Page 9

Sidney woke up with something warm and furry at her back.

It took her a moment to remember where she was.

In Lucius’s apartment.

She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she did remember snuggling with Lucius after they made love the first time and talking in that quiet, dreamy sort of way when everything was all sex and muddled thoughts, before they tumbled in the sheets again.

But there was definitely something furry at her back.

So he had a cat?

She yawned and looked around the room as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She couldn’t see much of anything besides shadows.

Her hand brushed her waist where Lucius’s arm was draped, but she felt only a large…furry paw?

“Lucius?” she whispered as her brain tried to figure out why she felt like a paw was pressed to her stomach.

She fumbled on the side table for her phone but didn’t see it and realized it must be in her bag, which was somewhere out in the front room.

Lucius didn’t answer her, but what felt like a paw on her belly tightened and something like claws dug gently into her bare skin. She sucked in a sharp breath.

Was she dreaming?

She had to be. But she felt like she was awake.

Slipping carefully from the bed, she hit the floor and barely stifled the squeak of pain as her knees connected with the carpet and jolted a shock through her bones. Scrambling through the bedroom to the front room, she found her bag and pulled her phone out. She hit the flashlight button on the screen and located her clothes.

She stared at her clothes and shoes on the floor and heard the squeak of the bedsprings down the hall.

She had to be imagining things. Why on earth would a paw be on her? She must have seen too many animals today and be stressed from the argument with her mom. That…had to be it.

She’d go in the room with the flashlight, see Lucius asleep, and realize she’d just had some crazy dream.

Rising to her feet, she kept the flashlight trained on the floor and slowly made her way back to the bedroom. Her brain was highly suggesting she just leave, that there was something dangerous in the bedroom, but that couldn’t possibly be the case. It had to be Lucius. She’d fallen into a peaceful sleep with him, his arms around her, and she’d remembered a last thought that she’d never felt so safe and cared for, and that she was somehow already half in love with him.

So why was she scared out of her gourd right now?

Her hand shook as she reached the doorway and lifted the phone’s flashlight to illuminate the bed.

No. Freaking. Way!

There was a lion on the bed.

A…lion.

A lion?

A scream rent from her throat and the lion sat up and stared at her.

She grasped the bedroom door and slammed it shut as another scream of terror came out of her. She dropped the phone in her haste, rushing to get to the front door. She grabbed her shorts and shirt and pulled them on as something heavy hit the bedroom door and a roar echoed in the apartment.

Snagging her bag from the coffee table, she rushed for the door and threw it open, racing barefoot out of the apartment.

“Help! Help!”

She ran away from the apartment complex and right into a man, who grabbed her arms and kept her from falling when she slammed into him.

“Hey, are you okay? Are you Sidney? I’m Amadeus, Lucius’s brother and one of the security guards.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks. She opened her mouth to tell him what happened when the distinctive roar of a lion came from the apartment behind them.

“Holy shit,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“We have to run!”

Something sounded like a bomb going off followed by the sound of splintering wood.

“It escaped! We have to run!”

“Shit, damn it!” Amadeus said. He grasped her upper arm and hurried her along. “Don’t worry, you won’t be hurt.”

“How can you say that? There’s a freaking lion coming after us!”

He grabbed his radio off his belt as they rushed from the complex and said, “It’s Amadeus, we’ve got a problem in the apartment complex. There’s a lion in apartment three and I need all the alphas in the employee cafeteria immediately.”

He steered her toward a building that was dark.

“Hey, I want to leave,” she said, trying to pull away from him.

“Sorry, Sidney,” he said. “I can’t let you leave right now.”

“What? What the hell, Amadeus! Where’s Lucius? What is going on?”

The terror she’d felt at waking up in bed with a lion was now replaced with anger and confusion. Amadeus wouldn’t let go of her arm, and no matter how she struggled, she couldn’t get free.

A light turned on as they passed near the building and it illuminated a door. It opened suddenly and she recognized Jupiter from the security office.

“Amadeus won’t let me go,” she said. “Make him let me go!”

“Sorry, Sidney,” Jupiter said as he stepped aside and watched Amadeus pull her into the building. “You can’t leave. I’m sorry.”

The door shut and Jupiter stood in front of it. Amadeus released her arm and said, “I’m sorry, Sidney, I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

She rubbed her arm where his viselike grip had kept her with him and looked at the two men.

“Why aren’t you worried about Lucius? I told you there was a lion in the apartment. What happened to him? What’s going on here?”

Jupiter pressed his lips into a thin line and shared a look with Amadeus.

A door opened at the back of the large room, which she figured for some sort of cafeteria with tables and chairs and a kitchen area. Men walked in, single file, and one of them was Marcus, who she remembered from the popcorn stand.

They all looked tired and disheveled, and it was no wonder since her brief glance at her phone screen before she’d turned on the flashlight in the apartment had shown it was past four a.m.

She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands and tried to calm her flying pulse. She wasn’t in danger right now, but she definitely didn’t feel safe.

“Where is Lucius?” she asked.

A man who looked a lot like Lucius and shared features that resembled Jupiter and Amadeus stepped forward from the group of men who’d come into the room from somewhere at the back of the building.

“My name is Caesar,” he said.

She blinked a few times as the name spun in her head.

“You’re Lucius’s dad.”

“Yes. Jupiter is head of security in the park, and I’m also on the security team as is Amadeus. Now tell us exactly what happened, Sidney.”

She looked past Jupiter to the exit, and he narrowed his gaze and shook his head slightly as if warning her not to make a run for it.

She couldn’t figure out why she felt so unsettled all of a sudden. She was scared at what she’d witnessed when she’d woken up and she was worried about Lucius. But everything about her current situation made her feel entirely uneasy.

Exhaling sharply, she put her bag on the nearest table and said, “I woke up in bed with a lion. I got dressed and ran from the apartment, but I heard it behind me. I heard it roar and then what sounded like the door splintering when it was hit. I was trying to leave, but Amadeus brought me here. I just want to know if Lucius is okay. Why isn’t anyone really talking to me?”

She rubbed her arms as a chill wove down her spine.

Turning slowly, she looked out the large windows into the darkness of the park, and there, standing like some kind of mythical beast come to life, was the lion she’d been in bed with.

He roared so loudly that she could feel it in her heart and it made her eyes sting with fresh tears.

What the hell was going on?

And why was no one surprised to see a lion through the window?