“I used to think you were too cowardly to take them, but do you even know that you have choices?” Santiago asked, his voice low enough that it started to pull the edge of a growl. “That you don’t have to march through life as the obedient daughter who never develops her own personality because she’s too busy following orders?”
Something hot pricked behind her eyes and she forced it back. He was just a loner. An outlier. His opinion of her didn’t matter. Even if he’s right.
“Oh, look, they’ve opened the Hall doors. I’d better go grab a seat before all the good ones are taken.” It was a flimsy excuse to escape, but she didn’t care. He already thought she was a coward. The cowardly lioness. If only there was a similarly fitting appellate she could throw at him about jaguars. Not that she would. The Alpha’s daughter did not lower herself to name-calling.
The Pride Hall was filling quickly. The large, open multipurpose room could fit sixty comfortably, but today it would be called upon to house nearly twice that number. The sixty core lions, plus roughly twenty cats of other breeds who lived on the pride lands, and nearly forty outliers coming in from miles around to heed the Alpha’s summons. Mandatory All Pride meeting. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d had one, but whenever it was, the pride had been smaller then. Over the last few months there had been a steady influx of shifters from the south, begging for sanctuary.
Something was coming. The Texas lions were stirring things up, trying to get the shifter community unified behind the idea of coming out to the humans by threatening them with the bogeyman of some mysterious organization that was abducting and running tests on shifters. People were scared, and everyone was looking to Lone Pine to see which way the wind was blowing. In recent years they’d become the biggest and most influential pride west of the Mississippi as well as the only pride in the country to accept non-lion shifters into their ranks, so everyone was waiting to hear how the Lone Pine Alpha would respond to the threat from the south.
That was what today’s meeting was about—informing the pride of the tales the new arrivals from the south had brought and warning the strays and outliers to be careful and stay close to pride lands whenever possible until they knew more about whether this organization was a legitimate concern. The wedding announcement was just the spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. Something positive for the entire pride to look forward to so they had something other than an unseen enemy to think about.
Lila smiled, chatted and flirted her way around the room—taking the time to introduce herself to new faces as she threaded her way toward a cluster of open seats along the far aisle. A good Alpha’s mate was accessible and engaged with her people, and Lila was going to be the best damn Alpha’s mate this pride had ever seen. Not that her mother hadn’t set that bar rather high.
She looked to the stage and there they were. The perfect power couple. Gregory and Lucienne Fallon. Her parents.
The man who’d been Lone Pine Alpha for the last twenty-five years didn’t look like he’d just had his fiftieth birthday and neither did the statuesque beauty at his side. They both still radiated strength, vitality, and calm, contained power. Roman had that same aura, standing at the foot of the stage with her father’s best friend and her godfather, the bear shifter Hugo.
The only one who didn’t fit in with the perfect Alpha power tableau was Lila.
Mild, biddable, obedient Lila. Was it really so terrible to be obedient? To prefer going with the flow to making waves? So what if she always did as she was told? Since when was that a crime?
Lila twisted toward the door, telling herself she was looking for Patch, when in reality her eyes were searching out a certain black panther. He loomed near the door, leaning against the back wall, his sleekly muscled arms folded over his black T-shirt. Not lord of all he surveyed like Roman or her father, but apart from it all. Not above or below, just separate. Independent. Lila could almost envy him that knowledge of who he was outside the hierarchy. She only seemed to know who she was relative to the pride, like she would cease to exist entirely without them.
Santiago’s head turned, just a fraction, and suddenly he was pinning her with his gaze. Lila sucked in a gasp and whipped around, a blush heating her face from being caught gawking at him.
“You look guilty.” A pair of cowboy boots appeared at her side. Cowboy boots containing a big, lazy lion with a big, lazy smile. Kelly Mather. Biggest flirt in three counties. “I love guilty. Tell me all about it.”
Kelly tossed himself into the seat at her side, long legs stretched out in front of him. Lila smiled. She’d always liked Kelly. It was impossible to be stressed out around Kelly. Everything was light and easy with him. And though he never failed to make her feel pretty and pampered, he’d sooner cut off his arm than take it any further than flirtation. Kelly was safe. And so much fun to play with.
“I was saving that seat for Patch.”
Kelly doffed his cowboy hat and reached across her to set it on the empty seat on her other side. “Now you’re saving that seat for Patch.” He winked. “I know you weren’t trying to subtly tell me to get lost just then. My manly ego couldn’t stand the disappointment if you rebuffed me, fair Lila.”
“Where does a cowboy learn a word like rebuff?”
He leaned in close to her, light brown eyes twinkling. “Can you keep a secret? The cowboy thing is all an act to get girls. I’m secretly a literary scholar with a weakness for Renaissance poetry.”
“You can’t use Renaissance poetry to get girls? I’d think they would eat it up with a spoon.”
“I could,” Kelly acknowledged with a shrug. “But the cowboy stuff is easier. Just a little swagger and a few yes, ma’ams and y’alls and they’re eating out of my hand. Or anything else I want them to be eating.”
She rolled her eyes as he wagged his brows in exaggerated lechery. “You are a bad boy, Kelly Mather.”
He laughed, sun-lined eyes crinkling. “I’ll take that as a compliment, Lila Fallon.”
She grinned at him, everything fun and light and easy. As it was supposed to be. As she was supposed to be. No niggling jitters. No doubts.
She wasn’t a coward. She was a valuable member of the pride. She may not be the Alpha’s mate her mother was yet, but her mother had been in the position for twenty-five years. Lila would grow into it. And maybe she wasn’t madly in love with Roman, but they’d grow into each other too.
She wasn’t letting other people run her life. She was choosing the right path for her, which just also happened to be the right path for the pride and the one her parents had always wanted her to take. Everything was going to go exactly as planned. Everything was fine.
Lila settled in next to Kelly for a good, long flirt.
Chapter Two
Santiago Flores was giving serious thought to murdering Kelly Mather.
Not that it was Kelly’s fault. He was a genuinely nice guy who would flirt with a rock if it stood still long enough. No, the reason Santiago wanted Kelly dead and safely stowed beneath six feet of dirt was perched on the chair beside him in a frilly white dress, laughing and leaning in to touch his arm and batting her goddamn eyelashes.
Lila Fallon. The bane of Santiago’s existence. His personal curse.
Not that it was her fault either, if he was honest. Lila had never done anything to encourage him, beyond her usual friendly flirtation and she hadn’t done even that in years.