by Unknown
“None of us?” Eric asked
“Oh, we all take care of her, dear. The whole neighborhood. Poor thing, with all that sleepwalking. She has shown up in just about every garden for four or five blocks any direction.”
The stricken look on Aubrey’s face made Eric ask, “Didn’t know it was that bad?”
“Did you?”
The look the shifters exchanged this time with one of shared guilt. Thank the gods Vanessa’s neighbors had been taking care of her, because Aubrey had been too busy, too clueless, and Eric been too distracted with not letting himself be distracted by the gorgeous curvy girl.
Itching with anxiety, bristling with the rise of his wolf at the thought of the little she-cat in danger, Eric asked, “But she’s not here now, right? Do you know where she went?”
“That’s why say I didn’t think Vanessa wanted us to worry,” Gloria explained with a shrug. “She said it was no cause for alarm and used our phone in the kitchen to make a call in private. I offered to make her cup of tea, but she said she thought it was time for a latte.”
Aubrey, like Eric, squinted doubtfully at that remark. “Latte?”
“Yes”, Gloria insisted again. “She was meeting someone for coffee.”
It only took Eric a second to realize what Vanessa was doing.
CHAPTER NINE
Watching the clock in a dentist’s waiting room before a root canal appointment was less tense than just trying to enjoy the cool shade on the coffee shop patio amid planters filled with lush, overwatered ferns. Go figure. Vanessa sucked down her iced latte too quickly and made that annoying slurping sound through her straw so loudly that the scattered patrons around her all glared.
“Whoops,” she mouthed and made herself put the plastic cup down on the metal bistro table beside her.
And whoops was right. Vanessa had really overplayed her luck, and she knew it. She had not counted on finding out werewolves and werecats really existed when she pushed her way into Eric Salo’s life or when she confronted her own delusions. Slurp. Vanessa only then realized she’d picked up that cup again. Still empty. The woman settled for chewing nervously on the end of her straw.
She also obviously hadn’t understood just how serious Jeremy Koller had been about protecting her—as in controlling her life—
until he had shown up at her house with police in tow. Would he really have tried to put a psychiatric hold on her for dating another man? Joke was on him, sorta. One of those police officers had, well, smelled wrong, even from a distance. He’d been on the hunt, or so his hormones had told her. Vanessa would have bet he was an Agency man, and he’d have done a lot more than detain her for observation. Slurp.
Put the cup down, Vanessa. She did, pointedly.
Most crucially, of course, Vanessa hadn’t anticipated just how much her brother had been hiding from her all these years or the contents of the Pandora’s box she had flung open by confronting Aubrey the way she had. On the phone. In one word, she had changed their relationship and now... even their lives. Slurp.
This time when Vanessa glanced up sheepishly from her thoughts and her cup, she found the previous customers gone, replaced by three gorgeous, muscular, expensively dressed men standing at the door. Pietr and Zaide, looking like Hellenistic playboys, like gods of sun and sex, and the dark man who smelled of werecat but not quite werelion. He was... something else.
The dark one positioned himself by the patio entrance, hands folded before him like a professional bodyguard (except more dangerous) and shoulder blocking the door so no one from inside would disturb them. When Pietr and Zaide sat, peering at her quietly but intently as they moved, Vanessa got a full dose of that werelion allure Eric had warned her about. Both males smelled of desire itself, like amber and musk and warm spices and maybe a touch of lotus. Exotic, certainly. It made Vanessa think of lion-headed gods and goddesses on temple walls and ancient military banners and wonder if those actually depicted shifters. The combination of smooth tanned skin, golden hair, and light eyes didn’t help her concentration any.
Why now, Vanessa had to wonder. Why was she feeling this primal pull toward the males of her kind now and not—or at least not as much—when Eric had been with her?
“I’m glad you called me,” Pietr told her. That suggestion of an accent, that Greek playboy billionaire purr, that she found charming just that morning now shuddered along her nerve endings like a warm hand caressing freezing skin. She could hardly resist the urge to shiver and squirm in her chair. “You’re making the right decision coming with us.”
Vanessa found that voice just too goddamn seductive; she bristled and balked. “I asked you to meet me here to discuss my place in the pride. That implies I haven’t made a decision one way or the other.”
The younger werelion, or so Zaide seemed, leaned forward toward Vanessa. His luminous eyes narrowed in confusion. From the way the two male shifters were sitting there—positioned in front of her with practiced self-possession, feet planted and legs spread just enough for a masculine display of their sizable semi-erect cocks just beginning to jut against the expensive material of their slacks—Vanessa got the impression there was a mating ritual in progress. Just the early steps, perhaps, the preening and positioning and flexing, the intense glares and subtle flares of nostrils and pulses as male and female sniffed one another out. Vanessa wasn’t in a hurry to go there no matter how good they smelled, how supernaturally endowed they were, or how wet her panties got.
Pietr seem to understand this and put a hand on Zaide’s arm to get the man to sit back. Then the pride leader asked, “So what is it you want from us, Vanessa?”
Right down to business. Vanessa made a point of putting her cup down out of casual reach.
What she wanted and what she needed were two different things. Vanessa wanted... well, to be a shifter, not a latent but a full-fledged werelioness. Not much anyone could have done about that, and to hear Pietr talk this morning, they wouldn’t have changed her if they could. Latents were too valuable to their breeding pool. And she wanted to tell the werelion, the pride, the whole Panthera where they could stick that bright idea. No one was telling Vanessa who to have babies or kittens or cubs or whatever with. Yet how much leverage did she really have in the matter, considering what she needed?
“The Agency knows about me,” Vanessa announced as steadily and matter-of-factly as she could. All a performance, of course, and not all for their benefit. Her hands still hadn’t quite stopped shaking from the surge of adrenaline of looking through her upstairs window and seeing Koller leading uniformed police officers up the cement walkway to her porch. If Vanessa let fear seep into her voice, she’d hear it, and she wouldn’t be able to lie to herself about keeping it all together while her life turned into some angry-chicks-in-leather urban fantasy with werewolves and werelions and fey and vampires and square-jawed special forces agents in tactical gear all fighting over the girl, and all with their own ends in mind for her. “They know about my brother, too. Aubrey. Up to now he has been one of them—hiding from the Agency by working for it, to protect me.”
Vanessa didn’t convey the rest of the details she’d heard in the balance of that argument between Aubrey and Eric, when the wolf shifter had confronted her brother about hunting supernaturals and Aubrey had admitted... a lot.
The most meaningful glance was not between Pietr and Zaide but from the Panthera leader to his black-haired guard. Vanessa was sure now the dark man, werelion or not, was the lion king’s right hand. Right claw, rather, and well-suited to it if the hard-packed muscles on that lean body and the icy gleam in his obsidian-black eyes were any indication.
“You need to bring your brother in before the Agency does,” Pietr told Vanessa. The force behind his statement, the undeniably regal tone of his voice, the stony expression he wore.... All of these told her just how serious he was, how serious the situation had become now. “Neither of you can go back to your homes or your jobs now. But we have a place for you both, Vanessa
. We can—.”
A hard grunt from the dark guard, as the door to the patio hit his shoulder so forcefully that it thrust him forward, preceded a flurry of total chaos that cut short Pietr’s warning to Vanessa. Aubrey and Eric, both glowing faintly in preparation to shift, barged their way into the small courtyard. The three Panthera weres, all growling, instantly surrounded the interlopers.
“That’s my brother,” Vanessa blurted, trying not to yell while still piercing the chorus of snarls cresting amidst the males. “That’s Aubrey. He’s a werelion, too. Hello? Are any of you assholes listening to me?” Did anyone ever listen to her?
Zaide made the unwise decision to nose up to Eric. The wolf shifter checked the leaner blond with a step forward, bouncing Zaide off his massive chest and forcing a shuffling retreat.
“So you do shift,” Pietr said to Vanessa’s brother. The pride leader’s seductive accent disappeared under the harsh rasp of his cycling growl.
Aubrey agreed, “Right now, if I have to. Whatever you think you’re getting my sister to do....” His blue eyes flashed with power and temper as he glared at Zaide in particular. “Forget about it.”
Pietr’s eyes narrowed as well. “We didn’t lose you by accident, did we? Your family was hiding you from us. Why?”
“Gosh, you think maybe it’s the kitty eugenics program you’ve got?”
Shaking his head, Pietr snickered through the constant snarl rumbling among all the men. “Romantic,” he scoffed. “Tragically romantic. I can’t believe you’d rather have your sister screwing a wolf shifter.”
“Hey,” Vanessa snipped. “Who I’m screwing is none of your—.”
“Just because I don’t like the smell of wet dog—,” Aubrey started to say, right before Eric shoulder-checked him. Reluctantly, Aubrey added, “My sister’s mate is her choice, not mine and not yours.”
This got a snort from Zaide and a small—very small—smile from Pietr. The dark man’s face never changed; he was just a carefully controlled fount of cold anger.
“Except, of course,” Pietr noted with careful enunciation to compensate for the grating of his lowered voice, “for the fact that wolves and lions can’t mate. Salo can seduce her if he wants, but she’s not saving him from the Wilding, if that’s what he’s after.”
Vanessa cocked one hip in irritation and tilted her head as she regarded the council leader. “Why does that have to be what he’s after?” Why did Eric have to be after anything at all from Vanessa? “Am I only good to him for mating? Like I’m only good to you for breeding?”
Pietr sighed in exasperation. “You act as though there is no value to bringing children to the pride.”
“And like you’d hate having to take a lion mate,” Zaide threw in as he started toward Vanessa. “You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t hate it, and you know it. Everyone can smell the lioness in you responding to us.” Which was the point at which Eric took the young werelion by the back of his collar and hurled him at the black-haired Panthera lieutenant.
The dark man moved fast. God, faster than Eric was, faster than Vanessa was. He could’ve caught Eric before the wolf shifter had positioned himself between Vanessa and the rest of the males. It was Pietr’s hand that stayed his enforcer.
“Enough, Dhakal. Not here.”
The dark shifter withdrew at once, went from lunging toward Eric’s back to standing with hands folded by the door again. Just that quickly. But his fury, his hunger to hurt the wolf, remained a tangible emanation from the were. It was, if not contained, completely controlled.
Fuck, Vanessa thought, what the hell is he?
Eric and Aubrey must have been wondering the same thing, because their gazes never left him as they moved to form a wall of muscle between Vanessa and the three Panthera weres. The low rumble of snarling emanated through the courtyard.
Vanessa shook her head and shouldered in among the males, between her protectors. “That’s just about enough pissing, boys.”
“What are you here for, Vanessa?” Pietr demanded, his patience evidently at an end. “We have a safe place for you on the ranch and work for you among the Panthera businesses. For your brother as well. You want our protection or you don’t.”
Now that Vanessa was on the spot, now that Eric was standing there, she wasn’t so sure of her plan. What Pietr described pretty much fit the bill. But did that mean saying goodbye to Salo, warm and solid beside her. As before, his presence very much dampened her instinctive desire for the werelion males. That had to mean something, didn’t it? It meant everything to Vanessa, but did it mean anything to Eric? Had that encounter in her living room been as serious—as amazing—for him?
“It’s up to you, Vanessa,” Salo intoned softly from beside her, as though he could hear her thoughts, could feel her anxiety and uncertainty. Just as her hopes began to sink with a sick stomach inside her at the thought that he didn’t care what decision she made, so long as she wasn’t his worry anymore, he added, “But you don’t need to do anything you don’t want to. I’ll protect you.”
Pietr whistled and smiled mirthlessly, shaking his head. “Big commitment for your pack. What will your alpha say to that? Or are you close enough to taking Ron’s place that you make these pledges on your own?”
“My promise is mine,” Eric said, staring down the pride leader. “It has nothing to do with my pack.”
Then the younger werelion sneered. “What about her brother? Is he under your protection as well, or are you leaving him to fend for himself?”
Just as Vanessa got her hopes up, Zaide’s question and Eric’s lack of response dashed them. She blinked up at the werewolf, tears in her eyes.
From the other side of her, Aubrey put a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “I’ve made a mess of this,” he muttered low. “I was the one who was supposed to take care of you.”
Everyone was trying to take care of Vanessa. Everyone knew what was best for her. And no one ever asked her about it. No one thought her capable of caring for herself, let alone any of them.
“You take both Aubrey and me in,” the lioness said flatly to the Panthera leader. Beside her, Eric’s head dipped, his full mouth pressed into a tight line that suggested anger, restraint, defeat.
While Vanessa was distracted by the urge to soothe Salo’s reaction, Aubrey stepped forward toward the Panthera weres. “I’ll do more than go back with you to the Panthera. I’ll fight as you direct me, and I’ll.... Fuck.” He swallowed back a sigh as Vanessa and Eric looked on in confusion. “I’ll mate with whomever you tell me to.” This perked Pietr’s brow. “Once. I’ll be breeding stock for the Panthera once.”
“Aubrey?” Vanessa asked. “Why would you—?”
The All-American doofus looked down at his sister and shook his head, mouth curved into a sad, sheepish smile. “We all fucked this up, and we’re each doing what we can to fix it.” Then to the lion king, he said, “She’s got a degree in public relations, so give her a job doing that, okay? And we both get a place to live and new identities, but you don’t get to tell her who to breed with, and you can’t make her stop seeing anyone.” The last word came out slow and nearly choked Aubrey, which was understandable considering that “anyone” was a werewolf.
Pietr’s light gaze scanned the three outsiders, weighing their expressions. His was amused. Zaide’s was not. And Dhakal was back to wearing no expression at all. What truly lingered behind the dark shifter’s black eyes Vanessa didn’t want to know.
“Is this proposal agreeable to the lady?” Pietr asked.
When she just blinked at him, as she struggled to take in the terms of the agreement, the terrible burden it placed on Aubrey while granting her both protection and freedom, Eric’s hand closed around hers. Salo tugged her slowly back, to stand shielded by his arm and shoulder. “Is it?” he whispered so low only she would hear.
“Aubrey?” she muttered.
“It’s what I do, Vanessa. I have been a soldier for the Agency. This is no different.” This assertion from Aub
rey brought a smirk to Pietr’s face. “And we both know you’ve been a prisoner in your own life for too long. That was my decision, and a bad one, one I had no right to make for you. This is just evening that one up.”
“Aubrey—.”
“Vanessa,” he sighed as he glared down at her. “Get out of here before they decide to renegotiate.”
“Don’t go back to your house,” Pietr reminded her. “The Agency will be watching.”
Vanessa balked. “So I have nothing? No clothes? No family photos?” Alarmed, she asked, “What about Uncle Oren and Aunt Fay? It’s their house.”
“They were our guardians after the Agency killed our parents,” Aubrey explained to the others. “Our mom and dad’s best friends. Humans. They’re in Arizona.”
“As are we,” Pietr assured him. “Just give me their location. We’ll have people at their house before nightfall, and they’ll be relocated immediately, under our protection.”
Vanessa felt a wave of nausea churning in her stomach. “Good god. They’re going to have to give up their lives, too?”
“Stop,” Aubrey told her. “Stop fretting. This is the way it has to be. They knew this was the case when they agreed to take us in if anything happened to our parents.” Then to Eric, he said, “Now will you please get her out of here before she talks us all into a corner?”
The wolf shifter dragged Vanessa cautiously around the werecats toward the door, always keeping himself between the lioness and them, always maintaining a firm hold on her hand.
“We’ll find you when we’ve got a place ready for her,” Pietr told Salo with a piercing glare adding a lot of unspoken context to the declaration.
“Take your time, kitty.”
“Get the fuck out, Salo,” Aubrey snarled.
Vanessa followed Eric out of the coffee shop in a daze, and it didn’t really subside until the glaring summer sun and its pervasive heat had faded behind the comforting cover of night. This time of day, twilight, had often found Vanessa wondering what the night’s dreams would bring—nightmares or a prowl in her beast form? Would she sleepwalk? Whose garden would she wake up in the next morning?
