King's Proposal: Paranormal Shape Shifter Alpha Male Cage Fighter Werelion romance (Shifter Fight League Book 3) (4 page)

Her mocking smile disappeared. “What the hell is going on?”

The words fell into silence as Niko just looked at her. He watched with a smile as all the pieces fell into place in her head. This was the underground fight group she’d heard rumors about, the one Logan had taken a call about at the restaurant.

She laughed at Niko, the sound harsh.

“Oh boy, you are so fucking dead, you know that? I knew you were dumb, but I didn’t think you were this fucking stupid.”

Anger flashed in his dark eyes and he folded his arms. “Yeah? You know what I think?”

“Sure you’re going to tell me.”

He leaned forward, face almost against the bars of her cage. “I think by the end of the night I’ll have wiped the smug grin off your face and you’ll come crawling to me.”

Her eyebrow winged up. “Really? You think winning the bit change a crapshoot fight like this’ll get you will have me falling all over you like a cheap hooker? Got news for you, pal. Not happening.”

“Oh, it ain’t change I’ll be winning tonight.” He swept her figure with a look that sent shivers up her spine, and not in a good way. “We don’t fight for money but for something more…valuable.”

He stepped back a little so she could see the rest of the room. On the other side of the ring, two men dragged a kicking and fighting woman across the floor to throw her into a cage similar to Zara’s. She followed the line of the ropes to see more cages, all occupied. And not just with humans; one contained a fairy complete with butterfly wings and another…her eyes widened… they even had a damn unicorn.

“Holy crap…” she breathed. “You dumb fuckers. Never mind Logan and Veyr…when that girl’s herd finds you, you’re all dead men walking.”

“Says the woman who’ll be riding my cock later.” The big werebear laughed, pushing away from the bars. “Hold on, doll…there’s someone who wants to see you.”

He moved aside and for a second Zara looked at the man approaching blankly. The tall, broad-shouldered figure was familiar, as were the clean-cut, still handsome features she saw a copy of on her brother every day, but she couldn’t seem to make her brain function and make sense of what she saw.

“Hello, Zara,” said her father, smiling down at her, whiskey in hand. “Nice to see you.”

“James.” She nodded, her expression locked down tight. “What are you doing here? I thought you were out in Hawaii with your bimbo.”

How the hell her father was here, she didn’t know. Niko must have found him. Brought him back. Why though? He had to know that Logan would kill him if he found out he was in the city. Her gaze flicked over her dad quickly. He was dressed too finely to be on the run, the whiskey accompanied by a fat cigar in the other hand. He didn’t have the manner or bearing of someone who’d been dragged back against his will.

“No, Hawaii wasn’t my scene.” James shrugged and leaned one elbow on the ropes, looking around. “So what do you think of my new venture?”

Fuck. Ing. Hell. Realization hit hard and fast, everything making horrible sense all at once. James was behind the illegal fight clubs.

“That’s why you stole the king’s money? To fund this?” She flicked a glance at her cage and the others. “And rather than pay out your fighters, you kidnap women?”

“Oh no,” James was quick to reassure her, nodding to a cage she hadn’t noticed over on the other side of the room. A man lay in it, unmoving, his back to them. “We offer equal opportunities when it comes to our prizes. Our fighters can list their preferences…age, gender…identity.”

She sucked a hard breath. Fury rolled through her as she moved to the front of the cage.

“You mean you kidnap to order.”

“Very good.” He tipped his glass toward her, as though she’d scored a point. “Gives the fighters more incentive if we can offer them exactly what they want. Like young Niko here… listed you.”

“Fuck Niko,” she snarled, slamming her hands into the bars. Her father was lucky there was a barrier between them because right at the moment, she wanted nothing more than to rip his throat out with her bare hands.

James beamed. “That’s the spirit! And I wanted to thank you, by the way.”

She gave him a blank look. What he had to thank her for, she didn’t know. Her expression must have given it away because he continued.

“For dealing with my…debt to the king. I heard he’d wiped the debt in return for you fucking him.”

“Thank me?”

She couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing. The sound was so loud and abrupt that others in the room turned to look at their little group in surprise. Tears of mirth rolled down her cheeks as both Niko and her father looked at her in bemusement.

“Oh, don’t thank me,” she finally got it together enough to get out. “You think the King doesn’t know exactly what’s going on in his kingdom? Don’t thank me because when he gets here you two assholes are fucking toast. And you know what? I’ll laugh as he takes you both apart, piece by fucking piece.”

S
hock had set in
. She couldn’t stop shaking and her face hurt where she’d been hit.

Zara had given up on standing and glaring defiantly at her asshole of a father. He was hamming it up, sitting on a raised dais to her left like some sort of benevolent king. Which was just what he was doing, setting himself up as a challenger to Logan. Like that was going to work out well. For him.

Instead, she sat at the back of her cage with her arms looped around her knees. Thankfully the cage was set against the wall so no one could sneak up on her. No, if someone wanted to get to her, they were going to have to come through the front door of the cage and drag her out.

She snorted. Good fucking luck with that. She’d done enough self-defense classes to know all the moves for confined spaces, plus she still had her shoes. Stiletto heels made awesome weapons in a pinch.

Shivers rolled down her spine, spreading out through her body in unstoppable waves. Lifting a hand, she rubbed gingerly at the side of her face, probing the inside of her cheek with her tongue. Brad had clocked her good and hard when he’d taken her from in front of her apartment. Her cheek was lacerated on the inside and sore as all hell. She shoved her tongue hard against the cuts and savored the pain, using it to fuel her rage against her father.

He was to blame for all this. It was bad enough when they thought he’d fucked off with the money to live it up in the Hawaii with his bimbo, but to find out he’d left them at the king’s mercy knowing Logan would probably have them killed…it pissed her off to levels she’d never experienced before. A growl rolled from the back of her throat… just give her five minutes with the guy. She’d happily take him apart with her bare hands.

The anger rose higher and higher, like bile in the back of her throat. Hot and acidic, it ate away at her control, increasing the thudding in her head to skull-splitting proportions. Her vision shifted, her heart pounding in her chest so hard she could swear her body was changing somehow. Blackness started to infiltrate the edges of her vision and panic set in. Shit, she’d known this was coming. Her headaches were sometimes so severe that she blacked out and this one was a total dozy. But she couldn’t pass out, not here. She’d be totally helpless and at Niko and her father’s mercy.

Closing her eyes, she concentrated on her breathing. In and out, in and out. Inflating her lungs and deflating them as she opened her eyes and expanded her senses. Focusing on the lights above the bars of her cage, she listened to the sounds around her. The sounds of the crowd watching the fight, the compere’s voice as he announced the next fight and the prize…the moan of distress from a cage over on the other side of the room.

Music blared as the fighters entered the ring, but she didn’t look away from the lights, not just yet. The noise level was loud but the smell…fuck, that was even worse. It was like someone had ramped the volume on her nose to full, ramming all the scents in the room right up her nostrils.

Mold and decay from the surroundings vied with cheap cigar smoke and cheaper cologne. Fuck, she’d thought the clientele from the Moon was bad but this lot were a thousand times worse. No wonder they used abandoned properties. She wouldn’t trust this lot with even plastic chairs from a fast food joint.

There was another smell under all the crap — one she couldn’t identify. Dropping her gaze from the lights, she looked around, trying to isolate the source. What the hell was that? It was a sharp, full smell…almost but not quite funky, like milk on the turn…but sharp and haunting at the same time.

Her gaze connected with the occupant of the cage next to her and she knew what it was. It was despair and fear. How the fuck was she smelling that? Shoving the thought away, she shook her head. No way could she be smelling stuff like that. That was shifter territory and she was so not a shifter. If she was, she’d be out of this cage in an instant and Daddy-dearest would be dead meat.

Looking away, she concentrated on the cages. Three were now empty, their occupants already won. None had put up a fight as their new owners had hauled them away, literally in one case. That left just three: the unconscious guy, the unicorn and her. The guy was the prize for the next fight, and then it was Zara. It had stung a little to realize that she wasn’t the evening’s grand prize but, with a unicorn here, she was never going to be.

Her gaze crept sideways to the girl again. She looked terrified, crouched in the corner of her cage with her arms wrapped around herself as she rocked backward and forward. Zara caught her gaze and offered a smile. Small comfort, but it was all she could offer.

It least it was a female, and not a juvenile male. If it had been, chances are none of them would have made it out alive. All the myths and legends about unicorns were fucked up six ways to Sunday. The females? Total myth material. Benign and gentle, they were so beautiful in human form that they were rare and prized, hunted by powerful men for things like this.

The males? Forget the stories, they were predators through and through. Born in equine form, they were highly carnivorous and would hunt anything that moved. Usually, they were kept under control by their sires…but she had heard horror stories of when they’d gotten loose. A cutesy dog-size unicorn that hunted by luring its prey with pheromones? She shuddered, the zombie apocalypse would be easier to contain.

But if a male was looking for this one? They were all fucked, and not in a good way.

* * *

B
lood got
sticky when it dried. Especially weredog blood.

Logan sighed to himself as he strode out of the third rundown location he and Gage had raided that evening, wiping his hands clean on a rag. Wrinkling his nose at the stench that rose from the cloth, he threw it to the side and flexed his knuckles. The asshole had put up a hell of a fight, but Logan and Gage hadn’t been in the mood to piss about, not with what they’d found out today.

Johnno, the fighter from the Moon they’d put undercover, had come up with the goods. He’d infiltrated the underground fight network easily, texting them addresses to bust as he tried to track down where the big fight this evening was going down. He was the point of the operation for the moment, while Logan and Gage were cleanup duty.

Logan curled his lips back from his teeth, letting his lion loose a little to snarl. The deep sound rumbled around the filthy alley. As soon as the lad gave them a location for the fight, then all of them… all of Logan’s crew…were going to war. He was going to end this once and for all.

A sound behind him made him turn. Gage emerged through the door, his arm around a young woman wrapped in a blanket. She was pale, her face bruised and her expression haunted. Logan nodded to let Gage know the coast was clear. His expression hardened as he watched the big wereleopard walk the girl carefully to the cars.

Disgust filled him and his lion as he strode to his car and slid behind the wheel. The bastards were trafficking sex slaves. Rather than offer a cash prize for the winners, they were snatching girls like the one Gage was gently putting in the car. She had leopard blood but wasn’t a full shifter. Logan’s first instinct when they’d found her, crying as her “owner”…

Rage threatened to overwhelm him again but he fought it back. Fights should be about skill and ability… and yes, money. Although some people argued it should be for the joy of the sport and being paid somehow diminished that, no fighter could live on fresh air and exposure. Reputation alone didn’t pay the bills nor put food on the table. This ended. Tonight. He was going to bring hell down on these assholes and send them down into its fiery embrace.

But what if Zara was the prize… the little voice in the back of his head wanted to know. He leaned forward, resting his forehead against his hands on the wheel and turned that thought over in his mind. Then he rejected it utterly. He’d taken away her choices once, and that was enough. She had to come to him of her own volition, or not at all.

“You fucking idiot, Logan.” He groaned, sitting back and slamming his hands against the wheel.

And he was. He’d screwed things up totally with her. Asked her to marry him but not told her how he felt. Told her it was a PR stunt, that it was to wipe the rest of her debt…anything to avoid making himself vulnerable. Anything to avoid exposing himself to the possibility that she might say no and walk away. Anything to avoid admitting how he felt.

Opening his eyes, he watched Gage’s taillights disappear out of the alley. He was alone. So how did he feel?

That was easy. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. Zara didn’t just run through his mind, she’d moved in and taken up residence. There for his every waking thought and inhabiting his dreams. He found himself making mental notes to remember things about his day to tell her and smiling when he saw something he knew she’d like. He was perpetually making plans to take her places that would please her and get her to smile at him from under her lashes the way she did when she thought he wasn’t looking.

He was addicted to her kisses and the taste of her lips. To touching her and the way she smelled, like sweet summer and haunting femininity in some nameless floral symphony that was uniquely hers. He loved the way she felt tucked under his arm against his side and stretched out under him in bed, moaning in pleasure.

And fuck were they compatible in bed. Just a little glance from her was enough to short-circuit all of his higher brain functions and have him operating with just the little head, ready to go in a heartbeat. Ready to act out a thousand dirty fantasies centered solely on her…or to just hold her in his arms as he took her gently, watching her shatter in ecstasy knowing his touch had brought her to that.

The thought of losing all that, of losing her, had him sucking a hard breath in. Just the chance he might never have all that again almost shattered him.

He was in love with her. Totally, head over heels in love with her, and he was an idiot for not realizing it sooner.

He had to tell her.

Desperate determination filled him and he started the car. The engine roared to life, the big car jerking slightly as he rammed it into gear and sped off down the alley.

He had to see her… Had to kiss her and tell her how he felt.

He had to tell her that he loved her…

And pray that she felt the same.

The journey to Zara’s place didn’t take him long, not when he was breaking all the speed limits and running red lights where he could. Within minutes he found himself pulling up at the curb outside. He looked up at the building, only for his heart to fall.

All her lights were off. Something was wrong.

He’d driven past here enough times late at night to know that she always left the lamp in the living room on. The light peeking through the blinds had been a beacon to let him know that she was tucked up safe and sound. Tonight there was no beacon. All the windows were dark.

“Shit.” He threw the door open and surged out of the car in a move that wasn’t even pretending to be human.

Panic started to well, his lion trying to push free of his control to deal with the possible threat to their mate. He gritted his teeth against the throb in his head and carried on walking. His chest ached, heart pounding as it fought to enlarge and change shape to power his shift, but he held it in check. He even held his lion back as his vision grayed out and his sense of smell ramped up to fever pitch, and then he pushed it back with the ease of long practice.

His lion was a jerk, always pushing its boundaries, so he was used to keeping it under control. Even now, when he was about to freak out, he knew he had to keep control. There was a time and place for the beast, but that was not now. Right now he needed to think clearly.

He was still feet away from her door when he caught the scent of blood and froze. Blood. Not much but enough. And not just any blood. Zara’s blood. Tipping his head back, he let his lion free enough to roar his rage to the night sky above, his claws bursting free from the tips of his fingers.

His cell rang, the vibration hitting his thigh. Yanking it out of his pocket, he almost smashed the screen with his claws when he answered it.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Gage,” the voice on the other end answered. “Johnno rang. They have Hunter’s girl.”