Southern Shifters: Werelock (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read Free Page B

him, closing his throat as he fought to remember to breathe. Someone, somewhere had hurt his beautiful familiar.
    He would rip their hearts out with his bare hands, and their spines through their damn guts. He’d make them suffer, and laugh as he danced in their entrails. Drawn by the compulsion between them, she reached him and crawled into his lap.
    Fuck. Hale’s eyes fluttered closed as he buried his face against her neck. One touch of her soft-as-silk fur and his suspicion was confirmed. She was his familiar.
    The long dormant part of his soul stirred and he held his breath. Please, no… it couldn’t take exception to Renae, not when he’d just found her. Power surged through him and he gasped. He’d never felt the thing so strong, like it had swum up from the depths of his soul to take a look out his eyes. Time froze as he concentrated on the female in his arms and the creature that prowled his blood. Please let it like her…
    It purred.
    Using his goddamn throat.
    He blinked, yanking his head up in surprise to meet the equally startled gaze of the lioness in his arms. She gave a slow blink, then without warning, he had an armful of curvy woman. Curvy, very naked, woman.
    “Please,” she begged, reaching up to touch his cheek. “Don’t take me back to him. Kill me now.”
     
    *
     
    Renae never begged. Even through all the years of emotional and then physical abuse Lance subjected her to, she’d never broken down and begged. No matter how bad it had gotten, the fact that Lance wanted her to crawl before him meant she just couldn’t do it. He was the worst sort of bully, the kind who wouldn’t be satisfied until his victim was completely broken.
    Given the number of bounty hunters he’d sent to haul her back to the pride, the fact he hadn’t been able to crack her and turn her into a blubbering mess without thoughts and options of her own like his mother must’ve really pissed him off. He’d have to suck it up though, because the only way she was going back to the Brogan pride was as a corpse.
    Begging Lance might be out of the question; he was an asshole who got a kick out of using his power over others, but the man who held her so gently in his arms was a different matter. She didn’t know him, but something in his gaze told her he was a good man, even if he tried to appear otherwise.
    He watched her steadily, his deep blue gaze unwavering on hers. Magic wreathed him like a clock, shimmering over his skin in a way that made her instincts sit up and take notice. She’d been wrong about him being a lion. He wasn’t a shifter, he was something else entirely. She’d always been sensitive to magic and even the most magically unaware couldn’t miss that he was a warlock.
    Her inner cat nudged her. No, he wasn’t a warlock. Her lioness, sometimes the most intelligent of the two of them (it hated Lance with a passion) recognized him and pulled memories from her childhood to parade in front of her. He wasn’t a warlock, he was a were lock… the perfect magical symbiosis between high magic and the primal magic of a shifter. He’d sacrificed his animal form to reach greater heights as a magic user. They were almost unheard of these days and supposed to be as powerful as the most famous of their number, Merlin, had been.
    Great. Just her freaking luck. The bounty hunter Lance sent after her was not only as sexy as sin, as ripped as a damn underwear model, he was also one of the most powerful magical creatures to walk God’s green earth.
    She. Was. Screwed.
    Big time.
    He shook his head, and sunlight danced in the golden flecks of his hair. She wondered what kind of shifter he would have been. A wolf, all grays and browns…or a bear, a black grizzly maybe? Two of the rarest paranormal creatures rolled into one. But try as she might, she couldn’t see him as anything other than a lion, all golden and tawny.
    “No. I’m not going to kill you.”
    His voice was low and controlled, deeper than she’d