Serengeti Storm Read Online Free PDF Page A

present enough to keep his paws firmly planted on the snowy ground.
    When his animal snarled and snapped at his self-imposed tether, Caleb began a slow, prowling circuit around the house. Every fourth paw print was bloody from the bite of sweet Shana’s tender claws. He paced around the house until the track was a circle of red. Guarding. Whether he was keeping her in or keeping others out, he didn’t know. The animal in him didn’t see a difference. It just insisted that he keep prowling.
    So he prowled.
     
     
    Shana woke and stretched, reveling in the pleasure of being in her feline form.
    During her months away from the pride, she’d never had the luxury of sleeping as a lion—or really of living as a cat for more than a few moments of each day, safely behind locked doors and careful not to make any non-human sounds.
    Shana arched her back and rolled to all four paws, pushing up to stand. Just for the joy of it, she filled her lungs and roared, long and loud. She flicked her tail just to feel the air brush through the tuft.
    Tempted though she was to remain feline all day, Shana reluctantly shifted back to human form.
    She quickly pulled a fresh pair of panties out of her pack and pulled them on, along with yesterday’s jeans, bra and tank top. She’d get someone to bring in the rest of her clothes from the jeep today.
    Shana opened the door to her borrowed bungalow—it was only hers temporarily, until she got her own back—and stood looking out over the snowy morning.
    The big storm had only dropped a couple inches of snow on the ranch. Pale morning sunlight was already at work melting it. All signs of the so-called Storm of the Century would be gone by noon. Not far from her—borrowed—front porch, a pair of cubs rolled around in the slushy snow.
    Shana frowned at a rusty brown stain on the porch—matching a similar stain circling her bungalow. She sniffed. Blood.
    Trust Caleb to bleed out on her damn front porch instead of taking five seconds to have someone put a damn bandage on his arm. Goddess forbid he should disobey the Alpha’s command to keep her out of trouble even as long as it took to patch himself up.
    Of course, he wasn’t around now to keep her out of trouble. Shana craned her neck and scented the air just to be safe. But no. No Caleb. Either he was hiding downwind, or he’d run off after making himself sick lying there bleeding on her porch all night long in the cold.
    She had no sympathy for him.
    A sleek young woman appeared around the corner of a nearby bungalow, giving Shana a tentative smile and a sheepish little shrug of her shoulders as she headed in her direction. Shana gritted her teeth. Loralee. She had no sympathy for her either.
    “It’s good to have you back, Shana,” Loralee called, even her voice sounding pathetically subservient.
    Did the girl have no self-respect? Shana appreciated Loralee’s respect for power and dominance, but even doormats like pathetic little Ava demonstrated some spine once in a while.
    “Is it?” Shana asked. Her voice was harsh and she did nothing to moderate the icy thrust of the words.
    Loralee’s wary smile faded a few degrees. “Yes. I missed you.”
    “Sure you did.” Loralee’d missed having someone to fight her battles for her is what Loralee had missed. “Who’s in my bungalow?”
    Loralee’s face froze. She was never much of a quick-thinker and now she was trying desperately to figure out whether Shana was allowed to know the answer to her question. Which meant she acknowledged an authority higher than Shana. Unacceptable.
    “Who, Loralee?” she demanded.
    “Tyler!” Loralee bleated.
    “Shit.”
    Tyler. Caleb’s older brother. Not quite as big, not quite as rough, but not someone Shana could tangle with and win.
    "You could have just told me,” Shana snapped.
    “Alpha said we couldn’t. He said it didn’t matter who it was. It was the principle of the thing.”
    Of course. The principle. Trust the demented Alpha to