Chapter 14
ISLA
“Bohdie! Come back here and put some clothes on,” I shouted down the tunnel that led to the common room of the den.
Female bear shifters chuckled at me as the group of naked kids ran down the long hall, having just changed back from their animals.
I threw my hands in the air, but I couldn’t be mad.
Bohdie loved it here, making friends with the bear cubs.
He’d never really had the opportunity to have friends, just going from one town to the other, and he was such a social child.
Tucking his shorts and shirt under my arm, I turned around to head back to our temporary home. I had to get used to the fact that nudity was a way of life around here. No one blinked an eye, or leered, or even paid much attention to a person’s state of dress—or undress, in this case.
We’d only been here three weeks, but the bears had accepted us like we’d been born amongst them. And honestly, I loved them for it.
Fresca came over, not even attempting to hold her laughter in.
“Don’t stress it, Isla. I’m going to see if they’d like to make ice cream sundaes with me, but there’s a strict clothing policy.
Here, give me Bohdie’s clothes and go relax.
I saw Axel stomping around earlier, looking all broody and sexy.
” She waggled her eyebrows, leaving no doubt in my mind what she was suggesting.
I couldn’t help but blush. I wished. Last night, he’d brought me to a stunning orgasm, pressed up against a wall in a dark corner of the den. There were a lot of dark corners, and he seemed determined to make me come in every single one. But still, no sex.
“Thanks, Fresca. I’m late to see my guys and Vance anyway.” I passed her the clothes and started jogging down the hall. “Good luck with the sugared-up five-year-olds,” I called over my shoulder.
I reached the simple door of Vance’s office and paused to catch my breath. Shoulders back, chin raised, I tried to walk in exuding all the confidence of a queen, rather than a bedraggled waitress who’d just been bested by a bunch of five-year-olds.
“Hello, pretty girl,” Franklin called as soon as I walked through the door.
Then he and Talbot did their favorite kind of hug, squishing me between them like a sandwich.
Mostly because they just enjoyed hugging, but there was also a perverse part of them that liked needling my lions.
I didn’t mind. I enjoyed how openly affectionate the bears were.
There was nothing sexual in the action for Franklin and Talbot. They were just wreaking havoc.
They hugged me tightly until one of my lions growled low and deep, giving them the exact response they wanted. Pavlov’s lions.
I walked over and sat on Axel’s lap, and while his outward expression didn’t change, I could feel the near soundless rumble of a purr through his chest.
“So, we are still happy with the plan?” Vance asked, and I scoffed.
Happy would be an overstatement. The plan was deceptively—or some would say stupidly—simple.
Franklin and Talbot would pretend to bring me and Bohdie to Bob for the reward.
We’d chosen the twins because, well, they were twins.
People expected them to be together. They would be far less threatening than Vance and Axel together.
It was easy to overlook the fact that they were separate, and deadly, people.
The twins would say that they’d found us hiding in the mountains near the den, a truth that would prevent the Regent from smelling the acrid scent of their lies.
They’d demand their money in cash, and when Bob failed to produce a million dollars in cash—because no one in their right mind would have that much cash lying around—the twins would cause a scene.
While they were raising hell, which was basically their job description, Vance would use a sniper rifle to take Bob out from a distance. Which was apparently in his skillset. They’d gotten really sketchy when I asked what they all did for a living.
When Bob was down, my guys would swoop in and clean up Bob’s main enforcer, Angus, and any other low-level lions he’d coerced into becoming enforcers.
We’d purposefully left Billy out of the plan.
Not because I didn’t trust him—although he was still practically a stranger to me—but because I was sure there was a leak in his organization.
Archer had been right; the odds of Billy and the mercs arriving on the same day couldn’t have been a coincidence.
My lions, of course, hated this plan. Not because it was bad, but because they’d been relegated from saviors to clean-up crew.
Axel particularly hated having no control over anything in the situation.
He had to place all his trust in Vance and the bears not double-crossing us and just handing Bohdie over.
After all, a million dollars was a cool chunk of money.
Axel didn’t like Bohdie and I being on the frontline at all, but we needed to get Bob out into a particular part of the compound where Vance could get a clear shot from a disturbingly long distance away.
“No,” Axel growled, but didn’t offer up any further protest. Archer scowled on the other side of him. I missed my cheeky, smiling Archer, but since the attack, he’d been stoic and serious. He was basically Axel times ten.
Wyatt, who had always been the voice of reason, sighed. “Yes. Let’s do this.”
“Tomorrow?” Vance asked.
“Tomorrow.” The word tasted like ash in my mouth and made my heart pound. This time tomorrow, we’d either be free or dead.
I hated this. I hated that Bohdie was even here.
No matter how I spun this to him, and to myself, about how there would be no danger, it felt wrong.
I consoled myself by eliciting a promise from the twins as soon as we were in the car and away from the ears of my overprotective guys.
At the first sign of trouble, Talbot would take Bohdie and get him to my guys. They would protect him.
It had been hard leaving Axel, Archer and Wyatt behind. They were mine, and I’d gotten so damn lucky. They hadn’t pressed me to choose between them. They just seemed content to love me, and be loved by me, in whatever form they could get.
Maybe we should have run. We’d have each other. We could be happy, right?
I looked over at Bohdie, his big eyes taking in the passing trees of what used to be my hometown through bulletproof windows.
He would never be safe. He’d never be able to make friends, or go to school, or take a damn selfie.
Five small minutes of courage, and then we could have a lifetime of freedom for all of us.
Bohdie, for his part, didn’t seem to care about the undercurrent of danger—perhaps because my false bravado was contagious, or perhaps because he’d inherited Kara’s lack of fear.
“Are we there yet?” he asked, turning his big yellow eyes to me.
“Soon,” I replied, falsely upbeat, before stage-whispering, “Talbot drives like a little old lady.”
Franklin laughed. “She’s not wrong,” he ribbed, as Talbot crawled the large SUV around the corner.
We pulled up to Kara’s old estate gate. Her house had once sat high on the hill, looking like a castle above the lowly subjects of Chatsville.
I’d always wondered why Kara didn’t want to spend more time there, a princess in her tower, but she’d hated being at home, preferring to spend time at the guys’ tiny apartment for social misfits.
Now I knew it was because the mansion was a monument to power and control, where misogyny and brutality were king. All that was left of that grand manor was a single blackened wall.
“Okay, so one more time, sweetheart. What are we going to do?”
Bohdie just looked bored. “We are gonna get outta the car. I’m gonna look scared and stand behind you.”
“What next?” I prompted.
“Then when you say so, I gotta climb back in the car and lock all the doors until someone I know opens them.”
I nodded. That was the best I could do. The rest was up to fate.
We hadn’t gone fifteen feet through the gates when we were stopped by a guard. “That’s Angus. Showtime,” Franklin whispered, cracking the window an inch.
“You aren’t welcome here, bear,” Angus spat. His face was scarred, and his biceps were bigger than my head.
Franklin sighed. “Take a deep breath there, Pussy. Smell that?” I watched Angus scent the air and go still. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. We want to talk to your Regent. And we want our reward. In cash.”
Angus peered through the gap, his dead eyes assessing me before settling on Bohdie. “Drive through.”
Franklin laughed, like Bob’s right-hand man had made a joke.
“So you can take them, put us down, and keep the money? Sure, Kitty Cat, that’s gonna happen.
You get the Regent and our money down here, or we bounce.
Maybe we’ll keep the girl and cub. She’s pretty cute, you know what I mean? ” He gave a lascivious wink.
I forced a whimper. Geez, these guys flirted even in life-or-death situations.
Angus scowled and pulled out a phone. I couldn’t hear what he said, even with my shifter hearing, but I kept still. Franklin wound up the window, and we sat silently, waiting. It was the longest five minutes of my life.
When a shiny black SUV pulled up nose to nose with ours, I clenched my hands to control the shaking. Smiling brightly at Bohdie, I gave him a tight squeeze in my arms. Franklin and Talbot slid from the car first, standing either side of their open doors.
The back door of the other SUV opened, and a man stepped out. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this congenial-looking older man. He was handsome too, if you chased the silver foxes… or silver lions.
But then, if I’d been smart, I’d have known he would have been attractive. I mean, Billy was hot as hell. But part of me had expected Bob’s outside to reflect his rotten core.
He swaggered up to Franklin and Talbot, smiling with Hollywood-white teeth. A man named Bob shouldn’t have such perfect teeth. He spoke to the twins, and they all laughed like old friends. Doubt worked into my mind, but I pushed it away. I had to trust people other than myself.
Franklin meandered back to the car and pulled open the door. “Get out,” he growled menacingly, though he angled himself so Bob and his goons couldn’t see, and winked at Bohdie with a smile.
Acting hesitant, I slid from the car, pulling Bohdie out behind me. He poked his head around my back just enough that Bob could see, then ducked out of sight again, just like we’d planned. God, he was such a good kid.
Bob appraised me, looking me up and down with an expression that made a cold shiver of fear run down my spine.
“Good. And you’re throwing in an unmated lioness as a bonus?
” He laughed, a cold, rough sound. “It’s like all my Christmases have come at once.
I always enjoy this next part, though. Especially when people think they can come into my house and fool me. ”
Pulling a gun from the back of his jeans, he shot Franklin in the chest.
I stood frozen between one thudding heartbeat and the next. What had just happened?
But my new predator instincts kicked in, pushing Bohdie into the car and slamming the door shut.
“Talbot!” I screamed, shaking him from his own stunned state where he was staring at his twin, who was lying bleeding on the ground.
He let out a completely inhuman roar that echoed off the trees.
The guys would hear that. They would come.
“Talbot!” I screamed again, reminding him of his promise to me.
He had to get Bohdie out. I could have driven, but if it came to a fight, my lioness couldn’t protect Bohdie against a fully-grown lion male.
But I would try and protect Franklin. I ran forward, and some peripheral part of me acknowledged the feeling of gravel hitting my skin as Talbot threw our SUV into reverse, the crack of them ramming through the gates.
The men all ran toward me, and I snarled a lion’s growl at Bob from my human throat.
Everything that happened next happened in the space of a few heartbeats.
Beat one, the back of Bob’s skull exploded over the windscreen of his SUV. This I was expecting, but I hadn’t been prepared for the visceral nature of someone getting their brains blown out, or the fact that the scent of blood made my lioness go crazy.
Beat two, I leaped toward Franklin, shifting into a lion to crouch protectively over his body.
I let out an angry growl at Bob’s bodyguards, but they aimed their guns toward the trees, peppering the woods with bullets, hoping to get the unseen assailant.
Unfortunately for them, he was a mile away in a tree, picking them off one by one.
I rested my huge paw against the wound in Franklin’s chest, counting every beat of his heart. It was getting slower. The guys needed to hurry.
There were now only two guards left, and one aimed his gun down at me. I hunkered down over Franklin’s body and roared. “Fuck you, bitch,” the guy spat, completely unoriginally.
I curled my lip in disdain. If this was how I was going to go out, it seemed only fitting.
Bohdie’s birth mother had given her life for him, and I would gladly do the same.
He was safe now. He could have a proper childhood with other lion shifters.
He wouldn’t have to be on the run. Closing my eyes, I waited for the crack of a bullet leaving the gun.
But there was only silence. And then a hard body slammed into mine.
I wanted to struggle, to fight for a microsecond, before my nose picked up the familiar scent of my mates.
The scent of Axel surrounded me. I opened my eyes and stared at his enormous dark lion.
So damn majestic. Then I looked past him to Wyatt tearing the last gunman to shreds. Literally.
Axel shifted back, wrapping me in his arms. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Archer’s got Bohdie. It’s going to be all right now.”
It wasn’t until I felt the dampness on his chest, that I looked down and realized I’d changed back too. And that I was crying.