The Lion and the Unicorn (Lionsville Shifters Book 1)

by Dara Fraser

  They turned onto a concrete road and headed south. They were headed closer to where she started than where she’d originally thought she was going.

  “Oh.” Was all he said for a few minutes. It seemed to be a habit of his.

  They made their way onto a major highway before he began speaking again. “He told me the day he met you.”

  “Huh?” It was hard to hear with all of the windows still down.

  “I said he told me the day he met you.” He spoke a bit louder.

  “That makes no sense.” It felt awkward having to shout this conversation, but she didn’t want to wait until they got wherever it was that they were going. The windows open, matched with the speed of the SUV and passing trucks, made hearing almost impossible.

  “Wait until we get there and I will tell you everything,” he shouted back so she could hear him over the truck that passed them.

  Samantha leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. If no answers were going to come, she might as well rest. She hadn’t had a full night sleep in days, and she doubted she would get more anytime soon. If Frank trusted Leo, then she would have to trust him, too. She was out of other options.

  “Samantha. Samantha.” Her arm was being poked, and the sound of the wind through the windows was gone. They must have stopped, and she must have fallen much more soundly asleep than she had meant to. “Samantha, we’re here.”

  It was a struggle to open her eyes. Her body rebelled at awaking so soon after finally relaxing enough to sleep. “I’m up,” she mumbled, still working on opening her eyes.

  The driver side door opened and closed. She finally managed to crack her eyes, and the brightness made her immediately shut them. The sound of her door opening startled them open once more. It was easily midday.

  “How long was I asleep?” she asked, still half asleep. “It’s so bright.”

  He reached across her to undo her seat belt. He was so close, she could feel the heat off him, yet he never touched her. Leo grabbed her bag from near her feet and leaned back out of the SUV. “Only a few hours. Come on, let’s get you inside so you can eat and have some proper sleep.”

  Samantha had no idea where inside was, but she was happy to comply. She stretched as soon as her feet hit the ground. Leo stared at her, his eyes sparkling. She would have known he was related to Frank by their color alone. They were almost gold, although she guessed that his driver’s license probably said brown or hazel.

  “Thanks for the ride and such.” She looked around and, aside from the small house in front of her, there were no other houses to be seen. Looking down the driveway, she couldn’t even see the road. “Are we in Sendoa yet?”

  “Frank really kept you in the dark, didn’t he?”

  Assuming the question was rhetorical, she waited for him to continue, but instead of answering her question, he walked toward the front porch, her bag in tow.

  Leo reached the bottom step before turning his head to call back, “Well, come on, then.”

  She scampered ahead, catching up to him as he reached the door. He walked inside and gestured for her to join him. Once inside, she started to feel foggy again, and she caught the doorframe with her hand to orient herself.

  “Sorry, I’ll open the windows.”

  Before she could question him, every window in the room was open and he was gone, presumably to open windows in the other rooms as well. She took the opportunity to look around. Leo was definitely a bachelor. The worn, yet inviting, leather sofa and recliner were nothing a woman would pick out, and the windows had no curtains, just shades. The room was tidy but not what her mother would have called “company ready.” Samantha walked in and made herself at home on the couch. She wanted to curl up in it and take another nap, but she needed at least a few answers first. Well, answers and a restroom.

  “Done.” Leo entered the room. “Good. You found the couch. Do you want the two-cent tour and maybe something to eat and drink, or would you like to relax on the couch for a bit?”

  “Tour sounds good.” She reluctantly got up. It was so cozy, but she really did need to know where the bathroom was, and food sounded pretty darn good.

  “Well this is the living room. And in here”—he led her to the adjoining room—“is the kitchen.” The kitchen was cute and pretty retro, although she guessed it was by age more than design.

  He walked down a narrow hallway and the fogginess came back, only not as much as before. “Are you going to tell me what the fumes and subsequent fogginess is all about?”

  “Yeah, we’ll get to that later. It’s not chemicals or anything, so try not to worry about it.” Leo continued down the hallway. He was not one to answer questions before he wanted to, that was for sure.

  “Why not now?” Samantha’s voice was meeker than she intended. His lack of sharing didn’t impress her. Not one bit, and she hoped her voice had conveyed that. Instead, she sounded like a timid little mouse.

  Leo stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face her. He looked less confident than just moments earlier. “Because it is complicated and you are exhausted.” He wasn’t wrong. Not that that made her any too happy.

  “I feel like I have a right to know.” Her voice was firmer this time.

  “You do and you will but not now. Please trust me?” The pleading in his eyes seemed so mismatched with the strength of his voice and had her willing to let it go. For now. Leo stared into her eyes before he began his walk down the hall again.

  “Later?” she called to him.

  “Promise.” She could hear the truth in his words and that would have to be good enough for now. Leo stopped in front of a doorway. “This is the bathroom. Clean towels are on the shelf behind the doorway.” He turned. “That is the guest room and the one at the end of the hallway is my room. I put your stuff in the guest room already, if you want to freshen up before you eat.”

  He wasn’t letting her get in a thought or comment, and it was probably for the best because she really needed that bathroom.

  “Sounds good.”

  “Grilled cheese alright?” The man knew her weakness. She briefly wondered if Frank had tipped him off. She had a lot of questions about her dead friend.

  “Perfect.” Leo walked towards the kitchen, and she took care of her bathroom needs and checked her bag to make sure nothing was damaged in her trip. Her bag actually had no clothes in it. It was pretty much all cash that she had hoarded, a journal, and a few small trinkets she couldn’t bear to part with. Her bag with the clothes had been lost when she ran away from her car. Maybe Leo would run into town with her. She was so grateful to still have what little had been saved.

  The smell of the grilled cheese hit her as soon as she opened the guest room door. She was starving. Leo was already sitting at the kitchen table with two plates of ooey gooey grilled cheese sandwiches and a couple of glasses of what she assumed was iced tea, another favorite.

  “Smells delicious.”

  “Frank said they were your favorite.” That answered that.

  “Frank seemed to tell you a lot about me and about things he shouldn’t know, but he told me nothing about you, or pretty much anything, for that matter.”

  He took a bite of his sandwich, and the cheese landed on his chin. It was adorable. Actually, sitting across from him, she noticed for the first time that Leo was more than good-looking. He was drop-dead gorgeous even without the stunning eyes. With them, he might as well be classified lethal. He wiped his chin, probably noticing her staring at the cheese and most likely drooling.

  “Frank was like that. He was like an uncle and grandfather wrapped up in one to me. When he moved away I missed him terribly, but he called every day like clockwork.”

  He took another bite of his sandwich, and she decided she might as well join him. He was excellent at avoiding questions, so she might as well eat while she waited. The sandwich tasted twice as good as it looked.

  “So yeah, Frank liked to gossip. He told me about you the day you moved in and told me you
would need me and I would need you and to get ready.” He took a very long drink of his iced tea, and she wanted to slap it from his hand so he could continue. “Frank had the gift of foresight, so I believed him, took notes when he told me to, and here we are.”

  “That helps things make more sense. How he knew to leave the car and to have his sister be ready for me.” She was pondering more to herself than the man in front of her. “So if he knew what was coming, why did he allow it to happen?”

  “Because it was meant to be.” Her head jerked up to see him, looking at her with all seriousness. “He knew you needed to find your way to me and that we, together, could defeat the Theron. He told me it was an honor to meet you and that finally his gift worked with enough clarity to make him useful. He said it was because you were a unicorn and somehow unicorns complimented lions.”

  “Frank was a lion?” How had she missed that? She thought she was pretty good at picking out shifters and other paranormals, but she never guessed Frank was anything other than a quirky old man.

  “He really told you nothing.” Leo let out a huge sigh. “Well, he must have had his reasons. Maybe he told Granny why? Honestly, I thought you would be prepared.” He seemed as frustrated by it all as she was.

  “Wait, are you a …you know…a lion?” If she missed two, possibly three lions, her para detection was beyond off, and she was in more danger than she thought.

  “Of course, I’m part of Frank’s clan. Well, alpha, but you know what I mean.”

  She started to crack up.

  “What?”

  “Leo. You’re Leo the lion?” It wasn’t that funny, but given her overtired state and her stress-filled life, it was hilarious, and he must have thought so, too, because before long, they were both laughing uncontrollably.

  “My mom was a bit of a hippy and she thought it was cute.” That had her entering into another bout of laughter. She needed this laugh.

  “Okay, so you are Leo the lion and Frank was a lion and I’m guessing your granny is a lion…”

  He nodded.

  “So why is it that I couldn’t sense any of you? I can usually sense shifters and pretty much everyone who is more than human. A few times I almost questioned whether Frank was more, but never did shifter play into it.”

  “You didn’t grow up in a herd, did you?” She shook her head. Unicorns, unlike most shifters, didn’t always live in packs or pack-like structures. Actually, very few herds were still in existence, and most of those were in name only. They tended to want to live in their own families and because they didn’t feel the need to have a pecking order, the whole alpha/beta thing never really worked for them.

  “Here is the basic crash course: Lions and Unicorns have a weird sort of love/hate relationship. They complement each other, generally because of the opposite nature of their beasts. That is why they often represent the sun and the moon.”

  “You can’t get more opposite than night and day,” Samantha pondered aloud.

  “Exactly. Because of this difference in nature, blah, blah, blah, we generally can’t sense each other the way we can other beings. Frank only sensed you through his gift of foresight and its direct connection to me. He conjectured that’s why his sight was stronger than usual after he met you.”

  Her head was spinning. If what Leo said was true, and it felt true, Frank knew what she was because she was somehow meant to help Leo take down the Theron. Frank also knew he was going to be in mortal danger and allowed himself to die for her safety. Frank was a far more complicated man than his sweet old shopkeeper image suggested.

  “So when he sent me to Sendoa, he was really sending me here, to meet you and to defeat the Theron. He basically died so that we would destroy them?”

  She took a long sip of her tea and waited for Leo to respond. He sure seemed to take his sweet time when it came to sharing.

  “He never sent you to Sendoa. It doesn’t exist. Well, one exists, but that isn’t the point.” She just stared wide-eyed at him, waiting for the point. “The name Sendoa means brave or strong in Basque. He was giving you a message. He probably figured you would look it up and figure it out. He had a weird thing about the Basque language. He filled my brain with more about it than I could even pretend to care about.”

  Come to think about it, Leo was right. Frank was fascinated by the language. She had spent more cups of coffee politely nodding and faux listening to how fascinating their verb stems were.

  “I did look it up, but I saw Basque show up in the search engine and dismissed it. His sight wasn’t as good as he thought.” She laughed at her feeble attempt at a joke.

  “As far as the sacrificing himself to defeat the Theron, I think that was secondary. Sure, he wants—wanted—them gone. The active ones, anyways, but that was not why he did it.”

  She put her glass down knowing the answer to her next question was going to be the game changer and trying to prepare herself for the impact. “Then why?”

  “He sacrificed himself and saved you so that you would meet me.”

  So…not the life-altering answer she was expecting.

  “You are either leaving out key information, or Frank was having a major senior moment.” She knew in her gut it was the first.

  “Frank sacrificed his life to save yours because he knew that I would need you. Yes, to defeat the Theron who were on their way to my clan regardless of you, but mostly because...” He closed his eyes briefly. “Because you are my destined mate and we are going to bring a new era of peace for the shifters and…”

  She stopped listening at the mention of the word mate. Her mother had told her terrifying stories of lions growing up; they ate unicorns and any other animals they could get their teeth into. Lions weren’t mates, they were predators. Hot predators with eyes that you could get lost in for hours apparently but predators nonetheless.

  “The foggy haze?” Samantha had thought it might be a lot of different things, but mating call had not crossed her mind. He was a lion after all.

  “The beginning of the mating pull.”

  There were no drugs or fumes, just pheromones and mating calls. If this was the beginning, how bad would it get? She needed a clear head if she was going to defeat the Theron and be truly free.

  “But I first felt it with your granny.”

  “She probably had something of mine there. My guess is Frank arranged that, too.” My, my, Frank was a tricky one.

  “I’m your mate?” It sounded eerily accurate and that scared her more than the Theron on her trail.

  “You’re my mate.”

  A lion. Fate sent her a lion. It could never work. Why would fate be so cruel? But what if it wasn’t cruel? What if fate knew what she was doing? How could it even possibly work?

  “A unicorn and a lion?” she mumbled, still trying to process it all.

  “A unicorn and a lion.” Leo’s confidence came through. He not only believed they were meant to be, but he was, dare she say, happy about it.

  “What now?” Why oh why had Frank not shared this all with her as well? Theron were after her, her fated mate was a lion, albeit a smexy one, and somehow the two of them were supposed to bring a new peace. No pressure there. None at all.

  “Now, beautiful, you rest so we can figure out all the clues Frank left us and get this done.”

  With that one word, beautiful, Leo managed to squelch her growing inner panic. Rest, rest was good, and then they would take on the world and figure out all this mating crap, not necessarily in that order.

  Chapter Three

  Rise and Shine

  Samantha woke from a remarkably amazing sleep. When she first entered the guest room, she was hoping to close her eyes and get some quiet time in to think about all that had happened in the past week. Samantha had been sure that the tension and anxiety would prevent her from sleeping. She was used to it.

  But last night, after a hot shower and a change of clothes she borrowed from Leo, Samantha climbed into bed and felt immediately safe. Maybe i
t was the mating call and the smell of his shirt wrapped around her body or the super comfy pillow her head sunk into, but whatever it was, it worked better than counting sheep ever had. Goodness, it worked better than a glass of wine.

  Coming to, she stretched, feeling renewed. Samantha had no idea what time it was, but it had to be very late. She was far too rested for a cat nap. She giggled at her inner cat reference. She still had no idea how she ended up in a lion’s home, much less one determined she was his mate, but she was getting used to the idea.

  Samantha thought back to the dreams she had the night before. Like most unicorns, Samantha was a dream walker. She couldn’t walk into other people’s dreams, although that would be amazing. She could, however, determine her dreams. She used the time the way many people used quiet time in their offices. She thought about her day, tried to figure out what to do next, and during college was even known to study. It was like gaining a few hours of extra alone time. She still had your typical dreams, too, but she spent equal time dream walking.

  Last night she tried to focus on her times with Frank, looking for clues. The more she thought about it, the more she realized how very careful he had been to give nothing away. Samantha felt a sense of loss when it came to Frank that was more than just guilt over her part in his death. Yes, she missed his company, his kindness, and his sense of humor, but more than that. Samantha mourned never really knowing the old man who took her in when she was alone, scared, and in peril.

  In her dream, Frank tried to reassure her that none of this was her fault and it was meant to be. He told her repeatedly that she was born for greatness, and he was honored to be able to play the part he had. It was such an odd dream because it felt like dream walking even though it clearly wasn’t since Frank was dead. She spent a good chunk of that dream crying, and as soon as he left, she quickly moved onto running.

  Running always gave her a sense of freedom and calm. Not in human form. Running in human form made her sweaty, out of breath, and more likely to cuss like a sailor than she was at any other time. Running in unicorn form, on the other hand, was her favorite thing and something Samantha rarely allowed herself to do in real life. Before running for her life after meeting Granny, she hadn’t allowed herself to run for months. She needed it though, and the way she felt as she stretched let her know it strengthened more than just her inner unicorn. It revitalized all of her.