Her Lion Guard - The Complete Series Box Set (BBW Shifter Romance) (3 page)

     “It looked like a cult.”

     Jonas glared at her and Mary-Lou raised her hands in a placating gesture, “Look, I am trying to understand. Honestly, had I not seen them change into—well,
change
, I would be running out of here screaming about crazy people.”

     Jonas’s frown became more pronounced, but he did not argue.

     “Why did they chase me?” Mary-Lou prompted.

     “Because it is a secret. One that is more important to some than to others,” Jonas shrugged.

     “Important enough to kill over?” Mary-Lou demanded. Jonas was silent. Mary-Lou thought of persecution, of the murderous panic to which the general population was given and understood, if at least a little, the need to keep such a secret safe.

     “What do I do now,” she whispered.

     Jonas caught her eyes and held.

     “You run.”

C
HAPTER TWO

“What?”

     Mary-Lou stared at the man as he made his way to sit by her, large body framed in gold-tinted shadows. “You run,” he repeated, adding, “I will help you.”

     “Run where? Home?” Jonas shook his head. A band tightened around Mary-Lou’s heart, “Where to, then?”

     “Anywhere else. The safest will be to leave the country, but I realize that might be too difficult of a transition. So a couple of states. How do you feel about Texas?” Jonas looked at her with the most earnest blue eyes and Mary-Lou had a surreal moment of realization –
oh God, he is
serious – before exploding.

     “I am not leaving my home!” she told him, “I am not leaving my parents and friends and
job
just because a group of people with
issues
decided that they have a problem with me.”

     “I don’t think you understand,” Jonas said, voice catching somewhere between pleading and annoyed. “They will kill you.”

     “Do bullets work on Shifters?” Mary-Lou asked.  Jonas nodded, somewhat alarmed at the vehemence in her expression, “Then I can protect myself. Hell, I can get the police involved…”

     “No!” Jonas grabbed her arm, nails elongating ever-so-slightly in the folds of her hoodie.

“No,” he repeated, quieter. “A couple of people knowing do not pose a problem, not to most of us. The government, however …” he shook his head.

     “Promise me that you won’t,” Jonas said, command and plea mixing in his voice “promise me that you will not involve
them
, and I will help you.”

     “Even if I stay here?” Mary-Lou asked. Jonas nodded with a defeated sigh.

     “Even if you stay here. Which,” he added, “I am still completely against.”

     “Too bad.” Mary-Lou rose to her feet and dusted chunks of moss and grass from her legs, “Now, I will be very grateful if you could show me the way back into the city.”

     They made their way into the city at about two in the morning, on foot. It took them a good three hours of walking. Mary-Lou was ridiculously happy to see streetlights and familiar buildings. Near-death experiences aside, her feet were going numb and she was cold. She looked downright miserable, which is probably why Jonas had offered to carry her about an hour ago. Mary-Lou had turned him down firmly, embarrassed at the very thought. What if someone she knew saw them? How do you explain away a six-foot-something, half-naked man? Even walking side-by-side with Jonas was pushing it.

      Thankfully, the streets were mostly empty, traffic slow even at the busiest intersections.  The two kept to the shadows, nonetheless, careful to the point of paranoia in ensuring no one was on their trail. Mary-Lou did not want to bring trouble to her parents’ doorstep; Jonas was similarly concerned, albeit more with her immediate safety.

     They turned a corner, passing the local post office, the bakery next door. On the next intersection Mary-Lou grabbed Jonas’ shoulder, staying the large man’s gait.

     “I will be fine from here,” she said.

     Jonas seemed inclined to argue. He was obviously uncomfortable with leaving her in the middle of the street. Mary-Lou was touched, but did not back down: The less people who knew where her family lived, the better.

     “Alright,” Jonas bent his head in sullen agreement. When Mary-Lou started forward, he stretched a large hand to lightly clasp her upper arm.

     “Just be careful,” he muttered. Mary-Lou smiled, for the first time since the whole awful evening began, and covered his hand with her own.

     “Thank you, Jonas.”

     The two-story, off-white house that Mary-Lou shared with her parents sat in the middle of a row of similar houses two blocks down from where Jonas and she went their separate ways. Mary-Lou let herself in from the back door, quietly angry at having to be cautious around her own home.

     “Mary-Lou?” a voice called from within the house.

     Mary-Lou sighed. It had been too much to expect that her parents would go to bed while she was still out, but she had hoped.

     “Yes, Mom!” she called back, making sure to lock the door before making her way inside. She followed the light and quiet rumble of voices, finally ducking into the open doorway of the kitchen.

     Emma and Ronald Smith sat around the high kitchen table, shoulders hunched as they nursed half-empty mugs of tea. Their faces were lined with worry, eyes shadowed by lack of sleep. Guilt tightened Mary-Lou’s chest. She muttered a greeting and stepped fully inside the small room.

    “Mary!” Emma gasped, the table clattering as the older woman rushed to her feet, “Baby, what happened to you?”

     “Nothing!” Mary-Lou hastened to reassure. She was met with two disbelieving stares, and quickly amended, “Nothing
horrible
.”

     “What happened to your clothes?” Emma asked, Ronald’s voice overlapping with hers as he rasped, “Your face is bruised!”

     “That’s from the bushes,” Mary-Lou told them, “And the river. The green stains on my jeans are definitely from the cave.”

     Her parents blinked up at her, only marginally less worried.

     “Sit,” Emma pointed a stern finger at her recently-vacated chair, “and explain.”

     “But you are tired—” Mary-Lou protested.

     The finger stabbed the air in a resolute downward motion. “Now.”

     Mary-Lou sat. She held back the relieved groan that rose in her throat, not wanting to explain the numbness in her feet as well.

    How was she to explain at all?

     “I was chased,” Mary-Lou blurted out, settling for the most honest lie she could manage, “by a cult.”

     “What?!” her parents exclaimed in unison, wide-eyed. “What cult?” Emma demanded, “Where on earth did you find a
cult
?”

     “I went exploring this afternoon,” Mary-Lou began. Her parents’ faces immediately tightened; her wandering habits had long been a sore point between them. Their city might be small, but bad things happened just as they did in New York or Chicago. Mary-Lou carried on, side-stepping the issue with practiced ease, “Down by the docks. I saw an interesting building, went to check it out, and – there they were. Chanting and dancing and –that’s all I saw.”

     “Who?” demanded Ronald, “Did you get a good look at any of the people that chased you?”

     “No!” Mary-Lou denied quickly, “No, I didn’t. They jumped at me, and I ran.  I had no time to stop and stare, you know.” This was true enough. She remembered the darkness of that first Shifter’s eyes, the rolling shadow of several bodies – pieces of different puzzles, none combining into a single solid figure.

     Her parents were obviously not too impressed by her explanation, but did not pursue the issue. “And the bruises?” Well,
that
issue.

     “I fell into some bushes, rolled down a hill, and ended in a stream,” Mary-Lou went through the list quickly, not wanting to lie more than necessary, “It got them off my trail, at least.”

     “And the cave?” asked Ronald dubiously.

     “Erm,” Mary-Lou winced --- very eloquently. “There was a cave near the stream. I hid inside for a little while, and left for home as soon as I was sure the coast was clear.” There, an explanation that did not mention half-naked men of questionable origins and the associated furry-slash-scaly animals.

     Emma hugged her daughter, Ronald moving to envelop both of them in his arms. Mary-Lou realized she had been shaking, and trembled even more with repressed emotion.

     “You are okay,” whispered Emma. She trailed a wrinkled hand through her daughter’s hair, pressed a motherly kiss on her forehead. Mary-Lou nodded, overcome with relief and gratitude for the wonderful couple that had taken her in and loved her as their own all of these years. She told them as much, mumbling words of endearment amid relieved tears. She had come so close to losing them tonight – closer than she could even explain.

     “We love you too, Mary-Lou,” her father told her.

     Mary-Lou hugged them tighter and promised herself that whatever happened, nothing would
touch her family. She would make sure of that.

                                                                       ***

     “Good morning!”

       Mary-Lou lifted a hand in response to her coworker’s cheerful greeting, swallowing her sip of coffee before replying with a less-merry, “Hi, Katy.”

     “Oh, come on,” Katy grinned, holding the door to the office open for Mary-Lou so she could shuffle inside without having to juggle her coffee and handbag, “I know it’s Saturday, but that’s no reason to be grumpy!”

     “Says the woman who threatened to trip a child last Sunday because he was – and I quote – ‘running in circles like a broken helicopter and giving her a headache, ’” Mary-Lou shot back, mock indignant.

     Katy laughed, unrepentant. “Yeah, little bugger was fucking annoying. Had the boss not been hovering, I might’ve taught him some manners.”

     Mary-Lou nodded in agreement. Some people just needed to be put in their places – the earlier, the better.

     “Speaking of rude people,” Katy muttered, plopping in the chair to Mary-Lou’s right and booting up their shared computer, “Here comes Jenna.”

     Mary-Lou rolled her eyes just as the office door banged open to reveal a tall, thin woman.

    “Good morning, Jenna,” she greeted, repressing a smile at the pinched glare Jenna sent her way in response. She did not pay Jenna much heed. Displeasure tended to be the older woman’s default expression and anyway, Mary-Lou had built immunity to misplaced bitterness a long time ago. Working the front desk of any public establishment made doing so a vital necessity for preserving one’s nerves.

     Katy, however, lacked both the practice and the patience to deal with Jenna’s issues. Any prolonged interaction between the two tended to end in petty fights, closely followed by sullen silence. Working with them quickly became unbearable for the rest of the office. Schedules were changed about a month into Katy’s time at the Center and as it stood, the two shared only one shift per week.

     “Morning,” Jenna sniffed, setting her satchel on the desk to Mary-Lou’s right. Katy muttered something scathing on the other side and Mary-Lou suppressed a groan, wondering when it was decided that she was to be the middleman to Katy and Jenna’s incessant bickering. Saturday was now the longest and most pointlessly stressful day of Mary-Lou’s week.

     “Miss Smith.”

     Mary-Lou grimaced, then quickly smoothed her expression into one of polite blankness as she turned in her chair. The day was getting better and better.