked upright and froze. A vague sense of unease he couldn’t identify churned in his middle, coated his tongue and throat with a sour taste, and made him want to drive spikes deep into his brain.
His lion settled down and licked his claws in smug satisfaction. Asshole animal.
Quiet sounds on the other side of the door cut short thoughts of finding some ancient fae magic to separate himself from his inner beast simply to make a rug from his hide.
Kyla cracked the door and peeked out before opening it fully. “Oh, it’s you.”
Fuck, she was breathtaking.
Her hair flowed over her shoulders, messy but still somehow looking nice. The light at her back bathed her in an unearthly glow. She’d changed out of her clothes and into a shirt of his and damn, did she make it look good. His lion rumbled in pleasure to see her dressed in his things, ready to crawl under his blankets, and fall asleep in his den.
He’d tried to give her some modesty when he plucked her out of the snow. Then he’d been too suspicious to drink her in while he waited for her to wake. Anger and harsh words drove him out into the night and the threat of seeing her snatched away brought him back. They hadn’t had an actual... Conversation? Reunion? Neither choice seemed to fit.
What the hell did he even say to her? Everything she knew about him was a lie? Not entirely. He hadn’t killed his mother, but the violence pumped through his veins. He just kept it locked behind a mask.
Besides, that crime kept her at arm’s length. Safer for them both to not get attached.
Lindley folded his arms over his chest and let off a soft snort. “Were you expecting someone else?”
“Just my backup in case those meddling Crowleys cut off my first escape route.” She winced and red flushed her cheeks. “That was a dumb thing to say. I don’t know why I said that. Ignore me, please.”
That was a little more like the Kyla he remembered. He’d sometimes wondered if she lacked a filter between her brain and mouth. It had been infectious, too. He’d overheard far too many conversations between Kyla and Sage where they bounced between topics faster than he could keep up, with no bearing on what they’d been discussing before.
That ridiculous, awkward teenager of the past had grown up, but some personality traits never vanished entirely.
“You’ve been through a lot tonight. Shock makes a person do strange things.”
“So do concussions from being hit by monster trucks,” she muttered, lips twitching at the corners.
His lion purred at the amusement lacing through her scent. Lindley leaned against the doorframe with a shrug. “You hit me. I’m surprised there’s even a front end left.”
Kyla planted her hands on her hips. “Lindley Levine,” she scolded, “did you just call me fat?”
Lindley’s life flashed before his eyes. The back of his brain itched with the threat of danger long ingrained since the first stumbling steps on two legs. Darkness held predators. Safety and numbers went hand in hand. Never, ever fall into the trap of weight-related questions.
Kyla covered her mouth with her hand and huffed a quiet laugh. “You should see the look on your face.”
“Very funny.” His lion’s purr rumbled louder in his head. Lindley shook himself and cleared his throat. “I’m going out,” he added. “Do you need anything?”
“Oh.” She ducked her face and a gulf seemed to open between them. “No. I’m fine.”
Lie.
The unidentified unease smacked into him like a cartoon character pancaking into a building. She didn’t trust him. Could he blame her? In her eyes, he was a killer who’d failed to keep her safe.
“Kyla.” Look at me. Lift your damn eyes.
She stayed focused on her toes for a handful of heartbeats before slowly dragging her gaze upwards. Lindley swallowed hard. He wasn’t the one being hunted. They weren’t in immediate danger. But she left him feeling exposed.
Bright grey finally connected with his own. The color wasn’t dark and stormy like some he’d seen, but lighter, like a thick fog hugging the ground on a cold morning.
“You’re not going back,” he told her in a low voice. “I won’t let that happen.”
“How can you be so sure? They got close once already.”
Her shoulders sagged, and anger swirled inside him. They’d done that to her. Levine pride bullshit wore her down until she couldn’t even laugh without hiding it.
Most of all, he hated that she hadn’t defended herself. No shifting, not even a snarl while that fucker had her locked down. Her eyes hadn’t even flashed gold with her inner lioness.
No matter what happened or what ruin his father tried to rain down on him, he’d see Kyla learn to roar and unsheathe her claws to fight.
Until then? “We’re running the territory. We’ll make sure no one else sneaks up on us like that again.”
“Lin�
��” She hesitated, catching her lower lip between her teeth. “Why are you helping me now?”
Because he’d taken the fall for his mother’s murder. Because his father dangled the same fate over Sage. Because he’d been weak and scared and cornered animals lashed out.
And what had happened anyway? Sage had been sold off to Jasper-fucking-Crowley. Kyla faced the same fate. Levine pride bullshit had only gotten worse since he hauled himself out of the territory.
Lindley glanced behind him, then back into the tempting warmth of his room. “Go to sleep, Kyla. Nothing to be done until morning.”
Disappointment tangled in her scent, sharp and stinging in its accusations against him. He didn’t need a deep stab to the chest for a fatal blow; inhaling his failure drained his life force in a thousand tiny cuts.
He didn’t wait for her to shut him on the other side of the door before spinning on his heel.
Lindley stepped through his front door and twisted around. No use locking up when he had a gaping entrance in the side of his den. He glared in the direction of Rhys’s den, and the empty home on the other side that had belonged to Garrett before he’d turned traitor. Safer option, that. Four complete walls.
Red washed through his vision and his lion snarled. Kyla didn’t belong there. She belonged in his den.
Behind him, a door creaked open. He glanced over his shoulder to see Trent bend down and kiss Hailey. She threw her arms around his shoulders when he started to pull away. Just as quickly, she let go and settled against the doorframe to watch him step off their porch.
“Be safe,” she said in a voice that carried. “Find them and give them hell.”
Lindley felt a smile twitch his lips. Bloodthirsty little human. She packed a lot of fight into a tiny package. Even after seeing her life disrupted, she’d chosen to stick around and take her place at the head of a pride of batshit lions. She needed to be tough.
Hell, she’d turned Trent into a halfway decent person. He still scowled and talked shit, but the fucker lit up whenever Hailey walked into his line of sight.
At the end of the day, wasn’t that what everyone wanted? Someone to call them on their shit, keep pushing them to be better, and be there every moment of the journey?
Lindley took another look at his den. The light in his bedroom flicked off in a giant, darkened sign of his future.
He turned at a rumble from his side. Rhys materialized out of the darkness, white hide crisscrossed with scars from hard years of fighting. The beast’s eerie silver eyes looked right through him.
Lindley opened his mouth to tell him to fuck off, but Rhys slashed his gaze away and prowled toward Trent’s den with a flick of his tail.
Crazy lions, all of them. Crazier ones still out in the world. Those needed hunting, or at the very least, a harsh reminder to never fuck with him or his.
His shift rippled through him slowly and painfully. The fourth of the day, his body protested even as his lion ached to get free. He grimaced as muscles tore and bones broke until finally, the darkness between forms took hold and shoved him onto four feet on the other side.
Lindley shook out his mane and dug his claws into the snow before joining the others. Kyla needed him to be strong. She needed to be kept safe.
Together, the pride circled the cluster of dens in the middle of the territory. Fresh prints and splatters of blood marked the fight and chase from earlier. The lion he’d hauled off Kyla had turned into the fight as soon as he hit the snow. He hadn’t been alone for long before a second lion joined him, but two against four weren’t strong odds.
Lindley led the others as they retraced their steps into the night. Their breath clouded in front of their faces with every exhale and their feet threw up clumps of snow behind them, but no one complained.
He pulled to a stop at the fence. They’d lost the assholes on the other side. They’d have met a driver outside enclave territory if they were smart, or waited to stalk their prey again if they weren’t. Either way, the last place they’d been spotted was as good a starting point as any.
Trent and Rhys split off towards the right. Their path along the fence line swung furthest from the dens.
Lindley turned in the opposite direction. He had less ground to cover, but his path took him closer to the road leading into Bearden. With any luck, he’d find the getaway vehicle stalled out in a snowbank and the fuckers frozen to death.
Even after trying to fight him for no good reason, Dash ran at his side. He was all business, too, with his nose to the ground or high in the air to catch unfamiliar scents on land or breeze.
For the first time in weeks, Lindley felt connected to the others. The sense of being at odds with every little thing that drew breath in the entire fucking world faded down to nothing. He was one with the pride in their focus to protect what belonged to them. Their territory. Their livelihoods.
Their mates.
He shook off the thought. Only one mate—Hailey. Kyla was simply an unattached female being hunted by a group of assholes. The consortium of bullshit circling like vultures wouldn’t get near her if he had his way.
The assholes were desperate. Lucky, but desperate. Sneaking into pride territory without a proper accounting of how many brawlers waited to rake their claws down an enemy’s sides? Dumb.
Kyla didn’t realize it, but she held the power. Men like his father couldn’t stand being told no. Their warped view of the world didn’t allow for being seen as weak or having challenges thrown in their faces. Kyla threw a wrench in that awful system of authority when she opted out of the bullshit. If she wasn’t brought back in line, everyone would know Roland Levine was as mortal as the rest of them.
If it hadn’t been for his big boy tantrum, they wouldn’t have gotten so close.
Lindley bared his teeth in rebuke of himself. Idiot. Asshole. Fool. None of the names he called himself stung as much as the words Kyla had flung at him.
He’d abandoned them to ensure his own survival. What saved his own neck made him just another Levine male in her eyes.
How the hell did he begin fixing the mistakes of the past?
Chapter 9
Kyla sighed the moment the water hit her. There was magic in a hot shower, especially one without interruptions. She didn’t need to rush out the door to make breakfast or start laundry or clean anything. Her parents weren’t shouting for her to hurry. She had all the time in the world. Or at least a full hot water heater.
She’d tossed and turned for hours before sleep finally claimed her, only to jerk awake at some unseen, unheard disturbance. Which was fine by her. The very real, very sharp disturbances of the night before were more than enough for one lifetime.
She’d been unsure of her next steps when she poked her head out of the bedroom and found nothing but silence and the cold scent of an empty den. She’d padded down the hall and into the living room, but found the same emptiness her nose already told her about and an extra twenty degrees of freezing from the hole in the wall. The only thing that kept her from dressing and getting on her way was the note stuck to the fridge.
Starting the day’s chores. Territory is clear. Be back soon.
-Lin
He’d denied he cared and refused to help, but then he’d gone and surprised her. Oh, he’d stayed as tight-lipped and broody as before. She was also certain his face had set permanently into a scowl. Laugh? With a scowl. Cry? If his tear ducts hadn’t dried up to nothing, that was probably done with a scowl, too. Staring off into the middle distance while waiting for the dang microwave to ding? Scowly-scowl.
He’d still gone back out into the night to keep her safe.
Kyla tried to remember a time when any male acted selflessly for a female and came up empty. The Levine pride kept them locked inside their territory for safety, but dark motives were behind the supposed protection. Women were there to serve, not to be waited upon.
She could make the argument that he’d agreed to watch for other Levine lions as a matter of keeping his own t
erritory free of competition, but she didn’t think that was the case. If he wanted the others gone completely, he could have let them have her.
Lindley had changed, but he’d also stayed the same. He still had a protective streak running right through his core.
He was still dangerous. Still a murderer. She didn’t know how to reconcile him extending his protection over her with the dark deeds that sent him fleeing in the first place.
Kyla took full advantage of her lack of interruptions and stayed under the water until the spray turned cold. When she finally twisted the knob and reached for the towel she’d hung on the bar, Lindley’s scent hit her square in the nose.
A shiver ran down her spine as her lioness unfurled inside her.
Nothing. It meant nothing. That her inner animal seemed to come alive around the man was just a symptom of the bigger wrongs in her life. The lioness was so desperate to find a safe space, she latched on to someone who’d been kind to her in her younger years.
She battered back the press of the bad cat until the craving in her middle was distant enough to be confused with a rumble for breakfast. Kyla dressed quickly and braced herself for the blast of cold of Lindley’s half-demolished den.
“Good morning!” a voice called brightly from the other side of the room.
Kyla whirled to find a dark-haired woman perched on the edge of the couch with a misshapen pile of purple next to her. She inhaled sharply, then narrowed her eyes.
Human.
She’d grown up avoiding them, but the Levine pride didn’t call an enclave home. Humans had existed all around them and the lessons to never reveal her other side were ingrained to keep herself and the others safe.
Then shifters—and vampires and fae—were revealed to the world. While the need for secrecy had disappeared, the Levines leaned hard away from any sort of integration. Humans weren’t to be trusted, Roland proclaimed, now more than ever. Whereas before only a small number of hunters wanted to annihilate their kind, the whole world could turn on them at any moment.
Savage Claim: Lion Hearts Book Two Page 5
