In Heat

Chapter 1 Shawn thrust into her, spearing into her warmth with a precision that astonished he, considering this was only the second time in their nearly two decade long acquaintance that they’d slept together. Granted, not a lot of sleeping was going on, but MaryEllen Forsythe-Drew was quite content to embrace the euphemism. Making love? Fucking? Screwing? Nothing fit. Nothing matched the exquisite joy flooding her as her long-time bodyguard sank into her. She’d been claimed by all her men now. The thought was a resolution at the back of her mind. One that brought comfort as well as confusion. All her life, she’d thought herself human. Had believed herself to be ‘normal’. Then, she’d met a man. A man who could turn into a Lion. And that Lion wasn’t just any ordinary mofo, but the leader of his Pride. A powerful Pride at that. She was used to power. Her family was railroad rich, and she was the heiress to those billions. But this kind of power was something that was new to her. Shawn swiveled his hips, twisting them left and then right in a way that did very interesting things to her p***y. She clamped down on him with a gasp, her head rearing back as delight whispered through her. “More! I need more,” she gasped, clutching at his ass and keeping him deep. He kept on retreating, leaving her empty. She’d been empty for so long, she never wanted to be empty ever again. With a shudder, he complied. Keeping his c**k deep in her p***y, he rocked back and forth. The thrusts were barely there, he hardly moved, but Goddess, they felt good. They rubbed places inside her that needed caressing. That had her brow puckering, her face contorting with the delicious agony of what he was making her feel. Then, he bent down and pressed his lips to her throat. He was human, not an ounce of Shifter blood in him ‒ unlike her. But when his teeth clamped down around a fleshy part of her throat, she came. The glory of it whirled through her like a dervish at a fire dance. The adrenaline that spat through her system had her gasping and clutching harder at him. With her body she refused to let him go. For so long she’d watched him from afar. He’d been her guard for so long that in many ways he’d been the one staying power in her life. The one constant. Now, they were morphing into something neither of them particularly understood. But, they’d learn it all together. They would come to terms with this whole crazy new world as a team. He shuddered against her, hips bucking, teeth snarling as his own orgasm hit him. She savored the internal quivers of her womb as his c*m sank into her hungry, quivering tissues. The thought would have disturbed her a handful of days before. Now, they fit. She needed more than just the s*x. She needed the claiming. She needed that every single time. A shiver had her trembling underneath him, and as he flopped down against her, his face sweaty, he pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Did I hurt you?” “No. It was perfect. You were perfect,” she whispered, meaning it, every single damn word. “Been waiting for that, for you, for a long time, baby girl.” She gulped. The term of endearment was silly, but he was from the South. It fit, and for him to call her anything other than her nickname, El, meant a lot. More than she could even say if she were being honest. “I—” Before she could continue, a loud blast boomed in the near distance. Before he’d been her guard, he’d been a soldier. And the explosion had Shawn rearing up onto his knees then scampering off the bed. Before she knew what he was about, he was pulling on clothes and yelling at her, “Stay the f**k here, El!” She stared at him in a daze. This was LA. The Hills, even. One of the richest residential spots in the country, not downtown Baghdad. What she heard couldn’t have been a bomb. Could it? She gulped. It just couldn’t have been. She eyed her limp, satiated form, and quickly scampered off the bed. Dragging the sheet off the mattress, she covered herself in its voluminous folds, toga style, and headed to the window. What she saw made her realize this was no joke. Nor a prank or practical trick. This was... real. Smoke blossomed and bloomed, swelling overhead in a mushroom of disaster. Fires licked at vehicles as their alarms beeped through the fury of what had just happened. She could see the shells of two vehicles, but the cavalcade of cars contained five or six in total. Six cars? Hell, did the President travel with that many? She ran a hand through her hair, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Trouble was, last night she’d attended a special event within the Pride and her whole life had come tumbling down around her ankles. Trying to figure out what the hell was on the schedule was a little hard when she was completely at a loss. Blowing out a breath, she tried to reason what was happening, then a thought occurred to her. Marc had only just left her bedroom a handful of minutes ago. But what about Trip? What about Ryan? She gulped. They weren’t... They couldn’t be out there. Not in one of the cars. Not in the blast. Before she could stop it, before she could even control her vocal chords, a howl escaped her. It was a sound that came from her, and therefore one that shouldn’t have frightened the s**t out of her. But that howl had every single hair on her body standing to attention until, suddenly, El wasn’t standing there, but a Panther. Bright green eyes with a slit pupil surveyed the calamitous state of a bedroom that had seen a rough couple of hours overnight. Though the creature saw, it didn’t process. Couldn’t process. The beast could think of one thing, and one thing only... Her mates. Their safety. As well as their current location. Since they weren’t right by the big cat’s damn side, they were too f*****g far away. A roar of agony escaped Ryan as his skin burned, peeling away as the fire gorging his clothes licked at his flesh. The explosion had shot him up into the air and thrown him fifty feet away. Only the fact he was a cat Shifter had him standing here... well, crouching here. Half bent over, he gritted his teeth and fought the agonizing sensations suffocating him as his weak arms patted at the flames licking his skin. Grateful when the last of his strength beat out the fire, he hobbled toward a tree and nearly collapsed as he leaned against it, using it for support as he tried to breathe, tried not to let the burns covering him cripple him and send him shaking to his knees. That last part was harder than he could have even imagined. He knew he needed to shift; knew that the longer he stayed in this form, the longer he’d be in pain. But the huge energy drain of the shift would be dangerous in itself. What he could handle when he was fighting fit and what he could handle now were two very different things. His Lion, stuck inside and understanding why, still chomped at the bit. It wanted out, it wanted to scent s**t, wanted to figure out what the f**k had gone on here and who had left their markers. The Lion didn’t need to be involved in that. Other members of the Pride would investigate exactly what had happened here, but the betrayal stung. Somebody had accessed their compound and had planted devices on their cars. It had to be someone in the Pride. Someone with easy access all year round. They kept too complete logs of the people who came and went through the large gates that El, his mate, said reminded her of the ones at Disneyworld. A design choice that was, according to her, spoiled by the fact that the Pride House, his seat as Pride Leader, looked like a happy Addams’s Family mansion. He shuddered at the thought of her, and knew he had to be grateful he was alive if not kicking for her benefit. She was his everything. She always had been, even when he hadn’t known who she was and had just had the ethereal notion of his mate, but she always would be. That was the way of it for them. A scent, a glance, a knowing. It could take a moment or a handful of minutes, but the binding that came was concrete. Set into stone so strong nothing could shake its foundations. Well, nothing save a bomb blast. His face, covered in sweat and dirt and soot, contorted as he peered down at himself. He was in one piece, miraculously enough, which meant the explosion had been closer to the center of the cavalcade than where he’d been scenting at the front. When he’d climbed into his limo at the back, he’d scented something funny. Something that had jerked at his attention, pulling at him until he got out to investigate. The blast had tossed him far, but what about Trip? His Triad brother? For decades now, he, Trip, and Marc had been united in their search for the one woman who would complete them. They’d found her a handful of weeks ago. She’d brought with her more troubles than a nest teeming with Black Widows, but he wouldn’t change her for the world. She was his. His to love, his to cherish, his to protect. And he’d failed her. Danger had sneaked onto his compound, onto his territory, and he’d almost been killed in the blast. She might have been had she been scheduled to leave the compound with him today. Anger and rage entwined, some aimed at himself, part aimed at the culprit who wouldn’t be unknown for long. Those emotions helped him surge forward, had him staggering toward the wreckage of what had been six very expensive SUVs and a limo. His Pride stared at the bomb blast, their horror and rage focused there as the females stood back out of the way, letting the males quench the fire and drag the injured out of the cars to safety. Their terror and anger were almost palpable, and he could taste the united fury over the scorched air he was inhaling. But when they saw him, they screamed. A big cat’s scream. Joy and anger, rage and defiance—not at him, but whoever had dared to do this to him. To them. To their people. They strengthened him with their support and bolstered his shaking legs as he made it to the still smoking cars. In the distance, the sounds of sirens made themselves known. He winced, grimacing at the knowledge the human authorities were coming. He was in no fit state to handle them, either. Marc would have to step up. Either him or Adam. Marc was the brother the Goddess had chosen for him. They shared no blood, but shared a mate. Adam was his litter brother. They shared heritage, and were close—he was Ryan’s PA. As his brain flickered through the c*****e that was a blown out SUV that near as dammit glowed with heat, and the bodies on the floor, two things happened. One, he saw Trip on the ground. His eyes closed, his mouth slack. Two, he heard the piercing, rage-filled roar of a devastated Panther. Marc watched in awe as the Panther slipped through the crowds to her destination, Trip. The Lions who saw her immediately thought her a threat. The Pantera were their foe, after all. With a bomb having just exploded on Pride territory, it wasn’t that much of a leap to figure the Pantera could have been involved in this attack. Unlike the Pride, the Pantera were... well, they weren’t exactly legal and above board. The Pride existed solely in a guise of respectability. They were wealthy as a result. They had businesses all over the nation, but many housed within the state of California. They owned restaurants and properties. Had staff on the pay roll that numbered the thousands. The Pantera had... very little that wasn’t earned through begging, stealing, or borrowing. Well, borrowing if that meant not giving the s**t back you were loaned. When she reached Trip’s side, the stasis into which he’d fallen shimmered away. Her rage and terror clawed at Marc’s insides, jerked him to attention, and he rushed to her, knowing that her focus on Trip would only exacerbate the Pride’s fear that she was an enemy. On this compound, there were four people who the Pride would die to protect. Ryan, Marc, El, and Trip. Trip was one of the most powerful men in their world, and a Panther was snuffling at his side, sniffing and licking him, trying to clean him up. He hadn’t been hurt in the blast, but as Marc rushed toward her, he had to stagger. His legs weren’t working as well as they should be. Shock? Maybe even repercussions of the blast. He knew his damn ears were ringing, so why wouldn’t his bones feel like they’d been whizzed up in a blender, too? “She’s safe!” he roared when he approached. His roar was loud enough that it went over the ruckus and chaos surrounding them. Men were still hosing down the burned out cars, others were trying to grab the few bodies that were left in vehicles. His people had reacted faster than he himself had, which would forever be to Marc’s shame, however, he could have lost... He swallowed. Maybe he had. Trip was so still. So burned up. Was he breathing? Marc couldn’t see. If he was, it was faint. The motion of his lungs was barely there. But then, his eyes weren’t working properly. They were blurred with tears and all he could see was the rage on his peoples’ faces as they approached the Panther, disgust emanating from their pores, fear and hatred, too. God, she’d just outed herself to their Pride in the worst possible way. El would be shunned, he knew. Especially if the Pantera were behind this unprovoked attack. A shout had his head jerking toward the source of the noise, and he saw Shawn, a male who wasn’t his Triad brother but who also was, thanks to the Mother’s divine intervention, coordinating the men who were trying to put out the flames. He was a soldier, and Marc had seen Shawn’s record. He’d dealt with worse s**t than this in his years in the CUBS. The acronym might have sounded cutesy, but what the Shifter troops did was anyone’s guess. It was like saying a SEAL was all heart, not a mean son of a b***h when it came down to it in a firefight. Marc shrugged off the stupid thoughts as he staggered to Trip’s side. The Panther reared back and bared her teeth at him, but then she saw him, and stopped. In her eyes, he saw El. The human was trapped within the Panther form, and Marc knew how true that was. Last night, she’d shifted for the first time. They hadn’t even known she was a damn Shifter, and jealousy had turned her into the animal standing here today. She had no control over the cat. Control was learned from childhood, from the moment of the first shift. Now, she had a feral cat, one who’d been denied and tucked away for decades, and whose mates were under attack. Jesus, could the day get any more complicated? Adam skidded to a halt at his side. “What the f**k’s going on, Marc?” he asked, backing up when El bared her teeth at him too. “It’s El. She’s a Panther Shifter.” Adam swore under his breath, but the people around them heard Marc’s declaration, and gossip soon spread. Marc ignored it to swipe at his eyes and to clear his vision. He saw Trip was, in fact, breathing, and relief made him feel nauseated. “We need to get him to shift.” Adam nodded, then swore again. The sound of his thudding footprints backing off caught Marc’s attention, and he turned to see where Ryan’s PA was going. Seeing Ryan, torn up, burnt, his hair near as dammit singed off his f*****g head had Marc’s eyes widening in horror. But the sound that El made? It was a scream. A pure Panther scream that had the hair at the back of his neck jolting to attention. The beast’s head swiveled between her two downed mates, but Ryan made it easier on her by collapsing against Adam’s side and letting his brother haul him over to where Trip lay too still on the ground. “We need to make them shift,” Marc repeated, and Ryan grunted. “I don’t know if I can.” Adam gnawed at his cheek. “Do you think it’s true what they say about a Pantera female?” Marc blinked, scouring his memory for what ‘they’ said about Panther Shifter females. When nothing was forthcoming, he turned to Adam and demanded, “What? I’ve heard nothing about extra gifts?” Adam shrugged. “Don’t know if it’s true or not, but when a female shifts, her mates can get caught up in it.” “Why would that happen?” If anything, in their culture it was the other way around. A Lion shifting could trigger a weaker, more submissive Lioness into a shift. But Ryan and Trip were dominant to their core, and El, though she had a spine of steel, was more submissive than dominant, Marc thought. “A mating thing.” Adam sighed. “Please don’t remember this conversation later on.” Ryan gritted out, “For f**k’s sake, Adam, Trip could be dying here. Tell us what’s going on.” “I had an affair with a Panther female back in college. She used to shift when she was horny, and it would trigger my change.” “Did you mount her like that?” Marc asked, and despite the seriousness of the situation, curled his lip in revulsion at the thought. He’d have taken El in a blink of the eye if she’d been a Lioness. But cross-species mating was never advisable. Even though they were both cats, it just wasn’t... right. Adam scowled. “No. I didn’t. That’s why it was a problem. She’d get horny and we’d shift, then we’d have to figure out how to get back to human form to fuck.” Ryan gasped, “Don’t make me laugh, Adam. Please. Don’t. It hurts to breathe never mind laugh.” Adam swore. “You bastard, you’re never going to let me live this down, are you?” “If it saves Trip, I might,” he bit off, a gasp of pain escaping his lips a second later. “And my ass, too. f**k, this hurts.” Adam swallowed, then admitted, “If she shifts now, then reverts back to this form, it should work.” “She reverted back last night. That didn’t cause us to leap on her,” Marc pointed out. “No. It’s not the shift back to human that does it. It’s changing to cat form. They mate like that because then she’ll get pregnant with Panthers, not babies, and will give birth in cat form. They say it creates a stronger Shifter.” Ryan caught Marc’s eye, and he had to flinch at the sight of his Triad brother. His face was one whole mass of raw, gaping wounds. Swallowing back the horror that filled him, the terror and the worry, he murmured, “It took us ages last night to get her back to human form. She’s feral now. There’s no getting her out of it.” Ryan clenched his jaw, admitting he was right. “I can’t do this alone,” he admitted softly. “I’m strong, but the blast...” He didn’t have to say another word. Marc could see that only Ryan’s strength as a Lion and a man had kept him alive. The fact he was walking around, even if it was more of a stagger and a hobble, was a testament to the man’s power. He’d seen Ryan exit his limo to check out the vehicle at the front of the cavalcade. He’d seen the blast go off in the third one, had watched as Ryan was torn through the air, a fireball blast shooting him down. He’d have chased after him, should have gone to help, but he’d been frozen. The sight of the explosion, the idea he might have lost his two Triad brothers had frozen him in place. Turned him to goddamn stone. He sucked in a shaky breath, then grabbed a hold of the Panther’s great head. Her fur was silky and it nearly soaked up the daylight around her it was so black. Her eyes were green, and the pupils were the feline version of pin pricks. She was terrified. Not for herself, not for the fact she was stuck in this form, but for her males. The thought bolstered him. He was the only one who could do this. He had to make sure he didn’t waste a moment longer. Those moments could have Trip’s life slipping further away into the next plane. Dammit, Trip was too young to go to the Mother. He flicked her ears as he held her head and repeated, “El, I know you’re in there, baby. I know you can hear me.” No response. But her eyes were glued to his. “I need you to listen. We need your magick, sweetheart. We need you to shift back. We need you here. It will help us save Trip.” The great head swiveled to stare at the male on the floor. His sense of smell was f****d up with the soot in the air, and the essence of whatever the fucker had used to blow up their cavalcade, but he could scent her horror at his words. “We need you to shift.” Ryan whispered, “Please, baby. We need you to be strong for us.” That was a huge ask, and Marc and Ryan both knew how unfair it was. She was the Shifter equivalent of a toddler. She’d been introduced to this aspect of her life in a goddamn trial by fire, but then, what about El’s life hadn’t been like that? She was the heiress to a family fortune all because her granddad hadn’t liked most of his relatives, and had lumped her in a trust fund that made her public enemy number one in her family circle. She’d been kidnapped, had dealt with more abduction attempts than beggared belief, and only God and Shawn knew what else his poor mate had suffered through... “Be strong for us, El. Please, sweetheart. We need you.” The Panther’s great hand tilted to the side, and Marc did the only thing he could do. He shifted too.