Mara
Aaron pulls me into the forest and I don’t know what for.
He hasn’t said a word since we left the cabin. That alone is enough to put my ears up. Aaron doesn’t go quiet unless something is wrong.
He stops in a small clearing and looks around carefully.
“What’s going on?” I ask him.
He turns. “There’s someone I need you to meet.”
My ears perk forward. “Huh?”
He grins at me, but it’s a smaller grin than usual. He holds out his hand and a small blue-gold magic ball forms in his palm, glowing soft. My ears stay up but my lion doesn’t flinch.
“He’s been coming to me,” he says.
“Who?” My tail curls tighter against my leg.
He keeps watching the ball. “My sperm donor. Aka my birth father.”
My lion freezes, every muscle locking in place.
“The Witching Glen father?” I ask him.
“Yes.”
I stare at him, searching his face for any sign that this is some kind of joke. The trees are quiet around us. The magic ball in his hand hums louder, the blue-gold deepening, brighter at the edges than it was before.
“I thought the Witching Glen was sealed off.” I keep my voice level. “I haven’t seen a witch or warlock from the Glen in years.”
“It’s still locked away,” Aaron answers, gaze fixed on the magic ball. “Eric’s managed to keep contact with me anyway.”
I wrap my arms around myself. The Glen has always been the place witches went to keep their distance. Dark magic users. The lionesses I grew up with said good riddance whenever the topic came up.
“I never understood why the Glen was locked,” I tell him.
He doesn’t answer me.
The magic ball lifts off his palm. It rises slowly, gentle, like a dandelion seed catching wind, and floats in the air. I watch it climb, my lion stretching forward inside me to look. Then I notice Aaron isn’t looking at the ball.
He’s looking at me.
I turn my head and meet his eyes and my tail goes limp behind me, the slump traveling all the way up my back.
“What are you doing?” My voice trembles slightly.
He doesn’t answer, just keeps watching me with that strange, soft intensity.
“Aaron. What—“
“You’re the most beautiful woman in the world to me.”
“I highly doubt—“
His mouth crashes to mine, cutting off my words.
His lips are sweet and warm and tender against mine. My tail comes up on its own and brushes his temple. He keeps it brief, gentle, his thumb stroking the soft skin under my ear.
He pulls back and kisses my nose, searching my face.
“Sorry, baby. You just look so adorable when you get distracted by my magic.”
He kisses my forehead.
“Not to mention, you are incredibly beautiful.”
I start to purr. I can’t help it. He has me and he knows it. I pucker my lips for another kiss. When it doesn’t come, I open my eyes. He’s already focused back on the floating ball. My mouth pulls into a pout.
He taps my nose. “Don’t give me that lip, beautiful. I’ll kiss you silly later.”
He raises his palm under the floating ball, fingers spread, and his brow tightens with focus. The hum of the magic deepens. The ball begins to expand. He moves his hand away and grabs mine, taking a few steps back, pulling me with him, and my lion stills inside me as we watch.
The ball stretches until it’s the height of a man. The surface goes flat and silver. I’m looking at a mirror standing upright in the middle of the clearing.
Aaron leans down and kisses my forehead.
I’m not looking at a reflection. I’m looking at a room I’m not standing in. Bookshelves, a leather sofa, a low fire throwing light against the walls. Wherever this is, it’s real.
A man steps into view on the other side of it.
A small sound of shock escapes me.
He has Aaron’s face. White hair, white beard, skin too thin for the bones it covers. A dying man, or a man who wants to look like one.
He looks at me, his gaze piercing through whatever separates our worlds.
He smiles, and there’s something predatory in it that makes my lion growl inside me.
“I knew you could reach out to me if you wanted,” he says. His voice is too warm. My lion does not like it.
He lifts a hand toward us. It moves a few inches and stops, like it’s hit a wall I can’t see. He doesn’t seem surprised by it, as if he’s tested this boundary before.
Aaron looks at me. “This is Eric. My birth father.”
My eyes narrow. I don’t smooth my face. I let the narrow stay, let him see my distrust.
Eric notices. His smile widens, and that bothers me more than if he’d frowned. “The lioness is always cautious.” He bows his head, too low. “Hello, Aaron’s mate.”
He looks at Aaron. “She’s beautiful, son.”
The word son lands wrong. Aaron clears his throat and takes my hand. He brings the back of it to his lips.
“I just wanted to thank you,” he says to Eric. “If it weren’t for you, I’d still be fighting to get her back.”
If it weren’t for you.
The words land cold inside me, ice spreading through my veins. My ears stay perked, alert for danger. My tail goes rigid behind me.
So this is what made Aaron cross the territory line. Eric. From a sealed realm, through a mirror, telling my mate what to do.
I keep my face still with effort, forcing down the growl building in my throat. I let Aaron kiss the back of my hand, though every instinct screams at me to pull away, to drag him back from this danger he can’t see.
“You’ve never come to me before,” Eric says to Aaron, and his voice goes quieter. There’s something in it that wants to sound moved. “Thank you.”
Aaron kisses my forehead, smiles at my scowl, and lets go of my hand. He steps closer to the mirror. My lion goes rigid as he moves toward the man who abandoned him.
“Something tells me you know about my magic. What it can do.”
“I had an inkling,” Eric says, a glint in his eyes that makes me nervous.
“I shouldn’t trust you at all.” There’s conflict in Aaron’s voice.
Eric lets out a breath. His shoulders drop in a perfect performance of regret.
“I haven’t been a good father to you, or your sisters,” he says. “And I am sorry.”
I watch Aaron’s back, tension coiling through every muscle in my body.
My lion sees it first. Aaron’s shoulders drop. His weight shifts. He’s giving in, right in front of me.
A hiss escapes me. I bite it back, but Aaron’s head turns. He looks at me over his shoulder, grins like he’s caught me at something endearing, then looks back at his father.
“I have to go,” Aaron says. “I need to take care of my woman.”
“Hopefully I’ll see you again,” Eric says, and there’s a hunger in his voice that Aaron seems deaf to.
Aaron sighs, and I can hear the conflict in it, the yearning.
“Maybe.”
He raises his palm and the mirror breaks apart into blue-gold dust that scatters on a wind I can’t feel. The clearing is just a clearing again.
“How long?” I ask, and my voice doesn’t sound like mine. “How long have you been speaking with him from the Glen.”
“About two years,” he answers.
“How many know about this?”
“Only Torin and my sisters.”
“Your mother doesn’t know?” The question tears from me, incredulous and pained.
Aaron’s hand comes up to my wrist where my claws are pressing into him. He doesn’t peel me off. He just rests his fingers there. The gesture both soothes and infuriates me.
“No, Mara. She’d find a way to ban him from reaching me if she did.”
I make myself unclench my hands, forcing my claws to retract. I have to be careful. My lion paces within me, agitated but focused.
If I push him to tell her, he won’t. He’ll shut me out. He’s let me in this far because he trusts me, and one wrong word from me will close the door.
I have to be a lioness about this.
I let my hands soften on his arms, consciously relaxing my grip. I feel my claws pull back fully, though my heart still pounds with adrenaline.
Aaron grips my waist and pulls me into him. His hand strokes my back, slow. It drifts down to steal a touch of my ass. My lion is furious, and she still flicks her tail across his cheek.
“I think you should tell your mother,” I tell him, keeping my voice gentle, non-confrontational.
“No, baby. I can handle it.” He kisses my lips, gently.
I let him kiss me, though my mind races with calculations, strategies. I keep my voice level, careful.
“He wants to rebuild a relationship with you? Or something else? Has he reached out to your sisters?”
Aaron chuckles into my mouth and kisses me again. He’s not taking me seriously.
“To answer your first question, I don’t know what he wants. But I can tell you he’s been consistently helpful.” He pulls back and looks at me, warm with an affection I can’t return right now. “The answer to your second is no. He hasn’t gone to my sisters.”
I hiss again. This one I let through, unable to contain it, the sound carrying all my fear and suspicion.
“You don’t like him,” he murmurs, his expression amused.
“No. I don’t like him.” The words come out with a fierceness that surprises even me.
The quickness of it makes him laugh.
My lion settles into something focused. Something like the moment before a hunt, when she has chosen what she is watching and goes very still.
I can’t tell him. He won’t listen. Not now, when he’s desperate for any connection that feels like family.
I’ll convince him another way. With something he can’t argue with, when the time comes. First I have to find out what Eric wants, because Aaron doesn’t know.
I make my face soft. I smile at him, though it feels like a mask settling over my features.
“Don’t tell my mom,” he says, his voice dropping. “Please?”
“And your sisters? Can I ask them?” I try to keep the desperation from my voice.
“Baby. Just don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t have introduced you if—“
I kiss his lips before he can finish, soft, just enough to stop the words.
“Forget it, Aaron.” I say it against his mouth, the lie bitter on my tongue. “It’s my lion being overly cautious. He’s new to me, and he’s from a world I thought was a bad place. I’ve got much to unlearn about witches and warlocks.”
His hand cups my face, his thumb stroking slow. I almost forget what I’m doing.
“I don’t think much of what you’ve learned is worth unlearning,” he says, his eyes holding mine.
I look up at him, studying the face I’ve come to love so deeply, wondering how I can protect him from himself.
“You weren’t wrong when you told me witches and warlocks are selfish. We are. And you’ve had a front row seat to it.”
A laugh escapes me, small and strained. He has a way of saying the worst thing about himself and making it sound like he’s flirting, of admitting to flaws as if they’re charming quirks rather than dangers.
I let myself look around the clearing. The sun is starting to come down through the trees on a slant.
Aaron buries his face in my neck. He nibbles. The moan I make is small and traitorous, and my head tilts back. He kisses up my throat. My body has already forgotten why I was angry.
“There’s something else I need to tell you,” he murmurs against me.
“Huh?” My thoughts feel scattered, divided between the immediate pleasure of his touch and the looming danger I can’t make him see.
He plants kisses along my cheek, then pulls back and cups my face in both hands, his expression suddenly serious.
“I should start by explaining the law of magic.”
I nod, my brain still half a step behind my body, struggling to focus.
“When magic is cast for self-gain,” he explains, “there are almost always consequences.”
“I don’t understand.” My tail swishes nervously behind me.
He sighs. “When I cast the shield over myself—“
The word shield coming out of his mouth makes my whole body tense, memories of betrayal and hurt rising fresh.
He cups my face quickly. “Shh. Baby. Let me finish.”
I let out a breath, forcing myself to listen.
“I lifted the shield,” he says. “Nothing is stopping us from making a cub.”
“Okay.” The word comes out cautious, uncertain.
He sighs and presses his forehead to mine.
“But because I messed with the natural order,” he says, “I’m stuck in a loop now.”
“What loop?” Alarm rises in me, my tail stiffening.
A scent has hit me, low and warm and familiar. His arousal. It wraps around me, potent and unmistakable.
“This,” he says. He leans in and kisses my nose. “I can’t seem to get enough of you.”
“I don’t understand.” But I do. I can smell it on him, see it in the darkening of his eyes.
“Remember the janitor’s closet?”
I blush so hard I feel it in my ears, heat flooding my face at the memory. He plants another kiss on my forehead, his lips curving into a smile.
“My magic called to you,” he tells me. “It’s why you left the Lion Shifter Wing and came searching for me. My body wants to breed you. Even when I fought it away with my own magic.”
“So Mother Fate is punishing you for this.” The realization settles over me, bringing with it a strange mix of vindication and concern.
He grins and shrugs, still cupping my face, his expression boyish and unrepentant.
“Something like that.”
“Is this forever?”
“No. All spells run their course. But I don’t know for how long, or when it will end. That’s up to Mother Fate.”
I grin. My tail starts to wag, the movement betraying my lion’s delight at this development.
Aaron glances down at it. He laughs once, soft and warm, and his hands slide off my face and he kisses my lips again. My tail is swaying playfully behind me, and my lion is delighted, temporarily distracted from her fears by the prospect of Aaron being magically compelled to want me.
He pulls back. “Your lion seems pleased with this info.”
“She is.” Despite everything, I can’t help the smugness that creeps into my voice.
I lean in. I press my mouth to his ear, my whiskers brushing his skin.
“I’ll put it in your face tonight. But that’s it.” The promise is both a tease and a distraction.
“Mara.” The groan in his voice sends a shiver through me.
I turn away from him, my tail brushing across his chest as I start walking back toward our cabin, a deliberate sway in my hips.
“Well damn,” he says behind me, already moving to follow. “Can I at least put my nose in it?”
My tail comes around and smacks him in the face. I make myself giggle and keep walking.
He groans, the sound half-frustrated, half-amused. I walk ahead of him through the trees.
I’m thinking, my mind racing beneath the facade of flirtation.
I don’t trust Eric. He wants something from Aaron. Everything I just saw was a set he built for us. The room, the fire, the white hair, the apology. I grew up in a pride that hunts. I know when I’m being hunted.
He hasn’t gone to the sisters because he doesn’t need them. He needs Aaron. But why is the question.
I’m going to find out what he wants, what he’s planning.
I love him more than he understands. So I’m going to do this the wrong way. The lying way. The hunting way. Until I have something he can’t argue with, he won’t hear me.
“Mara!” he calls, half-laughing. “Your tail!”
I let out a laugh and keep walking.