by T. S. Joyce
Emerald had never been more confused by a man in her entire life.
He was a study of opposites.
Moral compass but a killer.
Kidnapper but counting down the hours until he took her back.
Affectionate but left as soon as she got close.
I’m not the boy I once was.
No, he was not. And what was she? The exact same. Submissive, helpless to a bully on the playground and in need of a hero. But now it was on a bigger scale. Helpless to Cassius’s bullying, she needed Ronin to save her.
What would she learn about herself, good and bad, if she was put in a position where she had to stand alone?
The grit in her wanted to know. She didn’t know how she was going to do it, but she was going to escape Ronin to keep him safe, and she was going to face Cassius on her own.
And fuck that contract.
She didn’t have a plan, but she was going to figure out a way to get her dad out of there. To get them both out of there.
No man would ever hurt her again. No man had that right. In shock, she had taken it from Cassius, and the shame still heated her cheeks. But Ronin had gritted out a reminder. She was a Tarian lioness, and he was right. It didn’t matter if she was submissive; she was still valuable. She was still a person. She’d hated the Tarians for so long, but those words had filled her with the ghost of a feeling she’d never thought she would associate with her history—pride. She remembered those Tarian lionesses of her childhood. Warriors. Hunters. So the Old Tarian Pride had been replacing those badasses with the easily breakable. Fuck the males for their weakness. She remembered what she could be.
The image of the hate twisting Ronin’s face flashed through her mind. You them him back.
A big piece of her wanted him to be proud of her.
Deep inside of her, the lioness perked up her ears and paid attention.
“Did you hear that?” Emerald asked her lion softly. “He called you Sweet Kitty. Stop being sweet. You have teeth.”
Chapter Seven
Ronin shouldn’t be doing this. He shouldn’t be spending extra time with Emerald. He should be distancing himself and handling the million chores he had on his plate today.
But if he was going to do this, if he was going to go after Cassius one-on-one, he needed to let himself feel for Emerald. He needed her to fuel his fury.
Fuck taking her back. Cassius had plans. Probably ambush. He would probably have his Pride attack before Ronin and Emerald even reached their territory. That’s what Alphas with no honor did. Ronin was okay with it because he was ready. Mentally, he was prepared. The war had been dragging too long, both sides putting off annihilation, but he wasn’t here to tiptoe around this. He was here to change the ending of the Tarian story. It’s why he’d agreed to come back in the first place.
The day the council had been killed, Zeke, Alpha of the tiger shifter clan called the Furers, and Ronin’s adoptive father, had pulled him into a Crew meeting.
“It’s time,” he’d said. “You’ve been trained. You’re ready to take a Pride. Go take back the one that tried to end you. I see it in you, that anger. It’ll never go away until you get your revenge. You want revenge? Go poison that Pride from the inside out with our ways. Poison them with honor.”
The Challenge Gray had given Kannon was in full swing. Their lions were Changed and brawling in the middle of a loose circle with the Pride looking on and cheering for favorites. It was loud, but that was just fine with Ronin.
Ronin knelt in the snow and blew out a long, frozen breath, rubbed his cold hands together. His lion always felt better outside, but he still hadn’t adjusted to the cold again. The Furers were down in Louisiana where it stayed relatively warm. He’d forgotten just how frigid winters could be in Colorado.
It was taking Emerald a long time to put a jacket on. Perhaps she’d decided not to come out here. Maybe he’d scared her with that little bite on her neck. Hell, he understood. He’d scared himself with it. He’d tried to back away from the kiss, but his lion had taken over and laid his teeth possessively on her neck, teasing her with a claiming mark.
He was losing his damn mind around her.
Maybe he really did need to find a mate.
Maybe not one like Emerald, who would be broken by what was happening between the Tarian Prides.
A snarl rattled up his throat. She isn’t fragile.
Shut up, Lion.
Ronin swallowed the sound down, eyes on the front door. The bruises on her face that wouldn’t heal fast enough and the easy tears in her eyes said differently. She might not be fragile, but she hadn’t realized her strength yet. And he would be damned if he was so selfish that he would ask her to find that strength by putting her through war.
He just needed to get her out of here. No…it was more than that. Ronin frowned. He needed to keep her safe.
The front door creaked open, and Emerald stepped out onto the front porch. She didn’t see him right away, so he stilled. He liked watching her when she didn’t know. He’d done it as a cub, and had done it again last night while she was sleeping. What a fucking creeper he’d turned out to be.
She frowned in the direction of the fight, but when a squirrel rustled a tree branch, Emerald’s attention darted to it. He could see her profile from here. High cheek bones and dark eyebrows. Raven-colored hair that tumbled down her shoulders like black waves. She’d washed all of her make-up away, but she was still a stunner. She wasn’t one of those skinny girls the Pride was probably looking to put on the throne beside him. Nah, that wasn’t his type. His type was Emerald. She had full, soft-lookin’ tits and an ass he could grab when he was fucking her. Just the mental image of him railing her on her back, her spine arched under him, his name on her lips, how tight and wet she would feel, made his dick hard and too thick to kneel in this position comfortably. When he stood slowly, she arched her gaze to him. Her full lips turned up in a sweet smile. Had anyone smiled like that before when they’d seen him? He couldn’t remember a single time.
“Hi,” he murmured.
She inhaled deeply and then grinned even bigger as she said, “Hi, yourself.”
Something was different about her, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He held up a giant paper grocery bag, the meal he’d thrown together for them. “Do you want to do a hike and have lunch with me?”
Her cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink as she nodded. God, those gorgeous green eyes. It was hard to look away from them. As she approached, her thick-soled boots made crunching sounds through the snow.
He said, “You don’t look down as much anymore.”
“Well, not here. No one’s putting me in my place here.” Her jacket was open, so Ronin set the bag of food down in the snow and pulled her closer by the open flaps of her coat. As he zipped her up, he said, “No one will put you in your place here.”
“Why not?” she asked cheekily.
Pretty girl. He didn’t like hurting girls, but she should keep her distance today. He would have to walk a fine line between letting his lion get protective but not bonding them. He didn’t want to make it harder for her to leave.
Keep her safe. And he would, even if it meant from himself.
He gestured to the fight as they swung a wide berth around it. “You wouldn’t even guess how many of those fights I’ve been in. My destiny is a bloody one, Em. You should know that before I tell you things that will take the smile from your face.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her attention on the two bloody lions that were locked up in battle.
Terrence was on the outskirts, not paying attention to the fight. Instead, he was tracking Ronin and Emerald with narrowed, suspicious eyes. He was going to have to bring Terrence back in line sooner rather than later. That lion had been pushing Ronin lately. But it would have to wait until tomorrow, if he survived. Right now, he had three precious hours with Em. Ripping his gaze away from Terrence, he said, “I mean, I don’t necessarily want to hurt you. We just aren’t on the sam
e path of destruction. I want to keep it that way.” He zipped her jacket up to her neck and took a step away, picked up the sack, and started walking toward the woods. “No one will put you in your place because you don’t belong here.”
He heard it—a little whoosh of breath like she’d been hurt by his words. Too fragile, and it made him feel things. Soft things that were bad for an Alpha on a mission. He needed to keep his focus.
Behind him, Emerald cleared her throat. “You have a lot of tattoos.”
An out—that was what she offered him. An out from the painful, awkward moment that hung in the air between them. Right at the edge of the trees, he stopped and waited for her to catch up. “I got my first one the year after I joined the Furers.”
“The tiger Crew?”
He nodded. “I was a hell-raiser there. Mad at the world, missing Grim—”
“I remember you two were really close,” she said, picking her way carefully through the brush beside him. The trail here was years overgrown and barely visible anymore.
“Yeah. He was a brother to me. I spent so much time with him and Rose, they were like a family to me when I lived here. And then suddenly being ripped away and placed in a Crew of strangers? They took me in, but Tigers stick with tigers. It wasn’t their idea to bring in a lion cub with the Tarian Pride’s death-mark on his neck. I think Damon bribed them. Or threatened them.”
Ronin chuckled at the memory of the entire Crew going quiet every time someone mentioned the Blue Dragon. “And I wasn’t super-enjoyable to be around. I fought everyone all the time, for any reason at all. I was just pissed down to my soul. I got passed around from family to family, until finally the Alpha, Zeke, came to visit me. He was a bachelor tiger, a total monster, got to be Alpha by brawling his way to the top and stepping on every bit of political tradition in the process. Old, scarred-up, gnarly beast of a man. I remember he found me sitting on a woodpile, not doing the chores my foster family at the time had asked me to do, and he was this tall, barrel-chested man. I was thin as a whip at the time, hadn’t started getting my size on me yet. He had this great big old beard and dominance out the ass, and it was hard to even breathe around him.” Ronin moved a branch aside for Emerald to pass. “He asked me, ‘Boy, do you even know what you’re fighting for?’ And I couldn’t answer intelligently at the time because I didn’t know why I was so angry, so I said, ‘Hey, Zeke, why don’t you fuck off,’ and before the last word was out of my mouth, he had my shirt in his fist and had dragged me within an inch of his face. I could feel his snarl, he was that close.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Em murmured. “What happened then?”
“Well, I about pissed myself because I thought it was finally happening, I was gonna die, but he pulled his lips back over some razor-sharp teeth and said, ‘You’re my cub now.’” Ronin couldn’t help his smile. “You know how degrading it is to hear you’re some stranger’s cub at age seventeen? I thought I was grown! I thought I didn’t need anyone in the world, and then Zeke comes in and basically says, ‘Look, baby, you’re mine to bottle feed now until you learn to handle your shit.’ I think my pride circled the toilet that day. And it’s not like I could say, ‘Polite decline,’ to the Alpha. He was Zeke. He was fuckin’ terrifying, twice my size, and dominant as hell. I was shaking in my boots while trying to act tough.”
“What did you say?”
There was a smile in her voice, so Ronin looked over at her to see the curve to her lips. So pretty.
“Well, what else could I say? I looked him square in the eyes and said…” He drew it out as he helped her over a fallen log in the trail. “Yes, sir.”
Em snorted and then laughed so loud it echoed through the wild Tarian woods. “You weren’t so tough back then.”
“Oh, fuck no. I thought I was tough as old leather that first year, but it took one close encounter with Zeke, and I was docile as a kitten. He told me from then on, I wouldn’t be fighting his Crew. No more challenging the shifter kids at school or fighting the less dominant adults. He said if I had an itch to fight, he was going to teach me how to really fight.”
“How?”
“By fighting him.”
“While he was Changed?” Em asked, her voice jacked up an octave.
“Yep. And you should see his tiger. He’s a monster through and through. He’s still Alpha of the Furers. Longest lasting Alpha in Tiger Crew history.”
“Wow,” Em said on a frozen breath. “And he was the one who took you in.”
“Yeah. I know I didn’t find my place until I was seventeen, but it feels like between Rose and him, I had it all right. Maybe not a lot of people would think that way, but for me…well…I’m grateful for what I had.”
“Was he good to you?”
“Very. Very hard on me, but very good. He didn’t do anything that wasn’t teaching me a lesson. He turned me into a man.”
“I would like to meet him someday,” she said softly, her eyes on the ground again as she walked.
Staring at her profile, trying to read her expression, that’s when it hit him. It had been bothering him that he couldn’t figure out what was different about her. Ronin pulled her to an abrupt stop and hooked a finger under her chin, lifted her face. The bruising had faded, barely even there, the swelling gone, and the split in her lip was just an angry red line that would be nothing more than a faint scar in a day or two.
“Your healing.”
“What about it?” she asked, gripping his wrist.
“It sped up.”
“Oh.” Em brushed her fingers over her cheek. “My lioness came back.”
See? Not fragile, his inner lion rumbled.
Huh.
“My mom passed away a few years ago,” she said suddenly. “And it’s just been me and my dad ever since. I don’t feel sorry for myself and I don’t want pity that she’s gone. I talked about it with Dad so much. I feel lucky I got that much time and the relationship I had with her. She was really good to me. My best friend. And I just hope to be half the woman she is someday.”
“I remember your mom,” Ronin said thoughtfully. “I’ve been remembering a lot since I moved back here. She was a badass like your dad. One of those intimidating Tarian lionesses you didn’t fuck with. And I remember how the council treated her and your dad when they found out you were born a submissive. They stripped your family of their rank in the Pride, dropped them to the very bottom. Good on your parents for leaving. They deserved a better life.”
“We left the night after Leon had your blood on his hands. We left with almost nothing and rebuilt our lives completely. It was scary but worth it.”
“Did you have boyfriends?” he asked carefully. “Not that I care…just…making conversation.”
She was slightly ahead of him now and tossed him a mischievous grin over her shoulder like she’d heard the lie in his voice. He was glad he had a beard. Beards hid blushes.
“I had a few. All humans.”
“Whoa, scandalous,” he teased.
“I wish. I am a boring good girl and zero percent scandalous. I think my life would be different if I had rebelled. Human boys didn’t care about me being submissive. Shifters…well, they have more of a problem with it.”
“What do you mean?”
I tried to date a bear shifter when I was a few years out of high school. At first, when we were getting to know each other, it was easy and fun, but he would get domineering. I don’t even think that was his natural habit. I think that was just his bear’s reaction to my lioness. She’s…”
“She’s what?”
Em inhaled deeply and heaved a sigh. “She makes me invisible.”
Why did his chest hurt at her admission? “You’re wrong, Em. You couldn’t be invisible if you tried.”
“That used to be my biggest fear,” she said, picking her way through a narrow passage of brush.
“What?”
“Being invisible.”
“Mmm.” Every instinct in him wanted to trail his finge
rs down to the small of her back as she moved with him, just to touch her. But he didn’t. She deserved better than any future he could offer her. “And what’s your biggest fear now?”
She turned to him and gave him a sad smile. “Not being invisible enough.”
Fuck, she was talking about Cassius. About his attention on her, about him hunting her.
She perked up and forced a smile. “I’ve just figured out where you’re taking me.”
“You recognize it?”
She looked around the woods. “At first, I didn’t. This trail is really old. Probably no one has been out here in years.” Her dark eyebrows lowered over those striking green eyes. “Have you been out here since you moved back?”
Ronin shook his head. “I didn’t even think about this place until I realized who you were. Now it seems fitting. We’ll see it for the first time together.”
Lifting her chin, Em twirled her wrist regally and then offered her hand, palm up. “Shall we, then?”
He shouldn’t touch her. If he did, he would want more. That’s what had happened when he’d hugged her earlier, but Emerald was an addiction he didn’t understand. She quieted the anger inside of him, and it felt good to think of something other than war. It felt good to think of love instead. Love? God, he needed to get ahold of himself. And he would. After one more touch. After he touched her, then he would probably get ahold of himself again.
Ronin slid his hand against hers, squeezed it, and dropped them to their sides, and then he led her through the last of the trees into the clearing. And as they came to a stop in the untouched snow, he didn’t let her hand go. He didn’t want to. It was warm and soft and little against his large one, and he wanted to take care of something fragile right now.
She isn’t fragile.
Her chest was heaving as she scanned the old dilapidated playground. The swing set was still standing, and the merry-go-round was still functioning. It spun slowly in the wind with the softest sound of metal on metal. The slide had long ago toppled to its side, and the wood of the playset had rotted to splinters. The old benches where the moms used to chat while their cubs played weren’t there anymore, and the old splashpad they played on in the summers was buried under piles of snow.