She rubbed her hands against his chest and Lock’s eyes nearly crossed
She had painted nails that, although not ridiculously long, were longer than any he’d seen on predator females, with each nail painted dark red and elaborately decorated with flowers and other designs in black. It must have taken her hours to get those done, and the feel of them through his clothes was making him crazy. He should hate those nails. He normally considered that sort of thing tacky or gaudy, but damn if that look didn’t work on her. And because it worked on her—it was really working on him.
“This is all my fault,” she went on, oblivious to the effect she was having on him. “It’s a domino effect that only my mother can cause, and I’m sorry. I was trying to keep an eye on her, but she got away from me.” Mother? What did her mother have to do with this? Neither She-lion who’d been about to fight looked old enough to be her mother.
Swallowing, trying to keep his desire to maul in control, Lock motioned toward the woods. “That’s your brother.”
“Him?” She laughed. “No. He just wants to be. He’s the half-brother of my half-brother. And the female who went in after him is his twin, who I really hate, but that’s another story. Which makes her the half-sister of my half-brother, but neither of them have a blood connection to me.” Lock was busy trying to place all that in some semblance of a family tree in his head when she tossed in, “Life in the Pride. It’s not for everybody.”
Don’t miss any of Shelly Laurenston’s Pride Series
The Mane Event
The Beast in Him
The Mane Attraction
The Mane Squeeze
Beast Behaving Badly
Big Bad Beast
Bear Meets Girl
Howl For It
Wolf With Benefits
Bite Me
The Mane Squeeze
SHELLY LAURENSTON
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
EPILOGUE
THE UNLEASHING
LIGHT MY FIRE
PROLOGUE
As soon as the earrings and shoes came off, he knew it was a brawl.
A brawl he wanted no part of. Especially when he’d been trying to sneak out. And one of the hardest things for someone like him to do was sneak anywhere. Yet he couldn’t walk away, he couldn’t turn his back. This was his friend’s wedding, and he wouldn’t let a couple of cats ruin it because they couldn’t hold their liquor or their predatory instinct to maul. But maybe, just maybe, if he defused this fast enough, he could still make it out without being caught. The key was to prevent an audience. No audience, no witnesses, and sneaking away could continue.
There. A goal. He liked goals.
And with that goal solidly in mind, Lachlan “Lock” MacRyrie walked through the trees surrounding the Long Island, New York, property that held his friend’s wedding. He’d never been to a wedding at a castle before but it fit the style of the bride, who brought geekiness to a whole new level. In fact, she was the one who’d told him to go. Wait. That wasn’t right. She didn’t tell him to go. She’d told him to, “Make a break for it! Before the hounds of darkness come for you and destroy our plans to release our people from their enslavement! Go, Lachlan MacRyrie of the Clan MacRyrie. Go! And don’t look back, my friend!” It would seem strange to those who didn’t know her, but Lock knew it was simply Jessica Ward’s way of saying, “Could you look more miserable? Just go already!”
He’d never been so grateful, although it wasn’t Jess’s fault he was having a miserable time. He did a little better at full-human events since he mostly received the “shock and awe” reaction. But among his own kind, the reaction was much less…welcoming.
Not exactly surprising, though, when the predators knew what he was. Knew that he could shift to a ten-foot, fifteen-hundred-pound, silver-tipped grizzly bear whenever the mood struck him. How did they know? Because from early childhood, shifter parents taught their cubs and pups to recognize a few things: the cackle of a hyena, the roar of a male lion, the howls of nearby wolves, and the scent of a grizzly. For the first three on that list, the directions were simple: “If you hear one of those and we’re separated, call for me. Right away.” But when it came to the grizzly, the directions were much more…specific: “When you catch that scent, go in the opposite direction. If you stumble across one, do not wake it up. If you do wake one up, pretend you’re dead or climb into a tree. High into a tree. And if you get between a sow and her cubs—pray.”
Tragically, Lock couldn’t even argue that any of what the other breeds said was false, although it was perhaps blown a bit out of proportion.
In the end, though, none of that mattered, because he didn’t like parties, detested weddings, and being trapped in this tux was annoying him beyond reason. Normally, to save his sanity, he wouldn’t even attend something like this, but he couldn’t miss Jess Ward’s wedding. A more amazing woman, shifter, and friend a man could never hope to have, and that’s why Lock was going to undertake the painful task of getting between two snarling females before they started tearing into each other. He was almost on them, was only a few feet from getting past the trees and between them, with luck before blood was spilled, because nothing attracted shifter attention quicker than the scent of fresh blood—and, of course, two drunk chicks fighting.
Yet before he could take those last steps, she was there, shoving the two females apart before they’d made contact. With her fangs out, a low and deadly growl rolling past her lips, she held her arms out from her body to keep them separated.
“A mixed breed,” some lioness had sneered about her earlier in the evening when this feline had passed. The more politically correct term was, of course, hybrid. A ridiculously gorgeous hybrid, too, whom Lock had first caught sight of at the ceremony. At the time, he’d felt someone staring at him, but that wasn’t unusual. People stared at him all the time. Yet when he’d finally glanced over his shoulder, out of mere bear-curiosity, to see who it was…well, he’d looked right at her. And,