Ryland's Sacrifice

by Kim Dare

  Ryland fingered one of the buttons on his borrowed coat, twisting the piece of plastic back and forth. He still didn’t show any inclination to get out of the car.

  “Keep the coat.” His voice sounded the same way it did in his lectures. Not a trace of emotion, not a trace of lion, crept into the brief order. Arslan couldn’t take much comfort in that right then.

  Ryland seemed to give up on whatever excuses he kept trying to make. He got out of the car. Arslan watched him step safely into the building before he made himself put the car in gear and pull away from the curb.

  Alone in the car, he took the opportunity afforded by being out of the sight and hearing of any lion, any human and let out a string of curses. Maturity might bring its rewards. He might not be as foolish as the other lions in his pride, but there were moments when he was as stupid as any lion had ever been, and when he had to pay the price like anyone else.

  There were reasons why the tradition of willing sacrifices existed. There was a reason why lions needed the opportunity to learn how to be patient with humans, to learn to see them as pets that needed to be protected and humored rather than as equals that could be held to the same standards as a lion.

  It was because humans didn’t make any sense. They didn’t do what their instincts commanded. Arslan sighed as he turned a corner and steered his way back to his empty den, his empty bed.

  Human men couldn’t be trusted. A lion would have to be a fool to fall for one the way he might fall for another lion, to expect the same from them as he would from a feline lover. A professor would have to be a fool to fall for a student too, a man who was practically half his age. A man who agreed to be thrown to the lions as if it was some silly little game, a man who had no idea what the tradition was supposed to mean, what it had meant back in the mist of time.

  Of course, it didn’t make the least bit of difference if he was an idiot, or if Ryland lacked what could be expected of a lion. Ryland was his mate—Arslan had never been more certain about anything in his life. Neither of them would rest comfortably apart for very long now. All he could do was give the other man whatever time he needed in order to face those facts and accept the instincts that lying with his mate would have raised inside him.

  Stopping at a traffic light, Arslan dropped his head back and snarled at the roof of his car and the world in general.

  * * * *

  Ryland re-opened the front door and peeked out just in time to see Arslan’s car turn the corner at the bottom of his street and drive away. He stood on the doorstep and stared after it for a long time, his arms wrapped tight around his body, hugging Arslan’s coat against his bare skin.

  “You’re letting the cold in!”

  Ryland sighed and closed the door.

  One of his housemates peered out of the living room at him. He looked at the coat and the bare ankles and feet poking out of the bottom.

  “Good night?” Fred asked.

  Ryland took a deep breath and let it out as another sigh. Leaning against the wall by the door, he tried to make his brain work. He failed miserably.

  Fred’s eyes opened very wide. “You didn’t…”

  Ryland closed his eyes.

  “Bloody hell! You did!” Fred said. “You actually did it.”

  Ryland forced his eyes open and stared down at the coat. It was far too big for him. The sleeves covered his hands. But it smelled like Arslan. For all he knew it could have been months since Arslan had worn it. But it still seemed to hold some of the lion’s warmth as well as his scent. Ryland pulled it even tighter around him, clinging to the faint echo of the shifter’s touch.

  “Did you get paid?”

  Ryland nodded, swallowing down the bitter taste at the back of his mouth.

  If you come to us willingly and of your own free will, with no thought for your own gain and only wishing to add to the pride, then you are welcome… If you are who we think you are… He closed his eyes, but found it impossible to hide from that horrible moment when he’d realized that not every man who went to the lions went there as a cheap whore.

  “How much?”

  “Two thousand,” Ryland whispered. Maybe not cheap, but still a whore for all that. It had been just enough to pay the remainder of his tuition fees. When he lifted his gaze, Fred was right there in front of him.

  His friend put one hand on each of his shoulders as if he thought he needed steadying. “You okay?”

  Ryland nodded. It wasn’t as if he could tell him the truth.

  “They didn’t want you to do anything really weird, did they?” Fred asked, huge green eyes opening wider than ever

  Ryland shook his head. “No, it was…” Good? Perfect? The best night of his life? Fantastic because it was Arslan? Ryland closed his eyes for a second. What could he really tell his friend? “It wasn’t a problem.”

  Fred didn’t believe a word of it. Ryland saw that the moment he re-opened his eyes. Stepping to one side, Ryland moved out of his friend’s reach and headed for the stairs.

  “Ryland?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, not looking over his shoulder. “Just tired. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Fred said something, but Ryland couldn’t listen to the other man right then. He closed his bedroom door behind him and leaned against it for a few seconds. In the darkness of the room, he walked blindly across to his bed. His feet kicked against a discarded pair of shoes. Fumbling at the bed, he pushed all the clothes he’d changed into and out of before his appointment with the lions, onto the floor.

  He bit back a sad little laugh. All that worrying about what he should wear had been a truly spectacular waste of time. Lying down on the bed, he curled into a small ball, Arslan’s coat still wrapped around him. The movement of the cloth against his skin brought his attention back to the scratches on his back. Arslan’s marks…

  Biting down on his bottom lip, Ryland closed his eyes very tight and did his best not to fall apart, not to give in to the deep sense of despair that swirled inside him.

  Arslan would never have forgiven him if he said yes to him based on a lie, if he’d said yes while playing the part of a whore. He knew that with a sort of certainty he couldn’t ever remember feeling before. There were things a lion would forgive and things he wouldn’t—just like there were things a family would forgive, and things they wouldn’t.

  When he said yes to Arslan he had to mean it. He had to be able to look him in the eye and see that the older man knew it was the truth. He hadn’t been able to correct that part of him that his family hated so much, but he could fix this. He could be the person Arslan had thought he was when he invited him to join the pride.

  Ryland tasted blood as his teeth cut into his lip. No matter how logically he tried to think about it, something inside him screamed that he needed to be back with the professor now. He wasn’t where he belonged. He had to be with Arslan. Then everything would be okay. It was like a stabbing pain in a part of his mind he hadn’t even realized existed a few hours ago.

  He didn’t know where the lion’s den was. A frantic scrawl through his memory of the journey home yielded glimpses of dozens of shadowy houses and scores of left and right turns. But there were no street names, no road signs, nothing that could help him make his way back there. His breath caught in his throat as the full implication of that sunk in. He didn’t know how to find Arslan.

  It wasn’t as if he could go there, it wasn’t as if he could just turn up on his doorstep and announce that he’d spent his first night with him as a whore and simply beg his forgiveness. But he should still know where the other man was. It was important. In that moment, it was vital.

  Even if he couldn’t go back to his family, he knew where they lived. As the thought flashed through his brain, he couldn’t help but fall into thinking it meant he had even less chance of being accepted back by the lion than by his parents.

  He shook his head against the pillow. The line of thought made no sense, but somehow, it still crept under his skin, sen
ding a shiver down his spine. Ryland frantically repeated that not knowing was a good thing over and over inside his head, as if that might make it true. Anything that stopped him from running back to the other man was a blessing.

  When he went to him, he had to be able to tell the shifter he wasn’t the same man who screwed everything up before. Ryland might not have felt like he had a clue what was going on, but he knew with an undeniable sort of certainty that he couldn’t let himself set eyes on Arslan again until he’d worked out a way to fix the mess his life had spiraled into.

  That was his only chance. His family would have accepted him back if he’d been able to change his answers to certain questions. Maybe Arslan would too, if he begged hard enough. Ryland ran his tongue over the cut on his lip. It didn’t help it heal, it just made it bleed more.

  Wrapping Arslan’s coat even more securely around his body, Ryland closed his eyes very tightly and tried to keep his mind from shattering into a hundred different scared little pieces.

  Chapter Three

  “What do you want, Ryland?” Arslan kept his back to the younger man as he said it.

  He was being sensible. He was giving his pet time to get his thoughts in order and his newly developing instincts under control. He was keeping his distance, no matter how much he ached to do otherwise. And if Ryland wasn’t ready to join the pride, the least the boy could do was to let him go back to his office and throw himself in his work in peace.

  After he’d spent the entire lecture ignoring Ryland’s existence, he thought the other man would understand all that. But no, Ryland had to stay behind after a lecture he’d had no business attending in the first place, he had to make it even harder for Arslan to keep his lion side under control.

  Finally, when it became obvious Ryland wasn’t going to answer his question until he faced him properly, Arslan turned around. It took every ounce of self-control he could muster not to step forward and make everything very simple between them.

  Ryland took a shaky step closer to his master and put a neatly folded coat on his desk.

  Arslan looked at the coat, then back to Ryland. His pet was scared. Arslan could smell the fear on him. Every instinct made him want to wrap his mate in his protection. The lectures he’d been giving himself about allowing the younger man time and space faded from his mind. The only thing that actually succeeding in keeping him on his side of the podium, was several years worth of practice at never letting himself give in to the temptation to lay a hand on a student.

  Admittedly, this was the first time he wanted to hold one of his students close rather than give one a sharp slap across the back of the head to encourage him to stop acting like a toddler, but the habit still held him in good stead. Arslan had never been so grateful for having dealt with so many brats over the years.

  Ryland looked down, then away, then back to him, as if he wasn’t sure what he was doing there himself.

  “Is something wrong?” Arslan asked.

  Ryland swallowed several times in quick succession.

  Arslan’s eyes narrowed. Something was wrong. Ryland wasn’t just uncomfortable with his new instincts. He wasn’t even merely afraid. He was half-terrified.

  “I…” Ryland met his eyes properly for the first time. “I’m sorry, this was a mistake.” He fled from the room, the door slamming behind him as he disappeared into the hallway.

  Arslan stood stock still as he watched him go. If he moved a muscle, he knew the instinct to chase would overpower everything. He’d learned that years ago. When the prey ran, all a lion could do was stay very still and concentrate on his human side. It was the only way to keep the predator’s instinct under control, to keep humans, who didn’t understand such instincts, safe.

  Taking a deep breath, Arslan ran his hand over the coat. Ryland had left his scent on it, mingled in with the lingering traces of his own scent. The combination was a humiliating mockery of the way things should have been between them several days after he offered his pet a place in the pride. He still took another deep breath and took what he could from it.

  As his hand rested on the coat, his claws crept out to replace his fingernails. It was several minutes before he wrangled himself back under his own control. The claws morphed back into something that was indistinguishable from the kind of nails that would be found on an entirely human hand.

  Outwardly calm, the professor picked up the coat, draped it over his arm, and gathered up his papers in his other hand. He walked slowly back to his office on one of the upper floors of the history department building. Coat hung neatly on the back of his door, he sat down at his desk and did his best to ignore the garment’s presence, to ignore the scent that reminded him with every passing second he should be with his mate.

  Three hours later, Arslan frowned across his desk, his mind once more wandering away from the history student sitting in front of him to a math student who could be anywhere by then.

  His mate had obviously had something to say to him. Ryland wasn’t yet acquainted with the ways of a pride. Arslan couldn’t be sure he knew he could bring his worries to the leader of his pride, no matter how things stood between them, no matter if he didn’t have the courage to accept a formal place in the pride.

  Whatever his pet wanted to say to him, it had to have been important. As the last undergraduate in his appointment book left his office, Arslan made his decision. Two minutes later, he was out of the history building and walking up to the information desk in the lobby of the math department building opposite.

  “I’m looking for Ryland Gilford. I believe he has an office here?”

  The man behind the desk was familiar. Arslan was sure he’d seen him in some of his lectures. The receptionist glanced up from the computer and met his eyes. Yes, Arslan placed the face. Not a bad student, but a very bad speaker when called upon to answer questions in a tutorial. Far too many ums and ahs to be considered adequately understandable.

  “Room four-two-seven, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  The professor heard the student give a little sigh of relief as he walked away from his desk. He smiled slightly to himself. It was wonderful what the fear of Arslan could do for a young man’s education. If the student-receptionist continued with that sort of improvement, he might actually yet become capable of an entirely articulate sentence by the time he graduated.

  A knock on the door to room four-two-seven yielded no reply. Arslan didn’t get the sense that anyone was in there ignoring the knock. Ryland’s scent clung to the space on the other side of the door, but it was the trace of someone who had been there rather than someone who was there right then.

  When the professor tried the handle, the door swung open with a quiet creak. The cluttered little room was as unoccupied as he’d expected, but a steaming cup of tea on one side of the desk hinted that its owner intended to return soon.

  Closing the door behind him and switching on the light to make up for the absence of windows in the poky little space, Arslan moved an apparently random collection of note books and text books off the chair in front of the desk and sat down to wait.

  There was barely room to fit his shoulders between an overloaded bookcase and a pile of books balanced precariously on the edge of Ryland’s desk. If he stretched his legs out, the door wouldn’t have room to open. Pacing was out of the question. Arslan looked around the room instead.

  There were math books shoved into one corner that had to be relics from Ryland’s undergraduate days. Arslan could make sense of the titles. Those that seemed to be in current use were way beyond him. Smart boy, he mused, a smile touching the corners of his lips.

  He turned his attention to the work on the desk. At least the scribblings in the notebook Ryland had left open looked simple enough. The handwriting was appalling, but Arslan could just about make out the numbers. It looked like straightforward arithmetic, as if someone was checking the same series of calculations over and over again in the mistaken hope that the answer might change at some p
oint.

  Arslan sighed and tried to be patient. As he rolled his shoulders and tried to work some of the tension out of his muscles without knocking anything over, a familiar looking book caught his attention. Closer inspection revealed that the shelf was full of very familiar books—the entire recommended reading list for his undergraduate course on Medieval History. A battered folder was wedged in between the books. Arslan reached across and extracted it from between two well-thumbed reference texts.

  A quick flick through the file showed it to be full of hand written reports. Arslan scanned the first page. It was the beginnings of a history essay, one of those he’d assigned to those students who were actually supposed to attend the lectures that Ryland seemed so fond of sitting in on. A more detailed inspection of the file’s contents showed that all the essays he’d assigned on that course so far were tucked away in there.

  Arslan looked at his watch and across at the cup of tea. Steam no longer curled above it. With a silent sigh, he settled as comfortably as possible into the undersized chair and turned his attention to the first essay.

  An hour later, he was well into the third essay when he finally heard someone fumble with the handle on the other side of the door. Arslan pulled his feet out of the way to give it room to swing back. The door still faltered half way. Arslan could almost hear the warning flag go up in Ryland’s brain as he remembered that he hadn’t left the light on when he left the room.

  “Your tea’s gone cold.”

  Ryland pushed the door open a little further and peeped into the room. He seemed to consider his options very carefully before he stepped inside and elbowed the door closed behind him. He was weighed down under a huge pile of paperwork.

  Arslan stayed where he was, waiting to see what his new pet would do next. Ryland merely stood there, just inside the door, as if waiting for permission, for an order, for anything his master might be willing to offer him.