Serengeti Heat (9 page)

They all turned to look at her. The tears were a memory and in their place was the icy, distant mask that had greeted him this morning.

Landon vaguely noted that Ava hadn’t said no brawling at all. Apparently, she thought kicking his ass was okay, so long as they didn’t wreck her house to do it.

Her brothers filed out, silent and grave, but Landon hesitated, his heart tight. He couldn’t leave her like this. Ava watched him steadily, her face closed to him again, any ground he had gained in the last few minutes erased. The cool strength in her gaze only convinced him further that he had made the right choice, but she clearly didn’t agree. He’d had his shot to convince her she was his, and obviously he’d fucked it up.

Outside, Tyler barked his name. “I’m leaving,” he shouted back, reluctantly putting action to the words and mentally adding,
for now
. He hadn’t given up yet.

Landon stepped out onto the porch to face the firing squad and quickly moved to the open area in front of Ava’s cabin where he’d have the best maneuverability if they suddenly decided to jump him. Not that he didn’t deserve a few good licks. He’d known he was betraying their trust, but that hadn’t stopped him. Landon wondered idly if anything could have stopped him from claiming Ava. Frankly, he doubted it.

The Minor brothers ranged around him, taking position at compass points to box him in, but staying out of his reach.

Tyler, the oldest and apparent designated spokesman of the group, grunted. “Will you go quietly or do you want to do this in front of the entire pride?”

Landon glanced around. It was early afternoon, a popular siesta time among the cats, and there were few bystanders to qualify as “the whole pride”, but he stepped out of his defensive stance, opting for a strategic retreat. Tyler fell into step beside him as he forced himself to walk away from Ava, her other brothers ranging behind.

“Did you know who she was?”

Landon almost wished he could say he hadn’t. Ava’s only resemblance to her large, dark brothers, was a slight similarity in the shape of her eyes. It would be so easy to claim ignorance and escape the blame.

“I knew.”

Directly behind him, Michael growled. Tyler shot him a quelling look and returned his gimlet stare to Landon. “Would you care to explain how she ended up naked in your room?”

Another opportunity to deny his culpability. All he had to do was say Ava had walked into his room and asked to be fucked. It was truth, but it wasn’t the whole story. And Ava being held responsible for their night together didn’t sit well with him.

“I found her in the Bar Nothing in town last night. Brought her back here.”

“That pick-up bar?” Michael yelped. “Ava wouldn’t be caught dead in there!”

“Mike, shut up,” Tyler said calmly, his attention never wavering from Landon. “You brought her back to your place,” he repeated. “And you knew who she was.”

Landon swallowed. He wasn’t afraid of the brothers, but he did dread their reaction. Even more than the fist he was sure he was about to get in his face, he dreaded the loss of their trust. “I did.”

Tyler nodded slowly, his face revealing nothing. “Is there anything you’d like to add?”

Landon considered mentioning she was going to be his mate, that this was not the one night stand they assumed it to be, but Ava was so stubbornly against the idea. She thought she didn’t want the position and no one was going to bully her into taking it but him. Her brothers would just have to wait, and think the worst of him, until he could convince her to see reason.

Landon stopped, facing Tyler squarely. “No.”

“I see.”

Landon was willing to bet Tyler didn’t see, but he maintained his silence, meeting his stare head-on.

At length, Tyler nodded to his brothers. “We’re done here.”

Caleb and Kane peeled off without comment, but Michael snarled at Landon, jostling his shoulder as he brushed past. Tyler waited until his three younger brothers were out of earshot before turning back to Landon.

He didn’t see it coming. One second he was on his feet, the next he was sprawled out on the ground, holding his aching jaw. Tyler loomed over him, his face still dangerously expressionless.

“You so much as look her way again and I’ll kill you,” he said with icy calm.

“You’re staying?” Landon hadn’t realized until that moment how much the idea of them leaving, and taking Ava with them, terrified him.

“We’re still discussing it,” Tyler said flatly. “You’ll have your answer tomorrow if we decide to leave the pride. See you at the Hunt.”

Ava’s oldest brother walked away without another word.

One day to convince Ava to become his mate and if he even looked in her direction, her brothers would tear him apart. Landon sat up, cradling his jaw, and swore with feeling.

Ava normally hated the Hunts—the last thing she needed was a quarterly gathering of the pride to remind her how inadequate she was—but tonight she was actually looking forward to it. It was masochistic in the extreme, but she needed to be there when Landon selected his mate. Her heart needed to see him do it, officially give himself to another woman, if it was to have any hope of letting him go.

He’d seemed to want her so much. He’d actually seemed to care. Seeing him in her home, her tiny pathetic
cozy
little home, had been both mortifying and thrilling. Mortifying because he had seen her as she really was, in her true environment, but thrilling for that same reason. He had seen the real her. And he had wanted her still.

Ava needed visual proof that it had all been a fantasy. She needed the vicious slap of reality to crush the hope in her heart that just wouldn’t die.

Her brothers had been lurking nearby all day, ever since they’d run him off, but so far none of them had mentioned her nocturnal activities. She knew it was too much to hope that they never would, but she was hoping their surprising lack of curiosity lasted as long as possible.

Tonight, she took particular care with her appearance, even though the sarong she wore would only be discarded when they all shifted for the Hunt and all traces of make-up would be absorbed in the transformation. Ava wanted to look good when Landon saw her again, though she avoided analyzing
why
it was so important that she impress him with her sex appeal. An appeal she hadn’t even known she had until last night.

When she stepped out onto the small front porch of her cabin, Tyler straightened from his post, leaning against the rail. He fell into step beside her, a large, silent presence at her back, escorting her across the compound like she needed a bodyguard.

His overprotective posturing was oddly welcome. Ava was feeling a little too vulnerable, on her way to watch Landon choose her replacement in his bed, and her brother’s presence was a comfort, even if his intention was to be her jailer rather than her buffer against the world.

The pride always gathered for the Hunt in the natural amphitheatre on the far side of the complex. The ranch had once been a summer camp and that amphitheatre was where campers showed off their amateur dramas on parents’ day and gathered for weenie roasts and jamborees, but now the old pines encircling the space saw celebrations of a slightly more bacchanalian nature. Ava had often amused herself, as she sat in the darkness during pride gatherings, wondering how the founders of the original camp would have reacted if they could have spied on some of the “clothing optional” parties that were so common among the lions. The lack of clothing was more practical than puerile—the change destroyed any clothing not discarded before shifting—but somehow Ava suspected the old camp counselors wouldn’t see it that way.

The amphitheatre was already filling when they came into the clearing. Tyler steered her to a spot near the raised platform where her other brothers had already gathered. She stopped next to them and they quickly formed a living wall around her.

Ava rolled her eyes. There was protection and then there was annoying, overbearing, bullying overkill. She could barely move and she certainly couldn’t see a damn thing with their massive backs shoulder-to-shoulder blocking her view.

How was she supposed to get the catharsis of seeing Landon with another and releasing her love of him if all she could see was a row of bulging deltoids?

Ava twisted around, trying to get a better line of sight. There was a gap between Michael and Kane behind her, not wide enough for her to slip through, even if they hadn’t been watching her like hawks, but big enough for her to see a slice of the rest of the audience.

The Three Rocks Pride, so named because of the three rocks that marked the boundaries of the original camp, was larger than the prides of African lions, with approximately fifty members at any given time. Most of those fifty were mingling behind her, some nude, some wearing easily disposed of wraps like her own loosely-tied sarong. In the shifting crowd, she spotted Shana, wearing only the “borrowed” pendant and a feline smile.

Ava forced back the surge of irritation—and bile—that rose up at the sight of that smile. Shana may very well be the Alpha’s Consort by the end of the night and she would just have to get used to it. Tyler turned to frown down at her when she couldn’t quite stifle a gagging noise.

Then he turned back toward the platform and Ava knew, without being able to see a thing, even before the restless crowd behind her began to quiet, that Landon had arrived. She could
feel
him.

Silence rippled out from the platform. When the only sound was the all-but-inaudible hum of excitement, anticipation of the Hunt firing in every shifter’s blood, Landon spoke, not raising his voice, but somehow making himself heard to every corner of the clearing.

“Friends…”

Ava half expected him to call out to Romans and countrymen next, but he continued on a much less Shakespearean bent.

“This is our first opportunity to Hunt together since I arrived among you. I have had a few months to learn your ways and find my place among you. There is a great strength in our pride, but my rule is going to be a time of change and that change will begin tonight.”

Some among the crowd shifted uneasily, but most of the pride hung on his words. He was a charismatic speaker, their Alpha. Even Ava, who could not see him through the wall of flesh around her, was drawn up in the power of his voice. He held the crowd in the palm of his hand, wrapped in the draw of his presence more than the words he said, but Ava heard every word.

“Our strongest young men will no longer be turned out of the pride when they reach maturity and no longer will the females be required to remain with the pride their entire lives. We will foster relationships with other prides to provide other opportunities for our young, rather than seeking isolation in a world that is steadily closing in around us. Like any species, we must adapt or face extinction. We are powerful predators, but our social evolution leaves much to be desired. We can learn much from our human neighbors in matters of tolerance and understanding.”

Though many were still caught up in his words, the restless rumblings in the crowd were growing now.

“I do not threaten our traditions,” he assured them. “The Hunts will continue, but instead of my mate leading the Hunt and selecting those who are allowed to participate, it will be thrown open to all who wish to participate, but required of none.”

Ava felt a surge of relief at his words. The only thing worse than not being selected for the Hunt, in her opinion, was being selected and then struggling to keep up with the stronger, faster lionesses. She’d always thought it was horribly unfair that her slighter weight had not translated into superior speed. There ought to be
some
advantage to being the runt.

“My mate will be my voice in the pride when I am not here, but there will be no more ruling by force, no more bullying the weaker members.”

Ava snorted to herself. How Landon expected to be able to enforce the no-bullying rule was beyond her. Changing the format of the Hunt was one thing, but he couldn’t just wave a magic wand and eliminate the hierarchy of strength within the pride.

“We are both animal
and
man. We are capable of civilized—”

“Heresy!” A rough, sickeningly familiar voice cut across Landon’s, shouting from the back of the amphitheatre.

Ava turned, along with most of the rest of the pride, and watched as Landon’s banished predecessor, Leonus, stepped out of the shadows. She looked around for his enforcer and ever-present sidekick, Kato, but the hulking bully was nowhere to be seen.

“Lions rule by strength,” he roared, approaching the platform as the pride members parted like the Red Sea to allow him to pass. “If they do not, then what right have you to rule over me, Landon King? Would you change our very nature, boy? Is this what has become of my pride in three short months? Anarchy over tradition? A destruction of the very values that make us what we are?”

Landon’s voice rose, calm and confident, over Leonus’s. “I do not demand that you change your values. I do not even demand that you live by my rules. Only that you do so if you continue to live here, at Three Rocks.”

“Throwing others out of their homes now, boy?”

“We all have a choice. Live here honorably, or live elsewhere however you please.”

“The only honor is in victory,” Leonus shouted. “I have returned to challenge you to reclaim mine.”

A collective gasp swept through the pride. It was not unheard of for supplanted lions to return to challenge those who had taken over their pride, but Landon’s victory over Leonus had been almost laughably easy three months earlier when Landon had been half-starved from the uncertain life of a nomad and Leonus had been at full strength. Now that their positions were reversed, Leonus could not hope to succeed. Not fairly, at least.

Ava looked around again, wondering where Kato was hiding. She was not left to wonder for long.

A roar not heard in the pride for three months echoed across the amphitheatre from behind the platform. Leonus shifted right behind her and suddenly her brothers swept her away from the platform. Ava caught a glimpse of Landon, already in his lion form, being knocked from the platform by Leonus’s huge enforcer. They landed in a tangle in the space Ava and her brothers had just vacated, and Leonus leapt forward to swipe at Landon, claws out.