Rock Star Romance: Dan (Contemporary New Adult Rockstar Bad Boy Romance) (Hard Rock Star Series Book 4) (31 page)

****

When he woke, he
opened his eyes immediately, then slammed his lids shut when he saw they were
still underground. Charlie had slid onto the floor, but Ali hadn’t bothered to
tie him up, and his heart raced briefly in celebration. As his pulse sped, his
system cleared away the rest of the drug, and he twitched and curled one finger
experimentally; then he heard Ali’s voice, and he focused on quieting his heart
to hear more clearly. He could vaguely see her figure pacing around in front of
the open steel door, with a newly healed Natalie glaring at her in chains from
the floor. Ali must have found a way to hear her without letting her shift. He
wondered if she was drugged too.

“…Think we wouldn’t
find a way to bug your stupid houses,” she was saying gleefully. “God, you were
so wrong there. You think steel can stop the kind of tech we use? Brainless.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter that little Theodore hasn’t shown up; I can kill your
baby myself, and I’ll kill your husband as well. I can’t figure out which of
you is the source of power, so I’ll have to off you both. Usually the prides we
find have clear signs—one mate is clairvoyant or has super speed or can
manipulate an element, like fire. Ariel seems to be able to manipulate earth
and mineral. I’m going to get creative with her.” Her nonchalance was chilling.

Charlie’s mind raced,
and he debated whether or not he should try to get up. Ali would almost
certainly hear him crossing the plastic, and that would put Natalie in harm’s
way after she dispatched of him. If he could find a way to distract her, he
could buy time to launch himself twenty feet and take her out, but with her
fully aware, it wasn’t a sure enough move.

“You don’t see that
I’m doing our kind a favor,” Ali was saying, and she seemed to be stalling in
case whoever Theodore was showed up. Charlie assumed it was the short blonde
man from the tail and the airport. “You attaining these powers is a sign that
we’re reaching a ceiling of sorts. Shifters used to be gods, golden idols who
looked down on every other being on Earth.” Her voice was dripping with
admiration, and Charlie was revolted at her worshipful tone. “They were
perfect, so the other gods destroyed them for it. It ended an era, and shifters
had to crawl back up again from the bowels of mankind.” Ari stopped pacing and
peered down at Natalie’s face, and her words were spiteful and bitter. “I won’t
be made to writhe on my belly like a worm or bitch in heat. I won’t have our
kind set back just when we are starting to become diverse and unstoppable
again!” Ari reached behind her and pulled out a breathtakingly sharp knife
about as long as her forearm, and she cast a final look toward the door.

It’s now or never,
Charlie realized. How will I do this?

Then he remembered
Ali’s words—shifters were showing signs of new powers in the targeted prides.
Hadn’t something baffling happened earlier, something that shouldn’t have been
possible at all? Charlie held his eyes wide and looked at Natalie, who was
looking daggers at Ali from her place on her knees. He focused all of his
strength and energy into regaining the link between him and his wife, and
desperately thought as hard as he could.

Nat, I’m awake,
and I need you to distract this bitch so I can take her out!

Her brown eyes
widened ever so slightly, but she didn’t move. He was gathering energy to shout
again when her voice sounded in his head, clear as day and as irresistible as
any order he’d ever been given.

Why don’t YOU
distract her for ME, tough guy?

He drew a deep breath
and rose at the same time, and he saw Ali shift her weight and move toward the
sudden noise behind her. Time seemed to slow dramatically; he saw each movement
dragged out over space as he ran, so that by the time she locked eyes with him
and moved to raise her knife, he had covered ten feet of space between them.
Charlie raised his right hand, feeling the red haze of his beast swell in his
body as he shifted a deep brown paw bigger than Ali’s human head and sent it
toward her neck with his black claws outstretched. He saw the confusion
register in her face the moment before Natalie’s paw burst through her chest
from behind, shattering her ribcage and taking out a chunk of her beating heart
while Ali’s mouth was still open in shock. Charlie closed the space and closed
his shifted paw around the flesh of her throat, crushing her vertebrae between
the pads of his fingers as her body crumpled to the floor.

Her body lay in a
ruined mess between them, a scarlet pool rapidly growing around her broken
form. Charlie kept looking from her head—nearly completely separated from her
body—and her chest, which was mostly dripping from Natalie’s hand. He felt
numb, but Natalie’s shoulders were beginning to shake. He stepped over Ali’s
body and unshifted his hand, reaching for her to pull her into his arms.

When he locked his
arms around her, he finally realized she was laughing.

“What’s so funny?” he
asked uncertainly. All he could feel was an impossible mixture of panic and
relief.

“Nothing,” Natalie
admitted, and he felt tears soak through the fabric of his shirt. “I just…love
you so much.” He had a feeling she wanted to say more, but it was lost in her
uncontrollable giggling.

Charlie smiled and
gingerly kissed the top of her blood-soaked head. I love you, too.

****

In the days that
followed, the human residents of Sierra Leandra all returned from mysterious
vacations or snapped out of a light trance, and they couldn’t seem to agree on
what had caused all the damage in town. A lot of it was quickly repaired with
the help of the remaining lions, and no one had to explain away any of the
painful absences caused by the rash of violence the Golden Claws had
wrought—because none of the humans noticed a thing.

“They’ve been dosing
the humans with some kind of drug so they would stay docile and out of the way,
or at least open to suggestion,” a recovered Evan said in their newly cleaned
up living room days after the lions conducted a private investigation. “Once
the leader was gone, all the henchmen moved out real quick. It actually seems
like they don’t have it down to an exact science, drugging people. I woke up
like five minutes after Ali and the big guy left.” He shivered, and Ariel
slipped an arm around his neck and kissed his cheek. They had been so close to
death, and had escaped based on mostly luck. They both seemed to need more
contact after the ordeal; Charlie supposed they all did.

“So we’re safe?”
Ariel asked again. It was a question their community was asking a lot—when they
dropped by to check on Natalie, when Charlie visited his missing pridemate’s
families, at funeral and wakes; it was the one question that no one tired of
hearing an affirmative answer to every few moments.

“We’re safe,” Natalie
said. “And even better, we’re growing stronger. Susan Doyle can predict things
a few hours into the future, Charlie and I can communicate with our minds, and
Ariel, you can lift almost five hundred pounds now.”

Ariel blushed, her
flaming red hair accentuating the scarlet of her cheeks. “Yeah. But I don’t
know how useful it’ll be for everyone. Not like your healing,” she muttered.
“It’s useful being able to share healing powers.”

“You’re far more
useful than you give yourself credit for,” Natalie assured her best friend,
smiling warmly at her from her recliner. “Besides, you don’t even know what I
have planned.”

Evan sat up
straighter at her words. “Plans?”

Natalie looked at
Charlie for confirmation and nodded. “We’re going to help other prides reach
their potential while we reach for ours,” she said, and the joy was bursting
through every word. She held her palm against her stomach as she spoke, and
Charlie felt his heart swell and lighten as she told their friends what she’d
told him. “This new era those scumbags were afraid of…let’s go for it. Let’s
find out what our potential is. Lions are such a small group nationwide,
wouldn’t it be wonderful to strengthen and rally around this cause?” Her golden
brown skin was bright and flushed, and her words were impossibly buoyant. “I
don’t think it’s just us; I think we can all do it, and I think we owe it to
other prides to let them know.” She looked from Evan to Ariel, encouraged by
the growing smiles on their faces. Charlie was already there, high on the spirt
of togetherness with her. She pressed her hand more firmly against her stomach;
they knew now that the baby really was the link between them, the reason for
their power.

“So what do you say?”
Natalie asked. “I want to make history. I want to make the best available for
everyone. Are you ready?”

“Ready!” Evan
cheered, carried away by passion.

“Ready!” Ariel
echoed, bouncing in her seat.

Natalie turned to her
mate, pure happiness radiating from her determined features. She slipped her
hand against his cheek, her brown eyes consumed with love. Ready?

Charlie grabbed her
hand and sent a gentle pulse of dizzying energy into her palm as he pressed his
jaw firmly against it and answered her, with a single word packed with
unwavering devotion: Ready!

THE END

“Okay, what’s our final count?”

Thomas looked up from the stack of papers fanned
out on the glass table before him and removed his glasses, bleakly rubbing the
bridge of his nose. “Seven buildings irreparably damaged. Two will have to be
shut down for expedited repairs. Three we can keep operational during cleanup,
but two we’re going to need to pull down and rebuild. Frank’s Tires and the pie
shop just aren’t capable of standing for repairs.”

Evan groaned and shook his head, his dark-skinned
features finally showing his agitation after two hours of brainstorming.
“Frank’s wall can’t be fixed right now without being remodeled?”

“It’s load-bearing,” Thomas answered. “It’s gonna
have to come down entirely. I mean, it’s going to come down one way or another.
I’d just rather it be by choice, and not on Frank’s head one afternoon.”

Evan leaned back in his wicker chair and nodded,
his eyes still hidden behind his mirrored shades. Thomas knew the lion had been
having trouble keeping his eyes from looking too wild—after fighting off the
rogue lioness who tried to pick off their pride, his emotions had been
unpredictable, even something approaching volatile. Evan was normally calm,
collected, stoic: it was part of the reason why he was in the upper levels of
their pride as far as status in the pack. The last few weeks, he and his wife
Ariel had been a little jumpier and seemed to need far more space, choosing to
only leave their home during mandatory meetings and joint clean-up efforts. He
was finally settling back into his own skin, but his pupils kept slipping into
the distinctive cat’s eye shape and vivid hue that marked lion shifters. Thomas
didn’t mind, but the humans were still dropping by their respective homes
unannounced, eager to find out when they could continue with their business,
and scaring one of them would be bad for all of them.

The sun was gone, and thanks to the ordeal in the
previous weeks, many of Sierra Leandra’s brighter lights were off; this left
the sky astoundingly clear and dark, holding more stars than Thomas even
thought they could see without leaving the city. His backyard was a sprawling
square of lush greenery that sloped downward and connected with a field in the
distance, eventually turning into farmland miles beyond that. Susanna’s rose
bushes were in full bloom, bursting below the window sill to their right and
glimmering condensation under the light of the stars. Despite being surrounded
by such undeniable beauty, Thomas couldn’t shake his grim mood.

“It’s going to take weeks to get the pie shop back
up and running, even though her shop is small,” Thomas continued wearily. “I
called some of my relatives in London, and they’ll lend us a hand.”

“The London Council approved our request?” Evan
asked, sitting up straighter in her chair. Lion shifters were close-knit
regardless of distance, simply because they took shifter solidarity seriously,
but international affairs were often muddied by cultural differences. The
English Council was notoriously isolationist, only sending aid in the event of
clear emergencies—usually meaning all-out war.

“They didn’t,” Thomas admitted. “I really do have
relatives that can help us in London, five or six at this point. Half are
shifters, and the other half are just good sports. They’ll add to our numbers,
maybe keep all of work down to under a month.”

“Good thinking,” Evan said, and his tone showed
how impressed he was. Thomas smiled; coming from Evan, this was a round of
applause.

“I’m happy to be useful,” he said as he put his
glasses back on. “You kept Susanna and I calm while that…
monster
was in
our neighborhood. I wish I hadn’t been so hysterical.” Thomas dropped his eyes
as shame washed over him. He’d nearly passed out from breathing so hard.

“The front line isn’t where you’re used to being,”
Evan reminded him. “You’re a diplomat and a medic. That’s always been your
role, and you’re better than anyone else.”

He stood up, and Thomas was thankful Evan was
wearing his sunglasses; he was sure he was blushing furiously. “Thank you,” he
said awkwardly. “That means a lot to me.”

Evan shot him a brief smile and nodded. “Ariel is
making steak. I should get going. I’ll see you at the meeting tomorrow?”

“Absolutely,” Thomas confirmed. Evan touched the
heel of his hand to Thomas’ jaw in a quick gesture of affection and left before
the other man could react; he wasn’t quite sure how he should react to what
was—for Evan—an extreme level of affection toward he and Susanna. It hadn’t
just been that day, or just Evan; Ariel kept sending cupcakes over to them,
decorated with cute candy hearts or short, fat squares of chocolate. Julio had
offered to mow their lawn each week, and even Natalie, their matriarch, kept
inviting them over for dinner. He supposed they were all in need of more
company than usual, but he also thought they were treating the two of them more
fragile simply because they thought they needed to be sheltered.

Thomas wanted to be upset about this suspicion,
but the truth was that Susanna was having a hard time dealing with being
attacked on their own turf. In the five years since they’d committed themselves
to each other, she’d seen active duty in their marine unit, while he had never
even held a gun past training. She was home now—for good, once her psychologist
officially diagnosed her with clinical depression and PTSD. Though the United
States deemed her unfit for service, the pride never made her feel useless or
broken; however, these last few weeks especially they made her feel like a live
grenade: tiptoeing around her, couching their speech in euphemisms and gentle
language, and just generally behaving as though she were a downed wire.

“We don’t want to rush you,” Natalie explained one
evening after Susanna angrily asked how long they were going to keep this up.
“Please understand, none of us are trying to make you feel weak. We know how
strong you are, but we all need space right now, and we appreciate that you
might need more than us.”

After that, she’d become so frustrated and that
she wasn’t able to articulate her feelings, so she was choosing to sit out
non-mandatory meetings for a while. Seeing the damage done to the humans’
property especially upset her, since Susanna was the only member of the pack
who had been turned into a lion, and not born as one, meaning she actually had
human family in town. Thomas heard her moving through the house after Evan
exited through the front, and he turned his eyes toward the sliding glass door
while Susanna walked out onto the patio, holding what looked to be a very stiff
drink. Her short black hair was cut just above her shoulders, and it was still
wavy and damp from the shower. The porch light made her light brown skin look
more pale than usual. Her emerald eyes darkened briefly as they caught sight of
the estimates and reports on the table, but she smiled when she met Thomas’
gaze.

“Evening, Sargent,” Thomas quipped, propping his
long legs up on the table, so that his feet conveniently covered most of the
plans. “You were right, by the way. It’s cooled down quite a bit.”

“Mm.” Susanna sat in the wicker chair that Evan
had occupied only moments before, tucking her slim, muscled legs underneath her
as she started to sip her whiskey. “So, the reports were bad?”

Thomas balked. “I thought you didn’t want to talk
about that! How do you know if the reports were bad?”

Susanna laughed, a jagged, melodious sound that
still made his spine tingle pleasantly whenever he heard it. “Your accent got
much stronger, so I already know it’s bad. I guess you’re more upset than you
realized.”

Thomas swore under his breath. “Damn my posh
upbringing. You’d think twenty years in Southern California would tame it a bit
more, but alas.” He smiled and pulled his legs off the table, gathering the
papers into a neat stack in one swift movement. “You know, it’s not fair that I
have a tell for my anger and you don’t.”

“I don’t think it’s fair that I have a tell in
general, and you don’t,” Susanna shot back, a playful smile spreading on her
lips. Her tight green T-shirt was flecked with moisture, mostly likely from
making her drink. “I can’t ever remember to avoid rubbing my eyebrows when I’m
nervous. At least you might be able to force an American accent eventually.”

“Perhaps something southern,” Thomas said
thoughtfully. “Women like southern gentlemen, don’t they?”

“Those don’t exist anymore, dear,” Susanna said,
laughing. “Southern Belles are a little different, too. I love your accent.”

“Because it’s sexy?” Thomas asked, arching one
eyebrow and winking while his mate tried to stifle a giggle.

“Because it’s
you,”
she said after she
finally got her laughter under control. She leaned back in the high-backed
chair, taking another hearty swig of her drink before setting it down on one of
the black coasters. Thomas watched her fiddle with the glass absentmindedly for
a minute as she became lost in her train of thought. Then she raised her
oval-shaped face again said, softly: “Was I right about the steak?”

Thomas tensed, surprised by the topic even though
they’d spoken about it before. “Yes. I can’t believe I’d forgotten about that.
I’m so sorry, Susanna; I got so worried about the amount of work to be done,
none of which has any plausible explanation to a bunch of humans who can’t
remember anything.”

Susanna reached across the table and took one of
his larger hands in hers, shaking her head gently and smiling as he spoke.
“It’s ok,
mi querido.
Someone needs to look out for my family, and you
and Evan are the only ones level-headed enough to actually plan what needs to
be done.”

“But we need to bring this up, too,” Thomas
insisted, his voice thick with remorse.
How could I have been so selfish?
Susanna’s having visions, and I’m worrying about a few angry humans.
“I
mean, they’re coming faster, and they also seem to be coming true every time.
Even small stuff, like Ariel making steak.”

Susanna sat back in her chair again, her body
suddenly alive with energy. “But we got somewhere with this. We know that the
visions are consistently realistic so far. And Evan didn’t say anything? I
mean, I know that Natalie knows about them, and that she wants everyone with
burgeoning powers to work on them, but does she need anything specific from me?
I wonder how I can train this. Do you think—” she stopped, apparently realizing
she was starting to trip over her words. “Oh, man. I have to calm down.”

Thomas stood and walked over to her side of the
table, dropping to one knee and placing his hands on either side of her waist.
Susanna took a deep breath to steady herself, then looked down at her mate, who
was trying to compose his angular features into a comforting expression.

“It’s okay to be excited,” he said slowly, “but
now we have to tell Natalie about the things you saw regarding the fire.”

Susanna sighed and slumped forward in her chair.
This was the tough part. Though many members of their pride had been gaining
mysterious new powers over the last month, a lot of them took comfort in
knowing their abilities would be put to good use. Natalie and Charlie could
communicate telepathically anytime they wanted, enabling them to make decisions
faster and more fluidly than ever before; Ariel could now manipulate a thousand
of pounds of any mineral or metal with just the wave of her hand, meaning she
could help with building efforts until she got too tired; and Leslie could move
faster than anyone their pride had ever seen. Natalie, as their matriarch, was
interested in and supportive of Susanna’s flashes of perception, but so far,
they hadn’t been of any actual use. She’d predicted a window breaking from a
stray golf ball, a car accident in front of Leslie’s house, and a tree falling
across the mouth of the cul-de-sac nearby.

“This is excellent!” Charlie, Natalie’s husband,
had been positively overjoyed. “If something else happens, we can have all
sorts of warning.”

“It’s only a few hours,” Susanna had warned him.
“And I can’t seem to control when I get them, or even their subject matter.
Plus, they’re very brief, and sometimes they come in flashes, instead of a
steady moving image.”

“But everyone is getting crazy powers right now!”
Charlie exclaimed. “We’ll figure it out in time. Who knows, maybe you’ll even
be able to predict the lotto. Could you imagine?”

“Charlie!” Natalie scolded, holding her pregnant
belly with one hand and shoving her husband playfully with the other. “We can’t
use something as important as clairvoyance to play the lottery.” She’d turned
to smile warmly at Susanna, indicating her acceptance and support. “He’s right,
though; we’ll figure it out. For now, just keep monitoring your flashes and
focus on getting better.”

“I’m—” Susanna fell silent as the leader of their
pride was pulled away by someone else, and Thomas knew she had been about to
say,
I’m not sick.
His heart hurt for her then.

Now, he had to convince her to face the woman who
had implied her fragility so many times, and insist on being heard. “Do you
want to do it tomorrow?” Thomas asked, and Susanna rolled her eyes.

“You know I don’t want to,” she answered. “But
it’s our only option. This is the one vision I’ve had more than once, and since
every one of them came true, this one will, too.” She swallowed hard and
shivered, undoubtedly reliving the image now. She downed the rest of her drink
and stood up, looking Thomas in his eye with sudden urgency. Susanna pulled him
into a standing position and ran her hands down the long lines of his body,
smiling as she dropped both of her hands to his hips. “Help me take my mind off
this?”

Thomas cupped her chin with one hand, leaned down,
and kissed her gently, intending to pull back and give her a verbal answer. She
didn’t give him the chance; one of her hands pressed against the back of his
head of short brown curls, and the other started to tug at his belt.