Tamed for the Lion

by Annabelle Winters

  She smiled again at her mate, and then she gasped when he turned his head from her and Changed, his lion bursting forth in a flash of gold light, its mane glorious and full, its massive jaws opening wide to let out a thundering roar as if to say the King was here and he would take care of everything.

  10

  Darius felt his powerful haunches warm up as he tore through the jungle, heading straight for the stampeding animals. He wasn’t afraid of elephants or rhinos or anything in between, but as he got close enough to see those beasts, he felt a flash of dread go through him.

  “What the hell,” he muttered, his gold eyes widening as he saw the crazed look in the eyes of the animals. They looked feral, out of their simple minds, wild and rabid. But they weren’t actually running wild! If anything, they were running in lockstep, strangely orderly, the hippos and baboons and wildebeest galloping alongside in a way that could never happen naturally. It was eerie. No, it was terrifying!

  Darius easily kept pace with them, his lion taking long, graceful strides as he watched the beasts of the jungle run. Soon it occurred to him that the animals weren’t running away from something; they were running towards something!

  “What is it?” he growled aloud to a pack of hyenas even though he knew they couldn’t answer, that they didn’t have the luxury—or the burden—of a human’s reasoning, questioning mind. They were being drawn to something like a magnet pulls metal, and as they got closer, even Darius could feel his lion strain against the power.

  The moon was no longer visible, Darius realized. They were deep in the darkest part of the Kenyan jungles, so deep that it was quite possible this was nature untouched by human civilization. Pure nature. Pure wildness.

  Pure animal.

  Suddenly Darius roared as the darkness threatened to overwhelm his lion, and it took a surprising amount of control from the man in him to get his animal to stop. He did stop finally, but those galloping beasts were still going strong, and Darius squinted into the darkness as he realized that the wild animals were literally disappearing in the distance!

  Slowly Darius moved forward, feeling the strange magnetism that was pulling the beasts of the jungle like a black hole sucks in all matter and compresses it to a point of infinite density. Every hair on his mane was standing stiff. He could feel this force trying to split his animal and his human, but he wasn’t afraid of it. He understood that bonding with his fated mate created an opposing force that would not let his animal get pulled into whatever this was. But clearly these simple animals were no match for it. Whatever it was.

  It is the Darkness, whispered his lion as Darius crept closer and closer to the edge of what seemed like a wall of pure black.

  “Thanks, genius,” muttered Darius. “I can see that it’s dark. Telling me that something dark is darkness doesn’t really shed much light on the matter.”

  The Darkness, said his lion again, and Darius swallowed hard when he sensed the mesmerizing effect the wall of black was having on his beast. Pure animal energy. The source of my energy. The source of every Shifter’s animal energy.

  Darius frowned as snippets of things his grandparents had told him flickered through his mind: How if an unmated Shifter died, its human went to the Light and its animal returned to the Darkness.

  “But . . . but these animals aren’t Shifters,” Darius said. “Why are they . . . how are they . . . oh, shit! Holy motherfu—”

  And now Darius felt something he didn’t know was possible for him to feel, and it roiled his insides as his lion dug its claws into the dirt, bared its teeth, and stared up at what was emerging through the wall of pure darkness.

  Fear.

  He felt it like a knife, and it took a moment for him to even understand the feeling. He was a lion, a Shifter, king of the goddamn jungle! Nothing had ever scared him or his lion!

  Not until now.

  Now until this.

  Darius’s eyes went wide as he blinked in disbelief at the two glowing orbs that were shining through the Darkness. Shining red like fireballs. At first he thought they were planets or moons, that he was really looking into a black hole somewhere in the cosmos. But then he saw a flash of black . . . black that shone with dark light that made his lion’s tail go rigid.

  “Murad!” Darius whispered as he slowly took a step back. Only now did he realize that the two red orbs were the eyes of the Black Dragon himself! Massive like red moons, unblinking and unyielding, full of fire, powered by all the strength of the Darkness. “The Black Dragon!”

  Darius had to fight the instinct to turn and run, and he dug his claws deeper into the dirt and forced himself to stay put. He could feel the pull of the dark energy, and he stared helplessly as the animals of the jungle hurled themselves into the infinite blackness of Murad, the Darkness of the Black Dragon, a gateway that Darius knew was hell on Earth—or at least the beginning of it!

  “What’s it doing?” Darius muttered as he watched the animals of the jungle disappear as if the Black Dragon was consuming them. Not eating them like a good, normal dragon, but actually consuming them. No crunching bones. No blood. Just poof! And then they were gone!

  Darius’s lion didn’t answer, and Darius blinked when he realized that he’d taken a step forward without realizing it! His lion was slowly but surely being drawn to the Darkness, and Darius’s jaw hung open in disbelief. In that moment he knew he couldn’t fight whatever was happening here. Not alone. Perhaps not even with just his mate. He needed reinforcements.

  “Not just reinforcements,” he growled as he forced himself to turn away from the mesmerizing red eyes of the Black Dragon. “We need a goddamn miracle.”

  11

  TWO DAYS LATER

  NAIROBI, KENYA

  “Miracle in Morocco!” Lacy said, reading out loud from the newspaper she’d picked out of a trashcan. She raised an eyebrow and looked up at Darius. “Better than the last headline, I guess.”

  “Chaos in Casablanca?” Darius said with a snort, adjusting his sunglasses as he slid his arm around Lacy’s waist and pulled her close. “I kinda liked that one.”

  “You just liked the picture of you in that article,” Lacy said, feeling a shiver go through her as her mate’s arm easily circled her admittedly large belly. “Talk about hamming it up for the camera.”

  “Hey, I’m a performer, remember?” Darius said as he led her into a crowded marketplace, where street vendors were competing for attention as they hawked their wares. “What are we eating for lunch?”

  Lacy squinted up at the blazing overhead sun and then scanned the options around them. The market was bursting at the seams with vendors selling everything from fresh vegetables to dried meat, but although Lacy’s bobcat was a carnivore through and through, she couldn’t stand the thought of meat right then. Not after what they’d seen in the jungle. Not after what Darius had told her what he’d seen.

  “Ice cream!” Lacy said, clapping her hands as she saw a group of smiling African teenagers walk by with rapidly melting ice-cream cones in their hands. “Come on!”

  “I’m a lion,” Darius grumbled, digging his fingers into her side and making her squirm. “I am not eating a goddamn ice-cream cone!”

  “Well, too bad,” Lacy said, pulling away from him and making her way to the ice-cream vendor. “But since I’m paying, I get to choose. Ice cream. Ice cream. Ice cream!”

  “You know,” said Darius, finally breaking a smile as he adjusted his sunglasses and pulled his hat farther down his forehead. “I could just say to hell with this disguise nonsense and just show everyone that I’m the Lion Shifter from the headlines. I guarantee I won’t need any money to get a taste of whatever that meat-vendor over there is selling.”

  Lacy sniffed the air and shrugged. “Smells like bush meat. Probably raccoon. The King of the Jungle eating raccoon jerky? My, how the mighty have fallen!”

  She felt D
arius sigh as they stopped near the ice-cream vendor. The hat and sunglasses wasn’t much of a disguise, but no one seemed to recognize them. It probably helped that most of the photographs out there were of the two of them in animal form. And Nairobi was a fairly international city, with tourists, businessfolk, and students from all over the world. They didn’t look particularly out of place.

  “All right,” Darius grunted, letting out another sigh but also giving her side a hard squeeze as if to let her know that this would be remembered when they were alone. “Three scoops for me. Vanilla.”

  “Vanilla? How lame,” Lacy said, giggling as she pulled out her cash. She’d found an international branch of her bank in downtown Nairobi, and since she was a premier client back in the US, they agreed to verify her identity by photograph after she called her relationship manager back in Denver and explained that she was stranded in Kenya without cash or papers.

  Of course, she didn’t mention that she had no clothes either, because by then she’d stolen some, her bobcat’s stealth coming in handy as she sniffed around and found an apartment where the residents were away, snuck in through the window, and found some billowy blue pajamas and a white silk tunic for herself and an Arabesque robe for Darius, who was too big to fit into any of the trousers in the apartment. She’d made a note to return the clothes after buying some new ones, but then she’d decided to just leave some cash instead. A nice surprise, if a bit creepy.

  Lacy smiled as she watched her lion Shifter mate instruct the ice-cream vendor to pile on scoop after scoop until the man’s eyes went wide. Finally the vendor shook his head.

  “Too many scoops,” he said in broken, deeply accented English. “It will fall over. Unstable.”

  “Just keep going until I say stop,” Darius growled, his eyes narrowing, the gold swirling in there like liquid. Lacy frowned when she saw the spark of anger in her mate. Then she sighed when she saw him blink and gain control of himself. She didn’t say anything. She understood that they were both on edge.

  So weird, she thought as they finally strolled away with their ice-cream cones. We’ve just been hanging out for the past two days, roaming the streets like tourists. It’s like we don’t even want to talk about what happened that night on the train, what we saw and heard, what we know is coming.

  Lacy stopped at a weathered wooden bench near a small city park, gesturing to Darius that she wanted to sit. Darius was pre-occupied with his leaning tower of ice-cream, and he just grunted and stopped, placing one foot on the bench and furiously licking his treat before it melted all over his big hand.

  “Miracle in Morocco,” Lacy said again, pulling out that rolled-up newspaper and glancing at the headlines. “You know, this is the first article that actually presented all of this in a positive light. I wonder who wrote it.” She squinted to read the fine print. “Asheline Brown. Reprinted with permission from the Associated Press.”

  Darius stopped, raising his head and staring at her. He looked ridiculous, his mouth covered in white ice-cream. But his expression was serious as all hell. “Ash Brown?” he said. “Let me see that!”

  “You know her?” Lacy demanded, not sure if she felt jealousy or excitement when she saw her mate toss his ice-cream and feverishly read through the article that he’d previously ignored.

  “No. Not really,” Darius muttered, looking up and blinking. “It might just be a coincidence. Asheline Brown is probably a common name.”

  Lacy frowned. “Not really. But regardless, who’s the Asheline Brown that you know?”

  “I told you—I don’t know her. But if I remember right from overhearing Caleb the Wolf and Bart the Bear, Adam Drake’s wife is an Ash Brown.”

  “Adam Drake? The dragon Shifter? The dragon who destroyed that coffee-shop in Milwaukee a few years ago? The one who was photographed carrying a woman out of the rubble in his talons? That woman is Asheline Brown? The same one who wrote this article saying Shifters are a miracle, something beautiful and not dangerous, something to be accepted and not feared?”

  “Maybe,” said Darius. “Possibly. Probably.”

  “Maybe?” Lacy snorted. “How could it not be? Of course it is! Darius, we have to get in touch with her! She might have some answers about what’s going on here!”

  “We already have all the answers we need,” said Darius, looking down at his fallen ice-cream cone and smacking his lips. “But not all the food we need. I’m still hungry.”

  “What answers?” Lacy said. “All we have is questions! Neither of us understands what we saw and heard in the jungle that night! You were truly scared when you saw the Black Dragon! You said it yourself!”

  “I don’t get scared,” Darius growled. “And all I saw was a dragon doing what a dragon does: Feed. Destroy. Consume.”

  “But it wasn’t burning anything,” Lacy argued. “If it was, the entire jungle would have been lit up like a Christmas tree. And you said you didn’t hear bones being crunched. You didn’t see or smell any blood being spilled. It wasn’t eating those animals. There was something else happening. Something darker.”

  Darius shrugged as he grabbed her hand and led her back towards the market, sniffing the air as he made his way towards the meat vendors. “Neither of us has seen a dragon feed. Maybe the Black Dragon was so hungry it was literally inhaling those animals, swallowing them whole. I could do that right now, you know.”

  “Why are you changing your story two days after the fact?” Lacy demanded, almost stumbling as Darius pulled her through the crowd. She could sense that Darius had made a decision that this was the answer. She could sense that not only was he denying what he’d told her he saw that night, he was also hiding the full story of what he’d felt.

  Darius didn’t answer, stopping at a meat vendor and ordering a lamb shank the size of her thigh. He waved off the vendor’s offer to wrap it, and the shank was half gone by the time Lacy hurriedly managed to get her money out to pay the astonished man.

  “Something about what you saw really got to you, didn’t it?” she said as Darius finished his meal and began gnawing on the massive bone as people turned to look. Lacy could hear the whispers and comments from the people around them, and she grabbed his arm and tried to pull him away from the gathering crowd.

  “One more,” Darius said, tossing the bone away and pointing at another lamb shank that was even bigger than the one he’d just devoured.

  “This one is to go,” said Lacy hurriedly, stuffing some dollar bills into the man’s hand as Darius grabbed the shank right off the hook and sank his teeth into it. She smiled apologetically at the locals, many of whom already had their phones out and were taking photos and videos. “Crazy Americans,” she said, twirling her forefinger near her temple in the universal signal for “my man is nuts!”

  Finally she managed to get Darius out of the market, pulling him into a deserted alley between two concrete buildings. She watched as he finished his meal and hurled the bone at the side of one of the buildings, wiping his mouth savagely and letting out a deep growl of satisfaction.

  “So you’re a stress eater,” Lacy said after a minute of silence. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and nodded. “Yup. Total stress eater.”

  Darius snorted, his eyes narrowing with a flash of real anger. “Don’t project your own weaknesses on me.”

  Lacy jolted in shock at the angry comeback, and then her own natural sharpness rose up in response. “Excuse me?” she snarled, her hands on her hips, fists clenched tight, bobcat hissing inside her. “My weaknesses? What the hell do you know about my weakness?”

  “What the hell do you know about mine?” roared Darius, his eyes swirling with liquid gold as Lacy heard the lion in his voice. She could sense that his animal was riled up. So was her bobcat—but there was something different about his lion’s anger. Lacy couldn’t understand it. But she could feel it. She could hear it. She could smell it.

 
; And it smelled like danger.

  “Something happened to you in that jungle,” she whispered, backing away from Darius as he squared his broad shoulders and began to take deep, gulping breaths, his massive chest rising and falling like he was expending a huge amount of energy. “Something happened to your animal. I feel it, Darius. I sense it. You’re off balance. Off center. We need to—”

  But Lacy couldn’t finish the sentence, because with a roar Darius was on her, slamming her against the rough concrete of the building so hard she almost passed out. And then he was kissing her like an animal, licking her face like a beast, grinding his swollen cock into her crotch like he’d lost control.

  “Darius, wait!” she gasped, struggling helplessly as the lion Shifter grabbed her wrists and pinned her arms up over her head. He was biting and licking her neck, pulling her top down with his teeth, inhaling her scent with those deep, gulping breaths. “Darius, listen to me! You’re off balance! We shouldn’t—”

  No, you SHOULD, hissed her bobcat from inside her as Lacy felt a sudden rush of heat go through her, followed by the telltale release of her feminine wetness as Darius rubbed her mound roughly, his strong fingers pushing up inside her through the thin cloth of her pajamas. His lion is indeed out of balance. It would have been lost to the Darkness if it were not already mated to us. His bond with you saved him that night when he came face to face with the Black Dragon and the Darkness. If not for our fated bond, his animal would have been taken from him, sucked into the Darkness. He felt the pull of the Darkness on his lion that night. For the first time he felt that it was possible to lose his lion, that there might be a power stronger than the King of the Jungle. The event upset the balance between man and animal, and there is only one thing that can bring it back into order.