Lion's Lair: A Zodiac Shifters Paranormal Romance: Leo (Wylde Magick Book 2) Read online

  Lion’s Lair

  A Zodiac Shifter Paranormal Romance: Leo

  Ann Gimpel

  Edited by

  Kate Richards

  Contents

  Lion’s Lair

  Book Description: Lion’s Lair

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  About the Author

  Book Description, Tarnished Legacy

  Tarnished Legacy, Prologue

  Tarnished Legacy, Chapter One

  Lion’s Lair

  A Zodiac Shifter Paranormal Romance: Leo

  Wylde Magick, Book Two

  By

  Ann Gimpel

  Copyright Page

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © May 2018, Ann Gimpel

  Cover Art Copyright © June 2018, Raven Blackburn

  Edited by Kate Richards

  Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or people living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, e-mail, or web posting without written permission from the author.

  Book Description: Lion’s Lair

  Strong and self-assured, Jeremiah is the closest thing his mage kinfolk have to an alpha. He takes his responsibilities seriously, which hasn’t left time for much of anything, and it’s about to get worse. Mages are in trouble. A few signed on with vampires, causing human deaths. Because of them, all mages are being smeared with the traitor brush.

  Renee’s eagle bondmate jerks her awake one night with the terse message a cave lion, one of the most ancient of the animals, has bonded. According to the bird, they have to drop everything and go to Colorado. Reluctant to weave the fabric of lies she’ll need to cover her absence, she finally gives in.

  She’s horrified to discover the lion bonded with a man who used to be a mage. A mage. The rogues who joined up with vampires. She wants to hate Jeremiah, but it’s a tough sell. Not only is he gorgeous, he’s smart and kind and funny. None of it matters, though, because he doesn’t like her, either.

  Are the hurdles too high? Or is a shifter’s mate truly in the stars?

  Author’s Note

  In astrology-speak, Leo is a fixed fire sign, and those born under it are natural leaders. Dramatic, creative, self-confident, and dominant, they’re extremely difficult to resist. When things go well, they’re able to achieve anything they want to. They often have many friends for they are generous and loyal.

  On the flip side, Leo hates being ignored, facing difficult realities, and not being treated like a king or queen. They are perfectly capable of running roughshod over those who they feel have slighted them and can be quite temperamental.

  Chapter 1

  Angry honking snapped Jeremiah Fuller back to the present. He goosed the gas, only to be bombarded by more irritated honks and the screech of brakes.

  “Goddammit!” he sputtered and pounded a fist into the steering wheel of his classic 1965 Corvette Stingray. He loved the shiny black car, had spent hundreds of hours restoring it to pristine condition. That he’d nearly sacrificed a fender, or goddess forbid his entire front end, to a stupid accident disgusted him.

  He had to pull it together and shelve his problem du jour for now. No more excuses.

  Peering left, right, and over both shoulders to make certain it was safe, he drove away from the four-way stop that had almost been his undoing. Rather than turning right at the next corner—his normal route home—he kept on driving straight.

  He wasn’t fit company for the mages he lived with, not until he sorted through the vision that had dogged him ever since his close call luring vampires to their deaths. He’d ingested a powerful toxin on the reluctant advice of Raul, their group’s healer.

  Raul hadn’t wanted to compound the poison, let alone give it to him, but Jeremiah outranked him. He’d demanded a substance that would keep him alive long enough to mete out maximum damage to a vampire horde—presuming he could induce them to feed from him. He hadn’t worried about the last part. Enticing vamps was never much of a feat since they weren’t known for turning down any neck that swung their way.

  Jeremiah had fully expected to die. The lead-and-silver-based poison would kill him too, but not as fast as it destroyed the vampires. He’d said his goodbyes and come to terms with his decision. If he dissuaded even a handful of mages from joining ranks with vampires, it would be worth it. He’d been on his way out, hovering at the brink of crossing the veil, when a shifter medicine man cast magic of his own to save him.

  That had been two weeks ago. At first, the shifters had been horrified by what they considered a foolhardy move on his part. They’d gotten over that, though. He wasn’t privy to their internal discussions, but he would have bet his last spell that Sarai Lurie, a wolf shifter, had turned the tide in his favor.

  He cranked down a window and savored the wind scouring his overheated face. Mages and shifters had a rocky history. If you were to ask a shifter, they’d describe those like him as failed shifters, and the sad truth was many mages viewed themselves the same way.

  Jeremiah tightened his grip on the wheel. It was a shame. Mage power was different from shifter magic in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. True, they couldn’t entice an animal to bond with them, but they had other skills shifters lacked, like the ability to coax all living things to shine brightly. Mages were exceptional gardeners and ranchers and farmers. They channeled power from the gods to ensure crops would yield bounty, and animals would bear sturdy young. Mages were also philosophers and scholars, two talents many shifters lacked patience for.

  His particular skill was communicating with trees, bushes, and birds. Though he didn’t need to work because he’d amassed a fortune over his lifetime—and was prudent when it came to spending—he occasionally hired out to zoos and animal sanctuaries when they had uncooperative residents that preyed on other critters. He had a stellar reputation. Zookeepers were awed by his ability, but only because they had no idea he used magic to whip their recalcitrant charges into line.

  Since he was used to dealing with stubborn, independent animals and birds, luring the vamps to feed from him had been even easier than he’d anticipated. Certainly simpler than earning a hawk’s trust, but then raptors were notorious loners.

  He turned hard right, taking the road to Gore Pass, but turning off miles before he crested the ten-thousand-foot crossing point along the spine of the Rocky Mountains. A series of dirt roads grew progressively worse until he left other cars behind. The low-slung Chevy finally balked as the road deteriorated to four-wheel-drive terrain. He parked, intent on covering the last couple of miles on foot. An icy wind buffeted him, and he zipped his jacket to the chin.

  Moving at a lope across long-since-abandoned mining roads offered thinking time. Normally, he wasn’t an overthink-things kind of guy, but ever since Ronnie, an eagle shifter, had called him back from death’s door, he’d had unusual dreams. It wouldn’t be so worrisome if they hadn’t invaded his non-sleep time as well—

  “Bullshit!”
The harsh epithet forced him to face facts. He was blowing smoke, pure and simple. If he had any chance of sorting this out, he had to stop indulging in how he wanted things to be and admit the truth.

  The visions were eerily weird, no matter when they showed up.

  He reached the entrance to an abandoned copper mine and ducked inside. He’d discovered this spot years before. It shielded him and his magic nicely, as well as hosting several pairs of nesting raptors. They’d picked it because it sheltered their young from predators.

  He’d picked it for its solitude. Another plus was no one knew about it. He sent magic zinging wide, sampling the mineshaft. The only presence he sensed was residual energy from his last visit a few months back.

  Two of the hawks fluttered down from perches high above his head. One landed on his shoulder, the other on the ground in front of him. He greeted them in their language, assuring them he meant no harm. It seemed to satisfy them because they took to the air, exiting the cave amid a swoosh of wings and harsh cawing.

  Black feathers floated to the ground.

  Jeremiah smiled and scooped one up. Birds were magical in their own right. If he’d been a shifter, he’d have wanted to be a hawk or an eagle or one of the seabirds like cormorants, or even an albatross.

  A roar filled his chest, blasting out of his mouth. He couldn’t have held it in if he tried. The sound shocked him, but his lack of control over his vocal cords was downright terrifying.

  Reality smashed into him like a runaway bus. The lion was back. The same one who’d battered its way through every single dream he’d had since Ronnie saved his life. At first, he thought he’d absorbed bits of residual shifter magic, that the odd visitations would fade.

  They’d grown worse.

  Much worse.

  The lion was different enough from the commonplace variety on television nature shows, he’d Googled it. And come up with a cave lion, a prehistoric beast that had been extinct for thousands of years. Seeing the information march across his display reassured him he was caught up in some weird magical hallucination, courtesy of the eagle shifter’s ministrations. Cave lions didn’t exist anymore, which meant the one hounding him didn’t, either.

  He’d done a fine job ignoring the lion’s visitations after that.

  Until the goddamned, pushy creature entered his consciousness while he sat idling at that four-way stop on the outskirts of Glenwood Springs. Normally, he didn’t travel quite so far west, but he was helping Niall, a jaguar shifter, pack up his house so he could move in with his mate, Sarai, at her uncle’s ranch north of Denver.

  Shifters were banding together. So were mages. It wasn’t safe to live alone anymore. Not until they got a better handle on the foul magic running amok.

  Everyone was worried about vampires. After centuries of traveling miles beneath the radar, they’d teamed up with a pack of disconsolate mages, borrowing liberally from their power. The combination was potent enough to wreak havoc. At least a dozen humans had died as a result of mages selling their skills to the highest bidder.

  In this case, vampires.

  Jeremiah cringed. He’d wanted to craft an excuse for his kin, but their role in the vampires’ carnage was incontrovertible. It was why he’d been willing to sacrifice himself to teach them a lesson: that other mages wouldn’t take their treachery lying down.

  He exhaled sharply. He was stalling, coming up with diversions so he didn’t have to make sense of the cave lion—the one who’d just borrowed his lungs and vocal cords to yowl. He forced his mind back to earlier that day, determined to sort through what happened.

  They’d packed as much as they could fit into Sarai’s uncle’s old farm truck,

  and he’d been on his way back to his home in Silverthorne when the lion hijacked his mind—again. Rather than avoiding it, he’d taken a good, hard look at the beast for the first time. Keen golden eyes glared back. So did four-inch fangs and a shaggy, tawny mane. If the representation in his mind’s eye was at all accurate, the beast was even larger than he’d thought. At least four feet at the shoulder, and maybe six or seven from snout to rump.

  Another roar, louder than the last, ripped from him. Birds tore out of the old mine, squawking their ire and pecking at his unprotected head as they flew past. He didn’t blame them.

  Jeremiah stood tall, squaring his shoulders. “Who are you?” he demanded, proud his voice didn’t tremble. “Tell me what you want.”

  For long moments, nothing happened. The odd pressure in his chest and lungs loosened. He was close to deciding the whole thing was exactly what he’d suspected, a nexus where shifter magic was doing battle with his brand of power, when searing heat started in the soles of his feet, moving upward in an inexorable tide of pain. Pins and needles ceded to knives. The wounds the eagle shifter had carved reopened, wetting his sides with bloody fluid.

  He threw wards around himself, but the pain increased by a factor of a hundred until he felt like the skin was being flayed from his bones.

  “Do not fight me!” blasted through his mind.

  “Who are you?” Jeremiah shouted, but his mouth didn’t work right, and the words came out garbled. He dropped his warding because he hurt so much he couldn’t hang onto the magic.

  An anguished screech shot from his mouth, followed by two more. He wasn’t a coward but traveling through the nine circles of Hell couldn’t hurt this much. White-hot blasts seared him from all sides.

  Panting, gasping, he took a breath into lungs that had forgotten how to cooperate. The world smelled different, each scent individual and intense. It was as if he’d never smelled anything before, and he sucked air hungrily, sampling the rich variety. Who would have guessed rocks had a smell? Or that different types of bird shit each had their own tang?

  The pain receded. At first, he thought it was because he had something else to focus on, but it really was lessening.

  A strident rip from his jacket, and then another from his shirt, forced reluctant understanding. A glance downward solidified his knowledge. He was shifting—into the lion. Never mind it was impossible. It was happening anyway. Exultation did battle with fear.

  “Wait.” He switched to telepathy and fought with limbs that were half human, half feline to divest himself of what was left of his clothes.

  He saved his trousers but did a less effective job with his shirt. His jacket had already split down the back. All through his struggles, the realization he wasn’t human any longer rocketed through him, heady as a rare vintage wine.

  I’m shifting. I’m shifting. I’m shifting.

  The words repeated like a tape loop obliterating everything else.

  “So you want to be a bird, do you?” The lion’s words were lined with derision. “I was going to give you more time, but your bird fixation was so egregious I couldn’t let it slide.”

  Jeremiah was too overcome to craft an answer. The cavalcade of smells intensified. His vision changed, the visual field wider and deeper, but with less fine detail. Bones stretched and reformed. Fur sprouted, covering bare skin.

  He’d frozen in place once his battles with his clothing ended. What was left of the pain ceased abruptly, and he forced one paw forward, followed by another. He swished his tail, liked how it felt, and did it again. Before he knew it, he’d bounded to the end of the main cavern and back again, the movement easy, effortless.

  He sat back on his haunches and launched himself upward in an experimental leap that carried him fifteen feet into the air. This time the roar that shook the old mineshaft was all him. A low, rumbling purr followed.

  Before he got too carried away, he stopped moving. “Why?” he asked. “Was it the eagle shifter’s healing?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “You have to say more than that. I want to understand how it is that I, a mage, am now a shifter.”

  “It’s the same strain of magic,” the lion began.

  “No, it’s not,” Jeremiah broke in.

  Familiar pressure erupted into a roa
r. “If you know so much, little mage, why ask me?”

  It was a reasonable question. “Sorry. I know less than nothing about being part of a shifter bond. And I need to know everything.”

  “My answers will not satisfy you. Mage power was primary. Shifters were an offshoot. Long ago, both branches of that magical tree could shift. I have no idea if the eagle’s ministrations eliminated a blockage, but I was called from the animals’ world. Your energy is a match for my own. It is how our bond forms.”

  Jeremiah waited, but the lion fell silent. “Surely there’s more,” he prodded.

  “No. Nothing more. See? I told you my reply would be less than satisfactory.”

  “It’s not that. Not exactly. If what you say is true—”

  Another roar, deafening and nourishing at the same time. “I always speak the truth. To suggest otherwise demeans our bond.”

  If Jeremiah had been in his human body, he’d have cast a sidelong glance at his new partner. “Sorry. It’s a lot to wrap my mind around. Do you mean that any mage can become a shifter?”

  A slithering hiss sounding like an angry teakettle made his jowls vibrate.

  “Don’t be so literal. Every mage isn’t on the verge of becoming a shifter. That would be impossible. What? Do you believe an inexhaustible supply of bond animals exists?”

  “I have no idea what to believe.” This time the hiss was pure Jeremiah. “Look. I was raised a mage. I understand mage magic. I never studied anything about being a shifter. Why would I have?”