Chapter 7
Daniel
As I make my way through the brush, I try to let my senses as a lion carry me away from my thoughts. Some shifters become lost in the animal. Some, like wolves, retain their human intellects but have to fight the wolf nature if they want to act against instinct. Some, like lion shifters, retain their human intellects entirely. Bear shifters never change. Their minds are a blend of human and bear regardless of their form at any given moment. Royal lions retain their human intellect completely. Our senses enhance like our animal but we don’t have any of the standard big cat instincts that tiger and panther shifters do. We’re essentially just human beings in lion form.
With one powerful exception.
We become calm and serene regardless of how we feel before we shift. That’s the beautiful thing. I should point out, by the way, that this isn’t generally well known, the specialty in royals. I should also point out that there is variation in shifters like there is variation in any population. Wolves, in general, will be more inclined to go with instinct once shifted. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some that retain most of their intellect. Similarly, some lose control completely. There are scholars who believe the wolves who lose control completely are responsible for the rise of legends about werewolves. The same can be said about all shifting monster legends.
But the point I’m trying to make about this is that I am calm now. I feel serene. I am, of course, thinking about Makayla. At the beginning of this new relationship with her, the primary emotion was guilt. That is fading. To an extent that is fading because my royalty is far more pronounced as a Lion. There is a definite sense of entitlement that comes along with that. I am Dani?l Ben Adam Joubert Van Jaarsveld, thirteenth of my clan. I am the crown prince. Actually, in the strictest terms, Makayla is my subject. She doesn’t know that of course.
I feel guilty because she is young.
I feel guilty because I know more about her than she knows about herself.
I feel guilty because I imagine my father saying, “I sent you to her to protect her, not to bed her.”
I feel guilty because of how she’s behaving with me now. She’s going out of her way to make sure that all of the superficial needs a man has in a relationship are covered and covered in spades. I can count on an orgasm within a half-hour of arriving at her home unless I arrive and tell her I’m taking her out to dinner or something. Then, I’ll have an orgasm within a half hour of us returning.
A typical day is me showing up and her giving me a blowjob. Then, she sits me down at the table to enjoy the dinner she’s made. Then, she’ll passionately make love to me. In the morning, she’ll wake me with a blowjob.
Damn it, I know this is a strange thing to complain about. I can’t help it. I don’t want her to be what she thinks I want or need. I want her to be Makayla.
All of those things are irrelevant right now. In fact, while I’m a lion, they won’t influence me at all. Already, after only a few minutes of strolling along, the guilt is gone. When I am human again, it will return. However, I have found that it diminishes day by day regardless of a shift. I know that Makayla is exerting a great deal of extra effort to please me and make me want her. She’s trying to find a way to make me unable to imagine life without her. She has all of the training of a modern-day twenty-two-year-old to try to accomplish that.
She doesn’t realize that I already can’t imagine life without her. I couldn’t imagine life without her even before she returned from college. Of course, there is more to it now in that I’d just about resigned myself to not having a romantic relationship with her. I assumed she would have moved on, I think. It was a fair assumption. She’s young and beautiful. She most certainly was pursued in college.
And yet she came home to me.
No. She came home. She came home and we ended up together. I don’t believe her purpose was to come home to me. It doesn’t matter, though. I am soon to be king of all lions, and if I want her, than the girl is mine.
Mine.
Of course, when I shift back, my royalty ebbs a bit like the tide and the adamance of those thoughts disappears. Yes, I want her. Yes, there are those who would defend to the death the right of a royal to make that reason enough. Yes, I want her and she is very happy to be with me. But there still remains the vaguely troubling idea that this is wrong, that I’m failing my father. I’m failing myself. Most importantly, I’m failing my Makayla.
I realize I’ve shifted almost a mile from the car. That means I either need to shift back to lion form or walk as a naked human. Nakedness doesn’t really bother shifters as it does pure humans but I suppose there’s a chance a helicopter or plane might fly overhead. I take a brief moment to consider the odds. I suppose it’s even possible a stray hiker might stumble upon me. I take a breath because the fact that I shifted back so far from the car tells me I’m far more troubled about the situation with Makayla than I thought I was. I stand there for a moment considering that. I think I imagine the sound of an engine in the far, far distance. I think I imagine it but it’s enough to get me moving. I shift back and my human thoughts and doubts recede again.
The texture of the world around me changes. The rustling whispers of the grass and shrubs as the wind caresses them grow louder. The distant murmur of water finding its way through rocks makes its way to me, and I’m almost distracted by a small colony of rabbits. They’re lucky I’ve eaten.
But even with the heightened senses and the calm, my thoughts circle back to Makayla. I think about her laugh, her anger, her strength. I miss it. She’s too busy fucking me left and right and making sure I know how much sex I’ll get from her if I stay with her to be herself. She clings to me but not openly. She just keeps presenting herself as some sort of ecstasy machine and all I need to do is keep showing up to enjoy it.
I get to the car and shift back. I want Mackie back. Don’t get me wrong. It’s impossible to avoid desiring her physically, and it’s very difficult to be unhappy about how willing she is to make orgasms a constant part of my life.
But I want the girl who tempts me back.
I want her strength and her…
See, this is the why I can’t be with her. She’s too easily manipulated. I’m not even manipulating her but she’s manipulated. She’s turned into some kind of a voluntary sex slave in order to keep me close. That’s how desperately she wants us to be together. That’s what I allowed to happen when being with her in the first place.
Things just can’t go on like this. I can’t let them.