She’d hated the entire show from start to sedated finish, but she didn’t step into her den until the night belonged only to her again. There was something daunting about the scarred, white beast going up against shifters as strong as him. He had to have known he couldn’t win. Even against those odds, he’d refused to back down.
Rhys wasn’t a coward. Not like her.
Another snicker tugged at her attention. The second pepper went down just as easy. Three more, and Dash started to squint.
“Dash, Dash,” Hailey began chanting after the sixth. She glanced up and down the table for support.
Kyla took up the chant, with Lindley rolling his eyes and adding his own flair. “Ass, ass.”
Dash flicked him off and ate another pepper.
Strange to know Lindley had found his way to a Crowley. He fit in, too. Oh, he was every bit as tough as the others and didn’t hesitate to turn his claws on his enemies, but he was nothing like their father. He’d taken all the lessons on how to be an asshole alpha and thrown them out the window. If anything, he leaned heavily on the lessons they’d learned from their mother. As the pride’s second, he had to know when to offer support, when to push, and when to serve out his own helping of bullshit.
Stranger to know she’d found her way there, too.
Found her way. Sage frowned. The words were too active for her passive participation. She’d been sold by her asshole of a father to an even bigger bastard of a lion, taking away the last bit of agency she’d possessed. Her escape, too, fell on the shoulders of others. She’d still be locked in a bedroom, dreading every turn of the doorknob, if Kyla hadn’t stubbornly refused to give up on her.
She flicked a glance to Kyla deliberately lowering her hand away from her mouth and her laugh. Skies above, it felt good to see her best friend happy. Reconnecting with her brother was a close second, but Kyla? They’d gone through hell together. Fate owed her the happy ending she’d found with Lindley.
She also knew she didn’t fit in with them. How could she? They were so solid while she felt like she was fading away.
The dismantling was a long time in the making. She’d lost her mother and her brother in one night, then been fed lies about what really happened. Her days teaching and practicing at the local dance studio were numbered when her father decreed all females stay in the territory for their protection. Protection, as it turned out, meant serving the whims of an increasingly paranoid and controlling alpha. Even the escape she’d planned blew up in her face when he announced he’d found her a mate.
She’d been stripped down and burned to a crisp. Nothing of her old self remained. Her father stole the life she’d tried to build, but Jasper, her supposed mate, stole what was left of her confidence.
Thirteen days of freedom, and she still didn’t know what to make of it. She knew Lindley and Kyla just wanted her to be happy, but how the hell did she leave all the horror behind?
Movement startled her, but it was just Dash. Even with his eyes squinted and watering, he jabbed a finger at the table, then pumped his hands in the air. “Fuck you, I win!” he boasted in a pained voice.
Lindley tapped his fingers against his palm in a bored golf clap. “You look like shit, so I don’t know how much that counts as a win.”
Dash bared his teeth in response and wiped away the water from his cheeks. He rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes, then froze. An agonized groan left his chest. “Fuck me.”
He jumped to his feet to a chorus of laughter and fists thumped against the table. Sage followed his mad rush across the dining room and behind the bar. The bartender let off a startled squawk when he ripped the soda gun out of her hands.
The laughs turned to wheezes as Dash sprayed water all over his face.
Sage’s smile was short lived as the back of her neck prickled. She glanced up and swept a look around the table, finding everyone’s attention still on Dash.
Everyone except Rhys.
Her stomach dipped and twisted as he cocked his head. Silver swirled in the deep blue of his eyes, slowly brightening to the unnatural glow she’d watched days before. His focus felt too big. Too demanding. Her breath quickened and her heart raced, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away.
Fur brushed against her mind, stronger than ever. She reached for her inner lioness, but the creature only howled before disappearing into the darkness.
The air felt hot and heavy, pressing down on her. It was hard to breathe under that silver-eyed look. Hard to think, too, or ask questions like why and what did he want. Or if he was okay.
Instead, she stayed frozen, locked in his gaze, until he slowly blinked and turned his face.
“Hey,” Lindley said, leaning forward to tap a finger against the top of her hand. “You okay?”
Sage drew her hand back and forced a smile. “I’m fine.”
The word even tasted fake.
Chapter 3
Rhys sat on his porch steps and turned a hunk of wood over in his hands. He’d always wondered why his grandfather and old man spent their days working at a useless hobby, but he’d taken it up when Hailey told him to find a way to keep his hands busy and off the throats of the others. It didn’t make him any less annoyed, but it did keep him from lashing out as much as his inner lion wanted.
Staying completely sane and under control was out of reach.
He slashed a look across the yard to Trent and Hailey’s den. His alpha had released him from the cave that afternoon and sent him home like a toddler being told to go to his room. He’d tried to stay inside his den and contemplate the shit he had to tell the others when they rolled up at the end of the day, but that, too, was out of reach. His lion prowled inside him, twitching his tail in disgruntled agitation, urging him out the door. Sitting on his porch was the compromise.
He hadn’t always been a fucking mess. There’d been a time when he could count himself among the good. The years without Hannah poisoned him from the inside out. Trying to murder his way through the pride for the third time in as many weeks pointed pretty conclusively to his head fuckery.
He glanced up again in time to see the curtain twitch back into place.
Rhys narrowed his eyes as his lion shoved forward. It was that new girl, Sage, who held his attention. Lindley’s little sister, not that it mattered. She was off limits. Anyone he spent more than a day with was off limits. He didn’t do relationships or bonding or regular fucking friendships. He couldn’t. Not when he snapped and spoiled everything he touched.
Still, he couldn’t get her out of his head. Her scent. Her eyes. He got chills just thinking about the look she’d given him at Hogshead near the two week mark of her arrival. A week later, and he wasn’t any closer to figuring out how she’d been able to pull him off a fight, or why his beast wanted to get close, or even what he was supposed to do with that urge.
Fuck, had it been nearly a month since he first spotted her? Frightened her, more like it. In the aftermath of dismantling Jasper Crowley’s pride of assholes, he’d marched right for Trent and the others. Covered in blood and high off the victory, he’d stopped dead in his tracks when he caught the scent of the woman cowering behind Lindley.
Fear and sweat had almost hidden her from him. Baked earth of too many lions had clouded the air, too. But under it all, the thin thread of juniper in the moonlight after a passing storm made him pay attention in ways he hadn’t thought possible after losing Hannah.
Rhys didn’t know why his animal had latched onto her. He’d had a mate. He wanted to return to the years and life he’d lost, but they’d been stolen with the blast of a rifle.
Nothing had made any damn sense in the six years since, but the last three weeks topped even that.
His lion growled and tried to fill his head with sunshine and rainbows and frolicking baby goats, but he knew the truth. He didn’t have a happy ending waiting for him. Thinking otherwise was proof of how far off the path he’d wandered.
The distant sound of engines kickin
g to life buzzed in the air. The sound grew stronger, and the crunch of wheels on snow joined the mix. Rhys rolled his shoulders when the first truck came into view.
Game time.
He hated the first meetings after Trent let him out of the cave. Didn’t matter if he spent the night or lingered there for days, slowly losing his shit with every damn exhale, they always went one of two ways.
The first, the others nagged and pestered and mostly acted as if he hadn’t snapped and tried to rip their heads from their bodies. He didn’t mind those so much. Depending on how long he’d been left in isolation and the way the wind ruffled his inner lion’s mane, he could even dish out his own serving of shit and play along.
Seeing them cast long looks in his direction set his teeth on edge. Those glances from the sides of their eyes made him feel like a rabid dog released in their midst. If they stayed still long enough, maybe they’d get out of the encounter without a bite.
They weren’t wrong. He was fucking crazy. He spent enough time locked behind bars to call the cave a second home. Sometimes he wished they’d blow the entrance with him trapped inside. Better that way. Safer for everyone. His claws would finally be kept out of innocent hides.
Trent needed to put him down. If he had any decency left, he’d either ask for it himself or disappear in the middle of the night.
He wanted a drink. Or ten. Maybe a fight. Or twelve. He needed to ground the restless agitation coursing through his entire body before it broke out of his control.
“Aw, shit,” Dash called out as he dropped out of his truck. A quick wince passed across his face as he landed—a souvenir from Lindley’s teeth the night Kyla was stolen out from under their noses and returned with Sage. “Who let this chucklefuck back into the world?”
“Probably some asshole morally obligated to believe in second, third, and five thousandth chances,” Lindley griped with a slam of his door. “Wouldn’t know anything about that, eh, Trent?”
Trent lifted a middle finger. “Not me. I’m hoping he eats you for real next time. I’ll take silence over the nonstop complaints of how he almost gnawed your arm off.”
“Gladly,” Rhys swung his attention to the pride’s second, and flashed a grin with too many teeth.
The others barked laughs as Lindley scowled. Rhys tried to relax, but wishing away his irritation never worked. Fuck, if he could do that, he’d never spend another night in that damn cave or wake on four feet after his lion stole his skin.
His inner beast snarled over the whispered memories of lessons on owning his shit and knowing when to eat crow.
Fuck that. He’d eaten actual crow before. Gamey, foul birds. Too smart for their own good. Bones stuck in the back of his throat, just like Dash’s would if he didn’t keep his damn mouth shut.
That was his existence. Distilled down to nothing but bones and tallow, he was fury. He jumped from one annoyance to the next, snapping more often than not. All the lessons on knowing when to use the carrot or the stick were so deeply buried, they might as well have been a dream of another life.
Just like the blue eyes that haunted him.
The door of Trent’s den banged open and three more figures sauntered into the chilly winter evening. Hailey, at the head, twiddled her fingers and jumped down the stairs. “Hello, pretty kitties,” she called with a smile. “We thought we heard you pull up.”
Behind her, Sage stepped outside. Or rather, Kyla guided her with their arms linked at their elbows, but he wasn’t focused on Lindley’s mate. The tall, auburn-haired woman with green eyes she kept glued to the ground held his entire attention.
She looked absolutely gorgeous.
She’d braided her hair that day, one of those fancy ones that pulled strands from the top of her head. The end result was a rope as thick as his wrist that hung over one shoulder. Tight jeans clung to her thighs. The green of her sweater brought out the red in her hair. That, too, fit snugly against her curves. He dragged his eyes down her tall frame, then right back up again, not wanting to miss a single damn detail.
Rhys shook his head to snap himself out of it before his tongue unrolled from his mouth. He’d been with other women since losing Hannah, but they hadn’t meant anything. They were a means to an end, a way to slack his needs, someone to share a night with before moving on. Hell, he couldn’t even remember most of their names.
He also tried not to shit where he ate. Townies were to be avoided to keep hurt feelings and expectations out of the mix. Tourists looking for a good time, or someone he met on the road were fair game. Even then, they sought him out with longing looks and salacious winks from across the bar, not the other way around.
Sage made him want to go on the offensive.
He needed to stay the fuck away.
Across the yard, her eyes lifted for a split second and pinned him in place. His lion shoved forward, ready to… to… to what, he couldn’t really say.
Sage floundered for a moment when Kyla unwound their arms and threw herself at Lindley. She swept her head from side to side, looking for a place to melt into the background or latch herself to the sides of a conversation, but her shoulders slumped with defeat.
She glanced up again, then picked her way through the noisy chattering of the others deciding on the night’s plans. “You’re back,” she said quietly.
Holy fuck.
His lion let off a low purr of possession. She’d chosen him. She’d talked to him. The others were all there, but she picked him.
He opened his mouth to answer when Dash bumped into him. Rhys twisted around and pushed the man away. A growl of warning rumbled in his throat, and died the second he heard a sharp hiss of breath.
Sage flinched when his eyes landed on her, and he wanted to make the world bleed.
She dragged down a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Steeling herself, he thought, which only made him want to turn the world red even more. His lion roared and sliced him to shreds that she saw him as the monster he was. Someone she needed to prepare to talk to.
“Is it bad? In the cave?” she asked her toes.
Rhys grunted and again opened his mouth, only to have an arm slam down across the back of his shoulders.
“It’s terrible. Cold nights, only a scrap of a blanket on a creaky old camp cot, with a lantern that flickers when you least expect,” Dash drawled. “But ol’ Rhysie here is right at home. Ain’t ya, buddy?”
“Fuck off,” he growled. Asshole didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. Sage didn’t need to hear that shit, even if it was true.
“Thousands of years from now, when we’re nothing but ash, aliens are going to find our little hole in the dirt and see those scratches from your claws on the wall. You’re leaving your mark on the future. You should be proud!” Dash finished with a hard slap to Rhys’s chest.
Rhys twisted around and threw a punch into Dash’s shit-eating grin.
On his other side, Sage jerked back. Another sharp intake of breath was enough to make him hold back his next blow. Dash took advantage and leveled him with a hard-fisted taste of revenge right to the middle.
Rhys’s lion zinged through him, ready to rip out of his human half and pounce on the other male. Asshole. Motherfucker. Didn’t he give a single shit about anyone else? Her life was already difficult enough, couldn’t he keep his fucking antics to himself for a measly fifteen fucking minutes?
Hands pulled at his arms and chest. They pulled at Dash, too, but he wasn’t giving up either. They flung punches at one another over the shoulders and arms and roadblock bodies in their way. Rhys’s lion strained for release and he let the beast off the leash.
“Enough!” Trent shouted.
Power infused the words and buzzed in his ears. Rhys shook his head to clear the annoyance and get back to the fighting, but he was the only one still ready to go.
“Are you trying to be an asshole?” Lindley growled, voice dripping with venom.
Rhys cocked his head and stared into the empty space Sage had left be
hind.
Trying? No. He didn’t have to try. Bad behavior simply rolled out of him. It was all he knew these days.
Rhys glanced down at his hands and consciously willed them to relax out of tight fists.
He was a lost cause. Too rough. Too crazy. There was fuck all he could do to stop his slip into madness.
Chapter 4
Sage slipped away from the Ashford home as quietly as possible, though she didn’t go unnoticed. She waved off the gold eyes peeking at her from the shadows, then wrapped her arms around her middle and trudged in the direction of the Crowley territory. The males would look after their mates while she started her nightly walk into exhaustion.
The hum of voices inside still reached her, still buzzed in her head, but she couldn’t have repeated a word said to her or discussed around her. Everything disappeared into the foggy depths of her mind.
The night had gone as well as possible. Sage made sure she smiled and laughed and picked at the treats spread out for everyone to enjoy, but her heart wasn’t in it. Not even the neon pink polish Kyla selected for her boosted her spirits for long.
Two months. She’d been there for two months. Sixty-seven days, to be precise. She didn’t know why she kept track of the numbers. Counting didn’t make her head, heart, or lioness feel better. If anything, each day added an extra pound of pressure. With spring right around the corner, she was desperate for the growth and renewal of the season. None of it touched her.
Frustration boiled in her veins. Anxiety clogged up her heart. She was ready to keel over with a cardiac event, but fate had other plans in mind. No, she suffered and hurt and wanted to bite off the heads of everyone who tried to make her feel better with words and actions, but nothing ever changed.
She reached for her lioness, but that side of her cowered deeper in her mind. Stupid beast. She hadn’t been there when Sage needed her, so why the hell should she expect her to make an appearance now? Oh, she paced and snarled and hissed, but that was the extent of her power. Even those reactions didn’t always line up with Sage’s as the days ticked by with damnable predictability. The sun came up, the sun went down, and her lioness slipped out of her control a little more.
Savage Exile: Lion Hearts Book Five Page 2