Chapter 11
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Itried to hold in my laughter, but it was tough. Bohdie was playing in his lion form, and it was cute as shit. The huge butterflies that migrated around these parts made perfect easy prey, and he looked like a damn Hallmark card.
It was doing funny things to my chest. Just like his mama. They’d left an hour ago, and so far, it was radio silence. Every minute felt like an hour. So I focused on the kid and the adorable way he was now chasing a dragonfly.
“You hungry, Bo?” I took his plaintive squeak as a yes.
The kid shifted slowly, and I winced. I remembered what those early shifts felt like, before the process became second nature.
You had to be aware of each part of you, concentrating on ensuring each limb transformed.
Otherwise, you ended up as a boy with a lion’s tail and got your ass whipped.
Not that any of us would ever lift a finger to Bohdie. We were going to be different. We wouldn’t kick him from the Pride at fifteen. He could stay as long as he wanted. Go to college. Mate or not, with a human or a lioness. Bohdie would have the choices that Axel, Wyatt and I never had.
When he was a boy and not a lion again, we walked back toward the house. “How do you feel about grilled cheese?”
“Yummy. Lala makes the best grilled cheese.”
“Lala does everything better, kiddo. Gotta learn that now.” I cleared my throat. “Bo, are you happy with us? With Axel, me and Wyatt? And Lala, of course.”
“Yeah, I like the woods. You guys are good, too. Wyatt comes up with the best games, and Axel helped me build my fort.”
I resisted the urge to ask What about me? because I was a grown man, dammit. I didn’t need to fish for compliments from a five-year-old.
“What about me?” Okay, so maybe I did want to know how he felt about me.
Bohdie stopped and turned to me. “You’re cool. You’re what I thought having a dad would be like, y’know?” Then he walked off. Like he hadn’t just dropped an emotional bombshell on me.
I cleared my throat and blinked a little, trying to restore my cool. “Nice. Let’s go eat something, then we might head down to the creek for a swim. Do you know how to swim?”
He gave me a disapproving look. “Of course, Archie. Lala said that all kids should know how to swim. But my cat, he isn’t really big on the water.”
I laughed. “Mine either, kiddo. But the human side of me loves it. We’ll take the tire tube and just float in the sun. What do you say?”
He grinned, the freckles across his nose highlighted in the mid-morning sun. “Okay!”
We were almost to the door when I froze.
Putting a hand on Bohdie’s shoulder, I halted him too.
Quickly, I grabbed my phone from my pocket and leaned down, whispering quietly so only he could hear.
“Bo, I need you to take my phone and run back into the woods, okay? Run as fast as you can as a boy, then when you can’t run anymore, shift into your lion and climb the tallest tree and hold down the number one. Can you do that?”
Bohdie’s big eyes got impossibly wide, but he nodded.
“No matter what you hear, don’t come back. Stay there until one of us gets you. Or Vance or the twins. No one else, okay? Promise?” Bohdie nodded again, and I gave him a little shove. “Run, kid. Now.”
I put every ounce of Alpha I possessed into the command. It wasn’t much, but it sent Bohdie scurrying away from me and back into the woods as fast as his tiny human legs could go.
What I didn’t tell him, couldn’t tell him, was that we were almost surrounded. I could smell lion and gunpowder on the wind. They’d be here in minutes. I just hoped it was enough time.
I quickly shifted into my lion. He was a big motherfucker and mean. And he loved that kid as much as I did.
I didn’t have to wait long, as three men in tactical gear rounded the back of the cabin.
Masks covered their faces, but I breathed in deep.
I knew their scents now; I’d be able to track every single one down.
They held automatic rifles in front of them, pointed directly at me.
I was surrounded. I wouldn’t walk away from this.
I roared my outrage, and it echoed through the mountains.
“Shut it, fucker, or I’ll blow your head off,” the guy in the lead growled.
I couldn’t flip him off in this form, so I just roared again. He fired a few shots above my head, and I resisted the urge to flinch. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Where’s the kid?”
I stared at him, my huge canines exposed.
He wasn’t more Alpha than me. This time, he shot at my feet.
Clumps of dirt sprayed over my paws, but I still didn’t flinch.
My lion wanted to taste his blood on our tongue, and we were in complete agreement.
From a complete standstill, I tracked my prey, though they didn’t know yet that they wouldn’t be walking away from this.
The guy behind me interrupted. “Freshest trail leads into the woods.”
The leader, Fucker Number One, looked toward the trees behind me, and that was my cue.
Moving faster than the eye could track, I sprang toward the closest guy.
My lion was big, but he was light on his feet.
Wyatt liked to tease me that I was as close to a mythological griffin as you could get, because I all but flew when I ran.
I was on top of the guy before he even had a chance to shift his gun to the left, getting his head between my jaws and crushing his skull like a grape.
Then the shooting started.
I let out an anguished yowl as a bullet got my rump, but I used Fucker Number Two as a shield as I sprinted around the side of the cabin. This was my fucking territory.
I circled back through the woods, staying low. Unfortunately, we were colored for the Serengeti, not the wilds of Nebraska. I was a big, golden beacon. But I just needed the element of surprise.
I found the tracker following Bohdie’s trail in lion form, and I resisted the urge to snarl.
Instead, I crept along behind him. When he paused, I pounced.
My claws tore through his flesh, and he whirled around with a roar.
He swiped at me with his own claws, but I was faster, and they barely grazed me.
Rearing back on my back legs, I swung at him again, the satisfying feeling of my paws thudding against flesh making my lion go into a frenzy.
We would protect our cub. Our family.
I fell onto the other lion savagely, tearing at him with my teeth and claws, though the world started to fuzz a little at the edges from blood loss. That bullet must have nicked an artery. I tore out the tracker’s throat and stood over his body, his blood dripping from my mouth, down onto his face.
I barely saw the end of the gun butt before it hit me, knocking me from my feet.
Fucker Number One stood over me, his smug grin visible from below his helmet. “You’re one big bastard, but not even you can outrun a bullet.” He lifted his gun muzzle and pointed it at my head.
I stared at him, refusing to back down. The longer I dragged this out, the further Bohdie could run and the safer he would be.
The smile on the merc’s face was cruel. “Bob says hi. The cub’s pelt will look good on his wall.”
“No!” I heard the tiny scream over the sound of the gunshot, and my own yell. The heavy bullet thudded into my chest, and I saw Bohdie hanging from the merc’s neck before darkness flooded my vision and everything went black.
I’d failed.