Her Lion Guard - The Complete Series Box Set (BBW Shifter Romance) (30 page)

“Mine,” Jonas agreed –
snarled
– and bit down, wide-mouthed and hungry. The spike of pain threw Mary-Lou over the edge, tightened her body until Jonas, too, tumbled after her.

Together. Finally, finally—

“Marry me,” Jonas whispered between kisses later, body curled over Mary-Lou’s supple form.

“Yes,” Mary-Lou sighed, let her thighs fall open as Jonas kissed his way down her stomach to where she was wet and warm, burning, “Yes!”

She meant it, too. Even though she suspected she would have agreed to anything Jonas had chosen to ask of her at that moment.

But marrying Jonas? That was easy enough.

C
HAPTER SEVEN

Mary-Lou awoke with a start.

It was the day of the trial. Four thirty-two in the morning, to be precise – three hours and twenty-eight minutes before she was due to wake up, and several more until the trial itself. There was no reason to remain awake, to torture herself with images of what was to come, what Jonas would have to endure.

But Mary-Lou had dreamed.  Sleep was no longer an option.

Mary-Lou got dressed quietly, efficiently. When Jonas woke – as she knew, expected he would – she told him of a vision, asked him to accompany her in her visit to Wiley. The invitation was but a formality; Mary-Lou knew Jonas would not let her go alone, knew
he
knew her well enough to know that she would go with or without his permission.

They did not alert the others. Mary-Lou left a note for Sasha and Cara, telling them to meet her and Jonas at the stadium. The structure had been left intact for the trial, to be demolished as soon as Joel and Wiley’s blood soaked its grounds.

Mary-Lou shook her head, willing her mind away from such thoughts. There was something else that demanded her attention – a wrong that had to be righted, before the chance slipped away forever.

They drove in silence. Mary-Lou watched the empty fields that whirled past the car’s window; Jonas watched the road.

Soon enough, the car was slowing to a stop. Mary-Lou stumbled out of the passenger seat, green eyes grim as they took in the charred fields, the skeletal arena looming high above her. The Challenge had been but a week ago – seven days that felt like years and seconds at the same time.

“Lead the way,” she told Jonas when her mate moved to stand beside her. If Jonas was surprised at her words, at Mary-Lou’s knowledge of his visits to Wiley, he did not show it. The Lion Shifter simply nodded, guiding the human woman past the sullen-faced guards and down a dark, winding hallway.

Wiley was held at the very end, in a small chamber meant as a waiting room rather than a prison. Another pair of men stood guard by the doors. Jonas greeted them with a nod; he was let pass without further question, Mary-Lou following close behind.

They walked into an empty, dimly-lit room. There was no furniture; criminals were not allowed such luxuries. Along with light and basic medical help, it seemed: Wiley was laid against one of the far walls, body half-collapsed, half-hung from a sturdy metal plank. Bruises and cuts still littered the Wolf’s flesh, marking them as new, as torture-inflicted at the hands of the men  and women who patrolled this makeshift  prison. Mary-Lou shivered to see silver cuffs glint around Wiley’s swollen wrists, the metal releasing a barely-perceived poisonous steam where it came into contact with the Shifter’s skin.

“You again?” Wiley snarled. His voice, like the rest of him, seemed to have wasted away. He did not raise his eyes, obviously addressing Jonas. Likely unaware of Mary-Lou’s presence. “Am I that pretty of a sight?”

“No,” Mary-Lou said and watched Wiley stiffen, watched the Wolf shake with some unnamed emotion. She wondered if he would  attempt to attack her even as the man subsided into his chains.

“Well, well,” Wiley drawled, stumbled over a dry cough. “Should have known you would show up sooner or later.” Wild, maddened eyes lifted to catch Mary-Lou’s as the Wolf snarled, “Come on, don’t be shy; give me your best.”

He expected her to hit him, Mary-Lou realized. Expected her to strike and tear at him, to take pleasure at his defeat. The human woman swallowed back nausea, pressed firmly down against a bout of anger and disgust. What else was he to think? What else had Wiley ever known, but pain?

“I wish to speak with you,” Mary-Lou said in the end. “Alone.” Jonas glanced at her, a furtive, worried thing. Wiley laughed, low and ugly.

“You can’t be
that
stupid,” the Wolf growled.

“What are you going to do to me, Wiley?” Mary-Lou snapped, “What can you do to
anyone
, right now?” The Wolf roared at her and she ignored him, seeing his anger for the pathetic show that it was.

“Mary,” Jonas whispered. His hand lingered on her arm, light above the still-healing wound. She shook her head.

“Let me.”

A moment later, Jonas was stepping out of the door and into the gray hallway beyond. He was not out of earshot, had not truly left her alone; still, his willingness to respect her wishes – even here, even with
this
– was pleasing to the headstrong woman. She could not thrive stifled, would not even bother to try.

Mary-Lou waited until the door closed at Jonas back before turning to Wiley. The Wolf was back to staring at the ground, exhales slow and measured. He was stifling groans of pain, Mary-Lou realized. The human let out a soft sigh, then set to carefully lower herself to the cement floor.

“What’re you doing?” Wiley rasped. Dark, pain-glazed eyes tracked Mary-Lou’s movements with hostile curiosity from beneath messy brows.

“I’m tired,” Mary-Lou shrugged. It was true enough: She was still on medication for her arm (and had that not been a fun wound to explain in the ER), and had not exactly slept much last night. If her resting also happened to spare Wiley the embarrassment of being talked down to, it was but an unexpected bonus. Mary-Lou smiled at the grim Wolf, wiggling until she was as comfortable as she could be. Wiley glared at her suspiciously, but made no further comment.

“I had a dream about you,” Mary-Lou began after a moment of quiet stillness. Wiley choked out a mirthless laugh, grumbling a quiet, “There ain’t much left to dream about, Princess.”

“That’s true,” Mary-Lou agreed,  pretending that this meeting was anything other than what it was – a last rite, a confession, a punishment in its own right. Mary-Lou wished it was not so, even as she knew better than to wish for anything when it came to men like Wiley Turbo. She continued. “I did not dream of your future as it is. I dreamed of what could have been, and thought you should – must – know, before you go.”

“Revenge, huh?” Wiley laughed, cracked lips stretched thin over sharp teeth. “Torturing me with petty lies. Low, even for a human.”

“I do not mean to lie to you,” Mary-Lou told him. When Wiley only snorted in response, she shifted until she was well within the Wolf’s space. Wiley pulled back as Mary-Lou reached for his bound hands, hissing when the human woman pushed her soft, cool fingers between the thick silver and his burning skin.

“Here,” Mary-Lou said, face so close Wiley could count the eyelashes curled over green human eyes. “You will be able to tell if I’m lying now, won’t you?” Wiley nodded dumbly, thinking that this close, he could do more than read the stupid woman’s pulse. He might be weakened by hunger and poison, but a wolf was not harmless until dead. Even now, Wiley could just lean over and—

“You were married.”

Wiley’s eyes snapped to Mary-Lou’s. He sought the lie in her pupils, in the jump of her pulse beneath the curve of her jaw – found nothing but steady, cold truth. The Wolf swallowed, nodded at her to continue.

“Your wife was beautiful – a tall, dark-skinned woman with strong features and a happy face. She bore you two children: A boy with light eyes and dark skin, and a girl with soft black curls and a smile just like yours. You loved them dearly.

They were everything you had.

After the War – and there was a war in the wake of my death, a brutal time of hate and death and needless violence – you settled down to have a family, as you had always dreamed. But there was no glory in your life, no medals and commendations for the many battles you waged. For the lives you took so the cause could progress. The War had been too cruel, the survivors – too many and much too bitter to accept defeat and the Old Law without something in return.

You were their scapegoat. You, and the half a dozen like you: Men and women who fought for a cause in which they were taught to believe. Most were killed outright. The few who escaped – you among them – fled to the darkest, quietest corner of the country they could find. You were lucky enough to not do so alone.”

Mary-Lou paused, grasping for both breath and calm as her mind turned with her memories. Wiley stared at her, eyes wide and unblinking. The Wolf waited, patient and quiet, for her to continue.

“They found you,” Mary-Lou sighed after a moment. “One night, they came for you. Men armed with silver, Shifters out for your blood. They dragged your family into the forest that had until then hidden your home, tore you from your wife and children so they could teach you a lesson. Demean you before them.” Mary-Lou closed her eyes. This, this was the last of it – the most distressing, disgusting part of it all. Mary-Lou met Wiley’s expectant gaze head-on, willing her words to be as emotionless and direct as they could be.

“Joel was there. He – it was him, Wiley. He led them to you, let them beat you until you could not move – until your wife and kids could scream no more. But that, too, was not the end.

Your girl. Your little girl, Wiley—she was human, and they knew, and there is but a single fate for a human-born Shifter under the Old Laws.”

Wiley was shaking his head, shaking so hard his teeth rattled. “No,” the Wolf groaned, eyes red-rimmed and too-dry. “No.”

Mary-Lou said nothing. There was nothing left to be said.

Jonas did not question his mate’s silence, the slight tremble of her lips and eyes. The Lion Shifter  heard it all – he’d  been meant to, Mary-Lou had known he would. Wiley’s fate was an unhappy one; Jonas deserved to know, to understand that it would have been so, no matter the outcome of the Challenge. It was not a matter of luck, of chance, but of kindness and resolve: The Wolf had chosen the path he would tread  a long, long time ago. What lurked at its end was no one’s fault but his.

Jonas linked their hands, offered his side for Mary-Lou to lean against as they made their way through the darkened hallway. This place was not theirs, had never been for them to walk. Here, they would leave all misery behind.

A long, mournful howl echoed behind them. It climbed high, drew thin and awful before it, too, melted into the dark silence all about.

The trial was a brief, sad thing.

A few speeches were made: Most by survivors of victimized families, some by people close to either Wiley or the Prince. There was not a single kind word to be heard about either man. Mary-Lou was surprised to see the ferocious-looking woman who  had held her captive that first, moonlit night in Wiley’s car,  take the stand. Apparently, she had lost her bond mate during the fight – a tragedy she blamed solely on her Alpha’s blind, brutal command. Mary-Lou remembered her obedience, remembered the malicious smile that had curled the woman’s lips and thought of how easy it was to blame someone else for one’s own shortcomings. That night, the she-Wolf had hated Mary-Lou for living; today, she hated Wiley with the same single-minded intensity.

Mary-Lou knew nothing could be done about the woman’s pain. The woman knew it too, but elected not to see it – chose to believe that as long as someone was guilty, it would go away.

Wiley had done the exact same thing.

Irma addressed the crowd, as did Rowfer. They were the last to do so, their words sensible and pragmatic. Emotionless. Irma called for peace, Rowfer urged for logic; both agreed that this was the last trial of its kind to be held.

Wiley and Joel were brought forth, then. Chained, muzzled, pushed along like cattle – Mary-Lou had to look away. Beside her, Jonas had grown rigid and pale; Mary-Lou focused on her mate, on his pained expression.