Lion's Share

by Rachel Vincent

  That time, when he lifted me into position, I was ready. He guided and I lowered, and slowly, I slid over him. This felt different than his fingers had. It was blisteringly intimate, in part because I hadn’t closed my eyes and he hadn’t looked away.

  “You don’t have to go all the way down,” he said, his voice a gruff whisper. “We can work up to that.” He guided me with his hands, showing me how to lift myself, then lower myself again, as he rose beneath me, so that we met in the space between. He helped me find the most pleasant angles and the most comfortable depth, and as my confidence grew, I began to relax. To move more freely and discover what I liked. What he liked.

  What made his jaw tighten and his eyes flutter closed. What made him sit up beneath me and run his tongue up my neck until he could suck my earlobe into his mouth without ever losing focus.

  And then I found my rhythm.

  With the right tempo and the right angle came true pleasure, and that intimate pressure began to mount within me again, tightening toward another peak. I moved quickly, almost frantically, desperate to capture that moment again and feel it spill over me with him still inside me.

  “Abby…” Jace took my nipple in his mouth, and that pressure built faster. It was like chasing an erotic horizon. I could see it in the distance, stretching from one side of my world to the other. I could feel it reaching for me, pulling me…

  “Faster,” I gasped, and Jace obliged, as a carnal growl rumbled up from deep in his chest. He arched into me, and I rocked against him, and finally, the world exploded all around me. Through me. Jace thrust once, twice more, then groaned as he ground into me, gripping my hips, and each feverish collision of our bodies sent another wave of pleasure through me.

  Finally, I collapsed against his damp chest, my head on his shoulder. His arms wound around me. Aftershocks rocked us both, with him still twitching inside me, and I’d never in my entire life felt so comfortable or secure with another living soul.

  I could not let the council separate us.

  “Hey, thanks for letting me stay the night.” Robyn tucked a strand of brown hair behind one ear as she set her empty breakfast plate in the sink. “You don’t know me, and you guys are already pretty crowded, so that was really awesome of you.” She shrugged and smiled at Jace from across the kitchen, but before he could acknowledge her thanks, Melody laughed.

  “It’s not like he had any choice,” my future sister-in-law said, mopping a smear of gravy from her plate with the last of her biscuit. “An Alpha has to provide sanctuary for any Pride member who needs it. But lately, he’s been giving Abby a lot more than that, if you know what I mean.”

  My face flushed and Jace growled.

  “Melody!” Patricia scolded. “If you can’t be respectful, you can go straight back up to your room.”

  “But I’m still hungry.” She patted her flat stomach. “The baby wants another biscuit.”

  Jace grabbed a biscuit from the platter and half crushed it as he slammed it down on her plate. “Eat in silence.”

  “Wait, what?” Robyn frowned, picking at the edge of the thick bandage on her thigh. “I didn’t follow much of that.” But I could tell which part she had understood from the way she looked from me to Jace with a sly grin. “I thought you said he was unattainable.”

  Jace glanced at me in surprise, and my flush deepened.

  “Okay, we can talk about me and Jace later.” But we almost certainly would not. “Right now, though, we need to have another talk.” I sat at the breakfast bar and pushed a stool out for her with my foot. “Come sit down.”

  “Well, that can’t be good.” Melody dug a glob of grape jelly from an open jar and dropped it onto her biscuit. “The last time someone told me to ‘come sit down,’ I found out my father was dead.” She turned to Robyn with one brow raised. “Has your dad instigated any intra-species civil wars recently?”

  “Mel…” Jace growled, and Carver stood from his seat at the table.

  “Melody, why don’t we go find Isaac so the three of us can talk about what’s going to be happening to your body over the next few months.” The doctor handed Patricia his gravy-smeared plate. “This is a very important phase in your life, and I’m sure you want to be prepared.”

  Melody’s brown eyes lit up at the thought of a discussion about herself and how important her pregnancy was. “Can I take my biscuit?”

  “Of course.” Always the gentleman, Dr. Carver picked up her plate. “If you’ll excuse us, we have some important things to discuss.” He led Melody from the room as if she were precious cargo, and she practically glowed.

  “You know, if people keep coddling her, she’s never going to grow up,” Jace grumbled.

  His mother laughed. “Oh, I think childbirth will take care of that.”

  “So, what’s going on?” Robyn limped around the kitchen peninsula and sank onto the barstool, and Patricia turned back to her dishes, giving us the illusion of privacy without sacrificing her ability to eavesdrop. Not that she needed to be in the same room for that.

  Jace leaned against the counter on the other side of the breakfast bar, facing us both. “Robyn, I’m assuming you’ve noticed that our household is larger than most?”

  She nodded. “I met your sister and your brothers this morning, and several guys from those cabins out back came in to eat too. They’re your employees and your tenants?” Her frown said she knew that wasn’t quite right but lacked the vocabulary to accurately describe a relationship she didn’t understand.

  “Not in the typical sense. Room and board are part of their salary, but not because they work construction with me. I don’t own the construction company, and they don’t all work there. The guys who live in the cabins—all seven of them—are my enforcers.”

  “Enforcers.” Robin swiveled on her stool to face me. “Is this a joke, or are you dating some kind of gangster kingpin?” She was smiling, trying to make light of it, but I could smell the anxiety seeping from her pores. “Is there a shifter mafia?”

  “Robyn, I haven’t been completely candid with you about my family. Or about shifters in general.”

  She stood and limped backward, eyes wide, hands out. “Wait, there really is a shifter mafia?”

  “It’s not a mafia,” I insisted, but she was already glancing around the room, as if she might escape, if she could only find her purse. “It’s a Pride—a group of allied werecats who belong to a specific territory and swear loyalty to the same Alpha. Jace is our Alpha.” Though he wasn’t mine anymore, technically. “It’s his responsibility to protect, defend, and organize the Pride members against outside threats.”

  “Outside threats?”

  I shrugged. “We had a bad patch a few years ago, but lately, there haven’t been many outside threats.” Well, until the human hunters started targeting Pride cats and Robyn started killing them. “There are ten Alphas in the US—one for each territory—and if you want to visit another territory, for business or vacation, or whatever, you have to get that Alpha’s permission first, because trespassing is considered an act of aggression.”

  Robyn’s frown deepened and I could practically see her repeating what I’d just said in her head, trying to understand. “So, how is that not a mafia?”

  “We’re not criminals,” I explained. But then I had to backtrack. “Okay, sometimes we have to do things that are technically illegal, according to human laws, but we don’t profit from crime.”

  “The laws we have to break include disposing of the man who tried to kill you last night,” Jace said, his voice deep but soft. “Protecting you is my job now. I’m your Alpha.”

  “My Alpha?” Robyn picked at the edge of her bandage again, exposed beneath her borrowed shorts. “As in my…first?”

  “As in your dominant,” I said, and Robyn’s wide-eyed gaze swung back to me. “Jace is the fastest, strongest, and the best equipped to lead, so he’s the Alpha of this Pride. The Appalachian Pride. Which you belong to, because this is where you were infected
.”

  Technically, any stray infected in a US territory belonged to that territory, but the vast majority of strays were infected in one of the free zones by strays who didn’t realize—or care—that they were committing a crime. Those few who were infected in one of the recognized territories were almost always rejected by the local Alpha and exiled to the free zone after a brief explanation of the rules.

  Marc was a notable exception—he was infected as a young teenager—and Robyn would be too. In fact, the council would probably insist on keeping her, both to protect her and to study the rare infection of a human female.

  And in the desperate hope that she would be willing to help propagate the species she now belonged to.

  “What if I don’t want an Alpha?” Robyn lowered her hands and shifted her weight onto her good leg but looked no closer to reclaiming her seat. The sweat gathering on her upper lip smelled like fear, and I could tell from Jace’s forcibly relaxed stance that he could feel her anxiety.

  “It doesn’t really work like that,” he said. “Our laws say that you can’t live in my territory unless you belong to my Pride. But beyond that, you need an Alpha, maybe more than any other tabby ever has.”

  Robyn blinked at him for a moment, obviously struggling to make sense of what she was hearing. Then she turned to me, and the fear leaking from her pores developed a sharp tang of panic. “Abby?” She wanted me to tell her that this was all a joke. Or that Jace was wrong and she really did have a choice in the matter. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

  “I know. Me neither. I didn’t choose to be born into this any more than you chose to be infected. And for the record, I am so sorry. I thought I was protecting you by hiding all this from you, but Jace is right. You need an Alpha. And really, this is sort of a best-case scenario. There are only a few Alphas I’d be happy to see you serve, and Jace is one of them.” The others were Faythe, my dad, and Umberto Di Carlo.

  “Serve?” Robyn’s eyes widened as her panic swelled.

  “Well, only in the sense that he’s your boss. But that’s really more like a supervisory position.”

  “I’m an adult. I don’t need to be supervised,” she insisted.

  “The string of murders bearing your signature would argue otherwise,” Jace said, as gently as I’d ever heard him say anything.

  Robyn recoiled, shocked. “You know about that?” If she’d been in a police station, that probably would have been considered an admission of guilt. Obviously, she hadn’t realized they knew anything more than that Darren had tried to kill her.

  “It’s my job to know,” Jace said. “You’ve put our entire species at risk of exposure, and we’ve been trying to clean up after you. Though Abby was a little less helpful in that regard than she could have been, once she realized you were the stray we were hunting.” He shot a censuring glance at me, and I could only bow my head in apology. That was the very least of what I’d get from the other Alphas.

  “I didn’t mean to.” Tears formed in Robyn’s eyes. “I can’t even remember much of it.”

  Jace leaned over the counter with both elbows on the tile. “Well, on some level, you must have meant to. You found out where they lived and you hunted them like prey.”

  “That’s not how it happened.” A tear rolled down her right cheek, and I wanted to hug her, but I was afraid she’d push me away. “I only tracked them down to make sure they hadn’t kidnapped someone else. But at every one of their houses, I saw other dead cats, and I smelled blood, and I…lost it. I don’t remember shifting. I just woke up naked, covered in blood, every time. But they were monsters!”

  She dismissed Jace—something no one born a shifter would ever have done—and implored me with wide blue eyes to understand. “They were just like the men who killed Dani, and Mitch, and Olsen! They’re part of some sick club that kidnapped me, and played with me, and beat me. They’re the reason I turn into this animal I can’t control and crave things I never even knew existed. They deserved to die! All of them!”

  “Yes, they did,” Jace agreed. “But killing them was my job, not yours.”

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” she repeated, and when I gestured to the stool again, she finally limped in my direction. “And I didn’t even know the rest of you existed.”

  “That’s my fault.” My heart ached, seeing how much I’d put her through by denying her the support of an Alpha and a team of enforcers. “I broke the rules by not telling him about you, and vice versa.”

  “Why?” Robyn lifted herself gingerly onto the stool, favoring her injured leg. “What were you trying to protect me from? Him?” She nodded in Jace’s direction, and I shook my head.

  “No. He’s one of the good guys. Actually, there aren’t really any bad guys left on the council, but some of them are very old-fashioned, and they care more about the future of our entire species than about any individual member of it.”

  “I don’t understand what that means,” Robyn said, as Patricia set a glass of ice water in front of her.

  “That means that—” Jace began, but I interrupted, ignoring his irritated growl. The next part would be better coming from a fellow tabby.

  “Okay, you met Melody and Patricia this morning, right? And you’ve known me for years,” I said, and Robyn nodded as she lifted her glass. “Well, we’re the only female shifters in this entire territory. Just the three of us. Only two of us are young enough to…propagate. And Melody’s clearly jumped into that role with both feet. But my point is that there are dozens of tomcats in the Appalachian territory. Right?” I glanced at Jace for confirmation, and he nodded. “But only a couple of tabbies.”

  Because Patricia was actually a dam—a mother beyond childbearing years.

  “Wait.” I frowned and reconsidered. “Technically, I belong to my birth Pride again—my father’s territory—which means you and Melody are the only tabbies here, and that’s actually a very high ratio of tabbies to toms, compared with the average.”

  “That’s a high ratio?” Robyn said, and I could see that she might soon draw for herself the conclusion I was leading up to.

  “Yes. Right now in my birth Pride, I’m the only woman of childbearing age, and the Southeast Territory has none, because Sara Di Carlo died almost five years ago.” She’d been killed right in front of me, in the cage across from mine.

  “So, what, they want you to have a bunch of babies for them?” Robyn forced a laugh, obviously expecting me to say she’d drawn a hilariously inaccurate conclusion. But my silence spoke volumes. “Wait, that can’t be what they want from me! I’m not having a whole litter of some random tomcat’s shifter babies, and they can’t make me!”

  She stood again, and this time when she backed away from me, the betrayal in her eyes burned all the way to my soul. She thought I’d sold her out.

  “No, they can’t make you, and they won’t even try,” Jace assured her.

  I sat straighter when I heard the distant rumble of an engine heading toward us. My parents were minutes away, and I wanted Robyn to understand everything before she met my dad, the council chairman.

  “But that is the expectation for tabbies born into our society,” Jace continued. “Which—until you—has been all tabbies.”

  “That’s barbaric.”

  “Actually, it’s just very old-fashioned,” Patricia insisted, and when she started a fresh pot of coffee, I knew she’d heard the engine too. “It’s also somewhat unavoidable, at least until men start growing uteruses. They can’t have babies, so we must, or the species will fail. I’ve had six myself.”

  “Six?” Robyn’s voice was practically a squeak.

  Patricia nodded. “Five sons before I finally got a girl.” She turned to me. “That’s about the average, wouldn’t you say?”

  I nodded. Like Melody, I was the youngest of six. Dams almost always stop breeding once they get that precious daughter.

  “Okay, but what’s with the gender imbalance?” Robyn asked. “Why are girls so rare?”

&n
bsp; “Doctors have been trying to figure that out forever,” I said, as the car engine rumbled closer. “And you’re the very first human woman—at least the first confirmed in the US—to survive being infected. Which means you’re our only female stray. That makes you very precious, somewhat of a commodity, and a success story to be studied.”

  Creating strays was forbidden, but understanding why Robyn had survived could only benefit us all. Which I knew. But I also knew that…

  “I don’t want to be studied.” Robyn’s pulse was racing. She was terrified, and I wondered if she could hear the car. Her senses were as good as mine, but she’d had much less practice using them. “I don’t want to be part of your weird shifter mafia club. I don’t need to be protected—”

  “You’re wrong about that,” Jace insisted. “At least for the moment.”

  “—and I certainly don’t want to be some kind of anomalous freak baby machine, just so you guys can even out your fucked-up gender ratio.”

  “I know.” I reached for her hand, but she pulled away from me. “That’s part of why I hid you from everyone else.”

  Jace stood as the car pulled to a stop out front. “She broke several very serious rules to protect you, and because of that, Abby is in a lot of trouble.”

  Robyn turned to me with wide, scared eyes. “What kind of trouble?”

  A car door slammed out front, and Jace’s brief exhale was his only outward sign of tension. “The kind that might get her executed if she were a tomcat.”

  “Executed? They would kill her if she were a boy?”

  “See?” Patricia stirred creamer into a mug of coffee. “The gender imbalance does have its advantages.”

  “Not the point, Mom.” Jace listened as one of his brothers let my parents in through the front door, before they could even ring the bell. “The most likely penalties, if she’s found guilty, include losing her incisors or her claws, both of which would be permanently disfiguring, not to mention painful. Or incarceration in the capitol of a neutral territory. Which means she’d be locked up in the basement of one of the Alphas who has no blood or personal connection to her.”