by Celia Kyle
“I remember.” His voice was hoarse, old emotions shoving forward while he still tried to hold today’s feelings at bay.
She stared at the other side of the clearing, her gaze unfocused, distant. “It hasn’t been five years.”
“No,” he slowly agreed.
“I was so full of myself. So sure I was right and you were wrong. That you were nothing to me even though my cat craved you, wanted you… her mate.”
“But…” Shock held him still. Pre-heat, a shifter couldn’t recognize their mate. It was nature’s way of allowing them to grow and become comfortable with themselves before joining their life to another’s.
“Yeah, ‘but.’” She grimaced. “I hated her for that. For making me want you without truly knowing.” She shrugged. “But it all worked out in the end. It was actually best. It helped me… later. When I needed hope, when I needed to cling to something to stay sane, the belief was there. I held onto it so tightly, Grayson. So very, very tightly.”
The scent of emotional pain was different, held a hint of orange tang mixed in with the smoke. That’s what made it unique. “When did you need to cling to it? Why?”
Honor turned to him. He expected tears, a flush of anguish in her face. What he got was blank nothingness. “In London. In the cage.”
*
Honor laid the words at his feet, let them fester and twist on the ground.
She couldn’t look at him while she told her story. Her gaze remained locked on a tree across the clearing, on a single leaf that clung to the branch as it danced in the breeze.
Was she like the leaf? Clinging to life, begging to be spared? Pleading to be loved, to have the broken pieces of her glued back together?
Yes. All of it.
No. None of it.
She wasn’t sure about anything anymore. Grayson kissed her, showed her loving passion, and then pulled away as he buried secrets inside himself.
Was that how a mate acted?
Another item to add to the list of shit Honor didn’t know. It grew longer by the second.
Grayson was a quiet, solid presence. He didn’t move, hardly breathed, the sound of each inhale lost in the wind. She wondered if shock or revulsion kept him silent.
Then again, it didn’t matter because the quiet allowed her to drift back to January, back to her week of hell and her months of terror. Five and a half months ago. One hundred sixty-eight days. She stopped counting hours. Then again, she’d never started, really. When would the clock begin? The first pang of heat followed by Angus kicking down her dorm room door? Or when he’d tied her hands together? Maybe that first ride in a nondescript van or when the lock on the cage was thrown.
She had a day though. January fifteenth.
“Alex got permission from the local Prime for me to live in the area. It didn’t take too long to make friends with some of the women in the London pride. I shared classes with a few and met others at parties. I babysat cubs for extra spending money. It was nice to have other lionesses to hang out with.” At least, for a little while.
“I met a few males as well, but…” A low growl reached her, the sound almost lost in the rustle of leaves. She snapped her attention to Grayson and flashed her fangs. “You don’t get to make a sound.”
His gaze remained defiant, eyes flashing amber. She hissed at him in response, long and loud and filled with the anger she’d shouldered for years. The sound carried, a second passed, and he finally dropped his stare to the ground. He’d backed down and her cat was pleased. They’d stood up to a male and he retreated.
They were growing stronger after…
“But I didn’t feel comfortable around them. They sniffed after me, wondering, hoping I was theirs. I knew I wasn’t but I didn’t tell them. I didn’t want the looks, the pity, and the innuendo. London was a new start. At least for a little while.” Grayson winced and she was glad her verbal strike hit home.
“Only one male pushed. He tried charming, he tried guilt, and he tried cornering me.” She grinned then. Before everything, she’d become adept at avoiding him, at thwarting him. “He unnerved me, but the city, the pride, it was all so exciting. I only saw him at the runs and I wasn’t about to let one male dampen my enjoyment.”
Honor trembled, her bones vibrating before her body recognized the shakes. She held out a hand, watching the tremor attack her. She curled her fingers into a fist, fighting the urge to shrink into a ball and push the memories away. The cat whined an apology and fear at the same time.
“And then my heat came…”
Some things couldn’t be chased away or avoided, especially a tsunami of memories. They wouldn’t be denied any longer, so she told her story and prayed she’d emerge sane.
The first pang of her heat hit as she hopped down the stairs after Trigonometry. A throb formed below her belly button, a small blossoming of warmth tinged with a hint of pain. Her steps faltered and she stumbled forward, catching herself before she ate concrete.
“Honor?” Her friend’s eyes were wide, hands reaching for her and instinctively, she knew pain would accompany the touch. Her body wanted a male.
Her parents had visited weeks ago during holiday break and gone over what she’d feel during her first heat. It hadn’t arrived and Honor was coming up on her twenty-second birthday. It was only a matter of time and she hadn’t wanted to be unprepared.
Warmth in her center would eventually encompass her. Her cat would be edgy at first, scared of the changes in her body. Then new parts of her would awaken. Hunting instincts. Better eyesight, increased hearing, and an amplified sense of smell.
All because the cat would want to search out a male for the coming need.
“I’m-I’m…” She’d swallowed hard and taken a deep breath. “I’m fine. Just not feeling good all of a sudden.” She smiled, trying to convince her friend she was okay. The girl was human and didn’t know Honor was a shifter. She’d kept it a secret. She wasn’t ashamed, but she wanted a “normal” college experience. One that didn’t include occasional looks of fear and friends who didn’t transform into beasts.
So far, she’d been successful. She didn’t think luck would last much longer, not with her heat finally overtaking her.
At least she wasn’t in the middle of finals.
“I’m going to skip Sheffield’s class.” A rush of heat enveloped her, the need spreading from her center to her limbs. “Can you take notes for me?” She shoved the words past gritted teeth.
“Sure, yeah.” Her friend raised her eyebrows. “Do you want me to help you back to your room?” She glanced at her watch. “We’ve got twenty minutes.”
Honor shook her head. “No, I’m good. Just a stomach bug or something that came on all of a sudden.” She grinned, hoping to fool her friend. “I shouldn’t eat three-day-old pizza for breakfast, right?” Her grin turned into a grimace. Shit, this was happening too fast. She should have had hours between the first blush and this amount of pain. Nature was supposed to give a shifter time to get somewhere private before the first wave of need began. If she continued on this course, she’d be a ball of sexual desperation before she hit her room.
Fuck.
“Blech.” Her friend wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know how you eat that crap. You really should think of going vegan with me. The cafeteria has a—”
“I’ll think about it.” Honor groaned and grabbed her stomach. “I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”
Tomorrow, after her heat passed. Eight to ten hours, that’s all she needed and then she’d be right as rain.
“If you’re sure.”
She nodded, fighting the need to snarl at the human. She needed to go. Now. “Yup, tomorrow.”
With that, she spun on her heel and broke into a quick trot down the sidewalk. She took steps two at a time, skipping some of them altogether and merely leaping from one level to the next. The cat stirred, fighting her, forcing her to open her new senses and hunt for a male to sate them.
The human side of Honor
knew what she really craved lived on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
A few women, humans and lions, called out to her as she jogged past and she merely waved, not stopping. At some point the prickle of fur stung her arms, the cat asserting its dominance. Well, the other part of her was just as strong. The lioness might get some fur and fangs free, but she wasn’t coming out. Honor refused to be at the whim of her beast.
Soon, another cat joined her frantic race, easily keeping pace with her.
Bianca. One of the first friends she’d made in London. “What’s up, H?”
Instead of answering, she hissed at the woman. Her cat made her categorize people into two different groups. Males and competition.
Bianca’s nostrils flared and she grinned. “It’s that time, huh? Finally, right?”
Honor curled her lip.
“Who do you want me to call? Which bloke do you want to fuck today?” The lioness smiled wider.
To Bianca, to any other female, fucking was a part of life.
To Honor, and her cat, it was something to be avoided. She’d fuck Grayson. Someday. When he got his fucking ass out of his fucking head. She’d make him lick her boots first, though. And grovel. Lots of groveling before he leaned forward and licked her pussy…
Another bolt of desire overtook her, racing into her bloodstream, and her pussy heated. She grew slick, soaking her panties. Fuck, the cat was pushing hard and her heat was nearly in full force.
“No one. I don’t want anyone.”
Bianca’s smile fell. “Honor, you can’t do this alone.”
Honor met the building door at a dead run, shoving past others. The humans yelled at her, but the cats she passed merely breathed deep and then watched her go.
“Honor!”
She slid to a stop before her door. Alex, and her parents, had helped her get permission to modify her room’s construction. She got a solid steel door with a handful of locks. The air in the room cycled in on itself and was filtered and part of a system that kept the air in her room actually in her room. No hint of her scent escaped. From the moment she entered, no one could smell her. They wouldn’t be able to tell when she hit her heat and no one would be able to “help” her through it. She’d been adamant about that.
“I don’t want anyone, Bianca.” She bared her fangs, the canines now fully grown and extended. “No one.”
“I can call Angus and—”
“No one!” The roar echoed off the walls, bouncing down the hallway, and the entire building fell silent.
A soft, soothing hand stroked her mind, attempting to calm her. Bianca. Bianca the Sensitive. She could sink in, control her, force her…
Honor hissed and spit, allowing more of the cat to reach forward. She bared her claws, threatening the woman without getting close. “No one.”
With that, she disappeared into her room. She flipped the locks, secured her space. Another wave of desire hit, but she pushed it back long enough to stumble to her mini-fridge. With trembling hands, she snared one of the vials snug in its case. The needles were strapped to the fridge’s exterior.
It took eight tries and several connections of the empty needle and her fingers before she finally stabbed it into the rubber top of the vial. She shook as she tugged on the stopper, filling the syringe with clear fluid.
One shot now, one for every hour before she lost herself to the desire. She had enough for twenty-four shots, but shouldn’t need more than eight. If she pushed past ten, she was ordered to call Alex.
Honor looked to the clock. Even if it went twelve hours, she’d still make it to the Comp Sci building for her first class at eight tomorrow. Plenty of time.
Still trembling, she bared her hip and plunged the needle into her flesh. A quick depression of the stopper and the drug entered her body. She had just enough time to yank the metal out before she collapsed. She slumped to the side as it filled her veins, working its way through her system.
In slow increments, the pain eased, leaving behind a simmering arousal that neither grew nor lessened further. That didn’t matter though. She wasn’t in agony and she wasn’t dying to be fucked.
She’d be okay. She’d be fine. She’d—
The crack of a twig flung her out of the past and into the clearing.
It brought her back to a slowly approaching Grayson.
Honor stepped away from him, putting even more space between them.
“What?” she snapped.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I could have—”
“Fucked me through it like every other male on campus.” She chuckled, the sound flat and dark even to her ears.
Grayson growled and she returned the sound, letting hers roll on even as his quieted. “You don’t have the right to be jealous, or angry, or anything but a male standing there and listening. I’m not done. You think giving myself a shot was hard? You think running and brushing off the touch of a Sensitive would send me home with my tail between my legs?” She spat the words, not caring that he cringed with every syllable. Let him feel pain.
She had. She still did in her nightmares.
“I don’t know what I would have done. I know whatever nightmare you endured wouldn’t have happened. Even if you’d decided to go through your heat drugged, I would have protected you.”
She snorted. “You would have held onto your control until night fell, until the moon rose.” She chuckled ruefully, shaking her head. “I didn’t just have my heat, it was the night of the Gaian Moon.” Honor held up her hand, letting a partial shift flow over her fingers like water, the cat coming out to play a little. “She wouldn’t have allowed me to fight you. She almost didn’t allow me to resist…”
To resist the others. To resist Angus.
That thought was enough to return her to the past.
Pounding on her dorm room door woke her, the incessant thump of a fist striking steel filling her room. She lifted her head enough to glance at the clock. Only forty minutes, not time for another shot. The drug was strong enough to put a shifter down for an hour, what would it do to her if she doubled up?
More pounding, the sound becoming insistent. The person wasn’t going away.
Being awake had her heat shoving forward, as if opened eyes meant it was time to fuck. The cat was in agreement, her lioness purring and urging her to go to the door, to see if a male of worth stood on the other side.
She could tell the animal there wouldn’t be. The only male of worth was across an ocean.
It didn’t care, it wanted to check for itself.
Well, that sure as hell wasn’t happening.
“Honor!” The roar, the voice, was unmistakable. Angus Brooks, son of the London pride’s Prime. Powerful male. Not the strongest, but the cat was intrigued. It’d prefer the Prime, but he was mated. Maybe the male…
Her muscles contracted, flexed, and spasmed. The cat was trying to assert its will, take control of the human body.
“Hell no, you stupid bitch.” The lioness howled and she gritted her teeth against the pain. “We’re not opening that fucking door.”
Honor reached for the discarded vial. She stretched for the nearby needle. She’d apologize to Brute’s mate for the unsanitary nature of reusing a needle later. The nurse stressed over and over that sterilization was necessary and reuse was unacceptable.
It wasn’t just her heat she battled now. No, her lioness was in on the fight.
Her lower stomach clenched, her clit twitching and pussy releasing more of her cream. It prepared itself for penetration, for being fucked over and over again. Her breasts ached, nipples forming hard points within her bra.
On top of that, fur rippled over her skin, traveling to her arms until she banished it from sight. Then it’d reappear on her legs, the cat searching for a weakness.
It wanted the male.
Honor wanted another shot.
“Honor! I’m ordering you to open this door!” Angus’s voice vibrated the whole room and she could only imagine ho
w loud he sounded to others.
Her beast purred, slinking forward, pushing against her control once again.
The needle finally slid past the rubber and connected with the tranquilizer. She yanked on the stopper, hardly caring how much of the drug the syringe pulled.
Fingernails transformed to claws and the cat attempted to shatter the vial. It was determined. It wanted the fucking male. It wanted to be fucked. It wanted to ripen with cubs from the strong lion.
Honor sobbed, shoving and tearing at the beast, screaming at it to remain strong, remain faithful to Grayson.
She heaved against the animal, tearing it away for a moment, just long enough to fill the needle and plunge it into herself once again. The liquid burned as it made its way through her veins, but it blunted the cat, it eased the need.
Unconsciousness eased closer, gently pulling her down, and she wondered if she’d taken too much, if she’d killed herself by trying to remain committed to a male who may not even want her.
“Honor…” Angus’s voice was muffled, but the purr was unmistakable. He rapped out a rhythmic knock. Shave and a haircut. Da-di-di-da-di. Da-di. “Let me in, kitten…”
No. She was safe from him. Or was she?
Honor shied from the rest of the memories, stepping away from them and returning her attention to the man who had kept her strong, to Grayson. Anguish coated every line of his features, filling in each wrinkle.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“I know.” She nodded. She knew he was. The scent of his sorrow mixed and mingled with her pain. “Do you want to hear the rest?”
Grayson stopped breathing for a moment, his entire body stilling. “There’s more?”
Honor gave him a rueful grin. “There’s always more.”
“Then I want to hear it.” He swallowed hard and she thought she saw a sheen of tears. “Share the pain with me. Share the burden.”
“If you turn away from me. If you hear… I tried very, very hard to be strong. I fought. I hurt people. If there is any chance, any chance you could walk away, then don’t ask me to tell you. I’ll heal on my own and return to you when I’m not so broken, but I can’t—” Honor sobbed then, memories and pain overwhelming her for a moment, the past attempting to draw her back into the darkness.