Moira Rogers: Zola's Pride

Her lips brushed his cheek in a whisper-soft caress, and then she was gone in a swirl of near-silent footsteps across the untamed grass.

One shot fired into the night, but a second later he heard the Scion shifter’s grunt of pain as Zola pounced on her, tangling them up so the wizard wouldn’t get a clear shot at her.

As Zola grappled with the shifter, Walker eased around to the edge of the porch. A shot whistled past, and he cursed. Without rounding the house, there was no way to sneak past the caster under the porch.

Screw this. He scrambled up the collapsed side of the porch, the wood creaking under his weight. Another loud report, this one accompanied by a blaze of pain in Walker’s arm.

He’d been shot, and he didn’t give a damn. He roared his anger and punched down through the boards to close his hand in the man’s hair. He managed to slam his adversary up against the wood three times before the listing porch collapsed.

“Walker?” Zola’s voice, edged with worry. “Are you all right?”

He closed his fingers around the gun and groaned as he rolled to his back. “Peachy. You?”

An uncertain pause, and she echoed the word back to him in her accented English. “I am hoping that means good.”

“It means I’ll make it.”

The sound of flesh on flesh followed, a muffled grunt and then silence. “She is alive. Unconscious, but alive. I will call the Conclave. The Scions. Offer her for your pardon. A life for a life, yes?”

A life for a life. How could the Scions refuse, when the woman’s defeat rendered her life forfeit? “I think that’ll work out just fine.” Underneath him, the shattered boards shifted, and the spell caster groaned. “Maybe even twice over.”

Zola rose and crossed the yard, the moonlight glinting off her features. “Are you injured?”

“Just a scratch.” Walker rolled off the flattened porch and landed on his knees. “My jacket’s ruined, though.”

“Fool.” Her fingers slid into his hair and down, cupping his neck. Her words drifted to French, low and intimate. “I love you too much to lose you to stubborn pride. But if you walk into another trap without me at your side, I will kill you myself.”

“I screwed up, but never again.” Leaving her was, without a doubt, the most idiotic thing he’d ever done. Zola didn’t need his protection. She just needed him, and he knew the feeling. “We fight together?”

“As one. Always.” Her lips seized his in a breathless, desperate kiss, over almost before it began. “And now we call Alec Jacobson. He has a cage in his basement for situations like this. I’m afraid you will find they happen more often than not, if you stay here.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “I grew up around here. I know the lay of the land.”

“Then you know it will never be boring.”

Living in a plastic bubble wouldn’t be boring as long as Zola was with him. “Are you sure you can forgive me for sneaking out on you?”

A hint of laughter bubbled up as she reached into her pocket for a phone. “This time. But only if you take over my class full of adolescent male shifters. Perhaps a weekly reminder of the crippling effects of male ego will teach you a valuable lesson.”

It was far more than he deserved, but there was no way he’d squander a chance to make up for the hurts he’d visited on her in the past—the distant and the not so distant. “Make your call, Zola. The faster we get these two out of here, the faster we can be alone.”

The faster he could convince her she’d made the right choice.

“...so after the Scion representatives struck their deal with you, the Alpha escorted the whole mess of them back to New York on his jet. Got a call from him last night to let me know they’d left the country.”

Zola made a noncommittal noise, only half of her attention on Alec’s voice as it spilled out of her phone. There were only six students in her adolescent shifter group—all males, because she refused to teach them in a mixed class when their hormones would drive them to posture and preen for their classmates’ feminine attention. Any urge they might have had to fight for her attention had been knocked out of them within their first week, leaving a moderately serious group of youths on the cusp of manhood.

Manageable enough, until confronted with a shapeshifter male in his prime. Zola hid a smile behind her hand as Walker deftly handled another borderline challenge, patiently but firmly, setting the boy in his place without damaging more than his ego.

Alec was still talking, and Zola made a conscious effort to drag her attention back to the conversation in time to hear, “...all taken care of, then. Paperwork for the pride should be ready in a few days. If you need help getting them across the border—”

“We will be fine.” Considering all the trouble Alec Jacobson got himself into, owing him too many favors could prove to be an uncomfortable situation. “Thank you.”

She ended the conversation just as Walker ended the class, sending the boys out into the cool New Orleans evening. When the door swung shut behind the last one, she lifted an eyebrow. “Well?”

He flashed her a hint of a smile as he cracked open a bottle of water. “Well what?”

“Nothing.” Impossible not to admire the beauty of him, sweat-sheened golden skin and hard muscles and those eyes she’d now seen glazed with passion. Making love to him was new, but loving him was like remembering a move so ingrained it was instinct. Muscle memory, an amused part of her noted as she crossed the room to slip her arms around him. The heart is just another muscle.

Walker wove his fingers through her ponytail and pulled her closer, tilting her head up for a slow kiss, his open mouth teasing over hers. Hot, perfect, even before she parted her lips on a moan and realized he was determined to kiss her within an inch of her life.

Which made it even easier to catch his leg with her foot and spill them both to the ground. A breathless moment later she was straddling his waist with her hands on either side of his head. And because English was his native language, she ignored her self-consciousness and her odd accent and spoke from her heart. The words, in any case, were simple enough. “I love you.”

“Love you too.” He slid one hand to her hip, the other around to her back, cradling her close. “That’s why we’re stronger together.”

“And you should never forget it,” she whispered, before leaning in to kiss him again. Soft and slow, like she had all the time in the world.

Because she did.

The End