Moira Rogers: Zola's Pride

If she didn’t take Walker to bed soon, it might be the death of her sanity.

Assuming he’d accept such an invitation. That he wanted her was not in question. She’d felt proof of that fact hard and hot between her thighs on the practice room floor, so good she could have rocked up against him and driven herself to bliss without his assistance. But oh, how good his assistance would be...

Unfortunately, business could only wait so long. Zola showered while Walker made calls to wherever he’d stashed his people, some place in Mexico where a witch enhanced the spells woven into a charm Zola’s mother had given them. The last gift of her fractured mind, magic that hid their presence from the Scions.

Magic that wouldn’t last forever. Zola braided her hair and gathered her willpower. They’d spent precious hours circling. Stalking. Neither ready to commit to the one conversation they needed to have.

It was time to stop playing.

Zola stepped from her bedroom and found Walker in the living room studying the framed photos on her walls. “You studied with DeSilva?”

“Four months.” Her gaze drifted over the rest of the wall, over a dozen framed photographs of her with her many teachers, some of her most prized possessions. She’d honed her craft under the greatest masters who would teach her, flitting from country to country for six years after her mother had driven her from her pride.

She stepped forward and lifted her hand to brush the frame of a photograph of her standing next to a man who barely came to her shoulder. “I stayed longest in Okinawa. With Nakamura. He’s a psychic. Precognitive. Just a few seconds, but that’s all he needs. I’ve seen him take down shifters twice his size.”

Walker laughed. “You don’t need bulk when you know what the tank coming at you plans to do.”

Her preternatural speed had been of no use against Nakamura, who had left her with her fair share of humility—and a healthy respect for psychics and spell casters. “I’ve only been in New Orleans for a few years. It didn’t feel safe to settle in one place at first. I didn’t know if my mother might change her mind and come after me. Or if her enemies might.”

He didn’t argue with that. “Did you enjoy your travels?”

She gave him the truth, because she’d be demanding plenty of it from him soon enough. “Not at first. I was young. Scared. But my teachers gave me confidence, and I grew.”

His voice roughened. “You did all right.”

“Yes. I did.” No turning back now. She pivoted to face him, and worked to keep her voice even. “I will take your people under my protection. I will reform the pride. But, in return, you will tell me the truth.”

Walker stepped back, such a small movement that she wondered if he realized he’d done it. Retreat had never been in his nature, any more than it was in her own. Nor was the wariness in his voice. “The truth about what?”

Zola braced herself. “Why did you let her drive me away? Why didn’t you follow me?”

She saw the moment he decided to tell her, and she knew it would be the truth. His eyes shadowed, and he sighed. “I couldn’t stop you, and I couldn’t follow you. Not without putting you in danger.”

“Because of my mother?”

“Because of your mother’s orders.”

She hadn’t realized hope still lived until it fluttered weakly in her chest. “What would she have done to you if you’d followed me?”

“Tatienne said that if any of us went with you, she’d have to assume we meant to start our own pride. A rival pride.” He met her gaze. “She would have killed you, Zola.”

Zola closed her eyes as pain rose, bringing the sharpness of memory with it. Tatienne as a younger woman, pale skin bronzed by the relentless sun, her auburn hair streaked with gold. Zola had inherited her coloring from her father, chocolate and twilight, but her mother had been all the colors of a desert sunset. Power had sung in her mother’s veins, but so had love. Love for her daughter, for her pride.

The Conclave’s Seer was heavily pregnant. Would sweet little Michelle Peyton lose the gentleness in her nature? Would the son she carried beneath her heart turn someday to find his mother had vanished, lost to the ravages of a power too great for one body to contain?

“Hey.” Walker urged her face up with gentle fingers under her chin. “I know it’s horrible. That’s why I promised myself I wouldn’t do this to you.”

Too late, she scented salt. Her cheeks were wet with traitorous tears, revealing the depth of her helpless vulnerability to the one man who’d always had the power to lay her heart bare.

She recoiled, stumbling back two steps before turning and scrubbing away all evidence of her lapse from her cheeks with two shaking hands. “She loved me once. She loved all of us. Whatever monster she became, whatever she did to the people she had sworn to protect—it is not our fault. It is no judgment on us. A Seer’s power consumes them.”

“That’s all true.” He cupped her shoulders, rubbed his cheek comfortingly against the top of her head. “Doesn’t mean it can’t hurt.”

Tatienne had betrayed him too. Zola leaned back and let his warmth and strength curl around her, along with the wonderful belonging that came from being with one of her own kind. “If it had been your choice? Would you have followed me?”

He released a long, slow breath that stirred her hair and tickled her cheek. “In a heartbeat. Nothing else could have kept me away.”

Truth had a scent. A feel. Bitter, sometimes, but always solid and implacable. Tension that had lived inside her for a decade slowly unknotted itself. “Then it’s behind us. I like who I’ve become. I have my freedom.”

He stiffened, just a little. “I wish I could say the same.”

Zola slid her hands up to cover his. “The past is the past. You’re fighting to protect your people. I like who you’ve become.”

“You won’t if I have to go.” His hands slipped down and tightened around her waist. “I’d do it to protect you.”

He expected her to be shocked. Perhaps she should have been, or outraged, or even angry. Some male shifters smothered their mates with a blind protectiveness that carried an unpleasant aura of chauvinism. But if Walker had such unsavory prejudices against women, he wouldn’t have willingly followed Zola’s mother.

Zola smoothed one hand up his arm and shoulder, curling her fingers around the back of his neck. “I would do the same to you. We protect the ones we—” Love. “—care about. Which is why I’ll take your people under my care. I’ll call the Conclave tonight and declare them my pride, and the people in New Orleans will help me keep them safe.”

A beat. “Where do I fit in?”

The warmth of his body made it so easy to rock closer—and hard not to rub against him like a cat in heat. “You can lead with me, or you can leave. I won’t blackmail you into my bed by holding their safety over your head.”

His laugh vibrated against her skin, less amused than wondering. “That’s the last thing you’d have to do to get me in your bed.”

Instinct whispered that he wouldn’t make the first advance, so she did, rocking up on her toes to close the distance between them. His lips were warm and firm and tasted like bitter coffee mixed with cinnamon from the pastry he’d had for dessert, and underneath it all Walker. Lion. Male.

Mine.

Her back hit the wall and Walker pressed closer, lifting her a little as he eased between her thighs and ground against her. “I won’t stop this time, honey. Not until I’m inside you.”

She’d had plenty of men in her bed, in her body. But never another lion. Nothing could have prepared her for the satisfaction that roared up from the deepest place inside, washing away reason in a wave of primal hunger. She got both legs up around his hips, trusting him to hold her as she pulled at his shirt.