Savage Craving: A Shifting Destinies Lion Shifter Romance (Lion Hearts Book 4)

by Cecilia Lane

  Lilah wiggled her fingers in greeting to the others, then snorted a laugh as Dash threw his hands in the air and stalked off, only to spin back around. He snagged Colette around the waist and tossed her over his shoulder. “Traitors will be barbecued!” he called over his shoulder and her peals of laughter.

  After days of feeling cooped up and under surveillance—even if it was for her own protection—the noise sounded strange and wonderful all at once. Even some of the weight lifted from her shoulders and unwound from her chest.

  Until she glanced at Seth and found him watching her with the same naked interest he’d worn when he slid his hands into her hair and pulled her down for a kiss. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His brows pinched his nose as he shook his head like he needed to clear a stray thought. Then he turned and marched for his brother, pausing along the way to dip into an open cooler for a beer.

  Lilah stared after him, more confused than ever.

  “Trouble in paradise?”

  She jumped. Hailey held out a beer bottle with little bits of ice still clinging to the glass. “Thanks,” she said stiffly, taking the offering. “It’s nothing. Just spending too much time together, I suppose.”

  “Well, that’s what today is for. Everyone can take a breather.” Hailey cocked her head, then jerked her chin to the home she shared with Trent. “Want to come inside? I need to pull the next batch of enchiladas out in a few minutes and can always use the extra hands hauling them out here.”

  Lilah followed Hailey, throwing one last look over her shoulder at the gathered bunch. All but one seemed fully engaged in conversations with others. Seth watched her as he sipped his beer. She spun away from his look and hurried inside.

  Once again, she was struck with the differences between Hailey’s home—den, she corrected—and Seth’s. The space felt more lived in with photos on the wall and little touches that offered signs of life. A pregnancy book lay open with the arm of the couch marking someone’s spot. On the coffee table, the face of a chubby-cheeked baby adorned a parenting magazine.

  Seth’s room felt sparse by comparison.

  “Excited?” Lilah asked, holding up the magazine.

  “Thrilled!” Hailey gushed as she bustled around the kitchen. “I’ve always wanted a big family. We waited to try until we were clear of the whole Jasper death cult thing, but that fucker had to rain all over our good news. Surprisingly, Trent hasn’t gone off hopped up on bloodlust to track him down, but he’s been redirecting those urges into prepping. Those are his, by the way. Every time he tells me something I already know, I just remind myself that he’s not trying to be annoying. Besides,” she paused and a huge grin spread over her face as she laid a hand over her still-flat stomach, “it’s pretty adorable to wake up with him whispering to the little one.”

  Lilah doubted she’d ever be able to look at the man in the same light now that she knew his secret. All tough, growly exterior, and a perfectly gooey center for the loves of his life. Hailey was an incredibly lucky woman. They all were, actually. She doubted Trent was the only one who let his gruffness slide for his mate.

  “What about you?” Hailey continued. “Any little rascals in your future?”

  “I don’t know.” She set the magazine back on the coffee table. “I used to think so, but I haven’t found the right person.”

  “Or protective bodyguard?” Hailey asked with a waggle of her eyebrows.

  Lilah let off a startled laugh. She felt a blush spread over her cheeks. “Is it that obvious?”

  “The staring and spinning away act you two have perfected kind of gives it away.” Hailey crossed the room and took a seat on the couch. “So, dish. I’m dying for some good gossip.”

  “We... kissed,” Lilah admitted. “Then slept together.” At Hailey’s gasp, she quickly corrected, “In the same bed! Not slept, slept.”

  “Just kissed and laid together inches apart for hours on end.” Hailey gave her a thumbs up and disbelieving nod. “No big deal, right, sure.”

  “I don’t even know!” she lamented and sagged against the couch. “This is so strange. And sudden. Not to mention dangerous.” She winced and looked away from the other woman. She picked her words carefully, drumming her fingers against her leg in the seconds of silence. “I’ve... had run-ins with shifters. Before Jasper. Before they were out. A boyfriend was involved, and I’m sure you can imagine the difficulties trusting people that created. And Seth… I don’t know. I feel like there’s more to him than he’s showing me.”

  “Trent hated humans. Then he met me.” Hailey brought her fingertips under her chin and fluttered her lashes in a picture of innocence. Her joking dropped away with her hands and she turned sympathetic eyes on Lilah. “People suck, but they can also be incredible forces for good. They can leave impressions, scars, good memories and bad, but you’re the one that places the importance on one thing or another. I just hope we’ve shown there’s more good in the world than bad.” She jerked her thumb to the guys gathered around a grill on the other side of the window. “Them? They’re some of the good ones.”

  Lilah nodded. They’d been nothing but good to her. Wild, yes. Frighteningly savage at times when their lions ripped out of their bodies and they tore into each other. But there was gentleness, too, like with Trent buying baby books or Seth running his thumb over her inner wrist to bring her back from the edge of panic.

  The Crowleys, at least, weren’t monsters. They’d become friends.

  The rumble of another truck pulling into the yard pulled her from her thoughts. Hailey leaned around her to check the windows. "Looks like that's the last of the arrivals. Let's get these outside, and then we can feast."

  Lilah caught the potholders Hailey tossed in her direction, then dutifully followed the other woman back into the evening air. Under Hailey’s watchful eye, she deposited her pan of enchiladas at one end of the table line.

  “Jackson!”

  Lilah looked up to see a woman with a long, red braid chasing after a blur of blond fur. Shouts rose up as people jerked and jumped aside on the heels of the cub’s mad dash of keep away. The moment she neared the little bear cub, he veered away and shot underneath one end of the tables.

  Lilah crouched down, meeting Hailey's eyes at the other end. They dropped their attention to the cub flattening to the ground in the very middle of the forest of chair and table legs.

  “Hey, little one,” Lilah coaxed, edging down one side. “I hear someone is looking for you. Why don’t you come on out?”

  The cub fixed her with his bright green eyes and sank lower to the ground. His little legs worked under him and his fuzzy butt wiggled from side to side.

  “Uh-oh,” Hailey groaned.

  The cub launched straight at Lilah.

  She fell back with the cub on her chest. Her heart thundered against her breastbone. She readied herself for the flash of pain from the pricks of his claws. Smaller, for sure, than the ones she’d felt before, but dangerous nonetheless.

  A warm tongue licked her cheek before fur nuzzled against her neck, and Lilah’s heart melted. “You’re okay, sweet baby,” she murmured to the cub. She wrapped her arms around the little one and slowly rolled upright.

  “Lilah,” Hailey said with amusement warming her words, “meet Joss and little Jackson.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Joss sputtered. She took Jackson from Lilah and tucked him against her chest. “He’s been doing this all week. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he shifts and bolts.”

  A man jogged up behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders. He bent over her to drop a kiss on the wiggling cub’s head. “Fast little bugger, ain’t he?” he chuckled, voice full of pride.

  The sheer love on their faces as they looked at each other and their child made Lilah’s stomach drop into her toes. There wasn’t anything conditional in their adoration. Running around or snuggled against a chest, the boy was loved no matter what.

  Lilah pushed to her feet and caught Seth staring at her. The w
armth in his eyes rushed the blood to her cheeks. She ducked her face and turned to head back inside to help Hailey, but stumbled when she bumped into another body.

  “So—” she started to apologize, then cut her words. “Lorne?”

  Lilah took another step back. Pure shock dropped her mouth open at the sight of the man at the center of her most painful memories. She blinked and shook her head, but no, he wasn’t a hallucination. Same eyes, same nose. He’d aged since she last saw him covered in blood. Added a few extra inches. Filled out with more muscle than he’d carried back in high school.

  Back when they’d dated.

  Back before her whole world changed.

  “What did you do?” Seth demanded from her side. “Why do you make her smell scared?”

  Scared, yeah. Terrified worked, too. She needed to leave. Flee. Get the hell off the planet.

  The whole world rocked back and forth like she’d downed her weight in alcohol. Her stomach twisted and churned. She felt too hot and freezing cold at the same time.

  Not hearing any of the words from Seth, Lorne, or the others, she darted for the barn.

  Chapter 16

  Lilah spun around at the sound of footsteps behind her. Seth entered the barn, the sunlight outside casting his shadow almost to her feet. It felt like an ominous and dire warning, and she worried what would happen if that darkness touched her.

  “Stop following me,” she breathed. “I just need to be alone.”

  He shook his head and took a cautious step forward. “You know I can’t do that, Lilah. I won’t risk leaving you unprotected.”

  “Protected?” she scoffed. “I’m not protected here. This is the belly of the beast, no matter how much effort is made to dress it up. I have a bounty on my head and you’re best buddies with a man who ruined my life. Tell me how that’s protected?”

  “What did he do, Lilah?” he demanded again in a tight voice. “What happened?”

  The words were there on the tip of her tongue, ready to spill into the air. She wanted to trust him, but the past held her captive. She’d trusted Lorne once, too, and suffered because of it.

  Seth’s eyes had changed. More than once. There hadn’t been any trick of the light when he snarled at Lorne.

  Secrets everywhere. She had the smell of them in the air. They were strong enough to make her gag.

  She spun away from him again, not giving him an answer. Her blood pounded in her ears. She didn’t know whether to cry or scream, and teetered on the edge of both as frustration boiled in her veins. Pacing helped. The movement burned off some of the agitation, but a fresh swell rolled over her the moment she paused.

  His eyes followed her every step, which frustrated her even more. The attention weighed on her, stroked over her. She wanted to preen under it and add an extra sway of her hips as much as she wanted to tell him to get the hell away and leave her alone.

  It wasn’t right that he was the one to follow her away from the gathering. Oh, he was her bodyguard, sure. But he’d also kissed her and held her through the night, then pushed her away and held tight to his own secrets.

  “Then there’s you,” Lilah snapped. Still pacing, she waved a hand in Seth’s general direction. “I don’t even know what you are.”

  “I’m shiftless.”

  She stopped pacing and wheeled around. “You’re what?” she asked with a shake of her head, brows shooting together. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means,” Seth answered with a small step forward, “my parents were shifters, but I’m not. I have the senses. I’m just as strong, I can see just as well. Hear, smell, all the benefits without having an animal under my skin.”

  There it was. Lilah raised a hand to her mouth. After all the denials, after telling her she was seeing things, the words slipped right out. The bomb dropped between them. The fuse lit and burned. The vindication felt like a betrayal.

  “You lied to me?” She added a step between them. Another brought her back against the wall. Hurt curdled in her middle, spoiling the contents and making her sick. “This whole time, you lied?”

  “Not a lie,” he insisted. “I’ve never shifted in my life.”

  The earnest plea to be believed kept her from snapping about technicalities and omissions.

  “Can we go inside and talk? Please?” He rubbed the heel of his hand over his heart. “I... feel it more around you, and I can’t stand to see you so worked up.”

  “You feel it? You mean your animal?” She let her head fall back and muttered at the rafters above her, “Just call me a freaking shifter-whisperer.”

  “I’d say more of a magnet. Or cursed. You may have been right about that.”

  Lilah fixed him with a glare that only deepened when his lips twitched with a barely contained smile. “That’s not funny.”

  “Sure it is. Also fixable, unlike an innate talent to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course, we’ll have to get the fae involved. Who knows what monkey’s paw bullshit will come of that. No more curse, but now you’re plagued with bunions.”

  “Seth!” she groaned.

  He reached for her hand and gave her a gentle pull. “Come inside with me, Lilah. We can talk about it if you want, or we can sit in silence. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  Reluctantly, she allowed herself to be pulled into his room. After the liveliness of Hailey's den, the bare walls and empty flat surfaces made her stomach sink. How much of himself did he hide away from the others? From himself? He'd lived there for months, she'd gathered, and yet not a single personal belonging beyond the necessities filled the space.

  It was like he didn’t want to get attached, which was something she understood all too well. There wasn’t any getting hurt if everyone was kept at bay.

  “Will you tell me what he did? I’d rather not punch the man without a true accounting of his crimes.”

  Seth shut the door behind them, then stayed standing against the door. Not blocking her, she thought, just giving her first pick of the battleground.

  Lilah eyed the bed, then took a seat at the two-person table. “Not a man, though. He’s a shifter. Bear, to be specific.”

  “How do you know him?” Seth pushed off the door and took the seat opposite her.

  He tried to catch her eyes, but she turned her face away and stared into the middle distance. She didn’t owe him her life story.

  Except he had saved her life. And Hailey included him among the good ones.

  Lilah slid her eyes closed. Everything would be so much simpler if he was an asshole who barked orders. She could ignore those and enthusiastically wave goodbye when they parted ways. What she couldn’t ignore was a decent, caring man who called his mother every weekend. That man immediately jumped to her defense at the hint of danger and pleaded with her to know what was wrong. Even her flimsy excuse of secret for secret didn’t hold up. He offered her a piece of himself, surely she could do the same.

  “He—his family—they attacked me when I was in high school.”

  Seth growled. She started, then narrowed her eyes in a warning. He simply settled back and canted his head for her to continue, jaw tight enough to crack a walnut.

  “We dated in senior year. He was the first everything that mattered. I’d had crushes. I’d held hands. Lorne was my first love.”

  His eyes never strayed from her face. The dark pools heated with a hint of possession. Lilah wet her lips under the attention and flirted with lying to herself about how much she liked it. She shouldn’t. It was very much not ideal or civilized. But he’d already protected her physically. She wanted to know if he’d go to bat for her in everything else.

  One look, hell, even a handful, weren’t enough. He’d already gotten close and pulled away.

  Lilah dropped her eyes and the memories rushed in. “His family picked me up. I was supposed to meet Lorne, and they said they’d take me. Only they didn’t. They took me out onto their property, where the terror began.” She could see the first bear alon
g the tree line when she closed her eyes. She’d turned to the others to point out the animal, but they’d claimed not to see anything. When she turned back, a man stood where the bear had been. “I wasn’t right for Lorne, they told me. I’d never be right for him. I was just a stupid human girl. A plaything and a distraction. They strung me along and made me question what I saw with my own eyes, but I guess that got boring after a while. That’s when the claws came out to play.

  “I tried hiding in a little shack in the clearing, but the whole thing shook when they smacked their paws against it. Just when I was sure they would kill me, another bear showed up. Instead of going after me, he went after the others. I didn’t know it was Lorne until he’d killed one and chased off the rest.”

  She smoothed her hands down her thighs. She couldn’t feel anything under the thick denim of her shorts, but she knew the scars were there. They were part of her now, evidence she’d carry for the rest of her life. Shifters were dangerous.

  She wasn’t sure she believed the words anymore. Not completely.

  “What happened after, Lilah?” Seth asked softly.

  “There wasn’t anything to back me up,” she said bitterly. “My parents didn’t believe me. I spent a year bouncing between therapists and treatment plans until I finally stopped trying to be heard. Lorne disappeared. No one was at the property whenever the police dropped by, though rumors still placed them in town. Your kind has always been good at cleaning up, haven’t you?”

  “As a matter of life and death,” Seth murmured. “Opening up to humans has generally spelled disaster. Trent lost his family because of it. We’ve been hunted by humans and slaughtered by our own for breaking laws to never expose ourselves.”

  Lilah flattened her hands on the table and stared at the man across from her. Every time she thought she understood the world she brushed against, they surprised her. “Why would he even get close to me then? Why even risk it? He set us up to get burned.”