Ashton felt anger grip his chest. Ronan always treated him like an idiot. He and his brother were different, but Ronan believed his way was the only way. Ever since Ashton was a kid and Ronan was a teenager, Ronan looked down on him. He thought he was a screw up, just because he liked to have a good time. Ronan was always so serious. Ashton didn’t think that was any way to live.

“Get on,” he said to Isabella as he climbed on his bike and turned on the motor. She climbed on behind him and gripped his waist. He could sense her heart beating fast as a hummingbird’s wings. Hit the garage door opener on his bike and they sped out onto the road.

“Where are we going?” she asked him, grabbing his waist more tightly.

“You’ll see.”

He sped up the street and pulled onto the highway headed south. They hurried down the road and turned onto the highway east, through the mountains. The spring flowers bloomed in vibrant colors as the morning sun spread out over the hillsides. After climbing high into the coastal mountains, Ashton found the right turn off that would take him deeper into the woods.

The road turned into gravel and finally dead-ended. He cut his motor and helped Isabella get off. “Are we lost?” she asked as he pushed the bike into the bushes.

“Nope.” He covered his bike with brush and began to pull off his clothes. Isabella’s eyes swept over his body as he stuffed his things in the backpack. She grinned up at her and winked. He could smell her desire for him, even in human form. The little vampire wanted him as badly as he wanted her. Running from her psycho vampire daddy hadn’t changed that. “Here,” he said, handing her the backpack. “Put this on.”

He shifted, contorting into a massive mountain lion. He nodded for her to get on his back. She climbed on his back, and he bounded into the forest. The trail to Ronan’s cabin was long and winding through the dense forest, but he knew it like the back of his hand. He’d been to his brother’s cabin dozens of times in the years Ronan lived in the woods. Ashton had been the only person to ever visit him.

The twenty-mile trek was easy for Ashton in his lion form. The bracing smell of pine and fir filled his nose as he hurried through the underbrush. He could scent deer and wild boar, and the smell of a native lion, hiding from the massive shifter intruding in her woods.

Isabella’s hands gripped his pelt, pinching sharply. She had sharp nails that seemed to grow sharper the longer she rode on his back. When they got to the cabin, he would catch them a meal to cook in Ronan’s old cabin. Ashton barely ever hunted anymore, but he enjoyed it when he did.

Finally, the sight of the log cabin broke through the trees. Ashton stopped near the front door, and Isabella slid from his back. She looked around, a frown etched deeply in her face. “We’re staying here?” she asked, irritated.

He shifted and pulled the backpack from her back and pulled out his clothing. “Yep. Safest place I could think of on short notice.”

“Seriously, Ashton. I could be halfway to Mexico by now. I was thinking a nice little luxury resort on the beach somewhere with fruity drinks with umbrellas in them. Not some backwoods cabin. This place sucks. Does it even have electricity?”

“No. Believe me. I’d rather go to Mexico and stay in that luxury resort, but I think your father knows your tricks and your taste. Don’t you think he’d find you immediately?”

“I can hide. I have cash accounts he can’t trace under pseudonyms he doesn’t know about.”

“Let’s just lay low for a few days, Isabella.”

“I don’t even know why you’re helping me.” She crossed her arms and dug in her heels as Ashton stood in the doorway of the tiny cabin. She looked so cute when she pouted.

He crossed the space between them and stood close to her, putting his arms around her waist. He looked deeply into her caramel eyes and frowned. She didn’t understand how he felt. Maybe he didn’t even understand himself. He needed to help her. He needed her to be safe.

The lion inside him rumbled. He wanted to take her right then and there and show her exactly why he was helping her.

She is my mate.

Ashton took a sharp breath in. The vampire? A mate?  No. That couldn’t be true. His kind and hers were sworn enemies. At the very least there was a centuries old taboo against mating with one. Humans sure. Other types of shifters, okay. Even witches weren’t that off limits. But a vampire? No way.

She slid her long finger along his jaw and smiled up at him. She could sense his anxiety. A small smirk played on her lips.

“Come inside,” he said, taking her hand. She followed him into the dusty cabin. Everything was still there. Ronan had left the place tidy and livable for the most part. The months of vacancy had left their mark in half an inch of dust over everything.

She looked around and sighed. “I’ve slept in worse places. There was the year I slept buried underground in a coffin,” she said, waving her hand to the side.

“You slept in a coffin, underground, for a year?” he asked her in disbelief.

“I was depressed,” she said, moving into the small space. She sat down on the bed and tested the mattress. “Not bad,” she said, looking at Ashton meaningfully.

A slow smile moved across his lips. He knew what she was thinking and his inner lion roared to oblige her. Mate, it roared. Ashton gritted his teeth and put his palms to his temples, turning away.

When this had just been a fling, it was fine. When he’d decided to help the woman out a sense of duty, that was all good. He liked the danger and excitement. But now that his lion screamed for him to mate the blood-sucking vixen, Ashton was not okay with that.

“I’ll be right back,” Ashton said, turning away. “I’m going to hunt something for us to eat.”

“Fine. I’ll find something to do, all by myself.”

Ashton smirked at her and strode out the door to strip off his clothes. He hunched over into the shift and then bounded into the woods. His senses were on overdrive. The lion’s mind pushed to go back to the cabin and use his teeth to remove the vampire woman’s clothing before licking every inch of her curvy body with his wet, raspy tongue.

The human inside him pushed his lion on, forcing him to focus on the hunt. He picked up the scent of a buck not far off in the woods. Ashton fell into the hunt. His cat moved through the trees as if in an altered stated. Every sense heightened as he stalked his prey.

He saw the buck grazing in a small clearing below a rock outcropping. With silent feet, he pounced on the rocks and scrambled upward. He crouched, waiting for the right moment.

He could sense the buck’s heartbeat, smell its blood coursing through its veins. He licked his lips, still downwind from the animal. Pulling the scent of his future meal in through his mouth, it twisted down his throat and sank in his belly.

The buck looked up, startled by a far off sound. It turned its head, turning its jugular vein toward Ashton’s crouching lion. The cat pounced, falling full force onto the mature deer. His teeth sank deep into the buck’s neck. It gave a high-pitched yell until Ashton cut it off with his strong bite.

Slowly the blood of his kill ran over his tongue, its life flowing out of its body and into Ashton’s mouth. It had been so long since he’d hunted. The arousal of the vampire and her ever-present desire for blood had awakened a need in him. He reveled in the kill, rubbing his mouth on the bleeding wound.

I will bring my kill back to my mate, the lion decided. Ashton began to pull the deer through the woods, back to the cabin and Isabella.

When he’d dragged it all way back to the front door, he shifted and wiped his face from the animal’s blood. “Isabella,” he called through the front door, looking inside. She had dusted out the entire room, but was nowhere to be seen.

“Out here,” she called. Ashton followed the sound of her voice and found her around the side of the cabin. She had the quilt over a clothesline and was beating the dust out with a stick. She looked so cute in her pajama bottoms and tank top, doing this old-fashioned domestic work. He had to smile as he watched her breasts heave under her thin black shirt. 

“I brought a kill back. Do you want some…blood before I butcher it?”

She pursed her lips as she considered. She crossed the yard and stood right against him, her full breasts pressing at his upper abdomen.

She ran her hands over his naked body, up his chest and down his abs, her nails grazing his skin. “I know whose blood I would much prefer to cold deer blood.”

He growled. The lion inside him wanted to let her drink from him. The hunt had given him vitality. Ashton’s human mind was still not okay with this whole thing. No matter how much he liked Isabella, mating a vampire was a bad idea.