Chapter Six #2
Cameron’s expression almost convinced Franklin to back down. Almost. Unable to turn his head, he looked back to Arslan from the corner of his eye.
Arslan nodded as he seemed to realise how important it was to him. “Very well.”
Leaving the other lions behind, Arslan strode across to the door, collecting Franklin from a quietly furious Cameron along the way.
As he stepped into the hall, Franklin realised the other humans in the pride were all there waiting.
There really was no privacy anywhere in the den, no secrets that could be kept from the rest of the pride.
Arslan left the door into the other room open slightly, just an inch of space between the mahogany and the frame, as if he wanted to be sure he’d hear any problems that arose in there while he was absent. “What is it you wish to say to me?”
Franklin swallowed as he looked past him to the heavy wooden door. “What’s going to happen to Cameron?”
He put as much strength and confidence as he could into the query, but Franklin still didn’t feel like a businessman in control the whole world. He felt like a submissive who’d screwed up, and, from that point of view, it was almost impossible for him to look up and hold anyone’s gaze.
“We’re going to remind him what it means to belong to a pride.”
Images flashed through Franklin’s mind, each one worse than the one before, until he couldn’t stand it any longer. “I don’t know what that means,” he finally blurted out.
Arslan pulled the door closed a fraction more before he spoke. “The way he’s treated you tonight is unacceptable—”
“No!” Franklin cut in, all his worse fears confirmed. “You don’t understand.”
Arslan glared down at him in silence, apparently waiting for an explanation that would allow him to understand to be offered.
“It was my fault—”
Arslan shook his head without even letting him finish the sentence.
“It was!” Franklin protested.
“There is never any excuse for a lion to—”
“Excuse?” Franklin demanded, as panic raced through him, faster and more furious by the moment. “Has it ever occurred to you that he doesn’t need an excuse, that he might have a bloody good reason for hating me?”
After the way the men at the club, men just like him, had treated Cameron, he had so many reasons. Franklin stared up at Arslan, damn near begging him to understand, almost ready to get down on his knees and beg for real if that was what it would take.
“So, you think it’s acceptable for him to take his anger and his frustrations out on his pet?” Arslan asked, his eyes narrowing.
“Yes.” That word at least, had some strength in it.
“Would you think it acceptable for me to lash out at Ryland, or for—?”
“I’m not them! I’m not some silly little boy who’s out of his depth,” Franklin spat out. “I know what I’m doing. And a few put downs won’t kill me.”
“So, when do you think his pride should step in?” Arslan asked, more serious than ever. “When it stops being just your feelings that are hurt? Do we step in when it’s a black eye, or a broken arm? Or maybe when it’s something far more grave?”
Franklin shook his head. Arslan just didn’t understand.
“Or would you think you’d deserve that, as well?”
“Yes!” The word was out before he could stop it.
Franklin hadn’t realised how true it was until it hit the air.
Yes, he deserved it. Not just for what he’d done to Cameron, but for everything.
Suddenly, it was impossible for him to push aside thoughts of anyone and everyone each of his business decisions might have hurt.
Fresh guilt swirled inside Franklin, collecting up every scrap that he’d repressed ever since he’d first thrown himself into showing his father that being gay didn’t stop a son being just as big a bastard in the boardroom as his father had been.
Arslan’s annoyance seemed to drain out of him, a touch of sadness crept into his eyes in its place. “Then, it is a good thing he has a pride who disagrees with you.” He turned to re-enter the room, apparently finished with the conversation.
Franklin caught his arm and stopped him short. “Please?”
“He won’t be hurt,” Arslan promised. He looked past Franklin then and seemed to catch someone else’s eye.
When Arslan opened the door leading back into the den and stepped through it, Franklin immediately tried to follow him, but a hand came to rest on his shoulder and easily held him back.
Franklin spun around.
Ellery stood behind him. The other lions’ mates weren’t far away either.
“Sometimes, lions need time to be alone together—to be lions,” Ryland said, gently. “It’s best to leave them to it.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Franklin snapped. He looked back to the den door. It wasn’t Ryland’s boyfriend who was going to bear the brunt of whatever the hell was going to happen in there.
*
Cameron launched himself to his feet as Arslan strode back into the room.
He quickly gave up any pretence of lounging casually in an armchair as if he couldn’t care less what was going.
The tiny strip of Franklin’s skin that had been just visible through the gap in the door had disappeared when the leader of the pride closed the door behind him.
He immediately met Arslan’s gaze, and he refused to look down, no matter what his instincts screamed he should do when faced by the leader of his pride. Then, he noticed something else.
“Where’s Franklin?” His pet hadn’t returned to the room. That was wrong. And the fact that he was the one who’d ordered him to leave the room scant minutes earlier was irrelevant.
“He’s fine,” Arslan said.
“I didn’t ask how he is; I asked where he is,” Cameron bit out.
“I left him in the hall with the others. They may well have made themselves comfortable in one of the other rooms by now.”
Not good enough. Cameron strode toward the door, determined to check on his pet for himself.
Arslan stepped in his way. His hand came to rest in the centre of Cameron’s chest, stopping him short. “No.”
Cameron jerked away from him. “He belongs to me, not you! You can’t stop me from seeing him.”
“I think you’ll find I can,” Arslan informed him, each word calm and very controlled. “The way you talk about Franklin, it sounds as if you care about him.”
“He’s my pet.”
“And you’re his master?” Arslan asked.
“Yes!”
“Then, perhaps it’s time you started to act like it.”
Cameron snarled. Twisting away as he found himself unable to hold Arslan’s gaze, he found himself facing off against all the other lions in the pride. He turned away from them, too, but that didn’t leave him with a great deal of room in which to pace. He was trapped. Cornered.
“A lion can’t afford to lash out at his pet whenever he’s angry,” Arslan said.
“Why should you care?” Cameron demanded.
“Because you’re a member of my pride.”
“A few days ago, I’d never even set eyes on you,” Cameron sneered. “You had no idea I even existed—”
“Cameron Pankhurst. You were born on January the fourteenth. You’re twenty-two years old. Your parents are Edward and Samantha Pankhurst. Your father was the leader of your pride. You have three brothers, and you were last seen on May nineteenth, three years ago.”
The words were softly spoken, but they cut through every thought in Cameron’s head. Very slowly, he turned to face Kefir.
“There was an argument between you and your father regarding a leader’s right to demand you obey all his orders,” the little lion went on.
“You walked away from your parents’ pride the same night, but no one was able to discover which pride you joined after you left them.
For a long time, everyone assumed you were with someone else.
It wasn’t until I started working on the family lines that we realised that you weren’t with any of the prides, not in the entire country.
We’ve been looking for you for a long time, Cameron. ”
Kefir stepped forward, reached up and placed his hand very gently on Cameron’s shoulder.
He was no threat. Cameron knew that. A lion only had to look at him to see that he was nothing like the men in the clubs Cameron had danced in, nothing like the bastards in the alleyways.
When Kefir looked up and met Cameron’s eyes, there was no challenge in his gaze. The only thing Cameron saw there was pity.
He quickly backed away from him, as mortified by that as he had ever been by the way a punter ogled him. He almost stumbled over the edge of the hearth rug in his haste.
Luther stepped forward as if ready to catch him when he fell. Cameron snarled and jerked away from him, too. And, suddenly, they were all around him, all staring at him, suffocating him with their presence.
If they’d been lions who were ready to attack, it would have been easier. If they’d been humans with wallets and hard-ons, he’d have known how to deal with them, too. Cameron tried to back away once more, only to find the fire behind him.
In that moment, his body realised his human form had no chance of coping with what was going on around it. It did the only thing it could.
Cameron’s claws forced their way out. A lion wouldn’t have to think of an answer. A lion didn’t have to do anything but roar.
The shift burst through him so suddenly he felt as if it might rip him apart from the inside, tearing him into weak little pieces that would never have any chance of coping on their own and would always need the safety and protection of a pride wrapped around them.
Every muscle, every joint Cameron possessed, was wrenched in a different direction. Panic coursed through him, and he lashed out, fighting against everything in the universe, including his own shift.