The Lion's Fling (Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance Book 1)

by Lilly Pink

  Archer was bested and he knew it. When Gram spoke to him the way she was doing now, she meant business and there was no point in arguing his case any further. Because he knew this and because he had so little extra energy to expend, he nodded his head at her curtly.

  She nodded back and opened the door to his camper, not looking at him again before shutting it in his face. When he heard it close, he winced with the sense of finality that sound gave him. It wasn’t just the sound of the latch going, either. It was also the smell. He hadn’t really noticed it before because he had been so engulfed by it, but his camper smelled like death.

  He knew that smell well from his hunts around the times of the full moon and it was what his camper was filled with. He hadn’t been over-reacting to Eloise’s condition, after all. Without the aid Gram was about to give her, she would die and she would do it sooner rather than later.

  He clenched his fists and lowered his head so that to an outsider, it would probably have looked like he was praying. What he was actually doing was very far from that. His head was lowered because he was trying not to lose control of himself, to shift and rip the whole camp apart just so that he could feel something other than the panic that had been closing in on him ever since he had picked her broken body up in the woods and carried her back to the camp.

  “Archer! Hey, Archer!”

  “Not now, Roman,” he answered without looking up, not needing to see the owner of the voice to know who it was. “I can’t talk to you right now.”

  “You can, and you’re gonna.”

  This was enough to make Archer look up, which he did just in time to see the nasty look on Roman’s face as he shoved him roughly against the side of the camper. Because he was so completely caught off guard by the act, Archer went sprawling, landing in the mud and biting down on his tongue so that it began to bleed.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Roman? What is this?”

  “It’s your wakeup call, brother, that’s what the fuck it is.”

  “Wakeup call, huh? And what makes you think I need one of those?”

  “The way you’re acting, that’s what! Are you really standing by that bitch? After what she did to Vera? Because if that’s the case, it’s bullshit and you know it.”

  Archer stood slowly, deliberately, keeping Roman in his line of sight as he did so. The two of them had fought plenty over the years, fought physically and viciously, but never with such a tone of severity as this. They were as at odds as two people could be and Archer felt his body ripple with the effort of staying in his human form.

  That task was made more difficult by how close they were to the time of the full moon, and Archer would later wonder to himself in amazement at how he managed to keep himself in control. When he was sure that he was in control, at least as well as he could manage, he spoke to Roman in low, measured tones that only made him seem more dangerous.

  “I would be very, very careful what you say next, Roman. Very careful.”

  “But don’t you see what’s happening here? She’s tearing us apart! She’s coming in between you and your family, don’t you see that?”

  “What I see is a family that’s being the same kind of unaccepting we’ve always hated the humans for, that’s what I see. I wouldn’t be in this position if you all hadn’t put me there.”

  “But Vera! She’s one of us and that—”

  “Don’t call her a bitch again, Roman. It won’t go well for you if you call her a bitch again.”

  “Fine. That girl in there attacked one of us and you know it. Try and tell me it didn’t happen.”

  “I won’t try and tell you that, just so long as you don’t try and tell me it wasn’t Vera who started it.”

  “What does that matter?”

  “Of course, it matters. What would you have her do? Just stand there and let Vera take her life? Because that would have been the alternative and you know that. Even with her fighting back the way she did, Vera almost killed her. Gram is in my camper right now trying to bring her back from the brink. Vera did that, Roman. Vera did that to the woman I love.”

  “Love? Is that what you said? You love her?”

  “I do, Roman. It’s unlike anything I’ve felt before. It’s—”

  “Like the stories.”

  “Yes.”

  “Christ. Shit. That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “But why? Why be afraid? Why does it have to be a bad thing?”

  “Because, Archer, it means nothing will ever be the same again. It means we’ll always be looking over our shoulders, even more so than we’ve already been doing.”

  “We can go off on our own.”

  “No, you can’t. We need you here and you know it.”

  “Then you’re just going to have to get used to it. All of you will because Eloise isn’t going anywhere.”

  For a minute, Archer was sure Roman was going to shove him again, or maybe just sock him in the face. Instead, he reached out and put a hand on Archer’s shoulder, then nodded his head.

  “Alright, brother. If that’s the way you want it.”

  “It’s more than the way I want it, Roman. It’s the way it has to be. There is no other way for me now. I don’t think there ever was.”

  Roman nodded again and the two of them put their foreheads together in a gesture they acted out since they were little boys. It was a familiar gesture and one that made Archer feel like things might actually turn out alright. He did not know then the things that were to come, and that was good. He knew only that he needed his brother, and that he was finally seeing the first ray of hope for the woman he couldn’t seem to stop loving.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Knock, knock. Everything alright in there?”

  Eloise kept her eyes shut tightly, curled up on Archer’s camper bed and willing whoever was standing at the door to go away. She was well now, thank god, but she found that she still grew tired very easily and was in no mood for another confrontation. In her current state, she wasn’t sure that she would survive another confrontation, at least not one that was at all similar to the one she’d found herself in with Vera.

  It wasn’t even her physical state, either. The problem with Eloise in the week following her miraculous cure at the hands of Gram was predominantly a mental one.

  If she had still been at home, Em would have told her that she had a case of the blues and needed to stop feeling so sorry for herself. Penelope would have told her a hundred good things about herself, followed by a slew of jokes, each one worse than the last until both of them collapsed into a fit of giggles.

  That was what would have happened had she still been at home, except that she was nowhere near her home now. She had no idea where she was exactly, only that she was further north in the country than she had ever been in her life. If it weren’t for Archer, she would have been entirely on her own.

  She knew that Vera had survived the attack and without needing the kind of help that she herself had required, and that was good, she supposed. What was far from good was the collective mood of the camp towards her. If she had thought it was bad before, she had been wrong. Things after the battle with Vera were downright atrocious, so much so that Eloise hadn’t even attempted to leave the camper for two days.

  The only other living soul she had interacted with was Archer, and he had plenty of chores to do to keep him busy and away from her. Because there was no more carnival to draw revenue from the gypsies had resorted to drawing odd jobs from whichever town they found themselves closest to, in order to keep them all afloat. Consequently, she found herself alone with her thoughts, which had been dark indeed since her recovery, a recovery she hadn’t had any rights to in the first place.

  Although she wanted nothing more than to stop thinking about it, Eloise hadn’t been able to stop her thoughts from returning constantly to the first moments when she had begun to regain consciousness. It had been a blinding, gut wrenching pain that had pulled her up out of the dark and the first thing she had bec
ome aware of was the sound of her own screaming. The second had been Gram’s voice and the sound of pounding on the camper’s door. Archer had been desperate to get inside and Gram had shut him down with a bark of rebuke before turning her attention back to Eloise.

  “Stop your screaming, girl. It’s not going to help you none. That’s the feeling of your body pulling itself back together and that’s no easy task. Your muscles are all torn up, one of your lungs mostly collapsed. By all rights, you shouldn’t be here anymore.”

  “Why?” Eloise had gasped, writhing in pain and struggling for each breath. “Why?”

  “Why am I helping you? I shouldn’t be, I know that much. It’s only for Archer’s sake that I’m doing the things I’m doing for you now. These herbs and words aren’t meant for you. They’re meant for my own kin.”

  Eloise had wanted to thank her for the help, whether or not she was pleased to give it, but she couldn’t get the words out. Although she fought it, she sunk back into the dark that had cradled her and when she had woken up again, it had been Archer by her side.

  Although he had confirmed that Gram had worked her magic and brought Eloise back to life again, Eloise herself couldn’t help but feel that it was all some kind of strange dream, all of it, including Archer himself. It was a disorienting feeling and one she hadn’t been able to shake. Now that she heard someone knocking at the door, she wondered if maybe her brain hadn’t clung to the feeling as some primitive form of protection.

  That sound, the tentative rapping of knuckles on the door accompanied by the sweetly uncertain girlish voice of a stranger was too real to ignore. It forced her to come back into the real world, which hadn’t been the friendliest place for her as of late. Unfortunately, the disembodied voice did not seem to want to catch onto Eloise’s desire for solitude and as if to punctuate that point the knock reverberated through the camper yet again.

  “Please, I know you’re in there. Won’t you let me in? I’m not here to hurt you, I promise. It may be difficult to believe after...well, after everything, but it’s true nonetheless.”

  The voice was right, there was not a single reason Eloise could think of to believe that anyone aside from Archer and maybe on a good day, Gram, meant her anything but harm. The only problem was, she did believe it. Whether it was the smart play or not, whether or not it was only going to get her into another awful skirmish, she believed the person standing at the door enough to rise and move to let her in.

  It was only once she stood directly in front of the door, hand poised over the handle, that she stopped. Was it possible that her belief in this stranger was born out of a need to feel less alone and nothing more? Could it be that her instinct for danger had left her completely, stranding her on this island of strange new things and people without a light to guide her?

  In short, yes. Of course, it was possible. Both her mind and her body had been put through the ringer and she was missing terribly the familiarity of home. It wasn’t enough to make her want to return there, but it very well might be enough to make her see kindness where it wasn’t really there to be had.

  “Please,” the voice spoke again, gently and with a tremor that for some reason made Eloise certain that the girl on the other side of the door was only a little more than a child. “I’ll go if you like, but I don’t want to hurt you. I want to help you, that’s all. That’s all I came here for.”

  That was it. That was enough. Having no idea whether or not it was a good idea or a terrible one, Eloise flung the door open with a manic, half crazed energy that drove her visitor back a step or two. Her heart pounded wildly in her chest while her muscles groaned in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

  With a dull shock, she realized that this was the most active she had been since Gram had healed her. Ever since then she had only lay listlessly in bed, most of the time with her face facing the back wall of the trailer and ignoring almost all signs of life around her.

  Without realizing it, Eloise had allowed Vera’s attack and the subsequent total shunning of the others in the tribe to rob her of her true self and it had only been this scrawny young girl’s coming that had been able to snap her out of it. But now that she had snapped out of it, now that she was suddenly awake after days of being half asleep at all times, she felt a frenetic sort of energy buzzing throughout her body. It was the energy of life, and when she realized that her eyes quickly welled up with tears.

  “Oh no,” her visitor cried in distress, taking yet another step backwards and giving off the impression of a frightened animal considering whether or not to run. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I can go. I’ll do that, I’ll go right now.”

  “No!” Eloise responded quickly, quickly enough to frighten the girl even more, much to her chagrin. “No, please don’t. You didn’t upset me. I think you may have saved me.”

  “I—I don’t understand,” the girl answered hesitantly, slowly moving back towards the camper nevertheless. “I don’t think I did anything like that.”

  “I know. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t. Please, won’t you come inside?”

  The girl’s name was Carmella, and she was only sixteen years old, on the verge of turning seventeen. On the one hand Eloise was shocked to hear she was even that old, having judged by her diminutive stature that she was closer to thirteen. On the other hand, however, she could have sworn the girl was older than she was by a hundred years.

  There was an almost eerie sort of calm in her words and her movement, a gentle wisdom that Eloise could only hope to someday be able to emulate. Things felt awkward between the two of them at first, what with Eloise having become sort of accustomed to being on her own, but it was immediately evident that Carmella did indeed wish to help.

  When asked why, she had delivered an answer that was simple enough but still so tender that Eloise felt herself get choked up. They were the same in almost every way, or at least that’s how Carmella saw it. All of them were outsiders so why should it matter what sort of animal it was they were able to turn into? She had felt like an outsider all of her life, sometimes even amongst her own people, who could be harsh and unforgiving.

  The last thing she wanted to see was the same thing happen to somebody else. And besides, she liked Archer. Not in a romantic way or anything so absurd as that (she blushed when assuring Eloise of this, a pretty blush that made Eloise smile), but in the way, she thought she might like a much older brother she didn’t get the chance to see a whole lot. She looked up to him, believed he had done a lot for the troupe and that he deserved a little bit of happiness.

  “But what does that have to do with helping me?”

  “What a silly question! It’s got everything to do with helping you, with making sure you’re finally welcomed!”

  “Are you sure? Because I’m not, not anymore. I’ve been starting to wonder if maybe things wouldn’t be better for Archer if I just went away, if I just went back home or…or somewhere other than here. I’ve made a total mess of things for him with the rest of his people and ever since the fight with Vera I’ve done nothing but lay around this camper like a person half-dead. Surely that’s not worth making such sacrifices for.”

  “But it is.”

  “But why?”

  “Because, you’re his person.”

  She said it so simply that it felt indisputable, as if it was a closed subject matter. In a way, that was exactly what it was. It wasn’t until later that Eloise learned from Archer of the extraordinary kind of love that existed between the two of them, after all of their lives were changed forever, but some part of her must have sensed it even then because she accepted Carmella’s words unquestionably.

  She accepted them as law, feeling a great weight she hadn’t even realized was there lift off her heart, and because she did so it was exactly that. The truth of the love she shared with Archer being made into a canon as it had now been, made her feel positively giddy and when Carmella told her of her plan to win the others over, Eloise jumped in bot
h feet forward. She and Carmella spent the rest of the day slaving away in its execution and it wasn’t until Eloise saw the sky beginning to move towards dusk that she began to feel nervous about the whole idea. Carmella, who really was wise beyond her years and could sense the hesitation, took her arm lightly and gave her a smile.

  “Believe me, this will help. It won’t make everything perfect, but it will help, OK? It’s a start, at least. That’s all you need. One foot in the door.”

  Eloise smiled back, nodded resolutely, and then opened the door to the camper. It took the two girls three trips to get the traditional meal they had spent hours making out to the communal campfire and by the time they were finished, they had amassed quite the crowd. At first it was just the young and the old, them and those who hadn’t lucked into any kind of odd job for the day, but very soon it was everyone, everyone coming home from their labor and all of them looking on in shock.