by Meg Ripley
Charlie moaned throatily, thrusting his heavy member between the spasming walls of her pussy and raking his blunt nails down the slick skin of Natalie’s back as he exploded inside of her. Her hips rose emphatically a few more times, and she cried out as he sank against her, covered in sweat. He thrust against her once, twice, a third time, then lay still as her body cooled and grew quiet. For a long time, he lay listening to her heartbeat with one ear pressed against her back, monitoring the racing pulse behind her shoulder blades.
“Charlie?” Natalie said sheepishly. “I think it worked.”
Charlie laughed. “You can’t tell yet,” he said lightly.
“I mean it,” Natalie insisted, her hesitancy falling away into dreamy certainty. “I know this is gonna work. And she’ll be strong. I know it.”
Charlie pressed his lips to her neck and peered at the side of her face. “Okay,” he said. “You’re the boss, after all.”
5
When he woke, he opened his eyes immediately, then slammed his lids shut when he saw they were still underground. Charlie had slid onto the floor, but Ali hadn’t bothered to tie him up, and his heart raced briefly in celebration. As his pulse sped, his system cleared away the rest of the drug, and he twitched and curled one finger experimentally; then he heard Ali’s voice, and he focused on quieting his heart to hear more clearly. He could vaguely see her figure pacing around in front of the open steel door, with a newly healed Natalie glaring at her in chains from the floor. Ali must have found a way to hear her without letting her shift. He wondered if she was drugged too.
“…Think we wouldn’t find a way to bug your stupid houses,” she was saying gleefully. “God, you were so wrong there. You think steel can stop the kind of tech we use? Brainless. Anyway, it doesn’t matter that little Theodore hasn’t shown up; I can kill your baby myself, and I’ll kill your husband as well. I can’t figure out which of you is the source of power, so I’ll have to off you both. Usually the prides we find have clear signs—one mate is clairvoyant or has super speed or can manipulate an element, like fire. Ariel seems to be able to manipulate earth and mineral. I’m going to get creative with her.” Her nonchalance was chilling.
Charlie’s mind raced, and he debated whether or not he should try to get up. Ali would almost certainly hear him crossing the plastic, and that would put Natalie in harm’s way after she dispatched of him. If he could find a way to distract her, he could buy time to launch himself twenty feet and take her out, but with her fully aware, it wasn’t a sure enough move.
“You don’t see that I’m doing our kind a favor,” Ali was saying, and she seemed to be stalling in case whoever Theodore was showed up. Charlie assumed it was the short blonde man from the tail and the airport. “You attaining these powers is a sign that we’re reaching a ceiling of sorts. Shifters used to be gods, golden idols who looked down on every other being on Earth.” Her voice was dripping with admiration, and Charlie was revolted at her worshipful tone. “They were perfect, so the other gods destroyed them for it. It ended an era, and shifters had to crawl back up again from the bowels of mankind.” Ari stopped pacing and peered down at Natalie’s face, and her words were spiteful and bitter. “I won’t be made to writhe on my belly like a worm or bitch in heat. I won’t have our kind set back just when we are starting to become diverse and unstoppable again!” Ari reached behind her and pulled out a breathtakingly sharp knife about as long as her forearm, and she cast a final look toward the door.
It’s now or never, Charlie realized. How will I do this?
Then he remembered Ali’s words—shifters were showing signs of new powers in the targeted prides. Hadn’t something baffling happened earlier, something that shouldn’t have been possible at all? Charlie held his eyes wide and looked at Natalie, who was looking daggers at Ali from her place on her knees. He focused all of his strength and energy into regaining the link between him and his wife, and desperately thought as hard as he could.
Nat, I’m awake, and I need you to distract this bitch so I can take her out!
Her brown eyes widened ever so slightly, but she didn’t move. He was gathering energy to shout again when her voice sounded in his head, clear as day and as irresistible as any order he’d ever been given.
Why don’t YOU distract her for ME, tough guy?
He drew a deep breath and rose at the same time, and he saw Ali shift her weight and move toward the sudden noise behind her. Time seemed to slow dramatically; he saw each movement dragged out over space as he ran, so that by the time she locked eyes with him and moved to raise her knife, he had covered ten feet of space between them. Charlie raised his right hand, feeling the red haze of his beast swell in his body as he shifted a deep brown paw bigger than Ali’s human head and sent it toward her neck with his black claws outstretched. He saw the confusion register in her face the moment before Natalie’s paw burst through her chest from behind, shattering her ribcage and taking out a chunk of her beating heart while Ali’s mouth was still open in shock. Charlie closed the space and closed his shifted paw around the flesh of her throat, crushing her vertebrae between the pads of his fingers as her body crumpled to the floor.
Her body lay in a ruined mess between them, a scarlet pool rapidly growing around her broken form. Charlie kept looking from her head—nearly completely separated from her body—and her chest, which was mostly dripping from Natalie’s hand. He felt numb, but Natalie’s shoulders were beginning to shake. He stepped over Ali’s body and unshifted his hand, reaching for her to pull her into his arms.
When he locked his arms around her, he finally realized she was laughing.
“What’s so funny?” he asked uncertainly. All he could feel was an impossible mixture of panic and relief.
“Nothing,” Natalie admitted, and he felt tears soak through the fabric of his shirt. “I just…love you so much.” He had a feeling she wanted to say more, but it was lost in her uncontrollable giggling.
Charlie smiled and gingerly kissed the top of her blood-soaked head. I love you, too.
6
In the days that followed, the human residents of Sierra Leandra all returned from mysterious vacations or snapped out of a light trance, and they couldn’t seem to agree on what had caused all the damage in town. A lot of it was quickly repaired with the help of the remaining lions, and no one had to explain away any of the painful absences caused by the rash of violence the Golden Claws had wrought—because none of the humans noticed a thing.
“They’ve been dosing the humans with some kind of drug so they would stay docile and out of the way, or at least open to suggestion,” a recovered Evan said in their newly cleaned up living room days after the lions conducted a private investigation. “Once the leader was gone, all the henchmen moved out real quick. It actually seems like they don’t have it down to an exact science, drugging people. I woke up like five minutes after Ali and the big guy left.” He shivered, and Ariel slipped an arm around his neck and kissed his cheek. They had been so close to death, and had escaped based on mostly luck. They both seemed to need more contact after the ordeal; Charlie supposed they all did.
“So, we’re safe?” Ariel asked again. It was a question their community was asking a lot—when they dropped by to check on Natalie, when Charlie visited his missing pride mate’s families, at funeral and wakes; it was the one question that no one tired of hearing an affirmative answer to every few moments.
“We’re safe,” Natalie said. “And even better, we’re growing stronger. Susan Doyle can predict things a few hours into the future, Charlie and I can communicate with our minds, and Ariel, you can lift almost five hundred pounds now.”
Ariel blushed, her flaming red hair accentuating the scarlet of her cheeks. “Yeah. But I don’t know how useful it’ll be for everyone. Not like your healing,” she muttered. “It’s useful being able to share healing powers.”
“You’re far more useful than you give yourself credit for,” Natalie assured her best friend, smiling warm
ly at her from her recliner. “Besides, you don’t even know what I have planned.”
Evan sat up straighter at her words. “Plans?”
Natalie looked at Charlie for confirmation and nodded. “We’re going to help other prides reach their potential while we reach for ours,” she said, and the joy was bursting through every word. She held her palm against her stomach as she spoke, and Charlie felt his heart swell and lighten as she told their friends what she’d told him. “This new era those scumbags were afraid of…let’s go for it. Let’s find out what our potential is. Lions are such a small group nationwide; wouldn’t it be wonderful to strengthen and rally around this cause?” Her golden-brown skin was bright and flushed, and her words were impossibly buoyant. “I don’t think it’s just us; I think we can all do it, and I think we owe it to other prides to let them know.” She looked from Evan to Ariel, encouraged by the growing smiles on their faces. Charlie was already there, high on the spirt of togetherness with her. She pressed her hand more firmly against her stomach; they knew now that the baby really was the link between them, the reason for their power.
“So, what do you say?” Natalie asked. “I want to make history. I want to make the best available for everyone. Are you ready?”
“Ready!” Evan cheered, carried away by passion.
“Ready!” Ariel echoed, bouncing in her seat.
Natalie turned to her mate, pure happiness radiating from her determined features. She slipped her hand against his cheek, her brown eyes consumed with love. Ready?
Charlie grabbed her hand and sent a gentle pulse of dizzying energy into her palm as he pressed his jaw firmly against it and answered her, with a single word packed with unwavering devotion: Ready!
Part II
A Shift In Power
“Okay, what’s our final count?”
Thomas looked up from the stack of papers fanned out on the glass table before him and removed his glasses, bleakly rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Seven buildings irreparably damaged. Two will have to be shut down for expedited repairs. Three we can keep operational during cleanup, but two we’re going to need to pull down and rebuild. Frank’s Tires and the pie shop just aren’t capable of standing for repairs.”
Evan groaned and shook his head, his dark-skinned features finally showing his agitation after two hours of brainstorming. “Frank’s wall can’t be fixed right now without being remodeled?”
“It’s load-bearing,” Thomas answered. “It’s gonna have to come down entirely. I mean, it’s going to come down one way or another. I’d just rather it be by choice, and not on Frank’s head one afternoon.”
Evan leaned back in his wicker chair and nodded, his eyes still hidden behind his mirrored shades. Thomas knew the lion had been having trouble keeping his eyes from looking too wild—after fighting off the rogue lioness who tried to pick off their pride, his emotions had been unpredictable, even something approaching volatile. Evan was normally calm, collected, stoic: it was part of the reason why he was in the upper levels of their pride as far as status in the pack. The last few weeks, he and his wife Ariel had been a little jumpier and seemed to need far more space, choosing to only leave their home during mandatory meetings and joint clean-up efforts. He was finally settling back into his own skin, but his pupils kept slipping into the distinctive cat’s eye shape and vivid hue that marked lion shifters. Thomas didn’t mind, but the humans were still dropping by their respective homes unannounced, eager to find out when they could continue with their business, and scaring one of them would be bad for all of them.
The sun was gone, and thanks to the ordeal in the previous weeks, many of Sierra Leandra’s brighter lights were off; this left the sky astoundingly clear and dark, holding more stars than Thomas even thought they could see without leaving the city. His backyard was a sprawling square of lush greenery that sloped downward and connected with a field in the distance, eventually turning into farmland miles beyond that. Susanna’s rose bushes were in full bloom, bursting below the window sill to their right and glimmering condensation under the light of the stars. Despite being surrounded by such undeniable beauty, Thomas couldn’t shake his grim mood.
“It’s going to take weeks to get the pie shop back up and running, even though her shop is small,” Thomas continued wearily. “I called some of my relatives in London, and they’ll lend us a hand.”
“The London Council approved our request?” Evan asked, sitting up straighter in her chair. Lion shifters were close-knit regardless of distance, simply because they took shifter solidarity seriously, but international affairs were often muddied by cultural differences. The English Council was notoriously isolationist, only sending aid in the event of clear emergencies—usually meaning all-out war.
“They didn’t,” Thomas admitted. “I really do have relatives that can help us in London, five or six at this point. Half are shifters, and the other half are just good sports. They’ll add to our numbers, maybe keep all of work down to under a month.”
“Good thinking,” Evan said, and his tone showed how impressed he was. Thomas smiled; coming from Evan, this was a round of applause.
“I’m happy to be useful,” he said as he put his glasses back on. “You kept Susanna and I calm while that…monster was in our neighborhood. I wish I hadn’t been so hysterical.” Thomas dropped his eyes as shame washed over him. He’d nearly passed out from breathing so hard.
“The front line isn’t where you’re used to being,” Evan reminded him. “You’re a diplomat and a medic. That’s always been your role, and you’re better than anyone else.”
He stood up, and Thomas was thankful Evan was wearing his sunglasses; he was sure he was blushing furiously. “Thank you,” he said awkwardly. “That means a lot to me.”
Evan shot him a brief smile and nodded. “Ariel is making steak. I should get going. I’ll see you at the meeting tomorrow?”
“Absolutely,” Thomas confirmed. Evan touched the heel of his hand to Thomas’ jaw in a quick gesture of affection and left before the other man could react; he wasn’t quite sure how he should react to what was—for Evan—an extreme level of affection toward he and Susanna. It hadn’t just been that day, or just Evan; Ariel kept sending cupcakes over to them, decorated with cute candy hearts or short, fat squares of chocolate. Julio had offered to mow their lawn each week, and even Natalie, their matriarch, kept inviting them over for dinner. He supposed they were all in need of more company than usual, but he also thought they were treating the two of them more fragile simply because they thought they needed to be sheltered.
Thomas wanted to be upset about this suspicion, but the truth was that Susanna was having a hard time dealing with being attacked on their own turf. In the five years since they’d committed themselves to each other, she’d seen active duty in their marine unit, while he had never even held a gun past training. She was home now—for good, once her psychologist officially diagnosed her with clinical depression and PTSD. Though the United States deemed her unfit for service, the pride never made her feel useless or broken; however, these last few weeks especially they made her feel like a live grenade: tiptoeing around her, couching their speech in euphemisms and gentle language, and just generally behaving as though she were a downed wire.
“We don’t want to rush you,” Natalie explained one evening after Susanna angrily asked how long they were going to keep this up. “Please understand, none of us are trying to make you feel weak. We know how strong you are, but we all need space right now, and we appreciate that you might need more than us.”
After that, she’d become so frustrated that she wasn’t able to articulate her feelings, so she was choosing to sit out non-mandatory meetings for a while. Seeing the damage done to the humans’ property especially upset her, since Susanna was the only member of the pack who had been turned into a lion, and not born as one, meaning she actually had human family in town. Thomas heard her moving through the house after Evan exited through the front, and he turned his e
yes toward the sliding glass door while Susanna walked out onto the patio, holding what looked to be a very stiff drink. Her short black hair was cut just above her shoulders, and it was still wavy and damp from the shower. The porch light made her light brown skin look more pale than usual. Her emerald eyes darkened briefly as they caught sight of the estimates and reports on the table, but she smiled when she met Thomas’ gaze.
“Evening, Sargent,” Thomas quipped, propping his long legs up on the table, so that his feet conveniently covered most of the plans. “You were right, by the way. It’s cooled down quite a bit.”
“Mm.” Susanna sat in the wicker chair that Evan had occupied only moments before, tucking her slim, muscled legs underneath her as she started to sip her whiskey. “So, the reports were bad?”
Thomas balked. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about that! How do you know if the reports were bad?”
Susanna laughed, a jagged, melodious sound that still made his spine tingle pleasantly whenever he heard it. “Your accent got much stronger, so I already know it’s bad. I guess you’re more upset than you realized.”
Thomas swore under his breath. “Damn my posh upbringing. You’d think twenty years in Southern California would tame it a bit more, but alas.” He smiled and pulled his legs off the table, gathering the papers into a neat stack in one swift movement. “You know, it’s not fair that I have a tell for my anger and you don’t.”
“I don’t think it’s fair that I have a tell in general, and you don’t,” Susanna shot back, a playful smile spreading on her lips. Her tight green T-shirt was flecked with moisture, mostly likely from making her drink. “I can’t ever remember to avoid rubbing my eyebrows when I’m nervous. At least you might be able to force an American accent eventually.”