Lion And The Falcon (Furry United Coalition) (2 page)

“No one is asking you to.”

“Then why do you keep trying to set me up with lionesses?” Or most recently, tigers. Apparently at this point, anything with a feline gene would do.

“I’ve got to do something. It’s not like you’re making any attempt to find the right women to
impregnate and increase our pride.”

Did she
even listen to a word he said? Of course she didn’t. When it came to the pride, and her role as leader within it, his mother possessed a one-track mind, a mind currently obsessed with getting her son laid. “Why can’t you just relax and let me do things my way? In my own time? Did it ever occur to you that I’d like to find a woman who likes me for me and not because our families are trying to broker a deal? Or because you’ve promised them something?”

“I’m just looking out for you.”

The hurt on her face appeared genuine. Guilt made him squirm. “I know you are.” In her mind at least. In his, she meddled. Nolan didn’t have an interest in acting as a baby-making machine, creating the next line of lions, or ligers, in order to appease his mother. It wasn’t his fault he ended up the only male lion of age for their pride. Blame his sisters, cousins, and aunts who kept popping out girls and more girls. “Listen, Mom, can we talk about this later? I need to get up and get ready for work.”

Not the best reminder, seeing how his mother hated his job, but at least it diverted her attention. She sniffed with
clear disdain and lifted her nose in the air as she walked away from the bed, grabbing his clothes off the floor and tossing them in the hamper as she went. “I still can’t believe you turned down that perfectly respectable job with the hospital
”—
which came with a big salary, an even nicer car than the one he currently drove,and all kinds of perk
s—
“to work for
them.
” Them being FUC—the Furry United Coalition, helping shape-shifters worldwide since two thousand and eleven. Still a relatively new agency, the ones in power thought, given their population explosion, that it was time the shifters had their own police/protection agency. Previously, if a shifter required aid, they fended for themselves, which often caused more problems and attention than they wanted. No more. Now if a shifter needed help, they simply made a call and they got FUC’d. Not literally, of course, not that a few didn’t try, their request for him specifically not always subtle.

“I like my job.”
More like loved, but he didn’t need to irritate his mother any further, not when she proceeded to dust his dressers, her annoyance always resulting in cleaning. Needless to say, he didn’t complain about that habit of hers and sometimes worked it to his advantage. It saved him from hiring a maid.

Despite his mother’s lament that his current
employment didn’t come with a Jaguar and a giant office, or the prestige of a big hospital, Nolan did well for himself. He drove a nice car, lived in a great condo he’d bought with his own money, and in general had enough savings in the bank to tempt any woman. Until they met his mother. Then any normal female, who had any kind of mental capacity, would run the other way, probably screaming. He’d seen it before. It would take a strong personality to counter that of his overbearing mother. Problem was Nolan preferred women with docile characteristics, the complete opposite, in other words.

Once upon a time, he thought he
had found the right girl. Stephanie. A hot cougar with a few years on him. She was a business woman with a decent job, money of her own and an independent spirit. Best of all, she dated him because she actually liked him, and not just because of his looks or position. It only took his mother’s sudden appearance at the head of his bed, dispensing advice while Steph rode cowgirl, for her to disappear, her text message of,
“It’s not you, it’s your mother,”
not really much of a surprise.

“
I can’t see how you can like being underpaid, underappreciated, and overworked.” Again with the sniff.

Put in that light, it sounded foolish, however, he knew better. Nolan enjoyed
the people he worked with, what they stood for, and the fact his mother couldn’t dictate to them. Helping those in trouble and meting out justice also appealed to his chivalrous side. Not that expressed that aloud. In his mother’s world, altruism was for the weak. Only cold, hard cash and power counted. He’d argued enough times with her since his decision to join the agency to know it was pointless to try and change her mind.

“Mom…”
he injected a warning tone in the drawn out word.

A moue of distaste twisted her features, more to do he suspected with the wine stain on his beige slacks
—which he’d forgotten to soak before climbing in to bed last night—than because of the topic at hand. She tossed the offending item into his hamper. “Fine. Break a poor mother’s heart. If your father were alive, he’d die of shame.”

If his father were alive, he
would probably be deaf, or living somewhere without phones or mail service deep in the jungle. “Goodbye, Mother.”

“I’m
leaving. For now. I can tell when I’m not wanted.”

Really?
Mark it on the calendar as a first.

“
But keep in mind, we aren’t finished discussing this. You will do your duty to the pride.”

Or else. Yeah, yeah.
He’d heard the speech. Had it painted over, too, in the bathroom, living room, and even his bedroom ceiling, his mother’s attempt to get him to see her point of view posted in black and white. At least she had not managed to tattoo it on his body—yet. He’d foiled the last two attempts by recognizing the sleeping agent slipped into his drinks. Threatening to move to San Francisco to join the gay male pride living there put a stop to that.

Lying in bed, h
e waited until he heard the click of the door before hopping out from under the covers. Stretching, he scratched his lightly furred belly before stripping off his boxers and dropping them to the floor. He didn’t worry too much about leaving a mess. Never did. As the only male of breeding age in the pride, he was more than spoiled. But given what he put up with, he felt the few perks he got, such as free laundry and cleaning, were well deserved.

He hit the shower, his golden mane requiring daily washing, conditioning
, and blow drying to keep it fluffy and soft. As he went through his ritual, he wondered what the day would bring.

The last
few weeks had proven busy. Since the mastermind’s demise, he and the medical staff in the FUC safe-house-turned-infirmary spent a lot of time trying to recapture the escaped patients and dealing with the aftermath, mainly, the fact that with her final act and injection of a virulent toxin, Mastermind irrevocably changed the patients in his care, and not in a good way. Already, Nolan lost three of the patients they recaptured, the changes in their body too much for their cells to handle. And another two weren’t far behind.

Whatever
Mastermind gave to those poor shape-shifters, it was nasty. It turned the most mundane of people, the gentlest of creatures, into horrible monsters. When it worked. Sometimes, the morph only partially happened, leaving the poor victim in a halfway state. Painful and debilitating, the only solution when that happened was to inject them with heavy doses of morphine to control the pain.

Not good. And if that was what
he dealt with at the safe house, then what about the ones still at large? How did they cope? Because it wasn’t just the whole shifting and intense pain thing that proved an issue. When the cocktail didn’t kill or bring its victim to their knees, screaming, whatever the injection contained brought out violent tendencies. Turned even the most docile of people into maniacal killers.

No one would ever forget the first time
the victims swapped into their new, horrible selves. It happened the night Mastermind escaped. Caught up in the drama Mastermind left when they discovered her identity, they paid little attention to the experiments, the patients who still seemed normal on the outside. But inside their bodies, science and mutations were hard at work.

In the wee hours of night, the patients morphed,
slaughtering the poor guards and night staff in the safe house. Nolan was on the phone with one of the guards when it happened. He would never forget the screams. Even more chilling were the words of a patient blaming Nolan for their current state.

“
We’ll be seeing each other soon, doc-tor. Bloody soon.”
The chilling laughter at the end of that statement still woke him up in a cold sweat and had him looking over his shoulder all too often. It also hurt his feelings.

How could the
patients think he played a part in Mastermind’s heinous plot when all he had done was try to cure them? Did his best to help them recover from the experimentation Mastermind conducted? But angry, drugged, and no longer in their right minds, the poor victims needed someone to blame. Who better than the handsome—and modesty lacking, but always truthful—doctor in charge of them?

W
orry over their possible revenge cut into his naptime. Working on just ten to fourteen hours of somnolence a day really made him cranky. Everyone knew lions needed their sleep. Despite his fatigue, he worked harder than ever as he tried to forget the sibilant whisper the night everything went to hell.
As a brave and majestic beast, usually the threat of one individual would never throw him for such a loop—if it weren’t for the fact that those they recaptured expressed the same sentiment, and not just toward him, but his entire staff.

“I’m going to hunt you and skin you, then eat you alive,” threatened one.

“Juicy, juicy nurse. Won’t you give me a bite?” begged another.

“Meat! Meat! The magic fruit, the more you eat the more you want more,” screamed another
, in an attempt at poetry fallen short.

A
t least he could defend himself, unlike some of the others. King of the jungle and all that.
Hear me roar!

To think the mastermind had hidden under their very noses.
I should have known
. Suspected, at the very least, given how the diminutive figure always seemed to lurk around every corner, listening and watching. But really, who would have thought the teeny tiny squirrel mix with the thick glasses was the maniac behind the kidnappings, killings, and experimentation on shifters? Nolan never once gave the ugly little woman a second glance. None of them did.

They’d paid the price for their
neglect, some more than others. When his mother found out how close he’d tread to danger, he’d worried she’d make good on her threat to lock him up to keep him safe. He remembered all too well the summer of the bubble.

Fall out of a tree just once and break an arm
… You’d have thought the world ended. After that incident, she wouldn’t let him out to play without first putting him a plastic bubble that rolled around, making him appear like a hamster in a ball. It took him falling in a river, floating downstream, and taking a ride over the falls for his mother to realize her plan to protect him might have some drawbacks. Padding, banning him from outdoor play, and other ridiculous measures were enacted until he bore the saddest kitty face imaginable.

Thankfully, sanity
—the rest of the pride’s, not his matriarch’s—prevailed. His aunts came to his rescue and advised his mother that he was the laughing stock of the rival prides. Well, if there was one thing his mother couldn’t abide, aside from seeing him hurt, it was not basking in the respect she deserved.

She’d switched tactics after that by instead enrolling him in a defense and gymnastic
s class, figuring the less clumsy he was, the less likely to injure himself. Not the lacrosse or baseball he dreamed of playing, but at least it beat the alternatives. And he learned how to bloody the noses of those who made fun of him.

A grown man now,
Mother dear had loosened the apron strings somewhat, just not by choice. Nolan forced the issue every chance he got, insisting on moving out, choosing his own career and work locale. He even forewent a personal groomer—but not his hairdresser. Some things, like his mane, required special attention. A lion with a messy head of hair was just unacceptable. He couldn’t explain why. It just was.

Which was why, despite running late, he still took the time to indulge in a long
, hot shower. He washed his hair, conditioned it, and blow dried it in layers then dressed in impeccably pressed slacks and a shirt before he made his way to work, running a tad behind schedule. It didn’t help he forgot he needed to hit their main office instead of the safe house first—Kloe, the leader of FUC for this area, having called a general meeting.

Arriving at
headquarters, he ran the usual gauntlet. Lisa at front reception who leaned over as often as possible to show off her ample cleavage; Beatrice from accounting who not so subtly hinted she’d meet him anytime, anywhere; and Zoe, who, despite being married to her fourth husband and older than his mother, still made every attempt to get in his pants. Now there was a lady he made sure to avoid at staff parties.

Nolan bore their attention with good grace
, even if it made him uncomfortable. None of these women liked him because they knew him. They approved what he did for a living—who didn’t want a doctor as a boyfriend or potential son-in-law? They admired his looks—blond, clean cut, and always dressed in a suit. They enjoyed his politeness—opening doors, holding out chairs, using his “please” and “thank yous” as if his mother would tolerate any rudeness from her son. They tittered at his sense of humor—a necessary trait to diffuse many a situation, considering the number of women he grew up with. His lack of modesty meant he recognized his status as a good catch. But, despite all his awesome outward attributes, he could honestly say none of the women who flirted with him, who made every attempt to get in his pants, knew the real him.