HAPTER 16
Sebastian limped slightly as he followed the scent trail that told him that not only did Jack stand at the end of it, but also the woman carrying his child. He’d been ambushed in the woods, attacked not just by Julia, but also Jack, Mark, Kevin, and Alexis, and he thought—though he couldn’t be sure—a few other members of the Pride. They’d circled him, and Jack and Mark had attacked, with Kevin and Julia flanking.
They’d gone for disabling wounds rather than killing ones, which made the human part of Sebastian’s consciousness wonder what their long-range game plan was. To make him take Alexis as a mate against his will? To keep him captive long enough to enact some other plan? There was no way to know, at least not until he had them all rounded up and not until he was able to force them to reassume their human forms.
He didn’t know why Charlotte was in the woods. The scent he caught of Melissa, along with Julia a few yards away from where Sebastian knew Jack and Charlotte stood, was easier to understand. But Charlotte wasn’t a shifter—she was one-natured, and not particularly strong for her race. As he approached, Sebastian hung back for a few moments, trying to understand—both in his lion consciousness and his human mind—what was happening.
He growled low in his throat at the thought of anyone—especially a rogue member of his Pride—threatening the woman carrying his child. Rage rolled through him in waves, and despite his injuries, all that Sebastian could think of was ripping Jack’s throat out, tasting his blood, and watching him die.
Sebastian let out a roar, throwing his head back and letting it bellow into the air. It was probably not a wise choice—after all, the members of the Pride that he’d escaped only moments before were still pursuing him. But he advanced, moving towards where he could smell both Jack and Charlotte, determined to defend the mother of his child.
Everything was so much simpler with the lion consciousness dominating; Sebastian knew that he had to protect Charlotte, he knew that she was indisputably his and that anyone who threatened her would have him to contend with. Sebastian’s ears prickled as he tried to take in more information, to give himself the advantage over Jack.
He’d been too harried when the attack had first happened to land any real injuries on Alexis’ cousin, but he’d harmed Mark and Kevin in the melee before the group of rogues had been able to disable him temporarily. He picked out the presence of Jack in the brush ahead of him and launched himself forward, ignoring the pain in his haunches, ignoring the strain in his back where claws had raked him before, to land on the lion threatening the woman he loved.
Sebastian didn’t balk at the all-too-human realization that he loved Charlotte; in simplified terms that his lion-mind comprised, it was a basic equation. He had to protect the woman carrying his child, he had to love her. There was something deeper than just the fact of her pregnancy, something to do with the way she’d smelled from the first time he’d encountered her, but the fact was simply that he had to have her, he had to protect her, he had to keep her from any threat and anyone else who might try and take her. He could sort out the human complications later.
Jack knew what he was doing an instant before Sebastian landed on him, and tried to twist free of the pounce before Sebastian could make it. Sebastian felt his claws digging into the other male’s back, and growled deep in his chest, knocking Jack down and tumbling to the ground himself in the process. Everything—briefly—became a blur as the imperative to kill and survive took over, and Sebastian ignored the pain of counter-attacks from his target as he battled with Jack almost mindlessly, biting and scratching and pummeling. He tried to lunge for Jack’s throat, intent on sinking his teeth in and ripping it open, spilling the other man’s blood onto the ground and killing him.
He couldn’t get at Jack’s throat, but as he and the other lion grappled and tumbled, he managed to get a good bite into the ragged mane on the back of the other man’s neck. He bit in as hard as he could, knowing that with the protective fur it would be difficult to make the kind of damage he needed to end the battle, but maybe—maybe—he could disable Jack for long enough to deal a lethal blow.
He heard the sound of a scream, and in his moment’s distraction, Jack knocked him off, sending him falling to the ground and wheeling around to attempt to pounce on him. Sebastian recovered, rising up onto his hind legs to pummel the other male away from him. He looked around and saw that Charlotte was cornered, surrounded by two lionesses—both of them injured, bleeding already. There didn’t seem to be a mark on Charlotte yet, but Sebastian knew that if he wanted to keep that situation, he would need to finish Jack quickly.
His focus sharpened to a pinpoint, and Sebastian blocked out even the potential to hear cries from Charlotte for the few moments it would take him—he hoped—to end Jack. He drew on an animal savagery that he’d never known before, and bit and clawed and swiped with everything he possessed, ignoring everything in the world except for the goal of killing the man who had threatened his mate.
By the time he felt the blood gush into his mouth, felt Jack go rigid as the fatal wound shocked him, Sebastian almost couldn’t come out of the bloodlust, the red-seeing, all-consuming rage. He wheeled around, leaving the other lion to die, and saw that Charlotte was coated from hand to elbow in blood, with the two lionesses still circling her. He saw the gun on the ground, the knife in her hand, and hoped against hope that she hadn’t been injured, that the blood wasn’t hers.
He lunged at Julia, letting out another bellowing, raging roar, and heard the noises of other lions approaching the group of them at speed, but that wasn’t important. What was important was removing the threat to Charlotte.
After a few heartbeats, chaos—complete and total chaos—descended, and Sebastian lost himself in the middle of a pitched battle with the members of his Pride who had rushed to the sound of his roar, to the scent of his blood and Melissa and Charlotte in the middle of the woods.
He tried to keep straight who was his friend and who was his foe, but all he could do is position himself between Charlotte and the rest of the seething mass of lions that surrounded them, picking off anyone who lunged in his direction and hers. For her own part, Charlotte stabbed and swiped with the knife she’d taken, somehow managing to never cut or stab him, but landing good blows on the other people that tried to come at them both.
Sebastian fought as hard as he could, throwing himself completely into his mate’s defense, savagely biting and clawing anyone who came close enough to represent a threat. His personal pride was no longer even a concern—he was only interested in making sure that Charlotte was all right. He heard the sounds of growling, full-throated cries of leonine distress and anger, and at one point, Sebastian was almost certain that he was surrounded by the entire Pride, though they were not all arrayed against him; there were more than a few people fighting off those that he knew were attempting to get at him and at Charlotte.
All at once everything seemed to stop, and Sebastian leaned against Charlotte, almost bowling her over, but moving to support her as she sank down onto the ground. She was coated with blood, but his nose told him that most of it belonged to lions; only a few scratches showed on her exposed skin.
Sebastian took in the scene around him, the human consciousness coming back into control bit by bit. Dead and dying lion forms scattered the brushy ground, all of them—quick glances told him—members of the opposition, with the exception of a few people that Sebastian hadn’t been sure about.
He hoped, in the part of his mind still human-dominated, that they’d been opponents too, and not victims of friendly attack. He turned to look at Charlotte; she had a shocked expression on her face, but underneath it there was cold steel in her eyes. He needed to talk to her, needed to appeal to the human she was as the human he could be.
Sebastian willed the change through his body. He was exhausted, he could feel the pain radiating from the injuries he’d sustained, but he had bigger problems in his life at the moment; the rest of the issues could wait until he’d assured himself that Charlotte was both mentally and physically okay.
He groaned as he felt his bones changing, as he felt the injuries on his body shift and grow and shrink as the fur retreated and everything about his shape and composition changed. Sebastian could feel the pain even more intensely as he became more and more human, but he knew he had to finish the transformation, and he knew that he had to talk to Charlotte before he could do anything else. He had to be sure.
As human consciousness overcame leonine thinking, Sebastian pulled himself up onto his knees and looked at Charlotte, watching him with a mixture of fear and shock and interest. “Are you afraid of me?” He heard the hoarseness in his own voice from the roaring and growling, and coughed.
“Not you, exactly, but I’m in a lot of fear right now,” Charlotte admitted.
Sebastian slowly rose to his feet and tentatively reached for her. “You’re not seriously hurt, are you?”
She shook her head, barely meeting his gaze. “It was just intensely…” her lips twisted into a grimace. “It was an experience I’d rather not have again in my life.”
“So we won’t make a hunter of you,” Sebastian said, smiling slightly. “No cramps, no injuries to your abdomen or back?”
“I’ve got a scratch I think, but it’s high up,” Charlotte said, turning to show him her back. He saw the shredded clothing at shoulder-height, the blood staining the fabric, but it didn’t look like a serious injury, and it wasn’t somewhere that would affect her pregnancy.
Around him, the other members of the Pride took on their human shapes one by one, groaning and some of them whining while still in their lion forms as their changes progressed, as they reacted to their injuries. Acting on impulse, Sebastian kissed Charlotte hungrily, almost desperately, holding her body close to his. “We need to have a private discussion as soon as we can be private,” he told her. “For right now…”
“You need to deal with the community,” Charlotte said, nodding slowly. “I get it.”
Even the people that Sebastian knew supported him had intent gazes on him, on Charlotte. It was obvious that even though the people who opposed him seemed to be almost to a one defeated—most of them dead outright—that something in the community had changed.
They’d lost more people; the females they’d lost had been infertile, so in terms of the community’s well-being the loss wasn’t excessive, but it was still a schism, and he would have to deal with the fallout of that.
Sebastian turned towards the rest of the Pride. “We need to talk about what just happened,” he said firmly, drawing on a strength he hadn’t known he possessed.
“What just happened is that we lost almost half the Pride that we had,” one of the females—Chelsea—said harshly.
“They were attacking the Alpha, acting outside of the Pride’s bylaws to do it, engaging in a conspiracy,” Les countered. “It’s our responsibility to take them on by his side. Or don’t you support him?”
“Let’s talk about that,” another member of Sebastian’s decimated Pride said. “We support Sebastian—I think we all can say that with authority. None of us would have gone against other members of the Pride if we didn’t. But supporting him doesn’t mean that every choice he’s made is right.”
“If you have an issue with my choices, you should bring that to me,” Sebastian said. “Right now, tell me what problems you have with my leadership.” A little less than a dozen gazes turned toward Charlotte.
“We don’t like that you acted without telling us,” one of the males, Liam, said. “I understand why you chose to make a baby with a Recessive, but the way you went about it—secrecy, kidnapping, all that—was a shitty choice.”
“It was the only choice I thought I had at the time,” Sebastian said.
“There’s also the fact that this is a woman who isn’t one of us, but knows what we are,” one of the few remaining females, Naomi, chimed in. A murmur of assent to that point rippled through the Pride.
“She will not out us,” Sebastian said.
“We need more than her word—or yours—for that,” Naomi told him. “We need to know that she’s bound to the Pride, especially now.”
“Bound to the Pride?” Charlotte’s voice behind him sounded almost frightened.
“She’s got your child, but if she’s just going to hand it off to you at the end and go back to her life, there’s nothing to stop her from telling anyone that she was kidnapped, that she was forced to bear a child against her will,” Liam said.
Next to him, Travis nodded.
“We have a contract,” Sebastian countered.
“But that doesn’t mean anything if she talks, it just means that you could sue her for it afterward. We’d already take the damage by the time that happened,” Travis said.
“What do you propose? I’m open to suggestions, but I don’t necessarily agree to abide by them.” The few remaining females of the Pride looked at each other warily; even Melissa didn’t seem to be entirely certain of what to say. “Tell me,” Sebastian said, infusing his voice with as much dominance—as much control and mastery—as he could.
“Either you mate her, or you come against all of us,” Liam said. “You violated the Pride’s trust, and if you can’t make that right, then we will choose a new Alpha.”
Sebastian stared at him—and then at everyone else in his community—in shock. They couldn’t know that he had started to think, almost had himself convinced, that he needed to tell Charlotte about the need to mate her. None in the Pride—save for maybe, on the outside, Melissa—could possibly know that he had the driving need to make Charlotte his own, to take her and claim her. It was insane; he would have thought that the Pride would have driven him out rather than accepting, much less pushing him to take, a non-shifter mate. But he would have to have that conversation with Charlotte, and they would both have to discuss what that meant to both of them.
“What about the rest of the plan?”
Les looked at Liam and shrugged. “I don’t think any of us is in a position right now to say that anything that would increase our numbers is a bad idea,” Les said. There was a moment’s hesitation and then a susurrus of assent.
“No more kidnapping; everyone we bring in has to be willing, has to volunteer,” Naomi said. “If they agree to just be surrogate mothers, that’s fine—we can foster out the young—but no one is going to be abducted for this anymore.”
“It opens us up to discovery either way,” Melissa pointed out.
“But if we can get volunteers, we could make a better arrangement,” Naomi insisted. “Even at that, we could keep things as quiet as possible.”
“As someone representative of the group in question, maybe I could chime in here?” Sebastian resisted the urge to smile at Charlotte’s wry tone of voice. “I know I’m not a member of this Pride, but if you’re talking about Recessives—women like me—then I feel like I’m kind of qualified to say something.”
There was tension in the group, but the men and women both nodded slightly after a few moments of tension, acknowledging the rightness of what she’d said.
“Tell us what you think, but we’re not obligated to agree,” Liam said.
“I think you should screen for people who would be willing to accept this, and I think you should do it as up-front as possible.” Charlotte looked briefly anxious, but she took a breath and Sebastian smelled the freshening of her pheromones as she calmed. “I think you should wait until later in the negotiations to explain that part, but don’t outright lie about it. Just…” she shrugged. “Just a suggestion.”
“We’ll consider it,” Sebastian said.
“We need a decision from you, Alpha,” Naomi said firmly.
“The decision has to be made between me and Charlotte,” Sebastian countered. “And we are not going to make it a public discussion. We are going to talk about this privately, and I will inform the Pride of my choice by tomorrow.” That was—he knew—assuming that he and Charlotte would come to an agreement that quickly, but he had to give his people something. He had to be seen to go along with their communal demand, or he would lose his right to lead immediately, instead of upon deliberation.
“For now, we all need to go back to our homes, get cleaned up, take care of our wounds.” He looked around the group firmly, letting a low, almost subliminal growl roll through his chest and throat. The rest of the Pride started to slink away, backing up and only looking away from him as they retreated. Sebastian waited until he and Charlotte were—for all intents and purposes—alone, and then sagged. “Let’s get back and talk about this twist in the plot,” he told her.