by Unknown
“Salo,” the seated man said with a polite smile but without rising. He had a vague European accent that might have been Greek, but faded. His manner, while not overtly demanding deference, also did not convey a sense of parity with Eric. Whoever this man was, with a regal air about him, his station among—what had Eric called them?—supernaturals was above that of the wolf shifter.
For Eric’s part, position didn’t seem to matter a whole lot. He neither toned down nor accentuated the gruffer animal aura of his own kind. “Pietr,” he said with a nod.
“Intriguing message you left with my people.” Only when this Pietr’s attention shifted squarely to Vanessa did he straighten his posture and remove his sunglasses, and there seemed to be a purposeful respect to his gestures then. “This is the young lady.” It wasn’t a question. Before Eric could introduce her, Pietr said, “Vanessa Dreyer.”
The conversation had grown very close to relegating Vanessa to the third person. “Yes?” she responded to her name, stepping forward.
Now the blond man stood and gave a little bow. “Miss Dreyer. Vanessa, if I may?” And she nodded. He took a step closer, studying her, then sidestepped and began to circle her. Eric’s refusal to move from her side made Pietr deviate in his slow orbit. When he stood before her again, he let out a measured breath. “There is no doubt, Vanessa. You are one of ours, and yet we—.”
“One of ours,” she interrupted, tired and impatient with half-explained concepts and terms she never quite fully understood. Odin’s Wolf, Fenris Wolf, Agency, even shifter. Speak plainly, she wanted to scream. Instead, she asked, “One of your what?”
She caught Pietr’s glance at Eric, who shrugged. “I told them she didn’t know anything about shifters or the Panthera,” Salo commented with nonchalance bordering on rudeness.
Panthera? Great, a new term she didn’t understand.
“One of your what?” she asked again, voice louder and unintentionally higher.
She didn’t expect Pietr to take her hand, quite suddenly though gently, and say, “One of the pride, Vanessa. A lioness, and even more importantly, a latent shifter.”
It didn’t seem that Eric had expected the physical contact, either. Almost as quickly as Pietr took Vanessa’s hand, the werewolf cut between them and forcefully shoved the other man’s hand away from hers. The dark guard moved forward, closing a dozen steps of distance in hardly a heartbeat. Yet he stilled just as quickly when Pietr laid a hand on his chest.
“A latent lioness shifter,” Vanessa huffed, trying to lean around Eric’s hulking form to address Pietr again. “What does that even mean, please? Does anyone here speak English?”
Does anyone here know I’m speaking? She had to wonder as the two blond men stared each other down.
“Is there another issue I need to be aware of?” Pietr asked, glaring at Eric.
“Not as long as you keep your hands to yourself, kitty.”
Vanessa leaned the other way, peering at the men from around Eric’s right arm instead of his left. “Excuse me. Hello.”
“Kitty,” Pietr snorted. “That’s cute. Are you feeling territorial, Salo? Do I have to worry about you peeing all over everything?” Eric’s response was to draw the massive wall of his shoulders back and deliberately close his hands into fists, though they remained at his side. And little by little, Pietr’s shining demeanor darkened. “Is it her?” he demanded with his distinct enunciation flattening out the charming European accent. “Because we all know you have no business getting involved with a lady of the pride.”
“We do?” Vanessa asked, blatantly stepped out from behind Eric and planting her hands on her hips.
Despite anger hardening every muscle and angle in his body, Eric snickered. “As I recall, the lionesses are the first among equals in the pride of lion shifters. You might be the leader of the Panthera, but you don’t get to tell her what to do with her personal life.”
This time, when Pietr closed the half-step between himself and the werewolf, so close that their rising chests almost brushed, it was the dark guard whose hand stilled the lion. And as much as Vanessa considered herself a grown, mature woman—eccentricities aside—she did feel an alarming surge of arousal she couldn’t quite explain, all from watching and experiencing on an instinctive level these two powerful shifters squaring off at one another over her.
“Are you saying you’re mating with her?” Pietr demanded.
Eric smirked. “Not your business, kitty.”
“Even you don’t believe that, Salo. She’s a latent. That’s irrelevant to your breed, but it’s everything to us. The key to weeding out all our most serious genetic weaknesses as shifters lies in the traits carried by our latents. If Vanessa breeds with you, absolutely nothing is gained.”
“Vanessa’s not breeding with anyone,” she tried to interject.
Pietr continued as though he hadn’t heard a word from her. “But if she bred with one of her own, like me or Zaide….” He motioned toward the fair-haired guard visible through the glass panes of the patio door.
The growl cycling up in Eric’s chest rumbled all the louder. “I didn’t bring her here so she could churn out litters for your precious fucking Panthera.”
Hearing this, the protectiveness in Eric’s voice, was all the confusion Vanessa was willing to withstand. She wedged herself between the angry shifters so quickly that they couldn’t prevent her from separating them. Facing the wolf, she asked, “Then why did you bring me?”
Eric’s large hands closed over Vanessa’s shoulders, his body flexing and further tensing as hers pressed against him. For a moment, she thought he was going to jerk away to avoid her. When he did step back, hissing out a thick breath, he did so pulling her with him. Eric drew her away from Pietr—and the abrupt ridge Vanessa felt forming against the curve of her ass, in those tailored cotton trousers the lion shifter wore.
For the few seconds it took Eric to calm himself from the furious exchange with Pietr, the wolf shifter gazed gently down into her face. His own was marred by a thoughtful frown. “I brought you because I can’t teach you what you need to know about being a lion shifter. What kinds of supernaturals are out there, the Agency and the other government groups that hunt and kill anything superhuman, how to hide, I can tell you all that, but….” He swallowed hard, then lowered his voice. “I can’t teach you about yourself.”
Was that regret Vanessa heard in his voice?
“I’m not so sure about that,” she whispered back, even though the ears of the cat shifters surely caught her words as easily as if she’d shouted. Was that really the source of Eric’s reluctance? His belief that he had to step away from her to let her own kind teach her? Because there were things she wanted to learn from Eric Salo. If only he were willing.
Pietr’s voice rose up behind her, gently plaintive. “Vanessa, please try to understand. All kinds of cat shifters are rare. You could even say we are endangered. And lions—a lioness…. Vanessa, you would be prized and protected by the pride and by the council we call the Panthera. This mundane human world, this doesn’t have to be your life.” And didn’t that just make Pietr sound like the polar opposite of Aubrey?
The woman grudgingly turned from Eric but stayed just as close, her back pressed flush to the reassuring firmness of his chest and abs. “You understand I don’t shift, right? I can run like you wouldn’t imagine of someone built like me—.”
“Like a lioness,” Pietr corrected her. “Like a goddess.”
Vanessa glared at him doubtfully but didn’t comment on his flattery. “And I can smell and see better than the average person.” A lot better, actually. “But other than that, I’m pretty much defective. No fangs, no fur, two legs.”
Looking horrified, Pietr shook his head in denial. “Absolutely not. The term is latent. You still carry all the genetic material of the pride. In fact, every latent we know of is immune to one or more of our weaknesses. Some even possess a completely new ability that hasn’t appeared in shifters who hav
e actually turned. Who knows what you could bring to us.”
“She’s not vulnerable to heat,” Eric said in a flat, grating voice, as though it pained him to prove Pietr right.
The lion shifter froze even as he was gathering the breath to carry on his argument. “You can’t be serious,” he rasped, then exchanged glances with the raven-haired bodyguard. “That is our single greatest weakness as cat shifters. If we could breed that immunity into our werecats….”
The recurrent breeding theme was making Vanessa’s shoulders and neck tighten and ache. The term held one connotation with Eric but an entirely different one with this pride Pietr kept talking about, no matter this instinctive physical attraction cat shifters stirred in her. And they did. Vanessa’s nipples had hardened the moment she’d seen the one Pietr had called Zaide, and Pietr himself exuded a magnetism so strong that she wanted to push him down on the table and straddle his hips to ride that bulge in his pants. Just not as much—not near as much—as she wanted Eric to push her down on hands and knees and take her like wolves mated, and have it mean something to him.
Pietr shook his head in disbelief. “How in the world did we ever lose track of your bloodline? It’s a miracle you’re back with us.”
“You keep track of all the cat shifter bloodlines?” she asked. “For breeding purposes?”
The lion were nodded. “As I said, we aren’t many. Every single one is precious. When Salo contacted us about you, I had my people check our genealogical records for some clue as to where you came from, where we lost you. We have no accounts at all of losing a single female birth or a couple with a daughter.”
“I’m not an only child. I have a brother.” Which snapped the two male werecats on the patio with Vanessa to attention.
Pietr asked, “A brother? Older or younger? Young enough not to have shifted yet?”
“Older, but I….” Clammy cold prickles of suspicion climbed the back of Vanessa’s scalp. She tried to tell herself there was no reason for them. Just because Aubrey had been a track star and champion wrestler in high school, both earning him scholarships, didn’t mean he wasn’t a latent like Vanessa was. But finally she admitted, “I don’t know if he ever shifted.”
“Bring him to me,” Pietr said. It wasn’t a request. When Eric huffed softly under his breath at the lion’s imperious tone, and Vanessa reared back an inch, the Panthera leader lifted his chin and regarded them plainly. “I’ll find him myself if I must, and I have the resources to do it. Now I know who we’re looking for. If we have to do it, my people won’t be subtle about it, though. The rule of the Panthera is my rule. You and your brother are in or you’re out, Vanessa, all the way. With the Agency sniffing around you—and it’s just a matter of time now before they check your background and learn you have a brother—you need our protection as much as we need your blood. Your choice. Make the right one.”
Or what?
“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” Vanessa said, voice flat and nonplussed, before she turned for the door.
“Vanessa.” Again with the imperious tone. She had to take that shit from Koller, but none of these men were signing her paycheck.
When Pietr reached out for her arm, and Eric moved toward them as though he intended to take off the lion’s hand, Vanessa stepped out of range. “Is Eric right when he says the lioness is first among equals? Is this truly my decision?” Shrinking back slightly with a frown and a sigh, Pietr nodded. “Then I’ll thank you to give me the time and the space to make it.”
And she strode through and out of the coffee shop trying not to shiver at the strangely exhilarating sensation of having claimed her leonine supremacy in the face of an insistent, goddamn sexy lion shifter. Not what she had expected of her morning or her life as an obedient office mouse.
CHAPTER SIX
None of this was turning out the way Eric had intended it, not since three nights before when he’d let himself have what was supposed to be one dance, just a few moments when Vanessa Dreyer was with him.
Eric—a goddamn werewolf shifter and second in command for one of the most established packs in the ranks of Odin Wolves—wasn’t supposed to be trailing a hotheaded little werecat latent through a coffeehouse like her manservant or eunuch bodyguard. That freaking fop of a lion king and his leering thugs weren’t supposed to take one look at Vanessa and start thinking of all the ways to breed her to the most virile members of their pride. Calling her lady and goddess! Fucking cats. They couldn’t go out for coffee without seducing the barista, two other patrons, and the meter maid ticketing them for double-parking along the way.
As Eric opened his car door for Vanessa, and slammed it closed, he was thinking it didn’t matter what Soren said. It didn’t matter what their pack alpha, Ron, would say. Salo wasn’t turning Vanessa over to the Panthera. The pride was at least as dangerous as the possibility that her perverted jerk of a boss would make a move on her or that other shifters might somehow sniff her out.
But not near as dangerous as the Agency. The thought rumbled through Eric’s thoughts in Ron’s smooth, calm voice with its deeply paternal cadence and tone. Eric hesitated with his hands on the steering wheel, gaze directed ahead through the windshield but focused entirely inward. Only a sharply quizzical glare directed sidelong at him from the passenger seat roused the wolf shifter enough from his sullen internal diatribe to get him to turn the key in the ignition. His Mustang roared to life with a powerful mechanical snarl not unlike his wolf’s constant irritated growl from just beneath his consciousness.
Letting his wolf edge up on him while he was behind the wheel leant new meaning to the term road rage. Good thing it was just after morning rush hour by the time they’d emerged from the coffee shop. Beside him, Vanessa shook her head once, just a small motion, and moved one soft hand to grip the armrest mounted to the inside of the passenger door. Without thinking about it, without meaning to, Eric let up on the gas.
Damn it.
There had been a time when Eric and that Mustang—of a different color—had APB’s out on them in five states. Not for anything particularly felonious. Those had been Salo’s younger days, days before Ron had found him in a backwater jail and bailed Eric out before the Agency could fit the scattered reports of bar fights and wolves tangling in the dark with the profile they’d been working up on the rogue werewolf tearing up the Gulf Coast.
At a time when no one trusted the fiery, reckless youth—his friends and family back east least of all—the calm and calculating alpha had not only taken Eric in. Ron had trained him, taught him what an Odin’s Wolf was and the values they lived and died by, and then made Salo his right hand. Who’d have known that giving the rashly irresponsible bad wolf something of his own to take care of—a pack to protect—would forge a man out of the animal?
Ron had known. Eric downshifted as the thought of his alpha and another glance from the uncharacteristically somber werecat started to eat at him. Much as the wolf shifter, as alpha pro tem, wanted to live up to the trust Ron and his pack had placed in him, he also wanted to tell Pietr that he’d take a paw off if the werelion ever came near Vanessa again. The pride could take a hike if the cost of their protection was their right to designate a breeding mate for her as soon as they met her. Salo was willing to risk a diplomatic “incident” with the Panthera over that little point of order.
Eric wanted.... Fuck, he wanted a lot of things, chief among them to pull over right then and take the luscious werecat’s mouth with his until she swore she’d never let Pietr or Zaide touch her. And promised never to let the pride tell her who she’d mate, who she’d fuck, who she’d so much as smile at. He wanted those for himself, in a completely pigheaded, possessive male way.
Christ, at this point, he just wanted Vanessa to fucking say something, and that plain galled.
You can’t have everything you want, Salo, Eric told himself in a considerably gruffer, more irritated voice than Ron’s. There was a price for embracing the beast, bringing his wolf out in a
ll its superhuman senses and speed and strength. For living two or three times the lifespan of a normal man, assuming he didn’t fall to battle or lose himself to the wilding progression that stole a little of the human every time he took wolf form. For belonging to an Odin’s Wolf pack, serving a Norse god of war who demanded blind, frothing courage and the willingness to die as a given from his beast warriors. For being a shifter in a world that hunted hunters lest humans become prey.
There was a price for being Eric Salo, and one that he’d once been able to say he happily paid. Now that price was denying himself Vanessa Dreyer. He wasn’t sure he was up to the task.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The exhilaration she’s felt in the coffeehouse didn’t last, and heavy silence smothered Vanessa and Eric as he drove them back toward her place.
“You never mentioned having a brother until yesterday. It wasn’t my intention to drag him into this. I didn’t know it would go down like this….,” Eric said at last, sounding like he had to force the words up out of his throat and into the oppressive atmosphere between them.
“Why would you know that? You don’t know anything about me,” she muttered, not sure she intended Eric to be able to hear it or if she even cared whether or not he did. She’d endured too much back-and-forth over the last few days. Hell, over the last few years. She had the nature of a lioness, confirmed for her now, but the life of a church mouse. Her brother had shushed down so much of who she really was, to protect her. Or was it really to protect himself? Had he hidden the fact that he’d turned when he’d gotten to adolescence and made Vanessa hide herself away so she could never have inadvertently revealed Aubrey’s secret?
And what about Eric? Why was he kissing her one moment and sending her away the next? If he wanted to foist her off on the Panthera, why did he care if that blond Zaide had been giving her the eye or Pietr wanted to play some kind of lion matchmaker?
