A Lion's Heart

by A. C. Arthur

“Each time Mackey or one of his men came into that cell you could have easily killed them and got out of there. His baton, those guns, they wouldn’t have stopped the white lion. You could have defeated them, but you didn’t,” she said.

  He looked away from her momentarily and when their gazes met once more his eyes glistened in the darkness. The black and white mixture of his hair and beard more prominent, reminding her instantly of the lion’s regal mane.

  “After graduating from high school I came to Oasis to visit my family. I’d heard via the messages my mother had sent to her adoptive parents that were my human guardians about the changes that had been made in those first years after the Unveiling. The plan for Oasis was just beginning to be fulfilled, bunkers were being built, tribes were coming together. My parents were excited. I was disappointed because there was a freedom above ground that Oasis just couldn’t capture. I felt claustrophobic down here, like I was going to die if I stayed.”

  Nisa nodded because she could remember feeling the same way most days of her life. She’d combatted that feeling by focusing on creating something better for them—the holodeck—always looking for an answer, a solution to how they could once again join in the world that had forced them out. That was why it was imperative that she run above ground, that she get at least those small opportunities to breathe the free air.

  “I joined the Marines two weeks later,” he continued. I came back to visit my family after finishing my tour. Nothing had changed. Sure, they’d built more bunkers and spread out further, but they were still trapped down here. And I hated it. I wanted them and every other shifter out and above ground living the way we were meant to live. But the Assembly Leader was adamant that the shifters stay in Oasis. That we not attempt to fight the humans. So I decided I would make my own plans. I went above ground and had just finished a meeting with Keller when I contacted a woman I’d seen before.”

  “Marlee,” Nisa said the name and surprisingly did not feel any twinges of jealousy the way she had before.

  “She was a prostitute. She had children and lived in a small apartment. I paid her too much money every time I saw her because I knew she needed it. I didn’t use any other woman, not because I had any serious feelings for Marlee, but because I wanted her children to also have some freedom and to live the life they were meant to live. I’d gotten my tribal tat on my last visit to Oasis. It was long past time but since I was living above ground and trying to fit in, my parents hadn’t thought it was a good idea to have the identifying tattoo. Marlee saw it. Up until that moment she’d thought I was a human, just like everyone else above ground had and because of the fear that Mackey and his goons had helped spread throughout the world, she was afraid.”

  “She called the Task Force,” Nisa finished or him. “And they took you to the SIC. They took Marlee too, leaving her children to fend for themselves. Mackey wanted information from you so he didn’t kill you like he did so many others. But you didn’t kill him then.”

  She’d been walking as she talked so that now she was standing in front of the man this time.

  “The moment I woke up in the SIC I killed the first human that pulled a gun on me. It was instinct and training and my chest heaved as I watched his body fall to the floor, his throat torn out, blood pooling around him. I could hear the humans coming, screaming that they knew this would happen. That we were savages and all deserved to die. Mackey stopped them from killing me and that night they brought Marlee to me. He wanted to see if I could get her pregnant and what a half shifter, half human would be like. She would remain alive as long as I was there to serve a purpose.”

  “You took the beatings,” she whispered and lifted a hand to move over the scars on his chest.

  Pausing when she felt warmth under one particular set of scars.

  “Your tat was here,” she said and looked down at the spot on his left pectoral where the strips of scarring were closer together forming a sort of patch of dead skin. “They burned it off.”

  He nodded.

  “I wouldn’t tell him who The Desert Cat was and when they heard that the infamous shifter might be close, Mackey decided that Marlee would be the deciding factor.”

  “He killed her in front of you to force you to tell him,” she said. “But you don’t know.”

  Decan shook his head. “I don’t know who it is. But the shifter showed up that night and set fire to the SIC. I escaped.”

  “And began to plan to go against my father’s rules.”

  The moment she said the words Decan grabbed her wrist, keeping her hand on his chest as he pulled her closer.

  “I planned to free us, Nisa. We deserve to be free.”

  He was right. She’d believed that all her life, but she also loved her father.

  “He has reasons,” she said quietly.

  Decan nodded. “I know some of them now. But Cole is back and even though we have Mackey, they won’t stop. Not unless we stop them.”

  He was right again. She knew it as surely as she knew her name.

  “I won’t…I can’t do this without you,” he continued.

  She looked up at him, wondering once more. “Because I’m your companheiro.”

  “No,” he said, his voice lowering to a gruff whisper. “Because you’re my heart. You’re everything I was trying to hold onto each night in that camp. I knew that the moment I saw you at Assembly Headquarters. That’s why I couldn’t leave. I’m in love with you Nisa Reynolds.”

  There were no stars, no bursts of warmth in her chest the way Shya’s books had always said there would be. Nisa didn’t feel like flinging herself into his arms and having him lift her in the air and spin her around. There was no intense joy and thoughts of happy ever after. There was, however, peace. It settled over her like a fresh sheet in the morning breeze and wrapped her in security and comfort. She knew exactly what her mother had been speaking of in that moment. This was her second awakening. It was the moment she accepted the woman and the mate she was meant to be.

  “I’ll rule by your side?” she asked.

  Decan wrapped an arm around her waist, his strong fingers splaying over her bare backside.

  “You’ll be my partner,” he told her.

  “No secrets?”

  “No secrets?” he asked her in return.

  She couldn’t help the small smile that slowly spread.

  “I’ll plan the future of the Central Zone shifters with you,” he said as he brought the wrist he’d continued to hold up to his mouth and kissed the back of her hand. “I’ll listen to you and respect you.”

  His hands moved to her hips then, sliding down until he was lifting her up and wrapping her legs around his waist. “I’ll cherish and protect you.”

  Nisa wrapped her arms around his neck and rotated her hips at the feel of the crest of his arousal against the already damp folds of her sex.

  “I will help you plan the future of the Central Zone shifters,” she said and gave a slow moan when he pressed his length slowly into her.

  “I’ll listen to you and respect you,” she continued.

  He kissed her forehead and then the tip of her nose.

  “I’ll cherish and protect you,” she whispered when his cock went deeper.

  His lips found hers and the words tumbled free as she finally let go. “I’ll cherish and protect. I’ll love you, Decan.”

  He growled and pressed his full length into her. She clasped her feet and hugged him tight, never wanting to break this companheiro connection.

  “I’ll love you, Nisa,” he whispered and began to move slowly and deliciously in and out of her.

  “So I’ve claimed a lion’s heart,” Nisa said on another moan as Decan’s hands spread her cheeks apart and thrust deeper into her.

  He nuzzled her neck, licking along her shoulder before sinking his teeth into her skin and licking the spot when she growled in response. “Yes, baby, you’ve finally claimed this lion’s heart.”

  A COUGAR’S KISS

  A S
hadow Shifters Rebellion Novel

  A.C. ARTHUR

  Coming 2018

  He’d run as fast as he could, pushing his cat until its flanks heaved with each new breath.

  He wasn’t going to catch the beast. Not this time.

  He hadn’t caught it any of the last times that he’d been chasing it and that fact was eating away at him.

  It was killing. Shifters and humans, anything in its path, ended up dead. The rage was deep and real, festering inside this beast until nothing but hate spewed out in return.

  He couldn’t run anymore, couldn’t chase the beast and could not contain it either. He did not want to give up. But he had no other choice.

  With his last breath the jaguar roared loud and long. It broke through the class that had contained it for years and roared once more before collapsing to the floor and letting the human take over.

  Keller Cross hated hospitals.

  He hated the smell, the sounds, the stark white walls and the inevitability of death. That was the biggest reason he despised Rome’s punishment for all the things he’d done against the Assembly Leader’s command.

  Standing guard outside the room where Cole Linden had been sleeping like a fifty year old baby for the last three months was boring and tiresome and futile. People died in hospitals. Most assuredly Shadow Shifters died in hospitals. He knew, because he’d watched it happen. The fact that this was a Shadow Shifter medical facility built in one of the adjoining bunkers to the Assembly Headquarters in the shifters underworld haven called Oasis, didn’t really matter. It was supposed to. Ary Delgado took pride in the facility she’d designed and ran with efficiency. To her credit, the Brazilian born jaguar shifter was good at her job. She was the smartest and most talented curandero Keller had ever seen. But she wasn’t a god and could not bring anyone or any shifter back from the dead. If there were such a person, Keller would have begged them a long time ago to save his family.

  That was a miracle Keller had given up on a long time ago. There was no one to save them, they had to do it themselves. Which is exactly what he’d been trying to do before his plan of murder and revenge came crashing down in the form of the Assembly Leader’s daughter and one of Keller’s only friends getting caught up in that damned companheiro calor.

  Another shifter anomaly that Keller refused to accept.

  Rome had called Keller a renegade because he’d built a secret bunker and was able to hack into the holodeck vehicle control board. He’d also called Keller reckless because his plan for revenge had almost gotten him, Gold, Nisa and Decan killed. The Assembly Leader had raged at Keller once they’d returned to Assembly Headquarters and when Keller thought all the yelling and growling would be followed by a swift death, Rome had assigned him to babysitting duty.

  It seemed that even though he’d screwed up when it was his turn to keep an eye on the Assembly Leader’s daughter, he was now being given the chance to redeem himself by keeping watch over the most prized shifter of the decade.

  Keller pushed away from the wall he’d been leaning against and moved to stand in front of the door leading into the room. He stared through the window to the shifter lying in the hospital bed, his arms still at his sides, eyes closed, white sheet tucked around him. It was late so the lights were out in the room and in most areas of the medical center. Keller pushed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and continued to stare.

  He wondered, as he had in the past weeks that he’d spent staring at this same scenario, where Cole Linden had been for the past twenty years. What had he been doing and how had he ended up on coma? The biggest and probably most ignored question was who…or what…had brought Cole back to them?

  Keller had shifted early upon approaching Ewen Mackey’s house that night and he’d taken down at least four humans before hearing Gold’s roar of pain. He’d shifted back to human form in order to carry the wounded shifter out of the house, just in time to see what he and Decan now thought was a gigantic wing disappear into the fog and Cole on the ground.

  Nobody had spoken of it since that night and they hadn’t seen the lycans again. So Keller was left to wonder and stare at the comatose shifter leader as he was doing right now.

  Nothing had happened in the past twelve weeks. Cole had not responded to any tests or stimulation that Ary and her team could think of. He simply lay there, sleeping, as if whatever he’d done in the last decade had completely tuckered him out. Or scared him into a place so deep and so dark, he dared not come back.

  Keller dragged a hand down his face. He was irritable and tired of standing here and anxious from being stuck down here for so long. He was also horny, but that was a complaint for another day.

  Tonight, he would do fine with a nap until his babysitting shift was over. He was just about to resume his position against the wall when something stopped him.

  Through the darkness of the room yellow eyes glowed.

  Cole Linden was awake.