I shouldn’t have let her do this, he thought, distressed. I am the alpha. I say what goes. Being divided by our forms is better than being divided in death...
The air around him was eerily quiet, the crowd focused on the woman who had disappeared into the flames.
Unable to take much more of the wait, Gowon sprang to his feet and roared loudly, asserting his power over the pride. His self-will gave out. He was going in after her.
Cassie, I’m coming... he shouted mentally, roaring again.
Just as he was about to leap into the fire to save her, the flames shifted, snaking up to the sky and disappearing amongst the heavens. In their place, with soft embers falling around her in the night, was a lioness more beautiful than Gowon could have imagined. Her fur was not tawny but mahogany, like her hair in human form. She was a dark lion, a rare lion, rarer even than himself.
Cassie leapt out of the fire pit and landed beside him, the earth cowering to her power. Elated, Gowon nuzzled his head against hers, showering her in his love. She purred beneath him, returning his affections. Soon, her purr turned low and seductive.
Smiling, Gowon ran from the pride, leading his new lioness to a place all their own, where once again, they could be one.
***
Cassie
When she woke, it was morning. And she was human once more. That didn’t concern her. She knew it would take time to learn how to shift at will. What concerned her was that Gowon was no longer by her side. She woke alone.
Naked and worried, Cassie stood, surprised by how wobbly her human legs felt. After a night on all fours, sturdy and grounded, her two flimsy human legs seemed fragile.
It had been exhilarating – the change. It hadn’t hurt, not that she could remember. It had happened so quickly. One minute she was human, and the next... she was something as equally magnificent. It felt completely natural to be a lioness, as if it were what nature had intended all along – for her to experience both the call of the wild and the science of humanity. But human or lion, she was always a woman. Her strength as a woman held both sides of her together, as did her love for Gowon.
“I have to find him,” she asserted. She’d try the house first. Perhaps he had gone back to get her some clothes.
“The new alpha queen,” a woman sang near her, a song full of venom. “Has your king abandoned you so soon?”
Cassie watched in horror as a shadow moved towards her, transforming into a woman with jet black hair, flawless pale skin, and a ruby mouth twisted into an amused smile. Cassie could instantly see the resemblance to Kafele.
“Kalisha,” she hissed. “The alpha of the Shadow Pride.”
“I’m flattered you know so much about me,” she whipped, circling Cassie.
Cassie tried to transform, knowing she was stronger as a lioness. But she couldn’t. She wasn’t sure how.
“It’s adorable really, watching you try. I’ll show you how a real queen transforms soon enough. But first, I have a proposition. You may be a lioness, but Gowon is still afflicted. And base on rumors regarding my traitor cousin and his bleached-out mate, Gowon isn’t going to destroy the one who afflicted him anytime soon.”
“Tell me what you want,” Cassie demanded, trying to sound like she had some authority, even though she knew she didn’t. She was new and inexperienced at being a lioness. If Kalisha transformed, she could rip Cassie apart in seconds.
“I want peace, just like everyone else. But I want it under my reign. This is my land, Cassie. It belongs to my pride. I will reclaim it for my people.”
“Your people are corrupt,” Cassie fired back. “You care nothing for the other prides invited onto this land by your great-grandfather.”
“Thomas Dalkey was a fool”, Kalisha said with a smooth anger. “He cared more about his philanthropy than his own family. I want our land back.”
“And what am I to do about it?” Cassie asked, softening her tone, realizing an angry alpha was not someone she wanted to deal with so soon.
“You are the alpha queen now. A true lioness. While Gowon is stuck in human form, you have the authority to allow my people back onto the range. We’re coming, Cassie. One way or another. Avoid the war, while you can.”
“Go to hell,” Cassie retorted.
“Don’t be a fool”, Kalisha insisted, her patience thinning. Very briefly, she flashed a set of sharp, deadly claws. “Let my people back on.”
“You’re wasting your breath,” Gowon rumbled.
Back in human form, Gowon was dressed in a deep blue thermal shirt and jeans that set off his tan and short blonde hair. In his hands was a change of clothes for Cassie, as she’d suspected. “She doesn’t have the authority. I am no longer afflicted,” he revealed.
Momentarily forgetting the danger they were in, Cassie lit up. Was it true? Were they free? She wanted to believe it, but she knew it could be a ruse to scare off Kalisha. Gowon was clearly human, but it might only be temporary, like the last time.
“Impossible”, Kalisha said coolly, but she didn’t seem so sure.
“Cassie sacrificed herself to the flames for me. Kalisha, even a woman as vicious as yourself knows there are some powers that supersede a shaman.” Then to prove himself, he dropped Cassie’s clothes and transformed into a lion.
Kalisha did the same. As lions, Gowon was by far the strongest, but there was an agility and wit to Kalisha that Cassie knew couldn’t be underestimated. She did not seem to fear Gowon as a lion, but when he immediately changed back into a man, her surprise was undeniable.
Instead of attacking, Kalisha swiftly retreated back into her shadow form.
“Protect that little lioness of yours,” she cooed. “There’s a war coming.”
Then she disappeared. ***
“So here we are,” Gowon said, standing as naked and proud as she was.
“So here we are,” Cassie echoed, unable to take her eyes off his manhood, how it rose with power.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked, stepping close to her, tucking a piece of her mahogany hair behind her ear. “You don’t have to be a part of this war. You’re free. You can do as you choose. Return to the zoo. Carry on with your research.”
“You’re right, I am free,” she said. “I’m free to choose my life, and I choose you. War and all. This isn’t the start. And it isn’t the end. My love for you, it goes beyond simple measurements like time. Or danger. It is a force in itself.”
“The force that set me free.” Again, he smoothed her hair back, pressing closer into her. “Let me show you how much you mean to me,” he whispered with an authority that caused her core to shudder with joy.
“Go right ahead,” she answered back before reaching forward and feeling how much his manhood wanted her. It grew within her hand, hard and urgent.
Loving the way he moaned at her touch, she dropped slowly to her knees and took his tip into her mouth, licking it lightly, moistening it the way her core moistened when she was near him.
He grabbed her hair and rocked gently, easing his tip around her mouth. It wasn’t all for his pleasure. She enjoyed it. It reminded her of what was to come, of what he’d be doing with that colossal manhood once she was finished – of what he’d be doing to her.
Sucking on him, tasting his saltiness, she brought him almost to the point of coming before he pulled out.
“Your mouth is as beautiful as your eyes,” he said, “but this is supposed to be about you.”
Regaining control, like a true alpha, he turned her around so that she was facing away from him, then he nudged her slightly forward so that she was on all fours.
Flashes of their previous night together as lions sent sensual chills across her body, which only heightened when he stuck his fingers inside her core, causing her to pant with pleasure.
“Gowon,” she moaned as he hit her sweet spot. “Oh my god. Don’t stop.”
His fingers continued to push inside her, forcing her to grow wet and hot, drenching his fingers, but she
didn’t care. Waves of ecstasy were building inside her. Her body craved release.
She arched her back and rocked her body, trying to guide his fingers deeper inside her, but to her great satisfaction, he replaced his fingers with his manhood. It filled her up, rubbing every angle inside her, his thrusts impaling her with sheer pleasure. The heat within her grew, causing the world around her to go white. But she didn’t release. She held on, sinking her body further onto his manhood, her breath growing heavier and more desperate with every mind-blowing thrust. Finally, she could hold on no more. Her body lit up, much like it had the night before, transcending her to a new realm of bliss.
He joined her, pushing himself into her hard one last time. She clenched as she felt him spasm within her before they fell together on the soft earth, breathless both from their mating and their love for each other.
“I know no war when I’m with you,” she said, leaning her body into his. “I know only happiness.”
“As I to you,” he promised. “I will love you, Cassie, for all the days of my life, and beyond. I won’t let anything come between us. If your book on mythology is correct, and I am the child of a Sun God, then you are the light that feeds the sun. You are what gives my life warmth.” And with that, he took her in his arms again, never to let go.
THE END
Taken and Mated by the Alpha Bear Soldier:
Wolf’s Ending
A Werewolf Romance
Wolf’s Ending
Chapter 1: Dark
“I can feel it, this wild inside of me. It thrashes and howls and growls, until all I can do, is scream just to cover the sounds. If I had known that the solution to my darkness was so simple, I would have done a lot of things differently in my life. I would have acted sooner. The best way to keep my wild at bay is to embrace it. And if that makes me too dark for this world, so be it.”
Tears were streaming down Sharee’s face. Of all the things she would have ever expected him to say, that really wasn’t it. He wasn’t supposed to give up and in. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. She felt heartbroken and more than a little betrayed…which she was sure was exactly the effect he had been shooting for.
Damn him, she thought furiously. Damn him to hell and back.
“What are you doing?”
Sharee jumped. She hastily wiped the tears off her face and pushed the chair back, the little wheels rolling her away from the screen she was not supposed to be looking at. On the page, the word “END” still taunted her with its final, Arial Bold characters.
She looked up and was not surprised to find the shadow of an amused grin on Tristan’s handsome features. She was not supposed to look at his work until he asked her to, but they both knew she could never resist the temptation to peek. He hardly pretended to be annoyed by it anymore. Besides, he knew she didn’t do it out of an impulse to pry; it was just that she couldn’t help herself. Sharee lived for good stories, and Tristan’s words were just too beautiful to pass up.
They were not the only beautiful thing about him, either. By then, the two of them had reached a high enough level of intimacy that he didn’t even bother to cover up when he got out of the shower in the morning—and Sharee would never dream of asking him. Presently, he stood across the desk in the studio with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. Sharee knew that if she looked, she would see the lines of his hipbones disappear past the fluffy white waistband of the towel. She knew that if she let her gaze run along the impressive length of his figure, she would be treated to lean, strong muscles and smooth skin.
But Sharee didn’t look and didn’t let her gaze run, because Tristan was not her boyfriend. Tristan happened to be her boss, and despite the intimacy that inevitably came with assisting a genius author practically 24/7, Sharee still prided herself in her professionalism. She only allowed herself to fantasize about him within the privacy of her own apartment.
So, even then, she forced herself to ignore his nakedness and just meet his eyes—dark blue like a stormy sea, and sharp as a razor blade. Sharee swallowed past her suddenly dry mouth. Sometimes professionalism was really hard to keep a hold on.
Focus, goddamnit, she reprimanded herself sternly.
“Sorry,” she offered, although they both knew she really wasn’t sorry at all. “You said you might finish it during the night, I had to check.”
Tristan grinned openly this time. “Sure you did, darlin’.”
Sharee shivered. He had begun calling her “darling” the very first day she had started to work for him, over two years back, and he had not stopped since. The word rolled off his tongue like sin.
“What did you think?” he asked as he took a seat on the bright red armchair.
Sharee really wished he would go put on some clothes; it was hard to keep track of a conversation with him lounging about half naked.
“I thought it was very dark,” she said honestly. “Maybe a little too much.”
Tristan arched a dark eyebrow. “Too dark?”
Sharee hesitated. Tristan was generally good with constructive criticism, but even after two years, she was still mindful of not crossing the line.
“Go on, darlin’,” he said. “You know I can take it.”
She knew. She took a deep breath and resolved to get all of her thoughts out. “Tristan, this is the third main character you kill off in a year. Don’t you think it might be a little too much?”
Tristan Jacobsen was a prolific writer. His latest series centering on werewolves was going at a particularly steady pace. Like anything else that came out of his pen, it was selling by the thousands. No one could write horror like Tristan. He was generally viewed as Stephen King’s heir…even by Stephen King himself. There was something gripping and real about the way Tristan wrote about the things that go bump in the night, something ancestral that spoke to the reader.
But no matter how dark those terrors might be, his books always contained a message of hope in the end. Not so much lately. Lately, his books had gotten scarier, darker, of a darkness that left no escape. It certainly left no way out for the protagonists.
“I mean,” Sharee continued when Tristan did not react, “how do you expect people to get attached to your protagonists if you keep offing them at the end?”
“Eric Stratham is not dead.”
“He lost his battle with his were nature and went dark side,” Sharee argued. “He might as well be.”
Tristan shrugged.
Sharee stared at him. “Tristan, I mean it,” she said, as gently as she could. “People need redemption. They need hope. It’s why they love your books so much, because you always gave them that no matter how terrifying the rest of the story was.”
“Yeah, well,” Tristan stretched his arms above his head, yawning hugely, “redemption and hope aren’t always in the cards.”
“Fair enough,” Sharee admitted. “But do they really need to not be in the cards for three books in a row?”
Tristan huffed, exasperated. “Look, if they don’t like it, they can read something else.” He got to his feet and walked out of the studio, presumably in search of clothes.
Sharee stared after him, stunned. “I’m just saying,” she called out. “This is a series. You may want to consider leaving some of the characters alive for your next book!”
“I’ll think about it!” Tristan called back, in the absent tone of someone who most definitely was not going to think about it. At all.
* * *
Tristan emerged twenty minutes later carrying two steaming mugs. He handed her one wordlessly, and Sharee accepted the coffee for what it was—a peace offering to placate the fretting assistant within her. Admittedly, she should have been the one brining him coffee, but over time, roles had become somewhat blurry.
He was dressed simply, in a pair of faded blue jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt that hugged his body in all the right places. Sharee couldn’t help but let her gaze linger. Boy, but he was a sight! She snapped out of it quickly and looked aw
ay before he could notice the appreciation shining in her eyes. She took a long sip of black coffee, relishing the warmth of the liquid in this gray Oregon morning.
“Sabrina called while you were getting dressed.”
Sharee delivered the information casually, but she felt a pang of irrational jealousy whenever the woman renewed her attempts at whisking Tristan away. The fact that he wanted nothing to do with her felt somewhat irrelevant to Sharee when she was forced to hear her overly chirpy voice on the other end of the phone line.
Tristan cringed visibly as he took a seat behind his desk. “Again?”
Sharee shrugged. “She wanted to know if you’re free for dinner tomorrow night.”
He looked at her with something akin to terror. “You said no, right?”
Sharee hid a smirk behind another sip of coffee. “I said I’d let her know once I’d talked to you.”
“Why on Earth would you do that?”
“Look, I told you time and time again,” Sharee said as she absently shuffled some papers around on the table that served as her desk, “I’m happy to assist you with anything and everything regarding your work, but your personal relationships are your own business. I’m not going to interfere with them.”
“Maybe you should,” Tristan grumbled.
Sharee looked up sharply. He seemed startled, as though he wasn’t supposed to say that out loud. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He swallowed visibly. “Nothing, never mind,” he said quickly, disappearing behind the screen of his iMac.
Sharee watched him curiously for another moment or two, and then she decided she was probably better off not knowing just what was going through his head.
“Before you start typing away,” she said when she saw him get ready for one of his intense writing sessions, “should we go over your plan for tomorrow?”
Tristan looked around the computer at her, a lost expression on his face. “What’s tomorrow?”
MILITARY ROMANCE: The War Within Himself (Alpha Bad Boy Marine Army Seal) (Contemporary Military Suspense & Thriller Romance) Page 13
