Jaguar's Kiss (Lone Pine Pride) (3 page)

He was so fucking screwed up.

Someone bumped into him and he opened his eyes, reaching out automatically to steady her when he realized it was Patch. She mumbled an apology then looked up and smiled. “Oh. Hey, Santiago.”

“Patch.”

“It’s a zoo in here today, isn’t it?” she said with a wrinkle of her nose. Patch was a mountain lion. Even though she’d been raised on pride lands, she’d moved off as soon as she turned eighteen and had been an outlier like him ever since. The lions might get off on the togetherness, but the rest of them preferred their solitude. “Have you seen Lila?”

He jerked his chin toward where the princess was holding court. “Over there. Flirting with everything that breathes.”

“That sounds like Lila.” Patch swayed forward, shoved by the crowd. “Do you know what this is about?”

“I have a couple ideas.” Lions in Texas, threatening to come out to the humans. Shifters disappearing in Colorado and Utah. Some sort of mysterious human organization running tests on them.

“I guess the Alpha will tell us soon enough,” Patch said when Santiago didn’t volunteer his theories. “I’d better find Lila before it’s time to start.”

She dove back into the crowd, threading and shoving her way toward Lila and her entourage. Santiago tried not to watch, tried not to obsess over Lila, and had about as much success as he’d had for the last five years. None.

Thankfully, the Alpha called the meeting to order, providing a welcome distraction.

The announcements were, unfortunately, in line with what he’d been expecting. After a quick welcome of the new members and thanks to everyone for attending, the Alpha launched into an explanation of the troubles in the south—the Three Rocks lions’ plans to go public, their warnings about an organization abducting shifters for scientific experiments, and rumors about the disappearances in Colorado and Utah.

Other Alphas may not have told their prides about the rumors, may have made the necessary decisions and kept their people in the dark, but that was never how Gregory Fallon had operated. He wanted his people informed—but if they wanted Lone Pine protection, they still had to do as he said. And right now he was saying that the outliers needed to come in. Indefinitely.

Santiago bristled, and he wasn’t the only one, at the idea of having his freedom curtailed. He knew why the Alpha was asking, even understood that it was the best move for everyone involved until they knew more about the threats coming from the south, but that didn’t mean the jaguar beneath his skin liked the idea of sharing territory with all these other cats.

Even if Lila was one of them.

The Alpha held up a hand to quiet the rumblings of discontent rippling through the hall. No one wanted the outliers crowding onto pride lands, least of all the core lions who lived there. Sure, the pride had hundreds of acres of terrain and the facilities to house two hundred—Santiago should know, he’d designed the latest additions—but tempers were bound to flare if that many predators were forced to all live together.

“I know this will be a sacrifice, but until we know more, I feel it is necessary for the safety of our pride,” the Alpha went on. “And now for some good news. While we’re together seemed like the perfect time to begin planning an event I know many among us have been anticipating for years. I am delighted to be able to announce something that is a cause for great personal celebration, and hopefully gives our entire pride equal joy, the wedding date between my daughter Lila and my heir Roman has, at long last, been set. This New Year’s we will have more than another year to celebrate.”

There was cheering—Santiago knew there was cheering, but the sound was distorted, as if it were coming to him through a tunnel. He felt detached from his body, watching from a distance of miles as Lila stood and made her way to the stage, sliding her small, perfectly manicured hand into Roman’s large mitt.

At the touch, he snapped back into himself. His senses returned with a roar, and with them a fierce, wild, irrational rage. His jaguar was clawing against the inside of his skin, twisting and pushing to burst through. The anger blacked his vision and he pushed blindly toward the exit.

Three months. She was marrying Roman in less than three months.

He had to get out of here. Had to shift. Had to run.

He’d never involuntarily shifted before, but this had to be what it felt like. The jaguar was coming to the surface whether he wanted him to or not, a silent roar echoing in his head.

Santiago burst into the evening air seconds before the change ripped through him and his feral cat took command in a rush of rage and claws. The most animal part of him wanted to return and fight, but he forced himself to dart forward, away, the ground racing up to meet his paws, miles melting away as he ran.

Chapter Three

Lila had almost missed her cue.

All through her father’s speech, she couldn’t focus, a sort of creeping numbness fogging her awareness. Luckily Patch whispered her name and jostled her out of her catatonia just in time for her appearance. The one thing she was supposed to do and she’d nearly missed it.

She trotted up on stage, grabbed onto Roman’s hand and looked out over the sea of faces with her pretty social smile fixed firmly in place. Most of those faces were happy, a few held lingering concern from the earlier announcement.

Lila scanned the crowd for Santiago—not even sure why she was doing it—just in time to see the back of his head as he darted out of the building like it was on fire. No surprise there. She hadn’t exactly expected him to be happy for her. She shouldn’t have been looking for him in the first place.

The meeting had broken up shortly thereafter, though Lila had stuck around to accept congratulations and wedding tips from the pride’s matrons. She knew she shouldn’t have been relieved when an emergency had called Roman and the senior pride members away, but with her fiancé absent she’d been able to make her excuses and slip away to meet Patch at the Lion’s Den.

Located stumbling distance from most of the residential complexes, the bar was right in the heart of the pride lands. It wasn’t much—a couple of pool tables, an old juke box and a tiny dance floor—but as a shifters-only watering hole, it was often the only place where they could let their hair—or fur—down and just be themselves without worrying about what the humans might see or think if a drunken fight suddenly took a turn for the furry.

Seated next to Patch at the shadowy end of the bar, Lila watched the bartender, a dark-eyed tigress nicknamed Whiskey, slinging drinks.

“What are we drinking to?” Patch eyed the milky white shots of the bar’s signature drink dubiously. Called
raki,
or lion’s milk, it was a Turkish alcohol that tasted like black licorice, kicked like lighter fluid, and left the drinker with a sweet, smooth aftertaste and completely impaired judgment.

“To matrimony.” Lila lifted her shot and threw it back, sucking in a hard breath to keep from coughing as her eyes teared up.

Patch played with her shot, sliding it in circles on the surface of the bar. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was only decided this afternoon. I tried calling you, but it went straight to voicemail and it seemed like the kind of news that shouldn’t be left on a message.”

Patch made a face. “Yeah, sorry, I was probably out of range. Work stuff.”

“And how is life in the wilderness, Patricia Marie?”

Patch glared at the mention of her real name and downed her shot, gasping and giving her head a little shake.

“That good, huh?”

The cougar grimaced. “The season is winding down. This is usually when I would disappear on my own for a while, until the winter work starts up, but with the bogeyman out there, it looks like I’ll be hanging around here instead. Forgive me if I don’t jump for joy.”

Lila drew a fingernail through the condensation on the bar. For purely selfish reasons, she wanted Patch here with her and safe and sound, but she knew her best friend wasn’t a homebody like her. She’d go stir crazy if she had to stay here long term. “He isn’t forcing anyone to come in. It’s all voluntary.”

“It’s a warning I’d be stupid to ignore. I know better than anyone how quickly we can be taken.”

Lila went still. She’d forgotten. Not actually forgotten, but gotten so caught up in her own drama she hadn’t realized how Patch would be taking tonight’s news. What it would mean to her. She’d only come to live at Lone Pine after her parents had vanished. “Do you think these disappearances are related? Could the same people have taken your parents?”

“They could be. No way of knowing.” She reached for another shot of lion’s milk and Lila joined her. After they were done gasping and tearing up, Patch tapped the empty shot glass against the bar. “I hate that it’s still happening and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Roman will come up with a plan.” She may have jitters about the marriage, but Lila didn’t have even a twinge of reservations about her fiancé’s ability to guide the pride.

“He’s not in favor of coming out to the humans?”

Lila shook her head. “He wants to get together a hunting party and take the fight to whoever is abducting us. Says we aren’t predators for nothing.”

Patch smiled fiercely. “I always liked Roman.”

“I used to wonder if you more than liked him.” It was the
raki
. If Lila had been sober she never would have said it.

Her best friend’s face flamed. “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s your husband we’re talking about.”

“Not yet he isn’t.”

Suddenly restless, Lila waved to catch Whiskey’s attention and called out a request for a bucket of Patch’s favorite beer. Lila tossed her head to get her hair out of her eyes and tugged her best friend by the arm until she came off her stool. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk. I wanna get out of here.”

“I thought the whole idea of coming to the Den was to be sociable and flirt with the world. Isn’t that what you told me?”

“You should never listen to anything I say. I don’t know what I’m talking about.” The bucket of beer appeared on the bar. Lila called out her thanks to Whiskey who was already walking away and grabbed the bucket by the handle. “Come on. Please? We’ll do a little bachelorette party. Just you and me.”

Patch didn’t take much convincing. She always preferred being outside in the quiet to being crowded in with other shifters at the Den. Lila grabbed her hand and towed Patch to the door, for once ignoring the laughing mix of invitations and complaints that followed in the wake of their departure. She threw a smile over her shoulder at the door to smooth any fur that was ruffled when she didn’t stay and play like usual.

Then they were outside and the cool night air was kissing her exposed skin, easing some of that restless agitation in her stomach. She handed Patch a beer and took one for herself, gently swinging the bucket as they wandered away from the noise of the main compound.

Patch, bless her, walked in companionable silence at her side, sipping her beer and tipping her head back to take in the stars. Lila didn’t look up. She kept her eyes on the gravel path in front of them until it faded into a dirt track wending up toward the hills on the northern edge of the pride lands.

Thank God for Patch, who always seemed to know exactly what she needed.

No one had expected them to be friends. They were night and day. Patch dark and tough, Lila fair and girly. Patch was happiest in the wilderness on her own, or guiding tourists through challenging rapids or mountain climbs. Lila’s idea of roughing it was a hotel without a spa attached. By rights they should have had nothing in common, but that had never mattered. They’d been inseparable since they were ten.

Lila was the Alpha’s daughter, and lions, even as children, had an intense awareness of hierarchy. She was always the princess, always a little separate from the other children—and she’d felt the isolation keenly. Then Patch had arrived at the pride, half-feral and wholly alone. Patch who treated her just like all the other lions because pride hierarchy meant nothing to her and they were all strangers to her.

Even at that age, Lila had been a pleaser, wanting everyone around her to be happy, so she’d made it her mission to make Patch feel accepted and welcomed, to make her feel safe and protected after the trauma of her parents’ disappearance. She’d talked her father into letting Patch foster with them, even though the Alpha traditionally didn’t take in strays.

It hadn’t been instant or easy, but Patch had become the sister she never had. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t a lion. Didn’t matter that she preferred hiking boots and jeans—like she was wearing now—to dresses and heels. None of that could touch the bond they’d formed as two lonely cubs who’d promised one another they’d never be alone again.

“You don’t have to marry him, you know.”

If it had been anyone else, Lila would have deflected, turning the conversation back to light topics, but this was Patch.

“I don’t have to. But I will.” She sighed and dropped her empty into the bucket, taking Patch’s as well and handing out the next round. “Do you think that makes me a coward? Because I’m always doing the easy thing, trying to make everyone else happy?”

“Is that always the easy thing?”

It wasn’t. Trust Patch to know that. “I don’t please people because I’m scared to be myself.”