Feline The Love
River’s Edge Shifters #2
Lorelei M. Hart
Aria Grace
Surrendered Press
Surrendered Press
Feline The Love
Copyright © 2020 by Lorelei M. Hart & Aria Grace
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
One
Leo
I stripped my clothes and called forth my cat. I’d been in my skin for too many days and needed to stretch my legs and catch a mouse or two. It was less than ideal to leave my first-floor window open enough for me to climb through, but what else could I do? As crazy as the city was, people would notice if I went outside naked. No, that probably wasn’t true, but they might notice the naked man turning into an animal.
Maybe.
Cities were weird like that.
And I actually thought city life might be for me.
I shimmied out the window and jumped down onto the concrete sidewalk. There were benefits to having an apartment in the back of the building, even if everyone, including the landlords, thought otherwise. They put all the fancy amenities, along with their higher rents, on the upper levels. And by fancy amenities, I meant a full-sized fridge.
This was most definitely not the life I anticipated while growing up in the fiercest lion pride in North America. Not once in all my pre-shift years did I suspect I was going to be any different than my fathers. Why would I? Not a single member of the pride ever had been, the whole recessive gene thing previously considered more of a fairy tale than science.
I even called my inner cat Lion. And he was strong—still was. He just didn’t come with the huge body to go along with it.
When my first shift came and out popped my cat, the disappointment was clear on their faces. I was meant to be tough, strong, ferocious, and potentially the next alpha of the pride. Instead, I was a house cat. An everyday, run-of-the-mill kitty. And not even one of those huge cats that eat ex-husbands.
Which is why leaving the pride had been the right choice. My only choice, really. I’d been shunned from my first shift, and what kind of a life was that? What kind of life was working from home and sneaking around to let your cat free?
Moving to the city? That choice...not so right. But I was here, and I was making it work...ish.
My feet hit the pavement with a soft thud, and I scurried away from the window, avoiding the urine-soaked puddles as I went. My cat was on a mission. Operation: Hunt the Rat. At least the city was good for that. Rats were practically everywhere—everywhere except my building. We managed to deal with them my first year there.
Five years.
I’d been here five years. It was beginning to feel like it was time for a change.
Moving here, I expected a lot of different challenges from my life with the pride. I wouldn’t have the structured safety nets, the comfort of being with other shifters, or the freedom to not have to hide who I was, and...maybe that was it. The longer I was away from them, the less I remembered why it was so hard to leave in the first place.
Once I got here, I realized those differences weren’t so internal. There were more physical dangers for me to worry about, like cars to dodge and recognizing the people who were animals but not all in the shifter way. I knew I’d have to hide who I was, of course. But what I hadn't expected was that my biggest danger wouldn't come from those hardened by city life or the vehicles they drove. Nope. They would come in the form of little old ladies who thought they had to save the world.
By saving the world, I mean they liked to trap the “adorable stray kitties” and bring them to the shelter. I had more than one close call, including escaping in the shelter’s parking lot as some blue-hair tried to get me out of her car. I still got chills just thinking about it, knowing full well the first course of action was always a neuter.
Now I sort of knew the areas to avoid people who were helpful, but it took some trial and error. Spoiler alert, adult clubs are just as likely to try to rescue a stray animal as little old ladies with nothing to do. So, when I needed to hunt, I stuck to hanging out behind galleries, businesses that were closed permanently, and some of the seedier neighborhoods people avoided after dark. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked for me.
Of course, the occasional homeless person would want to say hello. I usually let them pet me, as demeaning as most of my pride probably would’ve thought it was. Their lives were hard enough without being rejected by a cat. If I could give them even a tiny bit of happiness, there was no reason not to.
I turned down my new favorite alley. They had done some renovating of one of the buildings and all the rats scurried to find new homes, making it ideal hunting territory. City hunting required different skills than hunting in the wild. Here, I looked for things humans left behind, such as their garbage. In the wild, I looked for footprints and grasses that had been brushed aside.
It kept my cat on his toes, which was good since he was cooped up far too often.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement behind the dumpster and got ready to pounce. It was a larger shadow than I usually saw in this part of the city, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a skunk. No one needs that, and for some reason, they had been more prevalent the past couple of months.
Behind me, a door opened, but I ignored it. Chances were it was someone going out for the night, and they wouldn’t even see me.
“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty. Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty.”
Fuck, I was wrong. They were out there for me.
I snapped around to take in the full picture and saw a woman standing there with a dish of what smelled like tuna in her hand. But she wasn’t the one who worried me. It was the man next to her with a laundry basket behind his back.
“Here, sweet girl,” she called. “You're a pretty girl, aren’t you?” She ducked down and set the dish on the floor as the man stepped closer to her side.
“You really need to have a Mom and Papa take care of you. We can't have you roaming around all those cars. And there are some bad people,” she whispered, talking to me like I could understand. Granted, I could understand her, but she had no way of knowing that. Heck, she thought I was a girl because...I’m a cat. “Let us help you find a new home.”
I looked back to the dumpster to see if there was a way out behind it instead of running past the man who was getting ready to lunge at me with his makeshift cage. The gate was closed but not bolted. I decided to chance it, taking off as fast as my feet could carry me. The woman continued to call me while the man told her he was right and the plan was doomed from the beginning.
I snuck through the fencing and opted to go straight home. Fuck the hunting. Fuck the city. Fuck the people who thought they were helping.
It was official. I was done with city life. How I managed this long was a freaking miracle. I was just too damn tired. Tired of not being able to run free. Tired of hiding who I was even in my own home, needing my shades drawn and a fake litter box just in case someone stopped by, which they never did but with landlords you never knew. Sure, there were nights I chose to sleep in a ball on my own pillow instead of as a man, but that just wasn’t the kind of life I longed for.
I climbed back in my window, shifted in my bedroom in case someone was looking, then locke
d the window tight and pulled the shades. After a quick shower to get the scent of the city off me, I climbed into bed with my laptop. I’d been thinking about moving for a while but the fear of big changes kept getting in my way. But tonight kinda sealed the deal.
I needed to get out of here.
I pulled up a real estate site on my laptop and put in the criteria for the kind of place I was looking for: Riverfront property with lots of acreage. That was pretty much it. I didn’t even choose a location. I had nothing tying me to any particular town.
Over three thousand properties met my criteria, and I filtered the results by price—lowest to highest. I was doing well financially, saving a lot of money each month thanks to my low-rent apartment and lack of social life. And I also had the money my parents gave me when I left the pride—not out of desire to do so, but out of tradition. Of course, it was meant to be a gift to a lion’s new pride when he mated. Unfortunately, I met none of those criteria, but it was still nice to have a safety net in case I needed it. It was even nicer that I hadn’t needed to touch one penny so far, and I wasn’t about to change that by purchasing a property out of my price range.
I needed something that would give my cat freedom to roam, not anything fancy or pretentious.
The first few places that popped up were mislabeled and were actually rental properties. They were cute enough, but if they were renting for prices that got confused with sales prices, then they really weren't what I needed or could afford. Besides that, rentals came with landlords taking away some of the freedom I’d been hoping to find.
I scrolled past those and the listings that were basically land with a hunting shack they were calling a house. One such shack was only two hundred square feet and had no windows. It wasn’t even functional enough to qualify as one of those fancy new tiny homes.
Then there were four that had clauses saying the buyer would need to sign a waiver due to possible contaminants. I was a hard pass on those.
But then I saw one with a gorgeous river out back, outside of the house's view.
As is—has potential.
The words should’ve sent me scrolling. Who wants potential when they could have move-in-ready splendor? Me, apparently, because I couldn’t move past the listing. It had the acreage I wanted, the home was unseen by the road, and the price was low enough that fixing the as is parts couldn’t be that bad...probably.
I clicked on the pictures over and over again. It didn't go unnoticed that most of them were of the outdoors and not of the house. The house was either dated or needed major attention. But I could work with that. Asbestos mold waivers...not so much, but wiring and sheet rock...I could handle. I’d probably even enjoy it.
It was close enough to the city that if I had to drive in for a work meeting, I could. But since I was telecommuting 99% of the time anyway, I didn't see that as being a huge issue.
I filled out the interest form, and was surprised to get an immediate response back. But then again, real estate was a eat-what-you-kill career, so people had to act fast. As a cat myself, I kind of respected that.
The email stated the house was currently being looked at, and if I wanted to make an appointment to see it, I should do so sooner rather than later.
I doubted that was true. It sounded more like a sales technique than reality...but what if it was true...
So, I did what any rational person would do.
I submitted a full-price offer.
Two
Ron
“What brings you here today?” Jase came out onto the porch with sweet Angeline, who was fidgeting to get down, in his arms. She wasn’t in his arms for long, though. Now that she found her legs, she was bound and determined to use them even if she fell more often than not.
“I just thought I'd stop by and say hi to Lux.” Lux bolted off the porch and straight to me at the sound of his name. I had an affinity for that cat, three-legged and all. He’d just wormed his way into my heart. “You remind me of Grandma Angeline.” I scooped him into my arms. August’s grandma held a kindness I’d never seen in another person. I missed her, and my visits to Lux were more about that than anything else.
August and Jase were doing an amazing job keeping her legacy alive, and little Angeline lit up the room with her grandmother’s smile.
Lux jumped from my arms as baby Angeline decided to make her way over to me on her toddling legs. “When did you become such a big girl?”
She giggled and it was a beautiful sound. She stopped in front of me with her arms up, so I picked her up, settling her on my shoulders.
At one point, I had thought I would get married, have 3.5 kids, and live the good life. That didn't quite work out.
My life was hardly what you called awful, but the getting married thing just hadn’t happened. Small towns had small populations. It was basic math. And sadly, in this small population, the right person, the one I’d hoped to share my life with, just wasn’t here. And yes, I believed in one true love and all that, which didn’t help matters.
But why settle down with an omega you didn’t adore?
If I wanted my dream life, I had to give up my home, my job, and my friends to try to find someone in another town. But I wasn’t willing to give up all the good I had now for a someday-maybe. I just needed to accept the fact that it was okay to be alone. I was almost there.
Most days it didn't bother me.
Some days, like today, it seemed like a little splinter that you couldn't find, and didn't really bother you, except for when it suddenly annoyed you a little bit. That's what it was like today.
“You sure you don't want some tea?” August came out and joined his husband with a box of tea in his hand.
“Well, if the water’s already hot.” They were such good friends. They never questioned my weirdness about visiting the cat or even the one time they caught me talking to Daisy like she was a person and not a pig—who thought she was a dog.
We went inside and sat down with Angeline in her highchair. I opened the cookie tin on the center of the table. It always had homemade cookies inside. It was nice to see that August kept up that tradition.
I handed one to Angeline, and her face lit up with the joy of the oatmeal goodness. I didn’t blame her. Their cookies never failed to be made of yumminess.
“Anything new and exciting in the world of real estate?” I asked as August slid me a mug of tea.
“Okay,” he said noncommittally. He’d recently started to work at the local agency doing property listings and some internet sales. It was a new technology for the area, and while it had some benefits, most of the people who wanted homes here were not that tech savvy. At least not from what I’d seen. “Not too much.” But I felt like there was something more that he wasn’t saying.
His husband sat next to him, pride for his mate beaming out.
“Well, just that…” Jase nudged.
“A couple sales.” August grabbed a cookie. “I sold Xander’s old place.” He was careful not to refer to it as Clarence’s. I didn’t blame him. Clarence had been pure evil filled with alcohol, and things almost ended really badly for August because of it. Technically, it was Clarence’s, though, which sucked. It would’ve been nice for Xander to at least get a college fund out of the sale.
No one missed Clarence after he drank a bottle of bourbon and ended up face down in the river. I don't even think Xander missed him. He might’ve been the man he knew as his dad for most of his life, but he was an abusive asshole.
“Well, that's good,” I said. “It's gonna need a lot of work. Hope they know that going in.” It was a miracle the building was still standing.
“I tried to tell him.” August picked up a cookie piece Angeline had dropped. “He just put in a full-price offer, sight unseen.”
“The bank was happy to get it.” Jase was so proud of his husband. It was adorable.
And he was right. Around here, foreclosures tended not to sell for years, and when they did, it was generally a neighbor who could
n’t stand to see it empty and attracting wild critters.
“I thought you had some big company nibbling at that place.” At least that had been the rumor around town. But then again, there was a rumor around town that the library was being painted green and it spread to the point of someone calling a town meeting with signatures protesting the nonexistent plan. The joy of small towns.
“I did.” August smirked. “It's amazing how many things you can find wrong with a place when you really put your mind to it. And then, you know, hearing the stories about how our zoning board hadn’t approved anything in over a year didn’t help.”
Technically, the zoning board hadn’t had anything to vote on in at least a year.
“My husband is saying he made sure they didn't want it.”
“Good.” The idea of a factory coming to town had made me nervous. It made a lot of people nervous.
“We don't need to be building up here.” August held the cookie tin out for me. “I know factories need to be made, but our town can’t support one.”
He wasn't wrong. As a small community, we were getting along just fine. We weren't one of those towns where unemployment was high and education was low after the boom left. We didn't need a factory to come in and save us, while actually destroying us in the process.
In fact, we didn't have the workers to support a factory even if one was built. Our small town would need to grow with lower-end jobs based on the company’s specs. Nope, I wasn’t sad to see someone snagged the place instead.
“I'm glad you found a new owner.” I grabbed one more cookie then stood up. “I best get going. I don’t need to be pissing off the boss man.”
Sheriff Martin was a bonafide asshat who liked to use his power for his own entertainment. How he ever got voted into that position in the first place was beyond me. Now it was a forgone conclusion that he’d always win. But at one point, he ran against someone else and won. That blew my mind.
Feline The Love: An M/M MPreg Shifter Romance (River’s Edge Shifters Book 2) Page 1