Melted By The Lion: A Paranormal Lion Shifter Romance (14 page)

Still following after Princess and growing increasingly winded, I just gulped air for a few seconds, and once I’d caught my breath, I realized I just didn’t know exactly how to phrase things. Trevor said my name a couple times, sounding kind of alarmed, how
I’d
felt that morning, and I finally spoke.

“I’m here. I just wanted to call and tell you.” I paused for a great lungful of air. “That I’m making a mistake.”

“Where are you right now? What are you doing?”

“I’m in the forest making a mistake.”

“Well, where in the forest exactly? And can’t you just stop doing whatever you’re doing?”

“No. I can’t. I’m chasing a hurt dog—a tiny little hurt, bleeding chihuahua who needs my help.” I paused again for a deep breath, still jogging after Princess. “And where I am is, well, I’m in the northern part of the forest, with the house somewhere to west, back a good ways. I’m just a short distance past the orange stakes, but I’m just going to grab this dog really quick, and then turn right back around.”

The line suddenly went dead. Whether the call had disconnected, or Trevor had hung up, I didn’t know. But at the moment, I was focused on something else. Princess was finally slowing, maybe twenty-five feet up ahead, then soon twenty. Still jogging on my rubbery legs, I’d seemed to have outlasted her.

However, not wanting to scare her and make her pull from some final, hidden reserve of energy, I slowed to a walk maybe ten feet away, panting just as hard as she was.

“Princess, please just come to me and get in my bag.”

Totally spent, I knelt, and to my surprise and relief, now she came.
Now
she did. Finally. She actually trotted right over pretty immediately.

Just as immediately, I scooped her up the second she was in reaching distance, heaving a sigh. “Princess, you are a damned something-or-other. I don’t even know what. A damned naughty little girl. Once we get home, I’m really going to have to keep my eye on you. And now you get to ride home in a bag, because you’re so naughty, you can’t even be trusted to walk.”

I couldn’t be too mad at her; the poor thing was still bleeding a little, and she was also shaking like a leaf, as if terrified of me.

I opened my bag and put her in it, and she didn’t protest or struggle at all. I then got to my feet with another sigh. At the moment,
I
was feeling like I might like to ride home in someone’s bag.

It was then that I saw why Princess had so willingly let herself be put into mine.

CHAPTER TEN

Maybe twenty feet ahead, just to the side of the remnants of the trail, sat some animal, far too large to be a gator. From what little I knew about them, adult gators were typically supposed to be seven or eight feet long, but this
thing
was fifteen feet, at least. The tip of its blunt-ended snout sat almost on the trail, while the end of its exceptionally long tail was in a part of the forest so densely packed with trees that I really couldn’t even see the very end. This thing also had to be at least seven or eight hundred pounds. It was just far too large to be a gator; it was more like the size of a small dinosaur, maybe. But whether I liked what my eyes were seeing or not, the thing’s appearance and characteristics told me that it
was
actually a gator, just an unbelievably massive one. Just a shifter one that likely had the benefit of increased speed and strength, just like the lions and other shifters did.

Now I knew why Princess had likely finally stopped running. I hadn’t outlasted her; she’d just probably seen what I hadn’t. Now I also knew why she’d so willingly allowed me to put her in my bag. She’d probably just chosen between two big creatures that frightened her, one a gator and one a human.

Recalling different things I’d heard about the Renards, I realized that the gator ahead was probably none other than Emile Renard himself, the leader of the Renard clan. He was said to be huge, much bigger than any of his many family members. He was also said to have unique pale green markings, possibly old battle scars, crisscrossing his head and neck like ropes, and I could see these markings on the gator ahead.

He was watching me. Not moving a muscle, not even to blink, he had his gaze locked on me. A few woodpeckers that had been hammering away at nearby gum trees seemed to have suddenly stopped. Either that, or I just couldn’t hear them anymore above the sound of my heart hammering in my ears. Because Emile Renard’s dark greenish-toned hide blended in with the tree canopy-shadowed forest floor, had Princess not stopped when she had, I would have crossed directly by him. Would have fallen right into his mighty jaws, I was sure.

But now, I had a chance to escape. I at least had a shot. I could run; I could run as if my very life depended on it, which it likely did. Exhausted as I was, I could make myself run faster than I’d chased after Princess. Adrenaline would help. As would getting a head start before Emile moved, so as not to waste precious seconds. I’d already wasted three, at least, just while I’d been surveying him in shock.

With princess quaking in my big shoulder bag, I turned and took off heading south. I only got about four paces, though. I actually slammed on my brakes, digging the heels of my white tennis shoes in the pebbly ground.

There was another one. Not as big as Emile, though still large, this one was no farther than fifteen feet away. He was sitting on the path, snout directly toward me, blocking my route home. Now if I wanted to make a run for it, I’d have to set out through the forest proper, with its dense copses of trees and its uneven terrain, rocky in some spots and marshy in others. The perfect terrain for a person to twist an ankle on and go down, making herself easy prey.

Maybe having to go through the forest was fine, though, I quickly reasoned. Maybe it was actually best. Surely all the trees would slow the gators down.

I immediately turned to set out west through the trees. But there was another one.

“Shit.”

About ten feet away, he sat at the base of a thin, spindly gum tree, mouth slightly opened and lips curved, as if smiling at my panic. Or maybe he was just showing me his sharp teeth.

With sweat seeming to be oozing from every single pore of my skin, I whirled to face the east, already knowing what I would see. Another gator sat ten feet away, maybe even a bit closer. Definitely within striking distance. I knew that average mature gators could spring up and catch prey within their jaws in a single leap from several yards away, and I was sure these shifter gators were no different. They could probably strike from even double the average distance, by the looks of them.

“Oh, God.”

Inside my bag, Princess was still shaking like a leaf. Although I was now shaking so badly myself, it was possible that
I
might have been shaking
her
.

Slowly turning, trying to find some escape route but not seeing one, I realized that Trevor had probably mere seconds to arrive in order to prevent Princess and me from being killed. The thought of the alternative, him arriving just in time to watch me get my throat ripped out, like had happened with Rachel, or him arriving to find me already dead, was enough to make my stomach instantly lurch, churning with nausea. I obviously didn’t want to die, but I especially didn’t want to die in a way that would wound Trevor like he’d been wounded before. With a wave of dizziness joining my lurching stomach, I truly could hardly even stand to have the thought. And I couldn’t let the thought become reality.

So, I knelt to pick up a fallen branch at my feet, then willed my trembling, suddenly-weak legs to straighten again. Emile, who was the biggest gator of the four by several feet and a few hundred pounds, was now ever-so-slowly advancing toward me, dark eyes glittering in a shaft of sunlight filtering through the treetops. The branch I’d picked up was about the size and heft of a baseball bat, and I extended it in his direction, silently commanding my shaking hand to remain steady.

“Try to attack me, then. But you’re going to have to fight me before you can get anywhere near my dog.”

My words had come out in a series of pathetic-sounding, high-pitched squeaks. I hadn’t managed to say even a single syllable without a clear tremor in my voice.

“Be prepared to get your eyes gouged out. I’ll blind you.”

I’d made my voice a bit stronger this time, though just a bit. But, terrified though I was, I fully intended to do what I’d said I was going to. I was at least going to try. I had to. Letting Trevor’s nightmare come true yet again, and letting Princess be killed, weren’t things I was going to allow to happen without a fight. I couldn’t wait any longer just hoping Trevor would come to my rescue; time was up. Even with my gaze focused on the largest gator, I could see in my peripheral vision that the two on my sides were advancing on me as well. I guessed the one behind me had also joined in on the slow crawl to attack.

My plan was so uncomplicated that I figured if all the planets aligned just perfectly, it had at least a one percent chance of succeeding. The branch I held had been cracked off of some larger branch at both ends, giving me a good baseball bat-like grip on one end, and a sharp, splintery weapon on the other. I had a feeling that the larger gator was going to attack me first, if even by just a second, and as soon as he did, I was going to jam the branch into one of his eyes before he could clamp his jaws around any part of me. Then, when he was reeling in pain, partially blinded, I’d immediately dash over the top of him, or slightly around him, and head on up the trail, circling back south, to the house, once I’d gotten a good distance away.

My reflexes would have to be almost literally as fast as lightning; I knew that. I’d also have to manage to do my speedy moves with a bagful of quaking dog on my shoulder. But the only alternative to my plan was to lay down and just let the gators come kill us.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, I tightened my hand on the branch, gaze locked on the biggest gator. “Come on, then.”

My voice had come out the loudest, steadiest, and strongest it had yet.

Encouraged, I took a small step forward, the act of advancing on the gator, instead of just waiting for him to advance on me, encouraging me even further. “Come on and try to get me. Just know that Trevor’s on his way, and he cares about me. He’ll kill anyone who tries to hurt me.”

My voice had now become positively commanding, bolstering my courage.

Sweat now trickling down the back of my neck, I took another small step forward, though this one a little larger than the last, murmuring to a still-trembling Princess that everything was going to be okay. Emile picked up his pace, turning his head from side to side as if to see me better with his side-positioned eyes. He was charging me. It was time.

Standing my ground, not budging an inch even though I was shaking so badly my feet were quaking in my shoes, I pulled the branch back, in preparation to stab an eye out. At the exact same time, a loud noise sounded in the near-silent forest. It had been so perfectly simultaneous with me pulling the branch back, that in my adrenaline and terror-induced near-daze, all I could stupidly surmise for a split second was that my arm had made some sort of an extremely odd noise when I’d moved it. But then, instantly, I got it. Arm muscles didn’t make noises like a lion’s roar. Arm muscles didn’t make any noises at all.

I didn’t take even a fraction of a second to laugh inwardly at my idiocy, even though the relief now flooding my body made me want to. Emile scuttled backward, then turned north, making some kind of deep bellow, maybe signaling to his friends to follow him. I only blinked, and everything after that was golden fur, dark alligator hide, roaring, bellowing, charging, retreating. Trevor and his pride had arrived.

Not having any intention of getting caught up in the fray, I dropped the branch, lifted my bag and Princess to my chest to protect her, and then darted away to a copse of trees. Even above all the roars and bellows, I could still hear Princess whimpering, though the sound was really more like outright crying, like the sudden sound most animals made when one of their feet was stepped on. Except Princess’ high-pitched cries were continuous, breaking my heart.

After peeling the bag down over her little face so she could get some air, I continued holding her to my chest, gently bouncing her and rocking her, telling her it was all going to be okay. With dried blood all over her tiny face, and her big, dark eyes nearly popping out of her head, she looked like she’d been through a war. But she was brave, and she was surviving, and I knew right then that Rascal officially had a forever sister. After what we’d been through together, and were still going through, there was no way I could ever adopt her out.

Shielding her face with my hand so that she wouldn’t see the fight and become even more frightened, I now turned my own focus toward it. To my surprise, only two gators of the four remained, and only three of Trevor’s top-tier pride of about a dozen, including Trevor himself. Majestic though fierce and even a little terrifying, even to me, in his lion form, he had one of the remaining gators pinned on his back. Roaring so loudly I was positive I could feel slight vibrations from it pass through the ground beneath my feet, he pulled one massive paw back and slashed it across the gator’s soft underbelly, disemboweling him with that single swift action. I didn’t consider myself particularly squeamish, but the sight was far too much for me. I turned away just as Trevor lowered his mouth, razor-sharp teeth bared, to the struggling, bellowing gator’s throat. I had no desire to even peek to see how Trevor’s two men were dealing with the other gator, who was alternating between groans and gurgling noises.

I rocked Princess with my back to the action, and she soon stopped crying, burying her blood-caked face in my chest. Her trembling lessened, too, though I could tell just how very frightened she’d been. The pungent scent of urine was wafting up from her lambswool-lined carrier bag, telling me that she’d had an accident. I couldn’t blame her. I’d nearly had one, too.

After just a minute or so, all sounds coming from the struggling gators stopped, as soon did the snarls and growls from Trevor and his men. I turned tentatively, trying to keep my gaze somewhat lifted from the ground and the carnage. In the blink of an eye, Trevor had already shifted into his human form, and with a tilt of his head to the north, he now seemed to give his two lions some kind of order, because they immediately took off up the trail at a sprint, roaring. I’d been able to see that their mouths and manes were covered in blood and something else I could only assume was, and describe as,
guts
. I was glad Trevor had shifted into human form right away, sparing me seeing
him
covered in gore. Not that I would have thought differently about him at all, but just because my nerves, and my stomach, which had finally quit its nauseated lurching, couldn’t handle the sight at the moment.

However, while he strode over to me, dressed in his usual uniform of battered jeans, boots, and a dark t-shirt, I began to think that seeing his lion face, even covered in blood and guts, might have been preferable to seeing his human face. Because right then, his human face almost made me think that I was hated. The expression Trevor was wearing may as well have been words proclaiming one simple message:
It’s over
.

*

“Trevor, I know you’re extremely angry with me right now, and I understand that, but I just have to know. Do you hate me?”

My question didn’t even diminish his glare in the least, and when he spoke, it sounded like it was through gritted teeth.

“First off, please tell me if you’re physically all right. Tell me if you were harmed in any way.”

“No, I’m completely fine. But please just answer my question. Do you hate me?”

The fact that he’d checked to make sure I was physically okay gave me hope that he didn’t hate me. Though still, I needed to hear him say it.