Bullet Page 0,73

that one low sound hit just the right note. I tried to stand up and hands held me in my seat. I turned on them, snarling, my lioness loud in my head.

Haven strode across the carpet toward us, and I knew he meant to jerk me free of all that restraint. His power went before him like an advance attack. I could either stand up and go to him in this body, or my lioness could try to go to him in a different one. I actually got to my feet. Jean-Claude and Nathaniel still had my hands, but I was standing, wanting Haven to touch me. His energy seemed strong, and giving in to it a little had kept the lion from trying to tear her way out of me.

Bram was a dark blur just suddenly appearing in front of me, blocking Haven’s way. I knew that Micah had told him to do it. A small logical part of me knew why he’d done it, and even agreed as Nimir-Ra, but the lioness didn’t agree. She snarled at Bram’s tall form between her and her Rex. She’d have had the same reaction if Bram had stood between her and prey. I pulled free of Nathaniel’s hand. Only Jean-Claude kept me from either jumping Bram or just running around him. Truthfully, attacking from behind was the first plan. The visual was of me as a lion on his back, claws digging into his flesh, my teeth sinking into his scalp, his head, crushing his skull.

The visceral almost-memory helped me climb back into my head and push the lioness back. I was a person, not an animal. I could control this. I didn’t want to hurt Bram.

When Haven felt my lion go cold, his energy was still there, still seeking lion. It found the lions he’d brought with him. Their energy flared. I could see it, not with my eyes, but with the back of my head. I knew it was Jesse, tall, dark, and handsome, and Payne, tall, pale, and handsome. Payne really was his last name, not a nickname since he was an enforcer. But I saw their lions around them like halos, one with a mane that was almost black and the other so pale it was ghostlike. But there were other lions behind them: a woman I didn’t know, tall, strongly built, but all curves. I had an impression of short dark hair, but mostly her lioness was tawny with darker marks so that she looked almost spotted in places. The other woman was much shorter, with long yellow hair, but her lioness wasn’t smaller. It was a huge golden form snarling around her human body as if it were a wick and the lion the flame.

Then I saw two more lions lying on the floor. They didn’t burn bright. Their lions were red-orange glows like a fire that was fading. They were younger lions, with shorter manes, ragged compared to the other men. Their lions turned and looked at me, one with a halo of dark mane, the other paler, but the lions looked at me. They knew me.

I suddenly saw the world through a golden haze. I turned my head and I could see my lioness over me like a glow just behind my eyes. She, like the other short woman, wasn’t a small lion. She was a great dark gold shape rearing over and around me. I’d seen Micah’s leopard once like this around him, but never again. Now all I could see was lions.

One of the lions on the floor stirred and lifted his head, and I had the double image of Travis; it was his golden-brown curls with that darker mane around it like an overlay. He looked at me, and he fought to reach his hand out toward me. Injured, it was the closest he could come to the begging gesture that most of the lycanthropes had. It was a submissive’s way of asking a dominant to forgive him, to help him.

Noel lay very still beside him. The image of his lion was a dark red shadow, growing dimmer. Some part of me knew what that meant. Noel was dying. In that moment the lioness and I were in agreement. You didn’t kill what was ours. In the wild, lionesses will band together to keep a male intruder from taking over a pride. They’ll fight beside their chosen males to keep their land, their cubs, safe.

I tried to go around Bram