The Lion's Loyalty

by Emilia Hartley

  “So…food. What do you like?”

  “I thought you had a place you were going to hunt down. Wasn’t that what you said when you surprised me at my door again?”

  Van scowled. “Well, yeah. I just thought we could talk. Your favorite food. Favorite colors. What you wanted to be when you grew up.”

  She snorted. Life had taken that dream from her. She’d been doing it. Carol had worked hard to get where she was before she’d been bitten. That one wound, the moment her skin broke, stole everything from her. That was the reason she was here, the only reason the doctors had taken her.

  Carol didn’t answer. Van fidgeted beside her. The silence grew oppressive, so she reached for the radio and flipped through the stations. The first one was country. Van started bobbing his head, but she wasn’t in the mood. The next was a top hits station. The songs were unrecognizable, reminding her that she’d missed so much. It unsettled her beast.

  Finally, she settled on the alternative rock station. The songs were from when she’d been a kid, but they were familiar from her days riding shotgun in the ambulance. Her co-workers would sing the songs at the top of their lungs when they had nothing to do.

  The food truck Van wanted to find ended up being a ring of food trucks. They circled a parking, little pennant flags hanging between them. Picnic tables had been set up in the center. The air smelled of fried food and beer. Carol’s stomach growled, pinching tight to remind her that she’d starved herself after days of eating well.

  She reached into her pocket for her wallet, but it was empty. There was a little money in her bank accounts, but they’d all been frozen after her disappearance and she hadn’t bothered to unfreeze them yet. It would mean having to lie about where she’d been. She would have to prove she was who she claimed to be.

  It could tell the buyer where she was, too. That wasn’t something she was ready to risk yet. Or ever. The thought of him turned her stomach cold. She forgot about the food and the rich scent in the air and looked beyond the trucks as if he would be lurking at the edge of the lot.

  She rubbed her face. Fear was trying to creep up on her again. All she wanted was to forget for a little while. She wanted to lose herself in garbage plate and enjoy a beer beside her elven king.

  “Earth to Carol,” Van said. His voice jarred her and dragged her back to the present. She turned wide eyes on him, and he flinched. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. You’re probably jumpy. And for good reason.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she snapped.

  Van opened his mouth, as if he had something else to say, then immediately shut it and nodded.

  Without money, Carol slunk toward a picnic table. She dropped her head into her hands and tried not to pout. Her stomach grumbled, the sound followed by her beast’s growl. It tried to tell her to steal something. Her attention turned toward the trash bins and she recoiled.

  No, she scolded the beast. There was no way she was going to eat out of a trash can.

  But the animal inside her didn’t understand the difference between the trashcan and the window serving food. To the creature, it was all sustenance. Carol scowled at her own beast.

  “What are you doing? Can you not decide on a truck?”

  She looked up at Van, who stood beside her and offered a bit of shade. His face was hard to read with the sun behind him. “No. I don’t have any money. Go ahead and order whatever you want. I’ll just wait here.”

  ***

  Van tried, several times, to convince her that he could pay for her food, but she wasn’t having it. His jaw was tight and aching by the time he finally walked away. If she wanted to play games, he could show her that he would win.

  At each window, he made sure to look over his shoulder and check on Carol. She hadn’t gone anywhere, but her gaze had become distant. He waited for trays of food while she stared off into the distance, clearly somewhere else even though the lot was becoming busier and louder. When he dropped off a tray, she would jump and then remember herself, looking up at him with disbelief in her eyes. Then, he would jump right back in line for the next truck. In the end, he got a little something from every truck at the rally.

  Their table was filled with different colored trays, each bearing a different kind of food. He never suspected that their small town could be this diverse. There was a tray of authentic tacos, another with Thai salads, a tray with Hainanese chicken and rice, and his favorite, the Italian American monstrosity that was fried ravioli and mozzarella.

  Carol gawked at him like he was insane. “You can’t intend to eat all of this. There’s no way. Not even a shifter could devour all this in a single sitting.”

  “It’s a good thing I have someone to share this with, then.” He grinned, feeling like he’d won.

  But her lips slipped into a frown and she leaned away from him. He thought, for a moment, that she might run away altogether. Van didn’t understand what he’d done wrong. She needed to eat. He had the means to pay for her meal. If she wasn’t going to order a meal, he thought she would be like other girlfriends and snack on his food anyway.

  Instead, Carol looked offended. He didn’t know what to do.

  Suddenly, it seemed like too much food. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking. Van was always so calculated. Everything he did worked out for the best, except when he was with Carol. Then he felt like a bumbling fool trying to make things up as he went along.

  Nothing was right.

  He popped a ball of fried mozzarella into his mouth. It was nearly tasteless. Which sucked because he really liked those. He’d tried getting the cook at the bar to make them, but the shifter couldn’t figure out how to cook anything that didn’t come prepared and frozen.

  “Can you try this and tell me if it has any flavor?” He pushed the mozzarella balls toward Carol. “This isn’t a trick. I want to see if I’m right about something.”

  “That’s not cryptic at all,” she said, sarcastic.

  Still, she tried one of the mozzarella balls. At first, her jaw moved slowly. He thought that maybe these ones didn’t have any flavor after all. Then, her eyes rolled toward the sky. A grin took over her features and she reached for another.

  “This is ridiculous. Why does this taste so much better than regular fried mozzarella?”

  Well, there was his answer. He explained that the fresh bocconcini had been marinated in herbs and pepper flakes. Then, he pushed the fried ravioli toward her. Her expression when she tasted the little flecks of lemon zest in the cheese filling was priceless. The way her eyelids fluttered, and her hands clenched made his stomach tight.

  He wanted to be the reason for that reaction, to make her howl his name when he touched her. But he couldn’t touch her. Van worried he would never be able to touch her. What the doctors had done to her might have stolen that opportunity from them.

  He would have to be happy with this, with making her smile and laugh. That was pleasure enough. At least, that was what he told himself. His beast wanted more. It wanted to pull her in close so that there was no space between them. How else would the beast know she was safe if they weren’t touching?

  “Does everything here taste this good?”

  Van nodded. “It gets even better, depending on your tastes. The guys won’t come here with me because they think Greg’s burnt burgers are the best thing they’ve ever tasted.”

  “Well, we both know Dante burns everything he cooks. He probably taught Greg to do the same when he trained him.”

  “If I had my way, we’d offer more stuff like this at the bar. Dante tells me that we aren’t a hippie brewery, though.” Van pulled himself upright and did his best Dante impression, rendering Carol to a giggling mess.

  She absentmindedly reached for the Thai cucumber salad and popped a slice into her mouth. She groaned with delight before realizing that she was eating his food. He waved her on, reminding her that he couldn’t eat all of it on his own.

  “Consider our time together as payment for the fo
od.” Van folded a carnitas taco. “I don’t get out of the bar much. The only excitement around here are the nights Sadie’s son breaks out of the house.”

  “Teenager?” Carol asked.

  “Bear shifter. The teenager sneaks out, but the son hasn’t managed to find control yet and there have been a couple of nights where we scoured the neighborhood for a baby grizzly bear. It’s more terrifying when the teenager sneaks out. Rodrigo said he had to drive Alexis home from a party one night. Dante must have been pissed at both of them.”

  Carol raised both brows. “I can’t imagine Dante being a father. Alpha, sure. But two kids? It’s so unlike what I remember of him. He used to lord over us with nothing more than a stern look and an iron fist. To think a human woman strolled into his life and changed him is bonkers.”

  He watched her eat with abandon, plucking from every tray while she spoke. Her guard was down, no longer searching the horizon for some unspoken threat. His heart swelled. A grin spread over his face.

  As soon as hope tried to take up place in his chest, he remembered the laptop and the information the doctors exchanged with someone else. They didn’t know who was on the other end or what they might want. The only person who might know wouldn’t talk about it.

  Dante was right. The pack deserved to know who the doctors had been in contact with. It was for the safety of the pack as a whole. Whatever reason she was hiding behind would get others hurt. He didn’t know how to tell her that, though. Not right now. Not while she was clearly at ease for the first time since they’d gotten her back.

  His shoulders dropped. He was lost in his own mind when Carol stopped talking. A few moments of silence ticked by, nearly eclipsed by the background noise as more people joined the parking lot. When he finally realized that Carol had gone quiet, he looked up. Fear sliced through him. His mind told him she would be gone again.

  Carol was right where she’d been the whole time, but her attention was on the road behind him. His thoughts were still reeling; he couldn’t quite make out what he was seeing. An SUV zoomed away, the engine revving, leaving behind a form prone on the ground. He’d only just figured out what was going on when Carol leapt to her feet. He surged upward right behind her.

  They raced to the road, toward the sounds of muffled cries. The shape on the side of the road didn’t move, but the figure hunched beside it trembled enough for the two of them. Carol skidded to a halt beside them both, collapsing to her knees to be closer to them.

  Van took the other side. He reached to turn the person onto their back and Carol snapped at him.

  “Don’t move her,” she commanded. “Never move someone who has been hurt until you can ascertain if their spine has been injured.”

  Van sat back on his haunches, amazed at how quickly she had assumed control. It was like she’d begun functioning on auto pilot, relying on old skills she had never told her pack about. Her hands were flying over the figure, checking the unconscious person for a pulse.

  While she was busy, Van turned to the crying child. He laid a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder. He was older than Van had initially thought. The kid had to be close to ten. His eyes were red and rimmed with tears, wide with panic.

  “Get your phone out,” Van said, softly. All kids had cell phones these days, right? He remembered having one of the old, brick phones when he was younger.

  The boy did as Van asked and retrieved a phone that could have been described as a small tablet. Van walked the kid through calling emergency services. The kid’s hands shook the entire time and he stumbled over his words while speaking.

  ***

  Carol hadn’t done work like this in over a year. She moved with muscle memory, old rules coming back to her as she assessed the person’s injuries. It felt good to help someone. She hadn’t seen the accident. Her brain had only half processed what she was looking at when she noticed the figures on the side of the road. Still, she’d leapt to action without another thought.

  This was what she’d trained for. This was who she was supposed to be.

  Distantly, she was aware of Van as he helped the child call emergency services. Once they were sure an ambulance was on the way, she became aware of Van’s attention on her. His gaze warmed her skin. She turned away from him and tried to ignore it, but her heart still fluttered.

  The ambulance arrived in a flash of dancing lights. EMTs poured out of the vehicle and rushed toward them. Carol launched into what she had been able to discern, that the woman had been hit by a car, that she might have a concussion from a head injury, that she was currently unconscious and hadn’t been moved.

  She wasn’t greeted with the appreciation she’d expected. The EMTs gave her a wide berth and snuck conspicuous glares at her. Carol’s stomach flipped. One EMT leaned into another, and Carol caught one word over the din of her heart.

  Shifter.

  She fumbled to her feet and slowly backed away. The paramedics had the situation under control now. They had the woman on a stretcher and were loading her into the back of the ambulance. One had pulled the boy away from Van and was talking softly. It didn’t matter how much they lowered their voices.

  Carol was indeed a shifter. She could hear what they were saying. The paramedic wanted to know if she and Van were behind the woman’s injuries. The paramedic asked if either of them had bitten or bled on the child’s mother. The kid was aghast.

  Inside the ambulance, they were unhooking equipment and hanging IV bags. Van stepped toward her, but the scent of medical equipment hit her. It made her head spin. She was no longer near the park. The four walls of the cottage bedroom closed in around her. The shadow of the doctors loomed over her.

  She couldn’t tame the wild thump of her heart. It felt like it was trying to rip its way out of her chest, tearing with claws and teeth like her beast. The creature itself was thrashing. It wanted to break free. If only she would lend it paws, it would run far away from those who wanted to hurt her.

  She clenched her jaw and tried to fight the feeling back. She tried to remind herself that she was standing in a park and not back in that cottage, but the smell from inside the ambulance was inescapable. Her panic swelled and she thought she would lose it in front of all those humans.

  Humans who clearly despised her for something she couldn’t change. Carol didn’t ask to become a shifter. She’d been doing her job. In the middle of saving someone, a shifter had lost control and irrevocably changed her life. It hadn’t been her choice, and yet they damned her for it.

  She would never be free of the monster forced upon her. It would forever remain a part of her until it finally eclipsed everything she’d once been. Like now, how it bent her spine and made her teeth press into her lips as they grew longer. The change was coming. The wolf was forcing its way out of her, and she couldn’t stop it.

  Carol lurched away from the park, her feet catching on one another as she tried to get away as fast as possible. No one noticed her run. All eyes were on the ambulance. It was a small reprieve from the dirty glares and hushed whispers. They didn’t see her lose control of the monster roiling inside her.

  She managed to keep it locked behind her skin until she reached a tree line. Behind the cover of trees and brush, she dropped to all fours. The beast was howling at her by then. It screamed to protect itself, that Carol would never be able to do what needed to be done.

  Her head wrenched and pain lanced down her back. She spared a moment to wish she wasn’t so alone. That someone could have been beside her. This was her curse, though. This gaping emptiness that presided around her like an impassable moat.

  Her lunch with Van was nice, but it only proved to her that she no longer belonged among others. Her beast couldn’t play nice. At some point, she would prove the humans right and hurt one of them.

  She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to be the reason for someone’s pain.

  Chapter Four

  Van didn’t know where she went. He searched in every direction, but Carol was gone. His s
tomach hit the ground and dragged behind him. His heart gave a nervous flutter before he caught ahold of himself. This wasn’t the time to panic.

  He scented the air, trying to be inconspicuous because there was a park full of humans watching. They watched him knowingly anyway. The whole park knew who he was, that he was Dante’s second in command. The lion, they called him as he tracked Carol’s scent through the air.

  He didn’t know what happened. Had Carol been grabbed? There were no other scents beside hers. The park was filled with odors, from wet dogs to frying foods at the ring of food trucks, but none that drifted alongside hers.

  Carol had run off on her own. He didn’t understand why.

  They’d helped those two humans. He would have thought she’d feel a bit of pride and satisfaction. Yet, her scent was tainted with despair. It was sour and sharp, like sweat. The odor made his heart rate skyrocket again. Worry gripped his stomach tight, like the night he’d torn the shed apart in search of her.

  He wouldn’t lose her again. He refused to fail her.

  Carol might not know it, but he would be there for her. Through thick and thin, he would be what she needed. He knew she needed him now, even if she had run away. That was, perhaps, the greatest sign that she needed help.

  He should have stuck around when the cops made their rounds, questioning everyone who witnessed the accident, but he spun on his heel and followed Carol’s scent at a breakneck speed. It led him away from the park and into the woods beyond. There, new scents greeted him and tried to overwhelm Carol’s. This time, when he found her trail again, her scent was marked with musky fur.

  She had shifted.

  His stomach fluttered nervously. He knew the signs, even if he didn’t want to admit it. The long years he had worked beside Dante with the new shifters had taught him the markers of a shifter who couldn’t control themselves. Carol had run from a situation and shifted not long after.