Her Lion Guard 2 (Paranormal Shifter Romance) Read online

  Speaking of. Sasha and Cara were steadily driving her positively, utterly insane.

  A month ago, Mary-Lou and Jonas moved into a two-bedroom apartment in a small neighborhood west of the city. The building was well situated: It sat halfway between the Cabin and Mary-Lou’s old home, making trips in either direction relatively short. It was also only two-stories high, which meant that when Sasha and Cara took the apartment directly below theirs, the house officially became pack territory. An event that would have been more joyous, had it not also meant that the two stubborn Shifters were now to share close living quarters. Jonas was most displeased by the entire situation; Mary-Lou had found his protectiveness of Cara adorable, up until he suggested she move in with them and leave the downstairs apartment to Sasha alone.

  Sasha had been less than pleased. The resulting argument was composed of howls and hisses, and ended with both men nursing their egos when Cara and Mary-Lou had reminded them to whom, exactly, the decision belonged.

  Cara did not want to move. Mary-Lou did not want Cara a wall away. End of story.

  They had fallen into a rhythm of sorts – a daily routine that almost passed for ordinary, if one did not try to fit the intensive combat training and occasional late-night visitor of unknown origins into the definition: Shifters of all ages and walks of life, interested in seeing and speaking to Mary-Lou in person. It would have been flattering, if not for the sheer terror their wide-eyed wonder inspired in the human woman. They looked at her like she held heaven in the palm of her hand; Mary-Lou wondered what they would think, if she were to tell them exactly how ordinary, how clueless she truly was.

  At least training was going alright. Mary-Lou was quite proud of her progress in hand-to-hand, even if she was still the runt of the group and could really only spar with Cara. Still, pretty good for a frail human.

  Thus, days were spent together, as a pack. Nights, however, were for Jonas and Mary-Lou alone. Living in close quarters with one’s family and friends may be instinctual for Shifters, but so was the desire to keep one’s mate close and secluded from others. Mary-Lou was often torn between annoyance and a guilty, primal sort of delight whenever that particular quirk made an appearance.

  Several months into their living arrangement, Mary-Lou was more than glad for the privacy of their apartment.

  Mary-Lou did not wish to hide from her pack. She did not cover her pale skin, her dark circles with cosmetics; neither did she lie when first Cara, then Sasha, pulled her aside to ask what was wrong. If she stopped visiting her parents, Irma and Jonathon, as the nightmares grew more vivid and heartbreaking – well, that was her business and hers alone.

  Mary-Lou did not wish for them to hear her screams, did not want her loved ones to see her tortured by pain that was not her own – by events confined to the recesses of her mind. She had to find a cure. She hoped there was a cure.

  Please, don’t let me be insane, Mary-Lou thought as she watched the small, blue Honda that was to bear her salvation park in front of their building. Please, anything but that.

  Jonas introduced the healer as Rowfer: A man so weighted down by age he walked bent nearly in half, his back a painful curve of old bones and worn skin. Jonas helped Rowfer up the front stairs and to the first floor apartment, gentle and patient as the old man groused about city traffic, the eggs he had for breakfast, and his goddamn knees. Mary-Lou smiled at the sight, Jonas’ kindness momentarily distracting her mind from the sharp, cold anxiety eating at her thoughts.

  Mary-Lou stood to greet Rowfer as he made his way into the apartment proper. Rowfer waved her back to her seat, pushed away from Jonas’ hovering self to make his own shaky way to the nearest chair. The older man proceeded to collapse onto the plush surface with a sigh, back straightening ever so slightly as he leaned into the chair’s warmth.

  “Finally,” he muttered to himself. A moment later, sharp brown eyes blinked open beneath a pair of truly intimidating eyebrows. “You two – out,” Rowfer ordered, the command clearly meant for Sasha and Cara. The two young Shifters blinked in startled disbelief, not moving an inch from their seats.

  “Out!” The man growled; Sasha opened his mouth to argue, eyes flashing poison-green as anger overwhelmed the usually mild-mannered man. Mary-Lou quickly shook her head, consciously ignoring the guilt that came with kicking the two Shifters out of their own apartment.

  Sasha subsided in the face of her disapproval. He allowed Cara to lead him into the kitchen and out of earshot, body stiff with displeasure. Mary-Lou was still amazed that he listened to her – that any Shifter did, when every last one of them could literally break her in half with their bare hands.

  “We don’t have all day,” Rowfer grumbled. Mary-Lou shook off doubts that had nothing to do with the task at hand and made her way to the older man.

  “Thank you for coming on such short notice,” she began.

  Rowfer shook his head, waving off her words as the empty nicety that they were. “Give me your hands,” he demanded instead.

  Mary-Lou offered her hands to the aged healer silently, palms-down. Rowfer clasped them in his, curled surprisingly strong fingers about hers. “Hold her,” he told Jonas.

  “What—” Mary-Lou could not finish, could do no more than gasp as a wave of darkness rose to swallow her whole.

  She knew nothing for a long, long while.

  Mary-Lou woke to hushed voices – to agitated barks and half-swallowed hissing. As that was an improvement to being shaken awake by her own body’s terrified thrashing, she did not question the situation too much. Instead, Mary-Lou chose to snuggle back into Jonas’s warmth – because of course Jonas was right there, arms gentle but tight about Mary-Lou’s body – and struggled to remember what had happened.

  “I’m awake,” she murmured in his ear, lifted an unsteady hand to tangle in Jonas’ golden hair. Jonas clutched her tighter for a brief, breathless moment, before releasing her to study her expression.

  “Are you alright?” he rasped, eyes wide and concerned as they roved over her face.

  “I am fine,” Mary-Lou was quick to reassure, surprised to find the statement true. No pain weighted her body, no worries or lingering fear – she took a deep breath, released it in a happy sigh. “I’m really, really fine.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Rowfer said, managing to sound both genuinely happy and impossibly grumpy in one breath. “Now, let’s finish up here. All this talk of dreaming has got me sleepy.”

  Mary-Lou nodded her acquiescence, memories of what had prompted the man’s visit dampening her spirits. She moved to disentangle herself from Jonas – a task she soon gave up as futile, given that the golden-haired Shifter did not so much as budge.

  Annoying. She was sticking with annoying in describing Jonas’ overprotective tendencies, at least for the moment.

  “Go ahead,” Mary-Lou sighed, knowing she must look ridiculous: Sitting in the middle of the living room floor, wrapped in two hundred pounds of worried Shifter. “Cara and Sasha should hear, too,” she added, not wishing to banish the couple yet again. Rowfer nodded his gray head, a grin hidden in his eyes; Mary-Lou got the feeling that the two would have been allowed to stay, had she pressed the issue.

  Right, she was an alpha now. A leader. Mary-Lou kept forgetting what that meant.

  “How long was I out?” she whispered to Jonas.

  “Just under ten minutes,” he rumbled back, arms tightening about her waist.

  “I told you she’d wake up,” Rowfer muttered, disregarding both the angry hiss and low growl Sasha and Cara let out with practiced ease. “Now,” he continued, “Onto your powers.”

  “My what?” Mary-Lou blinked heavily, hoping she had misheard.

  “Right. Of course you don’t know – why would you?” Rowfer muttered something too quick and low for Mary-Lou to hear. Judging by the faint blush that rose on Cara’s cheeks, it was nothing flattering. “Alright, listen here, because I really hate repeating myself.” Rowfer leaned forward against the anchor of his ca
ne, eyes serious in his gray, wrinkled face. “You may not be able to Shift, you may not have our strength, but there is nothing human about the blood you carry.”

  “What does that mean?” Mary-Lou gasped, cold with shock and a new sort of terror. Not human. Not Shifter. Where did that leave her? What was she to be? She tried to remember how to breathe.

  “Steady,” Rowfer warned, “No need for panic. You’ve always been this, always had the power of the Mother Goddess within you – nothing to fear now, just because it has finally been awakened.”

  “The power of – Mary-Lou is magic?” Cara gasped; Rowfer rolled his eyes. “What did I just say?” he grumped.

  “So the dreams – the nightmares,” Mary-Lou could not finish. The anxiety that had weighted her chest turned colder, cut sharper.

  Real. Could it all be real?

  She closed her eyes, trying to staunch her panic. It would not do any good to fall apart now – not when so many depended on her. When it would change nothing. Mary-Lou took a breath; when she addressed Rowfer again, her voice was steady and her eyes, calm.

  “What do I need to do?”

  Rowfer grinned. “That’s what I like to hear.” The aged Healer stretched a shaking hand to grasp Mary-Lou’s shoulder. “You,” he told her, “are to lead the right and punish the evil. What you saw, dear – what torments you in your sleep – is the result of leniency, of misplaced compassion, of self-imposed blindness. The world of Shifters is not that of humans,” he reminded. “Might, obvious and vicious, dominates. If you are to fulfill your destiny, you must first bear those who would have it otherwise. As publicly as you can manage,” Rowfer finished off with a wink.

  “And what of her powers?” Jonas spoke up. “What of the next disaster, and the next one after that? Is she going to be plagued by nightmares her entire life?” Anger rolled off Jonas, powerful but aimless. The idea that he could not protect her against this, against herself, made the Lion within him roar in wounded displeasure.

  “Young people,” Rowfer sighed, “Always so impatient. Tell me, Jonas, what happened the first time you Shifted?”

  Silence fell, thick and sudden. Mary-Lou twisted around in Jonas’ grip, eyes widening to see the man’s face red with embarrassment.

  “…I clawed up the couch,” the Lion Shifter finally muttered, in a voice that very clearly stated the couch was but one of several unfortunate victims. Sasha stifled a snort; Cara giggled. “Like you did any better!” Jonas snapped at the duo leaning against the kitchen wall, “It’s hard, the first time – you don’t know your limits, and everything looks so different—”

  “Exactly.” Rowfer cut him off. “But you got the hang of it. So will Mary-Lou, given enough time and practice.”

  “That’s great,” Mary-Lou breathed. “That is really – thank you. Thank you so much.” She would have hugged the man, had Rowfer not been so obviously uncomfortable with such gestures.

  “Don’t thank me,” Rowfer pushed up against his cane, rising unsteadily from his seat. “It’s your job to master your powers, to understand them, and it ain’t an easy one. Just remember, not everything you see has to happen—” the Healer wagged a finger near Mary-Lou’s nose, “—and not all can be saved.”

  Jonas helped Rowfer out of the apartment and down to the blue Honda and the patient young man sitting behind the wheel. “My grandson, Erik,” Rowfer introduced the youth. Erik offered a polite hello to Mary-Lou and her pack, half-hunching in his seat. “Excuse him; he is a bit socially inept,” Rowfer muttered as Erik moved to help him into the car. “We don’t get too many visitors, and have even less cause to visit others.”

  “Where do you live?” Cara asked.

  Rowfer did not answer. Cara let the subject drop.

  “Thank you once again,” Mary-Lou offered. Jonas echoed the sentiment, smiling slightly when Rowfer grumbled something snarky back.

  They waited until the blue car disappeared around a corner down the road before filing back inside. Mary-Lou grabbed for the house phone, dialing a row of numbers from memory.

  “Irma?” she gasped into the receiver, “I need to use the library.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Wiley Turbo was not a coward.

  The bartender set a cool, brown bottle in front of Wiley’s slumped form, quietly whisked the empty one away. He had stopped asking questions around the fourth beer, unnerved both by Wiley’s increasingly hateful expression as well as the man’s apparent lucidity. The beer had come on the heels of three shots of vodka, yet the dark-haired man seemed no drunker than he had when he first sat down.

  Wiley glared at the man’s back as he turned to tend to someone else a few tables down, then spat in disgust. Fucking humans. The whole world was crawling with them, choking beneath their weight. How he wished he could – just –

  Wiley gulped down a mouthful of bitterness along with his beer.

  Wiley admitted to being a great deal of unsavory, inglorious things: Liar, thief, murderer – the kind of bad man mothers warn their children about. Hell, he embraced these dirty titles freely, leveraged the fear they inspired in the weak and stupid to take what he wanted. It was a way of life, one that fitted him quite nicely.

  A monster, Wiley was. A coward?

  He had torn the tongue of the first man who dared call him that right out of his dumb, gaping mouth.

  Wiley was not a dog, was not a spineless bitch ready to kneel at the sound of the leash. He was a man of violence, a man of action – a man who could not be ignored. Wiley built his life around that idea, established himself and gathered a loyal pack with a brutal efficiency few could rival. He had pulled himself out of poverty, lifted himself out of the misery that followed his parents’ death with his own two hands – motivated then as he was now by a single, crystal-clear goal: That of Shifter dominance.

  Before any of that could happen, the Shifter ranks themselves had to be weeded out of weakness. Human-borns and human-sympathizers, powerless omegas and Formless elders – all that garbage had to go. Wiley was just the man to make it happen, had been so close to being recognized by those in power as the one that would lead them to victory, when—

  Wiley slammed a fist against the wooden table, sending both the porcelain ashtray and his untouched glass of water tumbling to the floor. The two other patrons barely glanced in his direction; the bartender smartly remained behind the safety of the bar proper.

  Wiley ignored them all, eyes red and claws lengthening in the curl of his fists. That girl. That human bitch and her disgusting, traitorous family – she had done that to him, publicly humiliated both Wiley and his pack and set him back at least a year in his plans. Wiley had spent the last four months reeling from the unexpected roadblock: Nursing his wounds and scaring some respect back from his followers. Or what remained of them, at any rate. Those on top where not too pleased with him, either, and there was nothing to be done—nothing but finish what he had started and kill the miserable human wench.

  Problem was, Wiley was stumped as to how exactly he was going to accomplish that particular task.

  It was an insanely frustrating situation. On one hand, Mary-Lou was hardly a match for him: Even with the sparkly little trick she had up her sleeve, the woman was very much human; a single, well-aimed claw would tear life from her flesh forever. On the other, she was surrounded by heavy-weights. Irma and Jonathon Stevens were legendary Hunters; Jonas Edwards traced his lineage all the way back to Shifter myths. The addition of Alexander Ivanov, heir to the Ivanov Dynasty and natural alpha, was downright unfair. Even the little fox they had running around – Sara, Kera? – even she was not your typical omega. Wiley frowned, anger building as he tried and failed to find a weakness he could exploit.

  “Woman troubles?” a voice slurred to the Shifter’s right.

  “Fuck off,” Wiley growled, not bothering to look at the inebriated human who had presumed to disrupt his peace.

  “She mouthing off?” the man continued, oblivious to the hateful anger radiating fr
om the dark-haired man as only drunk men can be, “Just thrash her around a bit. Shuts them right up. Or did she find someone else?” he gurgled out a laugh. “Did she? Well, you are a big fellow – lug the son of a bitch a few good ones! That ought to settle the score. Hell, I’d come with and help ya hold the fucker down, if I wasn’t so pissed.”

  Wiley had stood up during the man’s rant, had walked closer to the human’s table with the very real desire to punch the drunk into bloody silence. He was but a step away from the hunched man when he stopped, dark anger clearing as a much more vicious, much more efficient idea coalesced in his brain.

  Jonas.

  Wiley strode up to the still-laughing man, bent so his entire body loomed over the drunken fool’s hunched form.

  “Congratulations,” Wiley hissed between long, long teeth, “You will live to waste another day.”

  The man’s confused What? was lost beneath the sound of bones breaking, transformed into a high-pitched scream as the pain of his hand shattering registered in his alcohol-soaked mind.

  Wiley removed his elbow from where it crushed the man’s hand flat against the table. He threw the horrified bartender a fifty in passing, a satisfied smirk spreading on his face.

  Mary-Lou’s greatest strength was to become her worst weakness. Wiley found he rather enjoyed the irony.

  He knew that he was going to enjoy her blood a lot more.

  ***

  Mary-Lou was cautiously optimistic.

  The pack had spent the week following Rowfer’s visit at the Cabin; more precisely, in the Cabin’s basement, scrutinizing each and every relevant book for potential clues to Mary-Lou’s “condition.” In seven days, they had managed to go through over three hundred written works – including some Folklore volumes written in Chinese, courtesy of Jonathon’s translation skills. Irma and Jonathon had been thrilled at the news of Mary-Lou’s yet unknown abilities. They had thrown themselves into figuring out Mary-Lou’s powers with single-minded enthusiasm, completely disregarding the no-doubt important project that had occupied their time for the last month. Mary-Lou was more grateful than she could explain; she hoped one day to be able to repay their kindness.