The Lion's Shared Bride (8 page)

It occurred to her more than once as she ate breakfast with Soren that the very fact that she had had sex with both men, that she had gone to bed so contentedly with Aedan and hadn’t fled the house when Soren had awakened her and stole her away, meant that whatever she tried to tell herself, she was already more inclined to agree to the proposition than to walk away. And that was another thing that she wasn’t sure she liked about the situation.

Nina had to admit the two men were extremely clever; Aedan had kept out of the way while Soren led her around the backyard and through the house. Where Aedan seemed to be using a mixture of charm and sheer strength to overcome her caution, Soren was obviously interested in making sure that she felt safe and secure, that she knew that the two men would respect her boundaries, and that she could trust them both.
If you could roll them up into one guy instead of two, I couldn’t possibly come up with a reason not to do it,
she thought.

The crux of the issue, as it occurred to her in the aftermath of yet another orgasm with Soren, was that Nina couldn’t quite believe that two men could share a woman the way that they proposed without getting in each other’s way, and without jealousy coming into play. “Let’s be real for a moment,” she said, turning completely onto her side in Soren’s bed. “You and Aedan are both really masculine men. In a good way, I mean.”

Soren chuckled. “Yes, that’s true enough.” Nina reached out, almost unbidden, and found herself brushing a strand of Soren’s short, spiky hair off of his sweat-drenched forehead. She shivered at the memory of him inside of her. They had already had sex twice, and it was only the afternoon. Nina was more than a little alarmed at how good it had felt, every bit as good as it had felt with Aedan, though the two men had slightly different styles when it came to seduction and lovemaking.

“And neither of you is interested in the other one, right?”

Soren nodded quickly. “Yeah, no, we’re not bi. It’s not a homophobia thing, we’re just not into guys.” Nina took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“So how exactly is this going to work? I mean, love triangles are kind of—well, they’re a trope. It never ends well.”

Soren shrugged. “We know what we’re getting into. Keep in mind, we knew we were going to do this before you did. We’ve hashed out some rules about it that are just between us.”

Nina pressed her lips together. The fact that Soren and Aedan had apparently discussed their arrangement between them didn’t exactly surprise her, but some part of her vanity was offended that it seemed to have all been decided before she had even arrived.

“What if I end up loving one of you more?” She turned over onto her stomach. Her legs felt like the bones inside of them were made of jelly, and her arms were still less than real to her.
If nothing else, I will be the most sexually pleased woman on the damn planet.

Soren shrugged. “That’ll be a shame for whichever of us doesn’t make the grade, but as long as you’re doing your part to keep us both happy, neither one of us can exactly complain about it.” He looked at her for a long moment and Nina saw a flash of something she couldn’t quite identify flickering through his eyes. “I think you’ll be surprised though. Off the top of your head, right now, which one of us do you
like
better?”

Nina frowned. The question was impossible. She hadn’t known either of them long enough to form a definitive preference. On top of that, Nina couldn’t actually say that one man or the other had been less trustworthy, or more confidence-inspiring than the other. They were very different—but in some way, Soren and Aedan’s personalities were complementary.

“You’re both jerks,” she said playfully. “I mean, you trick me into meeting one of you without knowing there’s another one waiting in the wings, you practically keep me captive, and you’re apparently planning on spending the entire weekend making it impossible for me to actually dislike either of you.”

Soren laughed. “Well, we did warn you that we were going to try and convince you. I don’t remember you giving the stipulation that we had to make you miserable in the process.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “But it’s not going to be like this if and when I decide to go along with your plan. I mean… you’re not going to spend every waking minute catering to my needs and desires. You both have lives.”

Soren leaned in and kissed her lightly on the lips. “One of your desires—or, if you’re going to be honest, one of your needs—is probably to have some time to yourself, right? Your own personal space, a little independence? So Aedan and me having lives of our own should be a good thing.”

Nina groaned in frustration, burying her face against the pillows. “It’s not fair! You can’t be right all the time. It gets on my nerves.” Soren laughed and Nina felt his arms coil around her waist tightly, drawing her body against his. “Hey—hey! I called an hour-long break. You can’t…” her words were silenced by Soren’s lips descending on hers, sealing them against any further comment. Nina tried to break free in a fit of irritation, but Soren was stronger than she could have guessed by his wiry, lean frame. He deepened the kiss, holding her body tightly. She began to relax against him as she realized that he wasn’t making a move to seduce her once more, that he was—at least for the moment—keeping his intentions more or less pure.

His hold on her loosened and then his arms fell away as they were interrupted by the sound of a knock at the bedroom door. “Soren, I hate to interrupt, but we have a situation going on in the backyard.”

In an instant, Soren had slipped out from underneath her, and Nina fell onto the bed, startled as she saw the man who a moment before was entirely focused on her slipping into a pair of jeans and then pulling a dress shirt on, buttoning it quickly. He padded across the bedroom floor and pulled the door open so fast that Nina couldn’t follow his movements. She remembered how quickly he had intercepted her the night before, how fast Aedan had been as well.

“Best you stay here, Nina-love,” Aedan said, his lips curving in a not-quite-smile. “It has to do with the group we belong to, nothing for you to worry about.” The two men were gone from the doorway, and for a moment, Nina lay there, confused and bewildered. The way that Soren had moved so quickly to respond to Aedan’s summons indicated that there was some kind of serious issue going on. The fact that Aedan had told her it was nothing for her to worry about actually increased her anxiety because whenever anyone had said that to her in the past, it always turned out to be something that would affect her.

Irritated, curious, and anxious in equal measures, Nina pulled herself up and slipped out of the bed in direct contradiction to Aedan’s suggestion, looking around for something she could put on.
Something to do with the group they belong to, huh?
Nina pulled the tee shirt she had borrowed from Aedan over her head and stepped into her uncomfortably damp panties. She knew she wasn’t technically in any kind of state to meet anyone, but surely a peek at what was going on in the backyard wouldn’t be a problem; no one needed to see her.

Nina moved as quietly as possible, stepping through the bedroom door and walking down the hall. She heard Aedan’s voice, though she couldn’t make out what he was saying, and then the higher-pitched tone of Soren’s reply, before she heard the sound of a door closing. Nina continued towards the back door, slipping into the kitchen silently and taking an indirect path to the window there.

She looked outside, into the backyard, and for a moment, Nina was convinced that she had to be hallucinating. Ranged around the backyard, she saw a group of enormous lions—bigger than any she had seen at the zoo or on TV—standing in obvious challenge. Laid on the grass in front of them, a woman was sprawled, her head turned at an unnatural angle, obviously dead. As her shock deepened, Nina’s gaze sought out Aedan and Soren. She spotted Aedan first, standing off to the side, watching the proceedings as if he was completely unsurprised by the sight of a pride of lions in Soren’s back yard.
What the hell is this? Lions? What does this have to do with their group?
While questions swirled around in her mind, Nina looked for Soren. She spotted him moving towards the group of lions, absolutely fearless.

Nina stared in horror and fascination as Soren fell to the ground. The air seemed to shimmer around him, making him indistinct, blurring the lines of his body. Tawny yellow and brown fur began to somehow rise to the surface of Soren’s body as he grew larger, and his short, spiky hair lengthened into a mane. As the transformation completed, Nina realized that she had just watched a man that she had had sex with multiple times turn into a lion and that he was facing a group of lions.
Aedan said… fuck. Oh shit. God. Shit.
Her knees weakened underneath her. Nina decided abruptly that she couldn’t watch for even a moment longer.

Somehow, she was back in Aedan’s room, though how she had gotten there she had no idea. Nina’s panicked eyes searched the floor without knowing what it was she was looking for. Behind her, she heard the unmistakable sound of a lion’s roar, and Nina fell to her knees on Aedan’s floor, reaching out in a frantic panic for her clothes. The only thing she could think about, the thing that consumed her entire brain was the sudden, very urgent need to get as far away from the house as humanly possible.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Aedan stepped backward, keeping his body facing the Pride at all times as he quickly moved towards the house; Soren had given him a look when they had both heard the slightest of sounds, human feet on the floor of the house behind them. Soren let out a low growl, his gaze taking in the ranged Pride members, ignoring Aedan for the moment. The message had been received: get Nina.

Aedan’s hand slipped behind his back and he turned the doorknob, maintaining eye contact for as long as possible. It would not do for any of the Pride to see what he was doing as a retreat; he was not retreating—he was following orders given by the Alpha. He felt a twinge of all-too-human sadness at the last sight of Anna, sprawled on the ground, with an answering flare of anger at the members of her own Pride responsible for killing her.
Soren will handle it. He has to handle it.

With the door between him and the Pride, there was no longer any need for posturing, and Aedan moved quickly, slinking through the house, sniffing at the air to catch the scent of where Nina had traveled. He smiled slightly to himself; he would know her scent anywhere now. The particular sweet-spicy smell of her body was impossible for her to hide from him or from Soren.
I know you think you’re going to run, love,
he thought, stepping into the hallway and moving for the bedroom where he knew she was.
But we just can’t allow that. Not now.

Nina was on the floor, gathering up her clothing with shaking, panicked hands, staring off at nothing. Aedan stepped into the room, taking a deep breath. “Eavesdroppers rarely hear good things,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately light as he shifted to make sure that his body blocked the entire door. Nina looked up sharply and Aedan smelled the shift in her pheromones from alarm to sudden, intense fear. Her eyes widened as she stared at him, clothing falling from her hands.

“You have to let me leave,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. “If—if you don’t, I’ll call the police.” Aedan smiled slowly.

“How exactly do you think you’re going to accomplish that, when either Soren or I will be with you constantly?” Nina took a deep breath and Aedan fought back the urge to laugh as the scent of her emotion changed once more, an undercurrent of anger taking over the fear-smell. She stood, scowling up at him.

“You—you think I’m just going to let you hold me hostage?” Aedan let his smile broaden across his face as Nina stomped towards him, stopping just out of arm’s reach, checking as if she suddenly remembered what she had seen moments before.

“I think that, unfortunately, you’ve left us with no choice,” Aedan told her. “You could have stayed in the bedroom and you wouldn’t have seen what you just did.” Nina’s scowl deepened and she crossed her arms over her chest, looking up at him with a fiery gaze.

“So you were just going to lie to me—not tell me—that you’re—that he’s…” She took a deep breath. “That—that you are some kind of weird shapeshifter freaks?” Aedan chuckled.

“The correct term is were-lion, love.” Nina’s jaw clenched and Aedan resisted the urge to reach out and pick her up, lift her into his arms. “We were going to tell you eventually, just not until after you’d had a chance to get to know us a bit.” Nina stomped one foot on the ground and Aedan didn’t even bother to suppress the laughter that rose up in him at the sight of her temper.

“Isn’t—don’t you feel at least a little bit guilty that you’ve both been lying to me all this time? That you were… withholding things? How am I supposed to trust either of you?” Aedan tilted his head, listening carefully to attempt to hear if anything was going on outside. As far as he could tell, things were very similar to how he had left them: tense, confrontational, but with no outright fighting happening thus far. If Soren handled the situation well, there wouldn’t be a battle in his backyard. If he didn’t…

Aedan closed the bedroom door and then took the few steps separating him from Nina, his hands immediately moving to her sides, his arms wrapping around her. He didn’t exactly pull her body against his, but he had her definitively trapped where she was, trembling slightly, fear and righteous anger mingling in her body-scent. “I understand that you’re feeling betrayed, and probably more than a little freaked out by what you saw,” Aedan said, lowering his voice and looking down into her eyes. “But try—just try—to see things from our perspective. How long do you think any were-lion would last if they went around telling every prospective mate that they were—as you so eloquently put it—shapeshifter freaks?” Nina squirmed in his arms, and Aedan simply held her, making it clear without words that she would not be getting away from him—but that he was not going to hurt her.

“How in the world can you even think—how do you expect me to willingly become your mate when you both lied to me right from the outset?” Aedan smiled again; he noticed that—for the moment at least—her objection was not so much that he and Soren were were-lions, but that they had lied by omission by not telling her that they were were-lions.

“At no point did we say ‘we are completely regular human people,’” Aedan pointed out. “We never outright lied.” Nina struggled in his arms more, her anger pheromones spiking, and Aedan tightened his grip, a low growl forming in his throat; this woman was his mate—whether she knew it or not. Whether she was ready to accept it or not, somewhere in his mind he had already come to that conclusion. And Aedan knew that Soren had, as well. Neither of them was going to let her go without a fight.

“If you think that I have any intention whatsoever of honoring that stupid contract…” Aedan didn’t let her finish. He leaned in, closing the small remaining distance between them, and brought his lips down on Nina’s, kissing her hungrily. He crushed her body against his, breathing in the scent of her pheromones deeply, rubbing against her until he knew his scent was all over her skin, her clothes. He heard a noise from outside, but for the moment disregarded it, gathering Nina up in his arms and carrying her to the bed.

He pinned her down, his mind taken over by animal instinct; his erection felt like a lead bar, heat pooling in his stomach, but he was not interested specifically in taking Nina—not against her will, and not at a time like this. Instead, the animal inside of him was focused on subduing her, making her submit, calm down. He growled low in his throat, gathering up her wrists in one hand and pulling them up over her head, pressing them against the pillows. “You’re ours now,” Aedan said, the growl rumbling through his words. “It’s time to calm down.”

For a moment longer, Nina struggled underneath him, squirming, trying to get her legs free enough to kick, her hands free enough to scratch. She ducked her head and bit at his shoulder through his clothes, tried to bite his throat. Aedan chuckled, nimbly avoiding the worst of her attacks, feeling the jolt of desire that came with the ones she was actually able to land.
Someone should tell her that biting is a sign of affection between mates,
Aedan thought idly.
Another time, maybe.
He growled again, more sharply, nuzzling against her neck, and Nina began to relax—almost as if against her will.

Behind him, Aedan once more heard noises; nothing that would force him to leave Nina, but enough to be worth paying attention to, at least a little bit. “Are you willing to be calm, or should we stay like this for a while?” he asked her. Nina muttered something, her voice petulant, and her words not quite comprehensible. “Say again, love?”

“I hate you.” Aedan cringed, keeping his face buried against her neck to keep her from seeing it. She didn’t mean it; he knew she didn’t mean it, but the words stung nonetheless. Even if it was only for the fact that he and Soren—through circumstances mostly beyond their control—had made Nina feel unsafe in their company, hadn’t properly prepared her for the truth of their situation and hers, it was something of a failure.

Aedan took a deep breath, inhaling the spicy-sweet scent of Nina’s body; he could smell Soren’s pheromones on her, as well as his own. But the rich, delicious smell of her was stronger, and he struggled to get a grip of the control he knew he had over himself. It would be so tempting to take her right now, to bring her to orgasm again and again until she couldn’t make herself even think the words
I hate you.
But that was not the way to handle the situation; and just now, Aedan knew, it would make things so much worse—he was not about to compound the errors he and Soren had made by violating her trust even more.

“I’m going to let you up,” Aedan said slowly, pulling back and looking down into Nina’s eyes. He saw the wet tracks on her face where tears had fallen and felt another lurch in his chest at the sight. “I am not going to hurt you, but I am not going to let you leave either, love. You have to understand that. When Soren comes back in, we can talk about the situation a little more—but even if I could let you leave this house, the first thing those lions outside would probably do would be to kill you.” Nina’s angry, frustrated expression shifted into blank terror, and Aedan almost wished—honest as his assessment was—that he could take it back.

Instead, he slowly lifted himself off of her, relinquishing his hold on her wrists, gathering his weight up and shifting to the side. He slipped off of the bed and put himself between Nina and the door—making it clear that he was keeping her there, but giving her the space he knew she needed. He watched as the petite, curvy woman curled in on herself slightly, turning her back to him, burying her face against the blankets to hide it. Aedan watched as she shuddered, convulsively tightening in on herself, a sound like sobs leaving her throat, muffled in the bedclothes. The scent of her was enough to drive him mad, but Aedan knew that right at that moment, any attempt he made to comfort her, to seduce or distract her, would only complicate matters further, and would only drive her away from him faster. He had to do the right thing.
I’ve been doing such a good job of that so far,
he thought wryly. He forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly, pushing down the animal inside of him. He was not going to let those instincts overrule the humanity he had grown up possessing in equal measure. He was not going to terrify this poor, lovely woman whose trust he and Soren had violated; at least not any more than they already had. In a matter of moments, the situation between Soren and the Pride would come to a close—temporarily, at least—and the Alpha would be there with them, and they would have a long conversation.
Even if she wasn’t suitable, we couldn’t let her leave. Not like this. Not now. She’s stuck with us and us with her.
Aedan shook his head, hearing the quaver in Nina’s voice when she had said, “I hate you” all too clearly in his mind. The whole situation had exploded into a mess.

*

Nina paced back and forth across the living room floor, struggling to think clearly through the miasma of fear, anger, and pain that swirled around her mind, avoiding looking at either of the two men, seated in their chairs, watching her intently. That she would never make it to the door if she tried to make an escape, she had no doubt. Even though she was closer, the two of them could move so quickly—and had demonstrated that fact so forcefully already—that it would just make her angrier to be intercepted, pushed down onto the couch, subdued.
Not that I don’t think I’m entitled to be a little bit angry,
she thought bitterly.

A few minutes after Aedan had let up on her, Soren had walked into the bedroom, and at first, Nina had simply cried harder, burrowing into the blankets to hide from both men. In spite of the fact that she had felt Aedan’s erection digging into her, pressing against her through his clothes, and the way that he had restrained her on the bed, she had never seriously entertained the thought that he might take her against her will; but the enormity of the situation at hand had crashed around her, and when Soren entered the room once more, she couldn’t bear the thought of even being visible to the two men. If she could have climbed underneath the bed, she would have.
I’m spending too much time around felines,
she had thought irreverently. The thought of Aedan as a spooked housecat, hiding underneath his own bed, hissing at someone, flashed through her mind and some of the shock she felt began to lessen.

But the anger—the sense of betrayal—had not diminished one iota. As soon as she managed to compose herself, Nina had sat up in Aedan’s bed and licked her lips, wiping the tears from her face. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to look at the two men, but she had hugged her knees to her chest and taken a deep breath. “You are going to let me leave,” she had said, making her voice as firm as possible.

“We can’t do that, Nina,” Soren said, his voice low—but without the growling dominance of Aedan’s. “I’m sorry you had to find out that way, but you’re smart enough to realize that we can’t let you go just yet.”

They had adjourned to the living room as a sort of neutral territory, and Aedan had left her under Soren’s supervision as he went into the kitchen to retrieve a few beers. Nina had sat numbly on the couch, not looking at the two men, simply staring at the opened beer in front of her on the coffee table as they spoke to each other. “Who was it?” Aedan asked.

“Who do you think? Jordan—though Alex took credit for it.” There was a pause. “Shit. Anna. She didn’t deserve that.”

“I don’t think it was a question of deserving it,” Aedan countered. “What’s the outcome going to be?”

“No one dared to challenge me directly. After a few minutes they started to retreat, slinking back until finally Alex dropped his gaze. It’s going to come up again.”