Chasing Cristabel (Ashland Pride Six) (11 page)

Tanya had taken over the small eleven-member
all-female pride after their former leader, Layla, had been killed
by another female whose name was never to be uttered. Layla had
been Tanya’s friend, at least as much of a friend as an uncaring
female such as herself could have. She’d been a good leader, but
she was dead, and it was Tanya’s time to lead. The females had
retreated to Canada, where the remainder of the female mountain
lions lived in a large home. Immediately, Tanya and Honor – the
leader of the Canadian female pride – had clashed over their core
beliefs. After having their plans to cause trouble for the males
spoiled several times, Honor and her pride had opted to live in
peace, turning to a few trusted humans and rogue wolves for sexual
needs. As a result, Tanya and her small pride had left Canada and
come back to the states.

“Revolting,” Tanya said.

“What is?” Bella asked.

She shook her head. “I was just thinking out
loud. Trust me, this will work. When the human comes in from her
shift tonight, we’ll make sure she understands that she
must
lure the youngest Hall male here as soon as possible. After he’s
subdued, we’ll take him home.”

Hannah stood at the window, holding back one
of the filthy looking orange and yellow striped curtains. “She’s
coming.”

The door beeped as the keycard unlocked it,
and the human stepped into the room. Hannah moved quickly, slamming
the door shut and throwing the security bar. “Were you followed?”
Hannah demanded.

Theresa jumped with a gasp and then shivered
from head to toe. “N–No.”

Bella made a disgusted sound. “You’ve run out
of time, human.”

“What?” she asked, her eyes wide like dinner
plates and her heartbeat sounding like a snare drum with a million
sticks banging on it.

Tanya stood from the rickety wooden chair and
moved to the human. She smiled, but she knew it wasn’t a comforting
smile. Theresa cowered, but Tanya prevented her from moving
anywhere by fisting the front of her shirt and jerking Theresa
forward. “You’ve had plenty of time. How is it that you haven’t
brought the Hall male to us yet?”

The scent of Theresa’s fear sharpened, a
metallic, bitter taste that made Tanya’s cat happy.

“He’s got a girlfriend,” Theresa said, her
voice weak and wavering as tears flooded her eyes.

Bella snorted. “And? Males are driven by
their dicks. You should flash a little tit at him and then get him
to follow you like a lost puppy.”

Tanya shot Bella a sharp look. Mountain lion
males weren’t as easy to sexually seduce as human males, or even
wolf males. They were tenderhearted, prone to wanting relationships
and families over one-night stands.

“Why do you think he has a girlfriend?”

“I think they all do. The three guys. I was
trying to get Dylan to fool around on Friday night, and a woman
came into the bar and they…” her voice trailed off.

Tanya gave her a little shake. “They did
what?”

“They took her into the office and locked the
door. When I tried to interrupt, Hunter, the big one, he told me to
keep my hands off Dylan or they were going to get me fired. They
said they had a mate now, and that none of them, especially Dylan,
wanted anything to do with me. I don’t know what
mate
means,
but it must mean like a girlfriend or something because they made
me leave work and swear to leave them alone.”

Tanya released her hold on Theresa’s shirt
and pushed her away, turning to Bella. “Mate? One female for three
of them?”

Bella shrugged. “It’s what the males do now,
remember? They share a female between them. Gross.”

Tanya agreed. The males were only good for
one thing, and that was procreation. There was nothing she wanted
more than to have a cub. Not so she could play mommy like the human
females did with their young but so she could train the cub in the
new
ways of the pride. A female cub would grow up strong in
the ways of their people. A male cub would know his place swiftly:
to be a servant of the females in whatever capacity they chose.

Turning her attention back to Theresa, she
let her cat out enough so that her eyes changed to the amber of her
beast and her fangs elongated. Her claws extended, the dark tips
curving dangerously from her fingers. Grabbing the human by the
throat, Tanya lifted Theresa into the air and slammed her against
the wall. The human screamed and then grunted as the breath
whooshed from her lungs.

Leaning close, Tanya bared her fangs and
snapped her teeth. Theresa whimpered, tears sliding down her
cheeks. “When are you working next with Dylan?”

“N–Not until Saturday,” she blubbered.

“You will do everything in your power to
bring the youngest male here Saturday. I don’t care what you have
to do – lie, injure yourself, or drug him – but you will get him
here. If you don’t do it, I’ll skin you alive. Are we clear?”

Theresa sniveled, nodding as much as she
could. Tanya released her grip on Theresa’s throat and watched
dispassionately as she fell to the floor in a heap. “We’ll be
waiting on Saturday,” Tanya said in warning. She headed for the
door, eager to get out of the hotel room. It smelled of old sex and
body odor, and she felt like she needed at least ten showers.

Bella and Hannah followed as Tanya left the
room, the door slamming shut behind them. When they were in the
rental van, Tanya pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward
the RV park where their pride had rented two RVs. They’d been
staying there ever since Tanya had devised the plan to steal a male
so the mountain lion females could breed with him.

She hadn’t come up with the plan herself –
Layla had – but it was just as well that Layla was dead because
Layla had failed, and Tanya was
not
going to fail this time.
The male named Dylan would be brought to the hotel by the human.
The females would be waiting and would drug him. By the time he
awoke, they’d be in their new settlement, a small town just over
the border into Canada, where a large home waited for them,
complete with a basement that would become his home for the rest of
his life. Or until they didn’t need him anymore. After he’d bred
cubs for them, she’d most likely kill him. His only value, like the
other males, was his ability to breed. Once he’d outlived his
usefulness, that would be the end of him.

She couldn’t wait for Saturday.

Chapter 10

Wednesday night, Chase watched in amusement
as Cris played a video game with Grant’s and Aaron’s sons. She sat
on the large couch facing the flat-screen television with the boys
surrounding her.

“Oh no! I’m going to crash!” she said,
laughing as the boys tried to coach her through the racetrack. “Why
won’t this do what I want?”

“You have to press the green button while
you’re pressing the right button,” Owen said.

“Like this?” she asked, lifting the
controller higher and tapping the buttons.

“No!” all the boys shouted as her car spun
off the track and exploded.

“Ah, crap,” she said with a laugh. “I only
made it around the track once.”

“You did good for your first time,” Brian
said.

She tousled his hair. “You’re sweet.”

“Do you want to try again? We can set it for
an easier course,” Ben suggested.

“I don’t think you can get much easier than a
plain oval for a course,” she said with a chuckle. Giving Chase a
wink, she said, “I’m done for the night. My thumbs hurt.”

She handed the controller to Owen and stood,
stepping carefully over the jumble of legs as the boys started
another game. She stopped only long enough to give Chase a sultry
look and then continued to walk out of the family room. Her hips
swayed as she walked, and he watched her until she disappeared out
of the room. Snapping out of his reverie, he darted after her,
catching up to her in the hallway.

It was his first time alone with her since
they’d mated, and he really hadn’t wanted to waste a second of it.
When he’d picked her up, he’d considered taking her out to dinner
but thought that their first date should really be with the whole
group. They had stopped in the kitchen to make sandwiches when
Lachlyn, a bear shifter mated to Alek and Jericho, had asked if
they’d like to join them for dinner, and then the boys had asked if
she’d like to play a game with them.

“Did you have fun?” he asked, linking their
fingers.

“Sure. They’re all so sweet. I think it must
be a mountain lion trait.”

“At least for the boys.”

“What are the females like?”

They started up the stairs. “Dylan told you
about the curse, right?”

She hummed in agreement.

“We didn’t know about the cause of the
females’ behavior until last summer. Melody’s father had taken her
away from the pride as an infant and kept her hidden. He didn’t
know why the females acted like they did, but he’d apparently had a
suspicion. When Melody went to King to meet her uncles after her
dad died, Jilly saw her. That’s when Jilly met her mates, Wyked and
Fate, and they shared blood with her while they kissed. It broke
the curse, and she discovered how they’d poisoned her.

“The females, under a curse of their own of
sorts, would find a way to secretly poison the little girls. In
their human forms, they would extend their claws and sink them into
the underside of the upper arms. The girls wouldn’t remember what
happened, and slowly the poison would alter their personalities.
They poisoned the girls three times before they were sixteen. By
the time they were old enough to shift, they had become cold and
callous.”

Cris shivered as she stepped into their
bedroom, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “I don’t
understand why a goddess would do that to her own people, or how
the females could hurt the little girls.”

He shut and locked the bedroom door and
wrapped his arms around her. “We don’t think they understand what
they’re doing, that it is just something they’re supposed to
do.”

“Girls born now wouldn’t be poisoned, right?
They wouldn’t turn out to be like the females?”

“Right. We believe that most, if not all, of
the females are in Canada. Although they could bear cubs with human
males, the females don’t like to muddy up the gene pool by mating
with non-lions.”

“It would be terrible if there were little
girls up there with them, being poisoned.”

He nodded. “We don’t have to worry about
them, though. Our kids will be loved and protected, and if we
happen to have any girls, they’ll be beautiful and sweet like their
mother.”

She lifted her head and smiled at him. “You
think about kids?”

“Of course. Well, that’s not entirely true. I
always knew I wanted to have a family, but when I was growing up, I
pictured things being like it was when I was a child. Hunter,
Dylan, and I would get a house in King, and then we’d find females
to contract with to bear cubs for us, and we’d raise our cubs like
siblings.”

“Contract?”

“Not a real contract, but in order to get a
female to bear a cub, a male has to jump through a lot of hoops.
Promising certain concessions, usually money and gifts, to support
her during the pregnancy.” He looked down into her lovely blue
eyes. “How about you? Do you think about kids?”

“I didn’t until I met you guys. Now I do. I
want to have kids who live in a world where they can make their own
choices, love who they want, be what they want.” She sighed and
rubbed her cheek against his chest. “I know I was lucky in some
ways. I met a princess once who wasn’t allowed to leave her house
without an escort. She’d basically been imprisoned in her own home
– she was homeschooled, and she wasn’t allowed to have any male
friends or socialize. I remember thinking how lucky I was because
my dad could have done that to me. He could have caged me in the
house and never let me have any freedoms.”

“Why do you think he did?”

“I don’t know. I always thought it was partly
my mom’s influence that allowed me to actually have a life. But now
that I’m old enough to be mated in the pride traditions, she’s
pushing for me to follow in her footsteps.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” he said, stroking her
back and willing away the heartache that he could practically
taste.

She moved onto her toes, pressing her lips to
his throat with a purr. “You smell like you’re worried.”

“I am, love,” he said, closing his eyes as
her lips moved up his throat to his jaw. “I can’t be happy if
you’re upset.”

She hummed softly, her hands tangling in his
shirt and tugging upward. “I don’t like the scent on you.”

He chuckled. “The scent of my worry?”

Nipping his jaw, she said, “You smell sexiest
when you’re happy. Or turned on.”

“I’m very happy to be with you, but I’m not
happy when you get sad. Talking about your family makes you sad,
and I just want to erase all those bad feelings for you. I never
want you frowning or crying. It tears my cat up.”

She pulled back far enough to look at him.
“That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

He smiled and then kissed her, wrapping his
arms around her and pulling her close. She leaned into him with a
purr and tugged up his shirt again, and this time he took the hint,
separating from their embrace long enough to pull it off and toss
it aside.

Her eyes darkened as her fingers played down
his chest, stroking his muscles and making everything inside him
roar. Her fingers deftly undid his jeans and pushed on the
waistband, but he wasn’t interested in being the only naked one. He
snarled softly and pushed her hands away. He wanted to see every
inch of her lovely skin, to take this time to explore and taste the
way he hadn’t had a chance before. When there were two other guys
waiting in the wings to make her scream in pleasure, sometimes
things got rushed.