Her Lion Guard 2 (Paranormal Shifter Romance) Read online

  The results of the research were much less gratifying. There was not a lot of information regarding supernatural powers in Shifters – outside of the usual human-to-animal metamorphosis, that is. The only records of individuals who suffered vivid, predictive dreams were of Seers.

  Mary-Lou was quite certain she was not a Seer. For one, she had not actually predicted anything up to date. She refused to count the single, blood-curdling nightmare her mind played on loop as any sort of sign to the contrary, given that no such events were in immediate danger of happening. Furthermore, would she not be plagued by a number of visions, not the same disturbing one, if she had the power of Sight?

  Seers aside, information regarding extra-special Shifters was suspiciously lacking. There must have been some – Mary-Lou was a living, breathing example of how possible it was – yet the written history they perused remained empty of their presence.

  “What if they were all human?” Cara had wondered aloud at some point during day five. Her hands bore smudges, of ink, Mary-Lou remembered – left trails of it down her cheek as she pushed a strand of red hair out of her eyes. She had clamped her mouth shut but seconds after the question slipped her tongue, her face going strangely blank.

  “What do you mean?” Mary-Lou had asked. When Cara turned to look at Sasha instead, Mary-Lou narrowed her eyes and insisted, “Cara!”

  “Um,” Cara hesitated. When Mary-Lou did not back down she lowered her head in submission, hurriedly whispering out, “They might’ve been hiding their powers.”

  “Or were killed before they could fully realize them,” Sasha added. Cara threw him a pointed glare; he shrugged, unapologetic, “It’s likely. A human possessing supernatural powers?” Sasha snorted. “Humans would have believed them devil-followers; Shifters –a threat. Neither would have ended very well for the person in question.”

  Mary-Lou had shaken her head, partly in disbelief, partly in horrified understanding. Jonas drew near, but did not attempt to touch her. Irma and Jonathon remained where they sat surrounded by books, silent.

  They remained at the Cabin for two more days. Sasha’s grim revelation dampened their spirit some, but it also strengthened their resolve. In the end, they had found two volumes of folklore – one Egyptian, the other Japanese – that contained stories and anecdotes pertaining to people with rather familiarly unique powers.

  In the present, Mary-Lou laid her hand atop the blue folder containing the scanned pages. She then glanced at Jonas, smiling to find him staring distractedly out of the car window.

  “Five minutes tops,” Cara called out from the passenger seat. “You can’t believe how much I missed my bed—HOLYSHIT!”

  The car lurched sideways, tires screeching shrilly against the cement. Mary-Lou was thrown forward, almost hit the back of Cara’s seat if not for Jonas’ supernatural speed – the Lion Shifter grabbed her and held tight, maintaining his own balance by embedding the claws of his left hand into the upholstery. The back seat will never be the same again; Mary-Lou had a single, delirious moment to consider how much Sasha will bitch (it was an expensive car, and it was his), before everything fell still.

  “Fucking—!” the rest of Sasha’s angry outburst was lost as the Snake Shifter slammed the driver’s door open and jumped out of the car.

  “What happened?” Mary-Lou pushed against Jonas’ solid chest, attempting to free herself enough to see what had enraged their usually mild-mannered friend. When Jonas only growled and held on tighter, she sought Cara’s eyes instead.

  “What’s going on?” Mary-Lou demanded. Cara hesitated a moment longer.

  “Wiley,” she said, spitting the name out like the very sound of it offended her.

  Mary-Lou stilled.

  “Let me go,” she told Jonas, voice clear and calm. Jonas held on, seemed as if he wanted to refuse; in the end, he did let her go – reluctantly, and not far. His eyes were electric blue, Mary-Lou noted, his claws fully-extended. He looked as she felt.

  Mary-Lou did not slam the car door open, did not scream or curse at the familiar, smug face that leered at her several paces away. She drew to her full height instead, her gait unhurried as she moved to join Sasha and face Wiley and his gang.

  “Wiley,” Mary-Lou acknowledged. She felt Jonas stand beside her, saw Cara move to Sasha’s other side; good. Mary-Lou focused cold, glass-green eyes on Wiley, feeling a thrill of satisfaction as something in the man visibly faltered.

  Whatever reaction Wiley had been expecting, indifference was not it. Good; keeping one’s opponent imbalanced was the most basic of strategies.

  Time to escalate.

  “You are trespassing,” Mary-Lou noted. “All of you,” she added, making sure to lock gazes with each and every member of his pack. Most of them bowed their heads or turned their eyes; one glanced at Wiley, briefly, as if to reassure himself that all was fine.

  All was not fine. No, not at all.

  “My apologies,” Wiley offered after a long, awkward pause. There was no sentiment in his words, their vowels ground between too many teeth. Mary-Lou narrowed her eyes, tired of the game before it had even begun.

  “What do you want?” She asked. The smug smile on Wiley’s face widened, prompting a deep-throated growl from both Jonas and Cara.

  “You,” Wiley answered, eyes roving up and down her body.

  Mary-Lou stepped in front of Jonas, halting the man just before he had a chance to pounce forward. She could do nothing about the roar he let out, however; a few windows slammed shut, the sidewalk becoming suspiciously empty.

  Their neighbors were human, they could not afford—

  Mary-Lou winced, understanding dawning. By God, he had gotten them good.

  Wiley was not looking for a fight – he had wanted to deliver a message, to extract something without the need to worry about consequences. Slick, cowardly dog – Mary-Lou shook her head and focused, once again, on the smirking Shifter.

  “Say what you want and leave,” she told him. Sasha hissed something that Mary-Lou tried very hard not to understand. It sounded like he was threatening to actually eat somebody; the two Wolf Shifters who stood nearest to the enraged Snake took a cautious step back.

  Wiley was not moved. He was the kind of man who saw hard-headedness as bravery, Mary-Lou thought. A foolish, bumbling brute who understood nothing save violence, if that.

  Speak, she urged, Speak and leave, before you lose your head.

  “But I did,” Wiley declared, pausing for dramatic effect before finishing with: “I wish to issue a Challenge.”

  The three Shifters flanking Mary-Lou froze for all of a moment, before exploding into varying decibels of shouts and angry gestures:

  “HOW DARE YOU?” Jonas roared, neatly overlapping Sasha’s “Over my dead body.” Cara took a more hands-on approach and flipped the man off, screaming something along the lines of, “You sick fuck!”

  Mary-Lou gathered that a Challenge was Not A Good Thing.

  “You don’t even know what I said, do you?” Wiley ignored the deadly hostility which faced him, choosing to focus on mocking Mary-Lou instead. That arrogant quirk would bite him in the ass one day, Mary-Lou thought. Still, he was not wrong; she shook her head.

  “That matters little,” Wiley grinned, turning to glare challengingly at Jonas. “All I need to know is whether your pet pussy will fight or not.”

  Mary-Lou was feeling the urge to hit the dumb man with a stick rather poignantly, herself.

  “He won’t,” Mary-Lou answered, just as Jonas snarled a low, “I will.”

  “What?” Mary-Lou turned to Jonas, face losing some of its composure. “Jonas, you don’t have to—”

  “He does,” Cara interjected. Mary-Lou glanced at her, eyes widening to find the girl sporting fox ears. “Cara, your—” Mary-Lou waved her hand above her own head, frantically scanning their surroundings.

  “That’s not important right now!” Cara groaned even as the extra set of ears puffed out of existence. “Mary-Lou, don’t you und
erstand?” she pleaded, “He is trying to claim you!”

  A numb, cold feeling spread down Mary-Lou’s chest.

  “Who?” she asked, needlessly and stupidly.

  “Wiley!” Cara barked, more fox than girl. “That ugly fucker, Wiley! He issued a Challenge, which means that he wants to claim you, even though you belong with Jonas – she belongs with Jonas, you sorry ball of fur!” The last was screamed at Wiley, earning nothing but a derisive snort from the man.

  “We will see.” Wiley grinned, eyes still on Jonas’ rumbling form. Mary-Lou tightened her grip around her mate’s upper arm, trying to soothe the anger that threatened to overwhelm him. “Two days from now, where I first met Mary-Lou. You don’t show, I come to collect her.” Wiley then turned to his pack, growling out a short command.

  They were gone within seconds.

  Mary-Lou stared at the empty cement before her, at Jonas’s flushed face. Her mate was trembling against her, his body pained with the need to shift, to chase, to kill.

  In the end, it took both Mary-Lou and Sasha to ensure Jonas made it to their apartment and stayed there. Jonas did not speak a word for the rest of the evening; seemed incapable of it, human voice overtaken by its animal counterpart. Mary-Lou could do nothing but stay by his side, equally silent and sick with worry.

  No one slept alone that night: All four of them crammed in Mary-Lou and Jonas’ bed, needing the comfort only physical contact could provide. Mary-Lou pressed against Jonas, hugged Cara close, and tried to ignore the ball of anxiety growing, black and heavy, in the pit of her stomach.

  Tomorrow. Tomorrow, she will ask. Tomorrow, she will know.

  Mary-Lou wondered if she would want to, once she did.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The bedroom was dark, silent. Shadows hung from the ceiling, draped over the room and all within it like a shapeless veil. There were only two figures in the spacious bed tonight, the night before it was all to end. They, too, were still and quiet – but not asleep. How could they be, when uncertainty threatened to drown their entire world?

  Mary-Lou blinked red-rimmed eyes, trying to keep the blinking digits of the alarm clock in focus. 2:59 AM. She felt her lashes burn where they pressed in the sleep-bruised skin of her eye-sockets, felt tired and too-awake.

  For the first night in many weeks, Mary-Lou’s insomnia was not called forth by phantom shadows and bloody dreams. The terror that squeezed her heart was very much warranted, for the danger that loomed over them – over Jonas, over her family – was intolerably real.

  Wiley. Mary-Lou gritted her teeth around a frustrated scream.

  What would she give, to have her fears remain locked within her consciousness! When Wiley had first walked toward her – face smug, eyes filled with hate – Mary-Lou had briefly thought him a nightmare: Had believed herself asleep against Jonas in Sasha’s car, safe on her way home. But Wiley had remained stubbornly real; a monster of flesh and blood. And when he had spoken—

  Mary-Lou felt Jonas shiver against her, violent and sudden. Anger thrummed across their mental bond, hate and passion and fear so potent it shook her to her bones. Hesitantly, Mary-Lou turned to face her lover, gasping to find glassy blue eyes staring hungrily into hers.

  Wiley and his disgusting advances had left Mary-Lou shaken, Sasha and Cara – distraught and angry in turns. But Jonas – Jonas had been enraged. That first night, it had taken the entire pack and hours of physical contact, of soft words and gentle gestures just to keep Jonas stable. Mary-Lou had felt her mate teeter, felt him pull back from the edge of pure, bloodthirsty insanity more than once. An awful experience for which Wiley, too, was to blame.

  “He is going feral,” Cara had whispered sometime in the early morning, face pale and drawn as she regarded her alpha. “Had we not stopped him, he would have chased after them. He would have fought.”

  “There were seven of them,” Mary-Lou had gasped out, quickly falling silent as Jonas let out a menacing growl against her neck. She shivered, letting Jonas nuzzle into her and calm himself with her scent.

  “That would be the problem,” Sasha offered in the resulting silence. He was pressed along Cara’s other side, legs curled so his toes brushed against Jonas’ taut calves. “No sense of self-preservation. No sense at all. He would have been torn apart.”

  In the present, Mary-Lou watched Jonas watch her and wondered who lay in this bed: Her mate, or the Lion in human skin.

  Jonas must have felt her anxiety. He let out a soft growl and lifted a trembling hand – his fingers were slightly curled, nails glinting sharper then they ought to be – and rested it gently against her hair. He seemed uncertain, almost afraid. Mary-Lou pushed into his hand, tilted her head up and to the side to reveal her throat.

  I trust you, she said without words, I trust you, so trust yourself.

  Jonas’ hand tightened in her hair – a brief sting he was quick to soothe by rubbing large, gentle fingers against her scalp. Hesitantly, he moved closer, blue eyes flickering from Mary-Lou’s throat to her face. Mary-Lou fought to keep her expression mild and her mind at peace; her mate needed reassurance, needed her to be strong tonight. She would be. She was.

  Mary-Lou almost sighed with relief when golden hair finally brushed against her cheek. Here, Jonas was finally here with her – not lost in his mind, human consciousness buried beneath primal instincts. She let herself move closer, let her body relax and press against her mate’s.

  A rumble, low and deep, shook through Jonas’ body. Mary-Lou smiled and nuzzled into the hollow where her mate’s neck and shoulder met, trailing her lips against the soft skin. She tasted the next rumble, opened her mouth and pressed her dull, human teeth where the sound shook through Jonas’ throat. Jonas groaned and arched into the bite, eyes too bright as he stared down into Mary-Lou’s flushed face.

  “Mary,” he whispered, words spilling clumsily from his mouth. He had not spoken for two days; Mary-Lou smiled, blinking back relieved tears.

  “Jonas.” She pushed herself up on one unsteady elbow. Jonas bent down to meet her, lips soft and open as they swallowed her own.

  They kissed slowly, gently – without urgency or need other than that to touch and be touched in return. It was a kiss of reassurance, of love and heat: A memory to be cherished. A promise to be kept.

  The darkness of the day to come loomed above them, heavier than ever; Mary-Lou wished to forget, to make Jonas forget, if just for a while. So she deepened the kiss, guided Jonas back against the bed until his body stretched, supple and strong, against the white sheets. She sucked at his bottom lip, pulled the plush flesh in and bit – gentle, wet, desperate. Jonas groaned against her, opened his mouth wide and consumed her with eager kisses, large hands sliding down her back to grasp her hips. Mary-Lou let him pull her in, let herself fall fully against his body: Bare thighs spread over Jonas’ hips, hands braced on either side of his head. Jonas’ eyes were a soft, dazed blue; Mary-Lou’s own green gaze curled in a smile, glistened with mischievous happiness.

  “Hold on,” she whispered and ground down.

  Jonas gasped, thrust up against her as the softness of her flesh moved away – only to return again, and again, an insistent roll that left him shaking, fighting to ease his grip around her thighs. Mary-Lou grinned wider, pressed down faster as she felt him harden and strain beneath her. Electricity surged between them – Mary-Lou moaned again, low and drawn-out. She fell against Jonas’ naked chest, arms too weak to support her even as she continued to grind down, guided by her own pleasure as well as Jonas’ gentle hands. Her breasts pressed between them, aching with lack of contact and an excess of desire.

  “Let me—” Jonas rasped, voice still unsteady. His hands were sure against her body, however – slid up her trembling legs to where she was wet and aching.

  Mary-Lou surged up at the first touch, swallowing a sharp scream as pleasure thrummed through her. Her thighs tightened, ground down against Jonas’ fingers in reflexive need to keep the touch there, there, there. She bit
her lip, bit Jonas’ shoulder in retaliation and shuddered to a stop.

  “N-no,” Mary-Lou shook her head, shook it again when Jonas froze – uncertain and needlessly guilty –against her. She lifted her head, covered his mouth with a soft kiss she broke with a playful bite. “Not tonight. Tonight, you let me.”

  Jonas nodded hesitantly. He let Mary-Lou guide his hands back to her hips, fingers sliding beneath the waistband of her soft underwear to caress the skin beneath. Mary-Lou blinked when nothing else happened; a meaningful prod and an exasperated eye-roll later, Jonas was hurriedly sliding satin over pale skin, pushing the cotton of his own sleeping pants down and off.

  Mary-Lou pulled the large T-Shirt she slept in – one of Jonas; and had that not been a fun kink to explore – off her body, almost moaning in relief at the soothing caress of air against her oversensitive skin. Jonas drew in a breath beneath her, eyes half-lidded and hot. His gaze was possessive, hungry; Mary-Lou shivered in pleasure as he reached up to caress her breasts. The difference in size, in strength between them was never so obvious as when they were like this – wrapped around each other, Jonas’ body solid and large against her smaller, softer form.

  Mary-Lou never felt as powerful as she did in Jonas’ arms.

  Skin slid against skin as Mary-Lou lowered herself against Jonas. The large man remained still beneath her, muscles stiff with urgency and tightly-controlled desire. Jonas watched her move, watched her slide a hand beneath her own hips. The resulting wet, slick noise had his lips pulling tight against his teeth, the Lion swallowing a snarl of desire as he watched his mate ready herself for him.

  Mary-Lou smiled around a moan and let her hand slip free from her body, trailed wet fingers along Jonas’ hard length. “Ready?” she husked.

  Jonas bared his teeth in answer, hips thrusting shallowly against her hand. Mary-Lou let out a breathy laugh, the sound hushing into a soft groan as she guided Jonas’s hardness into her. Too big, too full – she gasped, fingers twisting the sheets at Jonas’ sides. Jonas’ large hands trembled as he caressed her back, her sides – palmed her breasts. The touch was soothing and devastating at the same time. Mary-Lou took a breath, then another. On the third, she moved up – then down, slower, slow, fast – faster. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale—