by Gregg, Kari
“I can protect myself.”
“Not here.” Lore shook his head. “Maybe not anywhere.”
He was probably right. Shane hadn’t been safe since he’d been appointed family heir in his teens. Why should this place be different? “Security on the Seskeran moon is too tight for my brothers to breach it easily.” He shivered as the wind picked up, a random gust. Cooler. Night would fall soon. “I believed if I made it through screening and into an arena—”
“They killed your first lover.”
Shane snorted. “Mason’s brothers did that. Mine couldn’t care less who I fell in love with or who was fucking me. All the families care about is that the one who rises to rule as patriarch proves himself strong. Resilient. No matter how brutal the test.” He flashed a sick smile. “Survival of the fittest. It’s how Narone works.” Tired of the infernal prodding and the depressing fate he’d fought so hard to escape, Shane shifted his hands to trace the contours of his cat’s chest. Here was where he belonged. Hard muscle under silk. “Feed me the berries you collected. Or fuck me. I don’t care which.”
Lore slid a plump berry to Shane and then looped an arm around him, dragging him back. “Stubborn.”
“But affectionate.” Shane sculpted his cat with hands that caressed. “Very affectionate.”
“I’ll never convince wardens that you’ve conquered me so they’ll let us leave the arena if we don’t talk.” The cat sighed but tightened his embrace. “Fine. Command me, then. Anything.” When Shane opened his mouth, Lore interrupted. “Not that. You’re too sore.”
Shane’s ass had been fucked so frequently in the past days—rough sex, gentle sex, animalistic rutting, and making sweet love—his stamina was gone, but fucking made the arena simpler. Basic. He didn’t have to think. When his cat touched him, Shane didn’t struggle through the haze of mating instincts to remember who he was or how he’d ended up stranded in the trees. The phantom echoes of Fallon’s screams didn’t ring in his ears, nor the hiss of the cat who’d attacked him. He could even forget he and Lore were essentially hostages while wardens unraveled the puzzle of how this Hunt, with two attacks against competitors, had gone so catastrophically wrong. None of that existed for him anymore. When Lore caressed him, all Shane could do was feel.
“Tell me what you want,” the cat said, voice purring against Shane’s throat.
He wanted to go home.
Except he didn’t.
Going home meant leaving Lore, and that was inconceivable. A night without his cat? No, Shane couldn’t bear that. Without the puma’s heat warming him, he’d be cold and dead inside—as lifeless as he’d been when he’d arrived at the screening center. Sometimes Shane believed the memory of who he’d been, hollow and empty, before the Hunt was a half-truth—Shane’s mating hormones skewing his emotions to drive him to Lore. But more and more he realized that other life was the lie, not this one. What was there to go home to? More murder attempts. More pain and death.
As much as he clung to Lore, though, he held back from the puma too. Because no matter how confused and muddled his thinking was now, he knew one absolute truth: he’d never intended to be a victor. He’d entered the Hunt to become a valued business partner and trade negotiator, not the beloved of a Mariket mate.
He just couldn’t remember why.
His head was messed up. And he did not know what he wanted.
“Anything,” Lore promised against Shane’s skin, arms so wretchedly right around him. “I’ll give you anything.”
Weakening, Shane leaned into him. “I want to feel the ground under my feet again.” Shane sensed the cat’s answer in the stiffening of his body, but that didn’t stop him. “You said security swept the arena and will keep sweeping it. Especially here, where anything sent to follow my trail would converge. They’ve found nothing, not even a trace of other animals.”
“The arenas are too large. Wardens can’t cover the whole territory.” When the cat shook his head, Shane quivered at the brush of soft fur. “Don’t ask me to risk you. I can’t.”
Shane flattened his fingers in gluttonous appreciation over Lore’s pec. “Outside the arena, the forest floor is too dangerous,” he said.
“You fear losing the ability to move freely, but my tribe has already begun redesigning my home for your comfort.” His puma’s sinuous tail stroked Shane’s thigh. “You’ll have platforms and zip lines. Rope bridges. Ladders and pulleys.”
“I won’t ever ask again.” Shane lifted his chin, meeting his cat’s gaze. “Just one last time. One final chase. Please.”
Lore’s odd, cat-yellow eyes narrowed.
Shane held his breath. Even he recognized that by requesting a trip to the forest floor he anticipated he’d never see again, he had all but formally ceded that he was in truth Lore’s victor. He needed to stand on the ground again—to say good-bye to it and to his old life. Before accepting his future with Lore.
“All right,” the cat said.
“Lore!” a voice rang out from the trees below them. “I’m coming up. Don’t attack, for I’ve a human of my own.”
Lore’s muscles, pressed close, tautened. Shane stiffened as well. He hated the cats. Well, not his cat, but other cats. Even the med techs sent to care for him jangled Shane’s nerves, and the appearance of wardens was never a good sign. Questions. Always so many questions. As though he’d speak to them? Damn creatures had gotten him into this mess. They could interrogate him about his kin all they wanted, but his brothers’ bloodlust had been satisfied by Shane’s sacrifice in the Hunt. They wouldn’t have maneuvered to kill him again unless he’d been evaced early. Meanwhile, if Lore hadn’t mated him, drawing attention to Shane, the feral cat would’ve never hunted him or set free the rogue that had almost killed Fallon.
Why could none of them see that?
Shane firmed his grip in the cat’s fur, the scratch of claws as the foreign cat climbed to them roiling anxiously in his guts.
Rubbing his cheek against the crown of Shane’s head, Lore relaxed. “Easy. Maero is a friend.”
Obviously on Mariket that meant something. Must be nice. Shane simply shoved his face into the crook of Lore’s neck.
“That’s far enough,” Lore said with a throaty growl.
Or maybe friendships were just as dangerous here. At least while mating.
“What do you want?” Lore asked.
When Shane peeked, the other cat—another puma, inky dark in contrast to Lore’s gold—nodded at him. “Wardens reported your human was doing well, the only cause for concern now how quickly you and he were mating each other. But I didn’t believe them.”
Lore stroked Shane’s hip, staring at the other cat for long moments. “What do you want?” he repeated.
Maero leaned on a branch several leaps away, not poised to jump, but with sagging shoulders and flattening ears. “Fallon is my victor,” he said.
Shane jolted in Lore’s embrace. “Congratulations,” Lore replied, squeezing tighter still.
The other cat laughed, a grieved and hopeless sound. “He isn’t healing.” He shifted a coldly assessing glance at Shane, shriveling Shane’s balls, then stared at Lore again. “Physically, his wounds are mending.” Maero tapped a finger to his temple. “But he is broken. Wardens believe the damage may be too severe. They want to evac him.”
“I’m sorry,” Lore said, purring as Shane melted into him, equal parts fear and relief nigh overwhelming. Survival of the fittest didn’t just govern Narone. It ruled the Hunt too. Everyone, cat or competitor, understood that. If Fallon was too mentally weak to mate, perhaps evacing the poor bastard from the arena was kinder.
Shaking his head, Shane blinked. What the hells?
If wardens were considering evacing Fallon, the man had won. Not Shane. Unlike Fallon, Shane would remain in the forests of Mariket, never to be seen again unless publicity from previous victors was required to spur offworlders to compete in the next Hunt. Having come so near to mating a cat, Fallon had earned a starring role
in trade negotiations later and would win concessions for his home planet, which would reward him with lavish gifts and higher social standing.
Shane’s reward was his cat. Only his cat.
Who was everything. More than riches. More than social status and all the power of Narone aristocracy combined. Maybe more than never walking the ground again. More than any safety that didn’t include Lore.
Confusion balled inside Shane, the conflicting emotions—desire, despair—prodding him to hang on to his cat all the more fiercely.
“I may yet save Fallon,” Maero said, tail twitching with his agitation to disturb the leaves behind him. “He’s convinced the arena isn’t safe, that we lie to him. He expects more rogue predators to attack him, and he’s terrified to mate me for fear another cat will take him away.” He scowled at Shane. “He thinks your human is dead.”
“But…” Shane gaped at Maero. “Why?”
“Your screams, Precious.” Lore lifted Shane’s chin with two fingers and kissed Shane’s brow. “He heard your screams.”
“The mating heat is staggering,” Maero said. “You know it’s true. The hormones and nanotechnology they inject into us that allows us to mate offworlders…rattles us. And them. We all go a little crazy.”
Smiling, Lore kissed Shane again. “Or a lot crazy.”
Maero nodded. “Paranoia is a common side effect until mating impulses have steadied. Spikes can include violence—”
“Which is why competitors fight one another. And us.”
“—possessiveness, secrecy, aggressive sexuality, and distrust.”
Shane craved Lore’s mouth on him so much he squirmed. More likely he jittered because the cacophony of sensations and emotions that had rushed through him and invaded him still had been clinically listed as an unfortunate side effect of…whatever the cats had done to him to prep him for the Hunt as well as what they’d injected into him since.
The compulsive pull drawing him and Lore together wasn’t just drugs, hormones, and sex, though. Not anymore. It couldn’t be.
“Fallon’s responses are more intense, but still within acceptable ranges if he can be swayed to trust me as your human relies on you. The mating can be salvaged.”
Lore sighed against Shane’s lips. “Lust can be manufactured, but not trust. Not love. That is the hallmark of a true victor.”
“I’ve mated him, and he’s accepted me. Fallon is mine,” the other cat hissed.
Shane shuddered at the tensing of the black puma’s muscles, the flattened ears, but especially at the furious yet fearful glint in Maero’s odd cat eyes. Even now Lore’s facial expressions confounded Shane. He was still learning to read his lover, to respond to the millions of cues that would tell Shane what the socially awkward cat couldn’t. But the chaotic emotion in Maero was transparent, the hurt fresh and vibrant.
Like Shane, Fallon had been injured in the twin attacks from the feral cat and the rogue beast. By the little wardens had said, Shane realized the other human who had become his ally had been wounded far more grievously than Shane, who had Lore to comfort and care for him. Whom Shane trusted to do that above and beyond all else.
Fallon had nothing. Just pain. Terror. The madness of a Hunt gone wrong that only his lover could ease.
The man Shane had hoped to call his friend was winning the Hunt…by losing.
They had to help him.
“What do you want us to do?” Shane dared to ask, shoving down twitchy anxiety and more fear than he wanted to confess.
Maero’s tail jerked. “Visit him.”
The arm curled around Shane stiffened to iron, Shane’s world shifting tumultuously as Lore dragged him away from the other cat.
“Show Fallon you’re alive, that I have not lied,” Maero said, his stare begging Shane rather than Lore over the low, threatening rumble that vibrated Lore’s chest. “Help me prove that he can trust in me.”
“Your human was too damaged for a den in the trees. He’s still on the ground,” Lore snarled, claws unsheathing.
“Your human would be well guarded by the pair of us and a team of wardens assigned to Fallon too. Your mate couldn’t be more thoroughly protected.” The other cat frowned. “Your heat is intensifying, but those instincts are mistaken, Lore.”
“My instincts seduced a victor.” Lore didn’t stop the growling retreat until he’d leaped to another tree, widening the distance between them and the black puma. “You ask too much.”
“No, this is perfect,” Shane said, swiveling his gaze to his cat as eager joy lit him up. “If we meet on the forest floor, two of you will sweep the area, two cats rather than one defending the ground. Wardens will be everywhere to make sure nothing sneaks through. You just promised to give me my last time on the ground anyway.”
Lore sneered at Maero. “They put you up to this. They won’t stop until they identify who breached arena defenses and how, to hells with anything else. Including our humans.” His claws pricked Shane’s vulnerable stomach, pancaking him against his cat’s soft fur. “You may be desperate enough to listen to wardens, but I won’t endanger Shane.”
“Yes. You will,” Shane said, voice steely. “I’m not leaving the arena until I’ve been to the forest floor again. The safest way to do that is with Fallon.”
“They’re using you as bait!”
“I’ve had a target on my back my whole life.” Shane’s jaw jutted. “What else is new? We’re doing this.”
Maero hooted in amusement. “He is your victor, then.”
Stroking Shane’s belly, dipping to nuzzle his neck, Lore glared at the other cat. Glared at Shane too. Though his embrace tightened, Lore shuddered. “Shut up.”
Chapter Six
“Never take your eyes off your enemies. The trick is figuring out—and remembering—who they are.”
~ Shane West
Midseason blackout
Shane wasn’t sure how much time had passed since the Hunt began, but he’d been in the canopy long enough to resist the reflexive flinch at being draped over Lore’s back. The blur of green leaves no longer dizzied him. He’d learned to keep his body loose to absorb the jar of each landing as they soared from limb to limb. His fingers were familiar with where best to cling to warm fur to hang on to Lore as they jumped. One day he’d grow more confident moving in the upper reaches of the canopy with zip lines, rope bridges, and the other systems the cats had devised for the safety of offworld mates deep inside Mariket, but falling didn’t scare him anymore.
His heart still galloped, though.
Because this time Lore was descending. To the forest floor.
If Shane shut his eyes, he could feel soft earth under his feet and remember the squish of mud between his toes. The memory of ground that didn’t shake or sway taunted him. He would be able to run again, trusting that the earth wouldn’t betray him with a sudden and unexpected lurch. He’d never jump as gracefully as his cat, but eventually he wouldn’t need to concentrate so hard to maintain his balance in the treetops. After he’d mastered that skill, when his hair was gray and his body withered, when he’d forgotten the smell of rotting mulch and the gurgle of fresh water bubbling from a spring, maybe then he wouldn’t crave the solid comfort of dirt under the soles of his feet. Right now, he still desired the ground, though, and in a few moments he’d have it.
Shane was a realist. As the earth zipped by beneath them so close he spied occasional flashes of animals scurrying, he recognized the visit with Fallon for what it was—his surrender.
Lore’s too.
Regardless of Lore’s friendship with Maero, Fallon’s disintegrating mental stability was the least of Lore’s worries, and his cat trusted the Hunt’s wardens as much as Shane did, which was not at all. Lore cared only for Shane. The ground represented danger to cats even in security-shielded arenas where Mariket’s most lethal predators had been cleared. A lifetime of danger had programmed Lore to view the earth as a place of dread. Besides, if one rogue beast could penetrate an arena’s def
enses, another predator could be loosed just as easily. Nothing would convince Lore to gamble his mate’s life on such perilous ground.
Except love.
Lore had agreed to this visit to please Shane. To seduce him. To love him, not just with the push of his body into Shane’s or with the nuts, greens, and berries Lore foraged. The cat had learned physical intimacy wasn’t enough. A dry recitation of Shane’s favorite color or a stilted discussion about his doomed career goals wouldn’t turn the trick either. Instead the wily cat had pinpointed the one act that would melt Shane’s heart.
He craved the earth.
One last time.
He hadn’t declared Lore his mate yet. Shane hadn’t been removed from the arena or ensconced with the felid tribe where Lore had made his home. Lore must understand that would happen, though. Soon. Shane had held out as long as he could, but his will crumbled whenever Lore held him, every time the cat stared at him. He gave in to Lore, sharing pieces of himself, filling the cold and empty void inside him. No matter how fiercely Shane struggled between his desire to stay forever with his cat and the life he’d fought so hard for, choosing Lore was a foregone conclusion. Surrender was just a matter of when.
He was Lore’s victor. Most of the time Shane was happy about that. He craved Lore too—more than anything. More than the earth.
Once Shane was outside the arena, walking on the ground again would be impossible. The cat’s biological advantages and inherent predatory skill hadn’t surpassed the native animals of Mariket that had claimed the forest floor as theirs alone—the cats lived in the tree canopy. They descended to the ground to hunt game to trade offworld and only with the greatest caution. Offworld mates permitted on the forest floor? Never.
After Shane mated he wouldn’t see the earth again.
Lore would walk with him, smell the dirt, see tracks of the animals. Shane had managed to wheedle a promise that Lore would hunt him after Shane had reassured Fallon. Lore would chase Shane. Fuck him. And after, they’d bathe together in the pond, splashing among the lilies without blood spoiling the water. He wanted Lore to make love to him there with the moss that had packed his wounds as his cushion, with no one to bother them or intrude. Just them. Only him and Lore. Shane wanted to replace the terror and pain of his last time on the ground with something good, sweet, and right. Those were the final memories he wanted of the earth, what would make him smile during the forever he’d spend with his cat high in the trees—happy and loved.