Sebastian woke up with a wordless instinct, heart beating faster in his chest, hairs on the back of his neck, along his arms, all fully erect. Something was wrong. In the darkness of the room, he looked around and spotted Charlotte; they’d both fallen asleep after managing to have sex one more time—one more glorious time—and she was still there, curled up on her side, the blanket tucked around her body up to her breasts. Sebastian watched her for a moment in the dim light coming through the window: she was asleep, completely at ease, unaware of whatever it was that had alerted him.
Knowing that Charlotte was safe, he carefully climbed out of bed and listened intently. If it wasn’t something about the woman sharing his bed, it had to be something outside of the house—something he’d heard in his sleep that had brought him out of it with the animal instinct right on top of his consciousness. Sebastian slunk towards the window silently, straining his preternaturally acute hearing to catch the slightest hint of what it could be.
After a few moments, just when he would have turned back and climbed into bed with Charlotte, Sebastian caught the tell-tale flash of moonlight on tawny fur, a gleam—a movement in the woods around his house. Sebastian stared intently through his window, waiting for another glimpse, waiting to see who it was. It was one of his Pride, that much he was almost certain of; but whether it was a friend—someone who knew about Charlotte—or someone who might be better off not knowing about her, was important to find out.
Sebastian waited, stepped back from the window in the hopes that whoever he had seen wouldn’t notice him. After a few moments, he knew that he wasn’t going to catch sight of the lion again; he would have to go out and see who was staking out his place. Whoever it is wanted me to see them, and then wanted me to know that I wasn’t going to see them again unless I came out.
That suggested that it was someone who didn’t already know about Charlotte—if it were one of the four responsible for abducting her, or Melissa, they would have, he thought, just made their presence known. But he’d heard something that had pulled him out of a deep sleep, he was certain; and he’d seen a flash of a lion, just enough for his animal instincts to know what he’d seen, without knowing whom.
Sebastian considered putting on a pair of pants, at least, but if it was one of his own Pride’s members, it wouldn’t make a difference, and he might—possibly—need to be able to change into his leonine form. As he carefully, quietly, padded out of the room and toward the front door of his house, Sebastian thought that it might even be someone else entirely; it might be someone who was affiliated with the group who had tried to take part of the Pride’s territory, looking for information or revenge.
Protective impulses danced through his brain, and Sebastian pushed down the urge to growl as he carefully opened the front door. He closed it behind him, but didn’t lock it, and stepped out into the yard surrounding his house. Sebastian tilted his head back, scenting the air, closing his eyes to make the most of the tenuous traces winding through the area around him. He caught the scent of a rabbit, of a vole; a deer, maybe a few hours earlier, on its way to the stream nearby before it found somewhere to be for the evening. The scent of a bear made him wrinkle his nose.
And then, cutting through the other scents, Sebastian caught it: a lion, female. One of the Pride. He compared it against the individual scents he knew belonging to members of his Pride until the combination of human and animal consciousness identified it: Alexis. Shit. She didn’t know about Charlotte; she hadn’t said anything against him, but he hadn’t wanted her to find out about Charlotte so soon. Would there be anything that Alexis could detect? The men had carried the non-shifter into his house without letting her touch the ground, and she hadn’t left the house since then. It had only been two days.
Sebastian took a deep breath and followed the scent into the woods, ignoring the few mosquitoes that sampled his blood. He needed to know what Alexis wanted with him. She’ll smell a stranger on me—that can’t be helped. Maybe she can be trusted to know about Charlotte. But even as he had the thought, Sebastian balked at it. He wanted to wait until he had something substantive to tell the Pride, and something about Alexis’ appearance made Sebastian certain that he didn’t particularly want to share the secret with her.
He found the lioness in a slight clearing a few yards away from his house, sprawled lazily on a still-warm rock. “Obviously, you wanted to see me,” Sebastian said to the lion. “You might as well change back and tell me what it is.”
Sebastian watched as the air shimmered around the female. After a few heartbeats, the fur began to recede, and the triangular face changed its shape, the muzzle retreating and softening into a nose, the teeth shortening, the whiskers disappearing. Within a matter of a few moments, the lioness had transformed into Alexis: fully naked, she sat on the rock, her auburn hair gleaming dully in the filtered moonlight, her milky skin almost translucent-looking. “What’s going on with us, Seb?”
“Us?” Sebastian raised an eyebrow.
“I thought that after what happened with Lily…”
Sebastian shook his head at the memory. He and Lily had almost come to an agreement before the battle that had taken so many of the members of the Pride out. She had been one of the few fertile women left in the Pride, and Sebastian had considered it his responsibility to mate with her.
“I need to mate with someone who has a chance of carrying a child, Alexis,” Sebastian told the woman gently. Alexis had tried—all the women in the Pride did, when they reached the age of eighteen—and hadn’t been able to conceive.
“I’ve heard a rumor that you’re looking into alternate ways to save the Pride,” Alexis said defiantly.
“That doesn’t change, that it’s my responsibility to contribute to the Pride’s continued existence,” Sebastian said, more firmly. He let the low, Alpha growl infiltrate his voice, hoping he could have it out with the woman and be done in less than ten minutes, to go back to Charlotte. Even if he had no intention of mating the Recessive, Sebastian didn’t question the impulse in his mind that said that it would be a bad idea—or at least unwanted—for him to leave her alone for too long a period of time.
“Are you seeking someone outside of the Pride? Like an Alpha’s daughter from another community?”
Sebastian shook his head. “Not that it’s any of your business, Alexis, but I haven’t made any plans to take a mate as yet,” Sebastian said. “I am looking into a solution for the fertility problem for our Pride, but I’m still in the early stages.”
Alexis peered at him closely, her dark eyes black as pitch in the gloom. “Are you sure about that? You can include me in your planning, Seb.”
“Right now, it’s strictly on me,” Sebastian said. “But I have no interest in mating anyone right now—and if I did, I would need to choose someone who’s fertile.” It was harsh, but Sebastian was sure that Alexis could understand; as the Alpha of the Pride, it was his responsibility—more than anyone else in the community—to make sure that he had a child. Once he had one, he could mate who he wanted, but he’d never been interested in Alexis, and he didn’t think that even Charlotte’s eventual baby would change that.
“If you call someone from another Pride, you should give us a head’s up,” Alexis said warningly.
“Are you trying to tell me how to be the Alpha of this Pride? Do you want to try and challenge me, Alexis? Because right now I’m not in the mood. I’ll call the Pride out here and get it over with.”
“I smell a stranger on you,” Alexis said. She made a growling, whining noise. “If you’re relieving stress and wasting time with some female, why can’t it be me?”
“Alexis, if you want a mate, find someone,” Sebastian said. “I don’t have time to deal with this tonight. I’m tired and I need to get a good start on the Pride meeting tomorrow morning.”
“Don’t betray us, Seb,” Alexis said. Sebastian could see the shimmering in the air around her that told him that she’d called upon the change deep in her body, and that in a few moments, he’d see a lioness once more. Hopefully—with any luck—he would watch her slink off into the darkness and a few moments later he could safely return to Charlotte. The non-shifter need never know about the night’s conference, and he could greet her in a few more hours, maybe with more sex.
But he heard more movement in the woods around him; there was company. Sebastian decided that the situation called for him to make sure Alexis wasn’t stirring the pot with someone else in the Pride, starting rumors that would get drama started between him and someone else. He sank to the ground and called upon the change, letting it flow through his body unobstructed. After the partial change during the day, he loved the feeling of his bones shifting and changing all through his body.
Within a few moments, his vision changed and the night-world around him came alive in a way that never happened when he was still fully human in form. Sebastian followed the scent that Alexis had left behind; it was much stronger to his leonine nose than it had been to his human nose, easy to trail through the woods.
Sebastian followed the trail, and while he caught the scent of another lion—a male—it was his cousin, Les. That was safe; and he was fairly certain, based on where it converged with Alexis’ scent trail, that his cousin had met with the female, and was leading her away, maybe to distract her for a few hours until they both turned in.
Sebastian didn’t change back when he turned toward the house once more. He loped through the woods, delighting in the feeling of the wind through his fur and mane, the soft, loamy soil under his paws, the smells and sounds of the evening hours. That was one thing that he would never be able to explain to Charlotte: the joy of simply being in his other form, of existing as a lion with the capacity for some human thought.
He came to a stop in his front yard and gave one final, detailed sniff to the air. Alexis hadn’t passed back by, and he couldn’t catch any trace of Charlotte in the area—of course, inside the house would be different, and if he had to meet with the Pride within the next several days, or any of the members of the Pride, they would smell her on him; he would have to explain.
Sebastian almost hesitated when it came time to change back into his human form, knowing that he couldn’t risk Charlotte being awake inside the house, and her seeing him transform. He sighed and then called upon the change once more, groaning as it rippled through him, shattering and remaking his bones. It wasn’t painful, precisely, but it was so uncomfortable that the first several times that a shifter transformed, they generally mistook it for pain. Sebastian had.
Finally, once the last of the fur had disappeared and his face felt normal, Sebastian rose to his feet and walked the last few steps to his front door. He could hear things in the woods, but all of them seemed utterly normal. Sebastian looked around quickly and then opened the door to step back into his home, to get back to Charlotte’s side in the bed. With any luck, she wouldn’t have any idea of what he’d done; she wouldn’t even know that there had been something that he could have done.
Sebastian reflected for a moment that he had—with the best of intentions—made his life infinitely more complicated not just by kidnapping Charlotte, but by the fact of doing it in secrecy, the fact that she wasn’t just a woman from another Pride but someone who would never, ever transform.
If I can provide a child for the Pride, someone to spread the genome, then everything will be fine, he thought firmly. Sebastian locked the door behind him and walked through the house, and carefully didn’t consider why it felt so good to be going back to the woman in his bed; better than it had felt with any other woman he’d been with. Almost unconsciously, he reminded himself that he wasn’t there to mate her—he was just there to get a child from her. He would free her afterward, and both of them could go back to their real lives.