A couple hours later, Nandi and Isisa arrived with fresh clothes for both of us and lots of worries. Ian brought them to the garage where I’d settled down with Esteban on an old couch.

Nandi approached first with slow and measured steps, studying him with wide eyes. “Oh my gosh, look at him. He’s beautiful.”

“But how?” Isisa asked. She hung back in the doorway. “We are not like werewolves. It isn’t contagious.”

“Hell if I know.”

Esteban raised his head from my lap and yawned. He licked his muzzle then met her gaze, gold on gold, his eyes as bright and vibrant as theirs. Nandi moved forward and held out her hand. He sniffed it then nudged his nose under her palm. She was won over in an instant, of course, enthralled by his powerful presence. Isisa, on the other hand, remained where she was.

“Hey,” I said to her in a soft voice, crossing the garage to meet her. “It’s still him. Nothing’s changed.”

Nandi had settled on the floor to hug him, resting her face against his mane and breathing him in. Esteban placed one paw against her back and bumped their cheeks together. “He’s still ours.”

I slipped an arm around Isisa. She leaned against my side while we watched Esteban and Nandi play on the floor. He was tender with her, soft paws and no claws, no touch of his teeth to her skin or aggressive growls. The male posturing and dominant behavior never arose. He rolled onto his back and let her pin him on the concrete.

Nandi pressed a hand against his paw and brushed her thumb over one of the individual pads. “He’s gentle. Not like what I expected.”

“He is,” I agreed, “and right now, he’s going through something we’ve never experienced. He’s going to need us once he comes out of this and returns to his normal body. Need our support and our love until he can work his way through why this happened.”

Isisa nodded. She swallowed and hung back a step, staring across the short distance between the door and Esteban. At last, she moved forward and pulled off her sweatshirt. “Then we should join him, yes?”

Nandi’s eyes brightened. “Good idea. Let’s take him outside for a hunt.”

Between the three of us, Esteban didn’t have a chance of getting away again.

---

Later, after we’d had our fill of venison and rabbit, Leigh stretched three blankets over the garage floor and provided us with extra pillows. If Ian knew she’d been in there with us—with Esteban while his human awareness remained unconfirmed—he would have lost it.

“It’ll be fine. I’m not worried about him. He’s just a big kitty, aren’t you, Esteban?”

Bless her loving, maternal heart.

Despite our worries, Esteban didn’t move from the couch. We slept together in a big heap on the floor, cuddled together with blankets and all the comforts Leigh had provided.

When I awakened, Nandi and Isisa had already left and the aroma of bacon permeated the garage since it was located just off the kitchen. I spent a while with my head against his powerful chest, listening to the rhythm of his heart and easy breathing until my stomach rumbled.

I crawled away first and began to dress while he gazed at me with half-lidded eyes. “What? You know, if you would become human again, there’d be a delicious breakfast for you too. A breakfast with cooked food. You love bacon.” I tugged on a shirt and knelt beside my sleepy lion again to cuddle him for a few last moments. The warmth of him soaked through my clothes. Perfect.

The door cracked open and Nadir stepped inside.

“Ah, good. You’re awake.”

“Yeah. I was just on my way out to join you guys.”

“Uh-huh.”

Lazily, I stroked a hand through Esteban’s mane. “Did you need something or are you just here to interrupt my snuggles?”

“I came to ask if you’d tried to appeal to his human side again yet. You know, talk with him and see if you can stir some memories of being himself. I was going to give it a shot.”

I gestured toward Esteban and stepped aside. “Be my guest.”

Nadir took a slow approach before sitting on the ground at Esteban’s level, leaning forward with his arms on his knees. “Hey, buddy, I really need you to snap outta this. Being lazy isn’t you. You gotta shake this off and get back to work. Your brother’s all worried, but we made some good excuses for why no one can contact you.”

Esteban’s ears pricked, but his head didn’t lift from his massive paws.

“Do you remember the first time you saw Sasha at my parents’ place? You couldn’t stop looking at her out of the window. I told you to talk to her, but you were like, ‘nah, man. I’m probably not her type. She looks expensive.’”

I snapped my attention toward Nadir. “He said that?”

“Oh yeah.” He grinned. “Then after I introduced you as a doctor, I caught him in the attic and asked what he thought of you. He said ‘totally beyond my pay grade’ and nothing I said could convince him you’d be open to a date.”

Laughing, I slipped down to join Nadir on the ground and placed both of my arms around Esteban. “I was never above your pay grade. But right now, I want to feel your arms around me again. I want you to hug me, and I want you to tell me how much you love me, so I can tell you the same.”

I kissed the tip of his nose and closed my eyes, basking in the warmth of the mane tickling my throat. He made another one of his body vibrating rumbles, a sound that was pure heaven every time I heard it.

“He does love you. This happening to him, it’s proof of that. We just need you to become you again, man.”

The return to his human body happened faster than the transition from two legs to four. One moment I had a hold on his thick pelt, the next, it was a bare back. Long after Esteban’s tawny fur became warm skin, his chin didn’t move from my shoulder. Strong arms enfolded me within a tight embrace, squeezing the air from me, drawing me close, his body shuddering from the experience of returning from a shift for the first time.

Running my fingers up and down his back, I traced hard muscles and coaxed the tension from him until his grip eventually loosened. He didn’t speak. A floorboard creaked, and a door gently shut. Nadir had left.

“Are you okay?”

He squeezed me again and shook his head.

“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.” I couldn’t remember what my first shift had been like. I’d been a child, and many of us predators learned to shift at young ages, often taking our first tumble onto four legs around the time we learned to walk in our human bodies. It was a learned behavior, a talent we mimicked from our parents if we witnessed them changing often enough.

My father had been the one to teach my brother and me. If I searched deep into my memories, a vague recollection of his mane and the scent of savannah grass returned to me. And his blue eyes. The blue eyes my brother and I had inherited. But I couldn’t remember that first time with the clarity I wanted.

Shifting for the first time rarely ever happened without a parent’s guidance, which made Esteban, Ian’s old Air Force friend, and the others like them anomalies in our community. Had he learned as a child, his shifter parent, or even both of them would have taught him to transition from beast to child, and child to beast, with the fluidity of rising or sitting in a chair.

I’d have to do it instead. We had time. All the time in the world. I kissed his throat, finding that little thump of his pulse, the scent of his lion still clinging to his warm skin.

Our embrace finally ended as Esteban sat back on his heels. He glanced down at his newly healed shoulder and the dried blood under his nails. There was another gunshot scar across his forearm. Both wounds were probably still tender under the surface, but eventually they would fade until only vague hints of discoloration remained. “I remember… I remember being shot by one of those guys. It’s not a dream, is it?”

“No. You transformed, baby.”

“I was… What the hell happened to me? How did that happen?”

Before I could answer, he twisted to the side and retched. He dry-heaved, but anything he’d ingested didn’t come back up, too many hours passed since the mauling.

“Take it easy. Just breathe, baby.” His knotted back muscles trembled beneath my palm.

“Where am I?”

“Ian’s place. You met him at the Halloween party, remember?”

“Yeah and once before that, too, I think. You and Nadir worked with him before… I came and hunted on his property with my family and friends once.”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t freak out?”

“Not exactly. You see, our whole team is made up of shifters. That’s why I called them when this happened to you.”

With my help, he sat up again and dragged his hands through his hair, eyes closed. “I don’t even remember what happened really. We were heading inside and—” His eyes flew open. “That robber grabbed you. Two guys had busted in.”

“Four, actually, but we handled them.”

“You mean I…”

“The stress and emotions of the attack triggered your shift.”

His eyes closed again, and he shuddered. “Shift.”

Sympathy for his plight moved me to scoot closer and wrap my arms around him. “Ian said it’s not unheard of to grow up unaware. Without other shifters around to teach them or anything to trigger the change, a person goes through life completely unaware of their animal side.”

“What did I… what did I do? What am I?”

I pulled back, his face cupped between my palms, and held his gaze. “A lion. The most amazingly gorgeous lion I’ve ever laid my eyes on.”

“What did I do?” he asked again, his voice barely a whisper.

“You protected me.”

“Sasha, please don’t try and sugarcoat this. What did I do?”

“You mauled two of them. I dropped the other two. Ian helped with the fallout from that. He’s also making sure your house is cleaned up.”

“I don’t care about that. Are you okay?” Worry for himself and his home were set aside, and he searched my body for signs of harm. “Did they hurt you?”

“I’m fine. They had no idea what they were dealing with. Plus, they underestimated you.”

“Who were they?” He stopped his fruitless searching but kept his hands on my hips. “They knew us. They mentioned something…” His brow furrowed as he tried to remember.

“Thugs. I don’t know exactly who, yet. Ian should be getting that info today from his contacts. You feeling up to seeing the others?”

“Yeah, I guess. Who all’s here?”

A thought occurred to me. “Take a deep breath in through your nose and tell me what you smell.”

“What?”

“You’re a shifter. Even in our human form we have heightened senses. So, what do you smell out there? Who do you smell?”

“I smell motor oil because we’re in a goddamned garage.”

I rolled my eyes at him this time. “Beyond that. What else do you smell?”

Resigned to put up with me, he closed his eyes and drew in a few slow, deep breaths through his nose. “I smell… your shampoo. And that musky perfume you girls always wear.”

I blinked. Had he always been able to smell it on us? “That’s not perfume. That’s just the way we smell.”

He cracked open one eye. “In that case, why couldn’t you tell I was a, um, shifter?”

“Because you’ve never been out of your human shape, so you don’t have anything of your animal clinging to you. Now what else? Try to sniff out the others.”

“I dunno. Fish, maybe? There’s sort of a salty, fishy undertone to the place. Like a clean freshwater lake though.”

“That would be Ian. He’s an eagle shifter and loves flying over to Lake Livingston to catch a fish or two. With a little practice, you’ll learn to differentiate scents and identify people, but for now, that’s enough.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek.

“Now what?”

“Now I get you some clothes and you get a shower. Go ahead and wrap up in the blanket so we can go inside.”

I knocked on the door between the kitchen and garage then peered inside to see if it was clear of toddlers and children. Ian must have rounded everyone up, because the house was silent, but gleeful shrieking drifted in through the kitchen window from outside. With the all clear given, Esteban shuffled in with the blanket wrapped around his waist, and I guided him to the guest bedroom nearby.

We had a lot of ground to cover, and the sooner I had clothes on him, the better.

---

A shower and fresh clothes made a world of difference in how I felt. Isisa and Nandi had brought them from my bedroom in the penthouse.

I’d felt like Prince Akeem from Coming to America, two women in the shower with soapy breasts against my back and chest. More cuddling and hugging than washing went down. If there had been room for another person to squeeze into Ian’s guest shower, Sasha probably would have joined us.

“Coffee?” Nadir offered out a steaming mug as I stepped barefoot into the kitchen.

“Yeah, thanks.”

My ladies sat around a large breakfast table with an open seat between Sasha and Nandi. Isisa was between Nandi and Ian, and they had all gotten a head start on breakfast without me.

Leigh’s warm and inviting smile welcomed me to the table, and then she placed an enormous stack of banana and chocolate chip pancakes in front of me, bathed in maple syrup and covered in a pile of bacon.

“Whoa. Uh, thanks.”

Ian’s wife had the soul of a 1950’s homemaker and a smile twice as bright as the sun. She beamed at me. “No problem. It’s about time you came out of there to eat. You must be starved for something that isn’t so fresh it was running five minutes before you bit into it. How do you like your eggs?”

I raised a forkful of pancake. It was like tasting a buttery slice of sweet heaven. “However you want to make them is fine with me.”

Sasha sipped her tea and gave me a sidelong look. “Don’t be shy around Leigh. Cooking for others must be one of her kinks because the more you order her around in the kitchen, the happier it makes her.”

“Honest truth,” Ian confirmed. “How are you doing, by the way? Feeling good?”

“Scrambled then,” I murmured. Leigh swatted her husband with a dishrag then returned to the stove while the others studied me like a bug under a scope. “I guess. Feeling human again, yeah.”

No one spoke while I ate, a kind of awkward silence falling over the kitchen nook. It persisted even after Leigh returned to set a small dish of scrambled eggs beside my pancakes.

After a couple more bites, I dropped my fork on the half-empty plate and leaned back in the seat, still starved but frustrated by the silence and lack of knowledge. “Are we not going to talk about what the hell happened yesterday?”

Ian offered a repentant smile. “My apologies. I was letting you get some grub in your stomach first. From what my acquaintances and I were able to determine, the thugs who broke into your home are tied to the same losers who picked Sasha up at Club Hysteria.”

Someone had picked Sasha up at Club Hysteria? “Excuse me? When the hell was this?”

Ian’s gaze cut toward Sasha. He stared at her. “You didn’t tell him?”

“I wanted to wait until a good time…”

Nandi groaned into her palm.

I slapped my palms on the table. “Okay, is anyone going to fill me in? What the hell is going on?”

“Leigh and I are going to check on Sophia. She’s a little too quiet for my liking.” Ian abandoned the room in a tactical retreat and pulled his wife with him.

Nandi and Isisa stayed in their seats, but they both looked at Sasha with accusing, know-it-all eyes. Smug eyes. They knew something. Nadir, friend that he was, remained in his place leaning against the counter and occasionally raised his mug for a nonchalant sip of coffee.

Sasha’s gaze dropped to her plate, but only for a moment. Then she looked up, straight into my eyes. “There’s something I haven’t told you about. I’ve been wanting to, but the timing hasn’t ever been right.”

“Tell me what? What have you been keeping from me, Sash?”

Nandi reached under the table and squeezed my knee in support. Isisa rubbed her foot against my calf.

“Before we met, I’d been at the bar. Someone roofied my drink and took me home. Tried to videotape me.”

“Christ.”

“I was fine. I knew what I was getting myself into, and I beat their asses. What we recently learned—what I planned to tell you after dinner yesterday—was that we discovered the Medrano family is behind it.”

“Wait, what? Why—why wouldn’t you tell me about this earlier? Dammit, don’t you know how dangerous they are?”

“Apparently not that dangerous since you were gloating about how well you could handle them!” she shot back at me.

“That’s different!” Furious heat swept into my face. I jumped up from the seat, fuming.

“Look, I had no idea until recently the Medranos were involved.”

“You should have told me.” Fear and anger pulsed through my veins, stirring the beginnings of an insidious tension headache.

“You’re absolutely right. I should have,” Sasha said, her voice quiet. “I’m sorry. I… I didn’t want you to worry, and I was wrong, okay?”

As much as I wanted to stay angry, it was next to impossible when she looked so miserable about her omission. The restless energy that had been building, that same tingling I’d experienced back at home, abated.

“I’ll go tell Ian it’s safe to come back,” Nadir said. He stepped out, leaving us all alone.

I sighed. “Look, I get it. You were trying to protect me, but I’m not someone you need to protect. I’m your equal here, and I want you to trust me.”

“I do trust you.”

“Then don’t treat me like a tender fucking plaything to defend.” The words rushed out before I could bite them back, with more ferocity than intended.

Sasha flinched as if struck. “I’ve never seen you that way.”

For the first time, Nandi and Isisa didn’t speak up, quieting and averting their gazes.

I took a deep breath, letting it fill my lungs before I spoke again. “What am I to you?”

She blinked at me across the table. “Our mate. You know that.”

“Treat me like one. From the start, I’ve had this occasional vibe from you ladies, all three of you—yes, even you Nandi—like I’m a pet to cuddle and fawn over.”

“Esteban—”

“Let me finish.”

Sasha’s shoulders dropped, and she tucked her chin. I hadn’t expected that to work. Isisa’s back had stiffened, and Nandi had her lower lip between her teeth with her gaze lowered to the floor.

“All the time, I watch you three do nice things for each other, but when I try to help or do for you, too, you resist. I know you three have been on your own for years, and you can handle yourselves, but we’re supposed to be in this together. That’s fifty-fifty. That’s not you protecting me, or me saving you. That’s together. And I’d feel this way even if… whatever the hell is happening to me, didn’t happen, and I was still a normal human joe.”

“I’m sorry,” Sasha murmured first.

“No need to be sorry. Just let me share the load.”

Sasha nodded. “I promise.”

“We promise,” Isisa said.

“Nandi?” I reached over and tilted her chin up, hating the glistening tears in her amber eyes—but I had to be firm, had to make them understand.

“You’ve never been a plaything. I promise,” she whispered.

Of the three women, Nandi was the least guilty of treating me like a fragile human. I hadn’t felt like a two-legged Simba, or anything like that, but there’d been a noticeable difference from the way they behaved with each other.

Maybe shifting would help with that.

Maybe it was meant to be.

After kissing Nandi’s pouting lips, I leaned close enough to squeeze Isisa’s thigh. “Thank you.” She relaxed at once, the tension bled from her body, and her eyes brightened.

“Safe to come in?” Nadir peeked around the corner.

With the weight off my chest, Leigh’s delicious breakfast regained its appeal, and I was fucking ravenous again, unable to wait another second before digging into the enormous pile of bacon. “Yeah, we’re good,” I muttered around a mouthful.

He and Ian stepped in the room and retook their seats at the table.

“Let’s pick this up where we left off. Why did they break into my house instead of getting her somewhere else?”

“Your neighborhood is a remote place with few witnesses, is my guess,” Nadir said. “Why abduct her from a busy Houston street when they can drive an hour north and pluck her off your stoop?”

“That doesn’t make any sense. I’m always at the penthouse with the girls. We don’t go to my house much since I have nosy family nearby.”

Ian ran his fingers through his silver-white hair. “Then it’s possible they were following her from the moment you picked her up from the hospital. I should have had that video destroyed on the same night, but I think the footage of your involvement leaked, and they decided to get you.”

“Get her for what?” Nandi asked, eyes wide in her face.

Sasha’s grim expression didn’t change. “To make me disappear.”

“Is it too late to get rid of it?” Isisa asked.

That startled me. Law-abiding Isisa wanted to wipe evidence? Then again, she had been prepared to murder me and hide my corpse if I turned out to be an asshole to her mates.

“I’d say so.” Ian glanced at Sasha. “Everything vanished from the evidence locker before it could be committed to the database. All of it’s gone like nothing ever happened.”

The moment I edged my chair from the table, Leigh approached and refilled my coffee. The woman had to be a mind reader. I blinked up at her, but she only flashed me a smile and topped off Ian’s cup too.

I sipped from the mug, mulling over the facts as we knew them so far. “Sounds like an inside job.”

“Yeah, I said the same.” Ian frowned. “Obviously, Internal Affairs is going to be all over this shit, but I don’t trust them to handle it. Cops lost the evidence, and it’ll take more than cops to shut them down. With that in mind, I petitioned the governor for his help and authorization to handle it my way.”

When Sasha leaned forward, the sun glinted across her eyes, making them appear lit from behind like twin blue flames. “I want in on it, Ian. It’s personal now. They tried to attack me and hurt Esteban.”

“No,” Nandi and Isisa spoke at once.

Sasha blinked at them. “No?”

Nandi tucked her chin and studied her lap, but Isisa spoke up for both of them. “You said you were done with the special operative gig. You promised you wouldn’t have anything else to do unless Ian needed you.”

“Isisa—”

“No. You said you were finished and that you’d no longer be putting your life in danger anymore. That we could settle and have a family and move on from all of that.”

Shit. As hell threatened to break out between the trio of women, Ian shifted in his seat, trading glances with Nadir like they were going to tear out through the door again. I wanted to run with him.

“This isn’t me going into a warzone. This is me helping shutdown the creeps who have hurt dozens of women.”

Nandi spoke up without lifting her gaze from her lap. “It’s going to involve guns and gangs. That makes it a warzone. An urban one instead.”

I licked my lips and considered the options. Letting Sasha go alone was out of the question, even if I knew she could handle herself. Had handled herself long before I came into her life. “What if I go with her?”

Isisa blinked. “Go with her?”

“I’m a Marine. I may not be in the service anymore, but I served for ten years. Plus, we know I’m not an ordinary human now.” Dragging in a deep breath, I let the smell of them fill my nose and wrap around my mind until I could differentiate Nandi from Isisa, recognizing the hint of coconut and vanilla always clinging to the former. After that, I searched beyond those familiar scents of spice and lioness until the lingering hint of bird feathers reached my senses.

“You don’t know how to control it,” Sasha said, her voice gentle. “It took almost an entire day to get you to shift back.”

“I’ll learn.” Before she could open her mouth again, I slanted a glance at her. “You’ll teach me.”

“So will I,” Nandi said. “I’d feel better then.”

Sasha turned a betrayed look upon her wife. “Nandi—”

“He’s a Marine, and he’s tough,” Nandi continued in my defense. “I think you’re being unfair. You want to go back on your word to us, then you need to take Esteban with you to do whatever it is you special agent people do.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“Neither are you,” Isisa said. “Those are the conditions we’re setting. If you want to return to duty, then you need an additional hand.”

After releasing an exasperated exhale, Sasha turned to Ian. “Give me a hand with this.”

“Their request isn’t unfair, Sasha.”

Her eyes flashed with indignation. Betrayal. “He’s years out of training and doesn’t know how to shift on his own.”

“Right. I understand. But none of us learned over night, and this issue won’t be solved tomorrow. We have time to whip him into fighting shape, and to be honest, Russ has no desire to return to duty. Now that he and Daniela are having their third—”

Some fury faded. Confusion clouded the anger stirred by Ian’s apparent treachery. She blinked. “A third?”

Ian groaned into one hand. “Shit. I wasn’t supposed to say that. I’m not even supposed to know. They want to do a whole party and everything this time around to announce it. Anyway, with a third coming along, Dani’s not comfortable with him taking jobs. We could use someone else.”

“There’s Lyle. Julia gave him her blessing.”

“She did, and I’m thankful. He’s become a great member of the team with training, but we’ve both seen Esteban’s power. He’s fast. Not only that, but he’s stronger than the rest of us. Maybe strong enough to make up for losing Russ. They’re about the same size.” Ian gave me another glance and whistled. “Esteban may be bigger. If he were any larger, we would have needed the van to bring him here.”

I leaned over to take Sasha’s hand in mine. My thumb swept over her knuckles, then I raised her fingers to my lips and kissed the tip of each. “We just had a five-minute conversation about this, Sasha. You can’t protect me, but you can let me work alongside you. Give me a chance to learn.”

“He has plenty of time. This mess with the Medrano family won’t end any time soon. There’s about a hundred of the slimy bastards,” Ian said. “It’ll take a while to gather the evidence we need and to put together an operation. Weeks. Maybe even months.”

With the three of them—the four of us—against her, Sasha slouched in the seat and closed her eyes. Her head tilted back. “Fine,” she finally breathed out. “Fine.”

And with her blessing, I now had a limited amount of time to learn how to become a lion.

Something told me this was going to make thirteen weeks of basic training in the Marines feel like a piece of cake.