Promised to the Pride: A Shifter Romance

by Candace Wondrak

  “Try again,” Jonas growled out, and I stared at him.

  “I’ve tried and tried and tried,” I said, all the while knowing I was getting too much of an attitude with him. He didn’t like it when I took a tone like that, but I just couldn’t help it. I was fed up, tired. This was obviously not working. “She won’t come.”

  “She is you,” he said, taking a step closer to me. “You are her. You’re one and the same. I didn’t turn until I was eighteen, and I was able to shift without a fucking problem.”

  “Well I guess I’m not as awesome as you!” I shouted, raising my voice. “I guess I’m just defective, because I can’t do it. I can’t do it.” I took a step back, lifting my hands in the air, feeling tears prickling my eyes. I was…disappointed in myself, really. Depressed that I couldn’t do the one thing every shifter was able to do. “I guess you’re going to have to return me and get another mate.”

  Jonas said nothing, staring daggers at me, his large frame rising and falling with even, long, and agonizingly slow breaths.

  Since he was clearly saying nothing, I turned on my heel and started to storm away from the lake. Enough trying for the night. I just…I needed to be alone. I needed to talk to my mom, to Lumi, to someone. With the time change, it was even later where they were, but surely one of them would pick up the phone if I called—

  I didn’t make it far. Maybe fifteen feet, at the most. Fifteen feet away from the lake and Jonas when I felt a huge, strong body tackle me to the ground. I let out an oof as I fell, struggling as I was forcibly rolled onto my back.

  I wanted to ask Jonas what the hell he was thinking, because the brute could’ve broken me, but the moment my gaze locked onto his green stare, I froze. To say he was not happy with me would be the year’s biggest understatement. The fury in those jade orbs was palpable, and it made me sweat and squirm, try to get away from him even though I knew it was pointless.

  “You are my mate, and if you think I’m going to throw you away like trash,” Jonas bared his teeth as he spoke, showing they were extra sharp, “you don’t know me very well yet. If you think any of us are going to give up on you, you’re a fucking idiot.”

  A fucking idiot. How sweet. He sure knew the words to say to get me all hot and bothered, huh?

  His domineering face inched closer, and my breathing practically stopped. I hardly felt the snow under me; all I could feel was his huge body on top of me. “You are mine. You will always be mine. Do you understand that?” Jonas didn’t give me a chance to reply, for he closed the rest of the distance between our faces, meeting his lips to mine.

  I felt his sharp teeth graze my bottom lip, and I shivered. Not because I was cold, but because…just…whoa. Jonas was terrifying when he wanted to be, a surly man who knew no boundaries. He was the only one who’d officially claimed my inner leopard so far, and he had me right where he wanted me. Beneath him.

  He said he wasn’t going to throw me away, that I was his forever. The words were whispered so fiercely, so assertively, how the hell was I not supposed to believe them? How could I deny him?

  My chest let out a purr, a sound that meant my inner leopard was indeed somewhere inside of me, and I tore my face away from his, turning it to the side, breathing in a ragged breath. Jonas didn’t move, as I turned my head, his nose and lips rested on my cheek, just beside my mouth, and his chest rumbled in a low growl.

  Never thought I’d like the sound of a man growling like an animal, but here I was. Here I was, defective, and still I was wanted, needed.

  I smiled.

  Chapter Twenty-Five – Jonas

  I couldn’t believe my mate’s gall. First she had the audacity to say we would rid ourselves of her because she couldn’t shift, and then she turned her soft lips away from me. Now—now she was fucking smiling; I could feel her grin against the corner of my lips, and my growl only intensified.

  There were a thousand and one things I wanted to do to her in this moment, but I knew the snow, the cold outside air was no place for her. Not until she had her inner leopard under control. No, those thousand and one things would have to wait until we got back, someplace warm, where I could tear the clothes off her body and make her cry out in pleasure so loudly she lost that argumentative voice of hers.

  “What are you smiling for, Mate?” I asked, my chest still growling. I heard a telltale purr from her and knew she was probably wet for me. My mate, mewling, practically in heat.

  She said nothing, for once sticking to her silence.

  An idea came to me, mostly brought on by the hardness starting to grow between my legs. That, and how she’d acted, how she’d turned her face away from mine, as if she got to say when we stopped.

  “I have a proposition for you,” I spoke against her cheek, feeling her shiver against me. I had her pinned down in the snow, her frail body under mine. “How about another race?” That got her attention, I knew. “A race to the house. Whoever gets to the front door first wins. If I win, I get to make you regret pouting like a child. If you win…” A smile threatened to grow on my lips, but I staved it off, because what I was about to propose would never happen. “If you win, you get to dominate me.”

  I could tell by the way her purring intensified she rather liked that thought. My mate would submit to me, but she also had a dominant streak coursing through her veins.

  Didn’t matter, though. She wouldn’t win.

  “It has to be a fair race,” she whispered, her voice hitching in ways that told me she was more turned on than not. “No shifting.”

  “No shifting,” I agreed. “No dirty tactics. Just a race between you and me.” I lifted my mouth off her cheek, watching as she slowly turned her head to look up at me. The way she studied me, as if she wondered whether or not I was lying, made me smirk.

  “If I win,” my mate murmured, “I get to dominate you…and I want to see you smile.” As my smirk morphed into a deep frown, she added, “A real smile. Not a smirk. I know you’re capable of one.”

  “I think you take me as a better man than I am,” I muttered. After a moment, I agreed, “Fine. I’ll throw a smile on top, just for you.” It took every ounce of self-restraint in me to heave myself off her. Once I was up, I offered her my hand, which she freely took—something I doubted she would’ve done weeks ago.

  She didn’t trust me before, but now…now she did. Now things were different, so much more different than I thought they’d be. My mate couldn’t shift, and I—I was growing weaker to her the more time I spent with her. If anyone could make me do something, it was her. No one else in the world had that kind of power.

  Her lively blue eyes glanced at my legs as I released her hand. “You’re so much bigger than me. I think you should give me a head-start.”

  Okay, I wasn’t expecting her to say that, and I almost fucking smiled at it. I almost laughed. My mate just wanted to win this. “A head-start,” I echoed, cocking a brow. “That’s dangerously close to cheating, you know.”

  “Is it?” she asked, wrinkling her nose, looking so fucking cute, even in that hideous jacket. Beneath her hat, her blonde hair swayed in the wind, and as I stared at her, incredulous that she’d ask for a head-start, I felt something inside of me swell. My heart?

  How fucking cheesy.

  My mate said nothing else as she spun and took off, running even though the race hadn’t started yet. If I didn’t give her a head-start, she was going to take one, anyway. The slimy, beautiful bastard.

  I was so shocked at her antics that I let out a laugh. Just a short chuckle, one that was over practically as soon as it began. I watched her disappear in the snowy forest that surrounded the lake, and I shook my head. She was…still surprising me, even after all this time, making me feel things I never expected.

  It might be cheesier than cheese itself, but I think I fucking loved that one.

  I loved her so much, I actually let her get a decent head-start before I started running.

  Through the forest, I followed her footsteps
in the snow. I wasn’t as fast as I was in my leopard form, and as I ran, I started to wonder if I shouldn’t have waited so long. I…I might actually lose this one, and owe her a smile and a night where she was the alpha in the bedroom.

  When I finally caught up to her, she was in the middle of the snowy field that sat between my cabin and the forest, her small arms pumping in her ridiculously oversized jacket. With the moon high above our heads, I picked up my speed, gaining on her. It would be a close one, just like that other race was—but you know what? This one…this one I was actually okay with losing.

  A little.

  My mate and I reached my house at the exact same time, and I pinned her against the siding before she had the chance to touch the front door. “No,” she whined, squirming against me and sending me a frown that only made my cock twitch. “No fair.”

  I remained as emotionless as I could as I extended an arm and laid a flat palm against the front door. “I win,” I whispered.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Bullshit?” I repeated. “My mate needs to wash out her mouth with soap, I think.” I leaned down to her ear, whispering, “Maybe if you’re good, I’ll let you take a whirl at me.” When I moved my head away from her ear, I gave her the one thing she wanted, besides dominating me.

  A smile.

  A small one, a gentle one, but still a smile.

  Her eyes widened, practically saucers, as they fell to my lips.

  I was so hungry for her, so lost in her, that I made a terrible mistake. And she was too new of a shifter, too disconnected from her inner leopard to realize it, too. I was so lost in my mate that when I moved us toward the door and pushed it open, I didn’t pay attention to the extra smell. I was the first to step into the house, my mate right behind me.

  By the time I snapped back to reality and moved my attention away from my throbbing dick, by the time I realized it, it was too late.

  We weren’t alone in the house, and it wasn’t Nikolas or Aster.

  It was a human.

  A loud shot rang out, and I instantly felt a sharp pain growing from my lower gut. I glanced down, finding red seeping through my clothes, my coat. The most pain I’d ever felt, I think, because before I could spin on the shooter, I fell to the floor, wincing. My nerves were on fire, and I struggled to get back up, to shift.

  Fuck.

  I couldn’t shift. It was too much. Too much pain, too sudden. My inner leopard was nowhere to be found, even though the shift would help me heal.

  My mate cried out, falling to her knees near me, reaching for me, too focused on me to pay attention to the third person in the room, the man holding the gun. A long-barreled shotgun, from the look of it. No wonder it was so much pain. The spread of a shotgun was dangerous, especially from close range.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” the man emerged from the living room, pressing the tip of the shotgun against my mate’s head, causing her to freeze. “Step away from the shifter, hun.” The way he called her hun made me growl, and I tried to get up, tried again to shift to tear this fucking human apart, but the man’s finger tightened on the trigger, and the last thing I wanted to see was her brains being splattered all over my wall.

  I stopped trying to get up, instead letting my blood pool on the floor.

  “There ya go,” the human spoke, narrowing his eyes at me. To my mate, he said, “On the couch.”

  She was shaking, and this time it wasn’t because she was cold. She was slow to move to the couch, unable to move her gaze from the gun and the man holding it. He was an older fellow, maybe in his fifties. His head was shaved bald. He wore a dark jacket, dark clothes, and he smelled like sweat.

  Why the fuck didn’t I notice him before? Where were his tire tracks? Why did I let myself get lost in my mate when I should’ve focused on our surroundings more?

  The man held the shotgun in one hand, reaching into his jacket pocket for something. He pulled out a round metal thing, and when he snapped it open, I knew what it was; a collar. “Now, if you attack me, I’m going to blow that girl’s pretty little head straight off her body, do you understand me, shifter?” The way he spoke…it was almost as if he’d done this before.

  My fingers curled into fists, and I nodded. I might be able to attack him, but being in so much searing agony, I’d be too slow. He had a gun, and he was clearly willing to use it. I would do as he asked, only to keep her safe.

  “Good boy,” the human spoke to me like I was some kind of dog, moving around me. With deft hands, he locked the collar around my neck, and he chuckled. “You’re a big one, aren’t you?” The metal collar hardly fit around my neck, and every time I swallowed, I could feel it.

  “Why?” My mate’s voice shook, and she looked even paler as she sat on the couch, staring down at me.

  “Why?” the human echoed. “It should be obvious.” He meant because I was a shifter. “I’m a hunter, darling, and I’ve been waiting. I knew a pack of shifters lived in this town, and it took me forever to discover who they were.” He pulled something else out of his pocket, a small square device, and my gut clenched, somehow knowing what it was.

  She shook her head. “I don’t…” My mate couldn’t even say the last word: understand.

  It didn’t matter. There was no understanding this. This was madness.

  “Genesis wants creatures like you.” The human pointed at her with the gun, causing her to sit straighter. “Though I’m not sure if you’re one of them yet. Still, you somehow got a crew of three, so there’s got to be something about you, even if you aren’t one of ‘em. Genesis will have you regardless, and they’ll pay me well.” His chest rumbled with laughter. “I’m almost at retiring age.”

  “Genesis,” I echoed, knowing the name sounded familiar. My human family was religious, and they dragged me to church every week. Genesis was the first book of the Bible, the creation of mankind and the earth itself. The beginning.

  The human inched closer to my mate, and he tossed me a look that said don’t try me. “I wouldn’t try to get up, if I were you,” he warned, waving the square, black device between us. “You didn’t think all humans were unaware of your existence, did you? The important ones know, and they’ve been studying your kind for years.”

  Humans, capturing us and taking us God knew where to study us, experiment on us. That’s where he would take me, my mate, Nikolas and Aster too. I had to get up, had to try to—

  As if knowing my train of thought, the human pressed a button on the device, and within a second, an electric shock zapped from the collar around my neck, stopping me from getting up, sending a new, different type of pain down my body. I collapsed back onto the floor, breathing hard. Fuck.

  The man leaned the barrel of the shotgun across his chest, his eyes studying my mate on the couch. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with here. A shifter who can’t shift, or a human that just smells really good?” He sent me a slimy grin before ordering her, “Take off that hat, and that coat.”

  She hesitated, and the man’s fingers hovered over the same button again, the one that would zap me. Her blue eyes closed, and she exhaled a shaky breath, resigning herself. She reached for her hat, pulling it off, revealing her blonde hair. She did not get up before she took off the coat; she just shrugged it off as best she could while sitting, setting both the jacket and the hat beside her on the couch.

  “Your sweater next,” the human spoke, tossing me a look. “Hard to see what we’re working with here.”

  We weren’t working with anything; he was only forcing her to strip in front of us. If I didn’t have this collar on me, if I wasn’t bleeding out onto my own fucking floor, I would rip his balls off and feed them to him.

  She didn’t move, and he aimed the gun at her while still holding onto the zapper. My mate’s eyes closed, and she fingered the bottom of her sweater before tugging it up and off her body.

  The human whistled appreciatively. “Now get up, hun. Give us a twirl.” He clearly got off on making females do what he wanted. He proba
bly did this to every one he caught and dragged off to whatever Genesis was.

  My mate was measured in standing, even slower in spinning once. She wore her jeans and her boots, and a black bra. Something the human shouldn’t ever see. He moved closer to her, and I cursed myself.

  I was weak. I couldn’t protect my mate, couldn’t do the one thing nature wanted me to do. She was mine to claim, mine to hold and to have, mine to protect. I was failing her, and it was the most bitter pill I’d ever had to swallow.

  My lips parted, and I croaked out a single, pain-laced word: “Holly.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six – Aster

  Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t say what it was, but as the bar grew busy and our local patrons filed in, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Amongst the drinks and the beers, amongst the tips and the raucous laughter, my gut threatened to upchuck. I wanted to be sick, and I had no idea why.

  When it was my break time, I went into the back room and dialed Holly’s number. She didn’t pick up. Not surprising, I guess, if she and Jonas were together, trying to shift. Then I called Jonas, his cell and his house phone. Left messages demanding him to call me back.

  That had to mean something, right? I never called Jonas.

  I shoved my phone back in my pocket, moving back into the bar, where Nik was busy mixing drinks. Maybe it was the look on Holly’s face when she went off with Jonas—like she thought we were going to throw her out, abandon her, all because she couldn’t shift. It didn’t sit well with me.

  I loved that girl, and I needed her to know that I would always love her, flaws and all. So what if she couldn’t shift? So what if I never could claim her leopard? It didn’t matter. I was hers and she was mine; nothing would ever change that.

  Once Nik was done mixing something that looked a little fruity, I tapped his shoulder. The bar was loud tonight, the jukebox playing some old song, so I had to practically shout in his ear, “Do you mind if I run home for a bit? I’ll come right back.” I just needed…I needed Holly to know that she was everything to me, that I’d never abandon her.