Royal Pride

by Zelda Knight

  "It's your right as an Alpha."

  "You're damn right it is.

  Kanji's body relaxed, and he laughed.

  "I met someone." I blurted out. It was easy to talk to my big brother. He had always been there for me and had always supported me. He was the first person that I confided in about being attracted to women, and he was right there by my side when I had come out to my parents.

  "What do you mean you met someone?" He asked seriously. "And does Marlize know about this someone?"

  "It's a long story, and Marlize knows. We actually just broke up."

  "What the fuck, Arami? I'm assuming Mom and Dad don't know yet." He desperately ran his fingers through his hair.

  "Not yet, but I will let them know."

  "This someone must be pretty special. You seem confident in what's happening. Who is she?"

  "She's my mate, brother."

  Kanji jumped to his feet. "Your what? Your mate?"

  I wasn't sure if Naemi knew it or not, but the desire to claim her that night in the forest had settled it for me. She was meant for me. I longed to claim her with my mark, and I wanted to dominate her. My dragon growled just at the thought of being with Naemi.

  "Her name is Naemi."

  "I don't know anyone by that name."

  "She's not from here. I met her at the bar in town a couple of weeks ago."

  Kanji was staring at me incredulously. "A couple of weeks ago? Arami, you ended a year-long relationship for someone you met a couple of weeks ago?

  I stood to look him in the eye while my anger flared, and my dragon drew restless. "That should tell you how serious I am. I had to end things with Marlize to be completely free and available for Naemi. To claim her."

  Kanji put his hands up. "Arami, I was just surprised, is all. You are right. This does, in fact, show me just how serious you are. You have never been one to make impulsive decisions. My baby sister is really growing up. I'm proud of you, Alpha. Finding your mate is a gift from the fates. You are one of the lucky ones." He stopped and looked around. So? What are you going to do? I would like to meet this Naemi?"

  "Big brother, you will be meeting her very soon. I'll be back. Keep an eye on things for me."

  At that moment, I had made up my mind, and I knew what needed to be done. So, I waved at my approving brother and set off to find Naemi. My dragon, who had grown agitated about the uncertainty of my relationship with Naemi, was now snarling with anticipation at the thought of being surrounded by the scent of our mate.

  Naemi was mine, and nothing was standing in my way anymore. I would claim her and announce her as my mate in front of our Clan. Hell, I would do the same in front of her pack as well if we needed to. We would become one forever, and I would love her for the rest of my life.

  I smirked as I shifted and took to the air in the direction, I had last seen my mate. Eventually, I would pick up her scent, and it would lead me right to her. I hoped Naemi was waiting for me because I would not be taking no as an answer. I was claiming my mate tonight.

  To Be Continued

  Arami and Naemi’s story has only just begun. You can read more about their story in the full-length version of Bonded, now available for preorder here.

  Also, you can get to know Astair, Naemi’s new best friend, in Black Girl Magic: A Shademire Witchy Cozy, which is available for preorder here.

  About Isabeau Moon

  Isabeau Moon loves coffee, dark chocolate, and steamy romances of all genres. A strong believer that Love is Love, Isabeau writes sultry inclusive stories full of passion and intrigue for everyone to enjoy.

  Pride of a Lioness

  © 2021 Katia Kozar

  Edited by Adrienne Ah

  About Pride of a Lioness

  She was just an ordinary American woman on a once-in-a-lifetime trip when the truth about her shifter heritage is revealed, changing everything.

  Serwa Robinson-Hall has been ignoring her inner lioness for a long, long time.

  Hiding the light of her spirit.

  Reining in her ferocity.

  Denying her own power.

  But a heritage trip to Ghana changes all of that.

  When handsome fellow tourist Abeiku Yeboah comes to her rescue after she’s robbed at an outdoor market, the secret he reveals makes her realize she’s only been living half a life.

  The information gives her the key to embracing her true self.

  Serwa is a lioness.

  And she’s ready to roar.

  Chapter One

  It was raining so hard that Serwa couldn’t see out the windows of the conference room because of the water pouring down the glass in opaque curtains.

  And that was a shame because not being able to look out the window while trapped in one of the agency’s endless creative team meetings made it a lot harder not to drift off, made it nearly impossible to look like she was focused and engaged.

  Looking alert and interested while Robert Prentice, the world’s most fatuous advertising executive, pontificated about whatever his current client was selling was a skill Serwa had perfected in the three years she’d worked as an advertising copywriter for the third largest ad agency in Chicago. She had learned to tamp down her rage at her boss’ reflexive racism and sexism; she’d learned how to express her disapproval for his disdain for the creative process without drawing his wrath. What she hadn’t figured out was how to deal with him shamelessly stealing any idea that looked like it might have some potential.

  There is no I in team. Nor was there an I in shameless self-promoter or unrepentant asshole, but Serwa knew bring up the topic wasn’t worth it. And it wasn’t like there was any other use for her brilliant thoughts about how to sell kitchenware endorsed by a Food Nor celebrity or the books pumped out by a publisher specializing in cozy mysteries and DIY manuals

  Serwa had stopped venting about her job with her parents because her father always pointed out that Robert was a white man and therefore not to be trusted, and her mother always told her to file a complaint with H.R., but Serwa knew if she did that, she might as well kiss her career in advertising goodbye and go to work for her cousin who ran a successful breakfast joint on the South Side.

  “Are you sure that you really want to be a copywriter?” her best friend Twilla asked her.

  Frequently. But then Twilla was working in the Mayor’s office and doing “important work” and thought Serwa was wasting her talents, no matter how much pro bono work she did for social justice campaigns and Black-owned businesses.

  Serwa sighed as Robert brought out the Power Point presentation, but at least she knew then that the meeting was almost over. Robert always saved the slides for last. Serwa barely even reacted as he threw up the image of an ad she had worked on for most of the previous weekend, the tagline of which he claimed to have authored. He’d lifted it from her but she’d been “inspired” by a line in an old movie, so she chalked it up to the circle of creativity and shrugged it off.

  She was already thinking about the food truck she knew would be parked outside the office building, right across from the pleasant little park where people went to eat their lunches, walk their dogs and conduct low-key drug deals. The truck served the best grilled cheese sandwich in the city with little cups of tomato or onion soup on the side. She was practically salivating at the thought. She had dutifully brought a vegan salad bowl for lunch but rainy days like today required sustenance with cheese.

  Then she heard the word “Spark” and her attention snapped back to full alert. Robert was talking about the toothpaste they were branding for one of their old school medical supply clients who’d decided to enter the lucrative but overcrowded market of oral health products.

  “Spark,” the agency’s creative director echoed thoughtfully and Serwa could tell he was already pregnant with the idea, which Robert had just floated out as a trial balloon. “Why don’t you work up something for next week?”

  Robert looked smug. Serwa couldn’t believe it. She had already told him
that they couldn’t use the name because there was already a toothpaste called Spark. All she’d had to do was google it and it had popped right up.

  For a hot minute she thought of speaking up, but knew there was no point. Robert would be annoyed and the Creative Director would just wave his wrinkly beige hand at her like she was a troublesome mosquito and tell her not to bother him with the details.

  She wondered if she could get down to the food truck before the line got too long. She wondered if they’d have any cups of their divine peach cobbler left when she got there. It was usually the first food item to d sell out.

  Finally, mercifully, the meeting ground to a halt. Serwa was on her way back to her office when she heard someone say, “Sara, hold up a minute.”

  Sara. Serwa tried not to roll her eyes. She turned and saw it was Robert. Of course it was. Sara was what Robert always called her. He liked to pretend it was a sign of his affection for her, a little joke between them. Actually, it pissed her off,

  Her name was not that hard to remember.

  Ser. Wa. Two syllables. Pronounced the way it was spelled.

  Didn’t anyone learn to read using phonics anymore? The name was Arabic in origin, meaning “wealthy.” Her mother was heavily into “The laws of attraction” and thought it would be a good name to gift a child. Her afro-centric father approved.

  Serwa couldn’t believe how many people misheard it or misunderstood and mispronounce it. She got “Sara” a lot. She couldn’t really tell if it was cluelessness or a microaggression. She usually gave most people the benefit of the doubt.

  She was really tired of having to do that.

  And also tired of wondering if her name was Connie if they’d still mangle it.

  Or over-enunciate it like Thad done.

  Thad. He had been an experiment and a mistake.

  SIR WAH, he’d say, rolling the R like an asshole. “What do you think of that, Sir Wha?”

  Thad had moved to Los Angeles a year ago. She’d deleted his Instagram account faster than J. Lo had cancelled Alex Rodriguez but she sometimes saw his posts on Twitter. Every once in a while, she thought about giving him a pity “like” but usually she refrained.

  Thad.

  Serwa waited for Robert to gather up his papers and put them in razor straight order. He was still shuffling them when he said, without looking up, “I’m going to need you to work exclusively on this Spark thing.”

  Wait. What?

  “I’ve got a presentation for Bonobo Brands coming up.” The Bonobo account was for luxury leather goods.

  “Marie can handle them,” Robert said casually, mentioning the agency’s most junior copywriter.

  “She can do Spark,” Serwa said. “It’ll be a no brainer for her.” She made air quotes. “Spark toothpaste. It’ll make your mouth taste like it’s on fire.”

  Robert looked at Serwa with disappointment. “Sidney doesn’t think you’re meshing with the brand.”

  Sidney was Bonobo’s marketing manager.

  Are you kidding me? Serwa thought to herself but managed not to say it out loud. Robert glanced at her hair, a fabulous box braid top knot, and added. “He thinks you represent a more urban demographic than the one he’s targeting.

  And there it was. Urban. Code for Black. Serwa could feel the anger uncoil like a serpent in her belly, all the way to her toes, which were currently shod in her favorite pair of Jimmy Choo pumps. “Sidney wears a counterfeit Rolex, polyester ties and a vinyl belt.” She could feel her voice starting to rise. “And I’m the one who doesn’t understand luxury brands?”

  Robert didn’t even look at her. “Stop being so dramatic,” he said.

  “No,” she said.

  “No?” He did look up at that and he looked puzzled, as if he couldn’t process a word that had only one syllable.

  “No,” she said again. “I will not work on the toothpaste account.”

  “You’re too good to work on it?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “You don’t need me to sell toothpaste. Everyone needs toothpaste. But a purse that costs more than a thousand dollars? Nobody needs that, no matter how butter-soft the leather is.” She leaned closer to him to make her point. “But I can sell that purse.”

  Robert was not comfortable with her being in his personal space. Probably because in her Jimmy Choos she was at least two inches taller than he was. He stepped back a bit and to cover his unease he said, “You don’t need to shout.”

  I am not shouting, Serwa wanted to shout. Instead, she turned and walked out of the conference room, leaving Robert open-mouthed with dismay.

  At her cubicle in the open-plan office the copywriters shared, Serwa packed up her oversize coffee mug and realized that there was nothing else she wanted to take with her.

  With her head held eye and her heels tapping emphatically on the polished concrete floor, she walked out of the office.

  She was not surprised that no one seemed to be at all aware of her intentions. Jimmy Riordan looked up as she passed him, but only because he was an inveterate clock watcher and he was hoping somehow the hands on the aggressively Atomic Age clock on the wall had somehow ticked over to five o’clock without him noticing.

  Chapter Two

  Serwa didn’t have an employment contract. None of the copywriters did. The agency didn’t consider them particularly important in the grand scheme of things. They weren’t the ones interacting with the clients, or bringing in new business. The agency operated on the assumption that it was the account executives who were responsible for all the really good ideas and they just dictated them to the women and men who worked in the open office.

  Account executives all had offices with doors on them. The better to brainstorm. They also rated perks like company cars, expense accounts, regular bonuses, and contracts with non-compete clauses. Nobody wanted an account executive leaving and taking a client with him. And the ones who did leave were almost always male. The agency’s lone female account executive wasn’t going anywhere. She was underwater on her mortgage and needed the job. Serwa would have felt sorry for her if she hadn’t been such a condescending bitch.

  Her main client was a chain of grocery stores that consistently had an ad budget of 1.35 percent of their sales revenue. The copywriters on her team spent their days writing print circulars and new recipes for the flagship store’s website. Most of the copywriters on her team had been on the team for years. At least two of them were alcoholics who kept thermoses of fortified “coffee” in their desk drawers like they’d watched too many episodes of Mad Men.

  Serwa tried not to think about what happened to people who quit without the safety net of an employment contract.

  Once she was home, Serwa turned off her phone, which was blowing up with calls and texts, poured herself a large glass of wine and settled in front of her television to eat her lunch of grilled cheese and peach cobbler. She’d started with the news stations but that soon grew too disheartening so she started clicking around, hoping to find something that would engage her. She watched a few minutes of a Crown rerun, realized it was the episode where Princess Diana died, so skipped it and turned off her television as well. The apartment was so quiet all she could hear was the rain, which was still pelting down. Even the ever-present traffic noise seemed muted. She couldn’t remember when she’d last had more than a half-hour’s unbroken peace and quiet. No deadlines. No homework. No stress.

  She knew she’d have to deal with the fallout of quitting without observing protocol, but she didn’t feel like adulting just yet. She went into her kitchen to warm up the peach cobbler and while she was there, fished out her last pint of Grandma’s Old Fashioned Vanilla ice cream from Shawn Michelle’s and plopped a half-dip on top of the warmed cobbler.

  It was just what she needed.

  Chapter Three

  It was Twilla who came up with the idea of the heritage trip. “You need to get out of town for a while,” she said. “Figure out what you’re going to do next.” She’d
paused for a minute, then added. “And don’t tell me you don’t have the money.”

  It was true. Her parents had preached the gospel of spending much less than se earned with the fervor of Suze Ormond, and as a result Serwa had a comfortable cash cushion. She could afford to take her time looking for another job.

  And she had had been toying with the idea of an overseas vacation but she’d been thinking more along the lines of Paris or Porto, somewhere she could walk cobblestoned streets and drink wine. But Twilla wasn’t having it.

  “You’ve been to Paris,” she pointed out. “And if you really want to spend some time in Porto, you can fly through there on your way home.”

  “On my way home from where?” Serwa asked, thinking it was not an unreasonable question to ask.

  “Ghana,” Twilla said. “I’m sending you some links

  The links Twilla sent had included the website for an outfit called “Black 2 Africa,” a company name that Serwa approved though she found their home page something of a cliché with all its green and gold and red and massive overuse of silhouettes of acacia trees. That told her the company had a risk-averse marketing department, an unclear sense of their target audience, and a subscription to Depositphotos. Still, after she’d explored the site for half an hour she decided that she really did want to go to Ghana and signed up for tour that was leaving in six weeks, joining up with another group that was swinging by Benin and Togo first.

  Serwa hadn’t done a lot of traveling since her junior semester abroad in France, so she was happy to be part of a group. They’d met up at the airport—three other women (two of them a couple) and two men—and boarded the United Airlines flight together with their exceedingly peppy group leader Tina. The one-stop flight had taken almost sixteen hours and by the time they cleared customs at Kotoka International Airport in Accra, everyone in the group was exhausted. But despite her fatigue, Serwa found herself exhilarated by the thought that everywhere she looked, for the first time in her life, the people looked just like her.