Tiger Lily

by May Dawson

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  Their Shifter Academy: Unwanted

  Prologue

  July-Before the Academy

  When I came down the stairs into the foyer, Lex was deep in conversation with Logan, one of my sister’s mates. Then he must have heard the soft click of my high-heeled sandals on the stair, because Lex turned.

  His eyes widened appreciatively, and he whistled. “I am one lucky man, Madeline Northsea.”

  I looked down at the slinky pink summer dress I wore; it was a lot more colorful than most people might expect from a werewolf. “You just saw me an hour ago in the training yard. Bruised up and dirty…”

  “And you were gorgeous then too,” Lex finished for me.

  “Don’t forget how lucky you are.” Logan clapped Lex’s shoulder. “Northsea women are complete pains-in-the-ass, but they’re worth it.”

  “I heard that,” Piper said from the front door. She carried a paper bag from the Baby Supply Depot. She had left on her shopping trip with Kai and Nick and Arthur in tow, and I had to wonder how much nesting material she’d picked up this time around that they’d actually let her carry a bag. My sister’s mates had crossed the line lately from merely adoring to straight-up worshipful.

  “I know.” Logan flashed her a devilish grin. “I wouldn’t have said it otherwise. I’m being honest, not disloyal.”

  She rolled her eyes, but still crossed the distance to grab his hand and pull him away down the hall. “Leave the kids alone. They don’t need to know how bad married life is.”

  I heard him laugh out loud, right before the sound broke off. The two of them must be kissing. Eight years together—and Piper pregnant with twins now—and they were still madly in love.

  “It’s a nightmare,” Logan teased distantly, and then there was a faint crash as the two of them bumped into something, like they were once again making out so intensely that they were willing to get bruised for it. I winced at the sound.

  “You know, you guys already knocked her up!” I called.

  Lex shook his head at me, his lips pursing but quirked in amusement. His mischievous lips were made for me to kiss, and I felt a familiar ache—of lust, but more than that, of longing. Lex made me so happy that I always wanted more of him, even when he was right there.

  “They are embarrassing. And hard on the furniture,” I told him.

  “I think it’s sweet,” he said. He held his hand out to me, and I came down the last few steps to take it. “I hope you and I are that happy one day. I hope you don’t get sick of me.”

  He drew me into his arms, against his body, and I tilted my head back as his lips met mine. Lex’s kiss was sweet and tentative, the way it always was in my sister’s house.

  That soft kiss was a lie, though. Lex was full of passion and certainty.

  “What do you mean, someday?” I asked, as hand-in-hand, we headed through the front door and across the porch. We were off on an adventure, a date night in the city. I waved goodbye to Arthur and Kai as they wrestled an enormous box out of the trunk of my sister’s car.

  He frowned. “You know…sometimes people aren’t as happy as their relationship goes on.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I had never seen that, though. My mother’s marriage had ended unhappily, after I was kidnapped by the coven that had raised me. My father was missing, presumed dead.

  My sister’s ridiculously happy marriage was the only up-close-and-personal example that I had.

  “I assume my parents were happy at some point, even though the other’s continued existence makes them miserable now.” He swung my car door open for me. “Now, do we have to talk about failed relationships on our way to what is hopefully a romantic date?”

  “I can’t wait to see what you planned,” I said,. “Pretty sure it’s going to make-or-break whether I get sick of you.”

  “I didn’t know things were so dire.” He ran his hand through his hair, feigning distress. “Or maybe I would’ve planned something more exciting than Taco Bell.”

  The charade didn’t hold. When I smiled, he finally gave in to a grin that lit his blue eyes. His light brown hair was sun-streaked above his tanned, big-jawed, gorgeous face, and I couldn’t resist that smile. I leaned over the console to kiss him.

  We’d been together since we met at my prospective student visit to the academy. The chemistry between the two of us was instantaneous and hot, and it had only grown more intense once he came to stay with me for the summer. It wasn’t possible for me to grow sick of Lex.

  The two of us drove through Blissford, passing the high school I’d graduated from in June—no more pretending to be normal for me, thank Cain—and then took the highway to the city. He played Taylor Swift without me having to tease him for it now, and I bobbed my head to the music. I caught him smiling. There was a reason he’d surrendered his old driver-picks-the-music rules.

  Dusk was falling across the sky, like a bruise pressing down toward the horizon. We didn’t mind night. We were creatures of it, after all.

  The Virginia evening was hot and sticky when we got out of the car. Lex led me a few blocks to an Irish pub where my very favorite band was playing. Somehow, Lex had gotten someone to hold a table for us, even though I knew I’d be up on my feet most of the time dancing.

  “I love to watch you dance,” he said when I tried to tug him out of the booth, where he was ensconced with chicken wings and a beer.

  “And I love to watch you humor me,” I shot back.

  “Brat,” he murmured, right before he slid out of the booth and wrapped me in his arms. His lips grazed my hair, and just the promise of his soft lips against the shell of my ear made my breath give.

  “You love it,” I said, because I wasn’t ready to say you love me. I secretly relished when he called me a brat, since those words always punctuated him giving into me. He was strong and fierce and dangerous and wrapped around my finger.

  “Yes, I do, but you’re not supposed to know.” He leaned into me as I slid my arm around his narrow waist. He was built like a god, with broad shoulders and chiseled abs I could feel taut under my fingers even through the soft fabric of his t-shirt.

  Then he danced with me to the bouncy music, spinning me and dipping me until I was laughing and dizzy.

  When a slower song came up, he rested his forehead against mine as we slow-danced. His bright blue eyes turned soft and heavy-lidded as he gazed into my eyes.

  I felt the familiar ache to tell him that I loved him. He loved me; it was there, written across his handsome face. This was the first time I’d ever fallen in love, and I didn’t know much, but I knew it when I saw it.

  Normally I was brash and loud and sure of myself—growing up in the shadow of the shifter queen and her cocky mates will do that to a girl—but when it came to the L-word, I turned shy.

  Lex ran his hand slowly down my arm, then my side, and his touch sent sparks flying down my skin.

  After the pub, we went clubbing. If I had Lex in a dancing mood, I wasn’t going to waste it.

  We were coming out of Vice when Lex reached back and grabbed my hand. I broke off in the middle of a sentence; we’d been debating whether to find a late night waffle house for food or to just high tail it back to Blissford for sex. Waffles or wild sex—it was a tough choice for me.

  But I followed his gaze as we caught a flicker of motion vanishing into an alleyway across from the club, and then heard a low, desperate human sob.

  “Don’t tell me to go back to the car,” I whispered pre-emptively. My sister and her men were so protective of me.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “I need my girl to watch my back.”

  No matter what trouble we were walking into, his words sparked a warm glow in my chest.

  Together, the two of us moved quietly across the empty city street. Lex tugged me to one side, and I thought we were skirting the glow of a streetlight until he nodded to a CCTV camera almost hidde
n under the eaves of the storefront.

  He squeezed my hand and released, nodding to the near side of the alleyway. He knelt and pulled an unseen blade from the inside of his boot, passing it to me.When I took the leather-wrapped handle, moonlight glinted off the blade. Then, stealthy as could be, he crossed the alleyway. He was barely a flicker in the shadows.

  He looked across the alley to me, and his always piercing blue eyes were so bright they seemed to glow with supernatural light.

  The two of us exploded into the alleyway together.

  It was dark in the alley, and it took me a second to make sense of the shadowy scene. Up against the dumpster, three figures writhed against the pale body of a young woman. Her eyes were wide, her head jerking back and forth with their motion. She was still conscious, but she didn’t seem able to fight back.

  Two of the things lifted their heads and turned toward us, hissing, revealing mouths full of jagged, broken teeth. The third was still sucking from her bloodied chest, long-clawed hands gripping her so tightly that her shirt was shredded.

  Vamps.

  She’d been lulled by their poison. She couldn’t fight back.

  “Fancy the luck,” Lex said. He leaned over the trash in the alleyway and straightened with a glass bottle in his hand. “And me without my sword. Sorry, guys. It’s going to hurt extra when I take your heads off.”

  Two of the vamps sprang at us. He smashed the bottle against the wall and strode forward to meet the one on the right

  I stepped in toward the one that came after me, meeting it without hesitation. Frightening teeth snapped against my skin before I caught it by the throat, slinging it to the ground. I had to kill the thing, but I also had to avoid those poisoned teeth. I stabbed it in the chest, and the sour-sweet reek of death washed over me.

  Besides me, Lex caught the vamp and slammed it into the brick wall until the thing went slack.

  I went to step on the vamp’s face, holding it down with my boot while I plunged the knife in again, and caught a glimpse of my strappy sandals and polished toenails. Shit. I was never going to wear open-toed shoes again. A girl can’t even enjoy a night out on the town free from supernatural beasties. Changing direction, I let my knees slam down on the creature, pinning it before I drove the knife into its throat.

  Rule one of fighting monsters: everything dies when you cut its head off.

  “Look out,” Lex shouted. I felt the other vamp coming as a shiver raced up my spine, and I ducked forward, trying to wrench the blade free. The dying vamp snapped at me one last time and then collapsed, finally succumbing to the pull of death that it should have met months ago.

  The last vamp launched toward me. Lex kicked it in mid-air, and it slammed into the pavement beside me instead. Without hesitation, I drove the knife into its throat. It had been trying to reach me with its jagged teeth, but I pinned it to the ground. Terrifying, rotted eyes seemed to meet mine, even though I knew the vamps couldn’t really see anything.

  I pulled the knife loose and slammed it home again.

  “God damn it,” Lex said, with feeling.

  “What’s wrong?” I scrambled to my feet. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” he said. He held out his hand for his knife, and when I passed it to him, he wiped the blade off on the hem of his shirt. We were both splattered with their blood anyway. Taking care of the steel was more important. “It’s two-to-one.”

  It took me a second to register. I’d technically killed two of the vamps to his one, although he’d been rather helpful.

  “I didn’t know it was a competition,” I said airily.

  “Like anything with you isn’t.” He winked at me. Then he turned to the girl who was plastered against the dumpster. Her face was a mask of horror, but she still wasn’t screaming.

  His glib act dropped away as he squatted next to her. “It’s going to be alright, you’re safe now,” he promised her. He picked a small silver clutch from the debris and opened it up. He used the hem of his shirt to pull out the phone and dial 9-1-1.

  “Hey, we’re at…” he squinted across the street, and I ran to the mouth of the alleyway to get the nearest address. When I gave it to him, he relayed it to the 9-1-1- dispatcher.

  Then he straightened, dropping the phone back into the clutch and setting it tenderly in her lap.

  “We can’t be found here,” he promised her. “But we’ll be watching from the shadows until the police come. Nothing will have the chance to hurt you.”

  I hesitated at the mouth of the alley until he tugged me away. Her face, wide with horror, slack with helplessness, would stay with me in my dreams for a long time.

  Deep in the shadows, I told him, “I never want to be helpless like that.”

  “The vamps poisoned her with that first bite—she couldn’t fight back,“ he told me. He studied my face, then seemed to understand that he had missed my point. “Maddie. You never will be.”

  I nodded, trying to convince myself.

  “You’re so strong and fearless,” he said, brushing my hair back behind my ear. His fingers skated down the curve of my jaw. “And even when you aren’t sometimes—because you aren’t perfect, and I’m not perfect either so I can say that—you’ll have me. Just like I have you.”

  I smiled up at him then.

  I didn’t need to hear him say I love you.

  He’d just said it.

  We waited until the police came, and then he said, “Let’s go home, Maddie.”

  He had slipped, but I didn’t call his attention to it. He was from another pack, and he’d chosen to spend the summer with me between his semesters at the academy. But maybe Blissford felt like home to him sometimes. It was where we were together, after all.

  I wouldn’t tell Lex—not yet—but he felt like home to me too.

  Download the prequel novella for Unwanted, Their Shifter Academy, for free, and find out how Maddie met Lex…

  Also by May Dawson

  The True and the Crown series:

  One Kind of Wicked

  Two Kinds of Damned

  Three Kinds of Lost

  Four Kinds of Cursed

  Five Kinds of Love

  Their Shifter Princess:

  Their Shifter Princess

  Their Shifter Princess 2: Pack War

  Their Shifter Princess 3: Coven’s Revenge

  Their Shifter Academy:

  Their Shifter Academy: A Prequel Novella

  Their Shifter Academy 1: Unwanted

  Their Shifter Academy 2: Unclaimed

  Their Shifter Academy 3: Undone

  Their Shifter Academy 4: Unforgivable

  Their Shifter Academy 5: Unwinnable

  The Wild Angels & Hunters Series:

  Wild Angels

  Fierce Angels

  Dirty Angels

  Chosen Angels

  Academy of the Supernatural

  Her Kind of Magic

  His Dangerous Ways

  Their Dark Imaginings

  Ashley Landon, Bad Medium

  Dead Girls Club

  About May Dawson

  May Dawson’s first crush was Indiana Jones, and it wasn’t just for Harrison Ford’s rugged good looks. She’s always been drawn to adventure, and she found it in Bali and the Antarctic, traveling widely before she settled down to raise two red-haired munchkins/hooligans. These days you can find her embracing a very different kind of adventure: love. Living it. Writing it.

  https://BookHip.com/LPGGRR

  https://www.facebook.com/groups/321534541670061/

  May@MayDawson.com

 

 

 
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