by Cecilia Lane
Not until he lay still under him.
Panting hard, Seth let Zeke fall from his mouth. The scent of blood didn’t fade from his nose as he turned toward the truck.
Panic laced through him. Lilah. He needed to get to her.
He pulled up short when the scarred white lion blocked his path. Seth raised his lip in a snarl and twisted around, only to be cut off by his brother on the other side.
A low growl of warning rumbled in his chest. Fuckers needed to back off. He dug his claws into the dirt, wishing they were sliding through their hides. They couldn’t keep him from his mate for long.
“Lilah, Lilah, listen to me,” Trent murmured. “You’re going to be okay.”
“He bit me. He bit me.”
“Who?” Trent asked in a hard voice.
Around the others, he saw her raise her hand and point at him. Trent lifted his head and followed the line of her arm, his face a mask of fury.
“Shift back!” Trent snarled. He shoved to his feet and stalked toward Seth, the others parting to let him through. “Shift back right the fuck now!”
Power infused the words with the full weight of the alpha’s command. Seth felt like he’d been kicked in teeth and plunged into a vat of ice, then warmed in an active volcano. He shook his head to clear the order, but more weight, more heat, more fire burned through his resistance.
The shift ripped through him faster than before, but the pain caught in the back of his throat. He groaned as he knelt on the ground, fists planted in the dirt under him. Every inch of his skin felt like he’d been stung by scorpions at the same time, only to fade away as he breathed through the pain.
“Fuck you,” Seth growled. His voice sounded rough to his own ears. “I saved her. Where the hell were you?”
“Fuck me?” Pure fire glowed in the alpha’s eyes and his teeth sharpened as he spoke. He shoved a finger in Lilah’s direction. “Do you have any fucking idea what you’ve done to her? What danger you’ve put her in?”
He knew. Down to his core, he knew. He'd sentenced her to possible death and himself to a certain one. Forcing an animal on anyone went against their laws.
He hadn’t meant to bite her. Surely that counted for something.
If she survived.
“Let me see her.” Desperation cut a hard edge to his tone. “Please, just let me see her.”
Trent cut his eyes away and spoke to the others. “Get him out of my sight. Stick him in the cave until we figure out what to do with him.”
Chapter 21
Three days. Three days without any information.
Seth stretched across the small camping cot, hands folded over his stomach. He kept his eyes closed. Behind his lids, he could pretend he wasn’t trapped in a cage he could cross in a handful of steps.
The cage was sturdier than the ones he’d willingly locked himself inside. Less to punch and fight, too. He’d felt useless his entire life without a lion under his skin, but those years were nothing compared to being locked away from his mate without knowing what was happening.
His lion stretched through him, needling his insides with the sharp pricks of claws. A low growl of displeasure vibrated through the beast.
Holy fuck. The shock still hadn’t worn off. Not entirely.
He’d shifted. Him. The worthless, broken one. He’d shifted.
Seth bit the insides of his cheeks to hold back the unsteady rush of emotion. He’d wondered for years what it felt like to experience his other half taking control. He’d wanted so badly to unleash that power under his skin. All those years were met with stubborn denial.
One woman—his mate—brought it out in force.
He’d gotten his greatest wish and it drove away the one person he thought truly accepted all his mismatched pieces.
Fuck.
She’d been so scared the last time he saw her. The sour stench of it cut him to the bone still.
Seth squeezed his eyes tighter and tried to avoid thinking about it, but three days of nothing but his own thoughts broke him down.
Trent had relented and given him one last moment with Lilah. She’d been placed inside his truck with him locked out on the other side. As if he’d try to rip her apart.
His lips peeled back in a silent snarl.
No privacy, either, with the other lions close at hand. Even so, he’d pushed closer and pressed his hand to the window of his truck. He’d just wanted to see her. Maybe try to explain. But her pale skin and wide eyes snatched his tongue before he’d even pushed out a syllable.
He’d unwillingly played the scene over and over in the days since, his lion snarling a little louder each time. How fucked was it that he hoped she was in shock? He could work with shock. Time to let her heart slow and space to think clearly healed that wound.
Outright rejection? That he couldn’t handle. Not from the woman destined to hold his heart. Not because of his own damned actions against her.
Guilt clawed through him. His lion roared his objections. There wasn’t a life without Lilah. He needed to set everything right.
And yet, he’d been stuck in a cage somewhere deep in Crowley territory for three fucking days, feeling like he’d caught the flu while buried under the worst hangover of his life. His heart hurt. Each beat pounded a nail into his temples. He dragged down breath through gritted teeth and shards of glass that rattled around his lungs.
He’d hurt her. Him. Not Zeke. Not Jasper. None of the faceless enemies in the dark laid a hand on her, but he’d been the one to rip her life apart.
Seth heard a truck pull to a stop outside his humble new home. He didn’t bother pushing upright until footfalls echoed in the short passageway. Arms resting on his thighs, he waited for his jailor to appear. His lion paced through him, too, a giant ball of fury. It was all he could do to keep seated and not charge at bars he already knew wouldn’t budge.
Three fucking days and Trent had hardly said a word to him.
Too much could happen in three days. Hell, three minutes.
“How is she?” Seth demanded, lion riding him hard. The beast wanted to rip out of his body and jump right for the alpha’s throat. He wanted to rake claws and answers from the man’s frame. Trent kept them from their mate.
Trent didn’t say a word. Seth narrowed his eyes. Something was wrong. Trent kept his face smooth, but his eyes were tight at the corners and his scent held a wariness Seth hadn’t smelled before. Pure, stinging anger, sure, but not the sharp caution that made his own inner beast sit up with attention.
What he’d pieced together, they, too, were waiting to see what happened. If Lilah turned, there was grounds for his death. If she didn’t, maybe some basic banishment. The technicalities didn’t concern him. He only wanted to know Lilah was alive.
Women took to the transition better than men. Mates, too. But the risk was always there. An animal sometimes took hold, but claimed too much of a person. Sometimes the newly born shifter wouldn’t relinquish control back to their human side. Sometimes it simply drove a person mad. Those out-of-control creatures had to be put down before they unleashed their own changing bites on innocent lives.
That was the risk he’d saddled her with. His lion ripped through him with an agonized cry. Fuck, he’d gladly go back in time and do everything differently to keep his fangs out of her skin.
“She’s gone.”
Seth’s lungs froze. No. No. Not that. Never that. The room spun as his heart suddenly evacuated his chest. If he hadn’t already been sitting, he’d have fallen right on his ass.
Trent continued, “She disappeared this morning with Sage. No one has any idea where they’ve gone. Rhys has barely been on two feet since we realized. Lindley is ready to maul everyone in sight.”
“Let me out. I’ll find her. Them.” When Trent stayed quiet, Seth pushed to his feet. He wrapped his hands around the bars and ignored the sting of silver. The bite of pain wasn’t anything compared to the hole in his chest. “I have contacts. I’ve done this kind of work before.�
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And still, Trent stayed silent.
Seth growled. What the fuck else did the man want from him? He’d pleaded. He’d demanded. Hell, he’d done everything but get down on his knees and bawl his eyes out. Now they were just wasting precious seconds while Lilah was out there with only Sage at her side. “It was an accident. You think I’d hurt her on purpose? Would you take that choice from Hailey?”
Trent’s eyes flashed angrily at the mention of his mate, but Seth pushed on. “Let me out. If she doesn’t want to see me, that’s my burden to carry. I can still keep her safe even if I can’t be with her. She doesn’t even need to know I’m there.”
“You actually believe that.” Trent crossed his arms over his chest and gave a small shake of his head. “I never thought you were dumb until this very moment.”
Seth growled sharply at the rebuke, but Trent went on as if he hadn’t heard. Didn’t care, more likely. What was a caged lion going to do to him?
“The only reason you’re alive is because she forbid putting you down. And no, I don’t think it was out of the kindness of her heart. She’s asked about you as much as you’ve demanded to know about her.” Trent gave another shake of his head. “I don’t think either of you can stay away from each other for long. I know I wouldn’t last the week without Hailey. She’s your mate, isn’t she?”
Silent, Seth nodded.
Trent stepped forward and drew a key from his pocket. “Then you’d better find a way to make this right. Keeping her safe is only the first step. Holding her close is harder to do, and you’re so far in the fucking hole, you may as well keep on digging until you reach the other side of the world.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Seth muttered.
Trent stopped him with a hand on his chest. “She hasn’t shifted yet. Maybe she won’t, or maybe that lioness is in hiding. If she’s alone when it happens…”
Seth nodded. She could be a danger to herself and others. For a woman like Lilah, there wasn’t any coming back from that.
Shifters had fucked up her entire life, starting from Lorne and his clan to Jasper and the shithead consortium lions, but his name headlined the list. He’d ripped her world apart with a single bite, but he couldn’t stay away.
Keeping her alive and breathing, that was where they’d begun. He intended to see that game to the end.
Lilah exited the gas station with drinks in one hand and a pair of sunglasses in the other. She joined Sage and leaned against the side of her car as gas continued to glug down into the tank. She set Sage’s bottle down on the trunk, then twisted the cap of her own. “Why are you doing this?” she asked.
Sage surprised her. Quiet and unassuming, she was the last person Lilah expected to stick her head through the door with a conspiratorial ‘psst’ and a jerk of her chin outside. That’d been where she underestimated Sage. Everyone else, too. The ones who kept their heads down were capable of unexpected things, like stealing her away from a lion pride and the man who broke her heart.
The other woman glanced at her, then turned back to the pump. The display reflected back in the mirror of her sunglasses, but Lilah thought she felt the weight of her sidelong look.
Sage raised her shoulders after a moment. “I know what it’s like to want to disappear. Sometimes it’s the best way to get a little clarity.”
Lilah cocked her head, but Sage didn’t say anything else. Even that much seemed like a big admission for the quiet woman. She hunched her shoulders until the tank filled, then snatched up her drink and slid behind the wheel.
“Still nothing?” Sage asked when Lilah settled into the passenger’s seat.
She shook her head. The question and answer had been the same at the last two pit stops they’d made, though she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to schedule her first shift to those few moments when they stretched their legs. At least she kept it to a single question. The others eyed her like a bomb about to blow.
Which she guessed she was. None of the others had been turned into shifters; they’d all been born. The Ashfords on the neighboring ranch had more experience with turning a person, but those didn’t fill her with hope. They’d struggled, all of them, to keep their animals under control.
Except somewhere along the line, she’d fizzled out. She’d spent the first day in bed, at times ready to vomit everything she’d ever eaten or twisted in the sheets with hot flashes that made her think her brain had been fried like an egg. The days after that were filled with a whole lot of being watched and no sign of the lioness supposedly ready to split her apart and claim a piece of her head.
“I have a theory,” Sage said slowly. “It wasn’t until you arrived that Seth shifted. If you have a lioness, maybe the same applies. You need each other to be complete.”
The words were too much like the last happy ones Lilah heard from Seth.
You make me whole.
Betrayal caught in the back of her throat and burned up from her stomach. She’d trusted Seth, the same as she’d trusted Lorne. Once again, she’d been hurt by a shifter.
Lilah glared out the window. “If that’s the case, I’ll just carry on like before. I don’t want to see him again.”
Sage favored her with a quick look of arched brows and pursed lips before turning her attention back to the road. Lilah frowned. She could have sworn the air in the car turned sour with her glance.
“Where to?”
Million-dollar question right there. They had the open road ahead of them, whatever hope that was supposed to bring. The miles they’d driven away from Bearden only added weight to the ones already tied around her feet and neck.
Seth had lied to her from the beginning, and she’d stupidly let herself be talked around. A shiftless shifter. He wasn’t dangerous. That’d changed the moment his lion ripped out of his body and he bit down on her leg.
She’d trusted him and now she didn’t know up from down or good from bad. She wanted to believe that he hadn’t meant her harm, but he’d still done the deed.
Her head and heart competed to each give her the most pain. At that moment, the throbbing headache won out over the aching of her heart.
Clarity? Yeah, she could do with some fuckin’ clarity.
“South,” Lilah answered, shoving her new sunglasses over her eyes. She needed to go back to where it all began. “Oklahoma.”
Chapter 22
“Are you sure about this?” Sage asked in a soft voice.
Lilah stared at her childhood home. The metal roof of the carport had more rust than she remembered, and the stairs to the front door sagged with age, but the rest of the trailer looked exactly the same. Her parents still did their best to add some curb appeal with a well-kept yard in the front. She knew if she peeked around the back, she’d find her father tinkering away at some truck or farm equipment as a favor to one of the neighbors.
They didn’t have much in the way of money or possessions, but they got by. Her mother still worked at the thrift store in the next town over two days a week instead of the five while Lilah had been in school, and her father still wandered the junkyard between customers. The bits and bobs he brought home were a sore point whenever her mother got irritated with her father.
It’d been a happy place, once. Now she looked at it with apprehension. She left home to escape all the bad done to her and never received acknowledgment that she hadn’t lied. Now here she was on some half-baked road trip for clarity, and she still didn’t know what she was looking for exactly.
“Not at all,” she said finally, but pushed open the car door anyway. Sage followed her out into the mid-morning heat.
From the other side of a bush, her mother poked up her head. Her mouth went slack for a fraction of a second before she jumped to her feet. “Lilah, is that you?” Her mother planted her fists on her wide hips. “Well, I’ll be damned, child. We didn’t know you were coming!”
“Just passing through, Momma,” Lilah answered loud enough for her voice to carry.
R
ita McKenna looked the same as the house: a little older, a little more worn, but otherwise like nothing had changed in the decade since Lilah had last been home. Her waist-length hair was braided and coiled into a bun on the top of her head with more grey than brown streaking through. Extra lines ringed her mouth and eyes, but both were exactly as Lilah remembered.
“Merle, come look who it is!” Somewhere from the workshop in the back came a muffled agreement, but her mother paid him no mind. She dropped her trowel to the dirt and dusted off her hands, then stretched her arms out long. “Come here, sweetheart. Let me get a good look at you.”
Lilah barely moved before her mother marched for her and wrapped her in a tight hug. For a second, the thick scent of her favorite soap overwhelmed her. Memory, she thought when Rita pulled away. Memory and reality colliding together.
“And who is this?” her mother asked, peering at Sage standing awkwardly a few feet away.
Lilah shook herself and started the introductions. “This is my friend, Sage.”
“Sage? What a pretty name! It is a pleasure to meet you, Sage. You can call me Rita.” Her mother gestured toward the trailer. “Why don’t you two come inside? We can sip on some lemonade before it’s time for lunch.”
Stepping inside was like taking a trip into a time capsule. The table by the door had the same stack of cardboard coasters shoved underneath a leg to keep it from wobbling. The same textured crystal bowl held the keys to the family car, with the strap of her mother’s purse next to it filling the rest of the space. That, at least, had been replaced, but the style and even color remained the same. Lilah bet if she reached into the outer pocket, she’d find a travel pack of tissues, just like she remembered.
She swept a look over the rest of the living room. A few extra pictures decorated the side tables and walls, but she was certain she’d find the walls underneath the frames a slightly different color from the rest of the room.
