Her Lion Guard - The Complete Series Box Set (BBW Shifter Romance) (13 page)

Mary-Lou gasped awake. Her fingers were bone-white where they clenched the covers, her chest heaving up and down in choked, desperate gulps of breath. Her entire body shook, rattled with fear and phantom pain. She wanted to scream, but found her voice muffled; she wanted to thrash, but could not dislodge the heavy arms that held her secure and immobile. Panic built behind her eyes as she struggled, as she writhed and bit at the palm that covered her mouth.

“Mary-Lou! Stop – stop, no, Mary, it’s just a dream, please darling, you are alright, it was just a dream!”

Jonas.

Mary-Lou ceased her panicked struggles and went limp. The arms about her gentled, the large hand smothering her voice slid to cradle her head against Jonas’ own heaving chest instead. Mary-Lou concentrated on breathing, focused on the pre-dawn light filtering into the room.

“It happened again.” Jonas’ voice was too calm, too light; he was controlling his concern, his helpless anger – holding them close to himself least he burden her with another worry. Mary-Lou felt them nonetheless, felt guilty and tired and so utterly frustrated she wanted to cry.

Jonas pressed closer against her, close enough to cover her entire body with his. Mary-Lou should have felt overwhelmed after what she had just experienced, but she only felt comforted. Protected. She burrowed deeper in Jonas’ warmth, letting his strength feed into her depleted body.

“Do you remember?” Jonas asked, like he did every time. Lately, he had been asking a lot.

Mary-Lou shook her head. Her mind was blank, her thoughts swathed in shadows of forgotten horrors. Jonas sighed; this, too, was familiar. He opened his mouth to speak, likely to urge her back to sleep that would not return.

“Wait!” Mary-Lou sat up, so fast she nearly avoided head-butting a very concerned Jonas. “I- wait, it’s coming back! It’s all – oh, God.”

Jonas threw the covers off and whisked Mary-Lou off the bed, getting her into the bathroom and over the sink just as the first dry heave shook her chest. Mary-Lou’s face was pale, her throat tight as she choked on saliva and air. She did not throw up, could not – there was not enough food in her stomach, her appetite long shot to hell – but wished she would, wished for the heavy darkness that had coalesced in her body to disappear down the bathroom drain. “I’m fine,” she croaked instead, pushed weakly until Jonas stepped back and gave her some much needed room to breathe.

Long minutes later found them back in bed, cocooned between off-blue sheets. Jonas sat against the headboard and cradled Mary-Lou between his legs, large hands rubbing soothingly up and down her naked thighs.

“Do you want to tell me?” he asked. Mary-Lou shook her head.

“I don’t. But I will,” she added, felt Jonas relax ever so slightly against her back. “Whenever you are ready,” the lion Shifter rumbled.

Mary-Lou took a breath, then another. Her third exhale was stuttered, tinged with fear bordering on panic.

“They were dying,” she said.

“Who?” Jonas asked, hands tightening where they had moved to gently grasp her waist.

“Everyone.” Mary-Lou shook her head, wordlessly begging for his silence. Jonas subsided, his expression pinched. “I didn’t – I don’t know them, not yet. But I knew them to be Shifters, and I knew they were – I saw them—
they ripped them apart
,” she finished, her last words caught in a miserable sob.

“Wiley?” Jason chanced. It would not be strange if Mary-Lou was bothered by nightmares of the cruel werewolf – the man had disappeared after the night of the Court several months ago, but whispers of his return were making the rounds in the usual hangout spots. Wiley had not been killed for his crimes, which in his twisted mind equaled innocence – no, righteousness. Jonas himself had been on the edge ever since he spotted the dark-haired Shifter in a nearby town, cocky stride and dirty smirk back full force. He rather preferred seeing him bloody and in chains.

“No – not him. Not only him,” Mary-Lou corrected herself. She tried to remember – tried to forget the terrified eyes of the victims for the merciless, ecstatic faces of their abusers. A thin, tall man with oily hair. A red-headed woman with blue-tipped nails. She grasped for them, tried to keep them in her sight even as they slipped away, as their features melted with the dawn’s light.

Mary-Lou told Jonas what she could, described the carnage and fires and destruction she had witnessed within the claustrophobic confines of her own mind. “They were murdering children, butchering women – they were storming churches and hospitals and schools,” she shook and Jonas rocked with her, whispered gentle nothings in her ear.

“It was a nightmare. It will pass. It was only a nightmare.”

Mary-Lou wanted to believe him.

***

The following night, she woke up screaming. The dream was different but similar enough – her mind the reel of a film, projecting different angles of the same grotesque scene.

It continued for a week.

On the eighth night, Mary-Lou refused to sleep. Her eyes were bruised and heavy-lidded with lack of proper rest. Yet she glared up at Jonas from her nest of pillows and blankets, her mouth set in a resolute line.

“You have
to sleep,” Jonas insisted, for what was likely the tenth time in twice as many seconds. He was met by another shake of blonde-brown curls and the flash of stubborn, stubborn green eyes. Jonas felt his own temper rise, the animal within him pushing against his resolve in need to control and dominate. With the desire to make his mate
submit
. He ignored it, wondering how long he could afford to do so before he really and truly snapped.

“What’s the use?” Mary-Lou dropped her eyes, frustrated guilt substituting stubbornness in her manner. Jonas was not sure if that was a better alternative. “I won’t be able to sleep anyway. This way, at least I won’t keep
you
up, too.” She let out a forced chuckle. As if it was funny. As if her nightmares, her terror, her waking up
screaming bloody murder
could be a source of hilarity to him at all.

“You think I will sleep this way?” Jonas growled as he stalked forward, “You think I will cover my head and close my eyes and turn my back to my mate as she trembles, wide-awake, right next to me?” He lowered his head until his face was inches from Mary-Lou’s, until his angry breaths puffed gently against her parted lips. “I cannot. I
will not
,” he rumbled, the sound a small roar.

Mary-Lou sighed. “Well, then. There is only one solution.”

“You are sleeping,” Jonas warned. Mary-Lou waved him off.

“Yeah, alright, I got it – roar roar, yes Sir, Lion Sir! Except I can’t sleep – my mind is tired, but my body has been lying about for the last week. So.” Mary-Lou looked up at Jonas through long, gold-tinted eyelashes.

Jonas blinked back at her, absolutely and utterly clueless. Mary-Lou sighed, then she let herself fall against the bed.

“So exhaust me, you big goof,” she laughed as realization dawned on Jonas’ handsome face, replacing his near-constant worry with something lighter, happier.

When he kissed her, large body curved over hers, she feels the shadows pull away. If just for a moment.

It worked, somewhat. Mary-Lou got a couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep, enjoyed a few moments without screams of terror and the stink of death tainting her unconscious mind. Any longer than that, however, and the nightmares returned with a vengeance.

On night thirteen, Jonas hugged her sweat-drenched body through the last of its dream-induced shivers and growled out,

“We are calling a healer.”

Mary-Lou was too fed up with it all to do more than nod and huddle closer.

Mary-Lou and Jonas did not live in the Cabin. In the months following Wiley’s attack and Mary-Lou’s impromptu introduction to Shifter society, the number of men and women who sought temporary shelter in Irma’s home increased exponentially. The day bunk-beds became a thing. Mary-Lou and Jonas promptly moved out. It was for the best, really – she could take only so much ogling.

Contrary to what she may have thought going into the Cabin, Mary-Lou found herself unable to move back in with her adoptive parents. For one, there was Jonas to consider: Although Emma and Ronald had taken the news of Mary-Lou’s… relationship with Jonas well enough, asking them to share their home with the man that had claimed their daughter without so much as by your leave may be pushing it a bit. Ronald was already much too grumpy in Jonas’ presence. Furthermore, Katy and Jenna had called dibs on Mary-Lou’s old bedroom and were now happily cohabitating with the older couple – all in the name of safety, of course. Nothing to do with lower rent or a shorter commute to work at all. Mary-Lou was glad, both for the protection and the company the two women provided her elderly parents. Given her new responsibilities as an alpha of their rag-tag pack, she welcomed any help thrown her way.

Speaking of. Sasha and Cara were steadily driving her positively, utterly insane.

A month ago, Mary-Lou and Jonas moved into a two-bedroom apartment in a small neighborhood west of the city. The building was well situated:  It sat halfway between the Cabin and Mary-Lou’s old home, making trips in either direction relatively short. It was also only two-stories high, which meant that when Sasha and Cara took the apartment directly below theirs, the house officially became pack territory. An event that would have been more joyous, had it not also meant that the two stubborn Shifters were now to share close living quarters.  Jonas was most displeased by the entire situation; Mary-Lou had found his protectiveness of Cara adorable, up until he suggested she move in with them and leave the downstairs apartment to Sasha alone.

Sasha had been less than pleased. The resulting argument was composed of howls and hisses, and ended with both men nursing their egos when Cara and Mary-Lou had reminded them to whom, exactly, the decision belonged.

Cara did not want to move. Mary-Lou did not want Cara a wall away. End of story.

They had fallen into a rhythm of sorts – a daily routine that almost passed for ordinary, if one did not try to fit the intensive combat training and occasional late-night visitor of unknown origins into the definition: Shifters of all ages and walks of life, interested in seeing and speaking to Mary-Lou in person. It would have been flattering, if not for the sheer terror their wide-eyed wonder inspired in the human woman. They looked at her like she held heaven in the palm of her hand; Mary-Lou wondered what they would think, if she were to tell them exactly how ordinary, how
clueless
she truly was.

At least training was going alright. Mary-Lou was quite proud of her progress in hand-to-hand, even if she was still the runt of the group and could really only spar with Cara. Still, pretty good for a frail human.

Thus, days were spent together, as a pack. Nights, however, were for Jonas and Mary-Lou alone. Living in close quarters with one’s family and friends may be instinctual for Shifters, but so was the desire to keep one’s mate close and secluded from others. Mary-Lou was often torn between annoyance and a guilty, primal sort of delight whenever that particular quirk made an appearance.

Several months into their living arrangement, Mary-Lou was more than glad for the privacy of their apartment.

Mary-Lou did not wish to hide from her pack. She did not cover her pale skin, her dark circles with cosmetics; neither did she lie when first Cara, then Sasha, pulled her aside to ask what was wrong. If she stopped visiting her parents, Irma and Jonathon, as the nightmares grew more vivid and heartbreaking – well, that was her business and hers alone.

Mary-Lou did not wish for them to hear her screams, did not want her loved ones to see her tortured by pain that was not her own – by events confined to the recesses of her mind. She had to find a cure. She hoped there
was
a cure.

Please, don’t let me be insane
, Mary-Lou thought as she watched the small, blue Honda that was to bear her salvation park in front of their building.
Please, anything but that.

Jonas introduced the healer as Rowfer: A man so weighted down by age he walked bent nearly in half, his back a painful curve of old bones and worn skin. Jonas helped Rowfer up the front stairs and to the first floor apartment, gentle and patient as the old man groused about city traffic, the eggs he had for breakfast, and his goddamn knees. Mary-Lou smiled at the sight, Jonas’ kindness momentarily distracting her mind from the sharp, cold anxiety eating at her thoughts.

Mary-Lou stood to greet Rowfer as he made his way into the apartment proper. Rowfer waved her back to her seat, pushed away from Jonas’ hovering self to make his own shaky way to the nearest chair. The older man proceeded to collapse onto the plush surface with a sigh, back straightening ever so slightly as he leaned into the chair’s warmth.

“Finally,” he muttered to himself. A moment later, sharp brown eyes blinked open beneath a pair of truly intimidating eyebrows. “You two – out,” Rowfer ordered, the command clearly meant for Sasha and Cara. The two young Shifters blinked in startled disbelief, not moving an inch from their seats.

“Out!” The man growled; Sasha opened his mouth to argue, eyes flashing poison-green as anger overwhelmed the usually mild-mannered man. Mary-Lou quickly shook her head, consciously ignoring the guilt that came with kicking the two Shifters out of their own apartment.