Lion's Love And Honor: The Pride of Sierra Leandra (Paranormal Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page B

he’d ever been given.
    Why don’t YOU distract her for ME, tough guy?
    He drew a deep breath and rose at the same time, and he saw Ali shift her weight and move toward the sudden noise behind her. Time seemed to slow dramatically; he saw each movement dragged out over space as he ran, so that by the time she locked eyes with him and moved to raise her knife, he had covered ten feet of space between them. Charlie raised his right hand, feeling the red haze of his beast swell in his body as he shifted a deep brown paw bigger than Ali’s human head and sent it toward her neck with his black claws outstretched. He saw the confusion register in her face the moment before Natalie’s paw burst through her chest from behind, shattering her ribcage and taking out a chunk of her beating heart while Ali’s mouth was still open in shock. Charlie closed the space and closed his shifted paw around the flesh of her throat, crushing her vertebrae between the pads of his fingers as her body crumpled to the floor.
    Her body lay in a ruined mess between them, a scarlet pool rapidly growing around her broken form. Charlie kept looking from her head—nearly completely separated from her body—and her chest, which was mostly dripping from Natalie’s hand. He felt numb, but Natalie’s shoulders were beginning to shake. He stepped over Ali’s body and unshifted his hand, reaching for her to pull her into his arms.
    When he locked his arms around her, he finally realized she was laughing.
    “What’s so funny?” he asked uncertainly. All he could feel was an impossible mixture of panic and relief.
    “Nothing,” Natalie admitted, and he felt tears soak through the fabric of his shirt. “I just…love you so much.” He had a feeling she wanted to say more, but it was lost in her uncontrollable giggling.
    Charlie smiled and gingerly kissed the top of her blood-soaked head. I love you, too.

****
     
    In the days that followed, the human residents of Sierra Leandra all returned from mysterious vacations or snapped out of a light trance, and they couldn’t seem to agree on what had caused all the damage in town. A lot of it was quickly repaired with the help of the remaining lions, and no one had to explain away any of the painful absences caused by the rash of violence the Golden Claws had wrought—because none of the humans noticed a thing.
    “They’ve been dosing the humans with some kind of drug so they would stay docile and out of the way, or at least open to suggestion,” a recovered Evan said in their newly cleaned up living room days after the lions conducted a private investigation. “Once the leader was gone, all the henchmen moved out real quick. It actually seems like they don’t have it down to an exact science, drugging people. I woke up like five minutes after Ali and the big guy left.” He shivered, and Ariel slipped an arm around his neck and kissed his cheek. They had been so close to death, and had escaped based on mostly luck. They both seemed to need more contact after the ordeal; Charlie supposed they all did.
    “So we’re safe?” Ariel asked again. It was a question their community was asking a lot—when they dropped by to check on Natalie, when Charlie visited his missing pridemate’s families, at funeral and wakes; it was the one question that no one tired of hearing an affirmative answer to every few moments.
    “We’re safe,” Natalie said. “And even better, we’re growing stronger. Susan Doyle can predict things a few hours into the future, Charlie and I can communicate with our minds, and Ariel, you can lift almost five hundred pounds now.”
    Ariel blushed, her flaming red hair accentuating the scarlet of her cheeks. “Yeah. But I don’t know how useful it’ll be for everyone. Not like your healing,” she muttered. “It’s useful being able to share healing powers.”
    “You’re far more useful than you give yourself credit for,” Natalie assured her best friend, smiling warmly at