Serengeti Storm

Chapter Two

Caleb had told her he wasn’t suicidal, but there was no other explanation for what he was doing.

Shana was back. And he was taking her toward the ranch. Where she would be staying. Indefinitely.

He groaned aloud at the thought.

She looked like hell, but Shana looking like hell was still Shana—still hot enough to have him half-hard from the second he’d scented her in the night.

Caleb shot off a quick prayer of thanks to whatever unnamed gods were listening that he’d been patrolling in human form. Facing her for the first time in seven months stark naked after a shift was not an experience he ever wanted to have.

She sashayed along the rutted drive leading to the ranch’s main compound, swinging her tight little ass. Her long red hair was loose, the ends flicking around her hips like tongues of flame. Most lionesses were blonde, their hair perfectly matching the color of their pelts, but Shana had to be different in every way. She stood out like a fire in the desert, unique and untamable. And dangerous as all hell.

The memory of those flame-red tresses tangling around him as they slept rose up in his mind, but he shook it away.

She was a viper. No matter how lush her body was. No matter how intoxicating her scent or how wicked the things she could do with her tongue.

Caleb barely bit back another groan. If only memories were as easy to fight as enemies.

She never once glanced back at him as they walked, but he knew she was aware of him. Unfortunately, the feeling was mutual. He’d always been hyperaware of her. His body had never cared that she’d become a soulless, manipulative bitch.

The entrance to the ranch’s residential compound rose in front of them. There was nothing ostentatious or distinctive about the low, open gate bordered by a cattle guard. Nothing to indicate there was anything extraordinary about the group of families who lived and worked at this particular ranch.

None of the nearby landowners or businessmen in the small town twenty miles down the road had any idea the residents of the Three Rocks Ranch could take the shape of menacing predators. Through the constant vigilance of the pride and with the help of a few technological gadgets Caleb didn’t pretend to understand, no one in their little corner of Texas had any idea fifty lion shape-shifters lived among them.

Fifty-one.

As Shana swung her ass through the gate, she turned her head toward the large tree where the gate guard would be perched in lion form. Caleb saw her flash a small feline smile in the guard’s direction and give a little shimmy.

The sound of claws scrabbling for purchase on wood sounded from the tree a fraction of a second before a young male lion with his mane not fully grown in hit the ground with a thud.

Shana gave a low, wicked laugh that was like claws scraping up Caleb’s spine. The juvenile male leapt back into the branches. Caleb closed the distance between himself and the troublemaker, making a mental note to talk to Landon about giving young Ryan a less critical post if he was going to be felled every time a lioness looked his way.

Caleb ignored the fact that he would have probably fallen out of the damn tree too, if he’d seen Shana walking through that gate again after seven months.

He caught her arm and nudged her toward the mess hall, where the rest of the pride was likely still gathered after dinner. The Three Rocks Ranch had originally been built as a summer camp and the communal dining arrangement worked well for a lion pride.

Shana slid her arm out of his grip and headed toward the hall. Caleb let her go, his fingers tingling from the touch of her bare skin, even as he wondered what kind of a fool wore a tank top in a snowstorm. Their body temperature might be a couple degrees higher than a human’s, but that didn’t make them impervious to cold. She could come down with hypothermia just as easily as the humans she looked down on.

Not that he cared. Not that he was concerned for her. She’d done far too much to kill any feelings he’d ever had for her.

The mess hall was by far the largest building on the compound. Light and the raucous sounds of the pride spilled out of it into the night through windows kept open, even in a snowstorm.

He knew Shana too well to expect she would betray any sign of hesitation. She didn’t disappoint.

She strode up the steps and threw open the double doors, head held high, the queen returning.

The reaction to her entrance was instantaneous. Silence rippled out around her until the only sound was the scrape of chairs as those in the back of the hall stood, craning for a better look.

She slammed her hands onto her hips and scanned the room, aggression in every line of her body. Caleb tensed, ready to tackle her to the ground if she went for his sister’s throat, but her eyes passed right over Ava, dismissing the Alpha’s new mate.

Instead, her eyes locked on the more dominant females, who bristled under her challenging glare. One or two dropped their eyes in submission, but more than would have dared only months before met her eyes head-on.

“That’s right,” she snapped. “I’m back. Now, which one of you bitches stole my house?”

Shana kept her eyes locked in prepare-to-have-your-ass-kicked fashion on the three most likely bungalow thieves. She heard the door shut behind her and felt Caleb’s heat as he crowded behind her—doubtless so he could take her down before she could rip out any throats—but she didn’t blink.

Loralee finally dropped her eyes, but Shana made note of the fact that the uppity little bitch had dared question her dominance for as long as she had. Mara didn’t last nearly as long, which left only Zoe.

Shana felt a growl start low in her throat. She should have known it would be Zoe who’d stolen her slot in pride dominance. The Alpha’s bitch sister had been asking for an ass-kicking for too long.

Shana hadn’t challenged Zoe when she and Landon first joined the pride, because she’d been trying to butter up the Alpha and snag the slot as his mate. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t take the Viking bitch down. The blonde may be just a fraction bigger and stronger than Shana in her lioness form, but Shana was fast and she fought dirty. As Zoe was about to learn.

Shana crouched forward slightly, letting the growl ripple out of her throat as her fingernails morphed sharply into claws. Zoe’s eyes narrowed and Shana saw her muscles tense in anticipation of the fight, even though she made no move to step away from her table into the open center of the room.

“Enough!”

The bellow held an edge of authority Shana reacted to instinctively. Her claws retracted suddenly. The Alpha had spoken.

Landon stood, the scrape of his chair against the wooden floor loud in the echoing silence. He sat at a table among the lesser members of his pride, not bothering to separate himself according to rank as his predecessors had. Shana hadn’t even noticed him sitting there. Until he stood.

When he rose, the mantle of the Alpha fell on his shoulders. He radiated dominance and authority. And disapproval.

“We do not fight for housing privileges anymore,” he announced, his voice ringing out across the room.

Shana fought the urge to cower. And won. She was not so easily cowed. She met the Alpha’s eyes across the room and did not blink.

“She doesn’t have to fight me. She just has to give it back.”

The Alpha growled, the low sound traveling the room to grip her spine, urging her to bend in submission. Shana stood straight.

“That isn’t how we do things anymore,” Landon rumbled.

“Our instincts don’t change, no matter how human you might try to make us.” Shana spat the word “human” in the direction of the Alpha’s spineless mate.

When little Ava flinched, Shana wanted to crow her victory. The Alpha’s weakling mate would never be strong enough to keep him. Only Shana had the strength to rule beside him. Her rightful place in the pride was so close she could taste it, sweet and bright on her tongue.

“You are welcome to return to the pride, Shana,” Landon said, the welcome sounding forced and borderline violent. “But the same rules still apply. We are not a pride of animals.”

The abrupt laugh burst out of Shana’s mouth before she could stop it. “We aren’t? What are we then?”

“Civilized,” Landon snarled, sounding anything but.

“Yes,” Shana purred, laughter rolling around in her voice. “I can see that. Just look how civilized I make you feel.”

She wallowed in his anger. Anger was a kind of passion. There was power in it.

The Alpha’s mate did nothing to defend her claim, tiny Ava shivering in her chair. But Zoe’s lips drew back from her teeth and her body tensed. Shana’s claws snapped out, eager and ready.

An arm locked around her stomach, hard and unmoving.

Caleb.

She hadn’t for a second forgotten his presence at her back, but she never would have suspected he would interfere with a challenge. It simply was not done in the pride. Here, honor was found only in a fight, with fur and claws flying. No one stood in the way of that.

“I know an empty bungalow,” he said to the Alpha, speaking past her shoulder. “She can sleep there, until she decides if she is willing to obey the new rules.”

Shana hissed, so low only Caleb would be able to hear her, at the word obey. “I would rather sleep in a scorpion nest than lower myself to sleep in your sister’s hovel,” she whispered.

He ignored her, listening obediently as the Alpha gave his verdict.

“Fine. Just keep her out of trouble.”

Shana snorted. “I’d like to see him try,” she said, loud enough for the Alpha, and Zoe, and Ava, and anyone else who might be stupid enough to think she was cowed, to hear.

Caleb’s arm tightened minutely around her waist. She knew he was stronger than she was, knew he could force the issue if he chose, and, for a moment, she almost considered fighting him. The only thing that stopped her was the fact that the entire pride was watching. She did not want her triumphant return to claim her place as the Alpha’s rightful mate to be sullied by a scuffle with Caleb. She had her image as the future ruler of the pride to think about.

But, she also couldn’t afford to be seen as weak.

Shana’s claws flashed out, fast and lethal. She slashed at Caleb’s forearm and twisted out of his grip before the blood had time to splash out. She’d always been eerily fast. Her size was an advantage in fights, but her speed was what made her dangerous.

Blood dripped from the gashes on Caleb’s arm as the big, slow ox reached for her. Instead of dodging back, she darted toward the double doors. “Come on,” she snapped irritably over her shoulder. “Show me where this empty bungalow is. I don’t have all night.”

She didn’t have to look over her shoulder to know every eye was on her as she swept out of the hall.

She didn’t want to look over her shoulder to see the slow fire she knew would be in Caleb’s eyes. She had a feeling he wasn’t going to take her little scratches lightly.

And he didn’t forgive easily. She knew that all too well.