by Lacey Thorn
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Book Description
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
About the Author
Dear Reader...
Gems of Romantic Fiction
ResplendencePublishing.com
Eyes on the Pride
An Awakening Pride Story
By Lacey Thorn
Resplendence Publishing
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www.resplendencepublishing.com
Gems of Romantic Fiction
Eyes on the Pride
Copyright © 2016, Lacey Thorn
Edited by Michele Paulin and Liza Green
Cover Art by Les Byerley
Published by Resplendence Publishing, LLC
1093 A1A Beach Blvd, #146
St. Augustine, FL 32080
Electronic format ISBN: 978-1-60735-952-4
Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
Electronic Release: June 2016
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places or occurrences, is purely coincidental.
Eyes on the Pride
By Lacey Thorn
Watching...
Darby doesn’t just know shifters exist. It’s her job to watch them. For the last four years, she’s had her eye on one shifter, Calloway Meyer. She’s obsessed with him, which is problematic since he seems set on avoiding her.
Waiting...
Calloway has spent four years keeping an eye on his mate, waiting for her to be ready to be his. When her father sends her on a mission that might get her killed, Calloway has no choice but to step in.
Claimed...
One touch. One taste. One word whispered between them that will change both of their lives: Mine.
I want to thank all of my readers for the love and support they give me with every new release! You guys rock! Also a shout out to my amazing editor Michele Paulin! Thank you for your support and guidance.
Chapter One
“You think he’ll go to Oklahoma and join the pride?” Darby Kline scoffed, an unladylike snort sounding as she shook her head. “He won’t give a damn about Utah Pearce. Calloway Meyer is an arrogant bastard. I can’t see him following anyone.”
“He’ll go,” her father, Andrew, stated, gaze locked on the laptop in front of him. He’d been collecting every snippet of information he could get on Utah Pearce, Abby Lane Pearce, Reno Esponetti, Logan Dobson, and two Irishman named Finn and Murphy Dockery. There were other names associated with the newest pride of ailuranthropes, but these were the ones her father concentrated on most. He already knew about the Erikson brothers, Gabriel and Daniel, who’d lost their father, Isaac, last year.
“What makes you so certain?”
“Years of observing,” Andrew muttered, obviously preoccupied with whatever he was speed reading on the screen.
Her father was a watcher, descended from a long line of watchers. They were the people who guarded the ailuranthropes, or cat shifters as she preferred to call them. They…watched, offering protection when they could, giving information when they had it and it was needed, and recording everything. They’d kept a history of every feline shifter ever encountered. What once had been documented in notebooks was now logged into a protected database online. It allowed those in the group with the current access codes to retrieve information and upload anything they could add.
Darby’s father had discovered Calloway Meyer four years ago when Darby had been twenty-one. She’d taken one look at the sexy shifter and wanted him. The need had nearly torn her apart. She craved him with a ferocity a sexual novice shouldn’t feel. She couldn’t be anywhere close to him without her pussy moistening and her nipples growing rigid and needy.
“Do you remember the stories I told you about the last leader of the ailuranthropes?”
Darby glanced over and found her father’s full attention focused on her. She resisted the urge to squirm, thankful he wouldn’t be able to smell her desire the way a shifter would.
“Yes.”
“Tell me,” he demanded, leaning forward.
“It was in the early 1900s. A young lion mated and began gathering shifters as he moved around.”
“What was his name?”
Darby scrambled for a moment, her father’s intense gaze making her anxious. “Tahmond,” she blurted as the name finally came to her. “Dale Tahmond, but his friends called him Tah.”
Her father nodded, motioning with his hands for her to continue.
“He ended up in New Mexico, but the Native Americans were unwilling to have what the Navajo referred to as skinwalkers so close to them. They feared Tah and his pride until the night the shifters saved a young Navajo boy’s life. No one ever spoke of what happened, not even the watchers who’d witnessed it. The boy was close to death when Tah and his two best friends came across him. They saved his life and returned him to his family. The boy’s grandfather was a respected tribal elder. The tribe still refused to allow the pride to settle near them, knowing their people would never believe skinwalkers wouldn’t hunt them and kill them in their sleep. There was a secret tribunal though, one the boy’s father was a part of, one that consisted of members of several Native American nations. They promised the pride a place of refuge. Two days later, Dale Tahmond and the shifters he’d gathered to him disappeared. They were never seen again. Two watchers disappeared with them.”
“The tribunal still exists today,” her father added. “We still know nothing about them, not even which tribes are a part of it. I do know that two Native Americans have joined with the pride in Oklahoma, twins going by the names of Dusty and Reed Hillman. I have someone working on background information on them. There’s more to them than what appears, and I plan to find out everything I can.”
Darby immediately picked up on what her father wasn’t saying. The watchers were afraid this pride would disappear as the last one had. They couldn’t let that happen if they were to unite all the cat shifters into one pride, something they felt was the only way to keep the shifters safe from harm. Their job was made all the more difficult by the presence of another group searching for shifters. Only that group sought in the hopes of capturing and killing. Hunters.
Hunters were essentially an extremist group that believed shifters were an abomination on the earth and needed to be wiped out. They stalked them, seeing them as nothing more than animals to be killed. Over the course of time, they’d made some changes, deciding to use their prey for other purposes. They had entire facilities built purely to experiment on shifters. They used drugs to try to control them, turning them against one another. They harvested organs, cut body parts off to see if they’d regrow, and recently had begun two new research projects: one dealing with brain activity and the other with reproduction.
Hunters made the job of watchers essential. They also made it harder. Wa
tchers had been tracked and killed along with the shifters they protected. Entire families of watchers had been wiped out. Hunters were merciless, leaving no one behind. They killed without hesitation, slaughtering men, women and children with no distinction. The humans who helped the shifters were even more vile in a hunter’s eyes. Watchers chose to associate with animals, called them friends, and sometimes, mated with them. That meant a special form of torture for any captured. Darby prayed she never found out what that entailed.
“Are you listening?” Her father’s sharp tone jerked Darby’s attention from thoughts of hunters and torture.
“Sorry,” she said automatically. “Do you think the tribunal plans to hide this group of shifters, as well?”
“I don’t know, but the fear is there. We need someone inside, someone to speak with the alpha. We can’t continue operating the way we have. The only way to truly eliminate the threat of hunters is by working together. All of us. Watchers and shifters of all breeds. The Eriksons have already forged bonds with the coyotes and bears. Pearce and his people seem to have one with the wolf alphas and their mate. This is more cohesion between breeds than we’ve ever seen. The time is now.”
“Has there been a decision on who they’re sending in?” Darby asked.
Her father gave her a strange look, as if he were piercing her skin and looking beneath it, searching for anything she hid inside.
“The person who goes in will have to be considered as one of them.”
“So one of the watchers who’s mated with a shifter.” That made perfect sense. As a shifter’s mate, the watcher would be treated like one of the pride, an integral part of the whole.
“Do you remember how telecommunication works within the pride?” Her father questioned, making her feel as if she were back in school taking a pop quiz she’d failed to study for.
“When they’re shifted, they can communicate with one another. Mates can hear each other in human form once their connection is made, the link growing as their blood bond grows.”
“In some families, siblings and even parents can share a bond similar to that of mates, hearing one another inside their heads.”
Darby nodded. “It’s rare though.”
“The alpha, Utah Pearce. How would you teach him to call his pride to him?”
She bit her bottom lip, digging through memory in search of the golden knowledge her father sought.
“Think, Darby. How does he call them to him?”
“The link,” she blurted. “He has to awaken the link as alpha. Once he does, he can call to his pride. They’ll come to him then, more so than if they merely hear of him through word of mouth. An alpha call can’t be denied.”
“How does he awaken it?”
“He’ll need to tap into the most primal part of himself, the pure instinct of the beast, undiluted by the man.”
“He’s done that already,” her father admonished her. “He wouldn’t be a very effective alpha if he wasn’t truly merged with his animal. What is it he needs to do to open the link? What is he missing?”
Darby shook her head even as she dug deeper, trying to recall any nugget of information her father had given her over the years. What would an alpha need in order to call his pride?
“Let me tell you a little about Utah Pearce.” Her father pulled something up on the monitor in front of him and gazed at it before focusing on her once more. “He grew up with his grandmother. Always big for his age. Always sticking up for those younger or smaller. Graduated at the top of his class then joined the Marines, where he rose quickly through the ranks until he had command of his own unit. He left the service and ended up bartending, which is where he met his mate. The two of them were kidnapped, a circumstance that awakened the slumbering beast in Utah and put him on the path that’s led him to Oklahoma and the beginning of what might be the pride we’ve all been watching for.”
He clicked another button and turned the laptop so she could see the screen.
“Utah Pearce,” Darby said, glancing at the photograph her father had pulled up on the screen. The man was immense, but it was more than his height and muscular frame. There was an intensity in his gaze that even a picture couldn’t diminish. His skin was a shade that brought to mind the cafe au laits she favored. Brown hair with strands of blond and maybe even red mixed in framed his face, setting off his golden-brown eyes. His stance was wide, shoulders back, broad chest showcased by the fitted shirt he wore. She saw his confidence, his intelligence. He wore the mantle of a born leader. Earlier, her father had mentioned all of the members of the Marine unit Utah Pearce had commanded were now with him in Oklahoma. Well, except for the one who had gone to visit the Holloways in Wyoming and ended up mating with a female bear shifter and staying. Obviously, Utah was a man worthy of loyalty.
“Now, look at this.” Her father clicked onto another image, one that had Utah Pearce’s photo on a split screen with that of another man. The other picture was older, early twentieth century would be her guess. Same posture. Same stance. Same piercing gaze. Same confidence and intelligence.
“Is that Dale Tahmond?” she asked as the connection was forged in her mind.
“Yes.” Her father validated her guess, tapping his finger on the screen. “Do you see the similarities?”
“How could I miss them?” she queried as her gaze moved back and forth between the two photos. “Utah Pearce has to be a descendent of Dale Tahmond. The resemblance is uncanny.”
“I think so, too,” her father agreed. He stood, stretching as he paced. “All this information. We’ve watched and recorded, keeping record of every little thing we could.” He grunted, throwing his hands in the air. “It’s time everything was shared. We can’t filter the information anymore, only sharing what pertains to individual shifters or families. We have to help the new pride.”
“You want to share everything with Utah Pearce?”
He stepped toward her, skimming his fingers down her cheek then cupping her jaw. “I want you to share everything.”
“What?” She hated the way her voice shook as she stepped back from her father’s touch. “Me? Why?”
“Look at you. You’re petite and human, beautiful with an engaging smile. None of them will see you as a threat. Plus, you know the history as well as I do, so you won’t rely on the database.”
“I’m not one of them, so it won’t matter. I’m human. If I’m lucky, they’ll give me a pat on the head and send me back on my way.”
“Did you know Abby Lane is a descendant of watchers, of Ebidiah Lane?”
“You can’t possibly think that will get me an invite into the inner group! Does this Abby even know she’s descended from watchers?”
“I don’t know. I’ve printed out information about Lane just in case. I want you to take it to them, but I don’t plan for that to be your way in. There’s only one sure way to be accepted.”
“Yes, but I’m not a shifter.” Her head spun, but not with the facts and information that had been dumped into it since birth. She didn’t care that she needed to help Utah Pearce tap into the pride link only he could initiate. She didn’t care about sharing the information with the new pride. Not when it sounded as if her father wanted her to do it alone.
“You don’t need to be a shifter,” her father stated. His gaze pierced her, as if he’d make her see by force of will alone.
She shook her head frantically. “You can’t mean… I’m not…” She couldn’t manage a complete sentence.
“Why do you think Calloway Meyer has stayed so close to us for the last four years?”
She shrugged. “Who the hell knows why Calloway does what he does!”
“Think, Darby. How many times have you gone out and he’s showed up? How many times has he sent you home when you’ve tried to sneak out while I was busy?”
Her face flushed with color she couldn’t hide. How did her father know about those times? Calloway had spoken to her like a child and commanded her obedience. Christ, just thinkin
g about it made her clench her thighs closed, made her nipples throb where they hardened and rasped against the lace cups of her bra. Her body always reacted that way when he was anywhere near her.
“You know the truth.” Her father’s voice was calm, soft. “I think you’ve always known.”
“I don’t,” Darby murmured. As much as she lusted for Calloway, the man scared the hell out of her. He was a dominant force of nature. He was the star of every sexual fantasy she’d had since the moment she’d first glimpsed him. One way or another, she was screwed.
Chapter Two
Darby pulled her car into the motel lot and parked next to the office. Her head was still spinning. For the first time in her twenty-five years, she was on her own. She’d prepared for this day all her life, but it wasn’t as she’d pictured it. She’d expected to take her place as a watcher, just as her father had. Instead, she was heading to Oklahoma with the task of joining the newly forming pride and making sure they had access to every piece of information gathered throughout history by watchers. She had an encrypted flash drive and the information needed to access the current code for the online database. Plus she had the print file her father had given her on Ebidiah Lane for his descendent Abby.
Her father was on his way to Ireland, stating there was something there he wanted to check into. She knew it had something to do with the Dockery brothers who were currently with the new pride, but her father hadn’t gone into detail. He’d been too busy making sure she knew exactly what was required of her. Go to Riverton, Oklahoma, a tiny town along the Red River, and stay there until she could gain a meeting with Utah Pearce or his wife Abby Lane Pearce.
She had to find a way to help Utah tap into his ability to call his pride together. All shifters could communicate with each other while in animal form, but an alpha could issue the call in his human skin. Furthermore, that call would go out to every member of his pride, no matter where they were in the world. That particular skill had been lost through the centuries. None of the shifters utilized it anymore, not even the bears who were the most unchanged of all the shifter species. How was she supposed to figure it out?