Savage Exile: Lion Hearts Book Five

by Lane, Cecilia

  Fuck. Disappointment tinged her scent and made his lion snarl. Being a dick to the other Crowley males was different than being an asshole to the mates. One group he’d happily brawl with all damn day. The other he’d gnaw off his arm before truly hurting.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  She spun back around and brought a hand to her ear. “Excuse me? What was that?”

  “You heard me the first time,” he said gruffly. “Do me a favor and don’t tell Lindley.”

  “Don’t tell Lindley you apologized? Oh, hell no. Everyone is hearing about that. They probably won’t believe me, but I’m sticking to my story. I might even make the news.” She waved a hand through the air like she was showing off her imaginary headline. “Crotchety local man apologizes, story at seven.”

  Rhys snorted at her chuckle, then called after her when she turned away again. “Kyla.” He turned over the words carefully, not wanting to seem like he pried too hard on shit that, ultimately, wasn’t his concern. “Sage’s scar. She got it from Jasper, didn’t she?”

  Her face fell and her scent turned sad. “He didn’t claim her, if that’s what you’re asking. Not properly.”

  Not properly, but enough to feel the weight of his possession. The long line across her collarbone, plus the dip down the middle… Familiar fury bubbled in his veins. “It’s his initial, isn’t it?”

  Eyes wide, she nodded.

  Rhys dipped his chin, and she turned to go.

  Motherfucker. A low growl rattled in his chest as his lion scrabbled for control.

  Rhys tightened his grip on the carving. Red tinged his vision. A litany of curses rolled through his head as sendings flashed from his inner beast. Blood. Lots and lots of blood. Spraying, painting the walls, seeping into the cracks in the floor.

  Jasper was a dead man if he ever walked out of Shiftermax. Hell, he was a dead man if Rhys ever found his way into the shifter prison. Roland, too. Sage’s father was far from innocent in the whole fucking mess. An innocent woman was dead—

  No. He shook his head. Not dead. Sage still breathed. Sage wasn’t Hannah.

  Laughs from the water buzzed through his head and he shot a glare to the pride enjoying their day. He needed to leave. Now. Before he ruined their fun over shit he couldn’t change.

  That damn volleyball sailed right for him again.

  Rhys snagged the ball before it bounced away from him, bared his teeth at the other group, then drove his knife straight into the white leather.

  “What the hell?” one of the players shouted.

  Rhys was already on his feet. He dragged his knife out of the ball, then threw the deflating remains back at the other group. “Watch where you’re fucking throwing things, assholes!”

  Eyes watched him. Brown. Blue. Grey. Green.

  Green eyes.

  Sage’s look cut through the snarling in his head, but it wasn’t enough to calm his lion. The beast wanted out.

  With a roar, his lion ripped out of him and he bolted for the trees.

  * * *

  “It’s happening more often,” Trent said from his porch steps.

  Rhys lifted his head as he padded closer to his den. He’d stayed out until the moon was high in the sky, not wanting to hear a damn word from anyone about how he needed to keep his temper in check and control his beast.

  Too fucking bad, it seemed.

  His bones cracked and popped as fur receded and his form shimmered back to two feet. He caught the jeans Trent threw at him and stuffed himself inside, then took a seat next to his alpha.

  Anger still rode him hard. He rolled his eyes to the other man and growled, “Let’s get it over with.”

  Trent pressed his lips together in a thin line, but didn’t say a word. Rhys wanted to bite the silent asshole. He resisted only because he knew it’d make the conversation last longer.

  Besides, the man would get to his point when he wanted. There was no rushing him. His father had been the same way. Maybe it was a trait all the poor bastards in charge developed over the years.

  “I know this time of the year is rough on you—”

  “I’m fine,” Rhys lied. Fine? Not for six years. Not when gunshots in his dreams sent him to four feet and out the door to defend a woman who didn’t exist in this realm anymore. Not when learning about some fucker’s fuckery made him knife a damn volleyball.

  Shit, the last thing he wanted was to touch on those memories. They pushed at him anyways, his lion throwing extra sendings of blonde hair running in front of him, blue eyes flashing over her shoulder. He squeezed his lids closed and shoved back on his inner animal before more than a growl bubbled in the back of his throat.

  Mistake. Blue eyes turned green. Blonde hair turned auburn. And the blood staining her shirt switched from her middle to her collarbone.

  “You’re not.” Trent’s words cracked through the night. “You’re spiraling, Rhys. Last time we had to tranq you? You were gone. I couldn’t feel you in my head anymore. The only times I’ve felt that before…”

  He trailed off, drumming his fingers against the wood of the porch step. Rhys knew what he meant. He’d watched it with his father and with Trent. An alpha’s job didn’t come easy. He lorded over the rest of the pride and kept the peace. When that failed, he dealt the final blow to keep a rogue beast from rampaging through the world.

  Rhys let off a frustrated growl and turned a glare on his alpha. “You and I both know where this is heading. Not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it’s somewhere down the line. All the nights in the cave and second chances won’t stitch me back together.”

  The words hit him hard. Harder than ever, in fact. He’d known for a long while he’d be one of those shifters meeting a final, bloody end, but only in the last few months had something inside him rebelled.

  His lion snarled and shoved sendings at him. Green eyes. Gorgeous, green eyes.

  Trent nodded thoughtfully and pushed to his feet. “That’s about what I expected,” he said with a shrug, “but you’re living in a different reality if you think I’m giving up. You’ve made it six years, asshole. You don’t get to flush those away.”

  Rhys let off a frustrated growl and clamped down on his beast. Fuck this talking bullshit. Words didn’t suit him. They hadn’t helped keep Hannah alive. They hadn’t helped when he exacted his revenge. Words hadn’t kept him from being exiled from his own fucking pride.

  He’d had a mate. A mate with blue eyes, not green. A mate who was dead.

  There was no coming back from that.

  Chapter 6

  Sage woke slowly, fighting through the pain that tried to drag her back into her nightmares. Hands grasped at her. Hot breath blasted against her face. Gold eyes glinted at her with malice in their depths. Then there was pain. Hot, searing pain that carved itself into her skin until she felt it in her bones. She bucked and screamed, but no sound seemed to make it out of her mouth.

  Nothing stopped the pain.

  Wetness coated her cheeks by the time she kicked herself free of the monsters behind her lids—and the blanket wrapped around her legs. Sage sat up and drew her legs close to her chest. She wiped her cheeks on her knees and glanced at the clock on the stove. The hour had ticked past midnight while she fought in her sleep.

  Two hundred days. Two hundred days, and not a damn thing had changed.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Nothing had changed for the better. For the worse? Jasper had blown a hole in the walls of Shiftermax. Her father had escaped with him, too. She didn’t believe for a second they would quietly disappear and never bother anyone again.

  The strangled, suffocating feeling returned. They didn’t even need to be in the same room to fill her with dread.

  Assholes.

  Her lip curled in disgust and she shoved to her feet. Restless energy coursed through her as she moved. Up the hall. Down the hall. A spin around the couch. She prowled into the kitchen and back out again, only to start the trail all over.

  Her den felt too bi
g. Too empty. Having lived her entire twenty-eight years under someone else’s roof, having her own space felt almost claustrophobic. It was as if she’d been dragged under the waves of crystal blue water, with no sense of down or up, left or right, and all the while her lungs were bursting for another hit of oxygen.

  Besides that, she still sometimes caught whiffs of the former occupant. Garrett hadn’t been one of her immediate tormentors, but he’d been present for enough. His history with the Crowleys only made him worse. To smell him in a place that already didn’t feel like home was another nail in the proverbial coffin.

  She was so fucking tired of this life.

  Claws sliced her insides as her lioness fed off her agitation. She reached for the animal, but fur only brushed against her before jerking away.

  Out. She needed out. Somewhere she could breathe easily without any reminders of what she’d suffered.

  She stuffed her feet into shoes and shoved open the back door, but her energy crumbled the moment night air touched her skin. Restlessness still shot up and down her limbs, but the idea of taking another step was so utterly exhausting that she sank down on the top step. With her back to the railing, she stretched her legs out long and turned her face to the sky. She doubted she’d find sleep again, but maybe she could find a sliver of peace in the stars.

  She didn’t know how long she sat before she heard footsteps approaching in the darkness. Her heart kicked back to life and she shot a glance to the den next to hers. But no, Rhys didn’t live there anymore. He’d given up the space for the latest mated pair, Seth and Lilah, and claimed the room in the barn. With the other animals, she’d heard him joke to the others.

  After what she’d watched her ninth night on the ranch and a dozen times since Lindley brought her there, she heard the truth in his words. They were as hopeless as her own.

  Lindley padded around the corner of his den, returning from his patrol. One of the others would pick up where he left off to keep tabs on the territory.

  Bones cracked in the night, followed by the soft whisper of energy. Lindley pushed off the ground and bounded up his steps to disappear inside. He emerged a second later with jeans covering his lower half. “What are you doing up?” he called, voice muffled by the shirt he yanked over his head.

  Sage flashed her brother a tiny smile in greeting. “Couldn’t sleep. Nightmares.”

  Pity flashed in his eyes and she groaned when he dropped off his back porch. “Go to bed, Lin,” she ordered, but he ignored her completely.

  “I will when you do.” He gave her an obnoxious shrug as he plunked himself down on her bottom step. He planted his back against the railing the same as she’d done, facing the opposite way so he could look at her. “Or you can tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “Mostly how nice it was to be the only child,” she tried to tease, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  She stopped herself from dragging her fingers across her neck. Months had passed since she’d worn the collar, but she swore she could still feel the cold metal itching against her skin. A little lower, if she dared dip her fingers, she knew she’d find the ugly scar branded into her flesh.

  She’d been treated like a possession her entire life. Her father wanted the perfect pride princess to tie his pride with powerful allies. She just never expected to be sold to a man old enough to be her father, and cruel enough to want war between humans and supernaturals. He’d given her that brand, the crooked, overlapping Js a sign of how she’d struggled every time he wanted to punish her, and a warning of what she faced if she ever defied him.

  Jasper and her father were out there, just waiting for the moment to strike. She felt it in her very bones. Something was coming. For her, or the pride, she didn’t know. She wanted to be brave and not back down from whatever it was, but she knew she was a coward at heart.

  She was too broken. Too lost. There wasn’t any forgetting the hurts she’d suffered. There wasn’t any moving past it. She still felt the silver collar around her neck and her lioness wouldn’t set her paws to the earth no matter how much Sage willed it. She wasn’t living, and she was tired of existing.

  “I can’t do this anymore, Lin.”

  Lies, something whispered deep in her head. Sage brushed the thought aside and closed her eyes. A faint, white smudge appeared on the back of her lids, like she’d stared at a bright light for too long, but she knew who it was even without her lioness slinking through her head.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This. Everything.” Sage gestured to the empty air. “Living. I can’t keep pretending like I’m getting better.”

  “No,” he said firmly, then gave a hard shake of his head. Sadness welled in his scent. “I won’t hear another word.”

  “It’s not your choice,” she insisted. Sage dragged down a steadying breath. Quieter, letting the defeat and anguish enter her voice, she repeated, “It’s not your choice.”

  “Why? Why now?”

  “I took Lilah away from safety. We’d be dead now if Seth hadn’t tracked us down in time.”

  She wished she’d gotten a taste of the clarity Lilah found on their road trip. Guilt and failure wrapped tightly around her throat. Accidentally bitten and made into a lioness by the man fated to be her mate wasn’t exactly an easy pill to swallow, especially after she’d been hurt by shifters before. But where Lilah came away with a lioness and a mate, she still felt scraped raw.

  Sage huffed an unhappy laugh. Maybe she had found clarity, she just hadn’t been willing to accept the answer.

  If anything, it was clearer than ever. She didn’t have a place in a world with savage lions, nor did she want to keep carrying weights wrapped around her neck. She didn’t want to run at the first flash of temper, but she didn’t want to feel forced to stay in one place, either. The pesky scar marking her as someone’s property was a promise that he’d try to collect. Maybe not tomorrow, or the next month, but the threat was well and truly alive.

  Her mother had been claimed by a mad, vicious alpha. Roland let Lindley take the blame for her death, but he’d been the one to do the deed. She’d been a strong woman. Proud. Ready to go to the mat for her cubs even if it meant facing her mate’s wrath. And in the end, he killed her for it.

  She didn’t have her mother’s strength. Jasper already broke her.

  Grief for her lost future welled up from the pit of her stomach. She reached for her inner cat, then reached again. Fur slipped through her fingers and a low growl vibrated in her middle, but there was nothing else. No comfort. No companionship. She was cut off from one whole side of herself when she needed her the most.

  “I froze,” she added. Skies above, her skin still crawled with the feel of the bear’s eyes on them. There’d been nothing but hate in them. He’d blamed Lilah for ripping his clan apart, but she didn’t doubt for a second that anyone stepping into that clearing would have met the same fate. He’d needed to ground his anger somewhere, they just happened to be the most convenient targets. “When someone needed me the most, I couldn’t do anything but cower.”

  Lindley grimaced. “So because you couldn’t be the hero—”

  “It has nothing to do with being a hero. I’d settle for a mediocre life at this point, but I’m not getting even that much.” Sage wrapped her arms around her legs and turned her attention back to the sky. “I’m broken, Lin. There’s no putting me back together.”

  Sharp, stinging pain filled his scent even as he shook his head. “You’re not thinking straight.” Denial hardened his voice. “You’ve been doing so well. I can’t lose you after I just got you back.”

  “I told Kyla to find you, not for you both to come looking for me. I knew what I faced when that collar went around my neck,” she said gently. “It’s been two hundred days, Lin. Nothing is working.”

  He was silent for a beat, then asked quietly, “You’ve been counting this whole time?”

  Sage nodded slowly. “I keep expecting to wake up one day and feel… I don’t
know. Not better. Like I have less weight on my shoulders? Just something different than this emptiness.

  “I can’t shift. My lioness is full of rage, but disappears at the vaguest hint of a threat. You know as well as I do what happens when our kind become disconnected from their animals.”

  There was only one solution for a shifter slowly unraveling. She needed to be put down before she became a danger to those around her. She’d be a liar if she said she hadn’t thought about it before. But there, too, she was a coward.

  So far, her inner animal was content to remain hidden away. But the moment she wanted out? If she couldn’t control the creature, she risked being the one trapped deep in her head, losing her humanity a little more each day. Rogue shifters were more animal than human, and more powerful than their regular animal kin. They weren’t beholden to any pride or followed any laws. They acted on the purest of instinct—survival—no matter who crossed their path.

  She hated, absolutely hated, how much better that sounded than the faded existence she found herself in.

  “One year,” Lindley sighed.

  Sage broke out of her thoughts and glanced at him. “What?”

  “Give me the complete year. You’re already two hundred days in. What harm will it do to add a few more months?”

  “Oh, only losing control of my animal and mauling some innocent strangers. No harm at all,” she muttered.

  Lindley reached up and squeezed her calf. “I’m serious, Sage. One year. I’m not giving up on you.”

  Sage frowned, but another crushing wave of exhaustion hit her. She could press, but he’d dig in his heels. The same lack of energy that kept her on her steps applied to the fight she’d face. “One year,” she agreed. “But Lin, promise me something.”

  “Anything.”

  “If my lioness rips out of me, if I hurt anyone…” She slowly shook her head. “Don’t let me be a danger.”

  Jaw tight, Lindley nodded.

  Deep in Sage’s head, her lioness roared.

  Chapter 7