Roman's Vow (Riley's Pride #4) - Sandra R Neeley Page 0,36

over to his recliner. He dropped into it and scrubbed his hands down his face as he stared at the wall behind Riley. Then he met Riley’s gaze. “She’s gone.”

“Who is she?” Riley asked.

Lucas shrugged again. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen her. Never spoken to her. I only ever felt her presence.”

“Then how do you know it was a she?” Riley asked.

“Just do. I could feel her watching me, but she never made me feel threatened. She just kept her distance and watched silently,” Lucas explained.

“Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

“Like what? There’s nothing to say. And it even sounds crazy to me, so why the hell would I say it to you?” Lucas asked, his irritation clear.

“Try me,” Riley said.

Lucas sighed and gathered his thoughts. Then he sat up straight and smiled brightly at Riley. “Hey, Riley. Listen, there’s this feeling I get sometimes. Something’s watching me. I’ve never seen it, and I’m pretty sure half the time I’m imagining things. I talk to her when I think she’s there, but nobody ever answers. Oh, yeah, I think she’s female, whatever it is, and Bear seems to think she’s ours. She doesn’t want to hurt anybody, just watches me. Can’t see her though, no tracks ever, no scent except ever so slightly, but hey, don’t worry, because it’s most likely my imagination anyway. So, you know, no worries.”

Riley sat there watching him for a moment after he stopped talking. “Now was that so hard?”

“I sound like a lunatic,” Lucas said.

“You do. But, you forget one thing… I know you. You’re not a lunatic. If you sense something or someone, then there’s something or someone there. Our families live here. Our Pride lives here. You can’t sense any damn thing and not let the rest of us know.”

“I just have no answers to give. Why open a conversation when I literally have nothing to offer to that conversation?” Lucas asked.

“Say one of us is out on a run. Come across whatever this thing is and unknowingly think it’s a threat? We kill it and it turns out to be your mate. If she won’t even speak to you, she’s surely not going to speak to us. We chase her off, or there’s a confrontation.”

Lucas’s chest rumbled.

“See? Confrontation could have been prevented if you’d just told us something was in the area. You don’t know anything definite, but you think it’s a female and she’s non-threatening. How fucking hard is that?”

Lucas shook his head. “Seems a lot easier than it sounded in my head.”

“Ya think?” Riley asked.

“Yeah,” Lucas answered.

They sat there quietly for a few minutes before Riley stood. “Come on. Throw on a shirt and let’s take one of the four-wheelers back there. Show me where you feel, or felt her, and tell me about your experiences with that feeling. What’d you see or scent? How often, was it day or night? Let’s see what we can figure out.”

“She’s gone. I don’t feel her at all,” Lucas said again.

“If she’s yours, like you think she’s yours, she’ll be back. At some point, she’ll be back,” Riley said.

Lucas stood up and walked out of the living room. A few minutes later he was back, pulling a teeshirt over his head while he walked over to the door to shove his feet into his boots. He leaned over to pull the laces tighter and knot them before opening the door and leading the way down his front steps to the four-wheeler parked outside.

“You drive, you know where you felt her,” Riley said, waiting for Lucas to get on and fire it up.

Lucas swung his leg over the seat and got comfortable as he turned the key. Once the engine was warmed up, Riley got on the back and off they went, over the rise, for Lucas to show him everywhere he’d felt his female watching him.

Chapter 9

Deep in the very back of the tree farm where she’d first sensed her male, Anahla sat beneath the highest tree she could find. It wasn’t like those the males here harvested and sold to the people who came to their farm, it was different. Older, thicker and tall. It had been here for many, many years. She took a deep breath and pressed her back to it, taking solace from her connection to the tree and the ground she sat upon.

She lifted her face to the sky, or at least where the sky should have been. Here in the darkest, thickest part of