by Zoe Chant
Lion’s Mate
Rowland Lions, #2
By Zoe Chant
Copyright Zoe Chant 2017
All Rights Reserved
Author’s Note
This book stands alone. However, it’s part of a series about the Rowland siblings, who are all lion shifters. If you’d like to read the series in order, the first book is Lion’s Hunt.
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Lion's Mate (Rowland Lions, #2)
A note from Zoe Chant
More Paranormal Romance by Zoe Chant
Zoe on Audio
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Lion’s Hunt | by Zoe Chant | Special Sneak Preview
Turn left.
Max Rowland clenched his hands hard on the steering wheel. He allowed the car to slow down just a hair as the turnoff approached.
Left. Turn left.
A hair more.
“Sir?” Tom asked from the passenger seat. “Something wrong?”
Yes. “No.” Max kept his voice level and his face blank. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator and sped past the turnoff that led out into the Connecticut forest. “Nothing’s wrong.”
Tom accepted that without any further questions. He was a good security specialist, with a sharp eye for any possible threats but a total lack of attention toward business and personal matters.
Not that Max had many personal matters. The only family member he saw regularly was his sister, Alexandra, and that was only because she worked in the same office. They rarely spoke about anything other than work, and they preferred it that way. His brothers both lived far away.
And his mate...
You should have turned left! his lion roared.
His mate didn’t know he existed. And that was for the best.
Shoshanna Ross had moved into a house in rural Connecticut six months ago, after she'd been freed from a lab that had been experimenting on shifters. The lab had been run by Carl Hendricks, the chief financial officer of Max’s own company, Rowland Global Solutions. Shoshanna had been kidnapped and imprisoned, along with a dozen other shapeshifters, because Hendricks had learned about shapeshifters from Max and had wanted to see how he could turn that knowledge into power.
Max, the company’s CEO, had been completely unaware of the lab’s existence for months. He’d only learned about it after he’d sent his own brother, Seth, to investigate what looked like embezzlement, with the result that Seth had been captured himself. Only the intervention of Seth’s mate, Cassie, had saved Seth from Hendricks.
Max had let someone else take on the danger instead of investigating on his own, and Seth had suffered for it. He’d trusted Carl Hendricks, and his brother and his own mate had paid the price.
He wasn’t going to make a mistake like that again.
Max had seen Shoshanna only once, during the takedown of the lab. She’d been unconscious, and hadn’t known he was there. He’d sensed she was his mate immediately...and he’d gotten out of there as quickly as he could.
He hadn’t wanted Shoshanna to know that her own mate was responsible for all of her suffering. He could only imagine the look on her face when she learned that Max’s carelessness had gotten her imprisoned and tortured. No one needed to live with that.
So he’d stayed away. He’d made sure RGS bestowed extremely generous settlements on all of the lab’s prisoners, so she had plenty of money to do whatever she wanted, and hoped that she’d settle down and live a peaceful life.
Instead, she’d started a private investigators’ agency with one of her fellow prisoners, Kevin Lane. Clearly, Shoshanna was not the sort of person to live a life of leisure, even if she had the means. Max had recommended them to RGS’s security department and then forced himself to turn his attention to other things.
Like what he was doing today.
Because he wasn’t driving so near to Shoshanna’s house on purpose, he reminded his lion, which was roaring in protest at having come so close and veered away. They had other business to attend to.
Max pulled off the highway several miles beyond the turnoff to Shoshanna’s place, into a small town only notable for being about halfway between New York, where Max was based, and Hartford, where the meeting’s other party was based. Mr. Santino had suggested it as a convenient spot for a meeting, and Max had agreed. He hadn’t wanted to have this meeting at RGS’s offices and he was pleased to avoid having to drive all the way to Hartford.
Despite being in the middle of nowhere, the town did at least have a coffee shop, and Max parked outside it. Tom preceded him through the door, scanned the room, and then stepped back out to glance around the area for potential threats.
Max, on the other hand, stepped smoothly up to the small table along the far wall and held out his hand to the man already there, who’d stood up to meet him. “Mr. Goring,” he said in mild surprise. “I was expecting Mr. Santino.”
“Well, you’ve got me. Mr. Santino sends his apologies.”
Paul Goring, second-in-command at Elite Enterprises, shook Max’s hand with the iron grip of a man who had something to prove. Max kept his own grip at a polite level and gave no indication that he’d noticed that Goring was trying vainly to crush his fingers.
Eventually the man gave up and indicated the chair across from him, and the tiny espresso cup on the table in front of it. “The coffee here’s actually pretty good,” Goring said, taking his own seat.
Max sat down and lifted the cup for a taste. Unusual, and not really to his liking, but drinkable. “Thank you. You’re telling me that Mr. Santino has authorized you to negotiate on his behalf?”
Goring nodded. He picked up his own coffee and took a large swallow. “Sure has.”
Something was odd here. Max had been expecting Santino to come personally, and he’d expected to see fear in the man’s eyes. Goring seemed casual, almost amused. When one of the richest companies in America was interested in a takeover, it usually provoked a more...active response.
Could they know why he was really interested in Elite Enterprises? Surely not. It didn’t seem possible.
Still. Something wasn’t right. Following his instincts, Max said, “I would prefer to negotiate with Mr. Santino. Thank you for your time, Mr. Goring, but I’m afraid we’ll have to reschedule.” He stood up, buttoning his suit jacket. “Or perhaps I’ll try other methods to obtain what I want.”
Goring sat up quickly in his chair. "Wait, where are you going?"
“I’m going back to New York,” Max said slowly and clearly.
"Wait." Goring set his coffee on the tiny round table. He finally looked like the situation was worth his full attention. "Like I said, I’m authorized to negotiate. Mr. Santino was unavoidably detained—an emergency—but he wanted me to take this meeting to discuss your offer. Please sit down, Mr. Rowland.”
Max paused for a long moment, and then sat down again. It was good to see that his presence inspired some kind of urgency, even if it hadn’t been immediately apparent.
Max wasn't expecting to come away from this meeting the guaranteed future owner of Elite Enterprises, but he had expected to be taken seriously. He wasn't used to being so surprised at a business deal.
Of course, this wasn't a business deal. This was a full-on, concerted attack.
But neither Santino nor Goring were supposed to know that.
Tom appeared at his left. "The car’s parked, Mr. Rowland."
"Thank you, Tom." Max looked at Goring. "My assistant, Tom." He preferred not to reveal that Tom w
as actually his security unless it was absolutely necessary.
Goring waved a hand, and Tom sat down. Max appreciated his solid presence at his elbow.
He especially appreciated it today, because the reason this deal in particular was so serious was that Elite Enterprises wasn't just any company. It was a company that was researching shapeshifters.
Ever since he’d discovered Hendricks’ lab, Max had focused almost all of his professional attention on searching out similar projects, projects that were investigating shifter biology using methods that weren’t strictly ethical. Since most of the world had no idea shifters existed, they were hard to sniff out. Now he’d found one.
He wasn't going to let shifters be kidnapped and experimented on again. He was personally going to make sure that it never happened again. It meant putting in extra time at the office, which, since sixteen-hour days were his norm, had cut heavily into his sleep schedule. It also meant hiding things from the other higher-ups in his company—most notably his sister, Alexandra, who was also a shifter and would've charged in next to him with a lioness' ferocity if she knew.
But Max wasn't allowing anyone else to take on the danger he knew was present. No one else would suffer for his own mistakes.
Tom wasn't a shifter himself, so he wasn't going to get kidnapped, and he hadn’t worked at RGS before, so couldn’t have been involved in Hendricks’ project. Max could admit that suspecting every one of his employees of collusion was paranoia at work, but it was justified paranoia after what had happened six months ago. So he’d hired Tom personally to oversee meetings exactly like this one.
Max leaned forward onto the table, took another sip of his espresso, and laid out his plan for a mutually beneficial merger.
Goring listened with every appearance of attention. Tom scanned the room as Max talked, but didn't give any signals, or even tense up noticeably, to indicate that there might be some kind of threat.
When Max finished talking, his espresso cup long empty, Goring glanced at his watch and said, simply, "Not a chance in hell." Then he stood up and walked out.
Max frowned after him, utterly baffled. What had been his purpose in showing up, if he hadn't planned to accept at all? And why hadn’t he wanted Max to walk out earlier? Had he hoped that Max would give something away about his plans? He had to know how unlikely that was. Max had delivered the pitch in person exactly as he'd delivered it electronically.
Santino had been the one who asked for this meeting. And then he didn't come himself, but sent an underling who refused the offer out of hand.
It was extremely strange, and it was making Max's lion sit up and take notice. He wasn’t used to being ignored like this, and it was starting to make him tingle with a sense of danger.
He looked at Tom again. "What did you think of that?"
Tom looked surprised. Max never asked his opinion about anything unrelated to security. "Don't know what to make of it," he said finally. "Not sure what he wants at all."
"Me, neither," Max said thoughtfully. "All right. Let's go." He stood up and followed Tom out. He looked carefully around as they exited the shop, and Tom did the same. But no one attacked them. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at all.
They got into Max's Porsche, and Max pulled out onto the road, heading east.
"Boss," Tom said after a moment, "New York is the other way."
"I know," Max said shortly. Tom didn't make any further protests.
Max wasn't going to New York just yet. He was going to drive a quick perimeter around a certain house that was just fifteen minutes' drive away.
It was a failure of will. But knowing that she lived so close...he’d blocked off his sense of her so thoroughly that he didn’t even know if she was home. But he still couldn’t keep himself away. And the feeling of danger was pushing him to ensure she was all right.
He would just drive past, and then he’d go back to New York.
Find your mate! his lion roared. Get close to her. Protect her!
If he got close to her, he reminded himself, he wouldn’t be protecting her. After all, not only was he the reason she’d been kidnapped, now he was inviting retribution from companies researching shifters. Companies who might be doing the same thing as Hendricks had. If there was danger here, the best thing he could do was stay away.
He wasn’t safe. Nothing about him was safe.
And she was doing well without him, he knew. She could take care of herself. She’d demonstrated as much ever since she got out of the lab. He respected her intelligence, her strength, and her resourcefulness.
And if his chest locked up with pain when he thought about her, if he stayed up all night researching companies like Elite Enterprises because he couldn’t sleep for wanting her, if the need to protect her growled through his entire body some days...no one had to know. He was strong enough to stay away.
Even though he still wasn’t driving to New York.
He wasn’t going to stop, though. He wasn’t even going to slow down. He was just going to drive down the road, pass the house, make sure nothing looked like trouble, and then go back to Manhattan and carry on with his workday as normal.
He knew he could do it. If there was one thing Max Rowland had in spades, it was an iron willpower. His father had taught him how to build himself into a man who could do anything. Who could always suppress his own desires in favor of what was best.
As a child, Max had played with the rich children of rival businessmen. He’d told reporters what a wonderful father his daddy was. He’d gone to school with politicians’ kids and made the right connections. All because his father had told him to.
He had spent his childhood learning about putting aside what he wanted in favor of what the company needed. As an adult, he was a master at it.
So he wasn’t worried about his ability to drive past Shoshanna’s house without stopping. To keep himself from getting out of the car, going up to the door, and ringing the bell. It was going to hurt, but it already hurt. What was a little more?
Tom, used to silence from his employer, was looking out the window. Admiring the scenery or scanning for threats, Max didn’t know.
He realized suddenly that he’d been staring over at the passenger window for several seconds, his mind wandering back to the past, not paying any attention to his driving. He jerked his gaze back to the road. Fortunately, it was a straight shot, and the car had stayed steady in its lane.
What had that been about?
Before his eyes, the road started turning fuzzy. Max drew in a sharp breath, and it echoed oddly in his ears. His mind hadn’t just been wandering. Something was wrong.
“Tom,” he said in a steady voice. “I’m going to pull over.”
Tom turned to say something, but Max didn’t hear him. He was turning the steering wheel to get them to the side of the road, but it wasn’t working.
Wasn’t it? Was he actually turning the wheel? He suddenly couldn’t tell. The world was turning gray at the edges, and his pulse was thundering in his ears. His hands didn’t seem to want to obey his brain.
As they came up a hill toward a bridge over a decent-sized river, the road turned abruptly. Attention sharpening with a rush of adrenaline, Max yanked hard on the wheel, then slammed his foot on the brake.
Nothing. Nothing was happening.
The car hurtled toward the bend in the road. There was nothing he could do at all, and even if there had been, his whole head was fuzzing out. He couldn’t feel his hands and feet at all anymore.
He could barely see it when the car went over the edge, falling down toward the river below.
***
Shoshanna Ross was feeling pretty good.
She’d just spent the last week in Miami, Florida, on an all-expenses-paid work trip to catch an embezzler on the run. She’d found him after some good hard tracking work, turned him over to the authorities, and now she was getting back on a plane to go home with the expectation of a large paycheck.
The job had come
from Rowland Global Solutions. A lot of her and Kevin’s business did these days. Shoshanna knew that it was probably guilt on someone’s part, because an RGS bigwig had been the one to imprison her, Kevin, and ten other shifters for months.
Memory struck her at the thought, as it often did. Shoshanna shivered a little, her good mood fading at the image of her windowless cell, the drugs, Dr. Benson and his dentist’s chair.
She forced the memories away. It had been a terrible experience, and she’d give anything for it to have never happened. But she refused to let it run her life.
And she certainly wasn’t going to turn away the good business RGS was sending their way.
After all, RGS was throwing all its resources behind the case against Carl Hendricks, the man who had run the lab. The company was doing everything it could to bring him to justice, and had turned over everyone who’d had any provable connection to the operation. They’d given settlements to all the prisoners, offered counseling services, and done everything but apologize on their knees for what had happened.
And, most importantly, the jobs they’d given her weren’t dumb busywork, born out of guilt. This was real work, stuff that needed to get done, like the embezzlement case. Shoshanna and Kevin were good at what they did, and RGS had picked up on that very quickly. She appreciated that.
Kevin wasn’t with her on this trip, because he had another job to take care of. It wasn’t RGS, just an easy number tracking down a cheating husband in Boston. They’d done rock-paper-scissors to see who got to go to Miami, and Shoshanna had won.
Kevin had rolled his eyes and complained, but not too hard. He was always after her to take a vacation, go somewhere warm and sit on a beach sipping drinks with fruit in them. He probably figured a job in Miami was the closest she’d ever get.
“Maybe you’ll meet someone,” he’d said hopefully.
Kevin also thought she’d relax if she started dating. Dating, she did not tell him, was the opposite of relaxing.
She had a hard time being casual with men after the lab, let alone revealing any kind of vulnerability. She’d only been on one date in the last six months, and she’d been so tense and snappish that it had gone nowhere fast.