Her Lion Guard 2 (Paranormal Shifter Romance) Read Free Page A

his way into the apartment proper. Rowfer waved her back to her seat, pushed away from Jonas’ hovering self to make his own shaky way to the nearest chair. The older man proceeded to collapse onto the plush surface with a sigh, back straightening ever so slightly as he leaned into the chair’s warmth.
    “Finally,” he muttered to himself. A moment later, sharp brown eyes blinked open beneath a pair of truly intimidating eyebrows. “You two – out,” Rowfer ordered, the command clearly meant for Sasha and Cara. The two young Shifters blinked in startled disbelief, not moving an inch from their seats.
    “Out!” The man growled; Sasha opened his mouth to argue, eyes flashing poison-green as anger overwhelmed the usually mild-mannered man. Mary-Lou quickly shook her head, consciously ignoring the guilt that came with kicking the two Shifters out of their own apartment.
    Sasha subsided in the face of her disapproval. He allowed Cara to lead him into the kitchen and out of earshot, body stiff with displeasure. Mary-Lou was still amazed that he listened to her – that any Shifter did, when every last one of them could literally break her in half with their bare hands.
    “We don’t have all day,” Rowfer grumbled. Mary-Lou shook off doubts that had nothing to do with the task at hand and made her way to the older man.
    “Thank you for coming on such short notice,” she began.
    Rowfer shook his head, waving off her words as the empty nicety that they were. “Give me your hands,” he demanded instead.
    Mary-Lou offered her hands to the aged healer silently, palms-down. Rowfer clasped them in his, curled surprisingly strong fingers about hers. “Hold her,” he told Jonas.
    “What—” Mary-Lou could not finish, could do no more than gasp as a wave of darkness rose to swallow her whole.
     
    She knew nothing for a long, long while.
     
    Mary-Lou woke to hushed voices – to agitated barks and half-swallowed hissing. As that was an improvement to being shaken awake by her own body’s terrified thrashing, she did not question the situation too much. Instead, Mary-Lou chose to snuggle back into Jonas’s warmth – because of course Jonas was right there, arms gentle but tight about Mary-Lou’s body – and struggled to remember what had happened.
    “I’m awake,” she murmured in his ear, lifted an unsteady hand to tangle in Jonas’ golden hair. Jonas clutched her tighter for a brief, breathless moment, before releasing her to study her expression.
    “Are you alright?” he rasped, eyes wide and concerned as they roved over her face.
    “I am fine,” Mary-Lou was quick to reassure, surprised to find the statement true. No pain weighted her body, no worries or lingering fear – she took a deep breath, released it in a happy sigh. “I’m really, really fine.”
    “Glad to hear it,” Rowfer said, managing to sound both genuinely happy and impossibly grumpy in one breath. “Now, let’s finish up here. All this talk of dreaming has got me sleepy.”
    Mary-Lou nodded her acquiescence, memories of what had prompted the man’s visit dampening her spirits. She moved to disentangle herself from Jonas – a task she soon gave up as futile, given that the golden-haired Shifter did not so much as budge.
    Annoying. She was sticking with annoying in describing Jonas’ overprotective tendencies, at least for the moment.
    “Go ahead,” Mary-Lou sighed, knowing she must look ridiculous: Sitting in the middle of the living room floor, wrapped in two hundred pounds of worried Shifter. “Cara and Sasha should hear, too,” she added, not wishing to banish the couple yet again. Rowfer nodded his gray head, a grin hidden in his eyes; Mary-Lou got the feeling that the two would have been allowed to stay, had she pressed the issue.
    Right, she was an alpha now. A leader. Mary-Lou kept forgetting what that meant.
    “How long was I out?” she whispered to Jonas.
    “Just under ten minutes,” he rumbled back, arms tightening