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

by Cecilia Lane

  He slid his eyes closed and nodded. “This comes far too late, but I’m sorry. I wanted to avoid causing you extra pain, but I caused it instead. It’s unforgivable.”

  The absolute frankness on his face tugged at her heartstrings. The earnest look in his eyes matched the boy who caught her outside of English and said she was the nicest girl he knew.

  Lilah glanced over her shoulder and found Seth watching them intently. He was proof that her trauma and fear didn’t run the show anymore. Her look took in the rest of the dens. His people, too, proved all her irrational loathing wrong.

  She’d been angry and hurt for so long. She wanted to believe that nice girl still existed.

  “Unforgettable,” she said slowly. “Maybe not unforgivable.”

  Lorne looked up at her sharply, but didn’t say a word. He’d had his say. The rest was up to her.

  Lilah folded her arms over her chest and dug the toe of her shoe into the ground. “And now? Where are they?”

  He shrugged and slashed a look over the landscape. “Gone. Dead. The clan broke apart, from what I heard. A cousin came looking for trouble a couple years back, but that’s it. I cut ties with the whole lot of them as soon as I got you safe.”

  Lilah thought she’d feel some relief over the news, but she just felt sad. Sad that’d he’d lost his family. Sad that they’d backed him into that position. Sadder still that they’d thought they needed to go to such lengths to keep their existence hidden, and some, like Jasper, would gladly go back to that way of life.

  “And that’s your mate?” She surprised herself with not tripping over the word. Maybe not too surprising, she corrected. She’d immersed herself with a lion pride. Their words like dens and mates were becoming part of her regular vocabulary.

  The way his eyes brightened when he glanced her way made Lilah both happy and hopeful. It was easy enough to think of herself as the only victim that day, but Lorne had killed to keep her safe. Not just a stranger either. He’d picked the life of a weak human girl over his own flesh and blood.

  He obviously carried guilt over what happened, but he’d found a way to live with it and let someone into his life. She wanted to believe she could do the same.

  “Sloan, yeah.” His voice warmed with affection. “She’s a tough nut to crack. Keeps me on my toes, that’s for damn sure. But you know all about that, I’m sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Seth. You’re together, right? I don’t know the guy all that well, but the rest of the kittens aren’t so bad.”

  “We’re not—I’m not—” Lilah closed her mouth with a click. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said honestly.

  “Oh.” He shook his head in clear bewilderment. “I just assumed. The way he looks at you...”

  She turned to face the dens. Seth stood right on the edge of Trent and Hailey’s home, arms crossed, and eyes locked on her and Lorne. His scowl disappeared when she lifted her fingers in a tiny wave. “How is that?”

  Lorne turned to face the same direction. Lilah watched as the same look Trent and Hailey shared sparked between him and his mate.

  “Like he can’t breathe without you,” he said, breaking the connection for a brief moment.

  A shiver ran down her spine and all the butterflies in the world took flight in her stomach.

  “They’re good people, Lilah. Rowdy as hell. Pains in the ass. But good people. You could do worse.” His mouth twitched. “You did much worse.”

  Lilah chuckled, then threw herself at the man for a hug. She felt a little more tension release from her chest. “Thank you, Lorne. It means a lot that you came to talk to me.”

  His arms tightened around her. “Anything you need, just ask. It’s the least I can do.”

  Feeling lighter than she’d felt in ages, Lilah started back toward the dens.

  “You okay?” Seth asked. He stopped a few feet away from her with hesitation written over his face.

  Lilah closed the distance between them. His arms wrapped around her as she snuggled against his chest. The hug was the same as she’d given Lorne, but felt so different. She fit better with Seth.

  “Yeah,” she said, going up on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his lips. “I haven’t felt this great in years.”

  Chapter 20

  “This is what you do for fun when you aren’t kidnapping defenseless women from their homes?”

  “Hey,” Seth groused. “Some of them were men.”

  Lilah laughed and blew out the tongue of fire rising from her toasted marshmallow. Bending her head, she made a delightfully unhealthy sandwich with the rest of the ingredients balanced on her knees.

  “I thought it might be nice to get away for the night. And since we’re grounded until all this shit blows over, heading out into the vast pride territory seemed a suitable compromise.” He leaned back and watched her, utterly entranced by the gorgeous woman. The idea had paid off, too. There hadn’t been a single drum of her fingers or tucking her hair behind her ears all night.

  Something had changed after her meeting with Lorne, which filled him with mixed emotions. The bear had done well to apologize for his role in her disastrous introduction to shifters, but talk was cheap. If he wanted to make up for his asshole relatives scarring Lilah, he needed to back those words up with actions. What, precisely, was a foggy mystery.

  She’d been lighter since then. Quicker with her laughs and a little snarkier with her jokes. Almost like an edge of her deeply ingrained fear had been polished away.

  Seth liked it. That other side of him liked it, too. She deserved all the happiness in the world. Barring that, a night that felt normal even if Crowleys patrolled near where they’d set up camp.

  “It’s beautiful out here. I’ve never seen so many stars.” She tilted her head skyward. Her pleased smile turned wry when she lowered her eyes back to him. “Camping wasn’t anything we did growing up. After I left, the friends I made weren’t very outdoorsy people.”

  He reached into the bag of marshmallows for one of his own, snacking on it without the proper s’mores fixings. “I camped out a lot as a child. Going out on my birthday was a tradition with my mother. Other times, I’d head out by myself to keep away from the other boys. It gave her an excuse, too, if they came by the house looking for me. She could truthfully say she didn’t know where I was that night.”

  “Not your biggest fans?”

  “Not even close.” He let off an irritated noise. “Being who I am—what I am—wasn’t easy. Most cubs shift for the first time before they’re a year old. The longer it takes to happen, the more concern is heaped on the cub. Sometimes it’s just late blooming, sometimes nothing happens.”

  “And that’s what happened with you?”

  “Mhmm,” he murmured. “By the time kindergarten started, I was already an outcast. Mothers didn’t like their cubs playing with me during the pride gatherings. They pushed my mother aside, too.”

  Lilah let her toasting stick droop. Sympathy flashed through her scent and pooled in the eyes she turned on him. “That’s horrible.”

  “That’s life in a pride. The Crowleys are good people. They treat each other better, but there’s still some ranking. You have Trent at the top, holding everyone together. Lindley serves as second and smooths down all the feathers Trent ruffles. Dash and Rhys don’t seem to have too much competition, but you start throwing more males into the mix, bring four up to fifteen or twenty? That’s when the real jockeying for position begins. And when there are winners, there are losers. I made my mother a loser.”

  “Seth...” She edged close enough for their thighs to touch. Heat flashed through him. Her, too, if her sudden intake of breath was an indication. “You’re not responsible for how they treated her. You were just a boy.”

  “A boy born wrong,” he said with a growl. “They never let us forget it.”

  Lilah slid her arms around his neck, but it wasn’t enough. He dragged her across his lap and wrapped her in as tight of a hu
g. So close, he could feel her heart pounding away in her chest. So close, she soothed the rumbling discontent sparked by memories of his childhood.

  “The first time I ran away,” he said, surprising himself, “she found me shivering against some rocks the next morning. The second wasn’t much different, though she found me quicker. The next day, she came home with some secondhand camping gear and told me if I’m going to sleep under the stars, I might as well know how to do it properly.”

  “Is that how Jaime got involved? You running away?”

  He ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Not quite. My mother contacted her when I was busted shoplifting at seventeen, going on eighteen. It was a big mess with the local authorities wanting to throw the book at one of our pride. Back then, we weren’t out. We were the weird cult on the edge of town, so I was the excuse for a closer look. Then the alpha wanted a piece of me for fucking with the human population. Jaime offered a way to get out of town and make something of myself, so I jumped at the chance.”

  “And now you’re here protecting me.” She eased back and placed her hands on his cheeks. “They were wrong. You’re so much better than they are.”

  The flames licked extra specks of color into her eyes, making her look almost like she had the eyes of a shifter. A single image flashed through his head of her with bright gold eyes and a mate mark on her shoulder.

  Seth swallowed hard. A dream, only. A gorgeous dream not cemented in reality. “You have too much faith in me.”

  She smiled as she slid her lips over his.

  His inner sense rolled through him like a cat in a pile of fresh catnip. Addicting and perfect, she stroked against his body and mind at the same time. The hollowed out, empty spaces in his chest opened wide to let her fill them.

  He didn’t know what shape the future would take, but he knew he needed Lilah at his side.

  His.

  “Stay with me,” he murmured as he trailed kisses across her jaw and to her ear. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  Lilah pulled back, heart hammering a steady beat to his ears. Hope brightened her eyes. Questions, too, but he had answers. He’d mulled over all the potential ones in the darkness while she slept beside him. And if those weren’t good enough, he’d let her take a turn with the suggestions. Nothing mattered more than keeping her close.

  “Are you serious?” she breathed.

  He had a joke ready, but that didn’t feel right. Nothing did, actually. Not when she deserved so much more than what he could offer. All he had were the words that had carved themselves a little deeper on his heart with each passing day.

  “I haven’t ever felt this way about someone.” He said thickly, meeting her look. “When I think about what life was like before you and going back to that, I hate it. You make me whole, Lilah. I don’t want to say goodbye.”

  She ducked her eyes and plucked at his shirt. Her scent spilled over with the light springiness of pure joy.

  Awareness brushed against the back of his neck, like the itch he felt in the fighting ring before a fist flew for his face. Seth straightened and cocked his head.

  A foot touched down against earth somewhere in the distance.

  Lilah stilled in his lap. “What’s going on?” she asked in a whisper.

  Her voice was still too loud against the backdrop of the quiet night. He raised a finger to his lips and moved her off his lap, listening hard at the sounds of the night.

  Another footfall. He whipped his head to the left and stared into the darkness. Something—someone—moved out there on padded feet.

  He raised his lip in a silent snarl, his other half striding through him with shocking weight. He didn’t have time to consider the growing strength when his focus stayed on the dark shapes outside the glow from the fire.

  Where the fuck were the others? They were supposed to be watching the fences to make sure no one snuck up on them. If something had gone wrong, their roars were the signal to get the hell back to the dens. They were a bunch of assholes, but they wouldn’t fuck around and sneak up on Lilah.

  A growl worked out of his middle. Fucking useless. He hated relying on others to keep his mate safe.

  Bright eyes caught the light of the fire.

  “Who is that?” Lilah asked. She leaned forward to see better into the darkness. Fear punched through her scent. “That’s not one of the others, is it?”

  “No,” Seth growled. “It’s not.”

  He knew the fucker’s scent. He’d tracked it with the others the night he came into the territory, then ran like a coward. Once again, Zeke slunk through the night in a place he didn’t belong.

  Rage burned through Seth. Frustration. Lilah didn’t deserve any of the shit they lobbed at her. They’d had their shot at taking her life and failed. Her death didn’t accomplish a damn thing for them, but they still kept trying.

  It was the same reason the cubs chased him down and why he and his mother were forced to live at the edge of the pride territory. Lilah’s continued existence challenged their position. She needed to be put back into her place.

  Over his dead body.

  Fire burned through his limbs. Every vein ignited as it spread, from the finest capillaries to the major arteries. He wanted to throw his head back with a scream, but his jaws clenched tight and his lungs refused to take air in or let it out.

  “Seth?” Lilah asked in a shaky voice. “What’s happening?”

  He strained to roll his eyes to her, then squeezed them closed at the first crack of bone breaking. Sweat broke out all over his body as more pops and cracks whipped through him. The tips of his nails darkened, sharpened, pushed out of the beds. Every point of tawny fur that sliced through his pores felt like glass shoving through his skin.

  The seconds dragged on for a painful eternity until, finally, everything went black.

  A roar vibrated and built in his core, then blasted out in all directions. Nothing of his human form was left standing.

  Seth opened his eyes to sharper colors. He inhaled clearer scents.

  “Seth?” Lilah breathed. “Holy hell. You... you shifted!”

  His first stumbling step took him toward Lilah. He pressed his nose against her belly, drawing her scent into his lungs. Sour fear sliced through the mangoes and lavender. That, too, disappeared over the stench of the approaching male.

  He swung his head toward Zeke in time to see the male launch himself across the fire and straight toward them.

  Seth twisted in place and caught the brunt of the lion’s weight, but couldn’t stop them from tumbling to the ground in a heap of snapping jaws and limbs. Zeke had the upper hand immediately. Years of knowing how his other half moved beat Seth’s measly minutes in his lion form.

  Lilah’s safety made him a fast learner.

  He dug his back legs into Zeke’s soft belly and kicked as hard as he could manage. Claws scraped against flesh deep enough to cut, but not deep enough to incapacitate. The other lion roared right in his face and hurled himself away from the first scuffle.

  Lilah stumbled away from the flames and the fight, but Zeke lunged and blocked her path to the truck.

  Seth roared. Lilah was his. The fucker already threatened her once and escalated with an invasion of her comfort and safety. He wouldn’t live if he even scratched her skin.

  Seth jumped on Zeke’s back and dug his claws in for a better hold. The bastard turned and snapped at his legs, trying to unhook him, but Seth met snarl for snarl, bite for bite. Zeke’s thick mane kept him from taking a killing crunch, but he left his mark on the other lion’s back and shoulders.

  With another snarl, Zeke slammed them both to the ground. Seth jumped away just as the lion rolled into the flames. Embers and ash kicked into the air with his scrambling back to his feet, but Seth was on him, crowding him away from the terrified woman.

  Zeke spun back around, snapping his jaws in Seth’s face. They went another round of biting and swiping, circling each other over the remains of the fire. The light caught Z
eke’s eyes, making him look like the devil glowed in his face.

  The bastard slammed a heavy paw against Seth’s face, driving him back, then whirled and bolted for Lilah.

  His heart stopped in his chest as Zeke tackled her to the ground and planted his paws on either side of her waist.

  No!

  His entire body thrummed with the single need to keep her safe from harm. Her skin was fragile, her veins even more so. He didn’t want Zeke breaking either. He didn’t want to watch her bleed to death in the dirt.

  Seth scrambled back to his feet. Head lowered, jaws open, he barreled right into Zeke, intending to snap closed around the bastard before he touched Lilah. At the last second, Zeke jerked back.

  Lilah’s scream tore through the night as Seth’s fangs cut into her leg. Immediately—too late—he let her loose. Blood scented the air, tingled against his tongue, and a shroud of doom wrapped around him.

  He spun and roared in Zeke’s face. All the fury he could muster went into the noise. He crouched low next to his mate, then jumped straight for the bastard who’d tried to kill her.

  And what did that make him, a little voice whispered. He’d bitten her. He’d changed her life forever. If she survived. Humans didn’t always make it through the transition.

  He lunged for Zeke again and again. Rage moved him from one motion to the next, biting, snapping, swiping. He caught the asshole’s ear and tore into his shoulders. Claws returned the favor and raked down his sides.

  Then others were there. A scarred white lion and tawny-bodied ones like himself. The rush of scents as they darted past him filled his nose. Rhys and Dash. Trent, too. And they were jumping right into the fight.

  A white paw slammed across Zeke’s face; a tawny one raked down his side. The poor bastard shrieked with pain and twisted to snap at one and swipe a paw at the other, but he knew the odds. Three against one wasn’t a fight he could win.

  He tried to flee, but Seth jumped for his back. This time, he wrapped his front legs around his neck and dragged him to the side. They skidded to a stop, but all the rage he felt at some asshole gunning for his mate and all the instincts to see her safe wouldn’t let him turn the fucker loose.